Cardinal Martini’s Legacy in the Irish Context · It is appropriate that we honour the memory of...

Martini’s legacy Gardiner St Jan 21 2013 Eamonn Conway

Cardinal Martini’s Legacy in the Irish Context

Eamonn Conway, Gardiner Street Church, Jan 21st 2013

Introduction

It is appropriate that we honour the memory of the late Cardinal Carlo-Maria

Martini and I am deeply honoured to have been invited to give this inaugural

lecture which is to explore the Jesuit Cardinal’s legacy in the Irish context.

I want to begin by acknowledging that I am no expert on Cardinal Martini’s life or

works. However, I have found the past few weeks during which I explored some

of his work deeply enriching, and I am convinced that there are many valuable

lessons we can learn from him. Well, perhaps that is not quite true. There is

really only one lesson he has to teach us, one which is both simple and profound,

and which discloses itself in many different texts and contexts, and I intend to

come to that fairly directly.

On hearing of the death of Cardinal Martini, Pope Benedict XVI sent a message of

condolence to the current Archbishop of Milan, Cardinal Scola. It read as follows:

Having heard with sadness the news of the death of Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini after a long illness,

which he lived with a tranquil soul and with confident abandonment to the will of the Lord, I wish to

express… my profound … sorrow, recalling with affection this dear brother who served the Gospel

and the Church so generously. I recall with gratitude the intense and profuse Apostolic work of this

zealous, spiritual child of St. Ignatius, an expert teacher, an authoritative biblical scholar, and a

beloved Rector of the Pontifical Gregorian University and of the Pontifical Biblical Institute, and a wise

and diligent Archbishop of the Ambrosian Archdiocese. I think also of the competent and fervent

service he gave to the Word of God, always opening to the ecclesial community the treasures of the

Sacred Scriptures, especially through the promotion of Lectio Divina.

These aspects of Pope Benedict’s tribute to Martini provide a helpful structure

for reflecting on the Cardinal’s legacy: a zealous spiritual child of Ignatius; his

service to the Word of God as an expert teacher and authoritative biblical

scholar, and especially through Lectio Divina; a wise and diligent archbishop.


I will reflect on each of these and then address the issue of the cardinal’s legacy

in the Irish context.

A zealous spiritual child of St Ignatius

The antidote of interiority

One can never underestimate the influence of St Ignatius on a Jesuit’s life. So it

should be, and so it was with Cardinal Martini.

It may seem a bit of a rush to focus so early in this paper on the last stage of

Martini’s life but “as a man lives so shall he die” (St Augustine), and it is perhaps

in the weakness and vulnerability of terminal illness, old age and approaching

death that one’s deepest spiritual roots are laid bare.

In 2008, Martini had just returned from Jerusalem to Milan. His body

increasingly succumbing to Parkinson’s disease, he found himself more and more

dependent on those around him, and struggling to remain positive in the face of

mounting fatigue and apathy.

It is worth noting that the reality of death seems to have always been something

Martini struggled to accept. In his book, Colloqui notturni a Gerusalemme, he

confessed that there were times in his life when he had found it difficult even to

glance at a crucifix and to be reminded of the reality of death and also of the

surrender in faith that death demanded. He agonized about why God could not

save people from death through Christ’s death, and even why he allowed his own

Son to suffer on the cross. But he had come to realize that without death it is not

possible to give oneself completely to God.

On returning to Milan in 2008, Martini gave an interview to the Lombardy

Regional Radio Station [RAI]. He spoke frankly of the effects of his illness; of his

interior struggles, of the tendency towards dark moods and depression, and of

the need to activate his personal defences; of the need to build up his courage

and to “counter-attack”. His main resource was what he describes as a little-


known book entitled “Spiritual Exercises” written in 1500 by Ignatius, who, as he

says, knew human psychology so well, and in particular human weakness.

At the heart of the Exercises is a path for purification of the mind and heart

which can lead to a situation of inner freedom and serenity. It is only in such a

state that we can choose freely, and make important decisions. The Exercises

help us to identify and therefore to manage what is negative in our lives. In this

way we do not have to be controlled by such moments, or succumb to what he

calls the “black mood” (umor nero) that they induce. We think here of the

inevitable moments of sadness, heaviness, anxiety, nervousness and tension

which arise when faced with adversity and which carry what he called an “inner

sting” (un morso interiore) that blocks us, that can cause discouragement and

entice us into “giving up”.

When we find ourselves slipping towards the negative and succumbing to the

dark moments, the Exercises urge us to get a grip on ourselves, to take control, to

dig more deeply and to discern prayerfully, moods, moments and movements

which are also present in our lives though eclipsed by the darkness. These can be

a source of courage, consolation, enthusiasm, and peace, if we acknowledge them

and unleash their power. They can lead to a state of consciousness in which a

sense of joy eventually comes to predominate, despite the darkness.

Incidentally, a “trigger” towards a more positive mood in Martini’s own life,

which he mentions in this interview, was the music of Mozart, a love of which is

one of a number of things Martini had in common with Pope Benedict (more

later).

I want to delay a little more on the Ignatian understanding of interiority as I

believe it is key to understanding Cardinal Martini.

While he was still living in Jerusalem in 2006, Martini gave an interview

regarding the message of Ignatius for the third millennium. He said: “I think

there is one especially salient message Ignatius can give us: the great value of


interiority. I mean by this everything that has to do with the sphere of the heart,

of deep intentionality, of decisions made from within.”

In some respects this brings us to the heart of Martini’s legacy. His life is a

testament to the daily struggle to decide, to will to live out of the depths, to cry

out from the darkness of the deep (Ps 130), and yet to find a liberating and

empowering sense of joy arising in and from that same darkness. In the

Jerusalem book already referred to (Conversazioni Notturne A Gerusalemme, Sul

Rischio Della Fede): he says: “The night is the time of darkness, of imaginings,

when the senses become more sensitive…. the middle of the night is the

beginning of the day”. He was not speaking only of the physical darkness. There

are echoes here of St John of the Cross on the dark night of the soul: “O night

more lovable than the dawn” (o noche amable más que la alborada).

Martini’s life is an invitation to live in and from interiority, there to build up

sufficient spiritual muscle that we can do battle with the negative, the heaviness,

the darkness, that threatens our very existence, individually and as a human

community.

As Brian O’Leary SJ has commented, “the argument for interiority today is not

simply that it has been a constant part of the Christian spiritual tradition; it is

also that interiority is the antidote to much that is destructive in our

contemporary society.” We will return to consider the need for interiority in the

Irish context towards the conclusion of this paper.

Interiority at work

In Martini’s life we see someone who dispensed the antidote of interiority freely

and effectively in a variety of contexts and ways, some of which are well known

and which we will refer to presently. One perhaps less well known is his

engagement with terrorists. Until his appointment to the See of Milan in 1979,

Martini had been an academic all his life, holding doctorates both from the

Biblicum and the Gregorian Universities in Rome and rising to be rector of both

these prestigious institutions. The priests of Milan, if they were anything like

their Irish counterparts, might well have groaned at having an outsider academic


foisted upon them as bishop, but this, of course, was the See of Ambrose and

more recently of Montini (later Paul VI).

The academic was soon to prove himself an able pastor. These years in Italy

were known as the “years of the lead (bullets)” (anni di piombi) because of the

many bloody and violent terrorist acts which plagued Italy at the time.

On 13 June 1984, a stranger arrived and was admitted to the Archbishop’s

residence in Milan. He opened a number of bags and unpacked a bazooka,

rockets, grenades and Kalashnikovs, the entire arsenal of the Comitati Comunisti

Rivoluzionari , a group associated with the Red Brigades who had killed Aldo

Moro. Andrea Gagliarducci sees it as quite remarkable that in a short time

Martini had developed the reputation of being such a significant public spiritual

leader that he was chosen by this terrorist organization to receive their arsenal

as a sign that their armed struggle was over. Martini had won their respect as a

Churchman who could bring about by peaceful means “political, human and

social reconciliation”.

A bishop must also dare

“A bishop must also dare”, was apparently, a fairly frequent saying of Martini’s,

and he used a similar phrase as the subtitle to his Jerusalem book “on the risk of

faith” (Sul Rischio Della Fede). We should not pass over these expressions too

quickly because I believe that they point to two aspects of Martini’s spirituality.

The first is the risk that is always involved in living Christian faith as an intense

relationship and not just as an abstract system of beliefs. The second is to the

willingness to take risks in the living out and proclamation of that faith to others.

In this the 25th year of my own priesthood I found myself reflecting on how easy

it is to settle for Christianity merely as a kind of comforting ideology, to which we

can indeed be very dedicated and committed, zealously so, and which can give us

a great sense of certainty in our lives, and even at times a sense of

accomplishment and achievement. Yet for all that, it is really a poor substitute for

entering into the messier riskiness of genuine relationship with Christ. Our faith


can and should give us a measure of certainty and reassurance, but the

consolation and friendship that a living relationship with Christ brings is also

accompanied by the invitation to risky self-surrender and self-sacrifice.

Martini’s daring to risk is, I suggest, the way to understand what some judged to

be a contradiction in his life between on the one hand powerful and faithful

witness to the teaching of Christ and his Church, and on the other, calls for

reform and renewal of Church structures. Some saw in his calls for Church

reform merely a “caving in” to contemporary culture or, even worse, a trivial

pursuit of popularity. This is to deeply misjudge the man. However inopportune

or ill-advised one might judge such calls there never was any intention to be

disloyal or to endanger the Church’s mission. Rather, they resulted from the risk

of taking seriously, in the opening words of Gaudium et Spes, “the joys and the

hopes, the griefs and the anxieties of the men of this age, especially those who

are poor or in any way afflicted”.

Pope Benedict and Cardinal Martini

Because much has been made of the differences between Pope Benedict and

Cardinal Martini, perhaps it is worth taking a moment to stress their similarities.

They had much more in common besides their mutual appreciation of Mozart.

They were born within a few months of each other. They spent all their priestly

life before becoming bishops in the academy, and they were both passionately

concerned about proclaiming Christian faith in contemporary culture. And there

is evidence that they also influenced one another. For instance, according to

Andrea Tornielli, Martini acknowledged that his well known outreach to

unbelievers, the Cattedra dei non credenti was inspired by Joseph Ratzinger.

According to Tornielli, Martini was on retreat in the Black Forest at the end of

the 1960s preparing for some in-service work with Italian clergy. He quotes

Martini:

“I expected lots of questions, objections and problems. I was looking for a

book that would help me introduce ideas in a calm and clear way. This is

how I ended up with Joseph Ratzinger’s “Introduction to Christianity” in

German, which came out a little earlier (1968).”


According to Tornielli:

“I can still remember” Martini said, “how I enjoyed reading through those

pages. That text helped me set my thoughts straight and my heart at rest

and took away my confusion…I still have those notes today. It was that

text in particular which instilled the “perhaps it’s true” theme (which the

incredulous individual uses to ask themselves questions) in my head and

guided me in writing “Cattedra dei non credenti”.

Decades later, as Pope, Benedict XVI has created a similar kind of dialogue in his

“Courtyard of the Gentiles” which has the aim of creating a neutral space of

encounter between believers and nonbelievers, just as Martini did in his Cattedra

dei non credenti.

A free and creative man

We have been exploring how being a “zealous spiritual child of Ignatius” led

Martini to take seriously the griefs and anxieties of the people of our age. Before

we leave this, it is worth recalling the tribute paid to him by the Jesuit Father-

General, Father Adolfo Nicolás. Father Nicolás described Martini as “a free and

creative man” and suggested that his creativity stemmed from the fact that he

“really cared about other people’s problems and was free from any concerns

about his own person.”

Fr. Nicolás made an interesting comparison between Cardinal Martini and the

founder of Apple who also died recently, Steve Jobs. I quote from an article by

Giacomo Galeazzi:

“He (Jobs) stated that his starting point was always dealing with

customers’ questions more than the producers’.” The latter ask technical

questions (what materials to use, how to assemble a machine, etc.). But

for Jobs, it was the customers’ issues that were important, the users’

questions: how is a tool used? How do I listen? Who do I want to connect

with? These are the questions that count. In a certain sense it was the


same for Martini: “Of course, as a representative of the Church he paid

attention to his tradition and it was precisely for this reason that he also

asked: “What do people need? What is necessary today? How can we talk

to young people, to non-believers, to agnostics and to atheists? What are

their problems?” He intended this to be his starting point. This is what

made him so creative and open.” This is why “the Biblicist cardinal “was

an example to many Jesuits, because he knew how to ask himself

questions, without limiting himself to those which could be easily

answered. He asked all the important questions, none of which have

definite answers, because they are to do with the mystery of God – the

mystery of the mysteries-, the mystery of the human person, the mystery

of history.”

It can be unsettling to entertain questions that cannot be answered easily or

indeed at all because to do so confronts us with our own smallness and

vulnerability. At the same time, it is only by acknowledging such questions that

we become open to facing and embracing the mystery of God.

Competent and fervent service to the Word of God; expert teacher and

authoritative biblical scholar, especially through Lectio Divina

I want to turn now to other aspects of the tribute paid by Pope Benedict to

Cardinal Martini. The Holy Father referred to Martini’s service to the Word of

God especially through Lectio Divina and as an authoritative biblical scholar.

Martini’s reputation in this area is well known and was widely appreciated, and

because of this I don’t think it is necessary for me to say much about it here.

Martini held a chair in the very challenging area of textual criticism at the

Biblicum and was the only Catholic invited to join the prestigious Institute for

New Testament Textual Research at Münster (Germany). At the same time, he

always found time to give retreats and workshops which tended generally to

follow a familiar pattern. Adopting the Ignatian method, he would reflect on a


biblical figure, King David or Moses for instance, during which he would unfold

God’s salvation plan and show God’s providential care for the human race

culminating in the coming of Christ. The lectio divina method would be followed:

reading the text; meditation and prayer based on the Word; contemplation of

biblical characters or encounters.

No one since Vatican II, apart perhaps from Pope Benedict, has done more to

implement the teaching of Dei Verbum “so that by hearing the message of salvation

the whole world may believe, by believing it may hope, and by hoping it may

love” (DV,1).

In an interview in 2010 given to Gianni Valente he commented that:

“Faith is transmitted to people beginning with the environment around

them, but can then enter each one concretely in four ways: the head, the

heart, the hands and the feet.”

Martini put all four aspects of his own being at the service of the Word of God:

head, heart, hand and feet. It is not surprising therefore that he chose for his

epitaph a verse from Psalm 119: “Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light for

my path”.

A wise and diligent archbishop

Cardinal Martini chose as his episcopal motto: ‘Pro veritate adversa diligere’ (for

the sake of truth, willingly to face adversity or difficulties). As we have seen,

Martini did not shirk from facing difficult issues or situations. As archbishop, he

faced many of the problems caused by secularism that we are only beginning to

deal with in the Irish context, and so in reflecting on his contribution as

archbishop of the largest diocese in the world with as many Catholics as Ireland,

we can also begin to consider more explicitly his legacy to us.


Il Vescovo

His last book is called Il Vescovo (the bishop), and is effectively a brief apologia

pro vita sua. In this book he contrasts a rigid style of Episcopal leadership

incapable of listening or taking seriously people’s concerns, with a form of

pastoring that is rooted in the kind of interiority we detailed earlier.

In his tribute to Cardinal Martini, the Vatican spokesman, fellow Jesuit Father

Federico Lombardi SJ quoted as follows from Il Vescovo:

“Do not think the bishop is able to effectively guide the people entrusted

to him with a multitude of regulations and decrees, with prohibitions and

negative judgements. Focus instead on interior formation, on a taste for

and fascination with Sacred Scripture; show the positive reasons for our

actions, inspired by the Gospel. One will gain so much more than one

would by a rigid observance of rules and regulations.”

Fostering Vocations

Martini focused on interior formation. As a bishop, he took the work of fostering

vocations to marriage, priesthood and the religious life very seriously. One of his

early initiatives was the establishment of the Gruppo Samuele which began with

a couple of hundred young participants and ended up with thousands. Why

Samuel? “Samuel, learned to discern God’s call and to distinguish it from human

voices” Martini explained, stressing Samuel’s vocation to be a prophet both in the

religious and the secular world.

The project took the following form: young people between the ages of 17 and 25

years; as yet uncommitted in terms of a specific vocational choice; and, in his

own words, “one hundred per cent open to God’s will… willing to do with the rest

of their lives whatever the Lord may ask of them”. He demanded of young

participant a commitment to one year of vocational searching and the acceptance

of certain rules: spiritual direction, monthly participation in meetings, limited

television viewing (today we would have to add the computer and internet).

There was one final requirement, and this the participants found most difficult of


all: the “setting aside of any anxiety about the future of their vocation, placing

themselves trustingly in God’s hands”.

In measurable terms the project led to many vocations to marriage, priesthood

and the religious life. In ways more difficult to measure, participants discovered

the richness of spiritual direction and Lectio Divina, which became life-long

practices.

Could such a process work in the Irish context? I believe it could, if we had the

courage and the resolve, and above all the depth of interiority within ourselves

to risk it. One of the legacies of Martini to the Irish Church, I suggest, therefore, is

the need to nurture vocations to the sacraments of marriage and ordination, and

to the religious life. There is more to this than the occasional workshop or media

campaign. We need oases for the nurturing of interiority where people are

accompanied spiritually by credible leaders who themselves are living “the risk

of faith”.

We also need to care more for those who have received the sacrament of

marriage and priesthood. Particularly at this time, when the distinctiveness of

marriage is being threatened and undermined, we need to help couples to

understand more deeply what their sacramental marriage means and to help

them to witness to this in the public square.

Dialogue with nonbelievers, and the issue of abortion

Another dimension to Martini’s ministry of interior formation was his outreach

to nonbelievers. We have already referred to his Cattedra dei non Credenti, his

dialogue with non-believers. While that dialogue was conducted at a popular

level, Martini also engaged in dialogue at the highest level with atheist

intellectuals of his time. One such discussion was with Umberto Eco. This began

as an invited exchange of letters in Corriere della Sera and was later published in

a volume entitled Belief or Nonbelief.


Compared with someone like Dawkins, of course, Eco was a much more

reasonable and intelligent kind of atheist with whom one could have a

challenging and respectful exchange of views. Eco fully acknowledged the

anguish and trepidation of the human condition and the reality that science had

done little if anything to address or unravel the existential questions.

Perhaps interesting in the current Irish context is one of the exchanges with Eco,

which focused on the sanctity of human life. Martini grounded respect for human

life in the reality that each human being, from the moment of conception, is

personally called by name by God himself. Thus, human dignity is not to be

determined by a “benevolent judgment” on our part, or some mere

“humanitarian impulse”. He says “we are talking about real responsibility toward

that which is produced by a great and personal love, responsibility towards

“someone” already in relationship with God and the human family and endowed

with a divine destiny.

His remarks are interesting in the context of the current abortion debate here. It

is proper and appropriate that we put forward arguments against abortion based

on reason, in the hope that they may find general appeal among reasonable

people. I think, for instance, of the evidence that abortion is not an effective

therapy for suicide and in fact may contribute to increased suicidal ideation; and

the fact that allowing abortion even in limited circumstances has proven

elsewhere to be ‘the thin end of the wedge’.

The problem is that I am not sure how genuinely open to reason people are at

the moment. It is not just faith that is under threat in public discourse, but reason

as well.

In all of the moral issues we are facing we seem to have gone in a matter of a

couple of decades from unthinking compliance with Church teaching to an

unthinking emotivism. The media portray very effectively the “hard case”

whether, it be the suffering of the person denied an assisted suicide or an

abortion; the pain of a same-sex-couple whose union is not given the dignity of


marriage or who cannot legally adopt a child; or the ‘unfairness’ of a non-

believing child having to attend a Catholic school.

There is, understandably, a knee-jerk reaction to the portrayal of suffering and

injustice. Faced with this, the response seems to be: “I would not want say, an

abortion, or an assisted suicide or whatever for myself but I have no right to

deny such a thing to someone else”. I am afraid that many committed Catholics

may believe that this is a Christian way to look at things in the present context.

But, and this is where Martini’s legacy is important, as a Christian community we

have a responsibility to witness to and proclaim the understanding of the unique

dignity and destiny of human beings which the human race comes to know only

in Jesus Christ. If we ourselves do not understand the importance of this; if this is

not what is forming and informing us in the depths of our own interiority, then

we can hardly expect others to recognize and accept it. The present debate is an

opportunity for us to give an account of the joy and hope which we hold

regarding human life (1 Peter 3:15) which we only come to know through our

faith.

Illusory notions of autonomy and ‘learning to beg’

The issue of assisted suicide is another case in point. In the recent unsuccessful

case to the High Court for the right to an assisted suicide (currently under appeal

to the Supreme Court) it was argued by Ms Fleming that the current ban violated

her right to “dignity, privacy and autonomy”. Ms Fleming’s argument was based

on the desire to avoid “needless suffering”, not only of the physical kind but also

that which arises from being bodily dependent upon others. It is not that at this

late our in the even ing I wish to drag us into a detailed consideration of yet

another very serious moral issue. However, the concept of autonomy invoked

here is worth considering and relating to Martini’s own reflections as he

approached death.

Cardinal Martini spoke on the issue of euthanasia a number of times and though

he stood firmly by Church teaching some of his comments were criticised for not


being sufficiently nuanced. But how he faced his own death is perhaps his most

important statement in this regard.

Like the recent petitioner to the High Court, Martini also suffered through illness

the loss of privacy, dignity and autonomy. But he saw such losses differently. He

referred to an old Indian proverb which says that the last lesson life has to teach

us is how “to learn to beg”. “Now my begging is also physical”, Martini said,

“which compels me to ask help of someone, perhaps at night. This is the first

privation that the Lord now makes me go through, but it’s not that it costs me

greatly, because thus I give occasion to others to perform acts of charity”.

The kind of autonomy being sought in contemporary Ireland, the most extreme

example of which we see in that sad assisted suicide case leads only to a deep

sense of loneliness, isolation and despair. Sartre described this human condition

as being “condemned to be free”, which carried with it the intolerable burden of

making, of inventing ourselves down to the slightest detail, something we are

ultimately incapable of.

The reality is that we humans are incapable of being autonomous. We are

dependent creatures, and there is no escape from this. Genuine human freedom

is discovered only in receiving generously God’s gift of life to us, and living it to

the full, in accordance with our nature.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the kind of schooling in Christian interiority to which Martini

dedicated his life is urgently needed in Irish Church and society at the present

time. We desperately feel its absence. Without it, we will fail to convince others

of the joy and hope which Christian faith offers.

The kind of proclamation of Christian faith which we have had in Ireland has

been utterly inadequate and we need to dig much deeper and plant the roots of a

renewd Christianity in more fertile soil. In Martini, we have the example of a

generous servant of the Gospel and the Church who worked faithfully and


tirelessly. His legacy to us is an invitation to “dare to risk” the kind of new

evangelization that is so urgently needed in our own context.

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