c. 2005 Religion News Service

VATICAN CITY _ In many ways, the 117 men who will gather here to choose the next pope are very similar ideologically. All but three were made cardinals by Pope John Paul II over the past 26 years _ which is why the next pope is not expected to make radical changes to the church.

But while all candidates presumably agree with the Catholic position on hot-button issues like abortion and same-sex marriage, many disagree on two issues critical to the Catholic Church: how much control Rome should have over the thousands of local dioceses, and how Catholicism should relate to other religions.

That debate will determine how much direction the U.S. church will have on its own affairs _ decisions that ultimately trickle down to the pews _ and how the wider church relates to the world.

Within the church’s hierarchy, conservatives and progressives are defined by their stance on these issues, and Vatican observers expect they will play as big a role in the election as a candidate’s age, personality and ethnicity. The issues loom large to cardinals and other clergy, who would rather not worry about being second-guessed by Rome and who live in communities with people of other faiths.

Normally, these issues are debated behind closed doors, except in Germany where three cardinals _ Joseph Ratzinger, 77, Walter Kasper, 72, and Karl Lehmann, 68 _ have publicly disagreed for years. The tug of war between these three _ who are all eligible to be elected pope _ illustrates how these issues may affect the election of the next pope.

Germany has six cardinals who are under 80 and thus eligible to vote for pope. (Only Italy and the United States have more, 20 and 11, respectively). The disputes pitting Ratzinger against Kasper and Lehmann have lasted more than a decade.

“What has surfaced in just their public discourse may be the best window we have, not just on the differences amongst them, but differences that also can occur among their own reticent fellow cardinals,” said Robert Sullivan, associate professor of history at the University of Notre Dame.

Ratzinger, probably the best-known Catholic clergyman under John Paul, is a staunch conservative and the church’s top defender of dogma as longtime head of the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. He took positions construed as favoring Vatican authority over local bishops and clergy and as indifferent to ecumenical relations.

Kasper has been president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, and is known as being progressive on these issues. He prefers to let bishops work out tough problems without Vatican intercession and has tried hard to improve relationships with other denominations.

Lehmann, who is president of the German Bishops Conference, is also progressive on these issues.

A cardinal since 1977, Ratzinger has worked in Rome since 1981. Kasper and Lehmann, while archbishops in Germany, took public positions at odds with some of Ratzinger’s positions. Disagreeing with Ratzinger was generally considered a bad career move for Catholic clergy, but the pope, rather than isolate Kasper and Lehmann, made them cardinals in 2001.

“Their disagreements … are significant in that it shows that someone like Cardinal Ratzinger, who is prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, is not considered to have the last word by some bishops and cardinals,” said the Rev. Thomas Reese, editor of the Jesuit magazine America.

In 1993, Kasper and Lehmann, then both archbishops, and fellow German bishop Oskar Saier wrote a pastoral letter saying many divorced Catholics should be able to receive Communion even if their marriage was not annulled.

A year later, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, in a document signed by Ratzinger, rejected the idea, saying divorced people who remarry without an annulment are “in a situation that objectively contravenes God’s law.”

Lehmann further upset some church conservatives, including Ratzinger, by echoing the call of the archbishop of Milan, Cardinal Carlo Martini, that all the Catholic bishops in the world should come to Rome for a churchwide council to help make new laws for the church.

In 1999, Kasper wrote an article saying the Roman Curia _ Vatican administrators like Ratzinger _ should give local bishops more leeway and that too many people felt that Rome held too much control over local dioceses.

Kasper, active in ecumenical and interreligious dialogue, also was upset in 2000 when the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith published a document supported by Ratzinger that said many other Christian denominations are “not churches in the proper sense.” Kasper said the document would hurt the church’s efforts to improve relations with other denominations.

Though most cardinals have not publicly criticized other cardinals, their vote for pope is likely to go to one who they think shares their sympathies on these issues, said the Rev. Richard McBrien, a theology professor at the University of Notre Dame and frequent critic of John Paul.

“I expect this to be the sleeper issue at the next conclave,” he said last week. “… I would expect that many of the cardinals will want assurances from the candidate they are tempted to support that he will be more respectful of the legitimate pastoral authority of the bishops than this pontificate has been and will, in the process, rein in the Roman Curia so that it will serve, as it should, as resources for the bishops rather than as their supervisors and controllers.”

No one thinks the issues dividing the three German cardinals are the only issues in the election. But they will be important to the voters, Reese said.

“This is a hotly debated topic,” he said. “Just as American society constantly debates what should be decided at the federal level, the state level, the local level and the school level, and what should be left in the hands of families, so the Catholic Church confronts this problem of what should be decided for the universal church and required everywhere, and what can be decided on a national level through bishops’ conferences, and what should be left for local dioceses or the local pastor or the individuals’ conscience.”

(Jeff Diamant is a staff writer for The Star-Ledger of Newark, N.J.)

KRE/PH END DIAMANT