At St. Pat's, Pope Calls for Unity

As a body is one though it has many parts,
and all the parts of the body, though many, are one
body, so also is Christ.
For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body
whether Jews or Greeks, slaves or free persons,
and we were all given to drink of one person.

That passage, taken from Paul's First Letter to the Corinthians, comes from the second reading in the Mass that Pope Benedict XVI is celebrating at St. Patrick's Cathedral. It provides a lead-in to one of the key points the pope made in his homily: that it's time for the feuding factions in the Catholic Church to make peace.

Angry debates between conservatives and liberals have been a fixture in the church for decades, and are probably one of the major obstacles to the Catholic Church's progress. There have been efforts to end these bruising battles, such as the Catholic Common Ground Initiative that the late Cardinal Joseph Bernardin started. But even the attempt to propose a dialogue to find common ground became controversial.

Here is what Pope Benedict had to say to a congregation made up entirely of clergy and religious:

"For all of us, I think, one of the great disappointments which followed the Second Vatican Council, with its call for a greater engagement in the Church’s mission to the world, has been the experience of division between different groups, different generations, different members of the same religious family. We can only move forward if we turn our gaze together to Christ! In the light of faith, we will then discover the wisdom and strength needed to open ourselves to points of view which may not necessarily conform to our own ideas or assumptions. Thus we can value the perspectives of others, be they younger or older than ourselves, and ultimately hear "what the Spirit is saying" to us and to the Church. In this way, we will move together towards that true spiritual renewal desired by the Council, a renewal which can only strengthen the Church in that holiness and unity indispensable for the effective proclamation of the Gospel in today’s world."

He added: "Was not this unity of vision and purpose – rooted in faith and a spirit of constant conversion and self-sacrifice – the secret of the impressive growth of the Church in this country?"

An opinion: Some of the loudest and angriest voices in these debilitating church debates belong to conservatives who stress the importance of papal authority. Will they heed the pope's call "to open ourselves to points of view which may not necessarily conform to our own ideas or assumptions"? And of course, that goes both ways. Will the liberals who have written off Pope Benedict as a doctrinaire enforcer see him in a new light as a source of wisdom?

Update: We asked Father Tom Reese, whom the pope pushed out of his position as editor-in-chief of the Jesuit magazine America, what he thought of Benedict's call to get past divisions in the church. "That’s an invitation to all of us to treat each other with love and respect, no matter what our opinions are," he said. "Disagreements in the family should’t tear the family apart."

Photo: Pope Benedict XVI in procession at the start of Mass in St. Patrick's Cathedral. AFP/Getty Images/Don Emmert.