‘Nothing is being thrust upon anyone’
Cardinal George Pell talks to Luke Coppen about the new English Mass translation, the SSPX and being a 'lightning rod' in the Church
20 March 2009

Cardinal Pell: 'I am keen that we strengthen the vertical dimension of the liturgy, if we can, in the popular understanding, so that it's very obviously not just community-centred'

The full transcript of the interview is available here.


My first glimpse of Cardinal Pell is rather surreal. His unmistakable, craggily handsome head emerges about 20 feet above me, framed by a grey Oxford sky. He is leaning out of the window of his rooms at Merton College and is preparing to throw down the key to let us in.

"Who's going to catch it?" he asks with a chuckle. I volunteer and flap vainly as they fly past and hit the floor.

Inside his rooms, the ink is drying on his Easter message to the people of Sydney archdiocese. His bright red hat sits on his desk and his red robes hang from a door. This is the last full day of his week-long visit to England. He is a guest of the Oxford University Newman Society, which is going from strength to strength under the leadership of Patrick Milner. The cardinal is here to launch the society's £100,000 Faith in Oxford appeal (see www.newmansociety.org.uk/appeal for more details).

The cardinal, who towers above everyone else in the room, is relaxed and accommodating - and doesn't even mind the presence of my two-year-old daughter, who gleefully ransacks his kitchen during the interview.

The Catholic commentator John Allen once described you as a "lightning rod" in the Church. Is that a rather painful position to be in?

Well, that's somebody else's description. Whether the position is painful or not, where you find yourself you make the best of it.

You've said: "It's better in the long run to be criticised often than to be always ignored."

You're a man of the press. You would understand the truth of that.

I understand that you don't really like the labels within the Church and you don't really identify yourself as a "conservative" Catholic.

I don't fuss too much. I mean, the old cliché is that every label is a libel. There's a little bit of truth in that. And sometimes I wickedly describe myself as "radical centre".

On the other hand, you have publicly criticised Catholic liberalism.

That's certainly true. I prefer though to direct my strongest barbs at what I call "ultra-liberalism" or "extreme liberalism".

How do you define that?

You might not believe in the divinity of Christ. Ecclesiologically you might not be very fond at all of the role of the pope or even of the bishops. You might not feel there's much role for a ministerial priesthood.

And then, in the area of sexual morality, as John Paul II said at the time of his great moral encyclical, The Splendour of Truth, once upon a time people argued about the rights and wrongs of artificial contraception. Whereas now the whole moral debate about sexuality runs right across the board: life issues, abortion, lifestyle issues of homosexuality, extra-marital affairs. The challenge in sexual morality is very, very broad indeed now.

The liberal Catholic intelligentsia often invoke Cardinal Newman. In his famous Letter to the Duke of Norfolk he wrote: "Conscience is the aboriginal Vicar of Christ" and "I shall drink - to the Pope, if you please - still to conscience first and to the Pope afterwards". Do they understand Newman correctly on this point?

That Letter to the Duke of Norfolk is a wonderful piece of work. Newman contrasts a secular understanding of conscience with a Catholic understanding of conscience. A Catholic understanding is that you're struggling to hear the voice of God, what Christ is telling us to do. You are not struggling to get around it in some form or other.

When he said he'd drink to conscience first and then the pope, he then went on to give two or three examples which were almost frivolous examples: of the Church having mandatory lotteries in every parish, or something like that.

I very much appeal to truth - the truth of the Gospel, the moral truths - and conscience is there to help us to try and recognise those truths. Once the truth has been recognised you have to accept it and follow it. It can be inconvenient.

There's been a Newman theme to your stay here. What would his beatification mean for Catholics around the world?

I think it would be a very good thing for the English-speaking world, because still on the Continent, say in Italy, they're tempted to think of us as very much identified with Anglicanism or Protestantism, as a slightly different world. I think undoubtedly now the Anglosphere is enormously influential intellectually and the Catholic Church in the United States... there are all sorts of things going on there, much of it for the good. I believe that the battle of ideas is more important than ever with the spread of tertiary education. The issues that Newman was wrestling with then are being fought over in much wider circles.

You're very familiar with Pope Benedict. Is there anything that he's done since his election that's surprised you?

I was very pleasantly surprised that his first encyclical was on love. I thought that was very good. I wasn't surprised by his interest in the liturgy. I regret the way the whole lifting of the excommunications of the Lefebvrist bishops has been set out of context by the controversy over Bishop Williamson.

So you think it was correct to lift the excommunications of the four?

Yes, I do. I think it's certainly a worthy goal to try to reconcile that wing of the Church. But as I've said, and the Vatican has said, if they are to come back they have to accept basically the teaching of Vatican II, especially the teaching that the state can't coerce belief, even if it happens to be a Catholic state (not that that exists anymore). And they have to accept the condemnation of anti-Semitism.

So you do believe that Vatican II contains certain teachings that all Catholics must sign up to?

Yes. Basically we have to accept the Creeds and there's a hierarchy of truths. But I think it'd be quite incongruous wanting to be formally reconciled with the Church if you explicitly disavow key elements of Vatican II.

As opposed to merely thinking that some of them need more explanation.

Or more development, yes.

I mean, you either agree or disagree with the condemnation of anti-Semitism. It would be quite inappropriate for somebody to be formally reconciled with the Church who was seriously and explicitly anti-Semitic.

On some of the other points, they say the Vatican II text is ambiguous and they say to Rome: "Tell us what they mean and we'll tell you if we agree with it."

I can understand that and we'll see where they go on that. But a couple of times before I think we've been very close to reconciliation with them. I hope it does succeed but on those other occasions we didn't quite get there.

Do you think it will succeed this time?

I've no idea. I wish it well. I haven't been involved in the discussions.

Where do you think the liturgical development is heading?

I don't know. I'm not a professional liturgist. I am keen that we strengthen the vertical dimension of the liturgy, if we can, in the popular understanding, so that it's very obviously not just community-centred, it's God-centred, it's an act of worship. I'm very sympathetic to that. I'm even sympathetic for the Canon of the Mass that the priest has his back to the people.

As something obligatory?

Yes. Now there's nothing like a consensus in favour of that at the moment. I think I would be in favour of it because it makes it patently clear that the priest is not the centre of the show, that this an act of worship of the one true God, and the people are joining with the priest for that.

Another way of acknowledging that: I'm very much in favour of having a crucifix in front of the celebrant during the Mass when we're facing the people.

Between the priest and the people, in front of the altar?

Yes, sometimes it might be flat, sometimes it might be vertical. But that distracts attention away to some little extent from the main celebrant. I think also I find the figure of Christ is a great aid to recollection and prayer while you're saying the Eucharistic Prayer.

As president of the Vox Clara Committee you have been advising the Congregation for Divine Worship on the new English translation of the Mass. Do you hope that the new translation will help to emphasise that vertical dimension of the Mass?

Yes, very much so. I'll be surprised if there's more than a few hiccups when it comes it. I think it will go well. I think people will recognise that it's beautiful and appropriate. We've tried to keep changes to the community responses, the people's parts, to a minimum. The translations are accurate, forceful and some of them in particular are very beautiful.

It looks like it has the potential to be controversial. Some people may say: "This translation is being thrust upon us by Rome."

Nothing's being thrust upon anyone. This matter has gone out repeatedly to the national hierarchies. It's approved by the national hierarchies. The level of change now will be very small in comparison with the enormous changes that were foisted upon the people just after the Second Vatican Council.

Undoubtedly there will be a small element which will try to resist them. I'm quite confident the overwhelming majority of Mass-going people will quickly learn to love them. The quality of the language there will emphasise that we're not talking to the bloke next door. We're worshipping the one true God. Not in old-fashioned, archaic language, but in beautiful, strong and appropriate language. I'm quite confident it will be successful.

Where are we up to in the whole process?

For about five years I've been saying we've got two years to go. And now that's becoming more and more likely. So people will be aiming towards the end of next year for it to happen.

Will the whole English-speaking world be going together with the same translation?

Yes, I think so. There might be little quirks here and there. But that's certainly the ambition.

You hosted World Youth Day in Sydney last July. But all accounts it was a tremendous success. It has been described as the largest gathering in Australia's history.

That's accurate, I think. At the final Mass there were 400,000 people.

Are you beginning to see the fruits of hosting World Youth Day?

I think so, yes. There haven't been any examples, I think, like St Paul being thrown from his horse. But none the less lots of steady growth. I suspect that the minority position of the Catholic community in Australian life has been changed by the impression the wonderfully happy, good and faithful young pilgrims made on the Australian majority. One very significant example, it's an isolated example, but one parish priest received 25 adults into the Church, and these were adults who came into the Church - three or four families - as a result of hosting World Youth Day pilgrims. That's one example.

And do you know about the impact on priestly vocations?

Yes, they are up to some extent. Not spectacularly, but to some extent. In a thing like vocations probably that effect will be over the next five years or so as distinct from a few months afterwards.

Last month we reported that new documents have emerged from the Vatican Archives showing that Pius XII saved tens of thousands of European Jews from the Nazis. Is the tide of now turning in Pius's favour?

I hope so. I couldn't be sure. There's a rabbi who works at Ave Maria University, David Dalin. Now I read his biography of Pius XII. Pius certainly did an enormous amount to help the Jews directly and indirectly. In Italy a higher percentage of Jews survived than in any other place. I stay in the Palazzo San Callisto in Rome. There were hundreds of Jews hidden in the basements there during the war.

It's very easy for us to say that people should have talked tough, because the terrible sanctions that had taken place then just don't threaten us. It's very difficult for us to understand what that world was like.

As we all know, when the Dutch hierarchy spoke out against the Nazi atrocities that resulted in all those Jews who had been converted to Christianity being taken up and off to the gas chambers. That was the dilemma he was in: would he speak and thereby almost certainly provoke extra deaths and punishment? It's a terrible dilemma.

And it's a monstrous injustice to suggest that somehow he was aiding and abetting the Nazis. The Nazis hated the Catholic Church. We know from Hitler's Table Talk that if he'd won the war he proposed to set up a pope in every country he captured. It was a terrible situation for the pope to be in and I certainly hope he's treated more justly in the future than he has been in the past.

Do you believe Pius XII was a saint?

Yes, I do. I wouldn't have any problem at all with his canonisation.