And so, the beloved Cardinal, Carlo Martini, was laid to rest after a funeral in the ornate Cathedral of the largest diocese in Italy — Milan. More than 200,000 people filed past his body lying in state, robed in vestments and miter. The funeral itself was a magnificent farewell using all the traditions the Catholic Church could muster.

How ironic! The very traditions that the cardinal on his death bed said were tired, old and pompous were used by the faithful to honor this admittedly good and decent churchman, giving him a fond, prayerful farewell.

 Actually, the very fact that he was an important prince of the Church, the reality that he was a successor to the Apostles, the manifest and obvious truth that he was a very powerful cardinal was the foundation and the reason why his deathbed interview was given force. In other words, he couldn’t have critiqued his Church without the credibility the Church had given him at his ordination as priest and bishop — the very credibility he criticized! How very ironic!

His basic criticism of Catholicism boiled down to this: we are a tired religion, outdated, outmoded, irrelevant in many respects. Catholicism has failed to address effectively the pre-eminent moral problem of our time, i.e., sexuality and its expression. We should discuss again what a family is; we should update our traditions and lessen the pomp. We should evangelize rather than catechize; we should change by inculturating our self with the world so that the world will listen to us.

The problem is that the cardinal, like most critics of the Church, failed to give specific measures to implement his hoped-for changes.

More importantly, in the area of sexuality, he failed to recognize the culture that surrounded the early Church as it first grew and developed. The Roman culture was promiscuous, anti-child, violent and opposed to most of what Catholicism offered. And yet, the early Church put forth a sexual morality based on what we would call a traditional family, advocated the practice of sexuality which finds its fulfillment in marriage, and vigorously opposed abortion, infanticide and birth control. The society of that day ridiculed the Church, and yet millions of individuals were drawn to it because, as the Scriptures say, they saw that the Christians “loved one another.”

Do the cardinal and his fellow critics offer an alternative to the early Church? No. They simply criticize parts of an apostolic tradition that goes back to Christ.

Does that make them bad? No. But it shows them to be naive and not up to the task of confronting the modern world. If the Church built walls to shut off society, that would be truly  going backward. But, instead, the Church proclaims its message up front and in the culture. Could we do it better? Yes indeed. For that we owe the Cardinal many thanks for his insights.

But should we jettison the teaching, reaching out into the darkness to be blown about by a hedonistic secular culture? Hopefully not. Instead, let’s do it Benedict’s way — by lighting a candle of truth, speaking the Gospel of love, and standing firm with apostles in proclaiming one Lord, one faith, one Gospel.