The perils of penance: contrition is not a cardinal's virtue.

The proposal submitted to the June consistory of the College of Cardinals, calling for an extensive examination of conscience by the Catholic church leading to an open confession of sins, errors, and crimes committed in the church's name, did not rouse great enthusiasm among the 114 cardinals from fifty-four countries attending the consistory. One cardinal who took part told me that the majority opposed the suggestion, but he predicted that this was unlikely to dissuade Pope John Paul II from going ahead with it.

The paper, or memorandum (Pro memoria), was not signed but reflected much that has been said by John Paul II on other occasions. It may have been written by him in whole or in part, but it certainly went to the consistory with his knowledge and approval. Moreover, according to sources cited by the respected Italian journalist Luigi Accattoli, the pope's address opening the consistory echoed the major themes of the position paper.

Most people, Catholics and others, are fully aware of this pope's insistence on maintaining church discipline, but less conscious that by some measures he is a runaway progressive when it comes to ecumenism, inculturation, social justice on a world scale, and acknowledgment of past errors.

But in this instance John Paul is not necessarily starry-eyed. Though the position paper proposes sackcloth and ashes, this is not cringe-in-the-corner stuff. The context is buoyant; taking this one step backward will prepare a great leap forward. The pope has a sense of urgency: the third millennium is at hand, humanity is greatly at risk, and to save it the church must act with spiritual dynamism. But that must begin with metanoia, a spiritual about-face within the church and among its faithful.

The cardinals appear to have welcomed some of the ideas in the Pro memoria, including the proposals for more continent-wide synods, revision of the list of recognized saints to include more lay people, including those who were married, the holding of a pan-Christian assembly and another with "the peoples of Abraham" - Christians, Jews, and Muslims. On the whole, they were at best tepid about the notion of a public ecclesial examination of conscience.

Some may have felt that people who live in glass houses should not throw glasnost. More substantively, questions rose about both the effectiveness and the feasibility of the project. Was the confession of error in the Galileo case beneficial to the church? It's debatable. The Los Angeles Times, for one example, ran this headline over the story: "It's Official! The Earth Revolves Around the Sun, Even for the Vatican!" Among some scientists, the confession might have been labeled "Too Little, Too Late," while some in the church said that Galileo's own understanding of science was in fact less sophisticated than that of Cardinal Robert Bellarmine, who grasped that the evidence Galileo was able to present was sufficient to back the Copernican cosmos only as a hypothesis, not as established fact.

Comparatively speaking, the case of Galileo was open and shut. The plot thickens when, as in the position paper presented to the cardinals, a straight line is drawn between the methods used by the Inquisition and those of Stalin and Hitler. If this implies influence, one is in controversial historical territory. The Polish philosopher Joseph Tischner, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, and others link the horrors of twentieth-century totalitarianism rather to a degeneration of Enlightenment rationalism. Reaching just judgments on all of the church's history would enter many such arguable realms, and contemporary issues of human rights, particularly within the church, would be even touchier. With respect to the past, one problem would be a shortage of church historians - the Congregation for Saints has trouble finding them for its canonization processes. But the cardinals were swimming against a tide that is controlled by John Paul II. He has spoken about the need to correct the record in the specific case of the Bohemian reformer John Huss, who was burned at the stake in 1415. In Africa he has deplored the involvement of churchmen in the slave trade; in Santo Domingo he asked pardon for the church's failure to bring about just treatment for the indigenous peoples of the Americas; in Morocco he deplored the excesses of the Crusades. The consistory took place shortly after leakage of a draft document from a Vatican-Israel joint commission. The document, "Anti-Semitism, the Shoah, and the Church," prepared by Professor Hans Hermann Henrix of the Catholic Theological Institute of Aachen, was in line with the pope's approach in demonstrating a willingness to admit the in justices done to Jews, already shown when he spoke of the "errors of the Inquisition" at a Rome synagogue.

So I am betting that the project in some form will come to pass as long as John Paul himself does not leave the scene too soon. The theologians and historians will seek out ways to say that the church (and not only its errant members) has indeed erred, without making it seem just like any other organization. The position paper itself points to the great works of charity and reconciliation and to the holiness achieved by men and women "in every century and every place where Christ has been preached."

Of course, the trouble with historical revisions, as Mikhail Gorbachev must realize, is that one knows where they begin but not where they end.

Desmond O'Grady has reported on Vatican and Italian affairs for English-language newspapers in a number of countries, including, in the U.S., the National Catholic Reporter, the Washington Post, and Our Sunday Visitor.