On the Eve of the Conclave

OK, so it's already evening in Rome and the cardinals are about to assemble in the Sistine Chapel, if they haven't already. So I want to get this in before the new pope is announced. The official mourning period for JPII is over, so I want to just revisit some of what I said right after his death.

I still maintain that as popes go, he was a standout, and that as a man, he led a remarkable life. But he certainly wasn't perfect. Spiritually speaking he may be on par with some of the canonized saints of the Church, but practically speaking he was quite a complex individual. And some of what he was perceived as is probably a gross exaggeration. For example, how much credit should he get for the fall of communism in eastern Europe and the collapse of the Soviet Union?

More problematic is the moralistic response to the AIDS epidemic in Africa (and elsewhere) and the uncritical "embrace" of certain world leaders.

More bizarre, on the other hand, is the heaping praise he received from the usual "liberal" media suspects who usually only have time to spotlight the Catholic Church when there's a scandal afoot. As much as I cringe at some of the beliefs of the ultra-right fringes of the Latin Church (the so-called "traditionalists"), this author hit it right on the mark:

In the days immediately following the death of Pope John Paul II, Catholics with any sense of dignity and tradition are horrified to see the organs of world opinion, as if by some prearranged signal, conducting a campaign to make of our late Pope a veritable icon of the New World Order--literally the first pope in Church history deserving of the world’s unanimous praise. An endless parade of dignitaries without the least respect for the teaching authority of the Catholic Church has been instantly produced to hail John Paul II, not as the Roman Pontiff that he was, but as an esteemed leader of “the global community” -- a community that will never, of course, submit to any Pope.

This is the figurehead Pope of Masonic dreams: loved and admired, but never feared; respected, but not obeyed, unless it pleases one to obey him; an eminent leader among the leaders of the world’s religions, but no more than this. This is the kind of Pope the “modern world” wants to see emerge from the next conclave--the kind it has always wanted to see emerge from the next conclave. And that is why the world, at this very moment, is trying to appropriate to itself the memory of John Paul II. But we must not allow the world to abstract the Pope from the Mystical Body of Christ, to which he is inseparably attached and without which he is nothing.

And so we cannot remain silent during what should be a period of mourning, for even the process of mourning is being manipulated to attack the Mystical Body. For in this case, with the death of this Pope, something unprecedented is happening that compels us to speak now in opposition: one Pope is being exalted above all others by a world that otherwise has no use for Popes. We must not allow the papacy to be exploited in this way. Nor can we allow our fellow Catholics to assist in that exploitation by agreeing with the world that John Paul II was indeed a Pope above all others, and that by implication the Church has never had a Pope so worthy of the world’s respect. That notion undermines the very integrity of the Church. We have no choice but to object.

And of course -- as cited by numerous papal critics on the right and the left -- the abysmal state of the Church -- statistically & spiritually -- in western Europe went unchanged or from bad to worse during JPII's pontificate. Is this his fault? Not really. The lackadaisical papal response to the clerical sex abuse scandals in the USA (& to a lesser extent elsewhere) was hardly edifying. And his repeated fixation on blaming gay people as the source of so much of the evil in the world has unfortunately further alienated even those gay and lesbian Catholics who (like me) try to live a faithful, authentically Catholic (in my case, Byzantine, not Latin) spiritual and moral life yet who cannot in conscience accept the Church's declaration that every homosexually-oriented person should -- and must -- live a celibate life with no possibility for a God-blessed romantic love and physical expression of that love. This former seminarian said things that hit home for me:

I remained in the seminary for several more years before I made the difficult decision to leave the priestly formation. It was time for me to stop living my life based on a decision I'd made when I was a scared teenager. I'd reached a point in the seminary where I no longer harbored secrets. I was free to go and free to stay. I left on good terms and with a great deal of support. The message to me was clear: "You are important to us." I'll never forget that.

Of course my relationship with the church is difficult at times. No one with self-respect can feel good when the church suggests that we are part of an ideology of evil. But I balance that message with the one of love and respect given to me as a child and as a young, confused seminarian who was given ample chances and was still treated as the prodigal son when I came to the conclusion that I didn't have a vocation to the priesthood.

Many gay and lesbian Catholics walk away from the church, saddened that they're not appreciated for their gifts and the contribution that diversity brings everyone. But this isn't my path. I still see myself as a child of God, as did my bishop and rector. With that belief comes a strong desire to be a part of the church, to worship with a community and to give back in gratitude for the life I've been given. With trepidation and hope, I await the transition of the church with a new papacy. I'm an observant Catholic, I attend mass, and it's my obligation to participate in the discussions about this transition, no matter the hostile language coming from all sides.

I pray that one day, sooner than later, the church will remember that we're all God's children. Gay or straight, for better or worse, we're all the body of Christ. And, drawing on my positive experiences with the church, I hope for a larger-scale expression of support for lesbians and gays, the same message I received as a child and again in the seminary: You are important to us.

And finally, for an ideologically-balanced but still hostile evaluation, here's one from Andrew Sullivan:

Did he succeed? The question is an impossible one. If by success, we mean the maintenance of the truth in the face of error, then only God knows. If by success, we mean asserting the truths of Christianity against the lies of Communism, then the answer is an unequivocal yes. But if by success, we mean winning the argument against secular democracy in the West, the answer must be no. This European Pope oversaw an unprecedented collapse of the Church in its European and Western heartland. He even lost Ireland. Under his papacy, vocations for the priesthood barely kept up with population in the developing world and simply collapsed in the West. Protestantism boomed in South America. Mass attendance in North America fell, along with donations. The next generation of priests? It is struggling to survive in the West. And the quality of the priesthood went from mediocre to terrible. It is hard to find a priest in many parts of America these days. To find a homily of any intellectual stature is almost impossible. If you judge a successful leader by the caliber of men he inspires to follow him, then the judgment on John Paul II is damning.

Under his papacy, the Church was also found guilty of allowing the rape and molestation of vast numbers of children and teenagers, and of systematically covering the crimes up. It is hard to understand how the leader of any lay organization would have stayed in office after allowing such criminality. But how the leader of the Catholic Church survived without even an attempt at papal accountability is still astonishing. A pope who devoted huge amounts of intellectual energy to explicating why the only moral expression of human sexuality is marital heterosexual intercourse, presided over the rape of thousands of children by his own priests. What was his response? He barely had one. He protected the chief enabler of the abuse in the U.S., Cardinal Law, and used the occasion of his own church's failing to blame homosexuals in general for the abuse. Attempting to grapple with the real question would have meant opening up a debate about priestly celibacy, homosexuality, pedophilia and the Church's disporportionately gay priesthood. And this Pope was far more interested in closing debates rather than opening them.

I have a personal stake in this as well, of course. I'm a Catholic now withdrawn from communion whose entire adult life has been in Wojtila's shadow. And as a homosexual, I watched as the Church refused to grapple with even basic questions, and ran, terrified, from its own deep psycho-sexual dysfunction. "Be not afraid," this Pope counseled us from beginning to end. But he was deeply afraid of the complicated truth about human sexuality, and the dark truth about his own church's crimes. This was a Pope who, above all, knew how to look away. How else do you warmly embrace Yassir Arafat and Tariq Aziz without moral judgment? But people - faithful people - noticed where he couldn't look. And they grieved, even as, in the aftermath of this brittle, show-boating papacy, they now hope.

Was JPII the perfect pope? For an unbelieving, hostile world, perhaps he was the best they could reasonably expect. For the Church, he was better than most but still... John Paul the Great? I don't think so. Pope Saint John Paul? I pray that he is in heaven, i.e., a saint. Absolutely! But "Santo Subito" [an immediate canonization]? Please, let him rest in peace. At least until the dust settles and a sober evaluation of his life and pontificate can take place.