I have heard it
attributed to Rousseau, Diderot, Voltaire and even Mark Twain, but whoever said
it, it is one of my favorite axioms: “God created man in his own image and man,
being a gentleman, returned the compliment.”
I am constantly amazed at how many people’s “God” is nothing more than a
projection of their biases, hopes, dreams, fears, and ambitions. I am not speaking here of atheists or agnostics
or Muslims or Hindus—I am speaking of every-Sunday-in-Church
Catholics—sometimes even daily communicants.
They can tell you with great assurance for whom “God” (their deity)
wants you to vote, what God wants you to think about Muslims, what his solution
is to illegal immigration, and a host of other ideas. And it is just amazing how God always agrees
with them. There was a day when people
were absolutely convinced that God wanted them to take the land that belonged
to the Native Americans, keep the black folk enslaved (hear that Cliven
Bundy?), and let only White Protestants from Britain, Scandinavia, and Germany come
to our shores and become Americans. For
a lot of people, the issues have changed but a God who favors the haves over
the have nots is still alive and well—at least in their pious imagination.
Today the
Church canonized Pope John XXIII. I am
not so sure, as I posted yesterday, that that is a great idea. Don’t get me wrong—I like Pope John. I remember when he was elected. I remember when he announced that he was
convoking a Council. I remember when
his Council opened. I remember when he
died. And I have spent hours sitting in
Saint Peter’s Basilica in front of the glass casket that holds his remains—an
island of peaceful prayer in the midst of the combination Grand Concourse and
Tourist Destination otherwise known as St. Peter’s Basilica. But the Pope John of popular imagination is
not the Pope John of historical fact.
John XXIII was
a warm and outgoing man. He was
remarkably personable and he stood in stark contrast to the introverted and
austere personality of his predecessor, Pius XII. But he was no liberal and had he been younger
and lived through his Council, things most likely would have been remarkably
different.
For one thing,
John—unlike the current Pope—loved the baroque trappings of the papacy. He liked wearing the triple-tiara that his
successor, Paul VI, would retire. He
liked the Cardinals decked out in their long (9 yards) trains of scarlet silk
and ermine. His Vatican apartment was
over-decorated with red damask walls and heavy gilt furniture that can only be
described as “Italian exuberant.” He
liked being carried shoulder high on his portable throne, the sedia gestoria, and he liked the
accompanying fans and canopy. He loved
the elaborate ritual of the Solemn Pontifical Mass. It is highly unlikely that he would have
approved of the remarkable changes to the Catholic liturgy enacted under his
successor, Paul VI. He probably would
have gone for allowing the readings to be read in the language of the
congregation but it is unlikely that he would have permitted the entire Mass to
be in the vernacular, much less the dramatic changes in the structure of the
liturgy that also marked a major theological shift in the way that Catholics
understand the Mass. Nor would he have
favored the dramatic changes in clerical and religious life with priests and nuns
wearing ordinary clothes and the dropping of many monastic customs that had
crept into the apostolic life over the centuries in favor of a more secular
lifestyle. When it comes to ecumenism
and inter-religious dialogue, John had always been cordial, even warm, to
people of other faiths and religions, but how far would inter-faith dialogue have
proceeded in pontificate? I doubt that the Assisi meetings of 1986, 2002,
and 2011 that brought a Pope into prayerful dialogue with non-Christian
religious leaders would have taken place.
John was always very conscious of his being Pope. One did not meet John
on a peer level and while he was very welcoming, he met other religious leaders
as his brothers but not as his peers.
Many of the Decrees of Vatican II would have passed his
muster—especially Gaudium et Spes, Nostra Aetate, and Reintegratio Unitatis—but others such as Christus Dominus and Lumen
Gentium (with its teaching on
Collegiality) may well not have. Dei
Verbum, on Divine Revelation, may have been significantly different as well
as well as Ad Gentes, on the
Missionary Activity of the Church. Dignitatis Humanae with its declaration
on the sovereignty of conscience may also have gone further than John would
have permitted. I think the decree Optatum Totius on the formation of
clergy might have been implemented very differently under John had he lived
than it was under his successor. The
fact is that most of the “liberal” accomplishments of Vatican II were not the
work of John XXIII but of Paul VI. None
of this is meant to be a criticism of John—simply the observation that he, like
all of us, was a person of his times and
for his times he was forward looking—but he was born in 1881 and he was just
short of 78 when elected to the papacy.
It is remarkable that he was as progressive as he was, especially given
the intellectual paranoia that pervaded the Vatican in the final years of his
predecessor, Pius XII.
I am not saying
that John XXIII was not a good pope—his calling the Council won him a seat as
one of the most important popes in history—but I am saying that the John XXIII
of popular imagination is not exactly the same man as the John XXIII of history. What has elevated him to sainthood, I am
afraid, is the Pope John of the popular imagination, the Pope of Vatican II and
Catholic aggiornamento to balance the ticket with John Paul II, a even more
complex (and much more complex) figure to analyze but much beloved by the
Catholic-Right-of-Center.
There was a lot
in the newspapers and on the internet about the fact that Pope Francis waived
the need for a miracle for the canonization of JohnXXIII—unlike John Paul who
had several to spare. I am surprised
that there were miracles lacking for “Good Pope John.” Back in the ‘80’s—almost twenty years before
John was beatified, a friend of mine, the late Father Alcuin Coyle OFM, told me
an interesting story. Father Alcuin had
worked for many years at the Franciscan Generalate in Rome and one of his fellow
Franciscans was the postulator for Pope John’s “cause.” The postulator is the person responsible for “pushing”
the cause through the various congregations and committees that have to review
the evidence and propose the candidate first for beatification and then for
canonization. According to Father Alcuin
there were almost two dozen miracles attributed to Pope John but the cause was
being held up for “political” reasons—namely that the more conservative
pontificate of then Pope John Paul II, was not anxious to advance John XXIII to
sainthood as he was identified with the liberal wing of the Church at the very
time that John Paul II wanted to correct the Council’s course and steer it in a
more conservative direction. I will be
doing an entry on John Paul next and while I don’t have the evidence—other than
Father Alcuin’s opinion—that John Paul was not anxious to advance the cause of
John XXIII (I won’t go so far as to say he was blocking it, but draw what
conclusions you may), I must say that I think John Paul’s canonization is no
more opportune than Pope John’s.
However, Pope Francis is Pope—I am not—and so I defer to his
judgment. At the end of the day, we have two new
saints.
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