The Beatification of John Paul II

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"The great danger for family life, in the midst of any society whose idols are pleasure, comfort and independence, lies in the fact that people close their hearts and become selfish."

John Paul II
(1920–2005)

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I'm not Catholic so I suppose today's beatification of the late John Paul II really shouldn't mean anything to me.

And, for the most part, I guess, it doesn't.

I was raised in a Protestant church. The only times I have attended a Catholic church were when I was someone's guest — or, 20 years ago this summer, when I was the pallbearer at the funeral for a friend.

Sainthood for John Paul — or anyone else — simply isn't a concern for me. I have my own idea of what I think makes a person a saint.

I always felt my mother was a saint although she isn't going to be recognized by anyone. Nevertheless, I still think she had all the qualities one looks for in a saint.

Anyway, go ahead, make John Paul a saint, urges Peggy Noonan, remembering the pope's triumphant return to Poland in 1979, less than a year after entering the papacy.

I don't think Noonan is Catholic — to be honest, I'm not sure, really, what her faith happens to be — and if she isn't, her opinion on the matter probably means no more than mine.

However, if she is a Catholic, Noonan shows how little she knows about the process — or, at least, the terminology involved. The church says it does not make anyone a saint. A higher power does that. Instead, the church recognizes that someone is a saint.

I do remember the occasion of which Noonan writes, and I agree with what she says. It was "[o]ne of the greatest moments in the history of faith," she writes, and it "was also one of the greatest moments in modern political history."

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And I remember when they gathered to say goodbye to John Paul a little more than six years ago. There was a growing movement at the time to put him on the fast track to sainthood ...

... Which, Reuters suggests now, may be a little too fast.

Actually, that doesn't really bother me, I guess, although I suppose I am sort of accustomed to the idea that those who are designated as saints are people who were dead before I was born.

Like, for example, the people in the Bible. I know that, if those people really lived, they were dead centuries before I came along. I have no image in my personal memory bank of any of those folks — the way I have for John Paul. He isn't just an historical figure to me the way he increasingly will become to others. I remember when he was flesh and blood.

I remember, too, when Ronald Reagan was flesh and blood. I didn't agree with him most of the time, either, yet he is treated like a saint by many now.

Today, also, those two men get most of the credit for the downfall of communism. I tend to think that many people played roles in that. John Paul and Reagan contributed to it, but I believe it was the combination of the resistance of ordinary people and the words of national and religious leaders over a period of several decades that, working together, brought down communism.

Reportedly, there are more than 10,000 saints, and my best guess would be that nearly all of them were before my time.

But there have been people who have lived during my lifetime whose works certainly qualify them for canonization — and the late pope is one of them.

I didn't agree with John Paul on everything, but I did respect him, and I have no problem if the Catholic church wants to recognize him as a saint.

During his lifetime and since his death, John Paul was and is symbolic of the reconciliation the church always seeks with those it deems to be spiritually adrift.

John Paul, the first Polish pope, believed he was drawn into the priesthood in part because of the events in Europe in the 1930s and 1940s, and his successor, Benedict XVI, the first German pope in more than four centuries, had been a member of the "Hitler Youth."

They came from opposite sides of the tracks, you might say.

(Benedict became a member of the Hitler Youth only because it was required by law, and neither he nor the members of his family advocated Hitler or nazism.)

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Thus, there is clearly a symbolic quality to the very act of this German pope presiding over the beatification of his predecessor, the Polish pope.

It signifies the reconciliation of the modern Catholic church with its uncomfortable history, notably the Reichskonkordat that the Vatican signed with Nazi Germany to ensure church rights.

So perhaps this is a good occasion to revisit the meaning of the word saint.

To be a saint is to be regarded as a holy person. Name your biblical passage, and the meaning comes down to the belief that Christ dwells in that person, here on earth and in the afterlife. I suppose that could be said of just about any Christian leader, but the belief that one is a saint is a conviction that that person is exceptional.

I don't know if John Paul was exceptional or not. But if he helped his church finally come to terms with its uneasy past, then that is saintly, in my book.

Suffer the Children

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As I'm sure you knew, yesterday was Good Friday. It was also the fifth anniversary of the death of Pope John Paul II — and, by a quirk of history, it also happens to be a time when allegations of pedophilia on the part of a now–deceased American priest have been dogging the Vatican, largely because John Paul's successor, Pope Benedict XVI (who was born Joseph Ratzinger), did not act forcefully when the matter was brought to his attention as a cardinal.

I really regret that this casts such an ominous shadow on an anniversary that should serve as an opportunity to pause and reflect on the life and works of John Paul, but that's how history is sometimes.

And, while I would prefer to be writing about John Paul's positive contributions to the church and the world, it is more important, I think, to address the issue that plagues his church today — or, more to the point, the way that issue has been addressed recently by others.

That is easier said than done. There have been times when all sides have left me speechless — literally. Yesterday was one of those times. In fact, yesterday may have been the topper. So far. But stay tuned. This story definitely has legs.

It started with Peggy Noonan praising the Vatican for facing the scandal — mostly because the press compelled it to do so. She exonerated the pope in the process and lamented the "victims" — not just the children who were abused and carry the emotional scars (and who, in my opinion, were the real victims) but also the clergy (who get tarred with the same brush as the perpetrator) and the rank–and–file Catholics in the pews.

I think I'm a fair–minded person. I don't want to see anyone suffer because of the misdeeds of others. It was primarily for that reason that, when I was younger, I opposed the death penalty (I have modified my position since the development of the methodology for processing DNA evidence). When I was young, I wanted to avoid punishing the innocent. When DNA evidence is available, I'm not concerned about that now.

In the case facing the Catholic church today, the only ones who are truly innocent are those who were children when they were abused (to make things worse — if such a thing is possible — most, if not all, of them were handicapped).

I'm not Catholic, but I have friends who are, and I sympathize with them. I also sympathize with the priests and the nuns who strive to serve their parishioners' needs. Whenever a priest has been accused (rightly or wrongly) of this kind of thing, it seems to have a ripple effect, staining the reputations of good and decent Catholic clergy in the process.

So the clergy suffer and their congregations suffer, too. And that certainly isn't right. But I don't think they are "victims" — at least not to the same extent as those who suffered the abuse all those years ago.

Then, not long after reading Noonan's column, I read the latest from Rome.

According to Daniel Wakin and Rachel Donadio in the New York Times, a Good Friday service became something of a pro–Vatican rally when a senior Vatican priest "compared the world's outrage ... to the persecution of the Jews."

I'm not really sure what to make of the logic of that. I gather that the priest, like Noonan, sees Catholic clergy as victims, guilty by association. Thus, the innocent are being persecuted along with the guilty.

But, as I see it, that analogy falls apart. For it to work, isn't it necessary for at least one of the persecuted Jews to be guilty of something? Because, as I see it, the priest who was responsible for all this abuse clearly was guilty of something.

And what could any Jew have done to justify the murders of 6 million during World War II? Nothing, for, in fact, the Jews who were killed during that dark period in history were slain not because of anything they did but because of what they were. Individually, they may have been guilty of transgressions, as most mortals are, but those transgressions had nothing to do with the unspeakable tragedy that was — and continues to be — the Holocaust.

I have known a few survivors of the Holocaust in my life, and I have known some of their descendants. The pain they have lived with is beyond the comprehension of non–Jews. Their gaping wound is never allowed to heal because virtually any group that believes itself to be wronged in some way compares its suffering (nearly always without justification) to that time because it is the most notorious example that history provides.

Thus, the priest from the Vatican compares the Catholics to the Jews during the Holocaust, even though most Catholics have not suffered the pain that those who were abused suffered.

And right–wing leaders equate the imposition of health care reform on them to the pain that was imposed — not just on the Jews but on the world in general — by the Nazis.

But if there is a Holocaust–based comparison to be found, I don't think it calls for presenting the church as a victim. The more apt comparison, I believe, may be to the Germans who stood by and did nothing while truly terrible things were being done by others.

(It seems pointless, to me, to carry that analogy any farther, though. While it might be possible to prove that there were some Germans who genuinely knew nothing about what was being done — a suggestion that is patently ridiculous, given the long existence of the anti–Semitic Nuremberg Laws and the unchecked attack on Jewish property that was carried out on Kristallnacht ["Night of Broken Glass"] — that number would be relatively small, I'm sure. I'm equally certain that, since there are more than 1 billion Catholics in the world, most are sure to be ignorant of what happens in a single parish.

(On the other hand, though, for the comparison to be accurate, the designation would have to apply to knowledge of the charges of child sexual abuse that have originated around the globe, especially after the Holy See acknowledged last year that "in the last 50 years somewhere between 1.5% and 5% of the Catholic clergy has been involved in sexual abuse cases." That's between 1.5% and 5% of the "world's" Catholic clergy, not the clergy of any particular nation. Fewer Catholics could plausibly claim to be unaware of that.)

Actually, it seems to me that, if we are invited to compare the child sexual abuse scandal to something from history, it is the Watergate scandal, not the Holocaust, that makes the most sense. In fact, a Watergate–era phrase keeps popping into my head with some regularity now, the more I read and hear about this case — "Stonewall it."

I guess that's why I was both intrigued and amused by a post from one of my favorite bloggers, John McIntyre, a former newspaper editor who writes the You Don't Say blog. He suggested some things the Vatican could learn from the Nixon/Watergate experience.

One of his lessons for the Vatican was the futility of trying to cover up. "Cover–ups magnify and spread the initial crime," he writes. And he is correct.

It's either ironic or appropriate — or both — that he should make his observation a few days after the death of Gerald Ford's first press secretary, who was so incensed when Ford granted a pardon to Nixon that he resigned. His resignation was hailed — and rightfully so — as an act of conscience.

The Catholic church would benefit from having more of that sort of conscience — rather than wrapping itself in the cloak of the victim.

The Shortest 'Papacy'

It has not been unusual for America to have two presidents in a single calendar year.

It has happened whenever an election has produced a new president — because either the incumbent president did not run or the incumbent president was defeated. When that has happened, America has begun Inaugural Day (for many years, March 4 — now January 20) with one president and ended it with a different one.

Additionally, there have been eight times when a president has died in office — and once when a president has resigned. On those occasions, the vice president has succeeded the president. Most of the time, the president who died (or resigned) had been in office for more than a year.

Only twice in American history has this nation had three presidents in a single calendar year. On both occasions, a duly elected president–elect has taken the oath of office and then died before the calendar year ended. In those years, America has had the president who was in office when the year began, then the president–elect was sworn in, and then the new president died in office within the same calendar year and the vice president succeeded him.

Of course, the American presidency has only existed for 220 years, and there have been 43 occupants of that office.

The papacy, on the other hand, has been around much longer — nearly 2,000 years — and there have been more than 250 people who have held that title. And, while there have been popes who reigned for decades, others have been in office for a few weeks, sometimes only days.

Consequently, there have been times when the Roman Catholic church has had at least three popes in the same year.

I'm not Catholic, but in some ways the pope transcends religion. He is a global figure, and his authority is at least perceived as political as well as religious. Having been raised Protestant, I can't say that I know the history of the papacy, but my understanding is that, in the early days, a pope enjoyed political as well as spiritual authority. Today, the pope's authority is mostly spiritual in nature, but what he has to say about the issues of the day still commands a lot of attention from non–Catholics as well as Catholics.

Once elected by the College of Cardinals, a pope reigns until his death. He does have the option of resigning, but Gregory XII was the last to exercise that right more than 600 years ago.

After his death in 2005, John Paul II was said to have considered resigning when he neared his 80th birthday in 2000, but he clearly did not do so. When he died, his reign had lasted more than 26 years. But even if he had been alive for the last five years, his reign still would not match that of Pius IX, who reigned longer than any other pope — excluding St. Peter, who is considered the first pope even though the title of pope did not exist in his lifetime.

There haven't been many popes in my life, but there was one year — 1978 — when there were three popes.

In that year, Pope John Paul I succeeded Paul VI, then served just over a month before dying suddenly. He was succeeded by John Paul II, who was the only pope that most people under 35 knew until Benedict XVI succeeded John Paul II.

John Paul I's papacy seemed short — and it was — but the shortest papacy wasn't even a papacy in the traditional sense.

On this day in 752, a priest of Rome named Stephen was elected to succeed Pope Zachary, but Stephen died of a stroke a few days later — before being ordained a bishop.

I don't know much about Stephen — except that he is remembered in history as Pope–elect Stephen — and I don't know if he dreamed of becoming pope, but if he did, his life and death are reminders that, even if you believe that you have reached the pinnacle of your profession, it can be taken from you in the blink of an eye.