Category: The Pope

Not surprisingly, a group of Catholic dissidents has bravely united to offer opposition to the beatification of John Paul II.

According to the Catholic World News article, the group includes "11 theologians and one journalist from Europe and Latin America". Apparently, the group tried to enlist Hans Kung, but he didn’t bite.

We Are Church "has not taken a public stance" on JPII’s beatification, but earlier noted that his pontificate was "full of contradictions".

Let’s look at the list of problems the group saw with the JPII’s pontificate:

"1. the "repression and marginalization" of controversial theologians;
2. the movement away from collegiality in Church governance;
3. the unwillingness to engage in "real and serious debate about the status of women in the Roman Catholic Church;"
4. the opposition to "a reconsideration– in the light of the Gospel,
science, and history– of certain norms of sexual ethics;"
5. the adherence to the discipline of clerical celibacy–which, the
statement said, continues despite the evidence that many priests in
some geographical regions live with women, and the sexual abuse of
children in other regions;
6. the lack of control over Church financial institutions, leading to the banking scandals of the 1980s;
7. the "ecclesial isolation" of Archbishop Oscar Romero and the failure to support the theology of liberation in Latin America."

Gee, they talk about repression and marginalization like its a bad thing. This looks like a list of recommendations, to me. Not that there couldn’t be some legitimate gripes about JPII, but overall, if this is the opposition, he must have been doing something right.

GET THE STORY.

I’m sure that’s a question many folks would like the answer to.

It seems that the cause is still at a very early stage of development, but there is some news available on it.

HERE’S AN INTERVIEW WITH THE POLISH PRIEST ASSIGNED TO SERVE AS THE POSTULATOR FOR THE CAUSE.

I’m afraid that the Zenit interviewer asked him a number of dopey questions (e.g., about the late pontiff performing "social" miracles–some of those Italian Zenit reporters seem to be from outer space in some of the questions they ask), but he did a good job handling them and it’s nice to get a feel for what’s going on now.

One thing I had not been aware of is that there is an official Internet site for the cause.

HERE IT IS.

Much of it isn’t in English, but look for the little British flags to see the English parts.

It seems fitting, in an odd, amusing way, that the pope who was totally devoted to Mary ("Totus tuus") would join her in making the rounds of appearances in food. (Before I annoy any apparitions purists, please understand that I am speaking ironically. When Mary or any saint appears, they appear. They do not appear as an image in food.) In any case, the image of John Paul the Great has recently been spotted in a flapjack:

"One Sunday morning, Myrna Kincaid’s life changed with the flip of a pancake.

"’Look at my pancake,’ she reflects. ‘It looks like, looks like the pope.’

"’I thought it could very well look like him,’ said Jay, her husband.

"Instead of eating the pancake bite by bite, they stored it in the freezer and scurried to church. But, what to make of this, they thought.

"Luke Galen is a Grand Valley State University professor who teaches a course on psychology in religion. ‘That one’s pretty accurate as far as these pictures go,’ said Galen."

GET THE STORY.

Why would images like this, what we might call nature’s icons, "appear"? Who knows. But one of the things I love about Catholicism is that we have such a sacramental view of life that even cooking breakfast for one’s family can become a holy moment when one’s mind is uplifted to God and to his friends.

For a longer meditation on this kind of phenomena, see the links below.

OUR LADY OF THE UNDERPASS

OUR LADY OF THE UNDERPASS, REDUX

JIMMY ADDS: I’m skeptical about all "phenomena" of this nature, though sometimes there may be coincidental resemblances. In this case . . . I dunno. The contrast between the background and the pope figure is so extreme and the edges between them so sharp that it looks . . . artificial to me.

It would not surprise me in the slightest if someday the Church canonized all of the popes of the twentieth century. During the first few centuries of Christianity, God blessed the Church with saintly pontiffs to lead us through the Age of Martyrs (the first non-saint pontiff was Liberius in the fourth century), and it seems fitting that he would grant the Church another slew of saintly popes for the Second Age of Martyrs through which we now appear to be passing.

Already, we have St. Pius X and Bd. John XXIII. Causes have been opened for Pius XII, Paul VI, and John Paul the Great. And, as if in a nod that canonization does not depend on what you do but rather on the person you become by grace, there is even an active cause open for Pope John Paul I, the September Pope of 1978, who is now being reported to be on the fast-track to beatification:

"Pope John Paul I, who died in 1978 after a reign of only 34 days, could be the next addition to the growing list of possible papal saints.

"The beatification process for the Italian pontiff has moved swiftly ahead since its 2003 launch, the official in charge of the cause said in an interview marking the 27th anniversary of the pope’s death.

"’We have testimony of an apparent miracle which we are evaluating and which we are thinking of presenting to the Vatican,’ Monsignor Giorgio Lise told a Catholic website."

GET THE STORY.

Interestingly, I have only been able to find discussion of John Paul I’s possible beatification on stridently radical traditionalist sites, where there is the usual teeth-gnashing over "Vatican modernists … obviously trying to canonize the whole New Religion by putting each and every one of their leaders on the road to ‘sainthood’" (source) and bewailing of a supposed desire by the Church to "canonise these popes to prove the holiness and rightness of Vatican II" (source).

Why the news of JPI’s road to beatification has only appeared to come to the attention of those who sneer at the possibility, I don’t know, but I decided to rectify the situation by posting notice of it here.

The Vatican has released a detailed report of the final hours of Pope John Paul II:

"Struggling to breathe, Pope John Paul II mumbled his final words weakly in Polish: ‘Let me go to the house of the Father.’ Six hours later, the comatose pontiff died, the Vatican says.

"The account of John Paul’s final hours appears in a meticulously detailed official report on his last weeks just released by the Vatican in what might be an effort to ward off any doubts about how forthcoming it has been about his illness and April 2 death.

"There was much speculation in past decades over how some pontiffs died and what caused their end.

"John Paul I’s brief tenure of 33 days as pope in 1978 spawned conspiracy theories that he did not die naturally in his bed, as the Vatican said. Some wondered if the pope might have been killed because he had information about an Italian banking scandal in which the Holy See’s bank was later found to be involved.

"While no one has publicly suggested anything amiss about John Paul II’s final hours, the Vatican said nothing for years when it was apparent to observers that the globe-trotting, widely beloved pontiff was suffering the symptoms of Parkinson’s disease.

"The Vatican already revealed many of the details in the new report, but the 220-page volume provides more description of John Paul II’s decline. It went on sale at the Vatican in recent days, the Holy See’s publishing house, Libreria Editrice Vaticana, said Saturday."

GET THE STORY.

The reported final words of John Paul, "Let me go to the house of the Father," certainly sheds new light on then Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger’s now-famous reflection during the funeral homily of John Paul II standing at the window of the Father’s house:

"We can be sure that our beloved Pope is standing today at the window of the Father’s house, that he sees us and blesses us. Yes, bless us, Holy Father. We entrust your dear soul to the Mother of God, your Mother, who guided you each day and who will guide you now to the eternal glory of her Son, our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen."

Amen.

GET THE HOMILY.

GET THE STORY.

(CHT: Southern Appeal.)

The Diocese of Rome is collecting accounts of miracles attributed to the intercession of the late Pope John Paul II:

"The Vatican is urging Roman Catholics to contribute to the late Pope’s beatification by sending e-mails about miracles performed after his death.

"The website for the Diocese of Rome will soon start publishing the readers’ messages under several categories.

"John Paul II, who died in April, encouraged the use of the internet."

GET THE STORY.

How cool is that? Modern technology at the service of a cause of canonization. Near as I can tell, here is the web site of the Diocese of Rome.  (Note: Link updated.) The post title is, of course, just my attempt to be clever. It is not the address to which you should send reports of miracles.

John Paul II, pray for us.

Those seeking to ask a rhetorical question that begs a no-brainer "Yes!" response sometimes say, "Is the Pope Catholic?" Well, not only is he Catholic, but he’s Christian, too:

"The war conducted by revisionist Catholics, they understand full well, is not simply against reactionary old men in the Vatican, but Baptists in Virginia, Anglicans in Nigeria, Pentecostals in Brazil, and against the heart of [o]rthodox doctrinal and moral teaching. It is not only against the beliefs of old-fashioned Catholics, but has been unmistakably revealed in the last generation, as revisionism marches steadily from the controversial to the abominable, to be against all Christians, everywhere, and at all times.

"A revisionist victory in a papal election would not be a small thing, but neither would it be as large as many of the liberal Catholics and their friends in the secular media seem to think it would. The Church — and by this I mean the Church as C. S. Lewis’s spirits could see it, spread down through the ages, as terrible as an army with banners — will survive it, and become stronger and more unified with the disciplines it imposes."

GET THE STORY.

"The Church — and by this I mean the Church as C. S. Lewis’s spirits could see it, spread down through the ages, as terrible as an army with banners — will survive it, and become stronger and more unified with the disciplines it imposes."

And the Pope will be leading and directing the charge.

So on Friday B16 named JP2’s personal secretary, Archbishop Stanislaw Dziwisz, to be the new archbishop of Krakow–the post Karol Wojtyla held before he became JP2.

Cool. A reward for a career of faithful service, no?

But on Saturday something emerged calling into question the precise degree of faithfulness that was involved: Archbishop Dziwisz announced that he had failed to burn all of JP2’s private papers, as called for in his will!

EXCERPTS:

Archbishop Stanislaw Dziwisz, who worked with the pope from 1966 until his death earlier this year, told Polish state radio there are "quite a lot of manuscripts on various issues," but he offered no details.

"Nothing has been burned," Dziwisz said. "Nothing is fit for burning, everything should be preserved and kept for history, for the future generations – every single sentence."

"These are great riches that should gradually be made available to the public."

Dziwisz did not say when or how that might happen.

In Saturday’s radio interview, Dziwisz suggested that some of the notes could prove useful in the late pontiff’s beatification process.

Now, I don’t know if Archbishop Dziwisz was himself charged with burning the papers, nor do I know if he was ordered not to do so by someone with the authority to give this order (e.g., B16), so I don’t know how to appraise his role in this.

Still, my feelings about this revelation are profoundly . . . mixed.

As they were when it was announced that JP2’s will called for all his private papers to be burned. I recognized that this represented a huge loss to historians, but on the other hand it was JP2’s will–and in his will–and you don’t disobey what someone says in his will.

I also have some sympathy for JP2’s desire. There have been people who’ve been badly burned historically by folks rumaging through their papers and the misrepresenting them.

It happened to Friedrich Nietzsche, for example. After he was institutionalized, his anti-Semitic, German-nationalistic sister went through his papers and "edited" them for publication. She also promoted what she proclaimed as "his" philosophy, which was really her own and which served to make Nietzsche an inspirational figure for Hitler and the Nazi party (contrary to what Nietzsche himself would have wanted).

While one hopes that the proper scholarly controls will be employed in any evaluation of JP2’s private papers, the potential for mischief is significant.

For one, we have no idea what state those papers are in. It may be that it will be hard or impossible to determine what was authored by the late pontiff and what wasn’t. People may have sent him drafts of things that found their way into his private papers, and some of these might be assumed to have been authored by the pope himself. Others’ (potentially lame-brained) ideas thus might end up being ascribed to JP2.

Also there is a fact that someone’s private papers are things that–by definition–the person did not intend for publication. Private papers frequently represent efforts individuals make at "trying out" ideas or ways of approaching a subject, only to have the individual himself conclude that this was a bad start that was unworthy of publication.

There may even be things in a person’s private papers where he tries to write out the strongest case he can make for a position he disagrees with–so that he can use this brief as a foil for later knocking down the position.

And then there is the danger of sensationalism–of an individual gaining (or claiming to have gained) access to the "secret" JP2 private papers and publishing books erroneously purporting to give his "true, private views" on matters.

Try to imagine what "historians" have done to Pius XII being done to JP2 to get an idea of what this could involve.

So while I am, on the one hand, pleased that JP2’s private papers are not lost to historians, I am simultaneously apprehensive about the use and misuse that might be made of them and concerned about the apparent violation of a clause of his will.

GET THE STORY.

(CHT to the reader who e-mailed.)

So on Friday B16 named JP2’s personal secretary, Archbishop Stanislaw Dziwisz, to be the new archbishop of Krakow–the post Karol Wojtyla held before he became JP2.

Cool. A reward for a career of faithful service, no?

But on Saturday something emerged calling into question the precise degree of faithfulness that was involved: Archbishop Dziwisz announced that he had failed to burn all of JP2’s private papers, as called for in his will!

EXCERPTS:

Archbishop Stanislaw Dziwisz, who worked with the pope from 1966 until his death earlier this year, told Polish state radio there are "quite a lot of manuscripts on various issues," but he offered no details.

"Nothing has been burned," Dziwisz said. "Nothing is fit for burning, everything should be preserved and kept for history, for the future generations – every single sentence."

"These are great riches that should gradually be made available to the public."

Dziwisz did not say when or how that might happen.

In Saturday’s radio interview, Dziwisz suggested that some of the notes could prove useful in the late pontiff’s beatification process.

Now, I don’t know if Archbishop Dziwisz was himself charged with burning the papers, nor do I know if he was ordered not to do so by someone with the authority to give this order (e.g., B16), so I don’t know how to appraise his role in this.

Still, my feelings about this revelation are profoundly . . . mixed.

As they were when it was announced that JP2’s will called for all his private papers to be burned. I recognized that this represented a huge loss to historians, but on the other hand it was JP2’s will–and in his will–and you don’t disobey what someone says in his will.

I also have some sympathy for JP2’s desire. There have been people who’ve been badly burned historically by folks rumaging through their papers and the misrepresenting them.

It happened to Friedrich Nietzsche, for example. After he was institutionalized, his anti-Semitic, German-nationalistic sister went through his papers and "edited" them for publication. She also promoted what she proclaimed as "his" philosophy, which was really her own and which served to make Nietzsche an inspirational figure for Hitler and the Nazi party (contrary to what Nietzsche himself would have wanted).

While one hopes that the proper scholarly controls will be employed in any evaluation of JP2’s private papers, the potential for mischief is significant.

For one, we have no idea what state those papers are in. It may be that it will be hard or impossible to determine what was authored by the late pontiff and what wasn’t. People may have sent him drafts of things that found their way into his private papers, and some of these might be assumed to have been authored by the pope himself. Others’ (potentially lame-brained) ideas thus might end up being ascribed to JP2.

Also there is a fact that someone’s private papers are things that–by definition–the person did not intend for publication. Private papers frequently represent efforts individuals make at "trying out" ideas or ways of approaching a subject, only to have the individual himself conclude that this was a bad start that was unworthy of publication.

There may even be things in a person’s private papers where he tries to write out the strongest case he can make for a position he disagrees with–so that he can use this brief as a foil for later knocking down the position.

And then there is the danger of sensationalism–of an individual gaining (or claiming to have gained) access to the "secret" JP2 private papers and publishing books erroneously purporting to give his "true, private views" on matters.

Try to imagine what "historians" have done to Pius XII being done to JP2 to get an idea of what this could involve.

So while I am, on the one hand, pleased that JP2’s private papers are not lost to historians, I am simultaneously apprehensive about the use and misuse that might be made of them and concerned about the apparent violation of a clause of his will.

GET THE STORY.

(CHT to the reader who e-mailed.)