The Exaltation of John Paul II: A Motion to Table

Hopefully, the voices clamoring for advancing Pope John Paul II to the status of “The Great,” and for putting him on a fast-track to sainthood, will stay quiet enough to let the Roman Catholic hierarchy continue getting the ministry of Benedict XVI into high gear without too many distractions. For one thing, a sober look at the pontificates of Leo and Gregory, the other so-called “Greats,” should be enough by itself to cool the passions of anyone now viewing John Paul in their lights.
As for sainthood --- well, of course, this isn’t any of our business really, or likely that of anybody else now alive. No track will be fast enough for the new Pope’s own generation to appreciate. But the idea of a Saint Karol Wojtyla still may be worth a look, primarily because it can provoke us to think more deeply about what truly exemplary character and leadership should be in a world like ours, and his.

Right off the bat, though, there is a lot of downside to the idea of a St. Karol. After all, this is the leader who stayed notoriously above the scandal of pedophile priests across his church, entering the fray primarily to reward some of the very leaders who contributed most to the problem. Does resigned Cardinal Bernard Law leading Mass in Vatican City bother you as much as it does me? There is also the matter of the late Pope’s intransigence on the issue of contraception, even as many of the world’s peoples continue to overpopulate themselves, and eventually us, too, to death. Neither he nor anyone else can get a natural law out of Genesis 1:28. The invitation to be fruitful and multiply was just that: an invitation.

As American Catholics are now preaching by their practice, the notion that there is something not quite right about married couples enjoying sex together without intending to procreate is a notion that has been lingering for far too long. Getting this mob of faithful Catholics to be more circumspect in the bedroom will be something that not even former Cardinal Ratzinger can pull off.

And then there are all those celibate priests. Actually, not all priests, alas, and that is the shame of it. If it took over a thousand years to get this flawed practice cranked up as policy in the first place, and if it is now driving capable men away from the priesthood by the hundreds of thousands, then surely the time has come to let this ignoble experiment go. But the Vatican will continue to hear nothing of it.

Or of the possibility of women priests. This issue is a little more difficult, primarily because an all male priesthood seems to supported by the scriptures and not just  tradition. You have to go up against a really big bunch of people --- the Orthodox Churches included --- to get anywhere on the ordination of women. But going up against tradition, the scriptures included, as well as entrenched authority was no problem for Jesus. And for an institution that could change its mind completely on such things as  usury, slavery, and religious freedom, not to mention the Latin Mass and fish on Fridays, putting women in priestly garb should be a walk in the park.

Unfortunately, the new Pope is not much for walking this kind of walk. The Point of these four points is not to sully the memory of a truly good man, or to be catty toward his successor. (Not too catty, anyway.) It is, rather, to point to a path, already cleared, to the late Pope’s goodness itself. Some of the most devoted Catholics who have cleared this path are precisely those who have been the most frustrated by John Paul’s manifold failures to hear their concerns, e.g.: parents with more children than they can even feed, much less nurture, deans of seminaries with applicant pools a quarter of what they were forty years ago, priests with 60% fewer attendees at Mass in a single generation, and called and gifted women who have much to celebrate and no altar at which to celebrate it.

How could folks like these have left kin, country, and parishes behind in order to sleep on dirty streets for only a fleeting glimpse at enactments in which they could not possibly have participated, and all the while let tears of sadness, gratitude, and hope flow from their eyes like a ever-rolling stream? Perhaps because they saw something in the man Karol, not the saint, that can inspire a quite extraordinary faith from very ordinary people like themselves, and like us.

Two Crowds, Two Hopes, Two Deaths

On Easter afternoon, Terri Schiavo continued her journey out of this world as fanatics proclaimed with diabolical certainty the possibility of its reversal. Their shouting made a mockery of the Easter message. We must hope that somehow, deep in her own soul, Mrs. Schiavo nevertheless felt the embrace of a God who grieved more than earthly creatures ever could the body that betrayed her. Four days later, that embrace became the only one that counted.

The scene was quite different in Vatican Square, where crowds prayed and sang quietly, respectfully, and joyfully as Karol Wojtyla lay dying in his apartment above them. Repeatedly, people expressed a sense of solidarity with each other, along with profound affirmations of the rightness of things, things present and things to come. The Easter message was everywhere evident. One spokesman for the church spoke eloquently of Christ’s holding the doors of heaven open to its dying Pope.

Two very different scenes, two very different crowds. What made the difference? Certainly not the respective importance of the two dying persons. As John Paul II would have been the first to insist, in God’s sight Terri and he were equals in partaking of an infinite and sacred value, and of the same destiny. The difference lay in what their respective followers had allowed themselves to hope. Terri Schiavo’s parents, and those who egged them on, fixated only on a physical body restored to health and a long earthly life, with new brain cells and with the ravages of an eating disorder gone forever. By contrast, the Pope’s fellow believers focused on what St. Paul termed the “spiritual body,” whose physiognomy God intends us to recognize only in the kingdom to come.

Although it is likely to remain obscure to those who decry Terri Schiavo’s death as “judicial murder,” it is blindingly clear to most everyone else that, for a long time, the question of her eternal destiny has been the only really relevant question. The question of what might have been left for her in this life was asked and answered, bluntly and searingly, years ago. Asking it again, and again, and yet again was little short of obscene, as was praying for a miracle in just her particular case, with a shocking indifference to every other human being also living in a “permanent vegetative state.” What we will all remember about John Paul II is that he left this world with grace and serenity, an example for all of us to follow in the face of our own death.
br> Where might we get any kind of handle at all on what we can hope not only for Terri Schiavo, but for all whose bodies have made of their souls prisoners with no prospect of escape in this life? The celebration of Easter --- the season and not just the Sunday --- is surely a good place to look, perhaps the best place. For one of the most important things that the Easter story offers is the encouragement to let go of what we were all like when our bodies worked well and looked good. If flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, and we have it on good authority that this is in fact true, then these bodies --- however impressive they might have been once upon a time --- never were meant to go anywhere anyway.

One detail in the Fourth Gospel’s Easter narrative that has long puzzled me is the outwardly callous remark that Jesus is reported to have made to a weeping Mary Magdala at the tomb: “Do not cling to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father.” (John 20:17) What compounds its unfeeling character is that a week later, Jesus went far out of his way to invite Thomas to do just this, to reassure himself of being in the presence of the Lord by probing his hands and his side. (20:27) On Easter Sunday afternoon, watching two crowds of people confront death in two very different ways, I think I finally figured out at least something of what he was talking about: don’t cling to the wrong things at the wrong times.

Martin Luther got the first part of this right: “let goods and kindred go, this mortal life also.” And the Johannine tradition got the second part right: on their respective ways to the Father, the last thing that Jesus, the Pope, and Terri Schiavo needed were faithful followers or distraught family members trying to hold them back. And neither will we.