Deliver Us from Evil

John Paul II’s health has been in the news all week, calling the world’s attention to both the past and the future of his career as pope.

The past is simple matter of fact—though the facts themselves are simply extraordinary! Elected almost exactly 25 years ago (October 16, 1978), he may soon (on March 15, 2004) become the second longest-reigning pontiff in history, after Pius IX’s 32-year reign. An entire generation has grown with no memory of any other pope. If they care about the church, John Paul II is their Vatican II—the defining fact of their lifetime in the church.

The future of JP II’s career is also about facts—but more importantly, it is about questions. Based on current reports, he is not likely to take over the #1 spot as longest-reigning pope. More likely, we will soon witness the election of new pope.

The new generation has no memory of a papal election. Satellite coverage existed in 1978, but now we’ve added cable and 24-hours news. Few events on earth are as telegenic as what we will soon see: the solemn pageantry of a papal funeral, the intriguing glimpses of far-flung cardinals arriving in Rome, the frantic speculation to identify the leading candidates, the suspense and secrecy of the locked-down papal Conclave, the dramatic spectacle of a new pope appearing on St. Peter’s balcony, the ceremonial splendor of his inauguration.

My guess is these events will give people everywhere, especially people under 30, a fresh positive impression of a Catholic Church that lately has provided mostly bad news. I can picture it now: Fox Sports interrupts its NFL broadcast to announce that a new round of balloting has just finished in the Conclave—and the screen shifts to show black smoke curling up from the ancient chimney as the ballots are burned. A whole new generation will learn that this vigil is all about watching for the black smoke to give way to the white.

So the fact is, these events will give us a new pope. The question in my mind is: will they also give us a new papacy?

This is no idle question. In fact, I will be surprised if we do not get a new papacy. After all, if you stop to think about it, the Papacy has already changed three times in the last 45 years. Each time, though, the change was quite a surprise.

When Angelo Roncalli was elected John XXIII in 1958, he was already 77 years old. But the Cardinals who elected him knew what they were doing—or, at least, they thought they knew. They really wanted Cardinal Montini of Milan, but he seemed too young, so they passed the torch instead to Roncalli. They intended for him to warm the Papal throne until Montini came of age. They presumed his age would guarantee a short papacy. They also presumed his long-time track record, as a mild and predictable church diplomat, would a guarantee an uneventful papacy.

They could not have been more wrong. True, John’s papacy was brief, barely five years—but within the first year he rocked the cardinals by announcing his intention to hold a general council of all the world’s bishops. Vatican II was the first council in nearly 100 years, and was all the more unexpected because the previous council, Vatican I, had defined the doctrine of papal infallibility. Many bishops and Cardinals assume the obvious: if the Pope is infallible, why would he ever again need to convene bishops to advise him? In short, many had long before concluded that Vatican I was the last of the ecumenical councils. So John XXIII changed the papacy when, simply by calling for Vatican II, he showed that no pope could dispense with his fellow bishops. Henceforth, infallible or not, the papacy would be a Conciliar papacy.

Montini, of course, did get his chance when Good Pope John died, for the cardinals swiftly elected him Paul VI. The first surprise was that Paul chose not only to reconvene Vatican Council II (suspended the previous Autumn) but to press forward with the same agenda John had left it. We now know this was surprising only because most bishops did not realize that John and Paul had worked out that agenda in private before John’s death; in hindsight we see that, if John was the visionary behind Vatican II, Paul was its architect and driving force.

The second surprise came when Paul took the council’s decrees as a mandate for the papacy itself. For the Council called for a more extroverted church, a church more open too and engaged with the world around it. Breaking the 100-year precedent of a pope closeted in his palace as “he prisoner of the Vatican,” Paul traveled to meet the Greek Patriarch Athanagoras, traveled to the Holy Land, and especially traveled to the United Nations—the first Pope to visit the new world. And so the Papacy changed a second time: henceforth, the Pope was no longer a prisoner; he was liberated, free to meet the world rather than wait for it to come to him. Paul became the first “Pilgrim Pope.”

John Paul II’s election came by default, of course, for John Paul I died after barely a month in office. But while both new popes chose names that emphasized their continuity with the legacy of John and Paul, John Paul II changed the Papacy in two ways, almost from the start. First of all, Karol Wojtyla was Polish—his very appearance on the balcony was a shock after 400 years of Italian Popes. So his very election made one change: henceforth the papacy was no longer an Italian monopoly. It now belonged to all the world.

The second change followed swiftly, as John Paul announced his first pastoral visit to Mexico and the Caribbean in early 1979. This trip was followed soon by his second trip, to Poland, and then his trip to Ireland and the US, and then came Turkey—and that was only the first year! Twenty-five years later he made his 102^nd pastoral voyage, making himself the most traveled pope, as well as the most “seen” human being, in history. If John introduced a conciliar papacy, and Paul established a pilgrim papacy, John Paul II virtually perfected the Pilgrim Papacy into the office with the greatest public presence in the world. Time magazine called it the Pope as superstar!

The net result: John Paul II will be leaving a Papal office radically transformed from the office John XXIII accepted in 1958. So it’s only common sense to suggest that the next time white smoke rises from that ancient chimney, it will signal not only another new pope but also another new papacy. The obvious question is: What kind of papacy?

Next week: What further changes to expect in the papacy?

Send Your Comments and Questions to bfswain@juno.com