Popes to remember, and, a pope to forget!
A couple of years ago, during the Lenten season, we attended a weekday Lenten luncheon with a person that we have become acquainted with who happens to be a Catholic nun! She runs the everyday affairs of a small congregation in one of our southern Illinois towns. And, she is polish! We asked this good lady which pope had made the biggest impression on her during her forty or more years in the service of the faith. We expected to here the name John Paul the second because of his commonality with her by his polish origins. She surprised us completely by saying simply Pope John the twenty third!
After we thought about it for a while, we came to realize that she shared with us the love of this briefly serving pope of the late nineteen fifties and the early nineteen sixties, who, in his brief five year reign, almost completely set his church on a new course that corresponded with what that the newly elected catholic president--John F. Kennedy--had done for the secular world that he also so briefly led. John the twenty third did many things to revamp his church and set it a sail into the twentieth century from roots that were, at times, as ancient as the Bible that all used as a guide. But John twenty three remembered that the Jesus who had picked Peter to be one of the leaders of his new flock and later on to become the first pope, was a true revolutionary who espoused change to a staid old Jewish church on an almost daily basis until the day that he died. Where Peter witnessed Jesus feed the three and the five thousand and all who accompanied them to hear him speak, John the twenty third decreed that Catholics did not have to eat fish exclusively on Fridays any longer, although the vestiges of that practice still reside in many catholic Lenten fish fries up until this very day. John the twenty third did many other revisions to the church and its ancient teachings and he angered many traditional Catholics by what he did. But he was revered by people such as my nun friend who thought, in her youth, that the church was in desperate need of change.
After the reign of John Paul the second, came the caretaker pope, Benedict the sixteenth. If Benedict had simply taken that role, it would have probably gone better for him. However, he decided to be a pope who would take the Catholics back down the road from which both John the twenty third and, to a degree, John Paul the second had led them forward. To put it in a few words, Benedict was an odd and often reactionary sort of leader of the faith. He tried his best to undo as many of John the twenty thirds reforms as he possibly could. And, this pleased many very staid and traditional Catholics who had never been pleased with any of them anyway. Among the oddest of things that Benedict ever did was, in 2008, to publish a papal letter to encourage Catholics to have more sex to combat isolation! We kid you not! Another thing that Benedict had to do was to try to cope with the pedophilia scandal that had been engulfing his church for many years as it grew and grew and grew and grew. He probably did a barely adequate job of that as the rumors swirled around him that he himself might have, in his native Germany, condoned and covered up or worked around what was going on there. They opened up a telephone line there a few years ago to allow people to report if they had been abused, and, reports stated that they had to soon disconnect it because of the overload on the line.
It has been duly noted in the press that the last pope to resign was five hundred and ninety eight years ago, in fourteen fifteen.
One of the duties of a pope is to die as well as they can in office to show us after all that they, along with the rest of us, are not immortal. No one did that better than John Paul the second as he allowed himself to publicly suffer from Parkinson’s disease for a number of years before his death as he dutifully carried on until the end. As his Jesus suffered and died on the cross, John Paul suffered and eventually died and he taught so many of us so much in the process of doing it all as visibly as he did! Benedict will die away from public view and it will be dutifully noted in the press when he does. John the twenty third had a short illness and did not burden us with his passing to any great degree but the world realized what a great leader that he really was and what he had accomplished with his flock in the short time that we had him on this earth. He was supposed to be nothing but an interim pope who would do little with his time but maintain the status quo. But God led him to do so much more! And those in their sixties and beyond who remember adore him so to this very day. It will not be so with Benedict! Perhaps the very best thing that he did was to simply quit, and, six hundred years from now that is probably what he will be remembered for doing! Where John Paul the second is bound for sainthood, Benedict is bound simply for the oblivion that he deserves! And we hope that this departing pope will have the good grace and decency to keep his pen and his mouth shut and not embarrass his flock and the new pope who will follow him with any more of his odd ideas. In an age of an over crowded planet, the idea of condoning Catholic bishops in the United States in their fight against a president who is trying to bring some order to the birth control mess the confronts us all simply reminds us of what master Jesus said so long ago when he gave advice about church and state: Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s and unto God that which is God’s!
IOVHO,
Regards,
Joe
To say that "God exists" is the greatest understatement ever made across space and time.
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