Light On Dark Water

A Captain for the Storm

Although I’m a lot older than the millions of people
under thirty or so who remember no other pope than John Paul II,
I did not become a Catholic until a couple of years into his
papacy. So I’m like these young people in that my entire
life as a Catholic has been spent with him as head of the Church.
And since I had paid little or no attention to his predecessors,
he has always been for me simply the Pope. I did not
entirely feel the significance of that fact until last night when
I saw a clip of him speaking to a crowd when he was still in the
fullness of his strength. I had not until that moment felt any
particular sadness at his passing: it had been expected, it was
inevitable, his decline had been painful to watch, and he had
done as much valuable work as any human being can be expected to
do. But when I heard and saw him as he was ten or fifteen years
ago, it finally hit me that on some instinctual level I believe
that “no John Paul” means “no pope.” It
was a bit like the death, almost four years ago, of my father: a
world without him would be a different world.

The beginning of any good thing (and for that matter many not
so good things) has about it, especially in retrospect, a fresh
and springlike quality. At the time of John Paul’s election
I was, after a period of wandering, entering into a mature and
serious Christianity, and as I wrestled with doctrinal and
denominational questions he played a significant role in my
decision to enter the Church. He, along with writers like Lewis
and Chesterton, had a combination of intellect and Gospel wisdom
which always seemed to strike exactly the right note on any topic
he addressed. And his name remains associated in my mind with a
sense of something wonderful about to unfold.

But that springtime is long since past. Winter began to
overtake the pope some time ago, and I have grown jaded and often
complacent, or worse, in my relationship with the Church. I have
also come, I realize now, to take for granted that the ministry
of a great pope would always be active in the world. Busy with
work and family for many years, I have only half-read some of his
most important encylicals, such as Evangelium Vitae. Now
in the space of a week we have seen the spectacle of officers of
the state enforcing a decree of euthanasia on a helpless person,
and the passing of the man who brought to bear against such
things a combination of weapons such as no one else has had:
intelligence, profound spirituality, and a worldwide audience.
And it is entirely possible that no one will have them again
anytime soon.

There are many who admire John Paul but quietly murmur that
his papacy has been a disappointment. Although his personal
witness has been almost flawless, certain pathologies remain
entrenched in the Church, and the disaster of the sexual scandal
cover-ups was in part perpetrated by bishops he appointed. I do
not feel qualified to take a position on whether the pope is at
fault in any of this, or on how much scope of action he actually
had in dealing with deeply-rooted problems in the Church. But I
have had for many years now a sense that the momentum is toward
reform and renewal, however much the inertia of the ship resists
turning. But now I realize that I have been operating on the
unexamined and completely irrational illusion that John Paul
would always be at the helm.

Suddenly the Church seems at risk. If the cardinals give us a
weak man for our next pope—or, God forbid, a
quisling—the momentum could disappear, or even shift the
other way again. Witness the case of Fr. Roger Haight, a
theologian who has written a book (Jesus, Symbol of God)
which, if the reports are accurate (and I stress that I have not
read the book), denies the Divinity and Resurrection of Christ.
The book had received an award from the Catholic Press
Association, and the Catholic Theological Society of America rose
to Haight’s defense when the CDF forbade him to teach. A
weak pope now could give the confusion and error of such
teachings a new lease on life.

One of the difficulties of being a faithful Catholic in the
face of an increasingly hostile secular culture is that someone
in the Church always seems ready to pull the rug out from under
you. During the Terry Schiavo case the news media never seemed to
be lacking for some sleek theologian to explain why cutting off
her food and water was a perfectly legitimate act.

I pray that the cardinals will act wisely. The clouds that
were gathering when John Paul was elected—the clouds that
bring a full-scale assault, in the name of compassion and
progress, on the whole idea of the sanctity of human
life—have become a storm. In some ways the situation is
worse than in the ‘70s when abortion was legalized, in that
the pro-abortion forces had to pretend that an eight-week-old
fetus was not a human life. That pretense is falling away, and
more people are willing to accept a purely utilitarian view of
whether or not to take innocent life. As always, we need a rock.
Or, to switch to another traditional metaphor, we need a captain
who knows his ship and knows the weather and knows how to
command.