Tuesday, April 05, 2005
I MUST BE AN INCOMPLETE CATHOLIC
All over the web, I find essays about John Paul II that make him seem larger than life, that lament his passing as though the writer had thought he would live forever and is now in shock that he actually died. Tears seem to be the ticket of admission to St. Blogs. Every account I've read is invariably sentimental, yet here I sit dry-eyed before my computer screen, contemplating taking a blogging hiatus until after the funeral. Maybe it's just the age factor. Death is more familiar to someone who has been around for the death of four previous popes and a lot of other people as well. The older I get the less offensive death looks when it comes at the end of a long and productive life.
Lots of posters in St. Blogs remember only one Pope who reigned for all or most of their lives. Maybe someone that much a part of a person's personal landscape is harder to do without. Or maybe Catholicism and the Pope are all tied up in a single package. Is it that the Catholicism that existed before this Pope was so different that it looks like foreign territory making people think the Church can't go on without him? The faith is bigger than John Paul II. Christ remains. We must not lose sight of that.
There's no doubt that he had a major impact. Yes he had time to make many changes in the way we live the faith. And yes, he preached orthodoxy and opposed the topsy-turvy madness that has been such a plague since the Council. But it has always been orthodoxy with a twist, though a lot of younger people don't seem to know that, or don't want to. He did good. Some of those on the right and on the left who think he should have done what he chose not to do are silent now, as perhaps they should be. Even Novus Ordo Watch has tempered criticism.
He was not young. He had become frail and was in pain. Is it a tragedy for such a life to end? His reported serenity in the hours before he died would indicate otherwise. Death comes to everyone, and he deserved to move on, one step closer to his eternal reward. I think he would remind us of that.
People are reacting to this death as though he had been a family member. I never felt that way about him. I never felt personally close to him at all. I would be more choked up over the death of my pastor than I am over the death of John Paul, so maybe I'm missing something. Maybe I never got the message, whatever it is. Or was. I certainly never understood the cheering crowds gathered around him. What was it about him that drew this kind of emotional response?
I don't understand why so many people are praying so frequently for him. We pray for the dead so that their time in purgatory will be shortened--purgatory being the necessary purgation as a result of sin. So was he sinful? All of these prayers would seem to say that he was very sinful. I doubt that anyone else has ever received so many prayers as John Paul II. So he must have been a great and terrible sinner to need so many prayers, right? Well, no, that isn't what people think. What they think is that he is already in heaven. That he is St. John Paul II the Great. So why are they praying for him? What are their prayers supposed to accomplish? Perhaps those in tears see prayers as a kind of connection that transcends death? So long as we are praying for him he is still here with us? Are all of the prayers and all of the tears a way of holding on, of refusing to let go?
What all of this emotional outpouring reminds me too much of is the sort of emotion that follows the death of a cult figure--a John Lennon or an Elvis Presley or a Princess Diana kind of idol--a someone that a lot of people have turned into a god without whom they think their life cannot continue.
John Paul II was first of all a man. Worship was hardly appropriate when he was alive. Worship of him now that he is gone is not appropriate either. Will those who are so emotional over this pope embrace the next Pope in the same manner? Will the transition be that easy? Three weeks from now will they cheer over the newly elected pope as though he had become their long lost hero overnight? It takes longer than three weeks to get sufficiently over a dead pet so that a new one can be acquired. Somehow I suspect, though, that the next pope will enjoy the same cheering crowds that are sobbing crowds right now, at least in the beginning. If that turns out to be accurate, it will make the emotional response seem even more shallow than it already does.
Perhaps all the controversy in the Church over the last forty years has simply made me callous. I've learned not to expect much. I don't worship a man even if he fills St. Peter's shoes. And I don't cry over the loss of someone I've never even spoken to, no matter how great I think he was.
So like I said, I must be some sort of incomplete Catholic who is simply missing what is obvious to everyone else.
