The Great Game

It is always nice to find an article that sums up your own thoughts on a topic (because then you can just copy it instead of writing it). The death of John Paul II has left me feelling small. I have respected the pontiff even if I couldn't agree with him. The (positive) effect that he has on millions of lives during the third longest reign on Peter's throne is awe-inspiring. When you see pictures on a crowd of a hundred thousand being brought to tears you there is power there.

Jax

I have said dark words about Karol before, this is not the time to repeat them.

It's entirely possible that by the time I finish this post, Pope John Paul II will be dead. I'm not Catholic, and I don't have particularly strong feelings about this particular pope. But seeing the crowd gathered in St Peters Square last evening, waiting for the end, did prompt some personal thoughts on the history of the church and John Paul's place in it.

So what do I have to say about the life and times of the former Karol Jozef Wojtyla? Nothing sweeping or intemperate. He was less reactionary than most who have held the See of Peter in modern times, but less progressive than either his immediate predecessor -- who died way too soon to leave much of a legacy, or Pope John XXIII -- who left one for the ages.

John Paul II spoke, if not always loudly, for economic justice and the needs of the poor. He was a courageous champion of freedom for those suffering under Soviet tyranny in Eastern Europe; less bold in condemning death squads and covert aggression in Central America. He opposed the death penalty and the War in Iraq. And he made a good faith effort (pun intended) to advance the church's painful reconcilation with its anti-Semitic past, despite considerable internal opposition.

On the other hand, John Paul II was a cipher, or worse, on most of what we here in the States would call the "social issues." His refusal to budge on Human Vitae -- the low point of the post-Vatican II reaction -- was particularly discouraging, as was his equally adamantine position on clerical celibacy. And of his attitude towards the gay and lesbian members of his human flock, there's little to say and less that's good.

I don't know to what extent those decisions -- or rather, non-decisions -- were motivated by a political fear of schism and to what extent they were deeply held beliefs, but their long-run effects will be add to the net stock of human misery, both for the world as a whole and for the church.

If the ultimate responsibility for the bestial sex crimes uncovered in the parishes of America over the past few years can't be laid at John Paul's feet -- and I don't know enough about the scandal to venture an opinion on how far up the hierarchy the blame should go -- his decision to kow-tow to the reactionaries on the celibacy issue certainly did nothing to make things better. It's also condemned the church, particularly its American branch, to a slow death of shrinking seminaries and empty parishes.

Sooner or later, a courageous pope is going to have to confront that issue squarely and not retreat. It's a shame it couldn't have been John Paul.

But the church is more than just a political institution, and a pope can't be evaluated in political terms alone -- left on economic issues, right on abortion, as if he were a candidate in a U.S. Senate race. A pope's moral impact on the world, like the impact of the church itself, has a lot of moving parts, including the complexity of the religious experience, the material or psychological benefits each believer derives from that experience, and -- last but hardly least -- the impact of religious doctines or practices on nonbelievers.

As I've said before, on balance I think Christianity has been a net positive for the world, despite its frequent fits of ignorance and intolerance. I guess I would assign the Catholic Church alone a slighty lower score -- mainly for allowing itself to become such a cesspool during the late Middle Ages. But still, on balance, positive.

For John Paul, though, I'm tempted to close out the books even closer to break even -- more because of the opportunity costs of the things he failed to do as pope, rather than for losses suffered because of the things he did do.

But the truth is, I really don't have tenough moral computing power to net that one out. A little humility is called for here -- even for a judgmental old lefty like me. The pope is a big guy and the Catholic Church is a big organization, and it's been in business a long time. In fact, unless I've overlooked something in the historical catalog, the church can rightly claim to be the planet's oldest surviving institution -- if you define an institution as an organization with unitary leadership, a generally accepted system of succession, and a permanent bureacracy.

Two thousand years is a remarkable run for an entity run by creatures who, even under the best conditions, typically live only about 1/30th that long. Walking in the Lateran Basilica -- the ancient seat of the papacy in Rome, before it moved into that gaudy Renaissance pile across the Tiber -- you get an incredible sense of this antiquity. The Lateran is built more or less on the same plan as the ruined Basilica of Constantine down in the forum, and is filled with columns, mosaics, friezes and other fancy bits of stone scavenged from the palaces of the emperors. It symbolizes, in other words, the almost seamless transition from imperial to papal authority, pushing the roots of the church back to the dawn of Latin civilization itself.

I told my wife once that while I don't believe in Christianity, the brand of Christianity I choose not to believe in is Catholicism. I guess what I was trying to say is that to me the church is the genuine article, the name brand, while the saccharine, homogenized brand of Protestantism I was raised with is the pale imitation.

You can't sit through a Catholic Mass and not be moved by the power of the ceremony, even if the symbolism itself (ritual cannibalism) is repugnant. And the church has that whole Holy Mary Mother of God thing going, which gives it a deeply anachronistic but emotionally rewarding connection to the old matriarchal fertility cults of the neolithic Mediterranean -- back before all those Caucasian barbarians came down from the north and brought their macho sky gods with them.

Put it all together, and there's a grandeur and richness to Catholicism -- and not just the kind that leads to the periodic Vatican financial scandals. It may not be spiritual, but it is . . . mysterious. Something about the institution has allowed it to defy (so far at least) the slow decay of history, even as proud dynasties and powerful empires have gone down like flies around it.

Looking back at the incredible venality and downright kinkiness of the late medieval popes -- the Borgias could have taught the modern porn industry a thing or two -- at the endless schisms and political scheming, the corruption of the the priests and the sheer bigoted ignorance of the Curia and its various inquisitions, it's a miracle the church managed to survive the Reformation, much less regain a measure of its moral standing.

You have to have a certain respect for an organization that has managed to retain the loyalty and deep affection of millions of human beings for almost two millennia, despite its own enormous flaws. Like an ancient olive tree, one which often appears completely bleached and dead from the outside, the church keeps sending out new moral shoots every so often: the Catholic Worker movement, Vatican II, liberation theology. John Paul didn't do much to tend these shoots, but he didn't, and couldn't, make them disappear entirely -- because they grow from the church's deepest longings for fellowship and justice.

If all this sounds like an extended apologia for the Catholic Church, I suppose it is. After the disgraceful way some -- but only some -- church leaders behaved during the Terri Schiavo nightmare, this may seem undeserved. But, like I said, there's something about the historical depth of human experience that Catholicism represents that commands my respect, even if the church's behavior doesn't always earn my admiration.

As the church moves through the ancient rituals of succession, I'll be watching closely -- to see whether the old graybacks in the College of Cardinals can transcend their own limitations and produce a pope like John XXIII, or whether the reactionaries will, as usual, have the upper hand and the kind of papacy that goes with it.

The answer may not determine the fate of the church -- for a 2,000-year-old institution, what's another CEO, more or less? But it will go a long way towards telling me whether I should, on balance, regard that ancient institution as an ally or an enemy of the moral values I believe in. (Link)