THE
PAPALMANIA VIRUS (2005)
Now
that John Paul II has passed on, and Pope Benedict XVI has
been outfitted in ermine robes, a Da Vinci Code decoder
ring, and the Melitta coffee filter chapeau,
can we
have allow ourselves a moment of doubt about the past few
months of media-massaged Papalmania? I’m not the only one
to have found the ecclesiastical cuddle party a turn-off.
It seems most embedded newsproles, who have a habit of
genuflecting to power, felt compelled to bow down and blow
white smoke up our airwaves.
The ghoulish deathwatch for John Paul II (news divisions
were camped out in St. Peter’s for months waiting for him
to pop his clogs) was accompanied by the most sententious
sermonizing ever displayed in print, television and radio.
John Paul II, a figure who ensured the Catholic Church
didn’t move with the times (unless the times were somewhere
between the reign of Constantine and the War of the Roses),
was rouged and puttied with all the embalming arts of
revisionism. I recall a number of questionable claims for
his stint as “God’s representative on Earth,” including
toppling communism in Eastern Europe and Russia. I
half-expected posthumous reports that JP2 defeated polio,
split the atom, and rolled around the Sea of Tranquility in
a lunar Popemobile.
Yes, he opposed the war on Iraq, we’ll give him that. He
also opposed condoms and other forms of contraception as
being against God’s will, condemning followers in Africa to
war, famine, disease and abstention as alternative means of
reducing population.
The guiding light behind Pope Paul’s doctrinal rigidity was
Cardinal Ratzinger, the Vatican’s chief in-house
theologian. So in selecting a hard-liner as JP2’s
successor, the Holy See has made its recent historical
trajectory clear – though it must be said, installing a
former Hitler youth as High Primate is thinking WAY outside
the box. Oh yes, I know, I know. The young Ratzinger
entered the HY only when it was mandatory, and had no say
in being drafted into an antiaircraft division of the
German Army. What makes my head spin is that the College of
Cardinals saw no public relations difficulties in this
choice, when there were presumably other candidates with
less problematic CVs.
The
Vatican has sent a clear signal that it has no intent to
critically examine past abuses within the Church. Quite the
opposite. Cardinal Bernard Law has long been the focus of
an ongoing scandal surrounding his handling of the Catholic
Church's sexual abuse scandal while he was archbishop of
Boston. Well, lookee here: the controversial Law officiated
at a mass of mourning for JP II at the Vatican. Talk about
blowing smoke; what signal does this acrid puff of official
endorsement send?
Critics
also cite a sexual abuse case from Texas that names the
Catholic Church and Ratzinger in a lawsuit. According to an
article last week in The Observer, the signature of the
former Cardinal is on a document dated from May, 2001, in
which the church asserted the right to hold its inquiries
“behind closed doors,” and keep any “evidence confidential
for up to 10 years after the victims reached adulthood.”
Ratzinger summed up Peter’s founding tenet that there is
the universal church when he declared that the Catholic
Church is superior to all other religions. According to an
article in the Asia Times, Cardinal Ratzinger called
Buddhism “a religion for the self-indulgent.” But then
again, when your name is appended with “Panzer,”
“Rottweiller” and “the Rock,“ it’s probably because you’re
thought more Soprano than Seraphim. Tissa Balasuriya is a
Sri Lankan theologian who ran afoul of dogma when he
challenged church teachings on original sin, salvation and
Mariology. The Asia Times article reports that conservative
churchmen in Sri Lanka ganged up with Cardinal Ratzinger,
unsuccessfully, to make Balasuriya recant. On the eve of
Pope Benedict’s election, the theologian spoke with the
BBC. “I can’t accept that my forefathers and their
forefathers are not worthy of salvation because they were
not baptized. If this is so then the vast majority of
people will be excluded from salvation. This can’t be the
genuine teaching of Jesus. The Church is out of touch with
the realities of the world. It is important to take the
Church in the direction that Jesus wanted – the way of love
and salvation to all.”
Not so fast, pal. Aggiornamento
(updating
the Church) has been sidelined indefinitely, as the Vatican
remakes and remodels itself into a rococo time machine,
with the controls set for the Counter Reformation. Are
observing Catholics up for the ride?
Geoff Olson
