Joannes Paulus II
I must confess I’m completely addicted to all the conclave coverage and to speculating on who will be (and who should be) the next Pope. This is all so unprecedented for me, as I was only 2 years old the last time around. For me and for my generation John Paul II was not just a great Pope, he was quite simply the Pope. While my mind realizes that the papacy is an office that has been held by 264 different men, to my heart the Pope is a single man who has now gone to his rest in the hope of rising again. Though I will welcome his successor with gladness, it will take some time to adjust to the idea that another man could in any sense replace him.
For not only was he the only Pope I knew, but in this polarized landscape of “liberal” and “conservative” American Catholics I have come in the past few years to label myself a “JP II Catholic.” For just as I have no memory of Bl. John XXIII or Paul VI, so too I have no memory of Vatican II or the publication of Humane Vitae, the two seminal events in the life of many American Baby Boomer Catholics. For me the Novus Ordo is the traditional Mass of the Church, I don’t perceive endless “liturgical innovations” because the liturgy hasn’t changed all that much in my lifetime. The parish I grew up in still had altar rails, but I never once saw them used, and I used to sit sometimes at Mass and wonder what they were for; why they would put a row of kneelers where no one ever used them. This mystery remained unsolved until just a few years ago when I first encountered the endless liturgical debates here in the blogosphere.
In my encounters with the more extreme Trads (especially those of the SSPX persuasion) I cannot help but think of that wonderful phrase “more Catholic than the Pope.” How exquisitely ironic that a group claiming to be the true heirs of the pure and undefiled doctrine of the Council of Trent would fall into schism with Rome. Yet before you label me “Progressive”, let me first say that I’m quite happy with Church doctrine as it stands, thank you very much. The Church has no authority to ordain women as priests, and John Paul’s wonderful Theology of the Body has put to rest any lingering doubts about the truth of Humane Vitae. And while I prefer the Mass in my native tongue and find the Sign of Peace a rather touching gesture of congregational reconciliation and unity (who can deny that all those diverse world political and spiritual leaders making this Sign during his funeral was a fitting tribute to his legacy?), I never did think the acoustic guitar a suitable sacred instrument. Folk hymnody, besides banal and uninspiring, isn’t even relevant anymore. Here’s a hint: you won’t attract the youth by playing a style of music that's gathering dust in their parents' old LP collections. Try offering them something timeless and transcendent instead.
I may have strayed a bit from my central point there, namely: somewhere between the Scylla of “Vatican II is the greatest disaster in the history of the Church” and the Charybdis of “we must follow the spirit of Vatican II and modernize the Church” lies a third path through the wilderness blazed by John Paul II, a path that embraces VII as a source of great renewal and untapped treasures while interpreting it in the light of all the Councils and dogmas that came before it. This is the Church of JPII, the Church I was baptized and raised in, and the Church I have embraced as an adult revert. May he rest in peace, and may the Holy Spirit send us a worthy successor to pick up where he left off.
posted by The Jabberwock @ 12:51 AM
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