What do you think of the new Pope?

Dear Rev. Know it all

So, what do you think of the new Pope?

Sincerely,

Shirley U. Geste

Dear Ms. Geste,

I am often asked this question, and my answer is not nearly as intriguing as the question itself. Are you asking what I think, or are you hoping that I will agree with what you think? 

First, an answer. He seems like a nice guy. I was impressed by the look on his face when he came out on the balcony in his white cassock and zuchetto. His “deer in the headlights look” said, “What have I gotten myself into?” This was good. It was honest. Also, I like what he has said so far. He hasn’t said anything a regular parish priest wouldn’t say. He hasn’t said anything I wouldn’t say and haven’t said. He thinks you should be respectful and kind to everyone, no matter their issues or attractions. Parish priests are in the business of welcoming sinners, because they are sinners. 

A friend of mine who rose to some prominence in the Church had to travel to Rome for a meeting with the Blessed John Paul and (then) Cardinal Ratzinger. He said that the two nicest guys he met in Rome were John Paul and Joseph Ratzinger. They were so interested in what he had to say that they invited him back for breakfast. They wanted to hear more about his ideas. I got the impression they were the kind of guys you’d go bowling with on a Friday night. I have this impression of Pope Francis. If we were pastors in the same diocese, I might try to sit near him in the back of the hall if I arrived late at meetings. And in his kindness and compassion, he would probably even laugh at my jokes.  I like his driving a Focus, it’s what I drive. Good on gas. I like that he cooked for himself and did his own laundry. I do that, and so do most priests I know.

But I worry, too. I worry about his living at St. Martha’s instead of the papal apartments. I worry about his having breakfast in the cafeteria. These are not necessarily humble things to do. They are simple things, but not necessarily humble. The papal apartments are probably about as comfortable as a fish bowl. I doubt there is a Lazyboy recliner in them as far as the eye can see. Above all, I suspect the papal apartments are lonely. Lord knows what ghosts linger there. 

In the cafeteria at St. Martha’s you probably get to pick what you want for breakfast instead having a doting staff tell you what you want. There is a perfectly good reason for worrying about the new pope’s choice of breakfast venue. It’s hard to fire someone with whom you have breakfast. 

Perhaps I am confused about this but, one of Pope Francis’ appointments seems to have been someone who did a good job as a manager at the Casa St. Marta. The Holy Father  appointed him to assist in the cleanup of the Vatican Bank. However, there are credible stories that years ago, the fellow in question had a reputation for hanging around in some very unfortunate places and had in fact been beaten up by some very interesting people. 

When he made this appointment, Pope Francis had no idea that the priest in question had such an interesting past. When asked about the matter the new pope assured us that the fellow was a good man, and that was long ago and who was he to judge?   

This is my worry. Having breakfast with someone may not be the best way to vet him for high positions in one’s reformist regime. Maybe Pope Francis should get use to eating his grapefruit and granola in the cold and lonely splendor of the papal apartments.

So, what do I think about the new pope? I like the guy. I agree with him and I am delighted by the response of the world to him... mostly. What I think of your question is the more interesting matter. History and Heaven will judge the new pope, and that will take a century or so. I suspect Heaven’s judgment will be quite favorable. 

The Lord is kind and merciful. He is full of compassion and laughter, and by the time history’s decision is made, you and I will not be much interested in history. So what you and I think of the pope isn’t really very important. He is the pope, and I am a Catholic who trusts Heaven’s wisdom, despite the human foibles of those who do the choosing. “I believe in one, holy, Catholic and apostolic church.”

I don’t believe in the press and the lights of our modern culture. I cannot help but wonder why they so love the man. I have heard so many people say  they like the way the new pope looks. The old one didn’t look as friendly. The other guy was German as I am -- at least in my ethnic background. There is a type of German whose smile makes it look like they are trying bravely to endure a medical procedure. They look  pained, not happy, when they smile. It can be scary. 

However, the way a person looks is far more important to our deep-as-a-puddle culture than the way he actually is. Hollywood stars of a certain age have had so much work done that they look paralyzed from the neck up. Their faces are frozen in a kind of permanent grin. They are caked with so much makeup that they leave little work for the embalmers as they prepare for the not too distant funeral, but we say, “they look so good for their age”.  To paraphrase C. S. Lewis, the devil wants us to look and feel good. Heaven wants us to be good.

The compassion of Pope Francis is a good and healing thing, even when it appears that he is winking at certain behaviors, even though he is not. The pope emeritus was also a man of tremendous compassion. I have heard a story that I think true about the pope emeritus that may surprise you. There is a certain theologian for whom the new pope seems to have a great respect. He has often been at loggerheads with reactionaries like myself. It is rumored that years ago when Pope Benedict was still Cardinal Ratzinger, he was visiting a famous German school of theology at the same time as the aforementioned theologian. Ratzinger, a.k.a. God’s Rottweiler, summoned the fellow, who thought, “Here it comes. He is going to lower the boom in person!” Quite the contrary. Cardinal Ratzinger let the theologian know that someone was about to be appointed bishop of his diocese who greatly disagreed with the theologian. Ratzinger suggested that the he join a religious order to protect his priestly faculties, which the theologian aforementioned promptly did. 

If the story is true, Ratzinger protected someone with whom he disagreed out of respect for the man’s intellectual honesty and his priesthood. I heard the story from a well placed source, not from the press. It was not something the press would bother to report because the press is uninterested. Ratzinger isn’t much of a looker. The press fails to comment on Pope Francis’ powerful denunciation of abortion, his clear stand on the ordination of women and women’s sacred role as mothers and his very traditional piety, Rosary, Eucharistic adoration and all! The appointment of someone from breakfast at St. Marta’s was dropped by the press like a rotting cantaloupe.  They are in love with a man who doesn’t exist.

The current occupant of the throne of St. Peter is far more complex than the air-heads of the media can comprehend. All that hair spray has addled their wits, I’m afraid. The pope is doing his best to renew dialogue with all people of good will. I worry that the vultures of the press will swoop down to pick the carcass clean as soon as they have a slow news day. 

Personally, I would worry if Chris Rock, Jane Fonda and Sir Elton John had nice things to say about me, but I think the new pope is a better man than I and he may just succeed in reaching the members of the Mediacracy. 

God bless him for trying. Underneath all that hair spray and the layers of makeup, the Holy Father has reminded us, and them, that they do have souls.

Yours as ever,

The Rev. Know it all

Who is in charge when there is no pope? Epilogue

Letter to Sue Quetta, epilogue)

It has been pointed out to me, by people who are paying entirely too much attention, that I promised to explain the Defenestration of Prague but have not yet done so. Remember that consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds. Still, for the sake of the curious I will explain the incident.

There were not one but two Defenestration’s of Prague! The First Defenestration occurred on July 30, 1419. During a religious procession, an angry mob of Hussites (followers of Father Jan Huss, a precursor to Luther and Calvin) stormed the town hall of Prague where they threw a judge, the burgomaster, and thirteen members of the town council out of the window to the pavement below where they were killed by the fall or by the mob of devout religious reformers.

The second Defenestration was the result of the election of Ferdinand of Styria as King of Bohemia. The Protestant Bohemians wanted nothing to do with this devoutly Catholic monarch.  So, when he sent two Catholic representatives to Prague in 1618, the Protestants, in a kind of reminiscence of the good old days, pitched the ambassadors out the castle window (a height of about five or six stories). Amazingly they lived! The Catholics said that angels had softened their fall, thanks to the intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary. The Protestants said that it was dumb luck that they landed on a pile of manure in the castle courtyard. Are the stories not irreconcilable? After all, grace builds on nature. No matter the reason, the angry Protestants failed to kill the ambassadors of the new Crown Prince Ferdinand, (soon also to be Holy Roman Emperor). They lived, but a lot of other people didn’t. 

The fight soon spread to all of Europe and killed an uncountable number of people. Half of the male population of Germany died, and at least a third of the general German population, perhaps a million people. During the mayhem the Catholic villages of my maternal and paternal families were burned to the ground by the Protestant Elector, the Duke Christian of Braunschweig, home of the yummy delicacy usually called liverwurst. Perhaps that is why, as a boy, I often ate fried liverwurst, much loved in our household. Anyway, Duke Christian certainly fried a number of my ancestors.  The wars of religion raged for thirty years in central Europe, from 1618 to 1648. Simultaneously, the Huguenot and Puritan Wars ravaged France, England, and particularly Ireland, killing thousands possibly millions more. All because a couple of guys got tossed out the window in Prague. Who knew?

It is interesting to think that in the oppressive Catholic lands of Italy and Spain, dominated by medieval superstition and the terrors of the Inquisition, not a single person died as a result of the wars of religion.  In Germany, it may have been one million. In Ireland, it was about 600,000. In France, the Catholics got the upper hand and, rather than slaughter all the Protestants, they forced them to convert or leave. So, I suspect that the French death toll was less than 100,000.  The total death toll of the wars of religion was certainly more than two million. 

The wars finally ended in the German states in 1648 with the peace of Westphalia. Each prince would have the right to determine the religion of those under his authority. This is called “cuius regio, eius religio” (His region, His religion). In other words, “If you live in the town or land I own, you will practice my religion,” said the duke, the count, the baron etc. The principle of freedom of religion ended in Europe with the peace of Westphalia. And the end of religious freedom meant the end of religious conversion which has ultimately resulted in the end of Christian religion in much of Europe. Religious affiliation was no longer a matter of choice, but of good citizenship.  Now it is non existent in many places.

It is easy to find pundits who rail against the Inquisition, but who rails against the disorder and death that resulted from simple and grandly defiant gestures like Luther nailing his 95 theses to the door of the Wittenberg church or the glorious Defenestrations of Prague? These appeal to us as heroic defiance in the defense of liberty. They in fact initiated a new form of government enforced religion and resulted in far more death and oppression than the Inquisition ever could have.  Still, we Americans and our modern imitators love the grand gesture.

I cannot get over the scathing criticism of Pope Benedict’s red shoes. The rumor went out that they were by Prada or Gucci! They were in fact made by a Peruvian shoemaker, by the name of Antonio Arellano, who has a small shop in the neighborhood of the Vatican. Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger used to have his old shoes repaired there. When he got a new gig as pope, he revived the custom of the red papal shoes, red being the color worn by popes before the white cassock. He simply steered a little business Antonio’s way. Benedict tried to restore the unity of Catholic history which he called the hermeneutic of continuity. He wanted to remind the world that there had been a Catholic Church long before the Second Vatican Council. The Church grows. It doesn’t change. Its expression is ever new. Although the appearance is different, the truth is eternal. The DNA is always the same, to use a modern analogy.

The world clucked its tongue led by the American media. We Americans felt so vastly superior to the luxury loving pope with the flashy shoes because we buy our shoes at cheap outlet stores, thus being somehow simpler and more noble. Look a little more closely at the red shoes. When his shoes were still black, Joe Ratzinger had his old shoes repaired by an immigrant cobbler. He made them last a little longer. We throw old shoes out and buy new.  When he needed new shoes, decent shoes for a demanding job, he paid about $200 to a worker he knew, a just wage for a decent product. We, in our simplicity, go to the mall and buy $300 sneakers made by slave laborers who get pennies on the dollar if they get anything at all. And we are superior? We are more moral? We are frauds. We are stealing from the poor of the world, but have the gall to criticize a man who pays a fair wage to a free worker. We love the gesture, not the truth.

The pundits of the entertainment world  critique the old men who run the church as they pretend to be philanthropists. In reality, they do no more than let crumbs from their tables fall to the poor and feel noble for doing so. And we are foolish enough to think them sincere. We love the gesture, not the truth. C.S. Lewis in his masterpiece the “Screwtape Letters,” has the demon Screwtape remind his nephew that “the Enemy (God) wants men to be humble, or charitable or to be forgiving. We, the demons want them to feel humble, to feel charitable, to feel forgiving.” 

We moderns don’t believe that something is real if we don’t feel it. A Mother Teresa, or a Joseph Ratzinger, or for that matter, a Christ on Calvary who begged His Heavenly Father to let Him off the hook, have no place in our shallow sentimental culture. Because we love the gesture, not the truth,  Cardinal Ratzinger’s repaired shoes, Mother Teresa’s service in the midst of dryness and the nails in Christ’s hand were no gesture. They were truth.  Our new pope is being lionized by the media for what they perceive as humility. If, heaven forfend, his humility turns out to be more than a gesture, I have no doubt that they will turn on him, and would throw him out a window if they could. The grand gesture has caused more suffering and human misery than can be imagined. 

The truth and only the truth will set you free.