CAPITOL IDEAS: Laissez Faire Pope
Bethell, Tom
CAPITOL IDEAS TOM BETHELL Laissez Faire re Pope HE NEW OXFORD REVIEW, edited by Dale Vree in Berkeley, may be the most interesting journal of Catholic opinion today. Once a communist,...
...The sin of TOM BETHELL detraction masquerades as the virtue of contrition...
...In the interim, I would say, it is a formula for chaos...
...Cardinal Kasper, whom the Pope named head of the Pontifical Council for the Promotion of Christian Unity, said recently that "we no longer understand ecumenism in the sense of a return, by which the others should be `converted' and return to being `catholics: This was expressly abandoned by Vatican II...
...A recent issue of the magazine (March) contains a remarkable article about John Paul II...
...Its author, David Palm, lives on a small farm in Wisconsin and converted to Catholicism ten years ago...
...So, conceal it...
...And just as the conservatives made excuses for everything Reagan did, so well-meaning Catholics praise the Pope no matter what he does, and never connect him with the chaos in the Church...
...T WO DEVELOPMENTS alerted the faithful to Rome's disordered priorities...
...I believe it is one that should be shared widely...
...Kofi Annan came to see him...
...If a Hans Ming or a Richard McBrien [dissident theologians] had suggested that Catholics make the good-will gesture of kissing the Koran, these Catholics would condemn and ridicule the idea...
...And no doubt it will work in the Church—in the long run...
...CAPITOL IDEAS TOM BETHELL Laissez Faire re Pope HE NEW OXFORD REVIEW, edited by Dale Vree in Berkeley, may be the most interesting journal of Catholic opinion today...
...What he resisted is something that has become increasingly clear to many Catholics...
...He still feels the imprudent optimism that drove the Council...
...Polysyllabic encyclicals continued to flow from his pen...
...So he went to live in East Germany...
...Then we heard a new refrain...
...He could hardly be expected to keep track of all these details...
...It looks now as though governing the Church was a task that never did much interest him...
...Vatican II was a Church Council that lasted from 1962-65...
...The Pope was distressed by the adverse publicity, but it was clear that he intended to do as little as possible...
...Remember what C. S. Lewis said about those who apologize for the sins of others...
...And perhaps that is why he has persevered down the political path, in the very different world that we are now in...
...New movements and orders have sprung up with his encouragement and blessing...
...But when the Pope himself does such things, they think he's divinely inspired...
...Rome's response was to turn the scandal back to the bishops who had allowed the problem to fester in the first place...
...Boston, more intensely scrutinized, differed only in degree...
...By almost all measurable indices, the Church has been in decline ever since the Vatican Council that the Pope so cherishes...
...Assassination attempt, hip operation, Parkinson's, the infirmities of age...
...He's a magnetic man with an imposing personality, for sure...
...But, as Maynard Keynes reminded us, by then we are all dead...
...But in exposing what delinquent bishops had tried to conceal they did us all a service...
...As recently as 1949 the Church repudiated as "indifferentism" this emphasis on what is held in common at the expense of doctrinal disagreement...
...He came to the papacy hoping to fulfill what he saw as the promise of Vatican II—the great experience of his life before the papacy...
...The man who has been Pope since 1978 has sounded an uncertain trumpet for many years...
...After a lengthy journey, via Anglicanism, he found his way to the Roman Catholic Church...
...The Pope has allowed good things to happen in the Church...
...When all branch offices pursue the same policy, we have to assume the head office is responsible...
...Joschka Fischer, Germany's antiwar foreign minister, was on stage next...
...We are enjoined to journey together along a "common path toward unity...
...MAY 2004 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 43...
...Where his interest was engaged, he was capable of vigorous action...
...Protestants and Eastern Orthodox Catholics are no longer expected to convert...
...Today, it's fair to say that he sees in much of the Church hierarchy a lack of seriousness comparable to what he found in his student colleagues from the 1960s...
...The same story of immoral priests and bishops emerged in diocese and after diocese...
...The Catholic writer and historian James Hitchcock detects in the Pope "an almost principled reluctance to exercise his disciplinary powers...
...Tony Blair and his wife were ushered into the papal chamber...
...There is now far more heresy and disunity within and without the Church—than ever before...
...Plainly, he sees his most important role as head of a state that although small in earthly terms has a key worldly mission: the maintenance of peace between nations...
...There's a woolly and indeterminate thing called ecumenism, a search, as it were, for the "lowest common denomination...
...he's made the Church a one-man show, which no previous pope has done...
...He keeps giving the wrong impression, to wit, that the Church has radically changed...
...How essential is the Catholic Church for the salvation of souls...
...I would not begrudge him that laurel...
...And now the foe is in plain view...
...I'm not saying the Pope was wrong on the merits of war and peace...
...There was no trace of discipline imposed by Rome...
...Once a communist, Vree saw that the student radicals of the mid-1960s were more dedicated to sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll than they were to radical politics...
...The underlying problem, Vree thinks, is that many of the bishops have lost sight of what are known as the Four Last Things: death, judgment, heaven, and hell...
...Tom Bethell is a senior editor of The American Spectator...
...The scare quotes around "converted" and "catholic" (lower case) are Kasper's...
...Then the Pope swung into action—on the issue of the looming war...
...A likely verdict on John Paul's papacy is that he played a role, perhaps an important role, in the abrupt and almost miraculously peaceful conclusion to the Cold War...
...Remember its emphasis on 'ecumenism' and 'dialogue': Weary old slogans of something that was hotly hyped in the early 1960s, but has not only failed totally but backfired...
...That is where the Pope has been ambiguous and confusing...
...His "prime minister," the Secretary of State, can take care of the details...
...The first was the pedophile scandal in the United States, exposed by journalists who mostly had no love for the Church...
...But he loves the large gesture too much...
...The Church...
...In fact, his approach to the Church he heads may be unprecedented...
...His geopolitical aspirations simply had a higher priority than church governance...
...The Pope was a sick man...
...Local pressure and an unremitting media forced Cardinal Law of Boston to resign...
...Then it was the turn of Tariq Aziz, Iraq's deputy prime minister...
...This is none other than the philosophy of laissez-faire, which in a secular context is something he abhors...
...All the signs are that he believes that the good within the Church will prevail, and the corrupt will wither away...
...In the official version of the Pope's remarks, Palm writes, this appeared "without the doctri42 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR MAY 2004 nally difficult wording 'whether' (see in Italian...
...Titled "Catholic Confusion at the Very Top," the article carries the subhead, "Overcoming my resistance to the facts...
...There is now far more heresy and disunity—within and without the Church—than ever before...
...Its name is Islam, and "dialogue" will not suffice...
...A friend of mine said of the Pope: "He's an actor...
...In a general audience in 1999, the Pope said that although "eternal damnation remains a real possibility" we are not granted "the knowledge of whether or which human beings are involved in it...
...Like others, I resisted these conclusions for a long time...
...It seems that "someone in the Vatican noticed that the words, as actually spoken, were problematic and intervened to make sure the official version conforms unambiguously to Church teaching...
...He would never betray the Faith, but he can't seem to stop himself from upstaging the tradition whose guardian he's supposed to be...
...All these dramatics—Woodstock trips, outreaches, Koran-kissings, apologies...
...But his sudden political activity gave the lie to the claim that he had been too ill to pay attention...
...Plainly, Rome considered that publicity about immorality in the hierarchy was even worse than the immorality itself...
...So what Palm says came as a revelation...
Vol. 37 • May 2004 • No. 4
