Pope John XXIII
Deedy, John
Pater et magister POPE JOHN XMII SHEPHERD OF THE MODERN WORLD Peter Hebblethwaite Doubleday, $19.9$, 550 pp. John Deedy Popes, like kings of yore, live on largely in the continuity of the...
...With respect to Roncalli and the Jews, Hebblethwaite destroys one myth and overlooks one important action...
...Ergo, the dogmatic definition of the Assumption and the issuance of Humani Generis...
...Ruffini and Ottaviani had set forth reasons for a council to Pius XJJ in 1948, only to have him decide he could do the work of a council better and more economically...
...Roncalli was the Vatican's second-choice for Paris (the nuncio to Argentina had declined on health grounds), and the inference is that he conducted himself much as a second-choice might...
...Veterum Sapientia was part of a' 'balancing act" to placate Curia conservatives worried for their immutable world...
...The synod was a dry run for the council...
...He took no part in France's exciting intellectual life, and in general administered in such fashion as to give rise to what the Jesuit Robert Rouquette termed' 'the Roncalli mystery": How was it that a man who appeared so conventional and conservative in France could turn out to be a pope who would astonish the world as the originator of a precedent-shattering council and author of two landmark encyclicals, Mater et Magistra and Pacem in Terris...
...The myth destroyed was that as a Vatican diplomat in Turkey Roncalli issued "baptismal certificates" to Jews seeking safe haven...
...It was the time of remarkable priests like Suhard, Congar, Chenu, de Lubac, Teilhard, Rondet, Bouillard and others who would be the targets, oblique or otherwise, of Humani Generis...
...Ordered dropped were references which spoke of the Jews as "perfidious...
...Peter's and the Vatican Archives, John XXIII is first among them...
...The Ethiopian War was not a moral outrage, but a time for prayer that the "big fish" would quickly swallow the "little fish" so we could get on with peace again...
...Not enigmatic, but decidedly underappreciated by Kennedy biographers and the American media in general, says Hebblethwaite, was John's strategic role in helping resolve the Cuban missile crisis...
...Small wonder that his superior in the Secretariat of State, Monsignor Domenico Tardini, would once exclaim, "This fellow has understood nothing...
...The opening to the left smacked of doctrinal error and breach of Catholic discipline...
...Roncalli for years seemed to float above controversies, abstain from moral judgments, and give credence to the wrong people — like Franz von Papen, who in Turkey represented the "smiling, Catholic face of Hitler's Germany...
...In this respect Hebblethwaite serves his subject well — certainly as well as can be expected considering that many official records are still under lock and key, and that an inevitable reticence no doubt inhibits some surviving supporting players in the drama of the Johannine years...
...John Deedy Popes, like kings of yore, live on largely in the continuity of the tradition which gave them rise...
...The king is dead, long live the king...
...Nor were enigmas to vanish entirely once Roncalli became pope (which, Hebblethwaite argues, came as no bolt out of the blue to an allegedly reluctant papabile...
...The full story of Pope John's council must await the next century (as Hebblethwaite notes, the Vatican Archives have a 75-year reserve rule), but it is clear that the council was neither sudden inspiration nor accident of John's pontificate...
...Hebblethwaite traces the inaccuracy to Ira Hirshman's 1962 book Caution to the Winds...
...Ron-calli did...
...where he began to reach out more directly in attempts to close the gap between Christian and secular culture, the church and "men of good will.'' Enigmas remained, to be sure...
...For instance, Roncalli the bureaucrat was no visionary...
...the pope is dead, long live the pope...
...It was the period of the incipient Worker Priest Movement...
...The difference now is (hat Hebblethwaite is able to fit ambiguities into a schema...
...More than any pope of the past, except Peter, 1 suppose, John XXIII is with our times in a real, almost tangible way...
...Not acceptable either were paralogisms like "faithless" or "unbelieving...
...John XXJII was right for the times, and Peter Hebblethwaite's book is right for John XXIII, even if it isn't the last word Commonweal: 312...
...There is first the memory of "good Pope John," and there is then the fact of the "new Pentecost," which he delivered, as promised, through "his" council...
...For some time John talked about the possibility of a council to trusted friends, and it is likely that both Cardinals Ruffini and Ottaviani put the idea to him early-on in his pontificate, as each subsequently claimed...
...Roncalli may not have campaigned for the job, but he did take "some initiatives...
...John fostered the idea mat "his" council was of sudden inspiration, but Hebblethwaite's contention is that memory had played tricks on him...
...Thus, a "definitive biography'' Hebblethwaite's book is not, dustjacket claim notwithstanding...
...where his theology took on a bolder coloration (there was discreet opposition to a new Marian feast, set in place anyway as the Queenship of Mary...
...There was the unimpressive Roman Synod of 1960 and the "unexpected bombshell" Veterum Sapientia reimposing Latin for the teaching of philosophy and theology in seminaries...
...Germany's rearmament policy— well, how about casting it in the context of the parable of the wise and foolish virgins...
...John XXIII has been dead since 1963, but he is 77 May /<W5' ?09 no artifact...
...In fact, his book points up so many paradoxes in the Roncalli/John XXIII story that we are left to wonder that so mortal a man could have had such an immortal effect on history...
...If some popes have a life beyond the crypt of St...
...Roncalli's practice was better than his theology, Hebblethwaite remarks in noting that Roncalli provided food, clothing, and transit visas to 24,000 Slovakian Jews en route to Palestine...
...Peter Hebblethwaite's biographical purpose, accordingly, is not to breathe life into an artifact of papal history...
...Except with Pope John XXIII, ne Angelo Guiseppe Roncalli, it is different...
...He is a man who merits careful attention as one with a continuing influence...
...Furthermore, the ecumenical vision was still framed in the context of the offensive word "return" to the one, true fold of those who had strayed...
...But there is no effort on Hebblethwaite's part to implicate Roncalli in the "silences" of Pius XII or the ongoing pragmatics of the Vatican's Cardinal Maglione with respect to Jewish refugees — although, he notes, there is a "disconcerting" 1943 Roncalli communication worrying that Vatican aid to a particular convoy of Jews to Palestine ' 'looks like the reconstruction 17 May 1985: 311 of the Hebrew Kingdom, and so raises certain doubts in my mind...
...the hard stone, an adult church solid in its convictions...
...The "mystery" began to clarify during the "mission to Venice," where as patriarch Roncalli lowered high ideological temperatures related to the legacy of Mussolini and the "threat" of Communism...
...Hebblethwaite is happy about this, and so might be the rest of us...
...There would be no substitution for the excised perfidis and per-fidiam...
...Similarly, the ascendancy Commonweal: 310 of the Fascists may not have been a moment for the beating of drums, but the Fascists could be given the benefit of whatever doubt that was going...
...The fact is that he forwarded to Vatican diplomats in Hungary and Bulgaria "immigration certificates" issued by the Palestine Jewish Agency...
...Hebblethwaite, the ex-Jesuit, British journalist, is admiring, but he is not hagiographic...
...Early naiveties, yes...
...But it is the best John XXIII book to date, which is praise indeed...
...The credit omitted was John's editing in 1959 of the Good Friday prayer of the church for the Jews...
...In France, Roncalli is portrayed as a nuncio pinned between a rock and a hard stone: the rock, an intransigent Rome...
...If memory serves correctly, Pope John himself interrupted the Good Friday liturgy that year and had the prayer repeated in the new form, after the priest-leader had gone on using the old slurs...
...Whatever, the Council became coterminous with John's pontificate as a whole, and acted as his pontificate's goal, policy, program, content...
Vol. 112 • May 1985 • No. 10
