The human face of Catholicism
I MET A pope when I was 17. Pope John XXIII granted my family a ''private audience" in the papal apartments because my father was a senior Catholic in the US Air Force. Ahead of the pope's entrance, my four brothers and I, my parents, and my grandmother were lined up by the monsignor in a room that featured a gilded throne. The wall behind it was covered in crimson silk. When His Holiness entered, he went not to the throne but to my parents, clapping in joyful salute at a good Catholic family. As he greeted us each in turn, we kissed his ring, as we'd rehearsed.
When Pope John came to me, he reached up and grasped my shoulders, pulling me close, to whisper in my ear. I remember the feel of his whiskers against my cheek. I remember the aroma of his skin -- it smelled of soap. I remember the puffy bursts in my ear, as he spoke to me. To me alone. I understood not a word of what he said -- Italian? Latin? -- yet felt directly addressed. The power of his affirming personality, what had endeared him to the world, stamped me, but so also did the power of his sacred office. The intimacy of that moment, shared with one called the Vicar of Christ, was a conscription. In truth, I was recruited for the church forever.
How to understand what the figure of the pope means to Catholics? John XXIII, the pope of the liberalizing Vatican Council, and John Paul II, who put a check on council reforms, were very different men. Broad assessments of the council agenda, pro and con, did much to shape attitudes toward the two pontificates. Yet liberals and conservative Catholics are alike this week in registering the death of John Paul II as an emotional earthquake. This is more than a matter of toting up the sums of his complex legacy, as if Catholic grief is measured by balancing, say, his breakthrough openness toward the Jewish people against his deafness to the proper demands of women. Whether accepting the authority of John Paul II, questioning it, or both, contemporary Catholics have found this pope at the center of our religious self-understanding, our political engagement, and our cultural identity.
For 20 centuries, popes have done this. In each age, they have revealed the Catholic Church to itself -- and to the world -- in very different ways: sometimes in collegial dialogue with councils of bishops; sometimes as strict autocrats; sometimes as warrior princes; sometimes as reformers; sometimes as figures of otherworldliness; sometimes as hedonists. But always, popes have been embodiments of the church's humanness, even when claiming mantels of the divine. The genius of Roman Catholicism is revealed in the way these widely varied characters have succeeded each other in a project aiming at nothing less than time's attempt to surpass itself.
Even slight knowledge of the papal succession, however, underscores the special depth of this week's loss. Agree or disagree, we Catholics most valued John Paul II not for his historic achievements on the world stage or for his undisputed integrity -- but for the full magnificence of his humanity, to the end. We recognized in him a figure both in touch with our time and at the mercy of it; confounded by change and loyal to a treasured past; deeply conflicted and at home in his skin. He was a man, that is, in whom we could glimpse the elegant range of the human condition, including its paradoxes, mysteries, and infuriating disappointments. This pope, for all his greatness, was one of us. We loved him.
What shows itself now, as the church commends John Paul II's remains to the care of the angels, is the very content of the faith. Here is the entire point, not only of his life but of our membership with him in this community. Life is not ended at death, we believe, but only changed.
In saying how that can be so, we call upon the language of poetry -- those angels. We invoke the witness of the tradition -- that apostolic succession of which he was an exemplar. But that succession's very humanity is the point. One whom we call God, in creating this finite earth and all its struggling people, has made a timeless promise. Karol Wojtyla took that promise into every fiber of his being. As pope, he pulled us -- and the world -- close for an intimate whisper, even if, at times, we did not understand a word. The important thing was clear, and we Catholics affirm it. John Paul II believed in God. Now God believes in him.
James Carroll's column appears regularly in the Globe.
