The Pope is a scandal to the world

The Pope is a scandal to the world. I wrote elsewhere that to declare the existence of a good God is a scandal in itself to all of us who don’t know the peace of Christ, to all those without faith. And it provokes a reaction. The juxtaposition of the media coverage of the death of Pope John Paul II with the election of Pope Benedict XVI caused me to reflect on how passing and empty is the praise of the world. Not withstanding Christopher Hitchens, for the most part people held their fire as the world took notice of the enormous outpouring of love for Pope John Paul II on his passing. It could not be overlooked; it was too big. The election of Pope Benedict XVI and its coverage, however, has political calculations involved, agendas, and the prior absense of malice in covering John Paul II could even lend itself to those purposes, giving one cover, plausible deniability, on the order of, "Why, this isn't anti-Catholicism, it's about the man they have elected." The obvious example is that Benedict XVI is too conservative. But also, in what must be the most outrageous claim to date, some quarters want to tar him as a Nazi because he happened to be born at a time and a place where he could not avoid living with the government in power.

Now, to be fair, I'm not advocating circling the wagons and protecting "our man" blindly. I'm saying that a full and fair accounting of the new pope will coincide largely with the Jerusalem Post's assessment.

An obvious parallel suggested itself to me. Jesus himself was welcomed into Jerusalem with hosannas (Matthew 21), with the whole city shaken, and then shortly thereafter was put to death, the crowd shouting out "Let him be crucified!" (Matthew 27). The parallel is rather even closer than that of analogy. For Catholics, the Pope is the Vicar of Christ, "the man on earth who represents the Son of God" see Crossing the Threshold of Hope, Chapter 1), so it is, I would suggest, part of the job description of Pope to accept the same treatment Jesus received. MOreover, it is, in fact, the job description of each and every Christian.

I found this discussion between a reporter and John Paul II on the Pope as Vicar of Christ, in Crossing the Treshold of Hope. The reporter begins:

In front of me is a man dressed in the white of ancient custom, with a cross over his chest. This man who is called the Pope (from "father," in Greek) is a mystery in and of himself, a sign of contradiction. He is even considered a challenge or a "scandal" to logic or good sense by many of our contemporaries.

Confronted with the Pope, one must make a choice. The leader of the Catholic Church is defined by the faith as the Vicar of Jesus Christ (and is accepted as such by believers). The Pope is considered the man on earth who represents the Son of God, who "takes the place" of the Second Person of the omnipotent God of the Trinity.

Each Pope regards his role with a sense of duty and humility, of course, but also with an equal sense of confidence. Catholics believe this and therefore they call him "Holy Father" or "Your Holiness."

Nevertheless, according to many others, this is an absurd and unbelievable claim. The Pope, for them, is not God's representative. He is, instead, the surviving witness of ancient myths and legends that today the "adult" does not accept.

Note the different definition of 'adult' the world gives compared to Pope Benedict XVI:

"Being an adult means having a faith which does not follow the waves of today's fashions or the latest novelties," he said. "A faith which is deeply rooted in friendship with Christ is adult and mature."

So we should not be surprised by vilification of the Pope. Perhaps it is those very people who are screaming the loudest against him who are looking for a proper Christian response. It may be they are demanding an experience of charity, something entirely new to them, because the world cannot give it. We must be ready to give it. Perhaps Hitchens, like Saul, is on the edge of conversion and salvation.

The Ugliness of Love

I posted this at another website that was discussing the relics of saints, and the different reactions to them.

True Love Is Ugly

The human person is drawn to and by the beautiful. There is indeed an aesthetic side to how God communicates with us, and how we communicate with each other. God is himself the Good, the True, and the Beautiful. As well, God is Love.

There is another side, though. The world as we know it is fallen. The path through which we walk is a vale of tears. We experience both the beauty of our world and its fallenness. However, the world cannot admit ugliness, it can only countenance the beautiful, as witnessed by hollywood, plastic surgery, anorexia/bulimia, and euthanasia. My reflections of late have led me to see that at times, perhaps often, true love is ugly. If you love Christ in his sacrifice, as he hung from the cross, his body whipped and pierced, for us, then it could be no other way.

Pope John Paul II was himself an artist, an actor, who I strongly suspect would have followed Stanislavski's method acting, as the actor incarnates, brings to life, that character he portrays. But late in his life, he became a smaller man, a disabled man, who drooled as he spoke, who would not hide the reality of his bodiliness. Why? The short answer is, for us. He was naked and was not ashamed. He held his dignity even as he revealed his woundedness, and united that wound with Christ's wounds. As his end of life was covered simultaneously with Terri Schiavo's he spoke to the world. It is said that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but what if it is truer to say that with time we come to see a beauty that is not available to the world, such as it is with a spouse, a loved one who is ill, a child with Down's syndrome. It is not hard for those who grew up with, or old with, this pope, to love him still.

As a boy I was the only one on the baseball team who refused to go to the funeral of a team members' relative. The thought of seeing a dead body repulsed and scared me. That is where I began, but not where I am today.

Looking back over my personal life, I ask myself, "Who loved me?" And, "How do I know?" The answer (one answer) is, my father. After his conversion experience, he would share the love that he came to know of his God, Father Son and Holy Spirit. And it would overwhelm him, and he would lose his composure, sometimes witnessing in public, because the love and forgiveness he experienced would cause him to weep. It overwhelmed me, embarrassed me. But I know beyond doubt that he loves me. And I would be so lost without it.

So I am grateful to my father, and our Holy Father, and our Father above, for ugly things.

David Hart on dualism and Terri Schiavo

Strange, here he is again. I keep bumping into this fellow's writings. Worth reflecting on:

Of this I am certain, though: Christians who understand their faith are obliged to believe that she was, to the last, a living soul.

Another recent article on the way dualistic assumptions make their way into political arguments by Patrick Lee & Robert P. George is here.

And finally, the comments page to the Hart article raises the issue of theodicy, in this case an inversion of Dostoevsky's argument, in Brothers Karamazov, about the justice of paradise founded on even a single tortured child's suffering:

For myself, further, I also hold that triage is necessary, and that the costs of one Terry Schiavo's medical care is probably the lost resources for a thousand or ten thousand starving children in Africa, and that if some version of God countenances saving one and losing ten thousand, then he is an evil god indeed. I blaspheme here, proudly. Stalin comes to mind, one death is a tragedy, a million is a statistic.

Not surprising to me to find it at work in our moral struggling.