Come, Holy Spirit
The world has been getting a crash course in Catholicism with the death of John Paul II and the election of Benedict XVI. There were so many priests and bishops on TV this month one might have thought the world had turned Catholic. Perhaps, for a brief wonderful moment, it did.
This, of course, was due to the remarkable life and death of one person — Pope John Paul II. A man passionately in love with God and every one of God’s six billion children, he poured out to the world every bit of himself: his extraordinary intellect, his boundless energy, his eloquent message of hope, his embracing arms, his radiant smiles and affectionate kisses, and finally, his helpless, silent, diminishing presence.
How could the world not pay attention? One of John Paul’s final gifts was the evangelization of the masses through the wonders of mass media.
As the man captivated the media, it became further fascinated by his church and its traditions, its history, its color, its rituals, even its teachings.
In short, the coverage has been marvelous and positive. To see the vast resources of the globe’s news conglomerates being put to the service of a Gospel witness has been a remarkable, astonishing thing.
Even the compulsory dragging of the past and present pontiffs through the media’s four-sided litmus test of celibacy, women priests, birth control and abortion did not seem overly tiresome. We have come to expect the inevitable commentaries of the “I was raised” Catholic who, like Anna Quindlen in a recent Newsweek, cites her eighth grade nun and pagan baby stories as suitable credentials for passing judgment on one of the most extraordinary religious leaders of the 20th century.
And aren’t we all weary of the tired observation that while the pope attracted four million mournful, joyful, prayerful, awestruck, mostly young people to his funeral, independent surveys show they are not all faithful to the church’s teaching on sexual morality.
John Paul had it right; the embrace comes first.
As the events in Rome were filtered through a secular media more used to reporting politics than papabili, there was a natural inclination to see the proceedings as merely a fascinating parade of rituals, personalities and politics.
Respected public television journalist Jim Lehrer was corrected on camera last week after he referred to certain teachings emphasized by the past pope as “policies.” They are not “policies,” his priest guest interjected, they are “beliefs.”
Catholics are hardly immune to the temptation. As we sat and witnessed the Father call one servant home and the Holy Spirit guide the choosing of his replacement, we too could be blinded into thinking that all we were watching were judicious negotiations, political maneuvering, influence peddling and secret deal making.
And so, when the result of the conclave was announced, some of us groaned in disappointment or gloated in triumph or cleverly explicated what happened (depending on our point of view) rather than surrender in wonder and awe at the work of the Holy Spirit, while giving glory to God for such abundant blessings.
Even those who thought they had inoculated themselves from the earthly process by holding tight to the humble convention of “he who enters the conclave a pope, exits a cardinal,” were fooled by the Spirit. Cardinal Ratzinger entered a marked frontrunner and came out Benedict XVI. Surprise!
The cardinal electors knew what was going on. Cardinal William Keeler of Baltimore, interviewed on public radio, said he could feel the “prayers of the world” filling the Sistine Chapel.
This is not to say that the human interactions among the cardinals were extraneous to divine involvement. If that were the case, a holy lottery would have sufficed. But the Spirit did blow through the hearts, minds and actions of the 115 men.
How? Consider this explanation given several years ago by a renowned theologian:
“I would not say … that the Holy Spirit picks out the pope, because there are too may contrary instances of popes the Holy Spirit would obviously not have picked. I would say that the Spirit does not exactly take control of the affair, but rather like a good educator, as it were, leaves us much space, much freedom, without entirely abandoning us. Thus the Spirit’s role should be understood in a much more elastic sense, not that he dictates the candidate for whom one must vote. Probably the only assurance he offers is that the thing cannot be totally ruined.”
The theologian, of course, was Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger.