You could fall in love with Pope John Paul II at the drop of a miter.
In 1978, when 58-year-old Karol Wojtyla slalomed onto the world stage as
the first non-Italian pope since the Renaissance, everything about him
captivated Catholics who felt adrift and conflicted.
The merry eyes. The sunny wit. The moral toughness honed during battles
against Nazis and Communists.
The former actor and factory worker was a
skiing cardinal, a mountain-climbing poet, a kayaking philosopher, a
singing author.
Twenty-six years later, the crowds at his funeral yelled “Santo subito!” Sainthood now!
Next Sunday, two days after the Kate and William show, another European
spectacle will unfold: Pope Benedict XVI will preside over the
beatification for the man he revered, the first time in a millennium
that a pope has elevated his immediate predecessor and the swiftest
ascension toward sainthood on record.
Hoping to get a P.R. boost by resurrecting John Paul’s magic, Benedict
fast-tracked the process, waiving the usual five-year wait before
starting.
But it won’t take away the indelible stain left by a global sex scandal
that continues to sulfurously bubble as we celebrate Easter.
The latest
grotesquerie, amid a cascade of victims coming forward in Belgium, was a
TV interview with the former bishop of Bruges, who serenely admitted
abusing two nephews.
Sex with the first nephew, he said, started as “a game” when the boy was
5 and lasted 13 years.
“I had the strong impression that my nephew
didn’t mind at all,” 74-year-old Roger Vangheluwe said, smiling.
“On the
contrary. It was not brutal sex. I never used bodily, physical
violence.” He said he abused the second boy for “merely over a year.”
He
did not think any of this made him a pedophile.
Certainly, John Paul was admirable in many ways.
After he became pope,
he was a moral force in the fight against totalitarianism, touring his
homeland and giving Poles the courage to resist the Soviet Union.
When
Lech Walesa signed an agreement with the Communists recognizing
Solidarity, he used a pen etched with the face of John Paul.
After Communism collapsed, John Paul offered a stinging critique of
capitalism, presciently warning big business to stop pursuing profits
“at any price.”
“The excessive hoarding of riches by some denies them to the majority,”
he said, “and thus the very wealth that is accumulated generates
poverty.”
As progressive as he was on those issues, he was disturbingly regressive
on social issues — contraception, women’s ordination, priests’
celibacy, divorce and remarriage.
And certainly, John Paul forfeited his
right to beatification when he failed to establish a legal standard to
remove pedophiles from the priesthood, and simply turned away for many
years.
Santo non subito!
How can you be a saint if you fail to protect innocent children?
For years after the Rev. Marcial Maciel Degollado, the founder of the
Legion of Christ, was formally accused of pedophilia in a Vatican
proceeding, he remained John Paul’s pet.
The ultra-orthodox Legion of
Christ and Opus Dei were the shock troops in John Paul’s war on Jesuits
and other progressive theologians.
There was another reason, according to Jason Berry, who has written two
books on the abuse crisis and is the author of the forthcoming “Render
Unto Rome: The Secret Life of Money in the Catholic Church.”
“For John Paul,” Berry told me just after returning from Good Friday
services, “the priesthood had a romantic, chivalrous cast, and he could
not bring himself to do a fearless investigation of the clerical culture
itself.
“He was duped by Maciel, but he let himself be duped. When nine people
accuse the guy of abusing them as kids, the least you can do is
investigate.
“Cardinals and bishops had told him about the larger abuse crisis for
years. And he was passive to an absolute fault. He failed in mountainous
terms.”
Now the Vatican is like Wall Street, where companies give their most
disgraced C.E.O.’s golden parachutes to make up for the stress of
outside attack.
Except the Vatican gives golden halos.
We are known by our heroes and those we choose to admire.
Pope Benedict has wanted to beatify John Paul, who shielded pedophiles,
and Pope Pius XII, who remained silent about the Holocaust as it
happened.
Meanwhile, Dorothy Day hasn’t been beatified.
Not beatifying or canonizing John Paul would be hugely symbolic, a
message far more powerful than the ad hoc apologies and payoffs to
victims.
This pope has been better than the last on abuse, Berry said, but “he’s
still surrounded by all these cardinals whose hands are dirty in this
thing.
There are still 16 bishops that were credibly accused who stepped
down from public positions but still maintain their titles.
“The Vatican rushed into this beatification, but after they take down the stands, the problems will still be there.”