The Church before Pope John Paul II

Vivificat! A Catholic Blog of News, Commentary, and Opinion ^ | 19 August 2005 | Teófilo

[Teófilo]

A short review of André Frossard's Portrait of John Paul II

Folks, I've been rereading a precious little by French author André Frossard, entitled Portrait of Pope John Paul II. You may remember Monsieur Frossard as the co-author and partner in dialogue of Pope John Paul's Be Not Afraid: Pope John Paul II Speaks Out on His Life, His Beliefs, and His Inspiring Vision for Humanity and a Catholic convert from atheism with several other printed works to his credit, particularly, I have met Him: God exists, the narrative of his conversion.

The Portrait of Pope John Paul II is a series of impressions that Frossard derived from his encounters with the late Pope. The chapter entitled "Just Who is Karol Wojtyla and What Is He Going To Do?" contains a brief account of the state of the Church when Cardinal Wojtyla was elected Pope. It is one of my favorite paragraphs in the book and I hereby reproduce it, for your reading pleasure. In fact, I think it provides an interesting coda to my serial blog posts about so-called "Neocatholics":

To the disinterested observer, the Church was showing clear signs of internal disintegration. There were at least two Churches in Holland: one of them was playing at throwing its hat over the blades of the windmill and then attempting to catch it as it flew off on the other side; the other Church of Holland, the conservative one, called "anachronistic" and "reactionary", kept constantly on the defensive, even had its communications cut off by the windmill faction. In Germany, there was a theologian who persisted in calling himself a Catholic while inveighing against Rome in the manner of a Luther, but with rather less eloquence and rather more pedantry. In Spain, always very Catholic, the higher clergy let themselves float on the prevailing winds. In France, we watched the first punches thrown in the boxing match between an ultraconservative bishop so obsessed with the old liturgical formulas that he came close to branding the Second Vatican Council a work of the devil and an opposing clerical contingent manifestly ready to throw the liturgical and pastoral baby out with the bathwater, clergy who continually preached democracy and pluralism only to take refuge in their own divinely conferred rights every time they thought their authority was being questioned. This group, so easily led around by the nose that it was incredible, took the slightest objection as an insult and the meekest question as evidence of intolerable defiance.

In the United States, some of the clergy who were persuaded that the best way to combat error is to appear to partake of it yourself, meddled in every conflict in contemporary society and fabricated a pastoral approach to homosexuality over the ruins of Christian marriage. In Latin America, the "popular churches" drew themselves up in full battle array against the institutional Church, all the while insisting, of course, that they were doing nothing of the sort. And I must not leave out Central America, where the superior of a contemplative order had all his monks psychoanalyzed and thereby emptied his monastery. He himself was the first to leave, so he could tie the knot with his girlfriend, who was entirely too young to get married in the first place—assuming it would palliate my shock if he explained to me in advance that I really knew nothing about the contemplative life. Deprived of sound catechetical instruction, disoriented by theologians who instead of instead of providing clear and distinct norms praised "the courage to doubt", Christians no longer knew what they ought or not ought to believe, and they suffered all the more in the silent stampede as the faithful deserted the churches and attendance steadily declined.

Now here came this Pope. He stood in the doors of the basilica and as soon as he did, my young traveling companion and I, and thousands more besides, had not only the comforting feeling of awakening from a bad dream, but the deeper, stranger, rarer impression of having been touched by grace.

If anything, friends, I think that the Church Pope John Paul left us is in a much better shape than the one he received in 1978.

Under Pope John Paul, the German Catholic theologian was marginalized, the "popular church" in Latin America snuffed out, the recalcitrant traditionalists isolated—whereas those remaining faithful to the Chair of Peter received the pastoral care and attention they deserved—and the doubting "theologians" reigned in, but only up to a point. Of course, this is much to the anger, chagrin, and frustration of SSPXers, of Hans Küng, Joseph O'Leiry, Joan Chittister, et al., but perhaps most of us could agree that the failure of the extreme wings of the Church to hijack the Church's soul has been a good thing for all Catholics.

Much remains to be done. The late Pope's work, spanning a quarter of a century, remains unfinished and Pope Benedict XVI is a worthy successor, one who knows that the requirements of orthodoxy should be taught to a recalcitrant public with a balanced, loving, and paternal hand.

Anyway, read André Frossard's Portrait of John Paul II and discover the humility, humanity, and contemplative side of this great Pope.

[Teófilo]

As always, all typos and grammar blunders, are all my fault.

[GrannyML]

Thanks for the review. You picked a riveting excerpt!