Posted on 08/06/2002 5:10:58 PM PDT by nickcarraway
One picture told it all: At Toronto's airport, the world's eye caught little ten-year-old Georgia Rae Giddings as she emotionally burst into tears after Pope John Paul II embraced her. For the next hour, she recalled the moment repeatedly before crowds of journalists. "When I stood in front of the Pope, I just got dizzier and dizzier," she said.
"Out of Step" with the Contemporary World
She's not the only one. Many of the million or so attending the World Youth Day celebrations reported the same phenomenon.
Most people would be astonished to hear that the Holy Father might be the most beloved person in the world among young people. After all, we're always told the Catholic Church's message is irrelevant, outmoded and - worst of all - square. Cynics charge it has nothing meaningful to say to today's fun-loving, hedonistic youth.
According to the press, polls repeatedly show the Pope's relentless opposition to contraception, abortion, homosexuality, pornography, pre-marital sex, easy divorce and other fruits of the sexual revolution is anathema to the modern and fashionable. (It goes without saying that no one knows the mind of the modern and fashionable like the media.) The Holy Father, they conclude, is out of step with the contemporary world.
A Rebuke to the Modern Age
Okay, then how do you explain nearly a million kids at the Pope's World Youth Day? And where else would the gathering of that many youngsters be termed a "disappointing" turnout?
Perhaps it's because young people's love for the Holy Father is a direct rebuke to the modern age, and thus to its primary megaphone, the modern journalist. No institution has been a more powerful force for secularism, materialism or sexual freedom than the media.
Most reporters today are alienated from religion, looking at faith as little more than an ancient superstition. They don't understand it, so they don't cover it - unless a "religious" story involving scandal or human weakness pops up. That they comprehend.
In listening to World Youth Day participants speak, their deep affection for the Holy Father is clear. The same words keep popping up over and over to describe him - "radiance," "hero" "world's role model," "leader of youth," "our rock," "following in St. Peter's footsteps," and "the person closest to Jesus."
Thus, reasons for the Pope's youthful legions are quite simple: When young people see the weary, lined, rugged, leathern visage of the Holy Father, they see the face of love. Not love the way Hollywood loves them - as walking wallets, rear ends in movie theaters, pairs of ears to listen to the latest CDs - but real affection, from someone who sees them rightfully as precious individuals with eternal souls. And when the Vicar of Christ's deep, aged, honeyed voice is intoned, it seems they're hearing the very Words of God.
An Inexhaustible Treasure of Grace
This, then, is the Papal appeal to the young: faith, as the steadfast leader of the Church, the eternal Bride of Christ; hope, offering refuge for the restless heart; and love, from a elderly man walking in persona Christi. Of these, as St. Paul says, the greatest is love.
This is what Georgia Rae Giddings reacted to. After telling the Pope she loved him, he tenderly stroked her head and whispered gently that he loved her too, the perfect personification of Cardinal Newman's great motto of "Heart Speaketh to Heart." It's hard to imagine any other world leader reacting this way to the presence of an unexpected young stranger - so fearless, so compassionate, so Christlike.
No wonder kids love him.
Catholicism may be known as the Old Faith, it's the Young Faith too, with a remarkable, time-tested ability to outlive every fad that mocks it as passe. Each Catholic generation discovers anew the richness and power of their ancient religion, finding within it an inexhaustible treasure of grace and beauty, boundless as the sea. Once that discovery is made, as a million young pilgrims recently learned, no worldly interest can ever again quite satisfy.
Dear ultima ratio, I wasn't "twisting" your words, I was attempting to parse the meaning of what you wrote. Which seemed to be an attempt to compare the crowd-pleasing ways of Adolph Hitler with those of Pope John Paul II, and to find some ominous significance in the resemblance. In what other way can your message be understood?
Yes, hero worship can be a bad thing; we can turn a hero into an icon or an idol, and this is never a good or healthy thing. But on the other hand, heros can have enormous positive sociocultural influence -- not as objects of worship, but as role models. It has been said that one of the obvious features of American life today is that we no longer have heroes to look up to, to offer as models of character worthy of emulation to our children.
Plus I have to say that Hitler was never any kind of hero. He played a German public that wanted to be seduced and deluded like a violin. He killed off all the real heros he could find -- Dietrich Bonhoeffer comes to mind. A true hero is always a source of order, not of disorder, disintegration, death....
If you found Threshold of Hope undecipherable, then maybe you need to pray for the light and grace to read it in the spirit in which it was offered. Just pray for the help you need, and try, try again. If you do, then I'm sure you'll have better luck next time. God bless.
I've lived in several dioceses. I've seen the Mass butchered almost beyond recognition, in some of the worst parishes in the Dreadful Diocese of Richmond. I've seen it offered properly and reverently, in various parishes in dioceses in Maryland, Ohio, Louisiana, Delaware, Wisconsin and other places. Even in Richmond. I've heard heresy preached from the pulpit, and heard heresy explicitly condemned from the pulpit. From which of these extremes should I extrapolate to the entire Church?
Bud, from this statement, am I correct in gathering that, in your mind, all religions are "false?"
Those are your first words on this subject of WYD and you take the occasion to select Hitler as one who had charisma just as this Pope does. "Culture Wars" published a story by a priest that left the SSPX. He received death threats etc. He also told of a bizarre interaction with an infamous SSPX cleric who has an infatuation with Hitler.
Would you like me to get that story and post it?
I have never read anything by any of those Popes that said signing "We resist you to your face" as a public statement one would withold obedience to the Pope was permissible but Vennari signed it. I gues that is Neo-traditionalism.
It is clear to me (I used to subscribe to CFN) that Vennari is a crackpot who went to World Youth Day (does he still think of himself as a youth?) with an agenda not as a disinterested journalist.
He doesn't distinguish bewteen his criticism of the Pope and those that arranged for the music, activities etc. No need to in his crabbed, bitter and insane world. The Pope is to blame for everything.
This is just more enmity and envy from a crank who pretends he is the measure of all things Traditional.
"Nobody here but us faithful Catholics who happen to draw comparisons between the Pope and Hitler but that doesn't mean anything. I mean, don't MOST Catholics draw such comparisons betwen Hitler and the Vicar of Christ?"
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