The Totalitarian Pope

David Morris, AlterNet October 19, 2003 Viewed on October 20, 2003

http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=16994

Last week John Paul II celebrated the 25th anniversary of his
pontificate to thunderous applause by many conservatives. The Weekly
Standard’s David Brooks argues in his new column in the New York Times
that the Pope deserved the Nobel Peace Prize. The San Diego Union
Tribune gushes that "John Paul II is one of the towering figures of the
last century...no one questions the moral force of this pope."

Time magazine’s assessment is far more measured and accurate. It
describes John Paul II’s time in office as an "extraordinary tenure."
Extraordinary, to be sure, but certainly not virtuous. John Paul II took
an institution just beginning to throw off the chains of centuries of
insularity and autocracy and to be plain speaking, reshaped it into what
can only be described as a totalitarian institution.

A little history may be in order. In 1958 Pope John XXIII assumed the
papacy. Within months he called for an "aggiornamiento," a "bringing up
to date" of the church. Church services began to be conducted in native
languages. Priests and nuns and laity were given more participation and
authority. "Let the layman not imagine that his pastors are always
experts," the Vatican declared. "Rather, enlightened by Christian wisdom
let the layman take on his own distintive role."

Pope John convened a Vatican Council that ended centuries of what he
called "holy isolation" by exhorting the church to participate in
humanity’s struggle for peace and justice. The Vatican called this new
church the "People of God."

Pope John XXIII died shortly after Vatican II. But the reforms he
nurtured took root and flowered under his successor. Journalist Gwynne
Dyer recently recalled his impressions after visiting Catholic churches
around the world in 1978 in preparation for a televised documentary. "In
southern Africa, Catholics were playing a leading role in resistance to
apartheid. In Latin America, the phenomenon of ’liberation theology’ was
reconnecting the church with the impoverished peasant millions whom it
had long ignored. In Europe and North America, the old hierarchies were
all under challenge, but especially the hierarchy of gender. Justice and
equality were the themes and the energy was astonishing."

"Twenty-five years later," Dyer sadly observes, "it is all gone."

John Paul II attended the Vatican Council meetings in the 1960s and
opposed the changes. Upon taking office he undertook to reverse them. To
achieve this goal he dramatically centralized and exercised powers. His
interventions roused widespread opposition. In 1989, for example, over
300 eminent European theologians, including a number in Rome itself
signed onto the Cologne Declaration, which accused the pope of
"overstepping and enforcing in an inadmissible way" his proper
competence in field of doctrinal teaching. It accused him of appointing
bishops throughout the world "without respecting the suggestions of the
local churches and neglecting their established rights." It described
the Vatican’s removal of qualified theologians from teaching because it
didn’t like what they were saying as "a dangerous intrusion into the
freedom of research and teaching."

In the 1980s French theologican Marie-Dominique Chenu put it bluntly.
John Paul harkens back to the "prototype of the church as an absolute
monarchy."

As is usually the case with absolute monarchs, Pope John Paul II refused
to listen to the people. He became even more aggressive. The Vatican
announced that as of March 1, 1989 all church office holders, be they
parish priests or philosophy and theology teachers in seminaries must
not only give formal assent to major church dogmas but also assent to
doctrine not formerly proclaimed as obligatory, such as the Church’s
teachings on sex.

John Paul II reasserted and even amplified the doctrine of ’Papal
infallibility" and beatified its author, Pope Pius IX. When the world’s
Catholic bishops gathered in Rome every five years it was not to be
involved in a give-and-take discussion but to receive the Word from the
pope, and, notes Time, to be "quiz(zed) on instances in which they may
have been deemed insufficiently aggressive in defending Church
doctrine."

Time’s conclusion? John Paul II "steadfastly held the line against those
in the European and North American clergy and laity who saw in Vatican
II an opening to democratize the Church... inside the Church his own
rule will be remembered as nothing if not authoritarian."

Back in 1979 the eminent Swiss Catholic theologican Hans Kung, whose
license to teach theology in Catholic institutions was revoked by the
Vatican, observed that the new pope, "has waged an almost spooky battle
against modern women who seek a contemporary form of life." Since then,
the pope has barred even discussion of the ordination of women.

Even in his final days the pope continues to imprint his remarkably
archaic values on the Church. A recent draft directive from the Vatican
would bar altar girls, thereby eliminating one of the few remaining
areas of participation in the Church allowed to women. Priests can only
allow girls to help them at mass if they receive special dispensation
from the bishop and offer "just cause." Priests, the draft advises,
ought "never to feel themselves obliged to recruit girls."

The draft directive also would prohibit Roman Catholics from dancing or
even clapping in their churches. It would would forbid priests from
quoting ethical texts other than the Gospels in their sermons.

By all reports the pope is near death. But his impact on the Church will
continue for many years. For the Pope has used his long term in office
not only to change its direction but to virtually handpick those who
will become the new Church leaders.

Pope John Paul has been far more active than his predecessors in
stocking Church offices with his own people. In 15 years his predecessor
Paul VI made only 26 new cardinals, but in 25 years Pope John Paul has
made 226. He has created nearly 500 saints, more than all of the other
popes of the past four centuries put together. Pope John Paul II has
appointed more than 70 percent of all Catholic bishops, and all but five
of the 135 cardinals who will choose his successor.

Yes indeed. His has been an "extraordinary tenure." One that will burden
the Catholic Church for generations to come.

David Morris, a regular contributor to AlterNet, is the executive
director of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance in Minneapolis,
Minnesota.