The Catholic world is all abuzz with the upcoming canonizations of Pope John XXIII and John Paul II on April 27th. I am 54, so both these popes lived within my lifetime. I see everyone rejoicing and getting all excited about the coming event but I look on with many conflicting feelings and thoughts. This is an attempt to parse them out and to see if maybe other people are coming from the same perspective I am.
I am a Vatican II Catholic. I can not remember what going to Mass was like before the changes that were precipitated by Vatican II. I have no memory of the Latin Mass or any of that. I went to Catholic schools all my life (until law school). The catechism I received was terrible. They took out the Baltimore Catechism and replaced it with the most wishy-washy stuff imaginable. I have distinct memories of listening to Simon and Garfunkel in religion class. I don't remember learning much about the saints at all. Maybe St. Francis of Assisi or a couple of other famous ones. I managed to get through Catholic grammar school, high school and college and never read a word of Augustine or Aquinas that I recall. And I was in a 'conservative' diocese.
However, I completely get that the actual Vatican II documents are not to blame for this, except I do think they must not have been clear enough and the Church did not exercise enough discretion in their promulgation, hence the confusion and the terrible implementation of its directives. No matter how you slice it, in the wake of Vatican II there came a social upheaval that the Church was unprepared for. People went crazy and did all sorts of things that ranged from silly to out and out heretical, in the name of Vatican II. The Church, at least here in the U.S. and I presume throughout Europe as well, simply stopped evangelizing her own children effectively. People like me who reverted back to the faith in their adulthood had to engage in self-study to actually learn the basics of Catholicism. The fall out of the Church's inability to catechize her own children is that many left her and many that remain do so out of inertia or sentimentalism and are not loyal to her at all. And the Church is now in decline in the western hemisphere due to the abandonment of her teachings in her educational institutions and in her very poor living-out of the gospel in her hierarchy and parishes.
I don't glorify the pre-Vatican II days. I think they had their own problems. My older sisters all studied the Baltimore Catechism and only one is still a practicing Catholic today. So the times, the virulent social changes that were going on, really had a devastating impact on our culture and on Catholicism. I look to the future when all the fall out from the atomic bomb of the sexual revolution at last dissipates and we can pick our way through the wreckage and begin again.
But this is my problem. I really distrust the speediness with which these two Popes are being canonized. I think it would be more appropriate to do the official canonization after the fall out has cleared. Right now we still have walking wounded, both individuals and institutions, who received their wounds under the watch of these two Popes.
I do not question their sanctity. I trust they are in heaven. I just don't think the official canonization, which has a political aspect to it, is in the best interest of the Church. Or maybe. I could be wrong.
I don't know. I have to fight my own resentment when I see the terrible job the Church has done in teaching her own baptized children. She is starting to rally but very slowly and inconsistently. It may be too little, too late. Not for the Church as a whole, but for her children in the western world at this point in time. I think she will recover eventually (as she has recovered before from evil within) but at the expense of her flock. The ones she is charged with caring for.
Now, maybe I am not being fair to Pope John XXIII. He died before Vatican II was completed. Maybe if he had lived things would not have gone down the way they did. But he did start it. It is his legacy and it is a very checkered legacy right now. Maybe in 100 years, our perception and our experience might have shifted and we can look back on it all as a 'learning experience' that was, though painful, worth it. The truth is Vatican II ushered in much division, confusion and occasion for sin. And the Church is weaker for it.
I really admire JPII so much. He was truly an amazing man with godly gifts. But right now there are people walking around who suffered from sexual abuse. Who were betrayed by the Church, not only by the terrible, personality-shattering evil done against them but also by the fact that the bishops chose to cover up the scandal. I keep wondering how they must feel about this canonization? If I were they, I would feel wounded and betrayed all over again. The sex scandals are a permanent scar on the face of Christ's bride. Permanent, like the inquisition or Galileo or the terrible things done in the name of the Crusades, they will forevermore be used against the Church. How many people left the Church because of these scandals? John Paul II did many wise and beautiful things, but he was blind to this terrible sin in the Church. He stood by Marcial Maciel, the found of the Legionaries of Christ, who was himself a terrible sexual predator and manipulative con artist writ large.
I know that saints are still humans. They are not perfect, but they are holy. I believe JPII was holy, but much damage was also done while he reigned over the Church. Why can't we wait a while for the official canonization? Why the rush? It used to be the Church waited hundreds of years, for the most part, to canonize saints. I think that is probably wise. We are too caught up in our own emotions, our own sense of alienation from the world of today, our own need to be defensive against the aggressive secularism that threatens our souls. But the Church is a long standing institution that needs to act in terms of millennia and not act in terms of day to day or even decade to decade media reports.
The funny thing is, I too cried santo subito when JPII passed away. But that was on a wave of emotion, of swelling admiration and grief at his passing. But now I have this very uneasy feeling about the whole thing.
I have yet to talk to anyone who shares these qualms. Am I the only one? I don't know how I will handle the canonization. I guess I'll watch on TV and pray. Pray for my Church, founded by Christ, who battles against ever present evil both outside her ranks and within.
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