Television Frontline finds greatness, tragedy
in Millennial Pope
By RAYMOND A. SCHROTH
For two reasons the popes are back
in the news in recent weeks. For one, we are rapidly approaching the
millennium, and John Paul II has taken a proprietary interest in that date,
perhaps because he agrees with his recent sympathetic biographers who depict
him as one of the outstanding figures -- perhaps the outstanding figure -- of
our age. An actor in his youth, the pope sees this as his dramatic moment, one
last chance to symbolize the meeting of heaven and earth.
The other reason: If magazines come up with special issues on the
Ten Worst Crimes of the Millennium, the Holocaust will be No. 1; and all
discussion of that horrible event works its way back to the moral
responsibility of those who remained silent while it was going on.
In The Holocaust in American Life, University of Chicago
historian Peter Novick raises good questions on how the memory of the Holocaust
has been used and misused as a political weapon and a source of dubious moral
lessons; but there should be some consensus that how we respond when others
suffer is a fair measure of our ethical sense. Genesis, a book shared by Jews
and Christians common, has as its basic message --from Cain and Abel to Joseph
in Egypt -- that we are all sons and daughters of Abraham and are our
brothers keepers. To turn our heads or wring or wash our hands, for any
reason, while others are shipped off to the ovens is complicity in the
crime.
The October Vanity Fair has published a long excerpt from
John Cornwells Hitlers Pope, the story of how Pius XII, as
Vatican secretary of state, negotiated with Italy and Germany to sign
concordats and eliminate the Catholic center political parties in those
countries, thus strengthening the Vaticans control over the local church
and the political power of the Fascist and Nazi regimes. He makes a case, based
on Pius letters and the memoirs of diplomats who dealt with him, that the
pope was so anti-communist as to often identify Jews with communism. According
to Cornwell, his fear of Russia blinded him to the sins of Germany.
The New York Times Book Review of Sept. 26 gave Cornwell an
uncritical free ride. In an interview in the Sept. 26 Newark Star
Ledger, historian and Jesuit Fr.Gerald Fogarty says Cornwell has screened
out evidence of Pius XIIs hatred of Hitler and has falsely claimed access
to secret Vatican documents.
Now both Cornwell and the Sept. 28 PBS Frontline
documentary, The Millennial Pope, link the mentalities of Pius XII
and Pope John Paul II -- men who sought to focus the power of the church on
Rome and on themselves. It is significant that John Paul, like his predecessor
Paul VI, has taken up the cause of Pius XIIs canonization -- even in the
face of protests from Jews.
Frontline asks some challenging questions, the answers
to which may embarrass both church authorities and critical secularists who
dismiss popes as irrelevant and scorn the spiritual life as if only
simple-minded jerks are naive enough to believe in God.
Lets say very clearly right now that Frontline
has created a masterful TV documentary. As journalism it is well-researched and
balanced, with superb commentary by a host of scholars, critics and personal
friends, the most perceptive of whom is Roberto Suro of The Washington
Post. As religious programming, it is a hundred times more intelligent --
and more inspiring -- than the pious dreck on an official church station. At
two and a half hours, to adequately absorb it, we have to watch it twice.
Its available on video from PBS (800-463-8727, $19.95).
Some favorable judgments are passed by Jews, who have been
gratified by this popes statements and gestures admitting Christian
peoples failures -- though not the institutional churchs failure --
to speak up for persecuted Jews. Yet they are not really satisfied. John Paul
himself admits that he did nothing when he was a younger man in Poland to help
Jews during the Holocaust. And he has canonized Maximilian Kolbe, a priest who
gave his life for a [Catholic] in a concentration camp, but who
was a virulent anti-Semitic publicist before his last-minute change of
heart.
The unfavorable judgments come from Catholics, who have seen the
church, once visualized as the People of God on the march through history,
frozen in its steps. As novelist Robert Stone puts it, this pope wants to be
the only show in town, Hes pope, and youre not.
To a degree unusual in TV documentaries, The Millennial
Pope is both disturbing and stunning in its visual images: with
beautifully photographed roiling clouds, sunsets and storms; Polish golden
wheat fields against purple skies; the ancient streets of Kraków;
tangled piles of naked corpses wheeled from the gas chambers and dumped in a
grave; huge crowds hoping for a glimpse of the pope on his trips throughout the
world.
The sequence on the Culture of Death flashes before us
with the evidence that this 20th century is the most evil in world history:
burning oil fields in Iraq; starving children everywhere; burning corpses in
war; smart bombs hitting their marks; Las Vegas casinos; Jack Kervorkian; the
electric chair; and the antiabortion film, Silent Scream.
The documentarys images of the pope himself catch him both
in the familiar posture of head bowed, hand clutching his troubled brow, and in
his awful anger -- yelling Silencio to an unruly Nicaraguan
crowd and in a petulant snit, chiding his Polish children who, like everyone
else, opted for materialistic capitalism once the communist empire
collapsed.
Structured in eight chapters, the film explains John Paul as a
product of the death-obsessed Polish history and culture, and attributes his
attitude toward women to the way he transferred his love of his deceased mother
to the Blessed Virgin Mary.
The writer Marina Warner makes the novel observation that the
popes uncompromising condemnation of contraception actually goes against
good Marian theology. The whole point of Marys assent, she says, is that
Mary made a free choice to conceive. Hans Küng argues that in
interpreting contraception as Step 1 in the continuum leading to abortion, the
pope is ultimately responsible for untold abortions that would not have come
about if couples could prevent pregnancies.
We see John Paul at his worst, watch him crush Liberation Theology
and listen to how he humiliated El Salvadors Archbishop Oscar Romero --
who, seen in this context, is the mirror opposite of Pius XII. Romero,
foreseeing his own death, cried out in church against the right-wing
governments death squads who were murdering his people. In Rome, Romero
was kept waiting for days when he tried to see the pope. Finally let in, he
showed the pope photos of his murdered priests, only to be told to get
along with the government. When Romero tried to tell him about the
governments atrocities, John Paul said, Dont exaggerate. You
have to be very careful with communism. One month later we see
Romeros bullet-ridden body at the foot of the altar and the massacre at
his funeral.
To Frontlines credit, it can still find
greatness in its subject, particularly in the segment on the Culture of
Death. Robert Stone says John Paul is on to something in the
continuum argument: There is a connection between ending fetal life for our
convenience and killing a living person for our convenience, as in the death
penalty. In a gripping interview, a prison warden narrates the gas chamber
execution of an inmate he had grown to love like a son. As the executioner, he
wonders what God will say to him.
Even someone convinced that the current pope, as Sr. Mary Hymes
says, is doing an excellent job of bringing down the church, and,
in Robert Stones words, is killing the faith of many
believers, will find much to admire in this strange mans extraordinary
life. I, for one, cant wait to see what happens if he visits Iraq.
As Roberto Suro concludes, if John Paul II is simply a lonely
pessimist obsessed with the evils of this century, he has lost his audience and
is a tragic figure. If he is a prophet who sees something that we miss,
the tragedy is ours.
Jesuit Fr. Raymond A. Schroth is writing a book about Fordham
University.
National Catholic Reporter, October 15, 1999
[corrected 11/05/1999]
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