Viewpoint Retirement hints stir Europes
media
By ROBERT BLAIR KAISER
In a world as mass-mediated as ours,
an unsubstantiated rumor can go all the way around the world while the truth is
still trying to put its pants on.
The recent Pope Resignation story is a case in point.
Bishop Karl Lehman, president of the German bishops conference, gave an
entirely innocuous interview to Deutschlandfunk Radio in mid-January. I will
give you the complete text of his statement right here.
He was asked: The pope is clearly ill. Is it possible that a
round date such as the year 2000 could be a suitable moment for the
pope to resign? There has already been some speculation on this matter.
Lehman replied:
In the last few weeks and months I have had more occasions
than ever before to meet the pope. ... I have been impressed by his spiritual
presence, both in personal and group meetings. However, I do not have the
(medical) competence to judge whether his evident Parkinsons disease has
any repercussions on his ability to guide the church and make decisions. In
fact, these activities require a special energy. Furthermore, for some years I
have had the impression that the pope has concentrated all his energy on the
Holy Year, on the Great Jubilee 2000. Its incredible, the number of
commitments and public engagements the pope has taken on. ...
I personally believe that the Holy Father is capable of
bravely confessing: I can no longer adequately carry out my role as is
necessary. I believe the pope would do so if he felt that he were no
longer capable of authoritatively guiding the church. ... Yet, if the pope
intended to take such a step, I do not know if those close to him or his
advisers would agree with his decision. ...
It is always a sensitive moment when popes, after lengthy
pontificates, suffer physical weakness, this is quite understandable.
Nonetheless, for the church and perhaps also for society, this may constitute a
positive lesson: the fact that there can be ailing popes. ... In fact, in our
daily lives only people in good health and the young count. Everything must
work. ... I was also greatly impressed by the constancy and
punctuality with which the pope followed all the meetings of the recent synod.
... Consequently, I must say that after this experience my respect and
appreciation of the pope are stronger than ever.
To the question: Would the popes eventual successor
have to come from a continent other than ours, perhaps Africa or Latin
America? Lehmann replied:
I do not wish to talk about a successor (to the Holy
Father), because I feel only respect for the present pope. It is true that one
looks also to the church in the Third World. ... Yet, a weak pope for such a
church would prove a catastrophe. Consequently, in my opinion, we must leave
the question open for the moment.
This was definitely not a call for the pope to resign.
But the Italian press made it appear in the next days
newspapers that Lehman was calling for just that, and they played the
all-too-common press game of Lets You and Him Fight by asking
for comments from a variety of prelates and politicians.
Those interviewed took the opportunity to get some exposure of
their own (and demonstrate their loyalty) by huffing and puffing their protest
over such an insane idea.
Cardinal Pio Laghi, recently retired as the Vaticans
Education chief, said, I must say that we have a Holy Father who is
excellent and exceptional and there is absolutely no need for him to step
down.
Alessandro Maggiolini, bishop of Como, Italy, said, The
church is not Fiat or General Motors. Even an elderly father can be the
conscience of the church and continue to govern it.
No one has the right to say that the pope should step down
for any reason, said Cardinal Alfons Stickler, a Viennese now retired as
an archivist in the Vatican Library. He was quoted in La Repubblica.
Even Italys Foreign Minister weighed in. I was very
surprised by these opinions of the German bishop, Lamberto Dini told
Italian TV. This is not acceptable. In my long years in diplomacy I have
learned that the figure of the pope is to be respected to the end. It would be
a great loss if this pope were to abdicate his pontificate.
There is a good deal of hypocrisy in all this. For some odd
reason, probably connected to the pope-worship of super-Catholics over the past
century, it is considered disloyal to even think that this pope will die,
ignoring the obvious fact that 262 popes have, setting an undeniable
precedent.
In fact, some people at the Vatican have been talking very
privately about this possibility for some time now, which is why Marco Politi
has no problem doing the speculative story he did in La Repubblica.
(The British press, by the way, doesnt much interview
people; it re-writes the Italian press, period.)
I had an interview with a ranking Vatican prelate on Jan. 4 in
which he said calmly that yes the pope could and probably would resign if he
couldnt do the job any longer. My diary note says he said,
Its all provided for in Canon Law, the law that the pope signed in
1983. If he cant speak any more, cant do the job, he should move
on. (Personally, I think he is right, and I think the pope will resign
when he cannot do his work any longer.)
Despite the fact that Lehmann had come nowhere near to calling on
John Paul to step down, the worlds press kept the pot boiling. Why piss
on the parade?
CRITICS JOIN CHORUS FOR POPE TO QUIT, howled The Times of
London. Phil Pullella of Reuters made more of the non-story, quoting paragraph
332 in the Code of Canon Law, and phoning Jesuit Fr. Tom Reese at
America magazine in New York for his reaction.
Editors of The Times of London carried on with a Day 2
story headlined: Vatican tries to scotch sick pope
rumor over a byline by Richard Owen, its Rome correspondent, reporting on
the Vaticans release on Wednesday of the popes projected (and very
ambitious) schedule in the Holy Land in March. Owen added that the Vatican had
even penciled in another papal visit, to Mount Sinai on Feb. 25 and
26.
(In fact, the timing of this announcement was the Vatican Press
Offices straight-faced answer to all this talk of the popes
ill health. In effect, the Press Office was saying, How could
he plan this killer schedule, a culmination of all his many trips, if he was
dying?)
At an audience with a youth group from Turin, the pope himself
milked the press brouhaha for a laugh. The groups director, Ernesto
Olivero, led off by thanking him for his old age: Santo Padre, grazie per la
sua vecchia. He meant it as a compliment. John Paul interrupted him.
But I am not an old man, he said. Ma io non sono
vecchio! (If he hadnt been smiling when he said it, it would have
been a recap for me of Richard Nixons I am not a crook. But
Italian newspapers made the most of it by featuring the quote on Page 1.)
Olivero tried a good-natured (if somewhat toadying) recovery:
Your Holiness is very, very young, younger than all these kids
here.
It was a proper response from a courtier to his king. No one
believes this, of course, not even the pope. But hes a long way from
resigning, despite this campaign from the likes of the London Times.
These Vatican reporters, in their eagerness to get into the story
of their lives, are jumping into it prematurely. Thats my most benign
interpretation. The least benign: that they are like stockbrokers
churning their accounts. That is, their stories are intended to do
one thing: get them the exposure they crave, not to help readers understand
what is going on.
Robert Blair Kaiser, who covered Vatican II for Time
magazine, lives in Rome where he is writing a book on the future of the
church. You can reach him on e-mail at rkaiser@ibm.net
National Catholic Reporter, February 4,
2000
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