Prayer, Protest
By JOHN L. ALLEN JR.
NCR Staff Rome
Pope John Paul II has never been the type to dream small dreams,
and in some ways the Great Jubilee Year of 2000, which he officially closed on
Jan. 6, 2001, was the most audacious dream of all. To mark this 2,000th
anniversary of the birth of Jesus, the pope, in an agenda laid out in
1994s Tertio Millennio Adveniente, aimed to do no less than
reinvigorate Christian faith and witness by purifying
the memory of the church and ushering in a new age of unity.
After 379 days of intense Jubilee activity, opinions seem divided
as to how far the year carried the Catholic church and the world toward those
lofty goals. Some believe a spiritual renewal was launched that will bear fruit
in years to come, while others say a bundle of controversial Vatican moves all
but eviscerated the popes vision.
If the year did not achieve the popes goals, it was not for
lack of trying. John Paul and his lieutenants -- principally French Cardinal
Roger Etchegaray, who headed the Jubilee effort, and Italian Archbishop
Crescenzio Sepe, his aide credited with most of the logistical work -- crafted
the most intense Holy Year calendar since Boniface VIII called the first
Jubilee in 1300.
There were 34 major events, starting with the opening of the Holy
Door in St. Peters Basilica on Dec. 24, 1999, and ending with its closing
Jan. 6, 2001. In between were dozens of Jubilee-related gatherings big and
small, ranging from the dignified (Jubilee of the Worlds Parliamentarians
in early November) to the whimsical (Jubilee of Pizza Chefs in October).
Some 24 million pilgrims, according to Vatican officials, came to
Rome specifically for the Jubilee Year, and 1.5 million attended general
audiences with the pope. The number of visitors was 7 million more than the
previous year, officials said.
Holy Week and Easter services were the best-attended events, with
340,000 participants. Nearly as many, 300,000, joined in a Jubilee for Workers
on May 1. Other big draws included the Jubilee for Families on Oct. 15, with
200,000 participants, and a World Missionary Congress and a Jubilee for
Agricultural Workers, both held last fall, at 100,000 each.
The calendars logic, according to officials, started with
Vatican departments organizing an event in their area of expertise. Hence the
Pontifical Council for the Laity hosted a Jubilee for the Apostolate of the
Laity in November, which included a gathering with the pope in St. Peters
Square as well as an international conference spanning several days. The
Pontifical Council for Health Pastoral Care hosted a Jubilee for the Sick and
Health Care Workers in February that likewise included a conference.
Beyond these larger events, were scores of Jubilee festivities for
smaller groups, including fire fighters, motorcycle riders, fashion designers,
and employees of the Italian state TV network.
Though officials say every effort was made to accommodate groups
that requested events, the choices were at times controversial. The Vatican
quietly allowed followers of the schismatic, pro-Latin Mass St. Pius X society,
for example, to stage a prayer service in St. Peters Basilica Aug. 8, but
refused permission for a group of conscientious objectors to be received
alongside soldiers and policemen in mid-November.
World Youth Day high point
In terms of both numbers and energy, the high-water mark came in
mid-August with World Youth Day, which brought some 2 million young pilgrims to
Rome for a week of prayer and play quickly dubbed a Catholic
Woodstock.
The years impact in Rome was frequently overwhelming. The
daily throngs of pilgrims in color-coded hats and scarves; the weekly TV
spectacles; the overloaded buses, restaurants, and museums; the stream of
references to the Jubilee in the political and cultural life of Italy; all
induced what many Romans ended up calling Jubilee fatigue. In early
January, one local paper published an insert with the headline: Its
finally over! No further explanation was needed to capture the sense of
exhaustion and relief that many in the city felt.
The pope delivered more of the bravura symbolic gestures that have
become his trademark. They included a spring pilgrimage to the Holy Land, where
he left behind a note of regret for the suffering of Jews in Jerusalems
Wailing Wall, and a March 12 Liturgy of Pardon in St. Peters Square,
where he apologized for abuses of the faith by the faithful. In early
September, the pope beatified Pope John XXIII, whose decision to convene the
Second Vatican Council (1964-65) in a spirit of aggiornamento has made him an
icon of a Catholicism with a loving, world-embracing spirit.
John Pauls desire was that the Jubilee be experienced in
local churches, too, and there were moments when such a spirit seemed to stir.
When the pope made his historic apology, for example, several church local
leaders followed suit, including, in prominent fashion, Cardinals Roger Mahony
of Los Angeles and Bernard Law of Boston. Yet most observers said the Jubilee
was only sporadically noticeable at the local level; the show, most people
concede, was decidedly in Rome.
The Vaticans Jubilee office told NCR in late December
that there was no estimate of cost for the Holy Year, saying it was a
fluid situation with bills yet to be paid. When everything is added
up, the total will certainly be in the tens, perhaps in the hundreds, of
millions of dollars. Opening ceremonies in December 1999 cost an estimated $3
million, funded in that case by state-run and private television networks in
Italy. World Youth Day, according to church officials, cost the Vatican $23
million, apart from expenses by other agencies and the city of Rome. As a
measure of what such an event actually costs, organizers of the next World
Youth Day in Toronto say they will have to raise as much as $100 million to put
it on.
John Paul himself clearly regards the expenses, whatever they end
up being, as justified. In his Angelus remarks for New Years Eve, the
pope said it has been, Certainly a singular year, because it was the year
of the Great Jubilee, in which we have found in so many men and women signs of
good will, as indeed an authentic desire for reconciliation with God and with
their brothers.
As NCR went to press, the pope was set to issue a document
expressing his personal reflections on the year.
Normal Vatican work
Yet there was more to the Jubilee, and to the way it was received
by people around the world, than one finds on the official calendar. As the
Holy Year unfolded, the normal work of the Vatican continued apace, and some
observers believe the two did not always sit well together.
The Vatican offered a pugnacious response, for example, to the
July Gay Pride celebration in Rome, which included the pope referring to the
presence of tens of thousands of homosexuals as an insult to the
Christian values of Rome. The Vatican went ahead with a bitterly
contested Sept. 3 beatification of Pope Pius IX, despite vigorous protest from
Jews, many Italians, and Catholics worldwide. Pius is controversial not only
for pushing through the 1870 declaration of papal infallibility at Vatican I,
but also for his belligerent relationship with Italys Jewish community
and his opposition to the values of secular democracies.
On Sept. 5, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the popes powerful
doctrinal enforcer, released Dominus Iesus, insisting that God is
revealed in a satisfactory way only through Christianity. Though less prominent
in the media, other Vatican documents reasserted in equally strident tones
opposition to divorce, premarital cohabitation, birth control and same-sex
marriage. New rules for celebration of the Mass released in July struck some as
a return to more traditional, clerical liturgies.
Italian cardinals and Vatican officials joined voices in the fall
in calling for a clampdown on Muslim immigration, seeming to some to undercut
the popes words about tolerance and welcome. John Paul earned a
distinction he surely did not desire on Dec. 16, when he became the first pope
in the modern era to be the object of a riot. The violence erupted near St.
Peters, triggered by his welcome of Austrian ultra-rightist Jörg
Haider.
The years final act, the closing of the Holy Door in St.
Peters, added another note of controversy. A group of 24 gay, lesbian,
bisexual and transgendered Christians from the United States, mostly Catholics,
staged four days of protest at the Vatican leading up to a ceremony. (See
related article.) As NCR went to press, the group was planning to
attempt a demonstration inside St. Peters Square after the Jan. 6 papal
Mass in order to oppose what they called the suffering imposed on
homosexuals by church teaching.
The closing of the door is a great symbol for us, said
Anglican Rev. Mel White, the groups organizer, because the church
has closed doors on us for centuries.
Thus, in retrospect, this Holy Year was marked as
often by strife as by sanctity.
Despite those flashpoints, some observers say the year came fairly
close to realizing the popes big dreams. Archbishop Charles Chaput of
Denver told NCR via e-mail that he believes the Jubilee was
enormously successful, but cautioned that we shouldnt
waste much time trying to measure it statistically.
His point of reference, he said, is Denvers own World Youth
Day gathering, held in 1993. The positive effects of that event, according to
Chaput, are being felt seven years later, even some that were not evident at
the time.
Immediate results, even when theyre good, are the
least important fruit, Chaput said. How can anyone statistically
measure the success of the cross or Pentecost or World Youth Day or the Jubilee
in the short run? In eight or 10 years -- thats when the real seeds will
start to show.
Others were less optimistic.
Lost opportunity
According to Fr. John Gurrieri, former chief liturgist for the
U.S. bishops conference, the Jubilee was a lost opportunity.
The popes visionary aim for a year of spiritual uplift was undercut,
Gurrieri said, by the Vaticans conservative policies.
The church has given in to a very small, vocal, extreme, and
wealthy right wing that borders on ecclesiastical fascism, to the detriment of
faithful lay Catholics and priests of my generation who have faithfully and
correctly implemented the reforms of Vatican II. Now we have been marginalized
and demonized for obeying the church! Gurrieri said.
Thats my sad estimation of the Jubilee year, he
said.
One practical success mentioned by several observers was increased
public attention to the debt crisis in the Third World. When President Clinton
signed a $435 million debt relief bill into law on Nov. 6, for example, he
credited John Paul IIs request for forgiveness of debts in the Jubilee
spirit with helping to make progress possible.
Fr. Robert Sirico, who directs the pro-free market Acton Institute
in Grand Rapids, Mich., echoed that reading.
As a result of numerous homilies, apostolic letters and
speeches, the Holy Father has caused this to become a central moral issue
internationally, Sirico told NCR. International agencies
such as the International Monetary Fund and World Bank, which once had free
reign to impose central plans on reluctant nations, must now tread more
lightly, and they must deal with prominent moral objections.
Yet some observers felt that whatever spiritual capital the pope
gained by defending the poor was squandered on other moves seen as insensitive
and antagonistic, such as the Vatican document Dominus Iesus.
It is of political and spiritual significance that the Holy
Year was chosen to reiterate a doctrine, that the Roman church is really the
only true one, which many thought and hoped had gone into disuse, said
James Walston, a professor of political science at the American University in
Rome.
Rosemary Radford Ruether, feminist theologian and NCR
columnist, also cited Dominus Iesus as a blot on the years balance
sheet.
It was a major setback to ecumenical relations,
Radford said. It deeply chills my work in Buddhist-Christian,
Jewish-Christian and Muslim Christian dialogue.
On a local level, some observers said the Jubilee gave new life to
parishes and dioceses. Fr. John Jay Hughes, a St. Louis priest and church
historian, was impressed with the success of a carefully prepared
Reconciliation Weekend in St. Louis inaugurating the Holy Year in November
1999.
In a diocese of 530,000 Catholics, over 30,000 came to
confession -- some of them for the first time in decades, Hughes
said.
Mercy Sr. Margaret Farley of Yale agreed that in some settings the
year had a positive impact.
Many parishes have used Jubilee themes -- and the materials
made available through the U.S. bishops conference -- for some marvelous
ongoing parish formation, adult and child education, action for justice,
deepening of peoples spiritual lives, Farley told NCR.
Other American observers, however, found less to praise.
I have to say that in the parish I have been involved in,
the Jubilee has meant about zero, said Capuchin Fr. Ed Foley of
Chicagos Catholic Theological Union. The only time it came up is
when they were pushing free spaces on a bus to go to Soldiers Field for
the big outdoor Mass with the cardinal. Though mentioned from time to time, I
think the Jubilee basically had no impact on the ordinary Roman Catholic,
he said.
The poor still struggle
Fr. John Prior, an English missionary with 27 years of experience
in Indonesia, said the Jubilees impact on the Third World was
minimal.
The Indonesia church is divided between 51 percent who are
super-rich, live in the cities of Java and mainly belong to the
Chinese-Indonesian minority, he said. For many of them, the Jubilee
has been a pilgrimage year, meaning expensive journeys, both
domestic and international, with loads of devotion but no obvious social
message.
Meanwhile, the other 49 percent are tribal and generally
poor, living at the edges of the cities or in the outer islands. I am not aware
that the Jubilee has meant much for them, Prior told NCR. He said
most of these poorer Indonesian Catholics spent the year struggling,
unaware of the Jubilee message.
Alberto Melloni, an Italian church historian who worked on the
official Vatican biography for the beatification of John XXIII, said that on
balance he sees a Jubilee year full of contradictions.
John Paul II often spoke through gestures of peace and
reconciliation, Melloni said, such as his moment of silence at the Wailing
Wall, but his words remained in many situations the words of
Ratzinger.
Melloni said he believes the papal gestures, which hint at a more
open and positive approach, represent the future toward which Catholicism is
moving. Yet he understands those who see the church speaking with a very
limited language of condemnations and the Jubilee itself largely as
a machine of money and power.
Sacred Heart Fr. Paul Collins, an Australian church historian
currently under Vatican investigation, saw a potential moment of healing that
slipped away.
This was a wonderful opportunity for Catholics on different
sides of the ideological divide to begin to talk to each other again, for
excommunications and canonical sanctions to be lifted, for sins to be
forgiven, he said.
Of course, nothing of the sort happened. That would be
asking for imagination and trust. Unfortunately these realities seem to be in
short supply in the contemporary Vatican.
Perhaps the most guarded analysis came from American Catholic
writer Russell Shaw.
The Jubilee defies evaluating, Shaw said. The
overarching purpose evidently was to refocus attention on Jesus Christ in order
to launch a new evangelizing thrust. Will the new evangelization now take
place? I have no idea.
To a great extent, whether it does or doesnt depends
on what now happens, or doesnt happen, in the local churches. In the
U.S., ecclesiastical inertia is very powerful, and I dont know how or
whether it can be overcome. Celebration of the Jubilee appeared to be pretty
perfunctory in many places, and theres an obvious tendency to say,
Weve done the Jubilee -- now lets get back to business as
usual. Thats happened before in response to other big events, and
it could happen again this time.
A pity if it does.
The e-mail address for John L. Allen Jr. is
jallen@natcath.org
National Catholic Reporter, January 12,
2001
|