Father Martin's Monthly Newsletter

Volume 1, No. 6	April Message	April 14, 1998

The Agony of Pope John Paul II

The health of His Holiness, Pope John Paul II, has become a pre-occupation for all sectors of Roman Catholicism, and for some of the most influential segments of our modern family of nations, all 183 of them. Most observers have given up trying to predict when the papal health will collapse; when John Paul will enter his mortal agony and finally draw his last breath is a matter of speculation.

In the meanwhile, His Holiness is undergoing another sort of agony: the agony of his papal end game. He is contending with the encircling personages who are vitally affected by the passing of his papacy. At issue are vast interests: socio-political, economic, financial and, yes, the final analysis, ideological. And in this Rome of the Popes, during the summer and autumn of 1998, the one subject on everybody's mind is the papal Conclave, the meeting of 120 Cardinals summoned at John Paul's death in order to elect a new pope.

Those who visit and sound out the atmosphere regularly around the papal household these days are struck by three salient elements.

The first salient element is that never before during the declining days of a particular pope and in the last 40 years we have had at least two instances, there is today a very disturbing "interim" feeling. John Paul II, a man enthusiastic for the Second Vatican Council, has gone only a certain distance in promoting that Council, according to many of his followers. He has not done away with the so-called Tridentine Mass, although everybody knows he personally dislikes that rite. He has allowed too much liberty, his enemies say, to the traditionalists minded among his clergy; and he has merely postponed the inevitable showdown between traditionalists and progressives concerning married clergy, women priests, divorce and remarriage, to name some of the most acute issues. John Paul is leaving his Church in an "interim" state, the Church according to these critics has not been allowed to decide to enter fully into the modern age.

The second salient element is really a consequence of this "interim" condition John Paul has fathered as pope. There is, as of this date, no virtually dominant papal candidate as there was, for instance, in the conclave of 1939 and 1963. The Cardinal-Electors are distributed unevenly and warringly around three to five powerful candidates. The pope has only emphasized this condition by providing one Cardinal, his Secretary of State, Angelo Sodano, with a powerful say in the next Conclave. John Paul has signed a resignation document ending his papacy, but deliberately withheld the dating of the document. Without a date, there is no valid papal resignation. But Cardinal Sodano will have the enviable job of dating the resignation, thereby deciding when the papacy of John Paul ceases to be, and when the next Conclave can begin. John Paul has thus rendered his papal Chamberlain, Cardinal Somalo, quite helpless. Thus, also, not only has a fresh contender for the papacy been added to the existing papal candidates, but much effective weight has been loaded on that candidate.

Seasoned Roman "hands" feel that this pre-Conclave situation could easily lead Church government into an interregnum when no unity could be found among the Electors, and when many vitally interested but purely secular quarters of our international community would prefer to see the Electors wait until new light is shed upon some old conundrums that has bedeviled man for sometime.

Besides, there is a small army of problems waiting for the Papacy and the Church just around the corner of the third millennium for instance, the troublesome existence of trans-galactic intelligent beings, the near-future cloning of human beings purely for medical purposes, the criminalization by secular powers of several basic moral Catholic teachings.

These and such like problems constitute the prior agony of this 78 -year-old Pope before his physical being is assaulted by the imperatives of mortality.

The third salient element in these last days and months of His Holiness is what many unprejudiced observers describe as the palpable hate or profound dislike of Pope John Paul which they detect as a constant reaction to this man who apparently has pleased no one, has never injured anyone, who went out of his way to love everyone, and who from the beginning of his Pontificate in October 1978 has been regarded as an unwelcome stranger. He never acquired romanitá, and he never understood its use. Never in modern times was any pope more deserving of our prayers and more needy for special graces between this moment and his last breath drawn on Earth.

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