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Habeunt papam!
Mar. 14th, 2013 02:11 pmSo the cardinals have now chosen the new pope. Or, from their point of view, God has informed them of His choice.
From all accounts, Pope Francis is a man who has always taken seriously his vow of poverty, chastity and obedience to God's will. He's reputed to have a strong sense of social justice and does not seem to set himself apart from or above everyone else. Though given his new role, I guess a certain amount of that will be inevitable. It's about time there was a pope from Latin America or Africa, since that's where the vast majority of the world's Catholics reside. It's doubtful that he will be particularly progressive or activist with regard to a number of issues that Canadian Catholics consider important: birth control, abortion, LGBTQ rights, the ordination of women, and so on. But in fairness, those probably aren't the top priorities for folks in the developing countries, either. What they would no doubt choose to focus upon would be issues like grinding poverty, government corruption, and on the feminist front, matters involving the education and health of girls and women, in particular freedom from the barbaric practice of female infibulation, sometimes euphemistically referred to as "female circumcision". Moreover, Pope Francis will likely only serve for half a dozen years or so. At 76, he was one of the older cardinals under consideration, and he apparently has only one lung, too. So it's possible that if he paves the way during his time in office on certain matters of social justice, his successor may be open to breaking new ground on some of the issues of wide concern in the western world.
The first pope I was aware of being in power at all was the most recent Pope John. I seem to recall that in the early to mid 1960s, just as Quebec was going through its Quiet Revolution, he retreated for a while to consider the issue of birth control - and decided in the negative. Or I may be mixing him up with his successor, Pope Paul. Or I may be mixing up birth control with some other issue. In any case, it seems to me that from Pope Paul onwards, Roman Catholics were, with perhaps one very short-lived exception, faced with a series of very conservative popes. Pope John may have been quite progressive - the fact he even would have pondered the merits of birth control is actually quite remarkable to me, given that in Canada at least, it was technically illegal at the time (though widely practised under the guise of "protection against disease!)
The one short-lived exception I referred to above was John Paul I. I was awed by his sense of humour and joking around - it struck me as very un-pontifflike - but I dared to hope that perhaps the Catholic church was actually entering the twentieth century! John Paul I, whose time in office was measured in days rather than years, is rumoured to have been murdered, though given the Vatican's enforced secrecy under pain of death, hellfire and excommunication (I'm not sure which possibility would be most feared by the cardinals), we'll probably never know for sure. How would you conduct a murder investigation in such conditions? Now THERE's some fertile ground for writers of murder mysteries! How about it, Ian Rankin? Or Louise Penny, Deborah Crombie or Antonia Fraser?
While Cardinal Ratzinger was generally regarded as an ultraconservative candidate for the last pope, I have to say that I actually respected him for having the guts to set a first-in-many-centuries precedent by stepping aside when he felt unable or unwilling to continue to fulfil his duties as pope. It seemed like a pretty dramatic way of announcing that he did NOT consider himself infallible. Contrast that with the vigil for John Paul II, where the faithful hovered nervously in St. Peter's Square, nervously asking each other, "Is he dead yet?" Not a very dignified way to go, if you ask me!
Anyway, as we approach the busy ecclesiastical Easter season, we shall see the extent to which Pope Francis makes a credible and promising leader of the Catholic church.
From all accounts, Pope Francis is a man who has always taken seriously his vow of poverty, chastity and obedience to God's will. He's reputed to have a strong sense of social justice and does not seem to set himself apart from or above everyone else. Though given his new role, I guess a certain amount of that will be inevitable. It's about time there was a pope from Latin America or Africa, since that's where the vast majority of the world's Catholics reside. It's doubtful that he will be particularly progressive or activist with regard to a number of issues that Canadian Catholics consider important: birth control, abortion, LGBTQ rights, the ordination of women, and so on. But in fairness, those probably aren't the top priorities for folks in the developing countries, either. What they would no doubt choose to focus upon would be issues like grinding poverty, government corruption, and on the feminist front, matters involving the education and health of girls and women, in particular freedom from the barbaric practice of female infibulation, sometimes euphemistically referred to as "female circumcision". Moreover, Pope Francis will likely only serve for half a dozen years or so. At 76, he was one of the older cardinals under consideration, and he apparently has only one lung, too. So it's possible that if he paves the way during his time in office on certain matters of social justice, his successor may be open to breaking new ground on some of the issues of wide concern in the western world.
The first pope I was aware of being in power at all was the most recent Pope John. I seem to recall that in the early to mid 1960s, just as Quebec was going through its Quiet Revolution, he retreated for a while to consider the issue of birth control - and decided in the negative. Or I may be mixing him up with his successor, Pope Paul. Or I may be mixing up birth control with some other issue. In any case, it seems to me that from Pope Paul onwards, Roman Catholics were, with perhaps one very short-lived exception, faced with a series of very conservative popes. Pope John may have been quite progressive - the fact he even would have pondered the merits of birth control is actually quite remarkable to me, given that in Canada at least, it was technically illegal at the time (though widely practised under the guise of "protection against disease!)
The one short-lived exception I referred to above was John Paul I. I was awed by his sense of humour and joking around - it struck me as very un-pontifflike - but I dared to hope that perhaps the Catholic church was actually entering the twentieth century! John Paul I, whose time in office was measured in days rather than years, is rumoured to have been murdered, though given the Vatican's enforced secrecy under pain of death, hellfire and excommunication (I'm not sure which possibility would be most feared by the cardinals), we'll probably never know for sure. How would you conduct a murder investigation in such conditions? Now THERE's some fertile ground for writers of murder mysteries! How about it, Ian Rankin? Or Louise Penny, Deborah Crombie or Antonia Fraser?
While Cardinal Ratzinger was generally regarded as an ultraconservative candidate for the last pope, I have to say that I actually respected him for having the guts to set a first-in-many-centuries precedent by stepping aside when he felt unable or unwilling to continue to fulfil his duties as pope. It seemed like a pretty dramatic way of announcing that he did NOT consider himself infallible. Contrast that with the vigil for John Paul II, where the faithful hovered nervously in St. Peter's Square, nervously asking each other, "Is he dead yet?" Not a very dignified way to go, if you ask me!
Anyway, as we approach the busy ecclesiastical Easter season, we shall see the extent to which Pope Francis makes a credible and promising leader of the Catholic church.
