Sunday 5 Easter (A): A Pope for everyone

“Habemus Papam!” We have a Pope!

Through the humble means of voting Cardinals, the Lord has confirmed for us the ministry of Peter in his Church. As Simon Bar-Jona became Peter, so Joseph Ratzinger has become Peter.

Simon dies, but Peter remains. For it is not the man as man on whom we depend, nor is it the man as man on whom Christ builds his Church: it is the perennial faith of Peter, a faith given by God the Father, focused on God the Son and sustained by God the Holy Spirit. The history of the men who have held the petrine office shows only too clearly that it is not those men as men upon whom Christ builds his Church.

Nor then should we indulge in human respect by paying attention first and foremost to the man who happens to be Pope. Rather, by faith we must first and foremost renew and revitalize our loyalty to, and our love for, the Pope who happens to be this man, Joseph Ratzinger. We thank God for this man, but we thank him above all for this Pope.

I say this because, human as we are, we are inclined to “root” for this or that man. In doing so, however, we risk many things. We risk above all looking at the Papacy as if it were a mere human institution with a merely human purpose. In recent weeks, we have seen the conclave viewed as an object of gambling and as a political election campaign. The press coverage has been unprecedented, and often very good, but the accompanying commentaries often viewed the election through the looking glass of polarized politics: left versus right, liberal versus conservative, progressive versus traditional.

An objective look at how a conclave is prepared and executed would show how far removed it is from such polarizing constructs. We have allowed our thinking in almost everything to be dictated to by power and party politics, including our faith and the Church. To the ears of Christ, talk of a liberal or a conservative wing in the Church, talk of a progressive or regressive Pope is meaningless. He would be exasperated and exclaim: “Do you still not understand?”

We need to be liberated from looking at everything in terms of right and left. It does not just polarize the house and the senate: it polarizes and therefore seeks to destroy the Church. If we think in terms of polarizing politics within the Church we have handed the Devil a golden opportunity to do what he does best: divide, conquer and destroy.

Our concerns for ourselves and for the Pope should not be on what end of the political spectrum we and he stand. It should be: how near or how far are we from oneness with Christ, from his kingship and his kingdom? It is not the politics of the horizontal, but the loving obedience of the vertical which should preoccupy us.

It would be as wrong for those who consider themselves politically right-wing to look to Pope Benedict XVI to promote their agenda as it would be for those on the left to dislike him because they consider he won’t do what they want. Such thinking is alien to authentic Catholicism; indeed it is reprehensible and irresponsible. The Pope cannot be manipulated either to be the promoter or the spoiler of special interest groups: he is the center of the unity of the whole Church.

St. Paul had to discipline with strong words the early Christian community at Corinth for its factions, when some were saying, “I am for Apollos”, others, “I am for Paul”, others still, “I am for Cephas.” He asked them: “has Christ been parceled out that you cry out such slogans?” Today he might well have asked the same, “has Peter been parceled out, that some of you are saying, ‘I am for Martini’, ‘I am for Daneels’, ‘I am for Ratzinger’?” We should all be for Peter, this Peter, because this Peter is for Christ and Christ is for the Father!

If we play politics with the Papacy we are failing miserably as Catholics. Politics has its role to play, but not in the Church. We would be allowing a matter which belongs to the fleeting reality of the world to trump our membership of the living and everlasting, mystical Body of Christ. We would have lost our senses, our Catholic senses, and replaced them with unadulterated mundanity.

You may object that there have been progressive and traditionalist Popes. I would respond that you are still thinking in terms of politics. Our concern as Catholics should be two-fold: whether or not the Pope and the College of Bishops, with and under him, are preserving intact the deposit of faith given by Christ to the Apostles and handed on to us by their successors; and whether or not, while preserving it intact, they are being open to the ways in which the Holy Spirit is leading them to develop the riches pregnant within it.

The Pope and the College of Bishops, with and under him, must by definition conserve in fullness the deposit of faith; likewise, by definition they must let that deposit develop according to the Holy Spirit. In other words, they are by definition, that is, by the divine will, simultaneously conservative and progressive, and they are both, not by their own judgment or preference, not by the judgment or preference of the world, but by the judgment and the timing of the Holy Spirit, who blows where he wills.

In terms of real-life politics, a Catholic can be whatever he chooses to be, provided he does so in a way that is coherent with the demands of Catholic doctrine and morals. But in terms of religion, it does not make sense for a Catholic to be either conservative or progressive. He must be both! He must have the maturity to live with the tension of both, and the faith and trust that the Lord will be faithful to his promises.

The truth of the faith cannot be parceled out. It must be welcomed and lived in its integrity. Someone who is open only to the past is only half a Catholic. Someone open only to the future is, likewise, only half a Catholic. But Catholic means “whole”: it does not make sense to be half a Catholic! It has as much sense as a square circle! So those who, by their own judgment, pick and choose from the past or from the future must ask themselves if in reality they are, in the present, truly Catholics.

The Pope is the rock on which Christ builds his Church. The Church is still being built, and those who say it’s all over are simply wrong. The Church is still being built by Christ, not by factions or fractions of the Church herself! Whoever heard of a building building itself? But unless what is built is built on Peter, it will be built on sand. It may look good, it may feel good, but it is not the Church. Some may wish to build their own church, or add to it extensions of their pleasing. But unless Christ builds, the builders labor in vain. And Christ will build only on Peter. Unless, therefore, Peter is at the foundation of whatever is new, by definition that newness is not of Christ.

The Catholic must embrace the genuine, living tradition of the Church and, because it is living, also the truth which will gradually unfold from that same tradition. A Catholic must be both conservative and progressive because Christ is ever ancient and ever new.

The election of our new Holy Father is an opportunity for us all to see beyond, to reach beyond, to live, love, labor, believe and hope beyond the petty factions which do such damage to the Church and cause such bitterness and disappointment in our hearts. How will the young find the Church attractive if we are fighting over special interests?

The Church must engage with the world and must therefore understand what is happening in the world. However, she must engage the world, not in the world’s terms, but in the terms of Jesus Christ. What a poor image of the Church it is to think of her as one political force among others! What an insult it is to the crucified and risen Lord to empty the Gospel of salvation of its power to transform the world, if we would have the Church transformed by the world and play the games of the world!

The Holy Father comes, not to play party politics, but, like Christ, to show us the way to the Eternal Father. Personal opinions are all very well, but, in the end, as long as we are shown the way to the Father, none of them matters. The way to the Father is for everyone, but everyone must leave behind whatever there is in their lives which does not obey the will of the Father. The sinner cannot keep sinning and come to the Father; the rigid legalists must melt and soften if they are to know the Father’s compassion and tenderness; the lax and those always itching for novelties must find discipline and order if they are to know the truth of the Father.

“Habemus Papam!” Through him we must listen to what the Spirit is saying to the Church. With the freedom and joy of the true Catholic heart, let us cry out “Deo gratias!” and pledge him our loyalty, our obedience and our love!

Msgr. Peter Magee - Sunday, April 14th, 2005: St. Matthew's Cathedral, DC- 10.00 am