http://www.telegraphindia.com/1050409/asp/opinion/story_4590523.asp
WINDOWS OF THE CHURCH
- Will the next pope end another white monopoly?
Sunanda K. Datta-Ray
Guatemalan street vendor
The spectacle of George W. Bush kneeling at Pope John
Paul II’s bier recalls another temporal ruler, Emperor
Frederick Barbarossa, on his knees while Pope Adrian
IV placed his slippered foot on the emperor’s neck and
then made him hold the stirrup while he mounted his
horse. But Adrian’s political clout was nothing
compared to John Paul II’s demonstration during the
Cold War that papal power surpassed that of the
military divisions that Stalin mocked.
Yet, despite television images of millions of pilgrims
and mourners (though not all grieving), his
pontificate was far from robust, which is why the 117
electors of the College of Cardinals could do worse
than look for a successor in Asia, Africa or Latin
America. Far from being a concession to the Third
World, a black, brown or yellow Vicar of Christ would
acknowledge where the future lies. By underlining the
catholicity of a Church that Islam has overtaken as
the world’s most popular religion, such a tribute to
the late pope’s universalism might also divert
attention from scandals, controversies and shrinking
congregations throughout the Western world.
This pragmatic prescription for revival may not appeal
to devout Catholics. They will probably retort that
the choice of an heir to St Peter’s throne reflects
only God’s will with no thought of earthly benefits.
That is nonsense, of course, for the papacy — and John
Paul II’s more than any other — has always thrived on
its worldly commitments.
Way back in 1953, when the first Indian prince of the
Church, Valerian, Cardinal Gracias, visited St
Xavier’s College, I asked a priest if Gracias could
ever become pope. I had in mind not only the
cardinal’s pioneering position but the legend of St
Thomas the Apostle landing at Cranganore in 52 AD,
making the Malabar coast the cradle of Christianity in
Asia. The Jesuit conceded that there was no
ecclesiastical objection to an Asian head of the Holy
See. The arguments he cited against it happening were
entirely secular. The pope ruled an Italian state. He
was a public figure in Italy where he interacted with
important European institutions, like governments and
the powerful Society of Jesus. He controlled a vast
fortune, presided over a College of Cardinals that
derived in some ways from the Roman Senate, and was
Bishop of Rome with local priestly functions.
No non-Italian had been elected since 1523. Few
Germans made it because the Vatican was often at
loggerheads with the Holy Roman Empire. One reason why
only one Englishman ever wore the triple crown was
that for all its global empire, Britain mattered
little in the architecture of continental power.
Acknowledging the dominant ethic, the few non-Italian
popes tactfully chose Italian-sounding names.
Karol Wojtyla’s elevation in 1978 represented the
triumph of ideology over race. His mandate made saving
souls for Christianity synonymous with rescuing
countries from communism. History will pronounce on
his contribution to the rise of Lech Walesa and
Solidarity, to Poland’s rejection of communism and to
rolling back what was called the Iron Curtain. The
West could not have fielded a more urbane,
sophisticated and skilful crusader than the man who
had confronted with courage, dignity and discretion
his country’s Nazi and Soviet occupiers.
His mission was as relevant to non-Christians as to
Christians, to Afro-Asians as to Europeans. Indeed, it
seemed especially sensitive to developing countries
when he celebrated history’s largest ever mass in
Manila, established a Congolese church in Rome, and
grieved for Uganda’s dead, regardless of religion, as
the “ecumenism of the saints and of the martyrs”.
Preaching the “civilization of love” in Jerusalem and
Bethlehem, he was as affable with Jewish as with
Palestinian leaders.
No other pope denounced Western materialism as the
“culture of death”, reached out as diligently to the
world’s suffering or made human rights the central
issue of his preaching. The underlying strategy
recalled George Canning, the 19th-century British
prime minister, who “called the new world into
existence to redress the balance of the old” by
turning his back on decadent Spain and recognizing
Spanish colonies like Mexico, Peru and Chile as
independent nations. Similarly, the pope nursed in the
Third World the Catholicism that was languishing in
the First, where traditional bastions like France and
Ireland are lapsing into apostasy.
Many reasons — paedophilia charges that have
discredited the clergy in several centres, rigid views
on divorce, abortion, contraception, homosexuality and
female ordination, inroads by boisterous
Pentecostalism and the appeal of Liberation Theology —
are advanced for this decline. But no individual cause
is more important than the growing indifference to
religion in the West which explains only sparse
scatterings of grey heads in so many European pews.
As John Paul II sought other fields to sow, Bharatiya
Janata Party zealots — it takes one to know another,
as they say — accused him of proselytizing during his
1986 visit to India. It was a facile charge, for
conversion is a priest’s job. A leopard might as well
be blamed for its spots. It was in Africa that he
blazed a trail, freeing Catholics from the
straitjacket of Latin so that they could worship with
song and dance, clapping and drums. With this
absorption of tribal mores, Africa’s Catholic
population soared from 9 to 50 per cent and stands
today at 150 million. Signal of what may lie ahead,
visiting African priests keep alive churches in France
that would otherwise be altogether deserted.
Brazil, with 75 per cent of its 180 million people
professing Catholicism, is another focus. In fact,
two-thirds of the world’s Catholics are in developing
countries, represented in the highest echelon by some
18 Asian cardinals, 17 from Latin America and 10
Africans. John Paul II recognized the logic of numbers
by being relentlessly on the move, making 104 trips to
129 countries, shaking hands with more than 1,500
heads of state or government, and covering more than
half a million miles. He also understood that the
medium is the message, that the pope has to be
photogenic, inspiring and accessible. “If it doesn’t
happen on television, it doesn’t happen,” he said
famously. His “popemobile”, which may have inspired
Lal Krishna Advani’s rath, guaranteed instant
publicity for his global recruiting missions.
Believers alone can determine the spiritual impact of
his 26-year reign. But the spiritual and temporal
overlapped as some accused him of ruling 1.1 billion
Catholics with an iron hand, easing out liberal
prelates and dashing hopes aroused by the Second
Vatican Council. He is said to have reversed the
legacy of both Pope John XIII who wanted to “throw
open the windows of the church” and Pope John Paul I
who congratulated the parents of the world’s first
test-tube baby. The ban on using condoms may have
condoned the spread of AIDS.
Ironically, conservatism finds an echo in parts of the
Third World where converts welcome papal activism in
liquidating communism and the Soviet bloc and take a
more lenient view of scandals over money or sex in
theological institutions. Indifferent to Pope Pius
XII’s equivocal attitude to the Holocaust, they are
more concerned about whether another European will
feel as deeply for the underprivileged as John Paul II
did. Only someone from the lands he held so dear may
be best qualified to carry out his secular work. No
one mentions colour, but a historic break with 2,000
years of orthodoxy would dramatically end another
white monopoly.
The end of history means that the Vatican’s political
battlefield has shrunk to China. The next pope might,
of course, follow Bush’s lead and embrace the cause of
democracy and the war on terror. Meanwhile, the main
focus must return to religion, which is dying in the
West. Not the most crusty Eurocentric elector can
ignore that a Third World nomination might, therefore,
save a hallowed First World institution. If not this
time, then when the next vacancy occurs.
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"[M]y ministry is that of servus servorum Dei."
--Pope John Paul II (Ut Unum Sint, no. 88)
"And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock
I will build my church, and the powers of death
shall not prevail against it."
--Matthew 16:18
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