Audience of One

The Pope

As possibly everyone in the Western world knows, Pope John Paul II died recently. I could write about the logic behind a secular society dedicating so many hours of TV and so many pages of newspaper to him in such a positive light, but I won’t. I could write about how the theology behind the institute of Pope is fundamentally flawed (and interestingly discussion of this is forbidden for members of the Roman Catholic church), but I won’t. The thing that prompted me to write this entry was an article in the Independent on Monday entitled “In the Roman sun, the cult of John Paul II is born”. More specifically, two quotes from within that article.

…the back of a visiting card … (left) at a makeshift shrine … says “Saint John Paul II, intercede for the health of your son”.

I’ll look at this quote first. Three things strike me. Firstly, he has already been referred to as a saint. Perhaps not surprising, and not even dodgy theologically at first glance. Go a bit further though and you realise that this is, of course, the special title “Saint” that has emerged from Roman Catholic tradition, and is nothing like the original meaning of the word. Instead of the New Testament meaning of “Christian believer”, it implies something special – canonisation. This is linked to the second thing I noticed, that the writer asks the dead Pope to “intercede”. The Catholic doctrine is that dead people can be canonised by the Pope, which enables them to intercede for Catholics in heaven. I don’t know where to start with the theological fallacies here, but I’m trying to stear clear of too much theological criticism and stick to the Pope. The Bible teaches of intercession by those other than Jesus – they were called priests, the Jews had them and they were superceded by the New Covenant that came along with Jesus. Jesus became the high priest who interceded for humanity in their relationship with the Father. Saying anyone else can do so is blasphemous. (Still, that is the official Catholic doctrine.)

So, the writer has assumed canonification for the dead Pope, and as a result asks him to intercede for him. We’re giving a little too much power to the Pope here, aren’t we? That’s effectively saying he’s as good as Jesus….

The third thing I noticed is the use of the word “son”. Again, this is standard Catholic doctrine, but it reinforces the point – if the writer is the Pope’s “son” then the Pope must be his “father”. With the obvious exception of a biological father, the Bible tells us not to call anyone father (Matthew 23:9) in the context of not elevating yourself higher than others. Seems familiar in this context. It reinforces the previous points. It’s almost like they’re replacing God with the Pope.

And on that note, here’s the second quote:

“Papa” – Italian for Pope – reads one message, “you have suffered much for our sins. We pray to you, we wish you to rest in peace”. It’s as if faith in Jesus and God, in these secular times, is a challenge too far – while faith in that amazing old man … comes easy.

Perceptive, isn’t it? Not what you’d expect from one of the most anti-Christian newspapers. Two points. According to this writer, the Pope has “suffered much for our sins”. Well, no he hasn’t. That was Jesus – or does his crucifixion mean nothing to you? This writer is also praying to the Pope. It’s back to the concept of intercession again, but in the context it’s even more startling – can the writer really be so theologically confused as to think the Pope is Jesus? It appears that way. The only other explanation would be to assign the Pope to the same level as Jesus, though not as a replacement.

The death of the Pope has brought rather a lot of serious theological issues to the fore. Granted, not every Catholic would agree with either of the two quotes above. By definition though, every Catholic should accept papal authority – and what the Catholic Church teaches comes with that papal authority. In other words, to be a Catholic you should believe that dead people, once canonised, can intercede with God for us; that we can pray to dead people so canonised; that the Pope is infallible; that contraception is immoral; that purgatory exists; that we can earn our salvation via deeds; that Mary was perfect and many other things. (So I said I wasn’t going to go into Catholic theology. Well, I changed my mind.) Okay, so some of the wrong theology has come to the foreground through writers such as these. Even if the majority of Catholics disagree with the writers I have quoted, they aren’t let off the hook as there’s still reams of bad theology left. I will probably go into some of it another time, but I’ll end now with this. The Independent article was entitled “the cult of John Paul II is born”. Most Catholics would say that they are Christians. With the theology and the reactions to the Pope already mentioned and the Catholic beliefs about the priesthood, how can we say that the Roman Catholic church was not a cult before this pope?

Matthew @ 12:40, April 6, 2005 to Discussions | Comments (5)