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Pope John's Anniversary
by Michael Sean Winters on Nov. 04, 2009
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Printer-friendly versionSend to friendPDF versionToday, the feast of St. Charles Borromeo, marks a very special, and very telling, anniversary for it was on this feast day in 1958 that Angelo Roncalli was crowned Pope John XXIII. Pope John remains the best loved Pope of recent times, even if his memory has been somewhat overshadowed by the long and undeniably significant pontificate of Pope John Paul II.
The coronation itself, and the date he chose, are instructive. Pope John, like Pope Benedict, had a certain love for the Baroque ceremonies of the Church. He loved the pomp and circumstance. Those who see him as a champion of reform in the Church are correct to do so, but he was nobody’s liberal and those who cast him in such a light misunderstand the man and his sense of the Church.
St. Charles Borromeo had a special place in Pope John’s heart. As a young church historian, Roncalli had edited the acta from Borromeo’s diocesan visitations. He admired the way this reforming archbishop had implemented the decrees of the Council of Trent and he no doubt saw in him a model for the kind of reform he hoped would issue from the Second Vatican Council. As Pope Benedict has reminded us, a hermeneutic of reform entails points of both continuity and discontinuity, and if Pope John were here to comment, I think he would agree.
What Pope John understood, better than some of his acolytes and some of his detractors, is that the traditions of the Church can be powerfully modern, not in the Enlightenment, Cartesian sense of the term, but in the sense that the Gospel is no more the personal property of the 16th century than it is of the 1950s. He called the Council to bring the Church up to date, but he looked back to Borromeo to see what that process looks like. On this day, we can do worse than to do the same.
Michael Sean Winters seems to
Michael Sean Winters seems to aim increasingly for shock value, and his posts are so garbled that I suspect they are hurriedly posted indeed ("he no doubt some in him a model..." What?) Was John XXIII a 21st century political liberal as the term is bandied about today? Of course not. But the biography of John XXIII shows he was far more in "discontinuity" than "continuity" with the Church of his life and ministry, circa Pius X-Pius XII. To suggest otherwise is simply to revise history to suit the current restorationism.
While Mr. Winters revels here
While Mr. Winters revels here in stressing the liturgical, Gerelyn Hollingsworth's current Saint of the Day offering here quotes Editae Saepe of Saint Pius X upon this great saint, my patron, which words I here excerpt:
From 31: "Like the Divine Master 'he went about doing good and healing.' He spared no efforts in suppressing and uprooting the abuses he met everywhere either because of ignorance or neglect of the laws. He checked the rampant perversion of ideas and corruption of morals by founding schools for the children and colleges for youth. After seeing their early beginnings in Rome, he promoted the Marian societies. He founded orphanages for the fatherless, shelters for girls in danger, widows, mendicants, and men and women made destitute by sickness or old age. He opened institutions to protect the poor against tyrannical masters, usurers, and the enslavement of children."
To protect the poor against usurers? No bail-out of the banks there, but protection for the hopelessly indebted.
All forms of social working here, without mention here of his heroically and personally going to ease the suffering of plague-victims.
Sounds like free and accessible health care. Sounds like living the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
Several bloggers here profess irately that the Second Vatican Council failed by turning our religious sisters into social workers. Here we see that Pope John XXIII was merely emulating the comprehensive and heroic social work of Saint Charles Borromeo for the poor and abandoned, and for children enslaved to labor.
Nevertheless this former political speech writer, Mr. Winters, most judiciously phrases this carefully: "Pope John remains the best loved Pope of recent times, even if his memory has been somewhat overshadowed by the long and undeniably significant pontificate of Pope John Paul II."
"Undeniably significant." What precise and undeniable significance does this phrase bear? Overshadowed? A shadow does indeed fall upon us from that "long . . . pontificate."
Former political speechwriter
Former political speechwriter Mr. Winters here writes: "He loved the pomp and circumstance." and that he was nobody's "liberal" whatever that means.
This is to overlook the enormous and loving and egalitarian heart of this great and good man
This is to overlook Pacem in Terris.
frère charles du désert OSB OBLAT (Congrégation de Subiaco)
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