A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Conclave

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As I watched Pope Francis being presented to the faithful yesterday — and especially as I heard and read about him afterward — I was struck by certain similarities between him and former President Gerald Ford.

I suppose the most obvious similarity between the two is the fact that they probably would have been the last people anyone would have expected to see elevated to such heights. Certainly, Pope Francis, coming from the Western Hemisphere, was unexpected. Many people — myself included — felt it was likely the cardinals would choose a European. When it was announced that a decision had been made roughly 24 hours after the conclave began, I thought that was a sure sign that a European, perhaps an Italian, had been elected.

And, if you remember the Ford presidency, it was a surprise when he was picked by Richard Nixon to succeed Spiro Agnew as vice president. Even when Ford was installed as the No. 2 guy in the executive branch, most people probably didn't think he would become president. Personally, I figured Nixon would find some way to run out the clock on his second term, but the clock ran out on him instead, and Ford became president.

Primarily, my thoughts centered on the image of Francis as a man of the people who cooks his own meals and rides the bus to work. It reminded me of the days before Ford became president, when journalists were enamored by the fact that he habitually walked outside his home to retrieve the morning paper or that he would prepare his own late–night snacks (his favorite snack, D.C. reporters couldn't wait to report, was cottage cheese with ketchup on it).

Like Ford, Francis is — or at least wants to be — a regular guy.

According to Catherine Harmon of The Catholic World Report, "[Francis] rode the bus back from St. Peter's with the rest of the cardinals after having been elected pope."

The new pope apparently wants to retain the common touch — even if the folks with whom he rode the bus yesterday were not exactly common — but that is easier said than done.

Ford didn't retrieve his morning paper anymore after Nixon resigned — at least not while he was in the White House. I can't honestly say whether he continued to make his own midnight snacks or if he left it up to others — I'm pretty sure cottage cheese and ketchup was a new one on the White House cooks (anyone who was there at the time probably thought he'd seen it all).

I assume it will be hard for Pope Francis to remain the down–to–earth guy he apparently was before fate tapped him on the shoulder to be the leader of a church with 1.2 billion members worldwide. That was something of a problem for Ford, too, and he had been in the spotlight longer than Pope Francis.

He also had the misfortune of succeeding a president who was intensely secretive and paranoid, words that don't seem applicable to the man Francis is succeeding. Benedict XVI may not be everyone's favorite the way John Paul II seems to have been, but his personality was hardly like Nixon's. He did not resign in disgrace — quite the opposite.

When compared to Nixon, Ford came across as a breath of fresh air. The reaction of the faithful to the introduction of the new pope yesterday was nothing like the sense of absolute relief that swept across the United States when Nixon resigned.

That much was different.

But when Francis' first words to the faithful were an appeal for their prayers and support, it really reminded me a great deal of Ford when he said, in his first speech after taking the oath of office, that, rather than give an inaugural address to the nation, he just wanted to have "a little straight talk among friends."

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"I am acutely aware that you have not elected me as your president by your ballots," Ford said, "and so I ask you to confirm me as your president with your prayers."

When Ford left the White House just under 2½ years later, he had lost a fair amount of his initial good will when he pardoned Nixon. But he still managed to retain that image of the common man, a decent guy whom you liked even if you didn't agree with him.

Perhaps the same could be said of Pope Francis. Tonight, when I was having my weekly dinner with my father, I asked Dad what he thought of Francis. He said he liked the new pope's humility and the fact that he took the name of an humble saint. Dad liked that very much.

But he was not so enthusiastic about Francis' views. Dad taught religion and philosophy for many years, and he has always had a good sense of a religious leader's doctrine even if it wasn't readily apparent to others.

Perhaps he will be pleasantly surprised by Francis' words and deeds. Perhaps he will not be. That remains to be seen.

But I think it would be wise for Catholics not to place a burden of expectations that are too high on the new pope. Those who are expecting sweeping changes are probably expecting too much from a church that still announces the selection of its leader via smoke signals.

Change still comes slowly to the Catholic church.

It may have to be enough that he is the first pope from South America, the first Jesuit pope and the first pope to be called Francis.

But certainly it can't hurt for the bishop of Rome to be humble.

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The Bishop of Rome

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I am not Catholic.

I don't see anything wrong with Catholicism. Many of my friends are Catholic. I have attended Catholic services. I was even a pallbearer at a Catholic funeral once.

I say all that merely to establish the fact — beyond any doubt — that I have virtually no credibility when it comes to saying anything about the pope. None. Consider yourself warned. Take anything I say on this subject with the proverbial grain of salt.

Especially if you're Catholic.

See, on this matter, I feel a lot like Frasier Crane must have felt when he found himself at a Jewish shiva. One of the guests — well, several, actually, but I'm thinking of one in particular — observed, "You're not Jewish, are you?" when it was clear from his unfamiliarity with Jewish mourning customs that he was not.

Frasier replied, "Well, my ex–wife is Jewish, which means our son is half Jewish, which makes me — no, I'm not Jewish."

So I guess I'm sort of cutting to the chase by acknowledging up front that I am not Catholic.

I was raised in the Methodist church, but I suppose I have had more exposure in my life to a greater range of religious faiths than most people. My father was a religion and philosophy professor, just like his father before him, and, when I was a child, my family often attended religious services in other faiths. My father knew most of the religious leaders in the area, and we attended services at least once in every faith that was represented in central Arkansas in those days — regardless of the size of the congregation.

In spite of all that — or, perhaps, because of it — I am not especially religious today. I'm not really sure why that is so. Deep down, I think I believe that there is some sort of greater power, but my interpretation of God and the afterlife seems to be quite different from that of most people.

It is not my intention to persuade anyone that he or she is wrong about any spiritual matter since I don't know for certain what lies beyond. Never has been. Isn't now. And, while I cannot see into the future, my guess is it will continue to be that way.

But even if I have little or no credibility on religious issues, that doesn't stop me from having an opinion on Pope Benedict's decision to step down.

I thought it was a courageous decision — and yet another example of what a pope can teach us.

Thanks to the nearly three–decade papacy of John Paul II, there haven't been many popes in my lifetime. In fact, the upcoming conclave, in which the next pope will be chosen, will be only the fourth in my memory.

But it will be the first of its kind in the memories of all living people, no matter what their faiths may be.

The last time a pope resigned, William Shakespeare hadn't even been born. For 600 years, popes have left office only through death. In most families, you would have to go back a dozen generations — if not more — to find the ancestors who were living when a pope resigned.

But Benedict has shown Catholics and non–Catholics that it is all right — even preferable — for a pope to accept the fact that he is not infallible when it comes to the natural aging process, that while he may be seen as infallible when it comes to matters of faith, he is not immune to matters of the flesh. When that process interferes with a pope's ability to face the challenges confronting his church (which has more than 1 billion members worldwide), a wise pope needs to step aside and let someone else do the heavy lifting.

Seven years ago, when John Paul II died after a long, painful and extremely public physical deterioration, it was often said that he showed everyone — Catholic and non–Catholic alike — how to die with dignity. I felt at the time that there was much truth in that, but I also felt that he had forced his church to function without an effective leader while it waited for him to die.

I recall thinking — a year or two before he died, perhaps longer — that the Catholic church needed to have some sort of mechanism through which a pope whose physical or mental capabilities were in the inevitable decline of old age could step aside.

I didn't realize it was possible for a pope to resign. No pope had resigned since Gregory XII in the 15th century. I had always assumed that was part of the deal. When a man became pope, I thought, it was with the understanding that he could not become a pope emeritus.

But Benedict has shown that it is possible for a pope to become a pope emeritus — and put the interests of the church above his own.

It is a wise man who recognizes when it is time to go, to hand the torch to the next one in line. Benedict is to be commended for his selfless act.

As the papal conclave begins, I hope — for the sake of all my friends who are Catholic — that the cardinals will choose a pope with the vitality and the strength to lead his church into the challenges of the 21st century — and to deal with the unfinished, sometimes messy, business from the 20th century.

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The Beatification of John Paul II

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"The great danger for family life, in the midst of any society whose idols are pleasure, comfort and independence, lies in the fact that people close their hearts and become selfish."

John Paul II
(1920–2005)

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I'm not Catholic so I suppose today's beatification of the late John Paul II really shouldn't mean anything to me.

And, for the most part, I guess, it doesn't.

I was raised in a Protestant church. The only times I have attended a Catholic church were when I was someone's guest — or, 20 years ago this summer, when I was the pallbearer at the funeral for a friend.

Sainthood for John Paul — or anyone else — simply isn't a concern for me. I have my own idea of what I think makes a person a saint.

I always felt my mother was a saint although she isn't going to be recognized by anyone. Nevertheless, I still think she had all the qualities one looks for in a saint.

Anyway, go ahead, make John Paul a saint, urges Peggy Noonan, remembering the pope's triumphant return to Poland in 1979, less than a year after entering the papacy.

I don't think Noonan is Catholic — to be honest, I'm not sure, really, what her faith happens to be — and if she isn't, her opinion on the matter probably means no more than mine.

However, if she is a Catholic, Noonan shows how little she knows about the process — or, at least, the terminology involved. The church says it does not make anyone a saint. A higher power does that. Instead, the church recognizes that someone is a saint.

I do remember the occasion of which Noonan writes, and I agree with what she says. It was "[o]ne of the greatest moments in the history of faith," she writes, and it "was also one of the greatest moments in modern political history."

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And I remember when they gathered to say goodbye to John Paul a little more than six years ago. There was a growing movement at the time to put him on the fast track to sainthood ...

... Which, Reuters suggests now, may be a little too fast.

Actually, that doesn't really bother me, I guess, although I suppose I am sort of accustomed to the idea that those who are designated as saints are people who were dead before I was born.

Like, for example, the people in the Bible. I know that, if those people really lived, they were dead centuries before I came along. I have no image in my personal memory bank of any of those folks — the way I have for John Paul. He isn't just an historical figure to me the way he increasingly will become to others. I remember when he was flesh and blood.

I remember, too, when Ronald Reagan was flesh and blood. I didn't agree with him most of the time, either, yet he is treated like a saint by many now.

Today, also, those two men get most of the credit for the downfall of communism. I tend to think that many people played roles in that. John Paul and Reagan contributed to it, but I believe it was the combination of the resistance of ordinary people and the words of national and religious leaders over a period of several decades that, working together, brought down communism.

Reportedly, there are more than 10,000 saints, and my best guess would be that nearly all of them were before my time.

But there have been people who have lived during my lifetime whose works certainly qualify them for canonization — and the late pope is one of them.

I didn't agree with John Paul on everything, but I did respect him, and I have no problem if the Catholic church wants to recognize him as a saint.

During his lifetime and since his death, John Paul was and is symbolic of the reconciliation the church always seeks with those it deems to be spiritually adrift.

John Paul, the first Polish pope, believed he was drawn into the priesthood in part because of the events in Europe in the 1930s and 1940s, and his successor, Benedict XVI, the first German pope in more than four centuries, had been a member of the "Hitler Youth."

They came from opposite sides of the tracks, you might say.

(Benedict became a member of the Hitler Youth only because it was required by law, and neither he nor the members of his family advocated Hitler or nazism.)

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Thus, there is clearly a symbolic quality to the very act of this German pope presiding over the beatification of his predecessor, the Polish pope.

It signifies the reconciliation of the modern Catholic church with its uncomfortable history, notably the Reichskonkordat that the Vatican signed with Nazi Germany to ensure church rights.

So perhaps this is a good occasion to revisit the meaning of the word saint.

To be a saint is to be regarded as a holy person. Name your biblical passage, and the meaning comes down to the belief that Christ dwells in that person, here on earth and in the afterlife. I suppose that could be said of just about any Christian leader, but the belief that one is a saint is a conviction that that person is exceptional.

I don't know if John Paul was exceptional or not. But if he helped his church finally come to terms with its uneasy past, then that is saintly, in my book.

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Suffer the Children

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As I'm sure you knew, yesterday was Good Friday. It was also the fifth anniversary of the death of Pope John Paul II — and, by a quirk of history, it also happens to be a time when allegations of pedophilia on the part of a now–deceased American priest have been dogging the Vatican, largely because John Paul's successor, Pope Benedict XVI (who was born Joseph Ratzinger), did not act forcefully when the matter was brought to his attention as a cardinal.

I really regret that this casts such an ominous shadow on an anniversary that should serve as an opportunity to pause and reflect on the life and works of John Paul, but that's how history is sometimes.

And, while I would prefer to be writing about John Paul's positive contributions to the church and the world, it is more important, I think, to address the issue that plagues his church today — or, more to the point, the way that issue has been addressed recently by others.

That is easier said than done. There have been times when all sides have left me speechless — literally. Yesterday was one of those times. In fact, yesterday may have been the topper. So far. But stay tuned. This story definitely has legs.

It started with Peggy Noonan praising the Vatican for facing the scandal — mostly because the press compelled it to do so. She exonerated the pope in the process and lamented the "victims" — not just the children who were abused and carry the emotional scars (and who, in my opinion, were the real victims) but also the clergy (who get tarred with the same brush as the perpetrator) and the rank–and–file Catholics in the pews.

I think I'm a fair–minded person. I don't want to see anyone suffer because of the misdeeds of others. It was primarily for that reason that, when I was younger, I opposed the death penalty (I have modified my position since the development of the methodology for processing DNA evidence). When I was young, I wanted to avoid punishing the innocent. When DNA evidence is available, I'm not concerned about that now.

In the case facing the Catholic church today, the only ones who are truly innocent are those who were children when they were abused (to make things worse — if such a thing is possible — most, if not all, of them were handicapped).

I'm not Catholic, but I have friends who are, and I sympathize with them. I also sympathize with the priests and the nuns who strive to serve their parishioners' needs. Whenever a priest has been accused (rightly or wrongly) of this kind of thing, it seems to have a ripple effect, staining the reputations of good and decent Catholic clergy in the process.

So the clergy suffer and their congregations suffer, too. And that certainly isn't right. But I don't think they are "victims" — at least not to the same extent as those who suffered the abuse all those years ago.

Then, not long after reading Noonan's column, I read the latest from Rome.

According to Daniel Wakin and Rachel Donadio in the New York Times, a Good Friday service became something of a pro–Vatican rally when a senior Vatican priest "compared the world's outrage ... to the persecution of the Jews."

I'm not really sure what to make of the logic of that. I gather that the priest, like Noonan, sees Catholic clergy as victims, guilty by association. Thus, the innocent are being persecuted along with the guilty.

But, as I see it, that analogy falls apart. For it to work, isn't it necessary for at least one of the persecuted Jews to be guilty of something? Because, as I see it, the priest who was responsible for all this abuse clearly was guilty of something.

And what could any Jew have done to justify the murders of 6 million during World War II? Nothing, for, in fact, the Jews who were killed during that dark period in history were slain not because of anything they did but because of what they were. Individually, they may have been guilty of transgressions, as most mortals are, but those transgressions had nothing to do with the unspeakable tragedy that was — and continues to be — the Holocaust.

I have known a few survivors of the Holocaust in my life, and I have known some of their descendants. The pain they have lived with is beyond the comprehension of non–Jews. Their gaping wound is never allowed to heal because virtually any group that believes itself to be wronged in some way compares its suffering (nearly always without justification) to that time because it is the most notorious example that history provides.

Thus, the priest from the Vatican compares the Catholics to the Jews during the Holocaust, even though most Catholics have not suffered the pain that those who were abused suffered.

And right–wing leaders equate the imposition of health care reform on them to the pain that was imposed — not just on the Jews but on the world in general — by the Nazis.

But if there is a Holocaust–based comparison to be found, I don't think it calls for presenting the church as a victim. The more apt comparison, I believe, may be to the Germans who stood by and did nothing while truly terrible things were being done by others.

(It seems pointless, to me, to carry that analogy any farther, though. While it might be possible to prove that there were some Germans who genuinely knew nothing about what was being done — a suggestion that is patently ridiculous, given the long existence of the anti–Semitic Nuremberg Laws and the unchecked attack on Jewish property that was carried out on Kristallnacht ["Night of Broken Glass"] — that number would be relatively small, I'm sure. I'm equally certain that, since there are more than 1 billion Catholics in the world, most are sure to be ignorant of what happens in a single parish.

(On the other hand, though, for the comparison to be accurate, the designation would have to apply to knowledge of the charges of child sexual abuse that have originated around the globe, especially after the Holy See acknowledged last year that "in the last 50 years somewhere between 1.5% and 5% of the Catholic clergy has been involved in sexual abuse cases." That's between 1.5% and 5% of the "world's" Catholic clergy, not the clergy of any particular nation. Fewer Catholics could plausibly claim to be unaware of that.)

Actually, it seems to me that, if we are invited to compare the child sexual abuse scandal to something from history, it is the Watergate scandal, not the Holocaust, that makes the most sense. In fact, a Watergate–era phrase keeps popping into my head with some regularity now, the more I read and hear about this case — "Stonewall it."

I guess that's why I was both intrigued and amused by a post from one of my favorite bloggers, John McIntyre, a former newspaper editor who writes the You Don't Say blog. He suggested some things the Vatican could learn from the Nixon/Watergate experience.

One of his lessons for the Vatican was the futility of trying to cover up. "Cover–ups magnify and spread the initial crime," he writes. And he is correct.

It's either ironic or appropriate — or both — that he should make his observation a few days after the death of Gerald Ford's first press secretary, who was so incensed when Ford granted a pardon to Nixon that he resigned. His resignation was hailed — and rightfully so — as an act of conscience.

The Catholic church would benefit from having more of that sort of conscience — rather than wrapping itself in the cloak of the victim.

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