The Bishop's Weekly Column from the Parish Bulletin

OUR LADY OF FATIMA

CATHOLIC CHURCH

On the Death of the Pope

April 3rd 2005

In 1963 after the death of Pope John XXIII the Jesuit theologian John Courtney Murray wrote as follows:

"The Pope is dead—long live the Pope! The ancient cry of grief and gladness has multiple meaning. (…) The office of the papacy is the one and only public office that is permanent in history; its occupants are destined to permanent presence in history. No Pope simply makes his private passage through death to his eternal personal reward, as all men must. Every Pope must also make, as few men do, a passage into history, not to become a figure of the past, but to remain a force in the ongoing present, an active participant in the church's permanent presence in the historical process."

America June 15, 1963

As I write these words in the early hours of Friday morning (April 1st 2005) after the news that John Paul II is in "grave condition" and senior Vatican officials are saying privately that his life is "ebbing away" the time-honored expression mentioned above is much with me: "The Pope is dead-long live the Pope!" By the time you will read these words dear friends, John Paul II will have passed from this world, then these words will be all the more poignant for us all.

"The Pope is dead-long live the Pope!" is an expression that points to the permanency of the institution of the papacy. Ever since the words of Our Lord Himself:

"And I say to thee: That thou art Peter; and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. And I will give to thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven. And whatsoever thou shalt bind upon earth, it shall be bound also in heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth, it shall be loosed also in heaven. (Mt. 16:18 & 19)

Catholics have always known that the office of the papacy endures and since this office is the very foundation of our Church, so the Church herself endures. At the First Vatican Council, the permanency of the Primacy of the Papacy was affirmed as a dogma of faith in the following terms:

[Canon]. If anyone then says that it is not from the institution of Christ the Lord Himself, or by divine right that the blessed Peter has perpetual successors in the primacy over the universal Church, or that the Roman Pontiff is not the successor of blessed Peter in the same primacy, let him be anathema. [Denz 1825] (My emphasis).

Since the Church endures a double duty for Catholics is now suggested by the expression: "The Pope is dead-long live the Pope!" – a duty to pray for the repose of the soul of the leader who has left us, and especially to pray for the one whom, in God’s providence, will now be called to lead Christ’s Church.

A few months ago we printed a letter from Alfons Cardinal Stickler in the parish bulletin, Prefect Emeritus of the Vatican libraries, which he penned in 2004 in which he admitted that the reforms of the Second Vatican Council

"opened the way too much for those who, perhaps without consciously willing it, would allow, as our pope Paul VI said, "the smoke of Satan" to enter the Church. The results of the reform are judged by many today to be devastating."

Clearly, then, with churches closing, falling Mass attendance, denials of doctrines a crisis is upon us. The death of a Pope is a time for us all to pray for relief, for strength, for clear leadership that will take us away from this path.

For years Paul VI lamented the divisions and destruction within the Church but seemed powerless to check the tides of change that surged through the Church in the 1970s. In many of his speeches he would correctly identify the problems but took no action. In a memorable visit to the Vatican in 1976, Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre reminded the Pope that "You need say only one word to the bishops and everything will return to order and at that moment we shall have no more problems. Things will return to order."

With the accession of John Paul II in 1978, since he came from a country where the Catholic Faith had remained very strong under Communist persecution, many traditionalists had reason to hope that action would be taken to combat the forces of revolution within the Church. Indeed in the first decade of his pontificate John Paul II had numerous clashes with rebellious theologians around the world, but the continued attachment to the Council despite the admissions by many senior Cardinals of the problems the Council had caused within the Church has allowed the problems to persist.

Since the Church is founded upon Peter, then, this crisis within the Church can only be solved by clear and firm leadership from Peter. This is why in the words: "Long live the Pope !" Traditional Catholics should hear the call to pray that the man upon whom the mantle shall now fall be the "Rock" that Our Lord called Peter 2000 years ago.

It is not possible for us at such close proximity to the events of the last 26 years of the Church to assess the legacy of John Paul II. There are some who have affixed the term "Great" to his name like Pope St Gregory the Great, or Pope St. Leo the Great. Depend upon it the name "John Paul II" proves to be a lightning rod within the Church. There are liberals who attack him for he is too conservative on issues like abortion and euthanasia, and then there are ultra-conservatives who see him as too liberal and decry his ecumenical gatherings at Assisi in 1986 for example. The man who has guided the Catholic Church for most of my life, in the final analysis, proves, to me at least, to be very enigmatic.

Raised in Catholic Poland, and losing his mother at an early age, the young Karol Wojtyla formed a deep attachment to another Mother, Our Blessed Lady. I have no reason but to believe his devotion to Mary is very deep. Indeed in his early life, he could not pass a church without entering and praying before her shrine. This love of Mary he brought with him to Rome, indeed his papal coat of arms bears a large "M" in the lower right quadrant and his episcopal motto: "Totus Tuus" ("I am all thine") speaks of his consecration to her. St. Louis de Montfort, the great Marian apostle himself, says in his Treatise on True Devotion to Mary that a true devotee of Mary will never be eternally lost. Let us ask Mary, his Blessed Mother, our Blessed Mother, that she would intercede for him as he has passed to eternity even as we pray that she would help us at our end:

"Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now, and the hour of our death. Amen."

Most Reverend Terence R. Fulham