Peter And John Paul

[poliphilo]

I'm in the middle of reading Roger Lewis's enormous Life And Death Of Peter Sellers- which runs to over 1,000 pages. Sellers was always peculiar, but career success drove him over the edge into full blown paranoid schizophrenia. Oddly enough, his madness never affected his art- and he was as capable of giving wonderfully sensitive performances at the end of his career as he was at the beginning (though the films he graced with those amazing performances were frequently wrecked by his wayward behaviour.)

A little money, a little power- and Sellers turned into the Emperor Nero. As I've been reading this 20th century morality tale I've been thinking about the Pope. John Paul II was an immeasurably stronger character than poor Peter, but what did it do to him to be elevated to a position where he had no equals, where there was God, then himself as the unique mouthpiece of God and then, very far below him, everybody else?

Did he have doubts? Did he ever wonder whether he might be wrong in the opinions he laid down as law? And did he have any friends? Peter didn't; it's very hard for the powerful to have friends; people are afraid of them. So was there a secret room in the Vatican where John Paul could slob around in a tee-shirt with his shoes kicked off, drinking beer with his cronies, watching TV? Were there people around him who called him Karol? People who were allowed to tease and twit and criticise?

Seems unlikely, doesn't it?

And if he never came off duty, never allowed himself to be vulnerable, how inhuman he must have become!

Comments

[karenkay.livejournal.com]

One of the things that struck me about all the post-death reportage about JPII is how easily he wore his humanity. I don't remember seeing much of his sense of humor myself, but it seems that the most unlikely people have a JPII story or two, and they will crack you up.

I don't know who his friends were, but I believe that he had them.

As for doubts, all of his private papers are going to be burned. What do you think?

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

"All his private papers are going to be burned". That's sad. More than sad, it's an act of cultural and historical vandalism- but I suppose it's what he wanted.

[karenkay.livejournal.com]

I had the same reaction you did (act of vandalism), but while I believe JPII was truly human, the office requires infallibility (in matters of faith and morals).

If JPII had doubts, he probably wrote about them, and I can see that he wouldn't want his thoughts to be miscontrued, or taken as the word of the church when it was just him exploring.

I loved the stories that people told about him, from the stories about him giving hints about their catechism questions to the kids he was confirming, to the story about him saying to Bryant Gumbel, who had brought him something from Warsaw, "You don't look like you're from Warsaw." Not politically correct, but funny.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I think that whole infallibility thing is/was a horrendous mistake.

And a mistake of fairly recent origin. Unless I'm mis-remembering what I was taught in theological college, the notion that the Pope speaking ex cathedra is infallible was only accorded dogmatic status during the reign of the extremely reactionary Pius IX- who was Pope from 1846-78.

[karenkay.livejournal.com]

I agree with you on the first point--I didn't look it up, but I think you're right on the 2nd point, too, that it's recent.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I went and checked.

The dogma of papal infallibility was promulgated in 1870.

[four-thorns.livejournal.com]

he did have a will, though- or some sort of paper that he wrote annual entries in (during lent, i believe) that spans all his years as pope- in the news here, they mentioned some of what was in it, the most significant apparently being that in 2000 (as his illness progessed) he considered retiring. also, only two people are mentioned by name in the paper: his personal secretary and/or best friend, stanislaw whatnot, and someone else that i can't recall at the moment.

also, regarding kissing the pope's ring-- i find that an utterly disgusting expectation as well. there was a priest at my church that refused to sit in the celebrant's chair when he led mass. instead, he sat in a regular chair at the side of the altar. i respected him a great deal for that. i wish we had a pope who had the humility to refuse some of the trappings of his office.