Posted on 01/11/2004 12:42:37 AM PST by Destro
OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR
Why the Next Pope Needs to Be Italian
By ROBERTO PAZZI
Published: January 11, 2004
FERRARA, Italy--For years Vatican specialists in Italy have, in delineating the uncertain features of John Paul II's successor, been fueled by a silent question: will the new pope be Italian? Why, one might ask, should Italy hope for an Italian pope, given the almost universal praise for the pontificate of Karol Wojtyla?
The origins of this question go back in time and deserve examination. I was watching on that unforgettable Roman evening of Oct. 16, 1978, when, on the state television network, RAI, which was still broadcasting in black and white, the newly elected pope appeared: a foreigner, Polish. I confess that, once I'd got over my surprise, like many of my fellow Italians I felt a certain bitterness, because my country had lost its last universal sign of power. Although today Romano Prodi, as president of the European Commission, in part makes up for that loss, it's not the same. The archetype from which the pope descends is that of the imperial Caesar, while Mr. Prodi's charge covers a merely political body that is still being defined and is, besides, limited to Europe.
Not since 1522, when a Dutch theologian was elected Pope Adrian VI, had a non-Italian attained the role of Vicar of Christ. Adrian VI died in 1523. He had time, however, to order the destruction of Michelangelo's marvelous nudes in the Sistine Chapel: he was scandalized by them, impelled by the same anti-Renaissance moral fervor of the German Luther, who couldn't understand the typically Latin cult of beauty. Fortunately, there were some at the Vatican who knew how to obstruct Pope Adrian's order. Thus for 500 years, while for the most part Italy wasn't even a unified state — unlike France, Spain, England, Russia — that unique supreme Christian authority, purely Italian, nevertheless continued to represent the universality descended from the emperors.
It is not paradoxical to say that in Italy the monarchy has continued to exist despite the expulsion of the royal House of Savoy, because the monarchical authority of the pontiff has a charisma and a national power of attraction that no president of the republic has ever been able to claim. This is why on that October night in 1978, when Karol Wojtyla introduced himself to the world, speaking a stilted Italian, and stumbling into a delightful grammatical error while he was asking to be corrected, the inheritance of the Roman Empire seemed to us to have been lost.
This was all happening, meanwhile, against the background of a collective trauma: the death, in his sleep — and disturbing hypotheses were advanced — of the Italian Albino Luciani, Pope John Paul I, just 34 days after his election. Perhaps it is only now, with the lengthy pontificate of John Paul II, that we can grasp the meaning of the meteorlike passage of John Paul I — possibly the last Italian pope — who appeared just long enough to give himself a name and then to name his successor, as if to compensate Italy for its loss. He invented that double name, which unites the wisdom of John the Evangelist with the charity of St. Paul.
While retaining one's respect and admiration for the great pope who is John Paul II, one might still ask what it means to have had a Polish bishop of Rome for 25 years. Beyond the many authoritative observations of the Vatican specialists (reporters like Marco Politi of La Repubblica; periodicals like Limes; scholars like Alberto Milloni, to name just a few), it is not only an obvious matter of national pride that makes many of us Italians dream of the election of a fellow countryman. One often gets the distinct impression that the bishop of Rome believes he is still sitting in Krakow and not in the Vatican, and that the weight of the anguished history of Poland lies heavy on his shoulders.
Indeed, his visceral anti-Communism is that of the Pole who has felt his country oppressed by the Soviets. That feeling has often informed choices made by John Paul that might have had a different outcome, ones perhaps more appropriate to Catholics in the parts of the world where they took effect. How otherwise to explain the harsh condemnations of the new catechisms of Central and South America, where the Catholic Church was allied with the Marxists against the abuses of dictatorships and capitalist oligarchies? Valuable for us all is the example of Oscar Romero, the archbishop of San Salvador, who, though he was assassinated like a martyr in his church because he defended the oppressed of his country, was viewed with distrust by the Vatican.
Perhaps, as someone who has devoted two novels to the Vatican, I may be allowed to invent a "what if" scenario. "What if," then, the new pope were to be Italian? We would surely have in bioethical and sexual matters a more modern and less conservative attitude, more sympathetic to the sufferings of the multitudes in Africa who are scourged by AIDS. To these victims John Paul has obstinately refused contraception, for reasons of principle that risk becoming complicity in what could truly be a mass extermination. It was this refusal in particular that influenced the Nobel judges in Oslo in denying him the peace prize.
But the pope has revealed the same mindset in condemning common-law and gay couples, under the influence of a family model that is more Polish than Italian, and in which sexuality has a single purpose: procreation. The inflexibility of John Paul II, the Pole who forbade abortions for Catholic nuns raped by Bosnian Muslims, recalls the severe Adrian VI, the Dutchman who wanted to destroy Michelangelo's nudes in the Sistine chapel.
To be bishop of Rome — that is, of the world — is not like being bishop of Krakow. We Italians are an ancient and tested bridge between past and future, and supported by 2,000 years of consummate political tradition. The popes knew how to bring into the melting pot of Christianity first Roman civilization, then barbarian cultures, and finally the many conquerors who came to Italy and were seduced by the imperial myth of the Rome of the emperors. Italy is also a secular school of political and religious mediation, run by the Catholic Church.
Even in modern times the highest Italian political class, the one most capable of a European breadth, the Christian Democrats of Alcide De Gasperi and Aldo Moro, was reared by the Catholic Church. And this church has been a master of mediation between historical contingency and the eternal — the child, often, of Machiavelli as well as of the Gospel.
John Paul II's rigidity seems alien to this more farsighted and elastic Italian tradition. In general, at least in the past 100 years, an Italian pope, precisely because he has been trained in a proud political school like the Vatican, guarantees a more nuanced distance from politics and a warmer pastoral mission. These are qualities that the pope who died after only 34 days, the Italian John Paul I, appeared to possess: he who left the memory of himself in his name and in the suggestive declaration that "God is the Father but is also the Mother."
Roberto Pazzi is author, most recently, of "Conclave," a novel. This article was translated by Ann McGarrell from the Italian.
The Orthodox warned you against placing the faith under the dictate of one fallible man rather than adhere to the councils of bishops.
No orthodox patriarch would have ever even thought to declare "God is the Father but is also the Mother."
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Pazzi has lost sight of the fact that the Vatican is an independent state. It is NOT another Italian province!
The word pazzi is Italian for crazy. Hey, if the name fits!
So he wants the Pope to be Italian in the hopes him being a liberal?
Definitely yes. But the absolute arrogance and egotism that the next Pope needs to be Italian is too too much. Why didn't he just honestly say that Slavs aren't as cultured and worldly as Italians and be done with it.
A liberal that favors gay marriages as Pope? Why bother having a Pope- or tradition or even the bible- just read the National Enquirer and do your own thing. If it feels good than it's good.
I am offended by you being offended by such language.
First of all, why are you giving any credence whatsoever to a liberal writing for the liberal New York Times? The article itself is preposterous.
Second, if you think that Pope JP I was a tree hugging liberal you are mistaken. An honest analysis of his life and writings reveal a moderate ideology and a man of honest and integrity.
Anyone who is familiar with mystical theology and certain Biblical texts would understand his statement. In Genesis we are told that man and woman were created in God's image. In the Books of Wisdom and Sirach, Wisdom from God is assigned a feminine nature. It is completely logical to deduce that God has qualities of both male and female. Many mystics have written things which caused scandal to the unenlightened. Once one gets to that level of Divine union it is difficult to relate or be understood on the ordinary level.
You aren't familiar with the USCCB are you?
I'm just plain offended, on general principles.
Not really, but I think USC was ahead of them at the quarter.
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