John Paul II — The Face of Love

One picture told it all: At Toronto's airport, the world's eye caught little ten-year-old Georgia Rae Giddings as she emotionally burst into tears after Pope John Paul II embraced her. For the next hour, she recalled the moment repeatedly before crowds of journalists. "When I stood in front of the Pope, I just got dizzier and dizzier," she said.

She's not the only one. Many of the million or so attending the World Youth Day celebrations reported the same phenomenon.

Most people would be astonished to hear that the Holy Father might be the most beloved person in the world among young people. After all, we're always told the Catholic Church's message is irrelevant, outmoded and - worst of all - square. Cynics charge it has nothing meaningful to say to today's fun-loving, hedonistic youth.

According to the press, polls repeatedly show the Pope's relentless opposition to contraception, abortion, homosexuality, pornography, pre-marital sex, easy divorce and other fruits of the sexual revolution is anathema to the modern and fashionable. (It goes without saying that no one knows the mind of the modern and fashionable like the media.) The Holy Father, they conclude, is out of step with the contemporary world.

Okay, then how do you explain nearly a million kids at the Pope's World Youth Day? And where else would the gathering of that many youngsters be termed a "disappointing" turnout?

Perhaps it's because young people's love for the Holy Father is a direct rebuke to the modern age, and thus to its primary megaphone, the modern journalist. No institution has been a more powerful force for secularism, materialism or sexual freedom than the media.

Most reporters today are alienated from religion, looking at faith as little more than an ancient superstition. They don't understand it, so they don't cover it - unless a "religious" story involving scandal or human weakness pops up. That they comprehend.

In listening to World Youth Day participants speak, their deep affection for the Holy Father is clear. The same words keep popping up over and over to describe him - "radiance," "hero" "world's role model," "leader of youth," "our rock," "following in St. Peter's footsteps," and "the person closest to Jesus."

Thus, reasons for the Pope's youthful legions are quite simple: When young people see the weary, lined, rugged, leathern visage of the Holy Father, they see the face of love. Not love the way Hollywood loves them - as walking wallets, rear ends in movie theaters, pairs of ears to listen to the latest CDs - but real affection, from someone who sees them rightfully as precious individuals with eternal souls. And when the Vicar of Christ's deep, aged, honeyed voice is intoned, it seems they're hearing the very Words of God.

This, then, is the Papal appeal to the young: faith, as the steadfast leader of the Church, the eternal Bride of Christ; hope, offering refuge for the restless heart; and love, from a elderly man walking in persona Christi. Of these, as St. Paul says, the greatest is love.

This is what Georgia Rae Giddings reacted to. After telling the Pope she loved him, he tenderly stroked her head and whispered gently that he loved her too, the perfect personification of Cardinal Newman's great motto of "Heart Speaketh to Heart." It's hard to imagine any other world leader reacting this way to the presence of an unexpected young stranger - so fearless, so compassionate, so Christlike.

Catholicism may be known as the Old Faith, it's the Young Faith too, with a remarkable, time-tested ability to outlive every fad that mocks it as passe. Each Catholic generation discovers anew the richness and power of their ancient religion, finding within it an inexhaustible treasure of grace and beauty, boundless as the sea. Once that discovery is made, as a million young pilgrims recently learned, no worldly interest can ever again quite satisfy.

Dear Bud McDuell,

"Are all statements made by an Ecumenical Council infallible, even when the Supreme Pontiff presiding over the Council says that the documents did not intend to teach infallible doctrine?"

All teaching of an approved Ecumenical Council is without error.

Your question concerning infallibility is confused. When you say that Pope John XXIII and Pope Paul VI did not intend to teach infallible doctrine, you seem to imply that then they intended to teach fallible doctrine. LOL.

But rather, what is meant, is that they are not infallibly defining anything that was not already the Church's teaching. Thus, no specific exercise of infallibility is invoked because the teachings of the Ecumenical Council are in harmony with all that has gone before, properly understood.

Thus, it isn't that the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council taught was is not true. That is impossible. It is that it is in complete harmony with what went before, and involved no development of doctrine.

sitetest

Dear Bud McDuell,

"Is the above quote from a papal brief an infallible statement?"

Yes, it is. The approval of the work of an Ecumenical Council by the Supreme Pontiff is an act of infallibility.

It is binding in conscience on all faithful Catholics, and any Catholics who reject it reject the authority of Peter, and to some degree, whether wittingly or unwittingly, reject the One Who gave that authority.

sitetest

Dear allend and others,

The sad thing is that we are reduced to arguing as to whether an Ecumenical Council can teach what is not true. It's disheartening that folks who consider themselves devout, knowledgeable Catholics could think such a thing.

It ought to lead us to more prayer and penance.

sitetest

all efforts contrary to these things by whoever or whatever authority, knowingly or in ignorance, be invalid and worthless from now on.

Of course, Lefebvre not only signed the documents, (he later said he didn't, he rapidly began to agitate against them and, not long afterwards, condemned them. Let me repeat that. Bishop Lefebvre signed the documents of an Ecumenical Councl and later denied signing them and still later attacked as heretical the very documents he himself signed. And he and his ilk are going to "save" the Church?

Only if the Pope gives an order that is harmful to the Church. No superior has the right to ask a subordinate to do evil. The Pope wasn't simply ordering him not to consecrate new bishops. Implied was the desire to destroy the Econe, to assure it would not survive following the death of the Archbishop. He understood Rome's game. It had tried in other ways to destroy it, none validly.

Take a look at today's headline at Diocese Report.com: Witch Is Hired to Teach at Jesuit College. Above it is a picture of an attractive woman dressed in black. So there you have it. Wicca practicioners are being hired by Jesuits--while Rome fires orthodox theologians of the FSSP. How many decades do you think it will take before it gets around to tapping the Jesuits on the wrist? It took only weeks for the Vatican to clamp down on the FSSP because they wanted to stick with the '62 missal, as they had been promised they might do by the Indult.

Dear Bud McDuell,

Could you provide a bit more context? I don't generally respond to whether or not I agree with statements that appear to be half-sentences ripped from much larger documents.

sitetest

Econe had been ordered closed long before. Lefebvre agreed the seminary would be opened on a six year expiremental basis. He had to make that agreement to get permission. Once the time of ecpirementation passed, he was asked to close it down. He refused, even though he had given his word.

He later did the same thing in his agreement with Rome. He signed his name then reneged immediately.

Same thing with Vatican Two. He signed the Documents, later said he didn't then spent the rest of his life denouncing as heretical the very documents he signed.

Yep, he is the only one that kept the Faith and his adepts shall be our salvation

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