Posted on 08/06/2002 5:10:58 PM PDT by nickcarraway
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.
"Out of Step" with the Contemporary World
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.
A Rebuke to the Modern Age
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.
An Inexhaustible Treasure of Grace
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.
No wonder kids love him.
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.
Catholicguy: Can you at least accept that papal infallibility, as it has been defined dogmatically by Vatican I and upheld by Vatican II, does not extend to all papal decisions? That not all of the fruits of the Council have been sweet?
See what ya miss in your recondite Communion? :)
Inspired metaphor. They definitely are in the dark...
I agree that many things have been sour, bitter and rotten. The whole question of Infallibility is misunderstood by most Catholics and I am one of those like the Ward (Englishman, I forget his name) gentleman who desired to begin every day with a new Papal Bull on his desk :). Maybe a whole thread devoted to Infallibility would be an excellent idea. Not that it would be controversial or anything.
Your point was that the Church only cracks down on dissident "traditionalists" and not dissident "liberals". The excommunications of these seven women, in a matter of days from their offense, belies your argument.
In both cases, people defied the pope. In both cases, people were excommunicated.
In your eyes, these silly women did a bad thing, and Archbishop Lefebvre did a good thing. But that is only your point of view.
In some ways, what Archbishop Lefebvre did was worse.
The silly play-bishop (the gentleman who performed the "ordinations", from what I have read, is not a real Catholic bishop, obedient, disobedient, or otherwise) who performed the silly play-ordinations was not abusing a sacred trust (the power to ordain) because he had no sacred trust to abuse. These folks were guily of nothing more than bad play-acting.
Archbishop Lefebvre, on the other hand, took the sacred trust given to him (the ability to consecrate bishops), and defied the Vicar of Christ in abusing that authority, your arguments that he was preserving the Catholic tradition notwithstanding. Remember that no matter how much the late archbishop may or may not have believed that he was justified to do what he did, the Supreme Pontiff of the Catholic Church did not share that opinion. And it is the view of the Supreme Pontiff that will determine whether or not one's act of disobedience results in excommunication.
To reiterate, the Church acted swiftly and harshly against these anti-Catholic dissidents of the left, just as she has against anti-Catholic dissidents of the right.
sitetest
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