I don’t know about you, but I take great Catholic pride whenever I see or hear our Pope in the news. I got goose bumps watching him on television on his first visit to the U.S. back in 1978. I remember standing paralyzed in front of the TV, tears welling in my eyes, and a lump growing in my throat. It still happens to me today. Something about the man....
Of course he has been in the news quite a lot lately with his historic trip to the Holy Land. I heard him the other day on the radio. Even in a 5 second, slurred speech, media soundbyte something comes across that gives me great pause. A holy man, true, but....How to describe it? The man exudes something that stops even the un-believer.
Certainly, John Paul II is the Vicar of Christ, the Successor of Peter, the Holy Father. But those are titles other great and holy men have bore. To me John Paul II is a “concentrated presence”, a laser in the midst of satanic murk, a man in whom a spiritual fire consumes and rages. I see him as one of the “burnt men” of whom Thomas Merton speaks in the last line of “The Seven Storey Mountain”.
I submit that if ever there was a sign from Heaven in our time that the Holy Spirit is indeed with His Church, then it was the election of this man to the Chair of Peter. We must not forget that in 1978 the Cold War had escalated to earth-destroying heights. And as Frank Shakespeare, former U.S. Ambassador to the Vatican, said, “If the cardinals had chosen another saintly, holy, triple-Ph.D. Italian cardinal to be Pope, we’d have been ripe for the ash can.”
Poor John Paul I. Talk about being in the wrong place at the wrong time. His death, only 33 days after his election by a seemingly uncertain, status-quo college of cardinals, and the subsequent election of this obscure Polish Slav, the first non-Italian in several centuries, the first Pole ever, and the first from a Communist country, was, for me, akin to the bolt of lightning that knocked Paul off his horse. Actually, I like Frank Shakespeare’s analogy of the Holy Spirit taking a two-by-four to the collective head of the cardinals.
It’s only my personal historical speculation, but I have long believed that the election of John Paul II to the seat of the greatest spiritual power on earth and the election of Ronald Reagan to the head of the greatest physical power on earth two years later was no accident. Reagan, like John Paul II was passionate about bringing to an end 75 years of the “greatest tyranny in history” (Shakespeare’s words).
Together, this second rate Hollywood actor and obscure Polish cleric would set forces in motion that would generate the final implosion of the “greatest tyranny in history” within a decade. An accident of history? A miracle? To me it seemed that the Holy Spirit had had His fill of murderous and atheistic Communism and divinely positioned these two men on the same side of the historical board for the final checkmate.
And checkmate it was. The great “Evil Empire”, forged in inestimable amounts of innocent blood by some of the worst tyrants in history, simply rolled over and died with hardly a whimper. No one foresaw it (except...Our Lady of Fatima).
(By the way, this is no vindication of the United States which through the legalization of the torture and murder of pre-born and mostly-born babies, has probably destroyed just as many or more lives since Roe vs. Wade than the all the gulags and Stalinist purges ever did. The Holy Spirit will one day have His fill of this too.)
But the Pope’s role in the “gotterdamerung” of the “Stalinist Death Star” will prove but child’s play when compared by history to the ultimate Holy War for which I believe this son of Peter was raised to the Papal Chair. The Kruschevs and Breshnevs and all the “chevs” will be but sandlot bullies when compared to the enemies Satan is even now raising up within the very Church over which John Paul II presides.
I believe the Trojan horse is even now within Her walls and its smiling enemies walk already among us. I believe that such a sly and insidious intrusion, not the first to be sure, has hastened the Pope’s bent frame and occasioned the papal urgings to pray, pray, pray.
There is already much drooling by certain factions within the Church over who will be the next Pope, as if to say “if we could only get rid of this guy”. Ah, such stupidness. We have the promise of Jesus Himself that not even the gates of Hell will prevail. So I have news for those guys: “Remember the two-by-four...and wait till you find out what it feels like to get hit by a concrete “Pole”!”
Tim Rohr
April 2, 2000