Bland Benedict XVI vs. Superstar John Paul II?

The Times recently carried this headline:

Crowds shrink for ‘bland’ Benedict, the Pope who only ever says no

It's not clear why "bland" is in quotes as it only appears in the headline. Who said it? Why is it in quotes? Regardless, the rest of the news piece screed is no better:

THE crowds turning out for Pope Benedict XVI’s preachings and blessings at the Vatican are dwindling fast as the dour pontiff pays the price for his lack of charisma and visibility compared with John Paul II, his showman predecessor.

Yet another use of the old "Benedict vs. John Paul" routine—aka, "Good Pope vs. Bad Pope"—which should not be confused with a reasonable comparison of the men and their distinctive traits. After all, there is nothing wrong with finding reasons for the change in numbers (David Gibson offers a few over on the Beliefnet blog). And, frankly, those who pointed to the huge numbers of visitors during Benedict's first year shouldn't be so defensive about the numbers dropping. They should, I think, be more annoyed (yes, as I am) about the way those numbers are used to wrongfully criticize, or even malign, the Holy Father.

You see, the mythology of a warm, huggable John Paul II vs. the mean, rigid Benedict XVI is based in part in the notion that everyone—including the Big Media and dissenting theologians and rabid anti-Catholics—simply loved and adored Pope John Paul II.

The truth is a bit more tricky and interesting, and helps make some sense of The Times' snarky criticism. Namely, the media was (especially early on) enamored with John Paul II's personality and his outgoing approach, which certainly differed from that of Pope Paul VI, who was hardly (if ever) seen during the last years of his pontificate. For example, the October 15, 1979, issue of TIME magazine (not to be confused with The Times), dedicated to John Paul's first American visit, carried the headline: "John Paul, Superstar!" The lead article stated that the young pope was "the kind of incandescent leader that the world so hungers for" and was "a man for all seasons, all situations, all faiths, a beguilingly modest superstar of the church..." But although John Paul II's outgoing, energetic personality couldn't be denied, TIME noted that "the warmth inspired by the Pope's presence poses a conundrum about the man and his views." It also pointed out that John Paul could be difficult, as he was "a firmly conservative occupant of the Chair of St. Peter. One indication of his uncompromising views: the austere Pope Paul VI got 32,357 requests from priests to be released from their vows and granted all but 1,033 of them; the warmly human John Paul II has not released one."

What follows is quite fascinating, especially with almost 30 years of hindsight (by the way, I was a ten-year-old anti-Catholic fundamentalist when John Paul II came to the U.S. in 1979):

That John Paul nonetheless won the hearts—if not yet the minds—of many Americans is partly a tribute to the uniqueness of his office, one that gives him the most imposing pulpit in the world, and very largely a result of his simple humanity. His spontaneous delight in baby kissing, in bantering with crowds, is needed proof that the head of even an enormous and tradition-bound institution can lead with affection and empathy.

There may also be a deeper reason for the reaction to the Pope: in the U.S., as in other wealthy nations, many people, vaguely uneasy about the materialism of their lives, yearn in varying degrees for higher values and are even amenable to some fatherly chiding. John Paul sensed that mood and appealed to it in every one of his U.S. addresses.

This is a Pontiff who does not pontificate, but neither does he budge from any of his stands. In Philadelphia he asserted that he would not permit the ordination of women or married men, saying it is not "traditional." In Chicago, speaking to American bishops, he dramatically emphasized papal condemnation of birth control, divorce, abortion, extramarital sex and homosexual sex.

So, there is no doubt that John Paul II and Benedict XVI are different men, with distinctive personalities, and with contrasting approaches. But, do they agree on the issues listed above? Was John Paul II any less staunch in his opposition to birth control, divorce, abortion, extramarital sex and homosexual sex? No, of course not. But what the piece in The Times does is (either purposefully or not) confuses personality and belief. The subjective (Is he likeable?) and the objective (What is he teaching?) are not distinguished from one another:

Before his election as leader of 1 billion Catholics, Joseph Ratzinger, the German cardinal and theologian, had been branded “God’s rottweiler” and “the Panzerkardinal” because of his work as an enforcer of doctrine. His personality was contrasted with John Paul, known as “the Grand Communicator” because of his media-friendly skills. Visitors to the Vatican often pay tribute to John Paul. They shuffle past his tomb in the crypt of St Peter’s Basilica and postcards bearing his image still sell well.

Here's an interesting theoretical question: what if Joseph Ratzinger had been elected pope in 1978, and Karol Wojtyla had been selected to be the head of the CDF? How might perceptions be different? How might a much younger Benedict have approached being pope thirty years ago? Would he, for example, travelled far more? As has been pointed out many times, one's title and position has a huge effect on how people perceive you. John Paul II, TIME magazine wrote, "asserted that the church has a special mission to 'guard and transmit intact the deposit of Christian doctrine,' thus reaffirming the thought that Christianity is a body of fixed beliefs rather than a faith that ought to be adapted to modern circumstances."

It wasn't a popular message, but many people (not all, certainly) were able to either ignore it or downplay it because of John Paul II's gregarious, fun-loving public personality. Benedict is not dour, nor is he bland—anyone who actually pays attention to what he says and writes knows he possesses both a powerful intellect and a keen sense of dry humor. But he is certainly less outgoing than John Paul II; he is described as shy by those who know him personally; he is very warm and engaging but isn't given to the sort of dramatic public expressions sometimes used by his predecessor.

In short, because the two popes have such different personalities, critics and enemies must go after them in different ways, even though the points of contention are identical. Those who disliked the teachings of John Paul II attacked and criticized him—but not in quite the same way that they criticize (or even mock) Benedict XVI. They don't like the papacy and the teachings of the Catholic Church—especially teachings about sexuality and related moral issues—so act like schoolyard punks, searching for the most emotive, least reflective means of getting at him:

Vito Mancuso, a theologian critical of Benedict, linked the smaller crowds to the worldwide fall in priestly vocations and decline in church attendance. He advised Benedict, 81, to stop “saying always and only ‘no’ ”. The church needed to be more humble and doubtful about its rulings on the role of women, sexuality and bioethics, he said.

In the latest “no”, the Vatican on New Year’s Day stopped automatically adopting Italian laws because of potential “antiCatholic legislation” involving euthanasia and gay marriage. In an address to Vatican staff, Benedict said homosexuality threatened humanity as much as did rainforest destruction.

“Benedict’s papacy has in the long run a polarising impact inside the Catholic world. In one camp there are those who are enthusiastic about Ratzinger’s government; in the other camp are those who aren’t attracted by it,” said Marco Politi, a Vatican watcher.

(Mancuso, if you don't know, is not just a "theological critic of Benedict," but a theologian who has sought to dismiss or undermine nearly every basic Christian doctrine, including sin, the Incarnation, the Resurrection, and the need for salvation.)

Sure, Benedict's language is, I think it can be fairly said, sometimes more direct and blunt than that used by John Paul II. But it's not as though Evangelium vitae was a huge hit in all quarters when it came out in March 1995. Quite the contrary. And it's hardly a secret that John Paul II was a big fan of marriage involving one man and one woman, monogamous, and for life, as he made clear back in 1981:

Living in such a world, under the pressures coming above all from the mass media, the faithful do not always remain immune from the obscuring of certain fundamental values, nor set themselves up as the critical conscience of family culture and as active agents in the building of an authentic family humanism.

Among the more troubling signs of this phenomenon, the Synod Fathers stressed the following, in particular: the spread of divorce and of recourse to a new union, even on the part of the faithful; the acceptance of purely civil marriage in contradiction to the vocation of the baptized to "be married in the Lord", the celebration of the marriage sacrament without living faith, but for other motives; the rejection of the moral norms that guide and promote the human and Christian exercise of sexuality in marriage. ...

Consequently, sexuality, by means of which man and woman give themselves to one another through the acts which are proper and exclusive to spouses, is by no means something purely biological, but concerns the innermost being of the human person as such. It is realized in a truly human way only if it is an integral part of the love by which a man and a woman commit themselves totally to one another until death. The total physical self-giving would be a lie if it were not the sign and fruit of a total personal self-giving, in which the whole person, including the temporal dimension, is present: if the person were to withhold something or reserve the possibility of deciding otherwise in the future, by this very fact he or she would not be giving totally.

This totality which is required by conjugal love also corresponds to the demands of responsible fertility. This fertility is directed to the generation of a human being, and so by its nature it surpasses the purely biological order and involves a whole series of personal values. For the harmonious growth of these values a persevering and unified contribution by both parents is necessary.

The only "place" in which this self-giving in its whole truth is made possible is marriage, the covenant of conjugal love freely and consciously chosen, whereby man and woman accept the intimate community of life and love willed by God Himself(23) which only in this light manifests its true meaning. The institution of marriage is not an undue interference by society or authority, nor the extrinsic imposition of a form. Rather it is an interior requirement of the covenant of conjugal love which is publicly affirmed as unique and exclusive, in order to live in complete fidelity to the plan of God, the Creator. A person's freedom, far from being restricted by this fidelity, is secured against every form of subjectivism or relativism and is made a sharer in creative Wisdom. ...

In the context of a culture which seriously distorts or entirely misinterprets the true meaning of human sexuality, because it separates it from its essential reference to the person, the Church more urgently feels how irreplaceable is her mission of presenting sexuality as a value and task of the whole person, created male and female in the image of God. (Familiaris Consortio, 7, 11, 32)

No doubt John Paul II, if he uttered those words today, would be labeled "homophobic" After all, upon his death in April 2005, the Gay and Lesbian Humanist Association said "he would go down in gay history as one of the most implacable homophobes of all time." Perhaps they meant he was a beguilingly modest homophobic superstar. Regardless, however different in personality, both John Paul and Benedict seek to do one thing: proclaim that "[t]he Redeemer of man, Jesus Christ, is the centre of the universe and of history," as John Paul II wrote at the very start of his first encyclical. In the recent words of his successor: "And so, the Pope is not the star around which these events take place. He is totally and only the Vicar [of Christ]. He points to the Other who is among us."

This is not about cult of personality, but about the conondrum of Christ and His question: "Who do you say I am?" And that, it seems to me, is a timeless and timely question.

• Pope John Paul II | Books and DVDs
• Pope Benedict XVI | Ignatius Insight author page

Comments

[Saskia]

My love for Benedict is deep and abiding. I give prayers of thanks daily for such a wonderful pope. He is an intellectual powerhouse with a very accessible way of expressing himself. A while back there were some very touching photos of him closely facing, almost touching noses, with a young black woman. The look of pure love and joy on each of their faces was remarkable and is etched in my mind. Benedict is pure holiness, the Vicar of Christ.

[V]

I think a much more simple explanation is that people are more inclined to hold on to their money fearing an economic downturn and are thus not travelling to Rome.

[Carl Olson]

I think a much more simple explanation is that people are more inclined to hold on to their money fearing an economic downturn and are thus not travelling to Rome.

That's quite likely part of the downturn. My interest, again, was in the reaction in certain circles, as though the drop in numbers indicated the death of Catholicism.

[Ed Peters]

Right Carl. When it comes to Catholicism, "bad news", no matter how innocuous, is exploited by the MSM, as good news, no matter how stupendous, is ignored.

[David Deavel]

It's not just that an economic downturn was looming: plane tickets to Italy have been sky-high for quite a while.

[joanne]

"The church needed to be more humble and doubtful about its rulings on the role of women, sexuality and bioethics, he said."
Humble? Humility requires obedience to Truth and acknowledgment of simple reality. It is clear that neither John Paul II nor Pope Benedict lacked humility. They lacked guile, though, which might not be said about this "theologian" whose words sound too much like "All this I will give you if you will bow down and worship me."

[Dan]

I share Saskia's sentiments. I believe that this "dour pontiff" is a saint. His love, courage and holiness come through very strongly in his books.

[Steve]

There's a great line in Boswell's Johnson that comes to mind when looking at these two great popes. I don't recall the poet Johnson quoted (it was said Johnson knew more books than any man alive), but it had to do with the death of a good king and the ascent to the throne of an equally worthy man: "The sun set, but no night followed."

John Paul the Great was that inspiring, charismatic officer who led from the front. Pope Benedict is the noncommissioned officer who checks your canteen, offers you a word of encouragement, and reminds you of what's important. We are deeply blessed in Peter's successors.

[Dr John James]

I recall a series of meditations that John Paul gave when asked to preach a retreat for Paul VI and subsequently published under the title 'Sign of Contradiction'.
It seems to me that to be Pope and to strive to be a holy Pope is, inevitably, to be such a sign.
I remember thinking, when Benedict was elected, that this was a tough job for a 78 year old man. God knows best.
Dominus conservet eum et vivificet eum et beatum faciat eum in terra, et non tradat eum in animam inimicorum eius.

[Louis Luca]

I loved John Paul II because he was John Paul II. I love Benedict XVI
because he is Benedict XVI. The Holy Spirit has certainly been
batting a Thousand with His selections of Holy Fathers. I am tired of 'catholics' trying to change Jesus' church. We are people of His church, not the church itself.

[Louis Luca]

I love John Paul II because he is John Paul II. I love Benedict XVI
because he is Benedict XVI. The Holy Spirit is batting a Thousand
with His selections of Holy Fathers. I am tired of the 'catholics'
who are trying to make Jesus' Church into the people's church.
I thank the memories of my parents who had me baptized in the Catholic Church. Now that I am an adult I am more grateful.