Is 2010 the new 2000?

From Sandro Magister's most recent essay:

ROME, July 8, 2010 – The via dolorosa of the Church today stands in cruel contrast with the glorious triumph of the Jubilee of 2000, the apogee of John Paul II's pontificate.

And yet, as soon as one digs down into what that year of grace really was, one discovers that the Church of Benedict XVI is simply bringing about what it announced.

The Jubilee was a year of repentance and forgiveness. Of forgiveness given and received, for the many sins of the Church's children throughout history. On the first Sunday of Lent that year, March 12, pope Karol Wojtyla, before the eyes of the world, presided over an unprecedented penitential liturgy. Seven times, like the seven deadly sins, he confessed the wrongs committed by Christians century after century, and asked God's forgiveness for all of them. Extermination of heretics, persecutions of the Jews, wars of religion, humiliation of women . . .

The pope's anguished face, marked by illness, was the icon of this act of repentance. The world looked at him with respect. With smugness, too. Sometimes pressing the claim that the pope should have done much more.

And in effect, in the global media, this was the popular tune. John Paul II was right to humiliate himself for certain black pages of Christian history, but every time there was someone demanding that he beat his breast even more, and for something else. The list was never long enough. Reviewing all of the times that pope Wojtyla asked forgiveness for something, before and after the Jubilee of 2000, one finds that he did so for crusades, dictatorships, schisms, heresies, women, Jews, Galileo, wars of religion, Luther, Calvin, Native Americans, injustices, the Inquisition, fundamentalism, Islam, the mafia, racism, Rwanda, slavery. And there may be a few entries missing. But he certainly never asked publicly for forgiveness for the sexual abuse of children. Nor is there any record of anyone having stood up to rebuke him for this silence, much less to demand that the pope add pedophilia to the list.

It was only ten years ago. But this was the spirit of the times, inside and outside of the Church. A spirit little attentive to the scandal of the terribly young victims of abuse, despite the explosion in Austria of the Groër case, the accusations against the archbishop of Vienna that were never verified, in the United States of the Bernardin case, the false accusations against the archbishop of Chicago, who forgave his accuser, and everywhere of the Maciel case, involving the founder of the Legionaries of Christ, who was eventually proven guilty.

But there was one cardinal in Rome who could see into the distance, named Joseph Ratzinger.

<snip>

But forgiveness was not the only element that characterized the Jubilee of 2000. John Paul II wanted that holy year above all to restore vigor to the evangelization of the world.

And also here, once again, the pontificate of Benedict XVI is nothing other than the systematic implementation of that project.

Read the entire piece, which also contains an interview with Camillo Ruini, who was cardinal vicar for John Paul II in 2000.

Comments

[Randy]

I never knew John Paul apologized for so many things. I was not Catholic in 2000 so I didn't pay attention. It just makes Time magazine's cover all the more amazing. How could they think a pope could not say sorry when there are so many recent papal apologies covering so many topics?

[Brian J. Schuettler]

The unintended consequences of public apologies is exactly this scenario. Unless you address every single issue, someone somewhere is displeased. Also, I do not agree with this approach because people tend to confuse the physical Church, which makes mistakes, with the Mystical Body of Christ (THE CHURCH) which does not. Unfortunately, JP2, with good intentions, did a disservice by presenting pearls before swine, so to speak.