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James K. Baxter Complete Prose Volume 2

Pope John

Pope John

‘A sad saint is a bad saint’ – I forget who said that, but I think it was a Pope in the last century. It may have meant something slightly different in the Latin. But I think it can be applied to Pope John. If he was a saint, he certainly was not a sad saint.

Was he a saint at all? – or just a good, friendly old man who happened to become Pope at a time when his particular talents were useful to the Church and the world at large? Does it matter whether he was or not? I think it does matter. Though we are always glad to have good, friendly old men among us, the saints are more than just other people – they are also trail-blazers, examples, portents, special helpers of the human race.

As to whether John was or was not a saint – I remember how a girl wrote to me about the time of his death – either just before or just after. She was not a Catholic. And she said in her letter – ‘Today I swept out my room. I did it for John . . .’. That means, I think, that she did it out of love – because she loved Pope John, she did something – something quite unimportant, yet perhaps of real symbolic importance to her – which otherwise she might not have done. She wanted to make some kind of funeral offering. Love begets love. Pope John exhibited the love of Christ to others – and I think it was the degree oflove that belongs to those whom we call saints – the good lovers, the sancti, the holy ones – and because of this love, he made it possible for many who were feeling spiritually impotent and chilled by life, to love first him and then to love other people. This is the dialogue of sanctity.

Even now, when I think of John, my heart is lighter for the thought. Some of it can be explained in psychological terms. People need a good father figure. When this good, kindly, wise old man became Pope – and showed so plainly that he had come not to condemn but to encourage, not to repel but to embrace – then all kinds of people, with all kinds of belief, or no belief at all – they (we) felt lighter-hearted, as if they had heard that the sun was still in the sky, that somewhere a good father still existed – and so it was in a way easy for John to be a God-bearer to others, because unconsciously they identified him with the good father, which is also the positive image of God Himself. But could he have been a successful God-bearer, if the goodness had not been real goodness, if the benignity had been artificial, a kind of stage costume worn for the good of others, but not really belonging to him? I think not. Any element of falseness would have repelled us. Any shadow page 674 of artificiality, of stageyness, would have made us turn away. But mercifully it was not so. We had been given an actual saint. A saint with a voice that reverberated in tune with our times.

Some within the Church were inclined to say – Archbishop Heenan said quite sincerely – ‘Ah, yes, John is a good man. He is the old style of simple Catholic: a garden-of-the-soul Catholic. But he lacks intellectuality. He lacks originality. He lacks grip . . .’. And some in turn rise up in anger to defend John, who needs no defence, because his own defence was simplicitas, the deepest and most difficult of all the virtues, because one has to become a wise child to obtain it. In that controversy this new book by Muriel Trevor can shed a great deal of light.

I had read another book by her about St Philip Neri, and had liked it up to a point, but not entirely – it seemed rather pedestrian, not anecdotal enough for my perhaps too lazy taste – too much reference to contemporary movements and not quite enough about the man. But I am able to praise her book about Pope John without reservation – for it is a true and sensitive account of the way in which he became what he finally was, to our great benefit, and to the glory of the God who made him. I cannot give a synopsis of that intricate narrative. But I can at least mention one or two important factors.

There is the matter of modernism. When John was at the seminary, the crisis of modernism was at its height. Pope Pius the Tenth had cracked down on theological speculation and any element of scepticism in the study of the Bible. Many liberal scholars within the Church found that they were suddenly robbed of the power of free speech, or at least of free publication, and worse, that they had to become something that their Protestant brothers might regard as fundamentalist. It was a hard time for the intellectuals. There was something of a witch-hunt. No doubt some writings were dangerous to the Faith; but there was an element of hysteria in the condemnations.

Where did John – not then John, but the young Angelo Roncalli, in training to be a priest – where did he stand? As a loyal son of the Church he opposed modernism. Yet his realistic and moderate mind soon discovered and recognised the hysteria of the attackers of modernism. There are passages in this biography which indicate it quite clearly. And perhaps it prepared him to be a good mediator between conservative and radical groups in the Church when eventually he became Pope.

Then there is the matter of his trials in Bulgaria, where he knew he could do many things, but was prevented not so much by outward circumstances as by the Vatican hierarchy which he was pledged to obey. He suffered greatly. In his Journal he uses what is for him very strong language about the situation – ‘I will be patient and good to a heroic degree, even if I am to be crushed . . .’. There is no pain like the pain of the man who sees the good he could do, and is prevented from doing it by the very order he most respects and loves. page 675 It is the special cross of the philanthropist. And Angelo Roncalli hung on it for many years.

It would be easy to say – ‘Well, Roncalli was a good man – but the Church was not good – he might have been better off without the Church . . .’. But this argument ignores that both hammer and anvil came from the Church: the hammer of a limited and suspicious hierarchy – they thought he might be a modernist in disguise – and the anvil of a generous obedience that did not count the cost. If he had blinded his intellect, he would not have become wise; if he had followed his own will in the matter, he would have been just another rebel shadow-boxing in the corner. But he did neither; and he became a saint who had the power to see and include the views and aspirations of all kinds of men – even the conservatives, who had hurt him, but whom he had learnt to love. Let us say – ‘He loved his enemies; and then they were enemies no longer, but human beings whom he could reach and help . . .’. Thus he became the Good Pope – the Pope of peace – not for the Church only, but for the whole world. That, I think, is the theme of this book. I recommend it to anyone who wants a close and lucid account of the life of Good Pope John – the village boy, Angelo Roncalli, who became a priest – and who successfully exterminated in his own heart all ambition to be more than a good priest – and who became an accepted father to many millions of people. In his life we may find possible solutions to some of the problems of our own lives.

1968? (556)