Peter Espeut
I THINK the whole Roman Catholic world was surprised at the level of interest shown in the death and burial of our late Holy Father, Pope John Paul II. The almost non-stop media coverage and the unprecedented throngs around the city on the Vatican Hill were not expected, and the large number of heads of state who showed up at the funeral including people like Fidel Castro suggests that at the beginning of this 21st century, the global influence of our church and her leaders is not waning.
I have been away from Jamaica during all these events, and wondered how all this would play out in Jamaica, still a most anti-Catholic country. Before and during the Pope's visit to Jamaica I remember the anti-Pope rhetoric, and the jamming/interference with the radio transmission during the airport arrival ceremony. I did not feel that the heavy Pope/Catholic news would play out well in Jamaica.
Martin Henry's column of last week (April 14, 2005) reveals all the suspicion born of the conspiracy theories of which novels are made. In it he states that the Pope holds "the office of supreme authority in things spiritual and things temporal, in matters heavenly, matters earthly and matters in the lower realms". Later he writes of "an infallible Church and Pontiff". Of course there is a heavy dose of sarcasm in Martin's words (I hope he doesn't really believe what he is writing), but I feel that I have to make a comment, lest someone has taken him seriously.
The Roman Catholic Church does not teach that the Pope is "supreme authority in things spiritual and things temporal, in matters heavenly, matters earthly and matters in the lower realms".
RARE STATEMENTS
Our church says that when the pope teaches about matters of faith and morals under certain very circumscribed conditions (referred to as being ex-cathedra statements), the content of that teaching is infallible. Such statements are very rare.
Pope John Paul II never made any infallible (ex-cathedra) statements in his long Pontificate; neither did John Paul I, Paul VI or John XXIII. In fact, only two infallible (ex cathedra) statements have ever been made in the history of the Roman Catholic Church. Those who attack the Church try to make it look as if she claims that every statement the Pope makes is infallible, which is rubbish. None of the encyclicals of the Pope, nor the declarations of the Second Vatican Council are infallible statements, and those who seek to give the impression that the Roman Catholic Church is making those claims, is making mischief.
In last week's column, Martin Henry makes much of President Bush kneeling during the funeral Mass for the Pope. The intrigue deepens when Martin quotes the novelist Malachi Martin (from his best-seller The Keys of this Blood), saying that "a no holds barred competition involving every human being on earth is on about who will establish the first one-world system of government that has ever existed in the society of nations."
Very high stakes. Martin (Henry, not Malachi) goes on: "With the USSR/Russia safely dead as a major player and Bush on his knees at the Vatican, calculated collaboration rather than competition will be more the order of business". So now we have it! The Roman Catholic Church is seeking to establish "the first one-world system of government that has ever existed in the society of nations". Martin (Henry, not Malachi) advances as evidence the fact that Pope Pius IX attacked certain principles in the U.S. Constitution, (the fact??) that Pius XII precipitated both World War I and World War II to further the political ends of the Vatican and the Roman Catholic Church, and the fact that John Paul II brought down the Soviet Union!
THEORY BLOWN AWAY
Martin (Henry, not Malachi) goes on to predict that therefore, "An Anglophone pope with a multi-faith background, a pope with vast diplomatic skills, experience and connections, a pope who was shaped by John Paul the Great, a pope very much like the pope of Malachi Martin's informed imagination may well be selected at conclave as the ideal". Sadly Martin (Henry, not Malachi) seems to have a difficulty separating reality from fiction (or what he prefers to call "informed imagination"). The election yesterday of Cardinal Ratzinger (hardly of Anglophone ancestry) as our new Holy Father has already blown away his theory.
Come, Martin! Let us debate truth and doctrine even fundamentalism. Conspiracy theories do not become you.
Peter Espeut is a sociologist and a Roman Catholic deacon.
