Passing of the Pope
I let my subacription to Catholicism lapse a few years back, so the death of the Pope is not of direct personal interest to me. It is big news in general because he was the Pope longer than any one else except Peter and Pius IX, and he is the leader of a Church claiming over one billion members. As the most well travelled Pope and one with a heroic secular background, he has had phenomenal celebrity appeal. His strict conservative application of Church doctrine has, however, caused many Catholics not always to agree with him.
The process of selecting a new Pope will be interesting, because of the secrecy of the process and the uncertainty of the outcome. John Paul II appointed so many Cardinals outside of Italy, so the former Italian lock on the Papacy may now be broken. Because there is a significant undercurrent to liberalize on some issues, the Cardinals may decide to elect an older Italian caretaker Pope, just to get a sense of what direction to take down the line, and then choose a Pope for that direction after the caretaker is finished. Last time they did that, in 1958, John XXIII took everyone by surprise by calling the Second Vatican Council. I don't expect anything so spectacular this time around.
What I found quite interesting was how the Pope died, especially in conjunction with all the furor in the US over how Terry Schiavo was dying. The Pope chose not to go to the Intensive Care Unit of the hospital, but rather to die at home in his apartment. In making that choice, the Pope was foregoing more extraordinary medical means of extending his life. By his example, the Pope showed that it is not wrong to forego extraordinary medical measures in general. However, the Church position on the Schiavo case, per the Pope, was that it is always wrong to deny food and hydration to a dying person, because they are not medical measures. But is it wrong for a person to make the choice not to eat and drink any more if the person knows they are ready to die? Many people in fact make that decision and stop eating and drinking as their failing health plays out the last few days of their lives. And what about making such a decision in advance of even being ill, such as by the widely recommended advance directive to physicians? Apparently, Church ethicists are not in agreement on these matters.
When a person is unable to make the decision about food and hydration, due to unconsciousness or other incapacity, the Schiavo case showed how the law in the US is capable of handling the situation by determining what the person would have wanted. Terry had not put her wishes in a written legal directive, which meant the law had to decide the case based on family testimony. We were all reminded by the legal commentators that we should execute such a document so we don't become the next Schiavo case. Did the Pope have such a written directive? What would the Pope have wanted if he had gone into a persistent vegetative state? Would he have wanted to be kept alive for 15 years or more with a feeding tube, or would he have wanted the tube withdrawn? His medical directive, if he had one, could provide valuable example for Catholics world wide, but so far as I know, if there is such a directive, the Vatican is not making it public. We do, however, have the guidance of the final conscious medical decision made by the Pope - to not make a trip to the ICU.
The process of selecting a new Pope will be interesting, because of the secrecy of the process and the uncertainty of the outcome. John Paul II appointed so many Cardinals outside of Italy, so the former Italian lock on the Papacy may now be broken. Because there is a significant undercurrent to liberalize on some issues, the Cardinals may decide to elect an older Italian caretaker Pope, just to get a sense of what direction to take down the line, and then choose a Pope for that direction after the caretaker is finished. Last time they did that, in 1958, John XXIII took everyone by surprise by calling the Second Vatican Council. I don't expect anything so spectacular this time around.
What I found quite interesting was how the Pope died, especially in conjunction with all the furor in the US over how Terry Schiavo was dying. The Pope chose not to go to the Intensive Care Unit of the hospital, but rather to die at home in his apartment. In making that choice, the Pope was foregoing more extraordinary medical means of extending his life. By his example, the Pope showed that it is not wrong to forego extraordinary medical measures in general. However, the Church position on the Schiavo case, per the Pope, was that it is always wrong to deny food and hydration to a dying person, because they are not medical measures. But is it wrong for a person to make the choice not to eat and drink any more if the person knows they are ready to die? Many people in fact make that decision and stop eating and drinking as their failing health plays out the last few days of their lives. And what about making such a decision in advance of even being ill, such as by the widely recommended advance directive to physicians? Apparently, Church ethicists are not in agreement on these matters.
When a person is unable to make the decision about food and hydration, due to unconsciousness or other incapacity, the Schiavo case showed how the law in the US is capable of handling the situation by determining what the person would have wanted. Terry had not put her wishes in a written legal directive, which meant the law had to decide the case based on family testimony. We were all reminded by the legal commentators that we should execute such a document so we don't become the next Schiavo case. Did the Pope have such a written directive? What would the Pope have wanted if he had gone into a persistent vegetative state? Would he have wanted to be kept alive for 15 years or more with a feeding tube, or would he have wanted the tube withdrawn? His medical directive, if he had one, could provide valuable example for Catholics world wide, but so far as I know, if there is such a directive, the Vatican is not making it public. We do, however, have the guidance of the final conscious medical decision made by the Pope - to not make a trip to the ICU.
posted by Tom Blake | 12:22 PM
3 Comments:
I have not been a practicing Catholic since Cardinal Spellman openly supported the Vietnam War in the early 60's. That was a long time ago. But I still wonder how a person representing the world's oldest Christian religion and the morality it esposues could so stridently support that immoral war. Using Spellman as a comparison, John Paul was a very holy man. I especially liked his support of the Polish solidarity movement. But his failure to deal with such a basic issue of morality as birth control leads me to conclude he was arrogant and intellectually lazy. During his reign the sexual controversy moved from the morality of birth control to the morality of abortion. He treated both as mortal sins, but most of his followers from the nothern hemisphere simply ignored his teachings on birth control, and some questioned his teachings on abortion.
The pomp surrounding the pope's death makes me aware of the power the papacy still has. The fact that the Catholic Church is growing fastest in the southern hemisphere where sexual beliefs are more "traditional" even while sexual practices are probably as wanton as any northern hemisphere culture means that the Church will remain as hypocritical as it has been throughout its history.
I have yearned for a real reform in the Church since John 23rd reigned. But it's not going to happen in my lifetime. All religions have become more conservative: Catholic, Protestant, and Muslim. I don't know about Jewish.
Of all the reforms I would like, I pray for only one, hoping that not being greedy will help. The biggest and most helpful change to the Catholic Church would come from allowing women to be priests.
John from Phoenix
Anna's friend Sarah wrote a thoughtful piece a month ago setting out her issues with the Pope, pointing out how far he has taken the Church away from Vatican II. The Pope has followed the practice of tyrants, ruling as he sees fit, without regard to any divergent viewpoint, and supported by hand-picked underlings who will unquestionably follow whatever he says. Such dictators can claim divine guidance, as the Pope and Bush have done, they can disregard religion as Saddam and Hitler did, or they can outlaw it as Communism does. The problem with the Catholic Church is not that it is a religion, but that the Papacy is a tyranical office.
In Catholic School we were continually reminded of Matthew 16:18, "Thou art Peter and upon this rock I will build my Church." We were repeatedly told that this meant that Peter would be the head of the Church and God would direct us through Peter, the first Pope, and his successors, and it is God's will that we obey the Pope, who speaks for God. Later we were told that not everything the Pope said was infallible - it had to be pronounced with all the appropriate trappings to rise to that status. As I recall the official list was somewhat short and a little esoteric, including such items as the Immaculate Conception.
How refreshing it would be to have another John XXIII become Pope and open the Church to the realities of this Millenium. But even if that did happen, it would only be a fleeting aberration within an institution which for 2000 years has claimed to be founded on tyranny.
I just punched the sentence from Matthew with quote marks into Google and got about 12,500 hits. Glancing at the first few results indicates people still have a lot of questions about the meaning of this scripture.
The link to Sarah's Pope issues is not correct. Try this link and if it does not get to her correct post, you may have to navigate back or forward in her Blog to find it. It was posted on March 7, 2005, and is worth navigating to find and read.
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