RBWords - Volume 27 - Number 4: April 2014
Something to Think About
In the 1955 movie, “The Private War of Major Benson,” starring Charlton Heston and Julie Adams, Heston plays a tough army officer who has been hired to run the Junior ROTC program at a Catholic military academy staffed by nuns. At the beginning of the movie, the superior [played by Julie Adams] is escorting the Major around the main building and they stop in front of a large portrait of a rather forbidding-looking cleric. The Major asks who that is and the Mother Superior piously responds, “Oh that is our founder! He was recently canonized.” The Major responds, “Oh, I’m so sorry!” The “canonization” of Popes John XXIII and John Paul II has given many people something to think about!
Some see the event as a triumph either for Vatican II [Pope John XXIII] and others a triumph for “Reform of the Reform” [Pope John Paul II]. Others see it as a diplomatic coup by Pope Francis to send a message that there’s room in the church for both those interpretations and more! Some Vatican spokespersons have piously claimed that it is not about the pontificates but about the pontiffs and their personal holiness! Forgive me if I find that a bit too much to accept! Pope John Paul II canonized more saints than any other pope in history and often did it to send a message to others about a particular cause or movement! Both these popes made history and, like it or not, symbolize very different visions of the church. Others prefer to leave both to history and focus instead on the remarkable man who has the job now, Francis!
The excitement and tumult that followed the Second Vatican Council began as I entered religious life in 1964. [The Council ended in 1965.] As years went by, the election of John Paul II seemed to be a “retreat” from the real benefits of the council, but I discovered in my campus ministry that most students were not particularly aware of the council, didn’t know what the liturgy was once like, and were very attracted to the muscular charism of John Paul II. He was a kind of Vatican III for them. Benedict XVI seemed more of the same in a less charismatic form! Who knows what Francis will do? Maybe we’ll have to wait for his canonization someday! IT’S SOMETHING TO THINK ABOUT
It Has Been Said
r.b.words – volume 27 – number 4 – april 2014
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IT HAS BEEN SAID:
“When we gather in Chapters to plan the missions of our Provinces, then we must always ask whether the institutions that we maintain serve the mission of the Order Do they give us a voice in the debates of today? St. Dominic sent the friars to the new universities because it was there that the important issues of the time were being argued over. Where would he send us today?”
From: “Freedom and Responsibility: Towards a Spirituality of Government” by Timothy Radcliffe, O.P., Master of the Order of Friars Preachers 1992-2001.