The Totalitarian Pope

By David Morris, AlterNet. Posted October 20, 2003.

Last week John Paul II celebrated the 25th anniversary of his pontificate to thunderous applause by many conservatives. The Weekly Standard's David Brooks argues in his new column in the New York Times that the Pope deserved the Nobel Peace Prize. The San Diego Union Tribune gushes that "John Paul II is one of the towering figures of the last century...no one questions the moral force of this pope."

Time magazine's assessment is far more measured and accurate. It describes John Paul II's time in office as an "extraordinary tenure." Extraordinary, to be sure, but certainly not virtuous. John Paul II took an institution just beginning to throw off the chains of centuries of insularity and autocracy and to be plain speaking, reshaped it into what can only be described as a totalitarian institution.

A little history may be in order. In 1958 Pope John XXIII assumed the papacy. Within months he called for an "aggiornamiento," a "bringing up to date" of the church. Church services began to be conducted in native languages. Priests and nuns and laity were given more participation and authority. "Let the layman not imagine that his pastors are always experts," the Vatican declared. "Rather, enlightened by Christian wisdom let the layman take on his own distintive role."

Pope John convened a Vatican Council that ended centuries of what he called "holy isolation" by exhorting the church to participate in humanity's struggle for peace and justice. The Vatican called this new church the "People of God."

Pope John XXIII died shortly after Vatican II convened. But the reforms he nurtured took root and flowered under his successor. Journalist Gwynne Dyer recently recalled his impressions after visiting Catholic churches around the world in 1978 in preparation for a televised documentary. "In southern Africa, Catholics were playing a leading role in resistance to apartheid. In Latin America, the phenomenon of 'liberation theology' was reconnecting the church with the impoverished peasant millions whom it had long ignored. In Europe and North America, the old hierarchies were all under challenge, but especially the hierarchy of gender. Justice and equality were the themes and the energy was astonishing."

"Twenty-five years later," Dyer sadly observes, "it is all gone."

John Paul II attended the Vatican Council meetings in the 1960s and opposed the changes. Upon taking office he undertook to reverse them. To achieve this goal he dramatically centralized and exercised powers. His interventions roused widespread opposition. In 1989, for example, over 300 eminent European theologians, including a number in Rome itself signed onto the Cologne Declaration, which accused the pope of "overstepping and enforcing in an inadmissible way" his proper competence in field of doctrinal teaching. It accused him of appointing bishops throughout the world "without respecting the suggestions of the local churches and neglecting their established rights." It described the Vatican's removal of qualified theologians from teaching because it didn't like what they were saying as "a dangerous intrusion into the freedom of research and teaching."

In the 1980s French theologican Marie-Dominique Chenu put it bluntly. John Paul harkens back to the "prototype of the church as an absolute monarchy."

Liked this story? Get top stories in your inbox each week from AlterNet! Sign up now »