Seemingly, all roads led to Vatican City last week. Virtually all political eminences of the Western world, as also national and spiritual dignitaries of other countries and religious traditions, flocked to pay respects to the Bishop of Rome, shepherd of the Roman Catholic Church, who had one of the best attended funerals in world history. Through all the solemn grandeur of the ceremony, however, one noted with admiration the silent dissent of the People’s Republic of China, which simply stayed at home.
Unlike India’s political elite, who seek international endorsement through self-abasement and compromise, China’s mandarins demand respect through dogged assertion of national pride. Western media hype over the funeral of John Paul II did not send Beijing scurrying to send a representative for a photo-op with George Bush or Cardinal Ratzinger. Instead, the atheist regime remembered how the Chinese people suffered at the hands of the Catholic Church and how the late Pope bestowed sainthood upon 120 “evil-doing sinners.”
Bishop Fu Tieshan of the state-run Catholic Church said: “Some of those canonized… perpetrated outrages such as raping and looting in China and committed unforgivable crimes…” (Associated Press, 1 October 2000). One saint was Albericus Crescitelli, an Italian missionary who died in the anti-Western, anti-Christian Boxer uprising. He “was notorious for taking the ‘right of the first night’ of each bride under his diocese,” according to the State Administration of Religious Affairs.
India, however, crawled without being asked to bend. Perhaps out of deference to the Italian-Roman Catholic origins of UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi, the Government followed Italy in declaring three days of State mourning. And far from remembering the atrocities of the Goa Inquisition, for which the Pope refused to apologize on his India visit, every luminary with access to a centrimetre of newspaper space recorded a vacuous eulogy in honour of the departed soul.
In Tamil Nadu, where the Kanchi Shankaracharya is being persecuted by a vindictive regime trying to whip up anti-Brahmin votes for the Assembly elections, the Directorate of Schools issued a Government Order directing all schools to fly the Indian flag half-mast on Friday 8 April 2005 to mourn the death of Pope John Paul II, and send a “compliance report.” Some of us wanted to ask why a secular government was issuing GOs to secular State schools and private religious schools (not Government-aided) to mourn the religious head of a foreign religious institution. But we thought it would be uncultured and politically incorrect, so we remained silent.
Such Oriental niceties have been given short shrift in the White Western world that Karol Wojtyla straddled with élan for nearly three decades. Vatican's decision to let Cardinal Bernard Law lead a funeral Mass in Rome has caused outrage in America, where Law had to quit as Boston Archbishop in 2002 for protecting paedophile priests (Reuters, 8 April 2005). The Archdiocese is currently paying over $86 million as compensation to hundreds of persons abused by priests. Law’s rehabilitation as archpriest of the Basilica of St. Mary Major in Rome has therefore upset the devout.
Many Catholics found John Paul II’s papacy disappointing because of his painful indifference towards married priests, women who lost lives, fertility and health in botched abortions, theologians dissatisfied with many aspects of church doctrine, persons caring for AIDS victims, gay Catholics longing for communion, victims of sexually abuse by priests, women wishing to be priests, and so on. The Pope’s high profile vis-à-vis the Communist regimes of the erstwhile Soviet Union and Eastern Europe in no way exonerates his “episodic and selective commitments to human rights throughout the world,” as Frances Kissling, president, Catholics for a Free Choice, put it succinctly.
Kissling was anguished that while the Pope had no problem meeting persons like Kurt Waldheim, he steadfastly refused to meet a single victim of clerical sexual abuse. It bears noting that some the John Paul II’s close friends, notably Cardinal Hans Hermann Groer and Kurt Krenn, Bishop of St. Poeltin, were forced out of office amidst allegations of sex scandals.
Regarding John Paul II’s reputation as a crusader for human rights, well, many Catholic women think he excluded half of humanity. A staunch advocate of traditional Church policies on women, he refused to ordain women as priests, and condemned contraception, condoms and abortion. He and his conservative advisers worked hard to roll back reforms from the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965), which gave women more say in the liturgy and allowed altar girls to serve Mass. In fact, the Church excommunicated seven women from Germany, Austria and the United States, who were ordained in Austria in 2002.
This arch conservatism alienated both religious and lay women who felt ignored, with the result that the US alone saw a sharp drop in nuns’ orders, from 179954 in 1965 to 73316 in 2003. In Ireland, church opposition to divorce and contraception has led it to being perceived as irrelevant and outdated. Critics especially carp at the Pope’s opposition to the use of condoms to combat AIDS in Africa, artificial birth control to curb rising population in many countries, and abortion for Bosnian women (mostly Muslims) who were raped by Serb soldiers.
Much has been made of his extensive travels across the world, and his so-called inter-faith dialogues. Former Prime Minister Inder Gujral’s wife, Sheila, lauds him for visiting synagogues and mosques and meeting the Dalai Lama (Indian Express, 9 April 2005). It is true that the Pope apologized to the Jews for the Vatican’s anti-Semitism and its aloofness during Hitler’s Final Solution. He also apologized to the Eastern Orthodox Christians and the Muslims for papal advocacy of the Crusades and the forced conversions and massacres in the Balkans during World War II.
But how sincere were these apologies? The Pope elevated to sainthood such scum as Cardinal Stepinac of Croatia, who supported the Nazi puppet regime of Ante Pavelic and endorsed the shameful treatment of Orthodox Christians and Jews there. Similarly, Jose Maria Escriva de Balaguer, the sinister founder of Opus Dei and close ally of the Spanish dictator, Gen. Franco, was canonized. Many justly felt that such actions undid the benefits expected from “dialogue.”
Of course, cunning political spiritualist that he was, John Paul II was much too canny to advocate respect for or dialogue with Hindu dharma, the native and majority faith of this land. This is because he had identified India as a recruiting ground to revive his dying church by converting the populace and subjugating it to the diktat of Rome. Mrs. Gujral may not notice or care, but those of us who love our Ishta Devatas see the hectoring of men like Karol Wojtyla as an affront to our religious freedom.
Even Western Catholics are disturbed over the manner in which Karol Wojtyla, from the time of his tenure as Archbishop of Krakow, aligned completely with the financially powerful but secretive Opus Dei movement, which has been linked to fascist regimes and is now active in the world of finance, politics and journalism. He went so far as to give Opus Dei special legal status, exempting the organization from supervision by local bishops, as dissident German theologian Hans Küng points out. Clearly the Catholic Church is in deep crisis. It remains to be seen if it can see the way forward.
The Pioneer, 19 April 2005