Monday, April 11, 2005
One, Holy, Catholic, Apostolic
The four qualities of the Church: that's where I'd say the new pope needs a firm focus.
I'd hope that unity (as opposed to uniformity) would be high on the new pope's list. How can a single person help us recover a sense of unity in Christ? At the least, I'd hope he would avoid the divisive us vs them attitude spawned by John Paul's later curia, and the Catholic extremists of both left and right.
The universal call to holiness: that has to be the root for everything we do from family life to traditional vocations to engaging the world in a moral dialogue and in reinforcing the social teachings of the Church. If it doesn't have holiness at root, these important aspects of the Church result in isolation, clericalism, and bored people tuning out the drone of preaching.
Did I mention universality? It is an important synonym for catholicity, and a far better adjective for a Church than "orthodox."
Apostolic does not mean doing it as we've always done it. It refers to what the apostles did: preach, convert hearts, start important things and let the people continue the job.
A conservative or liberal pope would be irrelevant. What we need is a person who exemplifies the gifts the Church needs: unity, a sense of the sacred for all of us, an even stronger sense of the world community of Christ, and a sense of mission that can be elucidated then passed on to the clergy and laity locally.
In a phrase: God help us find the right pope.
