The Black Madonna

The Orthodox Reformer

When I was a lad of ten, I'd lived my whole life to that time under just one pope. Living in the hills of New Jersey, I was far enough removed from my own bishop let alone the pope, that I didn't yet understand the difference. One day, I was watching a rerun of Gilligan's Island on the television when they interrupted with the news: "The pope is dead." My mother and sister ran into the room in shock and asked, "What did they say?!" I responded, "Some pope died."

Within the span of two months, I'd see three different popes govern the Church. It was a very quick introduction to the papacy, High Mass, and papal elections. And before I could even get old enough to be accustomed to the idea of Italians always being pope, hundreds of years of precedent was thrown on its head by a charismatic young man (for a cardinal, at least) from Poland.

I won't bother going into a tale of his life - that's better done elsewhere. But I'll tell you a story about his death, long before it happened.

When I was at Seton Hall University, trying to complete my bachelor's degree, attending ROTC classes to earn my Army commission, and contemplating entrance into the priesthood, I was required to take a course in Catholic theology. Being Catholic, I not only thought this would be easy, but perhaps fun and informative. Catholic Theology turned out to be the only class I enjoyed going to, the only class I got an A in, and the only class where I made a friend of the professor.

Jaimie Vidal was an almost perfectly round Hispanic man in his 40s, with a bright, smiling face and a contagious laugh. I asked him a question at the end of the first class, and he invited me to his office so he could explain his in-depth answer to me. Two hours later, he left me stumbling out of the office on my own, because he was running as fast as his stubby little legs could carry him: our conversation was so much fun for each of us, he'd missed the start of his next lecture.

Jaimie was a liberal, I'm certain damn near a socialist. But his politics was a reflection of his almost naive view of the world through the prism of his Catholic faith. He taught me what it was like to see the world through liberal glasses, something that was completely foreign to me to that time. And he wanted to see the pope dead.

From the time of his election, I revered John Paul. I never understood the rock-star hold he had on many people, especially the young adults who frequently worked as youth counselors and the like, but then again I never understood that mentality even when those revered were really rock stars. But as an historian and a faithful Catholic, it was undeniable that he was both a genuinely loving and pious servant of God and an earthquake of change and reform in the Church and the world. The pope wasn't from socialist, modernist Italy, but from communist, orthodox Poland. His impact on the Cold War was immediate and undeniable, but his effect on dogma and church culture was a bit more subtle. He would continue some of the reforms of Vatican II, but also encourage us to a new orthodoxy. While some bishops wanted to tear out all ties to the old Latin Mass, John Paul slowly, quietly allowed Latin Mass to be a choice for those who still wanted the older form. He strongly defended Church teaching and unswervingly promoted the Gospel of Life over the Culture of Death, but refused to adopt policies that did more than quietly disagree with those holding opposing views, like pro-abortion politicians.

So when Jaimie Vidal said he hoped John Paul II would go to heaven as soon as possible, I was stunned. He explained, he wasn't fond of the pope's conservatism, and he wanted to get back to the reforms that John XXIII had begun and Paul VI had only halfway endorsed. Liberal Catholic theology suggests that anything not strictly dogma is still open to interpretation, but John Paul wanted to reduce the number of issues left up to such interpretation. Liberal theologians reasoned that when the pope died, they had a good shot getting a new liberal reformer elected pope who could give them the freedom to go where they wanted to go. Jaimie wished John Paul health and long life, but wouldn't be opposed to the notion of the saintly man from Wadowice going on to heaven, either.

I don't know if Jaimie is still around - last I heard he'd gotten a job at Notre Dame, and we sort of lost touch with one another. He wasn't too adept with computers, so I was not surprised to see very little reference to him on the Internet when I looked. But I'm certain of one thing: for almost twenty years since he expressed the idea to me, the man born as Karol Wojtyla has frustrated Jaimie Vidal's greatest wish in ways that the latter could scarcely have imagined at the time. And in disagreement with my mentor, I think that has yielded great things for the Church in many, many ways. Some, like his ecumenical outreach to Orthodox Christians and Jews, have made progress in a few years that were unsolvable for centuries. Many others turn away from some misconceptions of Vatican II and lead us forward in a better way - not the Latin church of old, but not the kind of liberal transformation Professor Vidal wanted to champion.

Soon, Jaimie will get his wish for a new pope, albeit later than he would have liked. I hope wherever the good professor is, he continues to be disappointed. He of all people should know I mean that only in a good way.

UPDATE: As the timestamp indicates, this was posted early in the day on Saturday, just before the Holy Father passed away. Dom Bettinelli - as usual - has some insightful things to say, including a post on the pope's detractors that mirrors what I have to say here.

It should also be noted that some people - including his own Secretary of State, Angelo Cardinal Sodano - are already beginning to refer to him by the title, "John Paul the Great". A most fitting tribute.

We Catholics are a patient lot

For those of us who can't possibly wait to hear word of our next pope, Yahoo! News now has a Chimney Cam. Enjoy!

Habemus Papam!

I am so overwhelmingly happy. I had others in mind, but those have been burned away with the white smoke. I can't believe it. May his papacy be long and fruitful, and may our beloved Church and the whole world be blessed by his reign.

VIVA BENEDICT XVI!

Site makeover: The Black Madonna

Some time ago, I decided that my religious ravings at my other blog, The Black Republican, were getting a little too Catholic for my own taste. On that site, I may talk about anything at any particular time, but TBR always returns to issues of politics and culture as they are tinged by prejudice and racism. While there's nothing inconsistent in this day and age about being both Republican and Catholic, when I talk about the Faith there it feels like I'm trying to do too much in too small a space. The Catholic "angle" is overload, and detracts somewhat from the intended topic.

So I eventually decided to start another blog, and Ex Parte Fide was born. Naturally - as nothing good is ever easy - new problems arose. Actually, two interconnected problems: other than reflections about my Catholic faith, I wasn't sure what the new blog was about; and as a result, I tended not to post much, when I posted at all.

Several times, I thought of shutting this space down, as it was too underused. Even when I finally found something to say, I would feel compelled to post in both places, so that readers of TBR wouldn't be left wondering what I was thinking about some religion-inspired issue. Of course, that simply defeats the purpose of having a separate blog. Things were definitely spiraling downward.

But Our Lord had other plans. Pope John Paul II was due for a promotion (one day to Saint John Paul the Great, perhaps), and finally succumbed to the strain of his illnesses and an amazing and arduous 26 years on the throne of St. Peter. My interest in posting something to the religious blog increased, but I still wasn't sure what to say. I wanted to comment on my personal favorite to be the new pope, Francis Cardinal Arinze, a strongly orthodox bishop from Nigeria, but that would be unseemly before his election, wouldn't it? Yet, how our Holy Mother Church would be blessed by showing the world that the love of Our Lord knows no color! Besides, I reasoned, it's not like the College will choose someone too well-known and too orthodox, like Joseph Ratzinger....

As pope, I believed Cardinal Arinze would cause quite a stir with the press and the world, as they tried to grasp why Catholicism didn't feel scandalized by the selection. Surely Europe, of all places, can't embrace such an image... right?

The answer to that question is revealed in the faces of the mother and Child now adorning the masthead of this site. While I knew well of the Catholic tradition of veneration of The Black Madonna, and that inspirational thought drove me to look more closely into a new companion site for TBR, I must admit I'd forgotten that the monastery of perhaps the most famous of these Madonnas (Our Lady of Czestochowa) is in Jasna Gora, Poland. This would be the perfect complement to The Black Republican, I thought: a site that honors both our dear departed Holy Father, a new Holy Father from an unexpected place, and last but certainly not least, operating under the gaze one of the oldest and most beloved images of Our Lady.

As everyone knows by now, Our Lord surprised me again. My joy at the election of His Holiness Benedict XVI is almost beyond description, but some of our friends in the media world have apparently decided that Germany is enough of an unexpected place for them, and have generated some rather dark (though sometimes humorous) caricatures of him.

I know the Holy Catholic Church is "ready for a black pope". But I'd forgotten that perhaps the rest of the world might not be - some still aren't ready for any pope at all. This site will be devoted to the task of that preparation, and so we dedicate our work here to Our Lady of Czestochowa, that she might sway the hearts of the unready.

Benedict Prayed Not to Be Elected

http://www.ratzingerfanclub.com/blog/2005/04/benedict-says-he-prayed-not-to-be.html

Against The Grain

Well, what's a Catholic blog good for anyway?

I've just read that radio personality, political pundit, and recent convert to Catholicism, Laura Ingraham, is being treated for breast cancer. Please say a prayer to Saint Agatha for her speedy recovery.

Political correctness gone mad or Prudent evangelism?

It was not long after I clicked the "Post" button on my last entry, when the thought popped into my head: "Oooh, I'd better change that to say, 'Say a prayer to Saint Agatha... for her intercession with Our Lord.'" A few minutes later, I wanted to smack myself for "being PC". A few minutes after that, I wondered if my justifiable caution isn't simply good evangelism. Now I'm just confused.

I remember a time, long ago, when my mother's prompting, "Say a prayer to Saint Jude," would bring a feeling of hope that some lost cause might yet have a happy ending. Now this kind of a phrase causes me anxiety that someone, somewhere might believe I'm raising a human being - saintly, residing with Jesus in heaven, a reasonable candidate for intercession - to the level of the Almighty.

Does anyone else have this problem? Am I being cautious for the sake of apologetics, or shamed into unnecessary apologies?

Pope Benedict could need a bigger collection plate

http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=8309693

Reuters

Blogs for Benedict

As some of you may already know, shortly after the election of Pope Benedict, I ran across this post at Dom Bettinelli's blog, and it gave me the idea to go looking for another domain that popped into my own head. Initially I'd intended to offer it to Christopher Blosser from The Cardinal Ratzinger Fan Club - and I still may do just that - but I thought I'd best give a try to organizing the thing myself.

So without further ado...

I've just finished flipping all the required Internet switches to redirect the domain name www.blogsforbenedict.com back here to The Black Madonna, for lack of a better place. (Ironically, it was only because I was rushing to get the "blogsforbenedict" domain that I bothered to finally buy "theblackmadonna", even though I've been thinking of picking up the latter for a couple of weeks.) For now, I'd like to blogroll as many sites as are willing to join, but maybe in the future we can set up a mob-blog with the best contributions from orthodox Catholics around the blogroll, a la Blogs for Bush. At least, that's a thought.

(EDIT: Come to think of it, that's what Catholics in the Public Square is for, isn't it? Maybe they'd like to be the host site and I'll just manage the links.... Stay tuned.)

If you're interested in joining the blogroll, please send me an email.

TECHNICAL UPDATE: I suppose I should say that I've currently got the blogroll managed as a random sample of 20 links, so aside from the pure sentiment of belonging to a list of bloggers who support the Holy Father, it's a relatively small block of links that can give your site more exposure. For those of us trying to gin up enough ad revenue/donations to pay for our passion, exposure can be a good thing.

Getting to know Pope Benedict XVI

http://www.ratzingerfanclub.com/blog/2005/04/getting-to-know-pope-benedict-xvi.html

Against The Grain

Four Myths About Pope Benedict XVI

http://www.godspy.com/reviews/Four-Myths-About-Pope-Benedict-XVI-by-Brian-Saint-Paul.cfm

Brian Saint-Paul, Godspy.com