Popes and Monarchs

Those of you who know me know that I was raised Catholic. My wife was a Lutheran. When we got married in 1972 we joined the Episcopal Church as a religious compromise and have considered the Episcopal Church as our home church ever since. But Catholicism has strong ties that bind and old habits die hard. Many Protestant ministers will tell you that their best church members are lapsed Catholics. As they say…once a Catholic, always a Catholic.

At heart, most mainline Protestants have at least a degree of interest in the workings of the Catholic Church much the same way many Americans have an interest in the British royal family. The Catholic Church was the mother ship of all Protestant churches just as England was the mother ship of the United States. The history is there, good or bad depending on your point of view. We may pretend to have no interest in a discarded heritage, but we still watch!!!!

And we watched some history this past week with the election of Argentinean Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio as the new Pope. We watched Pope Benedict resign…the first in 600 years to do so. Then we watched the College of Cardinals elect the first non-European pope, the son of an Argentinean Italian immigrant father; the perfect blend of the Old World and the Americas. He chose the name Pope Francis, after the patron saint of the poor…and a name with which all Christians can identify. Then he got in a car and went and paid his hotel bill and picked up his luggage.

Whether we want to admit it or not, institutions like the papacy and the monarchy still matter. The world is a dangerous place. People yearn for strong and moral leadership notwithstanding the secular nature of modern society. Both of these institutions have seen their overt political power diminish over the past centuries, but more remains than we are led to believe. Pope John Paul II played in major role in the downfall of communism. Queen Elizabeth has been a pillar of strength over the decline of the British Empire and the rise of the Common Market and European Union. She showed strength and courage as Princess Elizabeth during WW II and as Queen over the changes in British society.

The power of these two institutions is the power of stability and constancy. Cultural mores may change over the years, but these pillars are the conscience of our society. Successive popes have stood by the church’s belief in maintaining the Catholic view of faith and morals. Whether you agree or not is irrelevant. I disagreed so I left and joined a church more in line with my beliefs. That doesn’t mean I don’t admire the strength of the Church’s convictions. Queen Elizabeth has had to make some adjustments to the modern monarchy, but at the end of the day she represents the resolute British character…keep a stiff upper lip in the face of adversity; and the monarchy survived in spite of efforts to destroy it during the Charles/Diana debacle.

Popes and Kings and Queens are fallible. They are human. But in my lifetime those occupying these positions in the modern world have at least tried to live up to the demands of their office. Will they fail from time to time? Of course they will, and criticism will follow. But when they succeed, the world is a better place.

I suspect that Pope Francis is going to be one who succeeds. I suspect he will be the Pope with the human touch. Coupled with Benedict’s good sense to resign when he could no longer do the job,  Pope Francis will show the way to a new and modern papacy: one of the people, one for the poor, one to be the world’s conscience, one to light a new beacon for all of us to admire, if not to follow.  One to show us our better side, and what we can be.