Wednesday 27th April 2005
It’s often said that George Bush is the most powerful man in the world. But now a new truth is being created: that the late Pope was the most influential one. This invites us to reflect on the nature of political and spiritual power.
The good thing about being the Pope is that your election happens only once. As prospective parliamentary candidates dash frenetically from door-to-door, I’m sure they’d love the thought that success might lead to 27 years of uninterrupted office-holding, without having to renew their electoral mandate. There is an apparent contrast between the bickering and fractiousness of a general election campaign and the serene and ordered preparations for the papal conclave. Political power is fickle; spiritual power appears to be ‘above all that’.
But appearances can be deceptive, for institutional religion is as much about politics as secular politics is. Spiritual and political power are inextricably linked. Many commentators have outlined the paradox that the man who opposed state totalitarianism was ruthlessly authoritarian in the way he ran the church. The late Pope was not simply a harmless spiritual being who liked kissing tarmac and babies. He was a formidable and shrewd political operator. And like all political spiritual leaders, his reign created both winners and losers. He was undoubtedly a ‘voice for those without a voice’ – the world’s poor, victims of war, and all those deemed disposable and worthless by western capitalism. But he also created new cohorts of the marginalized - those whose experience and identity placed them outside the faith that had hitherto been their spiritual birthright: women embracing life-possibilities beyond virginity or motherhood, divorced people, lesbian and gay people, and ordinary heterosexual people seeking to avoid unwanted pregnancy and/or HIV infection through means other than sexual abstinence.
John Paul II knew what he stood for and knew what he stood against. He stated both with skill, conviction, intelligence and charisma. He was loved passionately as a result – apparently by both his supporters and his detractors. Such is the success of his brand of political spiritual leadership that it’s become hard to imagine that the Catholic church could have been run in any other way.
But not impossible. On 4 April the Womenchurch Convergence announced an open conclave in cyberspace (www.women-churchconvergence.org/conclave), and called on Catholic leaders to invite women from every continent to participate in the election of the new Pope, saying, ‘We promote participatory, egalitarian structures rather than hierarchical domination. We see the papacy as a sign of unity, not a person with authority. We call on all Catholics to take this unique opportunity to rethink basic aspects of our common life’. Their struggle is for a Catholic church that is a ‘discipleship of equals’. Now there’s a timely spiritual and political challenge. And it’s relevance goes way beyond Catholicism.
Alison Webster is Diocesan Social Responsibility Adviser