It has been an exhausting week for me, a week of death. The Pope had been dying for years, Terri for two
weeks, and a colleague stepping off the volleyball court, only ten minutes. The Pope was 84, but Terri and my
colleague were only 41. The funeral for my colleague emphasized life after death, his eternal happiness and rest.
The obituaries for the Pope tended to emphasize his accomplishments, his confrontation with a materialist empire that
relied for legitimacy on visible army divisions.
And in the ruminations on Terri, little was spoken either of her eternal rest or accomplishments,
though much was said about the
culture of death that precipitated it. The colleague was Protestant, the Pope and Terri were Roman Catholic.
Terri died after a feeding tube was removed, the Pope died after a feeding tube was inserted, and my colleague
had no time for any tubes. The Pope died despite the best health care available in Europe, Terri died denied
health care in America, and it is doubtful whether the best care in the world could have
saved my colleague.
Death. That great equalizer. That inevitable end. That ultimate termination of all our endless "to do" lists.
"Teach us to number our days", says the Psalmist, "that we might gain a heart of wisdom." I started
counting this week. I know this somber mood won't last, but like April 15,
it is good to repeat the exercise every year, if only to see what has changed.
What has changed? The Pope presided over the biggest shift of the 20th century, the fall of the Communist block,
the defeat of Materialism, and the resurgence of the Church. He was an unusual Pope, the first
non-Italian in 430 years, the very first Slav, brought up in the hinterlands of Roman Catholicism, raised
in a country whose state religion was atheism, ground under the heel of tyranny.
Why is this significant?
I remember a proverb from an old catholic man who said, "it takes seven generations to make a priest", which
might explain the long run of Italians. But for this Pole, who Richard John Neuhaus thinks has earned the
appellation "great", it evidently takes only one generation under persecution to make a Pope.
It was a stroke of genius to
appoint an archbishop from a Communist country at the peak of the Russian hegemony to head the Roman church.
And the results are before us in countless commentaries, the defeat of the most virulent form of Materialism
spawned by the excesses of the 20th century.
Who will replace Karol Wojtlya? I will not descend into the pit of political speculation, but I would look
around the world and ask, "Who else has lived under persecution, who else has grown up under tyranny?" These
are the men with a spine of steel, these are the men who can lead the divisions Stalin could not see. Perhaps,
like Augustine, it is time to look toward Africa.