LICC - connecting with culture - The Funeral of the Pope

the funeral of the Pope

Few, today, can stop the world when they want to get off. But Pope John Paul II has done just that. His lingering curtain call gripped a mass audience - unused, as we are, to seeing physical degeneration modelled publicly in such style. The eulogies that sprang from a myriad sources flowed like an overwhelming river of praise to the See of Peter. Surely, an incomparable icon for the i-Pod generation.
John Paul had, after all, been seen 'live' by more people than anyone else in history. He helped, in Europe, to topple Communism, while making the world think hard about the consequences of its alternative, capitalism. And he displayed a moral and ethical consistency which puts most of us, one way or another, to shame.
Yet, there remains something unsettling about the nature of today's funeral, as we all squeeze through a lens and into the Square to pay our last respects. You could be forgiven, reading the papers this week, for thinking that our world is the church, and the church, our world. You could also be forgiven, watching the news, for believing that Western culture holds its religious leaders in the highest esteem, and that institutional religion plays a crucial, on-going role in our lives.
Yet who, beyond the faithful Catholic remnant, has read the Pope's words? And who, even among them, lives accordingly? As Deborah Orr wrote in the Independent, 'it's a sobering thought that this quarter century of galloping materialism, increasing inequality, continual war. and paralysing self-regard, has managed to be what it is, wven with a towering spiritual and moral presence among us.'
So what do we do, as we say goodbye? We all, of course, blur the lines, in our TV world, between voyeurism and participation, and will do so today in the greatest act of collective mourning the world has ever seen. Many, surely, will end up simply slowing down to gawp at the biggest roadside shrine in history before speeding off again, untouched. But others, yet, may be inspired, despite the religiosity and pomp, to pull over and reflect on the value of one life lived (and died) so well for the sake of Christ.
And that's a legacy to which all Christians can aspire. John Paul travelled, so famously, at a different pace; a pilgrim who tried, to the last, to lead the world in a different Way.

Brian Draper

CLICK HERE TO POST YOUR COMMENT AND TO FIND EXTRA RESOURCES