Dismantling the Monolith? A Retrospective View of the Papal Visit

Extract

In February of 1982 Cardinal Hume addressed a press conference on his hopes for the forthcoming papal visit to Britain. At that time the full horrors of the Falklands war were still lodged in the dim recesses of the Argentine military mind and the seemingly endless resources of British colonial nostalgia were still untapped. The Cardinal was able to speak of the renewal that the pope’s presence and message would bring as well as the challenge he would present to pastors and people calling them to “a fundamental change of ourselves”. In the euphoria that accompanied and immediately followed the Pope in Britain many people spoke of “things never being the same again”. In a few short days of glorious summer weather he was said to have given the Church here a sense of renewed confidence, hope and pride in its own history and traditions. He proved sensitive to the needs and aspirations of the various national communities that form the United Kingdom. He was openly committed to ecumenical dialogue and the tone of his speeches was so eirenic and positive that Peter Nichols in The Times wondered “if we cannot start thinking about the weekend that produced John Paul III”. Paradoxically this seems to point not so much to a renewal of the Church in Britain as to the personal conversion of the Pope to a new interpretation of the Petrine office. This interpretation has particular implications for the development of the theology of the Church as well as revealing not only the virtues of the Pope but the weaknesses of the Church in Britain. Until these implications are examined the renewal hoped for by the Archbishop of Westminster and his brother bishops in England, Wales and Scotland will be delayed if not altogether blighted.