Flashback 2005: High-tech world glued to Vatican smoke signals

 

    Maybe I really am getting old. When my editor called Thursday — a Chicago pope! Opinions to firehose at the flaming masses — I did not respond to the clanging bell by stirring on my straw. Did not stagger to my feet, shamble over to my cart traces, and wait to pull professional journalism to the latest fire.
     I had gotten up at 4 a.m., written a column whittling a splintery stick and shoving it up Kristi Noem's backside. That column was more topical — i.e., apt to lose whatever value it had. It would be stale in three days. Joining the rush to ululate the new pope seemed off-brand.
    "He'll still be pope on Monday," is what I said, passing. Tom McNamee, an actual Catholic, did a fine job and besides, nothing in the paper could top our headline, "Da Pope." Classic.
     So while I've begun the musing process for Monday's pope column, I thought about the welcomes given pope in the past. Twenty years and change ago, I did open the the firehose and rinse the topic down. Reading it today makes me glad I waited. The column filled a page and was 1100 words long, 50 percent longer than today. Bring snacks.

Opening shot

     Being in the communications business, I am constantly amazed at the co-mingling of old and new methods of getting the word out. I'll never forget standing on the bridge of a ship crossing the Atlantic and noticing that not far from the high-tech video screen displaying the multicolored radar readout and global satellite positioning system information was a brass mouthpiece for the speaking tube to the captain's cabin.
     So perhaps I was alone in savoring, amid the mass of analysis and hoopla surrounding the transition between popes, that while the death of John Paul II was communicated to the world via an e-mail from the Vatican, the selection of the new pope was conveyed by a puff of smoke and ringing bells. That strikes me as something of a marvel.

If I stop talking I'll die!

     God, I hate TV. They have such a marvelous opportunity to bring a dramatic moment to the world and they blow it, almost every time. There were a few minutes of indecision Tuesday morning as to whether a pope had been selected, whether the smoke was white. We were glued to the TV, waiting. I was watching CNN. As the bells of Rome began ringing, the talking heads kept bloviating, and I wondered if we would be allowed at some point to just hear the bells, a faint background noise. Finally one commentator said something like, "The bells of Rome are pealing, answering the Great Bell of St. Peter; let's take a moment to listen." I leaned forward, relieved, thinking "it's about time." But they didn't listen. Instead Wolf Blitzer began talking as if his life depended on his never stopping.
     Yet another, more human commentator suggested a pause in the palaver to hear the bells, and again Wolf leapt in, yammering away nonstop.
     So sad. That's the worst thing instantaneous communications does to us; it seems to demand that we instantly communicate. Though the real culprit is the media star system where a Wolf Blitzer could never imagine that the viewers might prefer he zip his big yap for a moment and let us listen to the bells of Rome.

Nor will he take up hang-gliding

     One more bit of TV stupidity and then we'll move on — as soon as the 78-year-old Pope Benedict XVI was named, one of the talking heads speculated that it was unlikely he would match the 26-year-reign of Pope John Paul II.
     Gee, ya think so? Considering that it would make him 114 and the oldest man on Earth, I'd say that's a safe bet.
     Let's take a look at the old resume
     As soon as it was announced that the new pope was the former Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, a German hard-liner, and before the new pontiff had even made his appearance, a sweet, older Jewish lady in my office whom I view as a kind of Greek chorus, wringing her hands and voicing the free-floating Semitic anxiety of the moment, drifted by my office.
     She spoke one sentence — "He was in the Hitler Youth" and then moved away.
     The next Jewish colleague I saw was on the down elevator.
     "Whaddaya think of the new pope?" I called after him.
     "German," he said, as he descended out of sight.
     Those are code words for unease. If anyone held out actual hope that the new pope would be in mesh with the liberal American tradition, the selection of Cardinal Ratzinger put the kibosh on that. As you must know by now, he is on record condemning virtually anybody who isn't middle-of-the-road Catholic — Muslims, other Christian denominations, gays, whom he called "evil." I didn't notice any slams against Jews, but that Hitler Youth item on the resume isn't exactly comforting, though supposedly he was in his early teens and forced to join.
     "That's what they all say," said a third Jewish colleague.
     Myself, I can't get too worked up about it. Everybody has baggage from childhood — heck, I was in the Cub Scouts, but I wouldn't want people to hold it against me. As far as his strict orthodoxy, it isn't as if the Catholic Church is an engine for radical social progress as it is, so a bit — or a whole lot — of traditionalism can be expected.
     I just don't feel any anxiety toward this new pope. My central attitude toward the Catholic Church is surprisingly benign: a hope that they do well, so we don't lose any more Catholic churches or schools in Chicago. I hate to see those go.
     Sure, mainstream America wants the church to be ever more liberal, because that's what we are, and like all people we are most comfortable dealing with those exactly like ourselves.
     That would be in our best interest. But the church is a religious group, obviously, and religions face a puzzle that can be thought of as the "Orthodoxy vs. Inclusion dilemma." If they are too strict, then they alienate people in our modern world and lose membership, but if they are too lax, then membership loses its meaning and the people who do belong fall away through indifference.
     Liberalism might be popular in our modern world, but it is orthodoxy that survives unchanged through the ages. Jews used to be 3 percent of the American population, and now we're 1.8 percent and shrinking, primarily because our leaders told us it was OK to practice as tepid a faith as we liked, so as a result, too many of our children ended up inter-marrying and the faithful basically wandered off. We could have used our own version of a Cardinal Ratzinger to keep us in line.

I haven't offended the elderly yet

     The biggest downside of Cardinal Ratzinger's nomination, in my view, is his age. I know that's why they picked him, so that he would not be expected to match Pope John Paul II's amazing quarter century tenure. But after watching the late pope's agonizing physical decline over recent years, are we ready to see it again in a soon-to-be octogenarian pope?
     Perhaps it's all planned out. A few years chaffing under the lash of a fading Pope Benedict XVI's harsh decrees and the church will be ready for whatever dynamic young South American cardinal they pick next. I hope so, because in my heart I'm rooting for the church to prosper.
     At least they believe in something, and while we can pooh-pooh religion, surrounded by our vast American wealth, there are many places on Earth where faith is all they've got — faith and a goat and a few earthen jars. A lot of people are depending on the church to keep going and work out its problems, and if the cardinals think this Ratzinger fellow is the man for the job, then I hope they're right.

           —Originally published in the Sun-Times, April 20, 2005