Papal Days

In my mind, John Paul II is still the pope, though I guess he was a sequel too. I was nine years old when he… took office? I don’t even know what you call it. But everything I know about popes, I learned from him.

Well, not quite. But let’s just say that there was a whole lot of papal drama in 1978, enough to grab the attention of a Jewish fourth grader in the California suburbs. Pope John Paul I (I knew they didn’t have anything to do with the Beatles, but still, it was a little weird) held the job from August 26 until he died 33 days later. He is the William Henry Harrison of popes. So, pope, new pope, and another new pope. To this day when I see a plume of white smoke rising in the distance, I’ll tell a baffled companion, “Ah, the cardinals have chosen a pope.”

Being a Jewish kid, I viewed the pope with the same sort of outsider fascination as royal weddings and Kwanzaa. Our religion didn’t have a leader, a focal point. (Who would it be? The late Rabbi Schneerson and his Mitzvah Tank? Alan Dershowitz? Jackie Mason?) But even my many Catholic friends—and even some regularly practicing ones—seem pretty far removed from the papal world. And the gap seems to keep getting wider.

There just seemed to be a lot more pope references in popular culture (pope-ular?) back in the day. John Paul II was Polish! That was big; that was like… well… John F. Kennedy being Catholic. He came to Yankee Stadium, decades before Metallica. There was an assassination attempt—and he forgave the dude! And John Paul II came back strong with that bulletproof Popemobile. He was like an Evel Knievel action figure with accessories. That sceptre. And oh, that hat!

Dennis Miller had a joke about it, comparing it to a post hole digger. As a sassy young college DJ, I incorporated the hat into a somewhat surreal drawing for our program guide:

You could poke fun at the pope—up to a point. The 1991 comedy movie The Pope Must Die suddenly became The Pope Must Diet in the United States after some initial outrage. The next year on Saturday Night Live, Sinéad O’Connor famously ripped up a photo of John Paul II, protesting sexual abuse in the Catholic Church. Her career never really recovered from the resultant condemnation she received.

Two decades on, there’s just not as much pope news. Every now and then, some controversial pope statement will make the rounds on the Huffington Post for a couple of days and then life moves on. So what happened? Information overload certainly, with a million other stories competing for our attention. The Catholic Church has taken a few more hits so maybe we’re a tad more cynical. Perhaps we’re also just a little more aware, a little more accepting, of the world’s diversity, and the wide variety of beliefs. A little more ready to question our own leaders. (Perhaps not; I made a comment on Facebook a couple of years back, criticizing Church hierarchy’s policy toward gays and women, and I was surprised how upset a few friends got. In fairness, I’m certain my phrasing was entirely too snarky, as I had zero intention of badmouthing the religion. But I was definitely reminded how ingrained faith can be.)

Still, I’ll always think back fondly of those papal days gone by. (“Papal”—the job has its own adjective!) My one trip to Europe with my dad, visiting the Vatican as a young teen. That goofily dressed Swiss Guard cracked me up. (In a city filled with tough Italian guys, you choose the Swiss as your muscle? Um… okaaaaay….) Or the Model United Nations club in high school having a delegate from “the Holy See”—that sounded so cool! The term “Il Papa,” also cool. And weird that popes change their names—though I guess I would too if my name was Karol.

And now Benedict XVI is hanging up his (big) hat. Seems totally reasonable for an 85-year-old, but apparently it’s the first papal resignation in six centuries. Wild. Well, good luck to the new guy, whoever that might be. But I have to imagine that I’ll still be saying, “Eh, he’s no JP2. Now that was a pope.”