Pope’s political force important to legacy

In response to the death of Pope John Paul II, the Daily Bruin
sat down with Professor Scott Bartchy, the director of the Center
for the Study of Religion at UCLA.

***

Daily Bruin: What do you think Pope John Paul II’s
legacy will be?

Scott Bartchy: I think that John Paul II’s legacy could
work out to be his role in talking with the great leaders of the
other religious traditions, especially his role as the first pope
ever to visit a synagogue.

DB: How do you think the papacy came to have such strong
political leadership, in addition to its religious
leadership?

SB: Well, that’s a big question. First of all, the Roman
Catholic Church is indeed the Roman Catholic Church, although
people colloquially just refer to it as the Catholic church.

The reason I start out this way is because the Roman Catholic
Church became the Roman Catholic Church in the fourth century, when
Emperor Constantine saw that it wasn’t going to work for the
empire to try to eliminate the Christians. They had tried that for
years and it didn’t work, so he decided they were made of
sterner stuff than he’d imagined, and one thing he could
admire about the Christians is that they had guts.

Constantine was a Roman through and through, so he admired guts;
he was the first person to really kill people in the name of Jesus.
And that was the beginning of the hand-holding between political
power and the Christian religion, and in many ways it was a
betrayal of what Jesus of Nazareth had in mind. So basically,
Christians have been giving the power brokers of Europe a break
ever since.

Now, that’s the background. So, the fact is that Pope John
Paul II said he doesn’t think that the church should become
involved in politics directly. Now, personally I think that he
gained a lot of credibility as a political force because of the
fact that when he was a religious leader in Poland he was a leader
of the resistance to communism there. So when he became the pope he
was known to have a great deal of intellectual integrity as well as
a strong backbone. So I think that his personal authority comes a
great deal from his integrity and the fact that he could stand up
to power.

DB: Why do you think there’s been such intense news
coverage of the pope’s death, especially in America where
less than a quarter of the population in 2002 self-identified as
Catholic?

SB: I think the news coverage has been so intense because on
various issues there has been a very strong hand-holding between
the Roman Catholic Church and other parts of the religious right.
And, whether you look at it as the way the religious right is
taking over the Republican Party or as the way the Republicans have
controlled the religious right, it’s clear that they have
become an enormously potent force in American politics.

It’s interesting to me the way in which President Bush,
who is the first president of the United States ever to go to a
papal funeral, is making a great deal of huff over John Paul II. So
I think the news media are really quite interested in this because
they see, for example, how many people in Congress and throughout
government, are socially conservative.

DB: There are a wide range of regions and backgrounds
represented by the candidates for the papacy. What do you think are
their assets and who do you think should be pope?

SB: Well, many people hope the next pope is from Latin America
since this is the main place where Catholicism is not only growing,
but also threatened by the growth of other evangelical efforts
there. Others say that it ought to be Africa. I think the best
guess would be that it will be a person from the Third World
economically. Certainly, the majority of Catholics are now south of
the equator, not north of the equator, and as such represent the
future of the church.

So what the cardinals will have to decide is whether they want a
voice that will resonate north of the equator to try to pull back
the move toward secularism and materialism that is typical of
Western Europe and most of the United States, or whether they want
to have someone who will have an increasing effect in extending
Catholicism to the Third World.

Interview conducted by Jeff Schenck, Bruin senior
staff.