The following evaluation comes from a long-time pope watcher whose bias will be evident:
Popes
There have been two great popes in my lifetime and two not-so-great ones.
My personal history of popism goes back to Pius XII in the 1950s. Counting the current pope, Leo XIV, that’s a total of eight popes.
The
two great popes were John XXIII and Francis. The two not-so-great ones were
Paul VI and John Paul II. The others did not stand out from the background.
This is admittedly not fair to John Paul I and Leo. John Paul I held the office
for only thirty days and by all accounts might have been a great one had he
lived. Leo is too new and is taking great pains not to make any waves, so it’s
not clear how he will turn out. Benedict was a clone of John Paul II. Pius XII
is a dim memory, shrouded in the mists of history.
The two great popes were great because they were revolutionary. They made significant changes in a positive direction. John XXIII initiated the Second Vatican Council which fundamentally changed the way the Catholic Church does business. The Spirit he set loose on the world will be reverberating for long time to come despite concerted attempts to quash it. He rightly belongs near the top of the list of great popes. In his own way, Francis was also revolutionary. A doctrinal conservative (no one is perfect), he nonetheless significantly changed pastoral practice for the better. Using traditional doctrine and applying his “much mercy” approach, Francis made it clear that the American hierarchy’s obsession with sexual sins was misguided. He clearly stated that sexual sins were no better and no worse than any other sins. At first glance, one might overlook just how revolutionary that papal declaration was. If sexual sins are no better or worse than other sins, and everyone (including Francis) agrees that most other sins are venial, then it follows that sexual sins are also typical venial. Take it from an old-timer, that’s not the way it was before Vatican II. Sexual sins were all mortal, and damned you to hell for all eternity if not formally forgiven, and that threat was yielded with alacrity by Catholic clergy, alienating whole generations of church goers who abstained from the eucharist while practicing so-called “artificial” contraception. Francis changed all that officially. He was the culmination of a tidal wave unintentionally launched by Paul VI (see below).
Which brings us to the two not-so-great popes. Both are in this category because they tried (thankfully, with limited success) to constrain what they saw as the excesses emanating from Vatican II. Paul VI will be remembered for one thing: Humana Vitae. Caving to a small cadre of conservative cardinals who convinced him that changing the teaching on contraception would make it look like the Church had previously been wrong, he threw Catholic married couples under the bus and reasserted the traditional teaching. The reaction was swift and exactly the opposite of what he intended: Insurrection from within. Lay Catholics were forced to grow up, and they did. In the spirit of Vatican II and encouraged (for the most part) by local bishops, they opted to follow their own consciences and dissented overwhelmingly. Paul’s legacy was to preside over the diminishment of the moral authority of the papacy. John Paul II was a rabid reactionary. He attempted to stifle every liberal tendency and wasn’t shy about using papal muscle to accomplish that goal. He and his enforcer, the future Pope Benedict, ran their own inquisition and crushed internal dissent wherever they thought they saw it. He “purified” the clergy but fortunately had little leverage over the laity. He attempted, unsuccessfully, to expand the doctrine of papal infallibility. He also dragged his feet throughout the sexual-abuse crisis. All in all, in his quarter-century reign, JP probably set the church back about 200 years. Ironically, after his death, he was fast-tracked to sainthood and given the honorary title “John Paul the Great” by his conservative cult following. Such is life.
In fairness, I should make it clear that the two popes I have criticized may have been entirely right in everything they did and I may be the misguided one for criticizing. Further, regardless of who is right, I am quite certain that God was pleased with their faithful service and has rewarded them accordingly.
If this brief commentary illustrates anything, it is that the church, through the office of the papacy, is malleable. If there is any hope for the future, that is it.
