The death of a good man brings so many thoughts to the forefront of our minds. I have found myself reflecting, over the last week or so, on the outstanding life of Pope John Paul II and this has triggered quite a flurry of activity in my brain on a number of other issues too.

There is no doubt that Pope John Paul has been an inspiration to millions of people: those who belong to his church as well as those who don’t and even some who would not count themselves part of any church. He was clearly a man of deep holiness and he lived through the kinds of oppression and restrictions that tend to produce exceptional human beings as they rise above and confront the evil they have to face head on. And he was clearly one of these. The obituaries have been full of examples and anecdotes about him.

But I have also found myself being reminded over the last week of why the Reformation took place, and that the Church of England has been significantly shaped by that Reformation. When I hear Cardinals commending Pope John Paul to Mary and praying through her, then a voice inside me shouts out a very loud ‘NO’! We don’t pray through Mary, to Mary, through a Pope, a Vicar, the Archbishop of Canterbury, or any saint. We pray through Christ and through him alone. In the words of 1 Timothy ‘there is one mediator between God and humankind, Christ Jesus’ (2:5); he is the one who bridges any gap between humanity and God. That is what Christ is and it is a distortion of the Christian faith to put anyone else in this place - even his mother. To do this is to deny the central Easter faith that through Christ we have direct access to God and he is the one who makes this possible. Not Mary, not the Pope, not anyone else. The Reformation was and is about considerably more than a divorcee King wanting to marry his former mistress! It was an attempt to purge the Church of what were seen as distortions and reassert a New Testament faith.

There has of course been much work in recent years about the full extent of this, but there are times when I am reminded of why I am an Anglican and not a Roman Catholic and the last week has seen a number of these. For all the developments in Christian Unity, there remain some significant differences between us and they are not removed by admiration for one man.

For all the wonderful things that have been said about John Paul II, he hasn’t changed the official line of the Roman Catholic Church towards the Church of England. As recently as a few years ago he issued a statement confirming the official Roman Catholic opinion that all Anglican Orders are utterly null and void! In other words, he didn’t recognise that my ordination or that of any other priest in the Church of England as being valid. Roman Catholics were also told by him that they should not receive Communion at our altars - because in his opinion it wasn’t real. A former member of our 8.00am congregation was refused absolution by a Roman Catholic priest last year for receiving Communion here - though why she felt she needed to confess it in the first place baffles me. This kind of negativity from a fellow priest makes me very cross. But then I am reminded that it is how many Anglicans regard Methodist and Baptist clergy, and how most used to regard them until recently, so the air of righteous indignation is somewhat dented.

I grew up, as a choir boy, hearing phrases like ‘Communicant members of all Christian Churches are welcome to receive the bread and wine here’. Yet in some places this is still regarded as radical. I grew up with a firm conviction in the priesthood of all believers and yet still hear people who don’t believe it in practice. Many still work under the misapprehension that the church can only be represented by a clerical collar. With reducing numbers of clergy that model of ministry is imploding and maybe it has to! Again I find my assumptions are not shared by everyone.

So when I look back over the last quarter of a century, the time that John Paul II occupied the Papacy, I find that some of the very things I just accepted as the starting point are still being debated. Sometimes I think we haven’t moved very far at all in that time. But it will all catch up because there are pressures at work that will just make it impossible to ignore these things for any longer. There is a reminder here to take the longer view and have patience when the change and facing that change seems slow - something I admit I’m not particularly good at! In the grand sweep of things, even a quarter century Papacy can be swept aside by the bigger waves that move and shape us. It will be interesting to see if the spirit of Vatican II, with its moving away from the centralised power base and its emphasis on local decision making will actually prevail in the long term and aspects of John Paul II’s reign will then be seen as a reactionary blip on the wider movement of ideas and developments.

If history judges him it will do so in the context of his time. As one commentator has observed, he never experienced democracy, growing up under Nazi occupation and then living under Communism, so he never had a model of democracy in action to emulate. He came from a Catholicism regarded as being more catholic than any other - ultra conservative - and of course, one man can only nudge things so far.

So I have some mixed thoughts buzzing round my mind as I reflect on the death of Pope John Paul II. Some of these thoughts remind me why we look to the Reformation in our faith and some make me focus on the importance of Christian Unity, some trigger thoughts on the model of ministry and leadership that shape the church. Underlying all of them is a deep thankfulness for the holiness of a life lived for God.

Our Gospel reading today gave us the great story of Jesus appearing to the disciples on the road to Emmaus (Luke 24:13-35). This encounter has inspired thoughts of Christians growing in their faith when they are accompanied on their journey. We grow when we are consciously joined with others and share our thoughts. Then when we gather round the table and break the bread we recognise that Christ has been present with us all along. And there is something about that joining together in the journey that helps us recognise the presence of Christ that we don’t see when we try to go it alone.

Noting the death of John Paul II reminds us that Christians are to pursue unity and celebrate together the common ground of our faith, which goes deeper than the things that divide us.

© Ian Black 2005

Home