John XXIII’s impossible miracle

Almost 51 years since his canonization was first proposed, the pope dearest to my heart, John XXIII, born Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli, is now a saint.

It has been long enough. I confess I have looked upon John Paul II’s rapid rise to sainthood with some pique. John XXIII would chide me for this. Ever conscious of his own unworthiness, he would be quick to acknowledge John Paul II’s merits, though I might quarrel with him about the superiority of those merits.

Could the long delay in John XXIII’s canonization be partly blamed on Catholic liberals who may have expected him to intercede for impossible miracles to demonstrate his saintly credentials? Universal admission of laywomen into the Extraordinary Ministry of the Eucharist—a universal cure for cancer might be easier. Women’s ordination—such a miracle might be beyond the Blessed Virgin herself, even under Pope Francis, who has declared that discussion closed, despite his call for a “Theology of Women.”

I am not seriously suggesting that John XXIII’s slow track to sainthood is because he didn’t get those miracles granted. But I do suspect it is because when he was alive, he was a pope of whom people would not have been afraid to ask for such things.

That is not to say he would have granted them then. A pope this side of eternity has a more limited perspective than he might have on the other side; and Church politics has to be considered, which a dead pope doesn’t have to worry about (except insofar as it retards his canonization). But at least the petitions would have had a hearing. After all, this was the pope who saw contention as a way “to fuller and deeper understanding of religious truths” (Ad Petri Cathedram #71).

That may explain the reluctance to canonize him. Willingness to listen to controversial proposals is not often regarded by the Roman Catholic hierarchy as a mark of sanctity.

But John XXIII’s willingness to listen to controversial proposals enabled him to work for what may be his greatest miracle: the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council (Vatican II). Aware that he was an accidental pope—elected as a compromise between liberal and conservative candidates, and not expected to live long enough to make trouble—he nevertheless swept the Church swiftly and decisively into Vatican II. He believed that the Church badly needed an aggiornamento, an updating, lest she turn into an irrelevant if impressive fossil.

He knew that Vatican II would stir up long-suppressed ferment among laity and clergy impatient with the Church’s incapacity to translate the Gospel effectively for the contemporary world. He knew this ferment would cause distress to those who defined the Church in terms of immutable rules and traditions. But while he loved the Church’s rules and traditions, he was confident that the Holy Spirit would bubble up from the ferment. “Without a touch of holy madness,” he said, “the Church cannot grow.”

A priest who for reasons of prudence cannot be named has said that popes should not be made saints, because saints should be models for ordinary people. Popes are not exactly ordinary people. But John XXIII had three qualities that ordinary Catholics can cultivate, which enabled him to take the enormous risk that was Vatican II.

First was trust in the Holy Spirit.

Second was faith in humanity. “We must always try to speak to the goodness that is in people,” he said of the Soviets whom the Church then deemed her godless enemies.

Third was his capacity to poke fun at himself and at the Church—always lovingly, sometimes pointedly. Greg Tobin’s “The Good Pope” tells stories that demonstrate this endearing sense of humor. Relatives on a first visit to him as pope knelt and bowed their heads. “Forget that!” he said. “Don’t be afraid. It’s only me!” A visitor asked him how many people worked in the Vatican. “Oh, about half of them,” he replied. A joke he played on freshly made cardinals was to lure them into the Vatican gardens, to be baptized unexpectedly by the sprinklers. This affectionate irreverence probably nourished a sense of perspective that sustained him through tensions over hierarchical resistance to Vatican II.

Yet Vatican II was John XXIII’s most serious business, with lasting consequences for the Church. If the Church has been able to accompany her people in struggles for justice and against authoritarian states; if the laity now have a greater sense of ownership of the Church; if the Church is still alive today, it is because of the transformations wrought by Vatican II. Most Catholics today have no personal memory of John XXIII. But much of the air they breathe in the Church is the air he let in when he threw open her windows to the modern world, allowing her eternal values of solidarity, compassion, and human dignity to illuminate contemporary problems which undiscerning conformity to anachronistic rules could no longer address.

The Synod on the Family, called by Pope Francis for late this year, may not be as comprehensively transformative as Vatican II. But it will stir up long-suppressed ferment among laity and clergy impatient with the Church’s incapacity to translate the Gospel of life effectively for the contemporary world.

Catholics who believe in saintly mediation may want to ask John XXIII to intercede for one more miracle: that Francis may have the faith in the Holy Spirit, the faith in humanity, and the sense of humor that makes popes into saints, and miracles possible.

Eleanor R. Dionisio is an associate director of the John J. Carroll Institute on Church and Social Issues.