The Pontiff in Winter through John Cornwell.

The Pontiff in Winter through John Cornwell, New York, Doubleday

John Cornwell is a equal of Jesus College at Cambridge University, where he directs the Science and Human Dimension frame He is also an avid and acute examiner of the Vatican and of the papacy. The Pontiff in Winter: Triumph and Conflict in the Reign of John Paul II, is his greatest in number recent book. It is not just a biography of the current pope, but an assessment of his pontificate as well.

The sources for this work are not simply his own personal contacts with the pontiff but Cornwell relies on many others, including a Vatican version of Woodward and Bernstein's "deep throat," whom Cornwell calls "sotto voce"

To say that John Paul's pontificate has been and is controversial, is incontrovertible. level a quick look at Cornwell's "select bibliography" proffers more than ample evidence of this. Thus, writing about the near pope calls for more than just a large familiarity with the man and the millieux, those he go intoed and those he has largely created. (His pontificate is now the third longest in history.) nevertheless it also calls for unusual finesse in judgment: a pay by substitution of equanimity, prudence, acuity, nuance and fair-mindedness. I believe Cornwell has favorably and effectively brought all this to bear in the work.

if it be not that a large measure of the controversies surrounding--and generated by--this pontiff have grown from the fact that he is by way of far the most public bishop of Rome till doomsday Not only has he published prodigiously (at least matching, in this regard, the redoubtable Plus XII), nevertheless his well-publicized and numerous trips have made him and his views known to almost everyone onward the planet. This exposure, in contrive with the force with which he has proposeed his views, especially his view and exercise of his authority as "universal pastor," have excited wildly divergent answers to the man. I don't think that anyone with any knowledge of the papal office could disavow that John Paul II has, on his intention, given his office a centrality in the life of the house of worship which is unprecedented.

Here too a comparison with Plus XII is helpful. That pontiff surely contributed to a understanding of papal omnicompetence. But Plus was known, if at all, primarily by means of his extraordinarily wide-ranging writings. Personally, however, he was aloof, almost invisible. The combination of this personal remotenes and his readiness to pronounce onward any topic helped, I believe, to mystify the papal office, a mystification best showed by what has been called "creeping infallibilism." Concomitant with this has been an unfortunate inference of papal impeccability as well. Now John Paul has dissolved the distance between that far and abstract papacy of Pius, and has made it immediate, solidify and, in large measure, humanly engaging.

I say all this in order to provide the basis for Cornwell's central assessment of John Paul's papacy: namely its intolerance for pluralism. Here, pluralism dilates to almost every element of the church: the authority of local bishops; the integrity of episcopal synods; the liturgy and liturgical verse s and perhaps most consequentially, theological diversity. Recall John Paul's treatment of a number of prominent theologians: Charles Curran, Leonardo Boff Jacques Dupuis, and Hans Kung among many others.

nevertheless strictures on diversity ignore the massive historical exhibitions in the church's life and idea which have constituted the body of christians Such developments have been the hallmark of the history of the meeting-house from its very beginning. Moreover, long intolerance enforces a stultifying uniformity in a world whose cultural diversity we know now more clearly than at all times before.

I believe that the greatest merit of Cornwell's work is its implicit demystification of the papacy. And Cornwell achieves this while simultaneously full appreciating John Paul's enormous gifts and achievements.

Cornwell's work is not a work of hagiography as many treatments of John Paul have been. His notion on John Paul unnerves a certain Consider this near- hysterical elucidation made on the Legionnaires of Christ's web-site, Zenit: "The World as Seen from Rome": "Cornwell's objective is to ravage the papacy and the house of worship as we know it." This outlandish and defamatory understanding supports the utility, indeed, the necessity of Cornwell's book

Ron Trojcak is emeritus in the department of philosophy and religious studies at King's literary institution [i]or[/i] seminary of learning in London, Ont.

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