THESE days Christians prefer “to work mightily” not to think of death or what life might be like after death.
So says Cardinal George Pell, leader of the 600,000 Roman Catholics in Sydney, Australia. He could hardly have imagined that his words, in his book Be Not Afraid, would be published in the week when he and the other 116 cardinals would be summoned to Rome to bury Pope John Paul II and choose his successor.
Although the Cardinal might be considered papabile himself — the bookmakers Paddy Power have him at 40-1, and history shows that the favourites rarely emerge as victors from the conclave — he is more likely to play a role in determining whether the papacy goes to a Latin American or a European. The votes of the two cardinals from Australia and New Zealand are considered crucial by the lobbying groups already campaigning discreetly in the Eternal City.
In many respects Pell epitomises the legacy of John Paul, but, like some of his brother bishops in the developing world, he is also a frontiersman. He is great-grandson of one of the first British colonists in Dunedin, New Zealand, whose son moved to Melbourne and then Western Australia in the 1890s.
Pell’s father was a heavyweight boxing champion who worked in the mining industry and then took over the Royal Oak Hotel in Ballarat, where Pell grew up. Pell senior, an Anglican, was dismayed when the young George said he was going to train for the priesthood. He told a local nun his son might just as well have been a “bloody dill” but added: “You probably don’t want dills, do you?” Over the years his views changed, as he witnessed the beneficial effect of the Catholic Church on his family.
Cardinal Pell is open to popular culture. In his book he praises Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings as a “masterpiece” and the film as a “classic”, lauding it as deeply spiritual and hope-inspiring. The Harry Potter books, he says, contain a “good dose of moral truth” as well as being “a great yarn”. But just because Pell is capable of the accessible “bon mot” and can see spiritual messages in secular contexts, does not mean that he has an uncritical view of the modern world.
John Paul II was profoundly disappointed when the people of the newly liberated Eastern bloc failed to fill the communist-shaped spiritual vacuum with the Christian God and embraced capitalism, consumerism and all the modern mores that the Church is so set against — and Pell emerges as a priest fitted to take up his sword and crusade on this account. He cites John Paul’s writings with approval in Be Not Afraid — singling out for special praise Novo Millennio Ineunte, the Pope’s apostolic letter for the beginning of this millennium. Pell outlined some of his own thinking in a recent address in Michigan entitled Is there only secular democracy? Imagining other possibilities for the third millennium.
Doubts about democracy are harboured by senior cardinals throughout the Church, and a cynic might wonder by what system, if not communism, fascism or democracy, should the world be governed in the eyes of the Catholic Church. The answer, the cynic suspects, is the Church itself or, in effect, theocracy.
But that is not what Pell is proposing. He commented on a society where television has broadcast, with little adverse comment, programmes such as one where people were shown with animals as their intimate partners. He also referred to the widening chasm between world and Church on issues such as contraception. The point he was making was that “for secular militants today democracy, more than anything else, means that anything is possible. Freedom today, in its everyday sense, means the limitlessness of possibility: whatever you want, whatever you like, you can do it”.
Pell acknowledges the need, voiced already by the likes of the American theologian George Weigel, for a Catholic theory of democracy. “Having a name for this alternative form of democracy would obviously be useful,” he says. “While ‘Catholic democracy’ has some slight appeal for me personally, I don’t think it would help us to corner the market.”
His system would be called “democratic personalism”, built on the Pope’s call for recognition of “the transcendent dignity of the human person”. While this clumsy term is unlikely to catch on, Pell is in line with the Pope — and millions of others — in his concerns about the long-term effects of life lived without the transcendent.
Speaking to The Times before the Pope became ill, Pell said politics was a matter for lay people. The obligation of bishops and priests was to speak out on the moral dimension of public issues. The Christian churches must dialogue with the world around them. The Pope had got it right, he said.
“His basic diagnosis of the Western world was correct. I would hope that line would continue. A new pope will bring new approaches and new perspectives. That is one of the advantages of having new popes, new bishops, new cardinals. But the person of Christ is at the centre of our understanding of faith.”
Pell finds the appellation “conservative” unhelpful. The Pope’s strong anti-war stance and his concern for the poor made him more of a socialist than many who call themselves socialists. And although he might not term it such, he supports the Pope’s theological conservatism. While acknowledging the need for the Church to adapt to the modern world, he believes this process has been used as a “Trojan horse” by enemies of the Gospel in Western churches: “Everywhere in the Western world, practising Christians are a minority. The danger is we will be swamped by the neo-paganism around us, just as the Jews in the time of the Maccabees were threatened by Greek culture.”
While the Second Vatican Council saw the Church embark on a dialogue with the world, he believes it was over-confident of its ability to influence the world. By contrast, he says, the world has erupted into the Christian churches, as seen most clearly in the Anglican Church’s struggles over homosexuality.
Like the Pope, he sees the answer in reaching the young, and in Sydney he is achieving modest success in programmes to do this. At 63 he is young compared to many of his colleagues. He is handsome, media friendly and a regular newspaper columnist, a sportsman and soccer player like John Paul II. He is orthodox where it counts but also in touch with modern mores. He is probably too young to be a serious contender this time, as few want another 26-year papacy — cardinals may continue until they are 80 but Popes carry on unto death.
Before the last conclave, few would have guessed that the Holy Spirit would guide the cardinals to choose a Polish Pope. The Australian might yet be destined to be Pope, but it is as a pope maker that he remains a man to be watched.
Be Not Afraid by Cardinal George Pell (Gracewing, £12.99)
