P
Pregustator
Guest
Not ultra-liberal, no. Clearly the popes of the modern day have shared your perspective. All the popes of the 20th and 21st centuries–even those who wore the tiara–have focused upon the pope’s role as bishop, teacher, and universal shepherd, over his role as worldly monarch. For that we can thank Italian unification and the changing times, as well as a litany of remarkable popes who were quite attuned to the times in which they lived.
It was certain that Pope Paul VI wanted to offer clear outward signals to the Church and to the world that the contemporary shepherd-pastor idea of the papacy was here to stay; therefore the papacy was to shed many of her outdated imperial trappings in order that the pope’s authentic pastoral role would not be hidden from modern eyes behind all the regal baroque clap-trap. Away went the tiara. Along came the pope’s pastoral staff. The rich scarlet brocades found throughout the papal apartments were replaced with earth tone treatments. The embroidered pontifical sandals were replaced by red leather slip-on shoes. The papal courtiers and divisions were slashed, and the pope’s court took on a more ecclesiastical and less worldly character.
By the time John Paul I’s smiling face said goodbye to us, the pope had become, in the eyes of the world, no longer a remote princely sovereign, but a beloved fatherly bishop. His successors obviously have felt that that is not a bad way to project the papacy in the modern age, at all. It works. It resonates with the public. John Paul II, in fact, took that modern concept of the papacy and ran with it all the way to the end zone.
Clearly, there has been some effort by Pope Benedict XVI to restore something of the “look” of the old papacy. But, if you’ll notice, he cannot quite seem to wholly commit to that effort. One day, he comes out looking like Pius XII in tall jeweled miter and mantum, with lace everywhere, the next he appears in something so avant-garde you just wonder what on earth he was thinking that day. At other times, his vestments look so much like John Paul II’s that for a moment, you think you are, in fact, looking at old footage of John Paul rather than of Benedict. Sometimes Pope Benedict uses the papal chairs embroidered in creams and earth tones, sometimes he uses great velvet and gilt thrones that haven’t been seen since the pre-reform days. Oddly, he uses those old thrones of state in St. Peter’s as pontifical thrones, rather than just restore the old pontifical throne, canopy and dais. He has shunned the familiar silver papal staff in favour of something rather less compelling that was fished out of an era when popes did not even carry pastoral staffs.
Clearly Pope Benedict wants to sort of have it both ways: he wants to restore something of the more splendid past, without going overboard so as to entirely lose that “John Paul” image of the papacy that has so much appeal. Despite the current pope’s restoration of this or that long-since vanished vestige of a past era, it was he who dumped the tiara from the papal coat of arms, replacing it with a bishop’s mitre. And, of course, he was not crowned, but invested with the pallium. A redesigned pallium. A redesigned pallium that he has since put aside, in favour of another redesigned pallium.
