power of frailty and power of power

This blog led me to an article in the National Catholic Reporter. I liked the sound, an interesting sound to me from that arena, a brokenness and peace portrayed - "not only the church triumphant"...

"...Now that all the rules are suspect and all the laws were written to regulate another whole kind of society, what rules can now prevail? How long will the old answers to new questions inspire, give direction?

It may be the moment for the church itself to contemplate a different way of being alive in the world that is more than the image of a massive basilica, confined under a hulking dome, encircled by a monumental colonnade and living behind a set of old rules.

The very person of a frail, silent pope, devoid of the drama and the force of the church triumphant, open to the future, calm and quiet in the face of it, could itself be a lesson to the church in a spiraling, renascent world such as this one. That, in fact, might be a far more potent image of what is really the spirit of Christ in the Christian church than anything else we could hope to see.

In 1294, Pope Celestine entered Rome after a 27 month conclave stalemated over the direction in which to take the Church. In the end, they chose an 84 year old monk who insisted on entering Rome on a donkey. Three months later, when the Cardinals refused to take over the daily administration of the church so he could fast and pray during Advent, he called a consistory and resigned on the spot.

The pope who succeeded him understood the power of the spiritual over the administrative. He refused to allow Celestine to return to his mountain hermitage for fear the gentle, prayerful monk-pope, would become a center of schism, a rallying point of holiness, in a church more given to pomp than to circumstance.

Now, in our time, the world has launched a period of authoritarianism, it seems, in order to control the chaos that change brings. But it isn't working. On the contrary. The control has only managed to breed alienation at every level.

Maybe Pope Celestine knew in the thirteenth century what people are now beginning to suspect: Simple holiness always trumps force.

From where I stand, it seems that history may well be repeating itself. This time the stakes are higher than ever. Let's hope we're all fairly alert to the fact that the purpose of the church is not control. It is holiness. The power of frailty is always more potent, in the long run, than the power of power.

Bring on the donkey."