“Methinks you protest too much” 

      Two weeks ago were heady days in Rome.  One would think that those glory-days of the 1960s had returned, and young people were ready, once again, to take to the streets to defy and protest against authority, especially that most onerous of authorities called “organized religion.”  The occasion?  Well, it seems the Roman Pontiff had somehow received an invitation from the University of Rome, La Sapienza, to speak at the opening ceremonies for the new academic year.  “No way, Jose,” was the response of a small group of students and faculty (63 out of 4,500), who staged a sit-in at the rector’s office to protest the Pope’s planned visit and, evidently, used the opportunity away from library and laboratory to paint some remarkably colorful protest signs, one even in English with the very subtle and developed wit of “No Pope!”  You see, the Pope is hostile to science, the young people claimed.  And they should know, for they are studenti of Rome’s major university, ironically, founded and funded by Pope Boniface VIII in 1303.  (No matter, for we all know that in those dreadful Middle Ages, everyone over thirty was hostile to science… except Muslims, of course.) 

      Pope Benedict politely declined to come to La Sapienza.  It would have been interesting, though – one must at least grudgingly admit – to have heard what one of these anti-science pontiffs would have had to say at a university gathering.  One’s curiosity can be satisfied, since the Holy Father did forward his presentation on to the university rector – whose comment about the protesters bears repeating:  “[theirs is] a fundamentalist attitude of great intellectual closure.”  Below is an excerpt from the Pope’s talk. 

      I am moved, on this occasion, to express my gratitude for the invitation extended to me to come to your university to deliver an address to you. In this perspective, I first of all asked myself the question: What can a pope say on an occasion like this? In my lecture in Regensburg, I indeed spoke as pope, but I spoke above all in the guise of a former professor of the university, seeking to connect memory and the present. But at the university "La Sapienza", the ancient university of Rome, I have been invited as "Bishop of Rome", and so I must speak in this capacity. Of course, "La Sapienza" was once the pope's university, but today it is a secular university with that autonomy which, on the basis of its founding principles, has always been part of the nature of the university, which must always be exclusively bound to the authority of the truth. In its freedom from political and ecclesiastical authorities, the university finds its special role, and in modern society as well, which needs institutions of this nature.  

This, obviously, just bristles with hostility….

      But something else was afoot in the Italian capital.  Even though a small group of students and faculty were able to block the Pope’s coming to La Sapienza, a huge contingent of the said university’s student body showed up at the Vatican for the following Sunday’s Angelus, carrying signs such as, “If the Pope can’t come to us, we’ll come to him.”  These representatives of the U of R mingled with a crowd close to two hundred thousand strong, filling the Piazza San Pietro and most of the length of the Via della Conciliazione.  Meanwhile, two universities in the north of the country quickly extended invitations to the Holy Father to grace them with his presence and speak to them. 

      What the 1960s sit-in style protesters of La Sapienza still cannot get through their heads – benumbed as they are by the inherited life-style “philosophy” of baby-boomers – is that the Pope is his own pulpit.  Back in the late 1990s I remember seeing a cartoon that in the first frame depicted academics and journalists reassuring themselves that traditional Roman Catholic teaching – especially involving morals – would continue to alienate almost all people, young people especially; the second frame depicted the Pope (John Paul II) greeting an immense crowd at one of his routine audiences in the Piazza San Pietro.  Such audiences have only greatly increased in size during the pontificate of Benedict XVI. 

      Granted, numbers are not everything, but they are the central argument of the secularists and their “Catholic” allies in the Church who keep whipping the dead horse of “the spirit of Vatican II” (that “ghost,” disembodied as it is from the letter):  that, unless the Church conforms herself to the norms and expectations of modern culture, she will continue to decline in size and importance.  The Church’s response is simply that she will remain true to the teaching of Christ – popular or unpopular – and if that means massive defections of the young, well then, the Church will just be smaller.  It’s a most appealing message, especially to the thoughtful young, the very ones who are becoming most prominent in the turning away from the pipedreams of the 60s and 70s; they are the real rebels, and their numbers are growing.  They do not want a church that will just tell them they are fine and dandy; they want a church that will help them become who they know they really should be – disciples of Christ, not of the world.

      Back during the last conclave, when the Sistine Chapel bells tolled, and the white smoke signaled the election of a new Pope, many a news commentator expressed confusion as to why so many young people, rushing by the TV cameras toward St. Peter’s, would be so concerned about this event.  (One has to also then ask why nearly the whole world’s attention was zoned in on that very place.)   A Catholic journalist answered, “They are looking for a father.”  In John Paul they had one; in Benedict they have another one, who will not pat them on the head and reassure them that they should pursue whatever makes them comfortable… blah, blah, blah; but rather, father-like, challenge them to be holy, to be true sons and daughters of the Church, witnesses to the Gospel of Christ, in a world that more and more so obviously needs to hear that message and see it lived.