We Need a Pope for the People, Not a Vicar of Hype

“If there could be such a thing in this modern age as a Saint of Public Relations, he is this Pope.” These words were said 32 years ago by Clare Boothe Luce about Pope Pius XII. In light of the present Pope’s visit, its magnitude, glamour, staggering costs and extraordinary media coverage, presumably Luce would need to grant John Paul II the status of supersaint.

We live, move and have our being unmistakably in the Age of Hype. Critic Louis Kronenberger noted that, in terms of affecting lives today, “the only man fit to be compared with Sigmund Freud or Karl Marx is P. T. Barnum.” The king of circus enterprises relied heavily on a barrage of publicity, stunts, sensational gimmicks and unhampered tub-thumping. We’ve come to the Popemobile and stadium rites of worship with casts of thousands, God in prime time.

Yet this is an evangelistic approach with many advocates. Billy Graham (for one) said in an interview in 1955: “I am selling the greatest product in the world; why shouldn’t it be promoted as well as soap?”

Product? If the gospel of Jesus Christ is truly on a par with soap, exploitation might seem to be in order. But exploitation is a mortal sin when it perceives people as objects, faces in a crowd, statistics for sales or conversions, and uses them for venal purposes.

To violate human integrity by exploiting people for Jesus Christ is far more critical, it seems to me, than coming up with a hard sell for Chrysler, Arrid or Paramount. God never exploits us. In fact, God created us with free wills. Jesus Christ, far from exploiting the political and cultural situation in which he found himself, refused temptations of worldly power, defused a passion of adulation present in crowds that hailed him, and willed to die in a setting of apparent humiliation and defeat. He provided the refutation, as well as the antithesis, of exploitation. His conduct represents the meaning of love on a vast public, as well as an intensely personal, scale.

The Christian church, ostensibly wishing to follow the way of Jesus Christ, instead has encumbered itself with bigness, publicity, professional packaging and audience-tested techniques in conveying its message to modern publics. Mostly, its business appears to be image-making--an enterprise available to athletes and Presidents, movie stars and Popes. When the propagandistic image is deemed foolproof, a “sale” can be made in dollars or votes, conversions or box office.

In the past, exploitation of people for Jesus Christ was carried out by swords, gold, guns and flags. Yet this same Jesus Christ emptied himself of power for the sake of humankind. To cleanse itself of the exploitation habit, modern evangelism needs to stress servant-hood over pomp, humility over spectacle, and the simple witness of its own “emptiness” in faithful response to God’s uncalculated, unconditional gift of wholeness and love.

Americans have been told--and they want to believe--that John Paul is avant-garde, contemporary, even post-modern, a religious leader looking ahead into the 21st Century. What we are seeing is a Pope trapped in a medieval vision of patriarchic control, monarchical trappings and misuse of vast funds for the glory of office while people go hungry and homeless. He appears to be as isolated as Reagan-at-the-Ranch from the everyday compelling concerns of ordinary women and men. His unrealistic views on human sexuality, for instance, have hurt and even harmed large numbers of men and women.

These same people are, through their taxes, having to pay for much of the cost of his visit. Spiritual and religious leaders of various persuasions should be welcomed by us and received amicably, but, please, let them pay their own way. More than that, a Vicar of Christ should be refusing the pomp and giving money wherever it is needed. And he should reject the Age of Hype.

Ideas, like food, are given us individually wrapped and sterilized. We who live in this age are slowly losing, in ways sometimes subtle but often very obvious, our identity as persons able to make a free response. Under the onslaught of hype, we grow feeble against the forces of dehumanization.

If the church does not cease our exploitation, it may unknowingly thrust aside Christ’s cross to achieve the chimera of success, and inadvertently lose its soul.