The Pope's Mission in Switzerland: Bolstering the Faithful
Today Catholicism is akin to an embattled cultural minority, struggling against extinction by assimilation

By John L. Allen Jr.
Bern, Switzerland

European Catholicism may be in some ways a shell of its former self, but to judge from John Paul II's June 5-6 trip to Bern, Switzerland, it's a shell with spunk.

Indicators of ecclesiastical winter on the Old Continent are not hard to find: a dearth of vocations to the priesthood and religious life, historically low levels of Mass attendance, and a near-total lack of public influence. In one telling sign of this impotence, just 48 hours before the apostle of the "culture of life" arrived in the Swiss capital, the federal parliament approved a bill for civil registration of same-sex unions.

The epochal transition now underway, in fact, may well be the dawning recognition that Catholicism is no longer the chief shaper of culture in Europe, no longer the animating conviction of the majority. Today Catholicism is more akin to an embattled cultural minority, and like other minority groups, it is struggling against extinction by assimilation. The antidote is the politics of identity -- preserving the language and the customs of the tribe.

In that sense, the deep logic of John Paul's weekend outing may have been to give his struggling Swiss minority a shot in the arm. The festive air surrounding the trip, John Paul's 103rd outside Italy, was palpable, if at times perhaps a bit forced.

The 84-year-old pope rocked and rolled with some 13,000 youth in the city's Ice Palace, which is normally used as a hockey rink, on the evening of Saturday, June 5. When the pope appeared on stage at 6:12 p.m., the crowd exploded as if the Swiss team had just scored the game-winning goal in the Olympic hockey finals, and sustained a deafening roar for a full 10 minutes.

A few moments later, the pope began his speech and appeared to be incapable of carrying on, breathing heavily. When an aide tried to take his papers, however, John Paul slapped him away, triggering another full-throated roar that shook the rafters.

Throughout the trip, John Paul appeared sluggish and tired, but he finished all his speeches and maintained all his public engagements.

"I too, like you, was once 20 years old," the pope told the youth gathering, which included not just Swiss but Poles, Croats, Austrians, Spaniards, and a number of other nationalities.

"I liked to play sports, to ski, to act. I studied and I worked. I had desires and worries. In those years that are now far away, in times in which my homeland was wounded first by war and then by a totalitarian regime, I was searching for the sense to give to my life."

"I found it," he said, "in following the Lord Jesus."

The crowd hung on the pope's every phrase. They sang, they danced, they did the wave, and for a few moments the ennui of centuries of history seemed to lift. European Catholicism felt young.

All one had to do, however, was to step a few paces away from the Bern Expo Center to find oneself on another planet.

First of all, John Paul II faces unrest in his own house. Prior to his arrival, a number of Swiss priests, theologians and lay people openly called on the pope to resign. A recent opinion poll for the Herbert Haag Foundation found that 90 percent of Swiss Catholics support inter-communion with Protestants, something the pope has opposed. Some 89 percent backed optional celibacy for priests, 76 percent want women priests, and 65 percent want dioceses to elect their own bishops.

Public reaction before John Paul's arrival was also largely negative. Here's how one local newspaper headlined its Saturday coverage:

The Pope in a Bern far from Rome. No display of welcome for the pope. Indifference to opposition in the local population. A Protestant boycott and fine-tuning from the Vatican against a press critical of the pope. No warm reception for John Paul II.

Even the President of the Swiss Federation, Joseph Deiss, felt constrained to acknowledge that some of his constituents were less than thrilled by the pope's arrival when he welcomed John Paul June 5.

"In a land of democracy and cultural diversity, it is natural that some of Your Holiness's doctrines and precepts elicit intensive debate," Deiss said. "However, tied to this is an acknowledgment that you compel us to reflect on key questions affecting society."

On the streets of Bern, the criticism was much more blunt. A small but determined group of young radicals staged a rally in the streets of Bern the night before the pope arrived, chanting "To the devil with the pope." As John Paul was getting ready for Saturday's youth rally, local college students were wandering the downtown area handing out lengthy tracts against Opus Dei, as well as condoms bearing the label "Protect yourself … the pope won't do it."

"We don't want the pope," Mike Dee, 24, of Bern told NCR. "He is too conservative on AIDS, on women, on everything."

Despite the fact that Dee and several of his friends, all from Protestant families, conceded that they never go to church, they all insisted on feeling hurt and excluded because the pope would not give them communion.

John Paul appeared to acknowledge this unrest on Sunday, when he appealed for unity.

"A local church in which the spirituality of communion flowers will know how to constantly purify itself of the 'toxins' of egoism, which generate jealousy, diffidence, manias of self-affirmation, and harmful contrapositions," he said.

Yet by the second day, as is almost always the case on papal trips, John Paul's stamina -- combined with the rapturous reception from his legions of young admirers -- had turned the tide, at least at the level of PR. The main Swiss daily headlined its Sunday coverage of the youth rally: "John Paul II was celebrated like a pop star."

Throughout the two-day swing, there was a definite "Catholic Woodstock" feel, with deliberately upbeat pop tunes even during the Sunday Mass in an open-air field outside the Expo Center. The soundtrack left toes tapping and produced a slightly unliturgical vibe at several moments, including after the presentation of gifts and just before the Eucharistic prayers. There was, for example, a jazz swing number during what is normally quiet reflection time after the distribution of communion.

The effect on the youth, however, seemed energizing.

"I feel more Catholic today," said Michele Tassone, 14, of the Swiss town of Lanquart. "Being here with all these other Catholic kids, I feel more like I'm part of something."

John Paul argued that beneath it all, Switzerland still has Christian roots. Even those young people protesting his presence, he seemed to suggest, have been shaped by their Christian heritage.

"Switzerland has a grand tradition of respect for the human person," he said Sunday morning. "It's a tradition that stands under the Sign of the Cross: the Red Cross!" he said, making reference to the Swiss flag.

Several times the pope made reference to the special service Switzerland renders to the papacy in the form of the Swiss Guards. Sunday he met with an association of ex-members of the guard before returning to Rome.

In the end, even if Swiss Catholicism has seen better days, it put on a good show over these two days in Bern, projecting an optimistic and lively image to a culture often accustomed to thinking of the church as anything but joyful.

This may be a remnant church, in other words, but at least it knows how to party.

John L. Allen Jr. is NCR Rome correspondent. His e-mail address is jallen@natcath.org

National Catholic Reporter, June 7, 2004