Linguist Geoff Nunberg on 'Values'

DATE July 19, 2004 ACCOUNT NUMBER N/A
TIME 12:00 Noon-1:00 PM AUDIENCE N/A
NETWORK NPR
PROGRAM Fresh Air

Interview: Author John Allen, the Vatican correspondent for the
National Catholic Reporter, on religion and politics
TERRY GROSS, host:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross.

My guest, John Allen, has been called the dean of Vatican correspondents.
He's the Vatican correspondent for the National Catholic Reporter. He also
writes a weekly Internet column called The Word from Rome. He's written a new
book called "All the Pope's Men: The Inside Story of How the Vatican Really
Thinks." And there's a new revised edition of his book, "Conclave: The
Politics, Personalities and Process of the Next Papal Election." I spoke with
Allen about Pope John Paul II, his health and his relationship with President
Bush. We also talked about issues facing the American Catholic Church.

John Allen, welcome to FRESH AIR. Let's start with some issues that are
facing Americans. John Kerry has said that he believes that life begins at a
conception, but he supports legalized abortion. Some American bishops have
said that a politician who supports abortion should not receive Communion.
What counsel has the Vatican given on that?

Mr. JOHN ALLEN (Vatican Correspondent, National Catholic Reporter): Well, in
any direct sense, the Vatican really hasn't given any counsel, because they
would see this as an issue for the local Bishop's Conference to resolve, but
in an indirect way, various Vatican officials have said various things. And
this, of course, is one of the hard things that people sort of struggle with
in trying to understand the Vatican, is there's a presumption that because
there is a kind of clear Catholic position on a short list of issues, there
should be a clear Catholic position on everything. In reality, it doesn't
work that way, and this would be one of those questions that different Vatican
officials would have different opinions.

And to take one example, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who is the pope's
doctrinal czar, kind of the guardian of orthodoxy in the Catholic Church,
wrote a letter to the American bishops in which he seemed to be saying that he
agreed with those bishops who had said that these politicians should be denied
Communion. Then when the American bishops took a position saying that, `No,
that's not necessarily the route we're going to go,' Ratzinger put out another
letter, saying he was completely in agreement with them.

So, you know, I think it's difficult to say, and I think that the reason it's
difficult to say what the Vatican's position is, is because this is an issue
on which there are deep divisions both in the United States and overseas. I
mean, the Catholic Church is clear that abortion is a grave moral evil. It is
less clear what that translates into in terms of legislative strategy, whether
or not you always and everywhere have to vote in favor of greater legal
restrictions on abortion, or whether or not a Catholic politician could take
the position that the battle has to be fought on the cultural and social level
rather than the legislative arena. That's an issue about which there's
disagreement. There's disagreement here, there's disagreement in the States.

GROSS: Now Cardinal Francis Arinze also made a statement about the Communion
question. What did he have to say?

Mr. ALLEN: Well, he said two different things, and actually, one of them was
in response to a question I put to him at a press conference. Cardinal
Francis Arinze--in the Vatican, he's the chief officer for liturgy; that is,
the rites and rituals of the church. But probably more importantly, for the
broader public, he is seen as one of the leading contenders to be the next
pope. And there were two questions at this press conference. One was
specifically about Senator Kerry and whether or not he felt that Senator Kerry
should be denied Communion. His answer to that was, that's something for the
American bishops to figure out. Then there was a generic question about
whether a Catholic politician who has a clearly pro-abortion voting
record--and, of course, you could debate what pro-abortion actually means, but
this was the question--a Catholic politician with a clearly pro-abortion
voting record, should that person be denied Communion, and his answer was yes,
that such a person should not come forward for Communion, and if that person
came forward, they should not receive it.

And this was, of course, taken in the States as a kind of Vatican green light
for those American bishops who were rattling swords about cutting Catholic
politicians who were pro-choice off from the Communion line. But I think what
has to be said is it is very clear, from the position that the American
bishops took at their June meeting in Denver, that that is a minority position
also within the American Bishops Conference. That is, it's certainly a strong
minority, a vocal minority, but most American bishops, I think, like most
American priests, do not want to be put in the position of having to decide,
as people come up from the Communion line, who gets it and who doesn't. And I
think that's, in effect, where the bishops ended up.

GROSS: I think some bishops have expressed their fear of politicizing
Communion.

Mr. ALLEN: Well, right. I mean, you know, from the Catholic theological
understanding, the Mass should be the supreme moment of unity in the
community. It should be the moment where everyone sort of comes together
around a common table, sets aside their differences and worships God as a
community. And the idea of applying some kind of political or ideological
litmus test to your eligibility to participate is repugnant, frankly, to a lot
of people, including a lot of priests and a lot of bishops. And I think that
explains the great reluctance with which the conference approached this
question.

GROSS: But traditionally, when is a person not supposed to accept Communion?
What are the kind of typical rules surrounding who can accept Communion?

Mr. ALLEN: Well, one of the great things about the Catholic Church is that
it has its own code of law, the code of canon law. And it does in many ways
kind of spell out what the rules of the game are, and whether you like them or
not, at least they're clear. And in this particular case, canon law does
indicate that anyone who obstinately persists in a manifest grave sin is
ineligible for Communion. Now the debate, of course, then becomes, what
exactly does that mean? I mean, certainly, somebody who is--you know, to take
an extreme case, I mean, somebody who is participating in massacres of
innocent people--I mean, I think we could all agree, that's manifest grave sin
and should not be taking Communion. It gets a little bit more fuzzy when you
talk about other situations.

But, you know, I think you have to separate between kind of what the rules say
and how most people would see it. I think what the rules indicate or what the
theology here would be, that the church never denies anyone Communion.
Someone denies Communion to themselves by the moral choices that they have
made. The church merely recognizes that. So that, you know, if you were to
say that a particular person, because of something they've done, because
they've been lying, cheating, stealing, killing, whatever it is--if a priest
refuses to give Communion to that person, it's not because the priest is
imposing a penalty on them. It's because the priest is recognizing the
gravity of the choices that person has already made.

But, you know, in the popular arena, obviously, this is going to be seen as if
the church is imposing a penalty on someone, and I think that's one of the
reasons that a lot of American pastors and a lot of American bishops have been
so very cautious about this, because I think they believe that, in many ways,
the last thing the church needs in the court of public opinion in the United
States right now is to be seen as, once again, being the kind of heavy hand of
authority, you know, trying to bend people to its will. I mean, the church
has had enough bad public relations in the last three years. It doesn't need
to court it again.

GROSS: Is it usually the person who chooses not to accept Communion, or is it
usually the priest who says, `No, you are no longer eligible for Communion'?

Mr. ALLEN: Oh, I think a priest saying to someone, `You cannot receive
Communion,' is exceedingly rare. I mean, I will tell you that in my
experience of, you know, now going on, you know, 39 years as a practicing
Catholic, I've never had a personal case--I've never witnessed a personal
case, I've never heard of a personal case. You know, I think, in the
overwhelming number of circumstances, if someone doesn't come to Communion,
it's because they've made the decision not to present themselves because they
think they're not in what Catholics would traditionally be called a state of
grace, meaning, that is, that you don't have a serious unconfessed sin on your
soul.

GROSS: Now if a politician is divorced, which goes against the church's
teaching, or if a politician uses birth control or supports the legal and
accessible--access to birth control, is it possible that they might at some
point enter the same kind of controversy about whether they should receive
Communion, or is that not close enough to manifest grave sin?

Mr. ALLEN: Well, I mean, this is the whole point. What is, you
know--obstinate persistence in manifest grave sin is in the eye of the
beholder, and certainly, I would not rule out that there might be some bishop
or some pastor someplace that would want to make an issue out of that. All
I'm saying is that I think the overwhelming majority of them do not.

Let me give you a very practical example. The former mayor of Rome is a guy
by the name of Francisco Rutelli. He's now one of the leaders of the center
left opposition here in Italy. During the Holy Year, that is, the year 2000,
when there was very long series of special celebrations here in Rome, the city
really bent over backwards to be helpful to the church, and Rutelli was
responsible for pumping all kinds of money and civic support into the church's
yearlong calendar of activity. There were at least 20 ceremonies during the
course of that year that included a Mass that Rutelli attended. And on many
of those occasions, including this, you know, gala final Mass at the end of
the year, he received Communion directly from the pope. Now the interesting
thing about this is that Rutelli is a pro-choice politician. I mean, he
supported the referendum in Italy that legalized abortion and has consistently
taken the position that although he's personally opposed, he doesn't want to
impose his morality through the civil law. So he takes what is essentially
the John Kerry position. And here, it just is not an issue.

Now is that because John Paul II isn't concerned about abortion? No, of
course not. It's because there just isn't much appetite for pointing fingers
at people and telling them, `You may not receive.' And it's the same, I
think, for the overwhelming majority of pastors and bishops in the States.

GROSS: I think some Americans are afraid that the move on the part of some
bishops to withhold Communion from politicians who support legalized abortion
could backfire against the church by making American voters suspicious of
Catholic politicians, fearful that Catholic politicians would be under the
sway of the church and not able to vote their own personal conscience or their
own personal politics. Is this something you think that the Vatican is
concerned about?

Mr. ALLEN: Well, not quite in the same terms, no. I mean, the Vatican, of
course, doesn't have, you know, a culture that's premised on the idea of
separation between church and state. I mean, the sort of point of reference
is a much closer and more cosy relationship between the two. I do think,
however, that there's another point of entry for the concern. Or I would
phrase it differently. I've talked to a number of Vatican officials who have
sort of, you know, shrugged their shoulders and rolled their eyes about what's
going on in the States, and the way they will phrase the criticism is that
Americans have not had the same experience of anti-clericalism that Europeans
have. The church here in the 17th, 18th century made itself wildly unpopular
precisely because it was perceived that it was trying to dictate particular
political choices. And it's taken an awful long time, and in some ways the
process still isn't over, of working its way out of that public relations, you
know, hole. And so I know a number of officials here who would say that the
Americans are in some ways seeming to repeat some of the mistakes that the
European church made by allowing itself to be perceived as imposing particular
political choices and attempting to use its spiritual authority; in other
words, you know, exceeding its competence.

GROSS: Has this issue come up in other countries, the issue of withholding
Communion?

Mr. ALLEN: No. I think that's one of the interesting things about this
debate is that, for the most part, it has not. As I said, I mean, you know,
the pope himself has administered Communion to pro-choice politicians. And
this is--you know, one can go down the list. I actually did some reporting on
this question, trying to find another place where this debate had come up, and
it simply hasn't.

GROSS: My guest is John Allen, the Vatican correspondent for the National
Catholic Reporter. His new book is called "All the Pope's Men: The Inside
Story of How the Vatican Really Thinks." We'll talk more after a break. This
is FRESH AIR.

(Soundbite of music)

GROSS: My guest is John Allen. He's the Vatican correspondent for the
National Catholic Reporter. His new book is called "All the Pope's Men: The
Inside Story of How the Vatican Really Thinks." There's also a new edition of
his book, "Conclave."

Now in your new book, "All the Pope's Men," you write a little bit about the
American Catholic Church's sex-abuse scandal. And you say that this is seen
as an American problem. What makes it an American problem in the eyes of most
people in the Vatican?

Mr. ALLEN: Well, let's be clear. They don't mean by that, that the sexual
abuse of children is an American problem. I mean, it's just too obvious that
that's not the case. I mean, in recent days, I mean, you know, we have seen,
for example, a scandal arise in Austria in which some 40,000 images of child
pornography were discovered in a seminary in the diocese of Sankt Polten.
And, you know, one could multiply examples like that all across the map, so I
think everyone here is crystal clear that the phenomenon, the behavior itself,
is a universal problem.

But what I think a lot of people in the Vatican would see as the American
dimension of the problem would be what they saw as a kind of over-the-top
hysteria in American culture in response to this problem. And they would see
that being driven along primarily by three forces. They would see a kind of
anti-Catholic or at least anti-institutional religion, maybe, streak in the
American press. They would see tort lawyers who are kind of hustling to cash
in on the church's failures. And they would see activist groups from inside
the Catholic Church, who have been critical of the church on a lot of other
grounds, who seized this opportunity to kind of make their case in the public
forum.

And all of that, along with what has always been seen from Europe as a kind of
hysteria in American culture about sex, which they would trace to things like
the Monica Lewinsky affair and those sorts of scandals--and all of that, you
roll all of that up together and what they think is that there was a real
crisis in the States. There was a real problem, real failures on the part of
the church, but the church took a beating in the press that it didn't deserve
because it was exacerbated by these other factors.

GROSS: In your new book, you write that the age of consent is much lower than
America in some of the countries that the cardinals are from. For example, in
Spain, it's 13. In Mexico, it's 12. In canon law, the age of consent for
marriage is 16 for men and 14 for a woman. In other words, in these
countries, people who are 14 or 16 or 13 or 12 are considered capable of
making sexual decisions, so it's not child abuse if a 12-year-old is...

Mr. ALLEN: Yes. That's exactly the point. I mean, obviously, you know, a
priest takes a vow of celibacy, so, you know, whatever the age with which a
priest is having a sexual encounter, I mean, that's cause of scandal in the
Vatican, certainly. But, you know, they would put a sexual relationship
between a priest and a 15- or 16- or 17-year-old male in a different
conceptual category than many Americans. Many Americans would see that as the
sexual abuse of a child, somebody--or at least a minor--who is vulnerable and
is not capable of giving consent. And therefore, not only is it much more
morally serious; it also, of course, under American law, is criminal. And
those are just not reactions that come naturally to people--not just cardinals
but really to anyone--who grew up in other cultures with different
understandings of the point in life at which people are capable of consenting
to sexual relationships.

So you know, particularly many Latin American or many southern Mediterranean
cardinals--and, of course, let's not forget the Vatican is located in the
southern Mediterranean, and therefore, the sociology of Italy, you know,
shapes the imaginations around here to a very powerful degree. You know, they
would see those sorts of relationships as wrong, as violations of a priest's
vows, as causes of moral concern, but they just wouldn't have quite the same
outrage, the same sense of indignation that many Americans would have.
Neither would it seem immediately obvious to them why the police ought to be
involved.

GROSS: Bernard Law, the former archbishop of Boston who resigned over his
handling of the sex-abuse allegations, was named archpriest in Rome. Does
that say anything?

Mr. ALLEN: Well, it says that he's no longer in the States. You know, I
think the reality here is that this is another one of those cases of the
cultural gap, really, between Rome and the United States. I think, you know,
in the United States, giving Law a job in Rome, however relatively
insignificant it actually is, was seen as yet another affront to victims. I
mean, in other words, you know, here is the church exorcising more care and
compassion for one of the architects of the suffering of victims than they are
for the victims themselves.

Now seen from Rome, this was an act of compassion for a man who had, you know,
taken a fall and resigned in disgrace. And this was, to use the classic
terminology, trying to give him a soft landing. And a lot of Vatican
officials had a really hard time understanding why so many Catholics in the
States were outraged by this. And, I mean, it has to be said that, you know,
the objective fact is that being archpriest of St. Mary Major, which is one
of the four major basilicas in Rome, you know, is a bit like being the guy
who, you know, picks up the paper and answers the mail. I mean, you know,
essentially his responsibility is to make sure that the lights are on for
Sunday Mass, to make sure that the sacristan gets paid. I mean, it is not a
high-profile assignment.

You know, honestly, you know, the story in terms of Law in Rome, is not that
Law is the archpriest of St. Mary Major. It is that he never resigned from
the seven congregations and two councils, which are the main decision-making
organs of the Vatican, that he had been appointed to as the cardinal
archbishop of Boston. So, you know, all along, he has been taking part in
meetings, for example, of the Congregation for Bishops, which appoints
American bishops. I mean, so in terms of his influence, you know, that is
actually a far more noteworthy fact than his appointment as archpriest at St.
Mary's.

But at the level of symbolism, obviously, I think many people would say it
sent exactly the wrong signal. And, in fact, I did an interview recently with
Cardinal Law's successor, Archbishop Sean O'Malley, and O'Malley conceded that
this was not well understood by the Catholics in his diocese, and the timing
could not have been worse, of course, because the announcement came two days
after Boston announced it was closing 65 parishes. And so, again, it's one of
these classic cases in which, you know, I think from the point of view of the
Vatican, they were trying to do something nice, but it simply was not
understood that way.

GROSS: I think it's fair to say most of the cardinals in the Vatican see what
America calls a sex-abuse crisis as being more of a homosexual crisis, a
crisis of homosexuality in the priesthood. Do you interpret that as meaning
that the Vatican's response to the crisis will be about cracking down on
homosexuals who want to become priests or homosexuals who are already priests?

Mr. ALLEN: Well, that, of course, has been an object of debate for some
time and, in fact, you know, it predates the sex-abuse crisis. I mean, the
Vatican has been, literally for the better part of a decade, working on a
document about seminaries--that is, the schools in which future priests are
trained--and one of the aspects of this document that has been debated is
whether or not there ought to be a rule barring homosexuals from admission to
seminaries. And they have been going back and forth on that in part because
they have been getting wildly differing input from the American bishops. Some
American bishops want prohibition like that. Others don't. And so it is
entirely possible that, at some future point, there may be a document from the
Vatican along those lines.

Now, of course, the thing is, that document is unlikely to answer the $64,000
question, which is: What exactly does it mean to be homosexual from the point
of view of church law? I mean, are we talking about somebody who once, you
know, 10 years ago committed a same-sex act? Is that a homosexual? In which
case, you know, it would be a very strict standard. Or, you know, are we
talking about somebody who has an enduring same-sex orientation, or are we
talking about somebody who participates in what's, you know, quote/unquote
known around here as the "homosexual lifestyle"--that is, you know, going to
bars, going to clubs, taking part in gay rights organizations? I mean,
there's a whole continuum of how you might define that term, and given the
fact that the Vatican is very unlikely to define it in this document, what
that means is that some discretion is going to be left in the hands of
individual bishops to decide how to apply this. So I'm not sure how much on
the ground a document like that is going to change.

GROSS: John Allen is the Vatican correspondent for the National Catholic
Reporter. His new book is called "All the Pope's Men: The Inside Story of
How the Vatican Really Thinks." He'll be back in the second half of the show.
I'm Terry Gross and this is FRESH AIR.

(Announcements)

GROSS: Coming up, religion and politics. We continue our conversation with
the National Catholic Reporter's Vatican correspondent John Allen and discuss
the relationship between President Bush and the pope. And linguist Geoff
Nunberg considers how politicians are using the word `values.'

GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross, back with John Allen, the Vatican
correspondent for the National Catholic Reporter. He's written a new book
called "All the Pope's Men: The Inside Story of How the Vatican Really
Thinks." And there's a new revised edition of his book, "Conclave: The
Politics, Personalities & Process of the Next Papal Election."

We're having a little technical problem, so we'll bring you the rest of that
interview momentarily with John Allen of the National Catholic Reporter.

Mr. ALLEN: (Technical difficulties; joined in progress) ...both kind of
bonhomie, that is, you know, kind of personal affection. I think it's very
clear that many people in the Vatican, including the pope, like Bush. I mean,
they like the fact that, you know, he seems to be a sincere religious
believer, that he speaks openly about his faith. And they also like the fact
that he is obviously very respectful of the pope. I mean, when you see him,
when he comes over--and, of course, he's now come over three times, which is
unusual for a president who's only served one term. You know, every time he
comes to meet the pope he is extremely--he's obviously in awe and that is
transparent. And so at that level I think there's a great deal of kind of
good feeling about him.

On the other hand, you know, when it comes to American foreign policy, there
clearly are some very serious differences between how the Vatican thinks the
world ought to be moving and what the Americans are, in fact, doing. And you
can kind of boil it down to the debate over unilateralism vs.
multilateralism. But you can also say that there is some real reserve in the
Vatican about the kind of cultural project of the United States and the values
that America is exporting around the world, especially what they would see as
a kind of exaggerated individualism and a kind of pleasure-principle morality.
And so at that level there is obviously some real clash. Then on moral
questions like abortion and gay marriage and--well, especially those two
questions, there is a real meeting of minds, so it's a very complicated
relationship.

On this question of Bush's request to the Vatican to kind of goose the
American bishops a little bit, you know, what you have is a situation where
George Bush is very conscious of the political realignment that's happened in
the United States since the Reagan years, which is that, whereas Republicans
used to be the party of Protestants and Democrats the party of Catholics,
today Republicans are the party of practicing religious believers whereas
Democrats are sort of the secular party in the States. And the more Catholics
that George Bush can get on board in his electoral coalition, you know, the
better off he's going to be. And so on that issue he sees a real kind of
symphony between his positions, between the Vatican's positions and his
electoral prospects.

And so, in that sense, you know, I think it is not surprising at all that he
would reach out to the pope to try to mobilize the American Catholic
leadership on his behalf. What's unusual in this case is that this story
leaked. I mean, I frankly think this kind of two-way exchange goes on all the
time, but it's fairly rare that it gets out into the public domain. Oddly
enough, it's a source of scandal in the States because it seems to trip
church-state wires. Of course, over here, where there isn't the same
tradition of church-state separation, it's a yawner.

GROSS: President Bush is a very religious man and he is a Protestant
fundamentalist, born again, and he believes in a personal relationship with
God. The pope is obviously at the head of quite a large hierarchy within the
Catholic Church, and in Catholicism your relationship with God is mediated
through priests and so on. And I'm wondering if you think that there are
conflicts between those two visions that have come into play in that
relationship between the Vatican and the president--or the pope and the
president?

Mr. ALLEN: Well, I haven't spoken to John Paul about that so I'd hesitate to
guess about what's in his mind, but I can tell you I've spoken to a number of
senior Vatican officials--in other words, the closest men to the pope on this
question--and I think you've got your finger on something that's quite
important to understand the Vatican's attitude towards the United States. I
mean, there sometimes is this perception that there's a kind of holy alliance
between the Vatican and conservative political forces in the States. And, of
course, on moral questions again, abortion and gay marriage being the two most
obvious, stem cell research to some extent, there is a kind of agreement
there.

But on the other hand, there is a lot of ambiguity as the Vatican looks at the
States because they see the United States as a culture that has been formed
much more by Protestantism, and specifically by Calvinism, then by the
Catholic Church. And they believe that there is a kind of exaggerated
individualism in American psychology that in some ways is not very congenial
to the Catholic conception of things. And so, for example, I recall that when
Cardinal Pio Laghi, the pope's former ambassador to America who was his
special troubleshooter set over to try and persuade Bush not to go to
war--when Laghi got back, one of the things he said in reflecting on his
conversations with Bush administration officials is how Calvinistic he found
their attitudes, meaning that there was a real kind of dualism, a sense that
`We are the elect and they are the reprobate,' and that, you know, there's
very little possibility of kind of common ground, and this sort of messianic
streak, that, you know, `We are the ones who must make the world right,' and
he found that quite alarming.

So I do think that there is a sense that, despite Bush's good intentions,
despite his obvious sincerity and despite his obvious respect for the Holy
Father, nevertheless there is a kind of Protestant, Calvinistic, almost
fundamentalistic kind of formation there that in some ways doesn't line up
very well with how the Catholic Church sees the world.

GROSS: Do you think that the pope or the cardinals in the Vatican follow the
intersection of religion and politics in the United States?

Mr. ALLEN: Yes, I mean, at a distance, obviously. But, of course, they
follow it. I mean, you know, one of the things that strikes you as an
American living abroad is what a strong consciousness there is, certainly here
in Europe, certainly here in Italy, about being part of what is, in effect, an
American empire. And so, you know, current events in the United States are
followed with a kind of passion here that almost follows the extent of which
Italians follow Italian politics. I mean, you know, whatever Bush and Kerry
are saying on the campaign trail is going to be--is going to vie with whatever
Prime Minister Berlusconi said today in terms of being the lead item on the
news or, you know, being on the front page of the papers.

And so in that sense, you know, the cardinals living in what is predominantly
a sort of, you know, southern European culture here--I mean, they're well
aware of some of these ebbs and currents. On the other hand, you know, not
having grown up in the culture, I think sometimes they struggle to understand
it. And to some extent, actually, you know, their fear of this kind of
exaggerated Protestant influence on Bush, I think, comes to some extent from a
misreading of American culture, perhaps a fear, an exaggerated fear, about how
much influence, you know, Protestant fundamentalism may actually exercise on
the formation of American policy.

But this isn't just the pope and it isn't just Bush; I mean, this has deep
roots. I mean, Pius XII, back in the immediate post-World War II years,
actually opposed Italy's membership in NATO, and his primary reason for doing
so was he saw NATO as a Trojan horse for the expansion of America and by which
he meant Protestant influence in Europe. You know, so we're talking about a
preoccupation that has very deep historical roots.

GROSS: My guest is John Allen, the Vatican correspondent for the National
Catholic Reporter. His new book is called "All the Pope's Men: The Inside
Story of How the Vatican Really Thinks." We'll talk more after a break. This
is FRESH AIR.

(Soundbite of music)

GROSS: If you're just joining us, my guest is John Allen and he's the Vatican
corespondent for the National Catholic Reporter. He's the author of the new
book, "All the Pope's Men: The Inside Story of How the Vatican Really
Thinks," and his book "Conclave" has just been published in a new updated
paperback edition.

What is the pope's state of health? We know that he has Parkinson's disease.
How far progressed is it, and what are some of his other health issues?

Mr. ALLEN: Well, the Parkinson's is clearly the most serious issue because
it's a generative disease, meaning it gets a little bit worse all the time.
At a physical level it has essentially--the pope is essentially an invalid, I
mean, in the sense that, you know, he cannot for the most part walk under his
own power. This is due not just to the Parkinson's but also to a botched hip
replacement surgery he had in '94 and also to the fact that he's now got
severe, almost crippling, arthritis in both of his knees. So, you know, he is
moved back and forth these days on what the Vatican technically refers to as a
rolling platform. They don't want to call it a wheelchair but, I mean, it is,
in effect, a wheelchair. And the Parkinson's also -often complicates his
capacity to breathe and therefore his capacity to speak, and so he has a
limited capacity for public speaking and especially for spontaneous speech
these days.

His mental capacity to date remains quite lucid. I mean, he just published a
new book last year or just a few months ago, and he is currently on vacation
up in the north of Italy in the mountains, where he is said to be working on a
new book about the twin totalitarianisms of the 20th century; that is,
communism and Naziism. You know, at that level he continues to be quite
alert, quite lucid, but obviously he fatigues much more easily than he once
did, so his periods of lucidity are much briefer than they once were. That
is, you know, if 25 years ago he could put in 20-hour days and read a hundred
documents and have 50 meetings--I mean, obviously, his capacity to do any of
those things is limited.

GROSS: So if he's not fully functioning to his peak, like he was when he was
58 and first became the pope, are there popely duties that aren't being
addressed because of his compromised health?

Mr. ALLEN: Well, you know, this is one of the interesting things. If you
watch the Vatican and you watch the kind of machinery grind, I mean, it is not
the case that fewer bishops are being appointed or fewer documents are being
issued or fewer meetings are being held. I mean, you know, all of that is
continuing pretty much apace. Now the only conclusion to draw, therefore, is
proportionately, if the pope is doing less of that himself, then other people
are picking up those responsibilities for him.

And, you know, I think what has happened is that John Paul II, in terms of his
approach to governance, has always been a delegator. I mean, it is very clear
that from October of 1978 on, he made the decision there were certain things
that were important to him, things like his travels, his encyclicals--that is,
his major teaching documents--his relationship with culture, his ecumenical
and interreligious outreach. And the price of moving the ball, so of speak,
was he was going to leave much of the day-to-day business of the church in the
hands of his aides. And what has happened--as the pope gets older and
therefore less capable of doing things himself, those aides are picking up
more and more and more of that routine business, so that these days, I think,
it actually is quite rare for a decision about the internal governance of the
church to end up on the pope's desk.

GROSS: Is the Vatican preparing for Pope John Paul II's death and getting
ready to pick a new pope?

Mr. ALLEN: Well, I mean, if you mean by that, are there kind of formal
things going on--I mean, are people sort of doing, you know, dress rehearsals
of what the funeral Mass will be like or are they, you know, in some kind of
conscious way, you know, arranging electoral coalitions, basically the answer
to that question is no. I mean, there is a very strong taboo which in some
ways reaches into the psychology of monarchies, you know, against talking
about the king's death while he's still in power.

But there also is specifically in canon law a prohibition against campaigning
for the next pope while the current pope is still alive. It's actually a
prohibition under threat of excommunication. And that is, for the most part,
taken fairly seriously. On the other hand, when you get cardinals in kind of
informal ways, usually, you know--obviously off the record--you know, what
they will almost to a man--and, of course, these are all men. What they will
tell you is that, of course, they are thinking about the transition. I mean,
this is the most important decision they're ever going to make, and they dare
not get it wrong. And so, obviously, in kind of quiet, unofficial, very
subtle ways, you know, they're pondering who they might want to vote for, you
know, what issues are important to them, what kind of profile of a man they
think will be necessary to be the next pope. So I would say it's going on at
the level of kind of informal, very quiet, very hush-hush kind of reflection,
rather than in any sense out in the open.

GROSS: You wrote in your book that most cardinals really don't want to be
pope. People don't believe you when you say that. I find that hard to
believe, too, since so many politicians in America, for instance, would like
to be president. Why do you think most cardinals wouldn't really want to be
pope?

Mr. ALLEN: Well, I think there's sort of a noble reason for it and a much
more human reason. The noble reason is that, you know, they think that, you
know, being president is, you know, a kind of walk in the garden compared to
being pope. I mean they see being pope as being the successor of St. Peter
and Christ's vicar on Earth. And if that's your conception of this office,
which I think most of them take very, very seriously, then they would see
themselves basically as being unworthy of it. They have a very hard
time--they can see themselves doing anything else, but they have a very hard
time seeing themselves in that role.

I think the more human reason is that being pope is unlike being president in
another sense, which is, you know, being president is something you can do for
four or eight years and then go off and do something else. I mean, you know,
you can serve your two terms at the peak of power and then you can go off and
retire and write your memoirs and, you know, earn six-figure lecture fees and
hit the gulf course and, you know, then do whatever you want with your time,
whereas, you know, being pope is a burden you carry from the moment you're
elected until you die. I mean, now theoretically there is a codicil of canon
law that would allow a pope to resign, but functionally speaking they don't do
it.

And so, you know, there are no golden years to contemplate. There is no sort
of finish line to cross. It's a job that you carry 24 hours a day, seven days
a week until the end of your days, whereas in comparison, being a retired
cardinal, especially in Rome, I have to say, is a pretty sweet deal. I mean,
you still get all the insider information and you get invited to all the right
parties and you get the best seats at restaurants, but you don't have to go to
work in the morning. And so if you were contemplating, you know, two
different options for your golden years, I think at a human level most guys,
frankly, simply prefer the second option. And so for both of those reasons I
honestly believe--and based on my experience at this point of having
interviewed some 60 of the 125 cardinals who would be eligible to vote for the
next pope if the election were to be held today, I'm convinced that the vast
majority of them really do not want to be elected. That doesn't mean they
don't have ideas about who should be elected, but they don't think it should
be them.

GROSS: Here's an impossible question, but are any of the contenders for pope
likely to move the church in a surprising direction to the left or to the
right, more conservative, more liberal?

Mr. ALLEN: Well, I think there's always surprise. I mean, who would have
anticipated that after a papacy of Paul VI, who took a grand total of seven
trips outside of Italy, that, you know, John Paul would have just made his
104th? You know, I mean, so there's always going to be surprise. I mean, you
know, this is the thing, people assume that because the sitting pope appoints
all the cardinals, they automatically photocopy that man as his successor and
elect somebody exactly like him, and it just doesn't work that way. You know,
what history shows is that colleges of cardinals appointed entirely by one
pope elect a very different man as his successor, and that's because they
think this way of doing business has had its day in court and we need
something else.

Historians call this the Pendulum Law--you know, the pendulum swings from one
point to another, sort of in a back-and-forth fashion. The Italians, as they
always do, have a better phrase for it. They say that you always follow a fat
pope with a thin one.

GROSS: OK. Now you're a practicing Catholic and you write for the National
Catholic Reporter. Is it special to go to services in Rome?

Mr. ALLEN: Well, I mean, I should say that it's true that I'm a practicing
Catholic, but I try not to let that dictate how I do my journalism. I mean, I
think journalism is a basically secular enterprise and so, you know, I cover
the church as I would cover the White House or as I would cover General
Motors. But, having said that, sure. I mean, you know, there is a--I mean,
it is very special having a kind of up-close and personal access to, you know,
the pope and to the people around him. I will tell you, however, that I--in
terms of, you know, my own personal reaction to things, I have often found the
Masses in Rome, which tend to be these big, kind of theatrical productions
that kind of resemble, you know, "Cats"--you know, I sometimes have found
those less impressive than some of the times I've been with the pope on the
road and seen him celebrate Mass in different contexts around the world and
seen the kind of powerful emotional reaction that can have for people in these
different cultures.

I remember when we were in Ukraine, for example, I was standing in an airfield
out in the western part of Ukraine, Galicia, where the Greek Catholic Church
is present, interviewing a 20-year-old girl whose grandfather had been a Greek
Catholic priest, who was arrested under the Soviets and crucified in prison.
And she was weeping, seeing the pope standing on Ukrainian soil and talking
about what that must have meant to her grandfather, the sense of vindication
he must have had. You know, those sorts of experiences, where you kind of
learn to see the church and the papacy through the eyes of different cultures
and different peoples, can sometimes be very powerful.

GROSS: Well, John Allen, thank you so much for talking with us.

Mr. ALLEN: It's been a pleasure.

GROSS: John Allen is the Vatican corespondent for the National Catholic
Reporter. His new book is called "All The Pope's Men: The Inside Story of
How the Vatican Really Thinks."

Coming up, linguist Geoff Nunberg considers how conservatives and liberals are
using the word `values.' This is FRESH AIR.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Commentary: Various definitions of the word `values'
TERRY GROSS, host:

GROSS: The recent efforts to pass a constitutional amendment banning gay
marriage have once again brought the contentious word `values' front and
center in the presidential campaign. It's a word that set Geoff Nunberg's
linguistic antennae to quivering.

GOEFF NUNBERG:

With the presidential election looking as if it'll depend on votes of nine
welders in Cleveland, it was pretty much inevitable that the V-word would rear
its head sooner or later.

Out on the hustings last week President Bush said that Senator Kerry is out of
step with the mainstream values that are so important to our country.
Meanwhile, Kerry was reminding voters of the importance of relying on the
values that made this country great. A foreigner listening to those claims
might think that this was simply a disagreement about who has better values,
like Wal-Mart vs. Costco. But it goes deeper than that. It's really about
what `values' means and what role values ought to play in political life.

It's a word that seems made for political mischief as it slithers from one
meaning to another. Sometimes `values' simply refers to cultural preferences
or mores, and sometimes it suggests religious principles or morals, the sorts
of things that some people can have more of than others do. Or often it
blends mores and morals together. That point was nicely made in a line from
the recent movie, "Win a Date with Tad Hamilton." Nathan Lane is playing a
Hollywood agent who's trying to persuade his dissolute movie-star client to
dump the small-town West Virginia girl he's smitten with. `Your values are
different,' Lane tells the actor. `For instance, she has them.'

Actually, you could say the same things about conservatives and liberals:
Their values are different. For instance, conservatives have them. At least
that's the conclusion you'd reach if you went only by the way the word
`values' is used in the press. Even in the political coverage of supposedly
liberal papers like The New York Times and The Washington Post, the phrase
`conservative values' is four times as frequent as `liberal values' is.

But `values' hasn't always been the property of the right. Like that other
modern buzzword, `community,' it began its life a hundred years ago as a
translation of a term from German sociology. And it didn't really enter the
general American vocabulary until the 1950s, when it was picked up in
progressive circles along with other social-science terms like `alienation'
and `peer group.' In those days a sentence like `I share your values' was the
sort of thing you would expect to encounter in a Jules Pfeiffer cartoon or a
Nichols and May routine.

The political connotations of `values' were limited to a vague association
with progressive education or liberal anti-communism. Back in the 1950s a lot
of universities were setting up chairs in interdisciplinary programs in
American values, where the phrase suggested only the democratic ideals that
made America different from totalitarian regimes. It wasn't until the Vietnam
era that Republicans seized on `values' as a convenient word for contrasting
mores of middle America with the alarming antics of the hippies and anti-war
protesters and the effete pretensions of the East Coast liberal elites.

You could date that shift in meaning from August 7th, 1968, when the
Republicans opened their National Convention in Miami Beach with a round of
inspirational songs from the preternaturally clean-cut Up With People chorus.
`Not a hippie among them,' as the speaker who introduced them said. Over the
next few years that newly divisive sense of values was tirelessly promoted by
Vice President Spiro Agnew, who really deserves credit for being the Johnny
Appleseed of the culture wars.

From then on `value' was the word you used to turn every election into a
referendum on lifestyles. By 1988, George H.W. Bush could make `values' a
literal mantra of his presidential campaign. `I represent the mainstream
views and the mainstream values, and they are your values and my values and
the values of the vast majority of the American people.' By now, in fact,
adjectives like `mainstream' and `traditional' aren't really necessary. The
bare word `values' alone evokes all those hot-button cultural issues that are
summed up as God, guns and gays. During last fall's Democratic primaries, Joe
Lieberman would say, `The Republicans can't say I'm weak on values.' And
everybody understood that he was talking about his religious convictions in
his campaign against sex and violence in the media, not his views on Enron,
the environment or the Iraq War.

And when you run into an organization nowadays with a name like The American
Values Coalition or the Institute for American Values, you can be confident
that the American values in question aren't things like `Different strokes for
different folks' or `A fair day's pay for a day's work' or, for that matter,
`Pick up after yourself,' which is how my mother used to sum up her position
on environmental policy. This time around the Democrats have made it clear
that they're not going to cede the V-word to the Republicans. But when Kerry
and Edwards baptized their campaign `a celebration of American values,' they
weren't referring to the issues on the Republicans' hit list. For them values
doesn't have a lot to do with what Howard Stern can say on the radio. As
Edwards puts it, `Values are a matter of faith, family, opportunity,
responsibility, trying to make sure that everybody gets a chance to do what
they're capable of doing.' That's a notion of values that would have been more
familiar to Dwight Eisenhower than to Spiro Agnew, a word for the beliefs we
have in common, rather than the ones that divide us.

Except that by now the word `values' has been so polemicized that it can't
help but suggest an implicit challenge: You want values, we'll give you
values. It says something about what we've come to that a word that ought to
be a bland political bromide has turned into a battle cry for both sides.

GROSS: Geoff Nunberg is the Stanford linguist and author of the new book,
"Going Nucular: Language, Politics, and Culture in Confrontational Times."

(Soundbite of music)

(Credits)

GROSS: I'm Terry Gross.
Transcripts are created on a rush deadline, and accuracy and availability may vary. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Please be aware that the authoritative record of Fresh Air interviews and reviews are the audio recordings of each segment.