Free Keys of This Blood by Malachi Martin

Rock of Peter. But the effective catalyst here is the Pontiff’s abstention from exercising his papal power in matters critical to Church governance. And, the warning continues, unless the Pope begins to extirpate those who are silently and covertly sapping the foundations of papal privilege and power upon which his Church rests, then into the bargain he might just as well give his blessing to the anti-Church.
    That may be an extreme sentiment, especially for men who do remain faithful, and who do accord to John Paul the deference due him as Pope; but it is a sentiment that is understandable. For while the Pope tarries, his in-Church enemies—those who arc sworn to rid the earth of the papacy as a centralized governing institution—use this strange and unsettling policy of John Paul’s as a comfortable highway leading to their own ultimate victory. Day by day, these papal advisers and advocates see the desuetude and obsolescence of the papacy more fully confirmed as a fact of life. In that situation, and as human affairs go, they foresee that the bulk of Roman Catholics can more and more easily be induced to look upon Rome much as they look upon St. Paul’s of London—as a venerable institution with its classic dome and whispering gallery, housing invaluable memories of the past but having no practical bearing on their faith or their lives. And in that situation, these advisers expect that the bulk of Roman Catholics can be ever more easily persuaded to accept the papacy itself as the office of a somewhat influential and honorific Catholic bishop who happens to live in Rome, and who will be as revered as the Dalai Lama—and just about as powerful.
    Those among Pope John Paul’s advisers who are most urgently and deeply concerned about what some call this “self-slaughter” of the Roman papacy do remain confident in Christ’s promise that its destruction will not be completed; that even the Gates of Hell itself will not prevail against the Church Jesus founded upon Peter as its Rock. But, as Lord Nelson commented after a cannonball came too close for comfort at the battle of Trafalgar, it looks to be “a damn near thing.”
    In the serenity of his own convictions concerning Heaven’s agenda for the nations, meanwhile, it is reasonable to think that John Paul himself fully expects that as Pope he will one day in the not distant future be hailed by the generality of his contemporaries in much the same termsas Czechoslovakia’s President Havel used to welcome him to Prague on April 21, 1990.
    After the Pontiff, following his now familiar custom, stepped off the papal plane and kissed the ground, Havel told the world that “the Messenger of Love comes today into a country devastated hy the ideology of hatred…. The Living Symbol of civilization comes into a country devastated by the rule of the uncivilized…. I have the honor to be a witness when its soil is being kissed by the Apostle of Spirituality.”
    To all who are presently skeptical about the acceptance on a universal scale of such a role for this or any Roman pope, John Paul might well respond, with Havel, that “I do not know whether I know what a miracle is…. Nevertheless, I dare say I am a party to a miracle now.” And indeed, to an extent John Paul would be justified in making such a response. For, five years before—even five months before—no one would have imagined such a papal visit possible. As he said that day to his Czechoslovak hosts, “Almighty God can make the impossible possible, can change all human hearts, through the queenship of Jesus’ mother, Mary.”
    Nevertheless, it would appear that now, as in 1980, John Paul has judged that he still can find no way to reform his rapidly deteriorating Church structure; that he cannot make an end run around the antiChurch, as he did so successfully in regard to the Vatican’s established policy