He gave new theological genre to church

National Catholic Reporter, Jan 6, 1995 by Arthur Jones

WASHINGTON - The tiny elevator at the Hotel Columbus would be too slow, so I ran up the marble staircase, hurried along the faded red carpeting and knocked on the dark, varnished door with its bright brass numerals. It was just after 7 p.m. on Aug. 25, 1978.

There was some grumbling and snorting from within until, finally, the door opened slightly and the round, flushed face of Peter Hebblethwaite, roused from a late afternoon nap after an extended Roman lunch, smiled in recognition and amused anticipation.

"Arthur. Yes."

"Better go, Peter," I said. "We may have a pope." In St. Peter's Square, the conclave smoke was an uncertain gray. Hebblethwaite didn't hazard a guess as to who it might be and disappeared behind the door. He probably hoped it was not Cardinal Giovanni Benelli, whom Jesuit Fr. Peter Hebblethwaite had attacked in the London Observer five years earlier as a deputy secretary of state who was "repressive ... secretive ... mysterious (and whose) methods obfuscate the message of the gospels."

In the intervening five years, Hebblethwaite had passed from the Jesuits to the role of layman/journalist.

"Coming?" he asked, as he emerged from his room. "No," I replied. "Your story." And I went to my room. Hebblethwaite needed to know where I was. I was there to edit.

We first met, we thought, in the early 1960s, at a hilarious - for us - news conference in which Cardinal John Heenan of Westminster, for reason never explained, decided I was the London correspondent of a very large newspaper in India and replied to my questions accordingly. In fact, I was back at school and commuting up to London two days a week from Oxford to work on the Catholic Herald. Hebblethwaite was still a Jesuit.

When I became NCR editor, I invited him to write for Americans, too. So, come the conclave, Hebblethwaite had already been telling good tales in NCR about Europe for three years.

Here was a typical sally, in November 1975, back from Dublin and Belfast: "In his play, `The Sanctuary Lamp,' Thomas Murphy has devised a parable for contemporary Ireland. The official church is represented by a guitar-playing curate (Michael is endlessly rowing his boat ashore) and a smooth monsignor. Meanwhile, in the Belfast theater, they were playing `Waiting for Godot.'"

From Rome in 1978, Hebblethwaite introduced the upcoming papal election this way. "The 111 cardinals carried their suitcases into the world's most exclusive club and the world's most expensive polling booth: the conclave area of Vatican City."

And of the scene that took place not five minutes after he arrived breathless at St. Peter's Square, he wrote, "When Cardinal Pericle Felici called out (the new pope's) Christian name from the balcony of St. Peter's, there was a moment of ominous silence ... the first reaction was one of disappointment ... Albino who?"

When, two months later, Cardinal Karol Wojtyla was elected Pope John Paul II, Hebblethwaite's third paragraph began, "No one would call him an adventurous theologian." And a month later, Hebblethwaite said, introducing his book, The Year of Three Popes, "I have often thought that we needed a new theological genre which would combine observation of what was going on with theological reflection upon it; in this way, the theology springs from the event and constantly refers back to it."

Having invented the genre by describing it, Hebblethwaite proceeded to practice it for the rest of his life. He had the gift of verisimilitude: You were there; you heard what was said and thought - or might have been or, at times, ought to have been. What follows are some selections from Hebblethwaite's NCR stories.

November 1978: "In his first four weeks as pope, John Paul II has aroused the enthusiasm of the crowd and quietly set about keeping the Roman curia guessing. At his audience Nov. 8, he was lost for a time among the milling 5,000 who surrounded him. Buttons were torn off his cassock, his hands were bruised and scratched from countless handshakes, and there were lipstick stains on his sleeves. If he insists on plunging into the crowd, he must expect to get mauled."

October 1979, in the U.S., he presciently summarized John Paul's first U.S. visit: "The restoration era begins."

October 1979: "Last week the door of the Roman curia was, if not wide open, then at least slightly ajar. Through the crack, 70 journalists belonging to the International Catholic Press Union, were able to glimpse some specimen curialists and question them about their work. But only part of the Roman curia (the) new part ... was on display ... one had a sense that the real sources of power within the organization were elsewhere and inaccessible. The `old' curia has a paranoiac fear of the press: The press spells questions, indiscretions, trouble."

January 1980: "Normally it takes centuries to reverse a decision of the Holy Office (or, to give it its new name, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith). After Christmas, hope flickered briefly that the condemnation of Hans Kung would be reversed in two weeks ... (but) it was all too little and too late."