The Catholic times. [volume] (Columbus, Ohio) 1951-current, 1958-10-24
JOSEPH BREIC-
Death of Pope
Difficult Hour
Ms

The ewes of the man who had recently returned
from Rome had the expression, that Is seen Wnen one
is cropping for words Tor something lhat caiuloe iealy
be put into words. r
He was talking about having seen Pope Plus XII,
and heard him speaking.
The far-aWay look in the mans lace oeepened -
he tried to tell me about it.
The description that finally emerged went some
thing like this; .u Din. vi
and you have the sfrangest feeling mar Is lonS -
YOU keep your eyes on him, you are upheld.
Even if The earth dropped away under your
feet, and the universe collapsed, you would still %
standing there because you were looking 81 nsnn'
Then the Pope began talking to vs.. and after
the audience was over, compared impressions with
others who were present. and each OF Us said fnaf IT
Iy into the eyes Of each individual all the time, and
talking to that person personally"
/ myself never saw Pope Plus XII, but | under.
stood wildly what the man was telling me. II was not
necessary to 90 to Rome to feel that | knew the HOLY
Father and was oddly close to him.
Merely from looking at pictures OF MIN ana
reading his words, / had come to realize a new way
the force and meaning of the most familiar OF MS
titles-Holy Father.
In my life there has been a kind of ascending
ladder of appreciation of the word father"
When / was young I was like other young
people, took for granted the presence, the strength
and the stability of the man who was my parent.
Even after | became a father myself, | had little
notion of what having a father means to a %youngster,
because | still had my own father. Then ne died.
IT IS NOT at all easy to phrase the effect OF
that event on me, but | will try.
] had no need of my father financially. | had no
need of him, indeed, in any material or worldly
sense.
Yet his death left me with a sense that the sun
had gone out in the sky, and the earth was rocking
alarmingly, and the stars were falling from the
heavens.
1t was almost as if God had let the universe slip
from His hands with a colossal crash.
| was like the man who had been to Rome
as long as my father was there las the Pope was
there for him) my feet were planted firmly on some
thing unshakable, When my father was gone, every
thing began to crumble.
THE DEATH OF Plus left me with the same
sense of a kind of universal desolation.
His reign had led me even higher in appreciation
of the word father"
The years of his papacy were dreadful years,
filled with awful wars not only of flesh against flesh
and nation against nation, but OF minds against
minds and even man against God.
There were years of the h~orrifying hatreds, lies,
brutalities and blasphemies of nazism and commun-
ism.
Men were attacking not merely our bodies and
our civilizations; they were striving to destroy reason
and faith and religion. They flung themselves against
the foundations of sanity. They warred on God Him
self.
YET AS LONG AS Pope Plus was alive we could
look and see that the flag of mankind was flying
bravely. He stood like a mountain peak-and yet
like a beloved father and elder brother-immoyable,
impregnable, serene with the serenity of eternal
things:
| saw the Fatherhood of God in lonely majesty. Pope
Plus, tirelessly teaching us the Brotherhood Of Man
under that ultimate Fatherhood, had e%pitomized and
symbolized both those titantic things, had made them
almost physically visible. Now we must defend them
without that constant vision which he communicated.
1t is a difficult hour.