EVERYONE'S AN EXPERT ON POPE'S CONDITION NOW.

Byline: Robert Brennan Local View

WITH the recent health setbacks of Pope John Paul II, television news of both the broadcast and cable variety have turned their expert machines into overdrive.

They seemingly have combed the horizon and brought forth writers, clerics, philosophers and theologians to get in front of a camera and tell the viewing public what every nuance of the pope's condition means for the current state of the Church and what it portends for the faithful in the future.

It has reminded me of the terrible sniper killings that took place around Virginia and Maryland of a few years back. I recall an ex-FBI profiler who was constantly on broadcast and cable news outlets informing us that when the sniper would be caught, he would be a solitary angry white male drifter. Then they caught the sniper and the sniper's accomplice, who turned out to be an angry black male and a teenage illegal immigrant from Jamaica.

So much for experts.

What Catholics, myself included, are supposed to believe is that whoever is the pope at any given moment in history is under the auspices and guidance of the Holy Spirit. This has included the Holy Spirit allowing some rather interesting men to serve in this capacity. But even these bad popes, even these popes who were robust sinners and debauched personalities, according to the faith, were not capable of teaching doctrinal error and were in the chair of Peter because of divine intentions.

The lexicon of bad popes reads like the itemized details of a tawdry paperback novel. There have been those who have purchased the papacy, bequeathed the papacy, stolen the papacy, and generally abused the papacy with enough avarice, lust and sinful behavior to meet the quota of an army of satyrs for a year. Yet we Catholics believe each of these men was there only because God allowed it and God wanted it that way.

There have been many more good popes than bad popes and Catholics living now have been particularly blessed with John Paul II. Even his detractors cannot deny his faithfulness to God, his goodness and his love for his flock. Many ``experts'' are telling us now that Pope John Paul II should retire, that he obviously cannot manage the demands of his office in his degraded state of health, that he could better serve the needs of the Church by letting a younger man take over.

I believe the theological response to this advice is, ``Says who?''

The pope is where he is because that's where he is supposed to be. When the Holy Spirit is done with him, he won't be there anymore and will be in an infinitely better place.

The temptation to rely on our own human resources and mechanisms is not the monopoly of the secular press. In the late 1950s, after the papacy of Pius XII had covered nearly two decades and included the turmoil and devastation of World War II, the College of Cardinals decided to elect an affable, elderly Italian bureaucrat to the chair of Peter in the hopes of having a couple of years to catch their breath until they would obviously be voting again and elect someone of more substance.

That mild-mannered ``safe'' pope turned out to be Pope John XXIII, who ushered in the Second Vatican Council, an event so powerful and all encompassing that the Church is still trying to come to terms with it almost two generations later.

So when I hear the experts, pardon the pun, pontificate on what is going to happen in Rome and who is not going to be considered for the chair of Peter, I think of the old line about how one gets a chuckle out of God ...

Tell Him your plans.