Who says ya gotta be old to be the Pope?
I mentioned that Paul DeMarco had inspired me to reflect on his latest post with a separate post of my own — or “perhaps more than one.”
This will be the second, more tangential, such post.
Paul shared this brief anecdote:
In another bookstore mentioned above, the name of which I shall not reveal, I was speaking to the owner about the new pope. The owner is a bit older than I and said, “I‘ve always thought of popes as very old men… but I just realized… I’m older than the pope!”
This caused me to check Wikipedia, and find out that I am indeed older than Pope Leo XIV. Not by a lot — we would have been in school at the same time; I was just a couple of years ahead. So obviously popes are not “very old men.” Of course, I realized long ago that this was the case. It was fairly obvious when the startlingly young Pope John Paul II came along. He was only 58, and obviously in his prime. I had just turned 25 when he took the chair of Peter, but you didn’t have to be older than he to perceive his youth to be exceptional.
But then Benedict and Frances were obviously up there, with Benedict retiring at 85, and Frances dying at 88. So at 69, Leo stands out a bit, but not the way John Paul did.
And like the man in the bookstore, I find it slightly jolting on a personal level to suddenly be older than the pope. But not as much as when I realized, back in September 2023, that I was older than three of my grandparents had lived to be. That was when I was the same age as Pope Leo.
And not as much as the moment in 1994, when David Beasley was meeting with the editorial board to seek our support in his bid for the governor’s office, and one of our members (technically an emeritus member, I suppose you’d call him) brought up the candidate’s extreme youth. I realized in that moment that he was only about 37 (I say “about” because I don’t recall the date of the interview). I was 40, and in that moment I was quite shocked that someone younger than I was seeking such an elevated office. The presumptuous puppy! That was a bit of a personal landmark.
That experience was repeated when Barack Obama came along. I mean, a young governor was one thing, but president of the United States? Come on. For reference: Obama moved to Hawaii about the time I was graduating from high school — but he didn’t graduate (from the posh Punahou across town from my public school) until eight years later. (That didn’t keep me from backing him for the Democratic nomination in 2008, although I went with the far more experienced John McCain in the general.)
Life can be described in many ways, but one way would be as a process of constantly modifying one’s sense of time. So having a pope roughly, but not quite, my age is not the surprise it might once have been. Governor, president, pope… there seems to be a pattern here, and I’m getting used to it.
And obviously, Pope Leo is not a “very old man,” even though he’s the age of the oldest of those three grandparents who did not live to be as old as I was when I wrote this. One’s own perception of human longevity is not the only thing that changes over time. Those three grandparents passed away in the 1950s, ’60s, and 1971. We lost my last grandparent in 1985, when she was 95. My father was three weeks short of 93 when he died in 2021. My mother is still very strong, physically and mentally, at 94. So it’s hard for me to think of myself — or the pontiff — as “very old” yet.
Today, we’re remembering my father-in-law, whose 102nd birthday this would have been, if we hadn’t lost him at 86. God bless you, Mr. Phelan, and thank you so much for all the ways you blessed us in your long life….
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Of course, our changing perception of when a person gets to be “very old” isn’t just a matter of personally getting older.
It’s also a function of the constant advances in medical science since, say, 1945. In this country, life expectancy has increased by about 10 years since then.
Of course that march of progess that we all take for granted could be coming to a grinding halt, or at least slowing down a great deal, with the way Trump and his secretary of HHS are slashing medical research…
I just threw that in for those who complain that I’m writing more about personal stuff than politics…
We’re about the same age. My first car as a teen driver was a year younger than me, a Chevy pickup. It had no power, as in power steering or brakes. Also, No AC, which is a bummer during South Carolina summers. I definitely gained upper arm strength driving that truck.
But I consider myself lucky living in the time period. In 2001, NASA rebroadcast the audio from the Apollo 11 capsule. I was listening to it at work as background at work when a coworker came to ask a question. The second question was what I was listening to. He is of the age where the moon landings are in history books. He got hooked on listening to the audio also.
July 1975, I got to see an Apollo rocket launch. Since it wasn’t a moon landing, they used a smaller rocket. But from the causeway, I could feel the ground, plus feel it in my chest when the sound wave reached us.
April 1981, I added just one item to my bucket list. Thirty years later, July 2011, I was able to check off a Space Shuttle launch. Veterans Day weekend 2016, we spent a week in Florida. Before we stopped at our destination, we took a side trip to Kennedy Space Center Visitors Center. There was an astronaut memorabilia sale and autograph booths.
I met Christopher Ferguson, the commander of STS-135. I told him, “Atlantis was the second final launch that I’ve seen.” He asked which one and I answered, “Apollo”. He asked “Apollo 17, the final moon landing?” “No.” “Skylab?” “No.” “Okay, which mission was it?” I replied, “Apollo-Soyuz”. He said, “That was the last flight.”
Car accidents without seat belts or attorneys
maga go go