BIRTHDAY AND BOMB

THE official 80th birthday of Pope John XXIII clashes with Mr. Khrushchev's 50megaton bomb. Rearing up like the Two Standards of the Ignatian Exercises, the two events polarise history. A kingdom fashioned in man's image confronts the kingdom of justice, love and peace. Classless society and mystical body engage in conflict for a prize of souls.
When Pope John exploded into the midst of it, some told us he was a stop gap. In fact, in three short years, he has launched a Council of the Church, revolutionised the College of Cardinals, created many new hierarchies, crowned the arrival of new nations.
Two of his encyclicals are assured of a place in history. His contacts with those outside the Church, his concern for the hungry and oppressed, his mission theologyall combine to present a new image of the Church, unchanged in essence, but floodlit by the smile of Angelo Roncalli.
To this smile, fusii,g the pathos of the cross with Easter joy, the world has reacted warmly, sensing the interplay of mind and heart in the true life of the Church.
Pope John and Mr. Khrushchev: poles apart? Yet they have something in common, these two, Angelo and Nikita, children of God, children of rugged peasant stock. Both of them hustlers. Both committed, each in his own way, to a "liberalising" policy.
Khrushchev, seeking a term to the era of monolithic Stalinism, reassures his critics in Russia and China that his coexistence formula is to be negotiated from strength. To dot the i's he explodes a big bomb, hoping as well to reduce the West to suppliant status.
Pope John, seeking to involve the common man in the formation of a Christian social order, throws the ball at the feet of the trade unions, of the artisans and agricultural workers, of voluntary co-operative enterprise at society's grass roots level.
But the fall-out of Mater et Magistra is the fall-out of the Mass, the social, family meal and sacrifice. By comparison, Khrushchev's bomb is a cricket ball.
In sending our love to the Holy Father on his dual anniversary, we thank God for giving him to us, and pray that, with the Church under fire from pole to pole, he may long abide with us. For today, many an unbeliever looks wistfully at the hand that bears the Fisherman's Ring, raised in blessing over the world. H.R.