December 12, 2004
Someone has finally come out and said it. What he said has been long suspected by some of us familiar with the John Paul II Cultural Center, especially when it cut its admission price in half, then made it a "nominal donation" and started advertising for volunteer staff. I don't think I've ever seen any more than five cars in the parking lot. It was a biggie who said it, too, Richard John Neuhaus, editor of First Things, and what he said was that the cultural center has "turned out to be a cropper in terms of both popular interest and scholarly contribution."
Not to brag, but I could see failure the first time I visited the place. The cultural center was not John Paul II's idea; its establishment was proposed to him by Cardinal Adam Maida of Detroit. The Holy Father asked that the center be located in Washington, DC, and that it be more about the Church than about him. He donated his old skis to the cause. I believe the $70-million complex was heavily financed by Kennedy money, which is troublesome in itself. Perhaps the place is cursed! [April 4, 2008: As it turns out, Maida put his diocese $40 million in debt to build the center. My hunch is that there was some hope--perhaps even an unkept promise--that Detroit billionaire Tom Monaghan would pick up the cost.]
What arose on Harewood Road, NE in Brookland was a brainchild typical of the post-Vatican II Catholic Establishment with its characteristic intellectual snobbery. Just as that establishment disdained the Rosary and other devotions with which average people touch the faith in favor of reflection and other mental gymnastics, so it proudly proclaimed that the JPII Cultural Center "is not a museum!"
That first visit, as I made my way through the center's interactive exhibits with the little card I was given upon admission, I remember thinking, "Yeah, the folks getting off the bus from Podunk'll really go for this!"
What in fact folks really go for, what they expect, is a museum. They don't want "centers of imagination" where they go around a place filling out questionnaires or choosing this and that. I found the interactive stuff interesting, but I knew that most visitors would just want to look at the pope's skis. And there's nothing wrong with that. The "hand" exhibit that begins with a casting of John Paul II's hand, palm and fingers wrinkled and rutted by the hard labor he did under Nazism, is the best permanent fixture, thought-provoking and still tactile, even if it makes for a bit of a long walk.
Vast spaces and distances inside the center tend to minimize the already small-scale exhibits. Sadly, there is not a whole lot of contemporary Catholic culture to fill the place. And it being an Establishment place, I don't think you'll see any screenings of that anti-Semitic The Passion of The Christ any time soon. You will, if you go before 1/30/05, see an exhibit about nuns, clever in its broad scope (includes nun dolls) but featuring the dubious Helen Prejean.
The think tank housed on the top floor of the center is probably just as dubious too. Cardinal McCarrick was caught there in a meeting about "The Future of the Church" that included Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, a real genius, and Monika Hellwig.
Copyright 2004, 2008 by Neal J. Conway