- Feb 5, 2002
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On December 20, 2002, I was at lunch in the papal department when the wide-ranging conversation John Paul II always encouraged took an unexpected turn, with the pope asking me how President Ronald Reagan was doing. As it happened, I had recently run into Reagan’s former attorney general, Edwin Meese, and had asked the same question. The answer was a sad one.
Meese had been to the christening of the USS Ronald Reagan, a Nimitz-class aircraft carrier, and had brought one of the traditional baseball caps with the ship’s name on it back to the former president. Reagan, ever the gentleman, thanked Meese and then said, “But Ed, why would anyone name a ship after me?” The Alzheimer’s that would kill him a few years later had obliterated his memory to the point where Ronald Reagan had no recollection of having been president of the United States for eight years.
When I related this story, John Paul, sitting directly across from me, looked utterly stricken, and what seemed a full minute’s silence ensued. The pope was in tough physical shape from Parkinson’s disease. But it was as if he now imagined a worse fate than being locked in an increasingly frozen body: a life in which he had lost the capacity to reflect on his life. The silence was broken by John Paul quietly asking me to “please let Mrs. Reagan know that I am praying for her husband” — a message I conveyed through Ed Meese on my return home.
That vignette puts a prayer once familiar to many Catholics, the Suscipe of St. Ignatius Loyola, into striking relief:
Continued below.
www.denvercatholic.org
Meese had been to the christening of the USS Ronald Reagan, a Nimitz-class aircraft carrier, and had brought one of the traditional baseball caps with the ship’s name on it back to the former president. Reagan, ever the gentleman, thanked Meese and then said, “But Ed, why would anyone name a ship after me?” The Alzheimer’s that would kill him a few years later had obliterated his memory to the point where Ronald Reagan had no recollection of having been president of the United States for eight years.
When I related this story, John Paul, sitting directly across from me, looked utterly stricken, and what seemed a full minute’s silence ensued. The pope was in tough physical shape from Parkinson’s disease. But it was as if he now imagined a worse fate than being locked in an increasingly frozen body: a life in which he had lost the capacity to reflect on his life. The silence was broken by John Paul quietly asking me to “please let Mrs. Reagan know that I am praying for her husband” — a message I conveyed through Ed Meese on my return home.
That vignette puts a prayer once familiar to many Catholics, the Suscipe of St. Ignatius Loyola, into striking relief:
Continued below.
Lent and the purification of memory
On December 20, 2002, I was at lunch in the papal department when the wide-ranging conversation John Paul II always encouraged took an unexpected turn, with the pope asking me how President Ronald Reagan was doing. As it happened, I had recently run into Reagan’s former attorney general, Edwin...
www.denvercatholic.org
