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In a reshuffle in the Vatican last year, John Paul installed two other key hard-liners. Jean Jerome Hamer, 68, a Belgian, was dubbed "the Hammer" during his years as No. 2 man at the doctrinal congregation. He was John Paul's choice to replace the indulgent Eduardo Cardinal Pironio and keep a tight rein on the congregation that supervises religious orders. Hamer, now enmeshed in the crucial test of wills with U.S. nuns over the abortion issue, is deemed by some leading sisters to be uncommunicative and insensitive toward women. Augustin Mayer, 73, a German workaholic, was for years the top aide to Pironio, handling the tough jobs that his boss had little stomach for. He now runs the congregation that regulates liturgy and the sacraments.
Silvio Cardinal Oddi, 74, the Italian member of the in group, runs the congregation that deals with priests not in religious orders, managing, for instance, the crackdown against priests in politics. Affable and highly conservative, he is a friend of John Paul's; the Pope enjoys his dry humor and no-nonsense air. Another Italian, Agostino Cardinal Casaroli, 70, is nominally the Pope's top aide, but has little influence on internal church affairs: he is now largely restricted to temporal and diplomatic matters, in which the Pope recognizes his supple mastery.
Besides his Vatican appointments, of course, the Pope names all new bishops, and, says one of the leading figures among the U.S. bishops, "He's trying to change the makeup of the hierarchies so he will have more control." Some liberals question whether papal authority can be so easily imposed. Father Greeley points out that U.S. Catholics no longer constitute an immigrant culture, and are far more likely to attend college than are Americans as a whole. Says he: "The American hierarchy and the Vatican simply haven't realized that we have a well-educated population out there whom you cannot coerce or talk down to." Joseph Pichler, an active lay Catholic and president of a retailing chain, agrees: "People won't stand for getting nailed any more. The risk the Pope runs is that in exercising his authority, he may lose it. People will quietly engage in spiritual disobedience."
Still, it is obvious that John Paul sees no choice but to clarify and unify the church's public voice and preserve its heritage, although it is not certain what further disciplinary measures he might impose to achieve that goal. Like most previous Popes, he is planning strategy not for tomorrow but for the centuries. His church has experienced persecution, wars, internal venality and schism, and yet survived and thrived. It is quite possible that John Paul II, who is only 64, will see Catholicism into the third millennium, a calendar point to which he often refers. He looks to that day mindful of the words of Jesus Christ to St. Peter that the powers of death and hell will not prevail against the church, and convinced that his own program of consolidation will help to secure that promise.