©2005 UrbisMedia
Anyone who has been reading this journal knows that I do not count myself among he credulous of any creed. I’ll take my chances with my own “faith”; the priests, gurus, mullahs, rabbis and the rest can keep their own counsel.
And now it must be said: that goes double for Pope John Paul II. I know, I know , one should not speak ill of the dead. Well, I spoke plenty ill of him when he was alive, so why turn hypocrite now. First of all, I must say that the papacy itself is a stupid concept that should have died when the Romans crucified Peter (“ Tu es Petrus ”) upside down in AD 67. But since then we have had mostly fools, whoremongers, megalomaniacs, murderers, and a few decent and pious men, running around in that silly costume, making saints, appointing cronies as cardinals, while claiming to be “infallible on matters of faith and morals.”
A few of these guys tried to let some air into the Church, most recently John XXIII with hisapertura a sinestra of Vatican II, and Albino Luciani, pope for only 34 days as John Paul I before he was probably murdered (joining the first 33 popes, none of whom reputedly died of “natural causes”) because he was going to clean up the sleazy Vatican Bank-Banco Ambrosiano situation run by Cardinal Marcinkus.
But John Paul II was no reformer; rather a pontifical reactionary, who while posing as an intellectual himself, drove off the Church’s theologians, fought against “liberation theology” because he did have the brains to see that it was closer to what the Church should be in developing countries than cardinals and bishops consorting with dictatorial secular powers. He did more praying than thinking, ran the Church more with ideology than theology, and ran around the world sucking up the adulation of the credulous as though he was a rock star. At the same time, if you do the demographics, he was running the Church into the ground. Barely fifteen percent of Europe’s Catholics go to mass, and churches and seminaries are closing in Europe and the U.S.
He was an apologist for traditions that kept women “in their place,” and protected, even rewarded, bishops who moved pederast priests around so they could get fresh prey and had to pay off their victims with the first, second and third collections at masses that are more and more thinly attended. He supported new theological SS Church organization like Opus Dei that functions, like his buddy Cardinal Ratzinger and the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, to make sure that homosexuals, feminists, and open-minded theologians would be marginalized or purged. No married priests, women priests, birth control, or choice for women with this crowd. With AIDS raging in many countries where they seek converts they oppose even the use of condoms. This pope was more concerned with creating a cult of personality than a culture of ecumenical Christianity. Pontifex means “bridge-builder,” not barrier-builder.
Sure there is all the photo op stuff of going into mosques, apologizing to the Jews, kissing African babies; but if we have a hard time linking that with real sincerity with other politicians, we should be able to see it through the haze of incense and discern its hollowness through the strains of Gregorian chant.
When interviewed on the PBS News Hour about his fellow Pole, Zbigniew Brzezinski concluded his sappy encomium by saying that Karol Wojtyla was a “Pope for the ages.” Right. TheMiddle Ages.
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©2005, James A. Clapp (UrbisMedia Ltd. Pub. 4.6.2005)