The only tragedy about Pope Paul is that, in his senility, the Vatican bureaucracy took over and too often made the Papacy the servant of Fashionable Issues.
I disagreed with much the Pope said because I disagree with many things the Catholic Church stands for. But I also understand who the Pope is. I do not need to agree with a man to see him as a hero.
The real John Paul passed away some time ago. But to his last days he actually BELIEVED. To his last days he was Pope to the extent he could be.
Catholics have no right to grieve for John Paul. They have every right to grieve for themselves.
Catholics are the first to admit that throughout history they have not always had a pope who was actually a pope. Americans will readily admit that we have not always had a president who was actually a president.
Too many popes have just been Top Bureaucrats. This pope never said anything he didn’t mean. You could sincerely disagree with him, but you always respected him.
And now John Paul is going Home. There is no sadness in that.
#1 by H.S. on 04/02/2005 - 7:16 pm
There’s a Polack.
I am not a Roman Catholic and know very few closely on a personal level. And the majority that I have worked with or known as acquaintances left a bad impression. I remember vaguely watching all the moaning and gnashing of teeth in American Catholism and some of the other Roman Catholics in the news mostly complaining and openly wondering HOW this man EVER got to be selected as Pope! But the undertow that kept surfacing as the newswhores flocked to Poland to “investigate” this guy that he was so utterly respected for his devotion to right and to the people he served (and his amazing leadership skills) plus that eery lack of any “opposition” or moral dirt from the people who worked with him, that I decided then that the guy was going to make some changes, even if only that the powers that be were thwarted and they were forced to take a good man, at last.
Wonder if he was the coalminers’ hero.
#2 by Elizabeth on 04/03/2005 - 3:27 pm
I am a Catholic, and am grieving at his death. I’m not crying for him, but for me, and for the rest of his people, and for his
Church.
I am terrified that the College of Cardinals is going to elect some go-along-to-get-along coward.
One of the reasons it took me six years to become a Catholic was that I spent the first three years looking for leadership in the Church. Then, in 1980, I met my first Catholic who was happy to see a Protestant interested in becoming Catholic. The next Easter, there I was, standing in front of the Bishop, getting Received into the Church.
It hasn’t been easy being Catholic, and I haven’t always agreed with the Pope [There is a difference between Papal personal opinion and Papal decree.], but I have generally been happy — much happier than I was as a “nothing,” out in the cold of teenage iconoclasm.
We Catholics can attend Sunday Mass on Saturday evening, and I did that yesterday as I’d been a few blocks away at the local library when I got the news. As I walked towards the church, I could hear the bell tolling. As the church was packed, I sat in the back row of one of the transepts, occasionally breaking down, handkerchief in hand.
A lot of us in my parish are converts, and I don’t think most of us would be Catholic if it weren’t for Pope John Paul the Great.
#3 by Don on 04/05/2005 - 3:26 am
Was this Pope in favor of sanity?
Or a One World One Color Cesspool?
There is the Political Cesspool and there is the Religious Cesspool.
I have no use for either.
#4 by Don on 04/05/2005 - 10:31 am
And the Educational Cesspool, which Why Johnny Can’t Think is about.
#5 by Jay on 04/11/2005 - 12:31 am
I’ve been a Roman Catholic since birth. I will say that I really disliked John Paul II.
The two things I really disliked about him was that when I was a kid, he made it so that girls could be altar “boys” too. The other is that he kissed a koran and seemed more worried about Africa than with the declining populations and moslem invasions of the center of Christianity. He also kissed Castro’s, a communist murderer, ass.
There’s prolly a lot of stuff I’m forgetting, but Lord help us if we get a black pope. 🙁