Posted on 04/08/2005 7:30:22 AM PDT by dead
WHEN dramatising another historic death in Rome, starring another giant who'd bestrode the earth, Shakespeare had Mark Antony say, with solemn insincerity, that he'd come to bury the assassinated Caesar, "not to praise him".
Now it's the Pope's time. Having survived assassination in St Peter's Square, he died in comparative calm, to be buried in praise, much of it as coded and careful as Antony tribute to his friend. Few Australian critics have dared to speak out. Even ex-priest Paul Collins, that perennial thorn in the side of Cardinal George Pell, has been muted.
But with so much talk of the Pope's death, now is the time to talk about the Pope and death, of his record on the life and death issues of life, from the Holocaust to AIDS, from the war in Iraq to the electric chair.
His holiness was at his best on the endless tragedy of Christian anti-Semitism. As a Pole, with Auschwitz in the neighbourhood, he was well aware of the Vatican's role in two millennia of pogroms – and of his church's mephistophelian contracts with dictators Francisco Franco, Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler. Although John Paul II's expressions of regret to the Jews for so many centuries of Catholic condemnation were guarded and qualified, they were light years ahead of the evasions of his predecessors and earned him belated respect throughout Israel and the diaspora.
His church, however, seemed just as concerned about abortion as with the Holocaust. Obsessing over the life and death of the fetus, the papacy led the opposition to stem-cell research. And on John Paul's watch the abortion issue, particularly in the US, exceeded boiling point as Catholic zealots linked with Pentecostal terrorists in the bombing of clinics and the murder of doctors.
Similar passions erupted when the courts agreed to switch off the life support of a vegetative woman and conservative clergy, aided and abetted by the Bush administration, turned a human tragedy into a political circus.
This brawling between reactionary theology and secular consensus in a pluralist society was balanced, however, by the Pope's profound opposition to the death penalty. This despite its popularity with many of the same US Christians – the best-known being the born-again President – who stridently oppose abortion and any form of euthanasia. (Throw the switch but don't pull the plug!) It was the Catholic nun who has spent more time on death row than most convicted murderers, as crusader and friend to the doomed, who persuaded her boss to speak out more strongly on the issue. Sister Helen Prejean convinced the Pope to oppose the death penalty in any circumstances.
On the war in Iraq, the Pope again refused to budge. With George W. Bush's planned invasion failing to meet John Paul's criteria for a just war, the deaths of countless Iraqis could not be countenanced. The Pope said so loud and clear and often. Yet among the many Catholics of influence in the secular world who totally ignored their spiritual leader were local columnists Frank and Miranda Devine, Christopher Pearson and Gerard Henderson. It seems that on this all-important issue, John Paul was not infallible. That mantle was draped over the shoulders of Bush, Tony Blair and John Howard. Our Catholic commentariat took their spiritual guidance from them.
Not that the Pope's anti-war position bothered the President. Team Bush simply arranged for a photo-op of their boy with the ageing prelate. With heads close together, it looked as if Pope and President were murmuring in agreement. That was certainly the interpretation put on the images by Washington. It's hard to imagine more ruthless and cynical behaviour.
Where the Pope entirely fails the test on life and death, where one bad decision eclipses all else, is with the worst pandemic since the Black Death. Millions of men, women and born and unborn children are on the death row of AIDS. Denied that right to life, they've been condemned to deaths far crueller than anything the gas chamber or electric chair has to offer. Their deaths will be long and lingering, infinitely more agonising than the Pope's. A great many of them are in Africa, a continent where Catholicism is increasingly dominant. Many of them, Catholics and non-Catholics alike, could and should have been saved.
All it needed was for John Paul to change his policy on the condom. But he refused to consider it. The condom was wrong, he proclaimed, in any and every circumstance. This monstrous folly follows the Pope to his grave. And theirs.
It seems that on this all-important issue, John Paul was not infallible.
No Catholic believes that the Pope’s opinion on all issues is infallible, jackass.
Is it too much to ask that liberal blowhards learn about an issue before they spout off their stupid opinions about it?
Major barf alert, IMO!
'Is it too much to ask that liberal blowhards learn about an issue before they spout off their stupid opinions about it?'
Yes, probably.
100 million people were killed by Communist China's economic policies. China's policies were promoted as being economic justice, redistributing wealth to the poor. Therefore, anyone who advocates giving money or aid to the poor is responsible for a hundred million deaths.
[/artcile's logic]
You idiot. Then they wouldn't be liberals. (hands dead a cluepon)
D'oh!
This poor soul is consumed with hatred.
(Denny Crane: "Sometimes you can only look for answers from God and failing that... and Fox News".)
Can't see the author's problem. Apart from his oppsoition to abortion, the Pope was pretty sound on all the correct left-wing postions.
(Denny Crane: "Sometimes you can only look for answers from God and failing that... and Fox News".)
Apart from his oppsoition to abortion, the Pope was pretty sound on all the correct left-wing postions.
They never forgave him for opposing communism so vehemently and effectively.
You don't know any more about the Pope than the author does.
The word 'arrogant' comes to mind after reading this,,,published just now apparently, and not before the death and burial of the Holy Father. How convenient, how cowardly. That's how evil works, IMHO.
This poor author, the poor dear. Imagine how frustrating it is to be a reporter for a paper when you really have all the righteousness and insight to solve the world's most serious problems. It must be such a strain on this poor fork-tongued serpent to have to slither around with the rest of the peons of the world.
I am sure PJPII has already blesssed this 'person' (ahem) and moved on to bigger and better spiritual things. I can only hope that some day I'll have even a fraction of the Holy Father's graciousness...right now...it's a little tough.
much of it as coded
You'd almost think this was a Ron Fournier piece.
Monogamy? Abstinence? Are you kidding?
God forbid the most logical solution to the AIDS problem(and many social problems too)would even be considered.
WHAT?????!!!!! I'm sure this is news to Sister Helen.
The libs get all confused when they try to write more than just a short and witty slogan. Here the writer ends up appearing sympathetic to "unborn children," who presumably might have been saved from AIDS if their parents had used condoms. (Of course, if the parents had used condoms, presumably the unborn children wouldn't exist at all - hence, no need to abort them away!)
The backlash cometh. Idiots unite!
This reads like some highschooler hacked into the computer network and posted his term paper.
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