Just as with the Church,so it is with the Pope. One has to read with the knowledge of what has been said before,many of you do not wish to see anything but trouble,when it come to Pope John Paul II. So when he says something that is totally in line with Catholic teaching you leap frog to another subject and hold the Pope,speaking on the other subject up for ridicule.
You only diminish yourself and your compadres and I speak as one who has had much empathy and respect for your position in the past but observing the action on Free Republic lately,I am fast losing it.
I think it's as simple as the fact that you don't have a grasp on exactly what the action consists of. You mischaracterize the nature of what's taking place here.
Consider this: if you had, in the past, respect for a position but then later change your mind based upon your perception of the actions of others, then your original respect had more to do with character than it did thought or idea or principle.
In other words, it was based on sentiment; a sort of personalizing of what's supposed to be based upon principle.
Sentiments, they come and they go. Principles are steadfast. You need to approach this discussion from principle.
Nobody is going to feel compelled to ran after that respect in order to retreive it. It's your job to seek and find it.
You seem to want him to cover all bases every time he speaks,while at the same time you want him to be clear and on point. Whether you realize it or not you want the impossible.
I'm not sure why you think it's impossible when all that is expected of the Pope is to do what his predecessors did. They seemed to be able to do the job without creating so much confusion. He made one statement that any number of Pope's would have either have so drummed into the heads of the people of the world that it would have been unnecessary. The result is this outpouring of exaggerated emotion about how wonderful and saintly he is. I'm sorry, I just can no longer buy that line. I believed it for a while, then I read his work, and I read the works of the greatest Popes before him. Sorry.