[Pokey78]

Steyn ping!

[stylin_geek]

Mark Steyn:

"It requires tremendous will to cling to the splendour of truth when the default mode of the era is to blur and evade."

Excellent turn of phrase.

The Late Pope:

"Thus the original import of human sexuality is distorted and falsified, and the two meanings, unitive and procreative, inherent in the very nature of the conjugal act, are artificially separated."

Worth remembering and repeating.

[whereasandsoforth]

"Progressive" is a phrase to hide a meaning. To be "progressive" really means to move as far away from the rules of God as possible. They want a world that follows the darkest side of man's desires. They would love to see a Pope elected that shares their vision. They want a pope that isn't afraid to get a little mud on himself. Maybe, to help "progressives" realize their wettest dream, we can find an atheist Pope.

[federal]

bookmark

[metesky]

Steyn always gets it.
Thanks.

[fortunecookie]

Steyn ping!

...I'd be a little irked at the secular media's inability to discuss religion except through the prism of their moral relativism.

I've got to remember this. It says it all.

[bubman]

Thank for "Steyning" my Monday!

[Siobhan]

Ping!

[Billthedrill]

When a free man enjoying the blessings of a free society promotes an equivalence between real democracy and a sham, he's colluding in the great lie being perpetrated by the prison state.

Worthy of an essay in itself - heck, a whole book.

Many - not all - of the defenders of such enthusiasms as abortion and gay marriage have as their ideological underpinning a religious belief in the inevitable direction of history, which is why "progressives" tend only to view progress in one dimension. This is one of several "gifts" to current political culture from one Karl Marx.

In point of simple fact, no one was more progressive in terms of being a causative agent of change in the 80's and early 90's than the late Pope unless his name was Ronald Reagan. This has contemporary progressives grinding their molars to a powder but it happens to be a fact. Much of the venom we are seeing at the moment from the unclean pens of the Guardian and the NY Times is a result of a political class certain that it was the future watching the real future marching off in an unexpected and decidedly unapproved direction. It's a bitterness with which I find it impossible to sympathize.

[maica]

Another important excerpt:

Thoughtful atheists ought to be able to recognise that, whatever one's tastes in these areas, the Pope was on to something - that abortion et al, in separating the "two meanings" of sex and leaving us free to indulge in one while ignoring the other, have severed us almost entirely and possibly irreparably from traditional impulses, such as societal survival. John Paul II championed the "splendour of truth" not because he was rigid and inflexible, but because he understood the alternative was a dead end in every sense.

#####

An argument that cannot be refuted.

[Lorianne]

Dead on, as usual.

You don't even have to agree with John Paul II on everything to see the wisdom in his writings and statements.

[nothingnew]

You da man Pokey.

FMCDH(BITS)

[chatham]

Steyn is magic.

[Fury]

Thanks for this post.

A priest I know is from Croatia. After talking with him and other Catholics from Eastern Europe, I believe that we as Americans really have a different perspective.

Folks from Eastern Europe say that the Pope along with President Reagan helped to "set them free" (one person used that phrase). Those people will always remember what the Pope and President Reagan (among others) did for them.

[nothingnew]

...man, so why be the last squaresville daddy-o on the block?

Hey! That's me!

FMCDH(BITS)

[Jabba the Nutt]

"...the Guardian, for example, has already been touting the Nigerian Francis Arinze as "candidate for first black pope". This would be news to Pope St Victor, an African and pontiff from 189 to 199."

Well, to nitpick, being African doesn't make one a black necessarily. I'd be willing to bet that Pope St Victor was not black.

[e5man_r_u?]

Yikes, Mark at his best!

Thanks for the post!!

[Malesherbes]

"If his beloved Europe survives in any form...." I go to Poland twice a year. Poland will survive with its European culture, because most there hold the same values John Paul II held. Western Europe is another matter entirely. It has embraced the culture of death.

[Tench_Coxe]

"Why progressive Westerners never understood John Paul Ii."

There should be an addition to that saying, " ...and why they never will. "

[goldstategop]

The Pope's legacy will outlast the impatient trendiness of liberal secularists. What's cool today is a dud tomorrow and so forth. I don't expect secular societies to survive more than a generation. Mark Steyn's right; the late Pope will have the last laugh. Absolute standards and eternal values matter because they last forever.

(Denny Crane: "Sometimes you can only look for answers from God and failing that... and Fox News".)