Posted on 04/05/2005 1:20:22 AM PDT by nickcarraway
Pope John Paul II's most impressive quality was the one that most media encomiums over the weekend didn't even bother to mention: his intense personal piety. He was at once the most public Catholic and the most private one, reading a breviary on airplanes and retreating to his sparsely furnished quarters to pray as Jesus Christ taught: "When you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret, and your Father who sees in secret will reward you." In an anxiety-ridden, distracted age, when the idea of praying for even four minutes a day sounds taxing, Pope John Paul II prayed for four hours.
It was fitting that he lived past Easter: his speechless struggling during Holy Week was more powerful than words in testifying to a life of perseverance in silent prayer and confirmed that though he was dying he would soon rise like the God whose sufferings he shared to the end.
But a worldly press corps finds the Pope's personal holiness boring, if not a bit suspicious and troubling (the New York Times' obituary writers, arching their brows, reported that "some" sources said that "in private he was somber, serious, enigmatic, sometime quixotic, a man who hid his feelings and did not say much." Boy, what a weirdo.) So it largely reduces Pope John Paul II to a worldly personality, a pretty nice, even fun, humanitarian who said some things liberal journalists like to hear from time to time (though it doesn't occur to them that he reached the positions they liked by reasoning they'd never accept, such as concern for the salvation of a criminal's soul). If the press cast him as a holy man, it is not because of his frequent fasting but because of his "statements against world hunger," not because of his piety, but because of his politics.
In the end, the journalists' coverage, ostensibly about the Pope, is more about their minds and souls than his. Like Ron Reagan Jr.- who had no use for his Dad's politics in life but claimed his legacy in death -- the Keith Olbermanns now jump on the papal bandwagon (that they had tried in various ways over the last 26 years to upend) in the hopes of steering it toward a liberalism Pope John Paul II would find abhorrent. Get ready for a month of the most disingenuous coverage imaginable.
Apparently we're supposed to believe that the Paula Zahns and Aaron Browns stay up late at night fretting over the future welfare of the Catholic Church. When they ask this or that unctuous guest -- usually some habitless nun, Jesuit ninny, or obvious heretic like Richard McBrien -- whether the Church will, say, junk its teaching on condoms or bless birth control, we're supposed to believe that they have the Church's best interests at heart. Every problem they cite in the Church -- from the sex scandals to the decline in vocations -- is due to the very wordly liberalism they demand more of. They feign shock over indiscipline in the Church (with the abuse scandal) but in truth they want more of it (hence their knee-jerks calls for "decentralization"). Their interest in reforming the Catholic Church is about as sincere as their interest in reforming the Republican Party: calls for "reform" are just self-projection and will amount to separating Catholicism from Christ.
Toward the end of liberalizing the Church, the media will look for fixes to problems from the liberal clerics most responsible for causing them-- such as Los Angeles Cardinal Roger Mahony, who couldn't fly to Rome fast enough to start politicking with reporters in tow for a liberal pope.
Pope John Paul II knew that a worldly liberalism had derailed the Church and was trying to remove it. The project of the next pope is to finish that job. The media's "whether or not you agreed with them, you respected the intensity of his principles" formulation is nonsense: they didn't respect Pope John Paul II for his principles but for his power, a power they have long wanted to appropriate for their own liberal purposes.
Their idea of honoring Pope John Paul II is to mau-mau the Church into embracing heresies that he deplored. The greatness of his life consisted in what the press ignores and seeks to undo in the Church: holiness, the measure of which is never the will of men but of God. The Pope made such a powerful impression on the world not because he was wordly but because he was otherworldly. A godless age had left an enormous vacuum; only a man who conformed his life to God could fill it.
We haven't watched any network but Fox since the Pope began to decline last Thursday. It has been a bash free zone, and, for the most part, very well done.
O'Reilly has been an exception to the good coverage by Fox.
When Bishop Dolan explained the pope's responsibility is to conserve the deposit of faith, one of the hosts suggested that the church might lose members if it didn't contemporize. Dolan then pointed to last week's readings from the Acts of the Apostles, saying that even in the first century, people were dismayed when changes they wanted weren't effected.
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News?
One of the reasons I love Dolan. He is good when having discussions with people. Usually can respond in this way.
And for the record, he only wore the cheesehead at the very very beginning of his homily after his installation.
"I agree with you completely," said Dad. "I suggest we start by taking a vote on the doctrine of the Trinity."
The media will not be able to resist lecturing us on how backward the Church is, how many deaths it causes by not licensing use of condoms, etc. Plus did I mention pedophilia? They just don't get it. I think they are hoping the next pope will be Episcopal.
A great piece. Thanks.
President Clinton met with the Pope to try and unite Catholics and the Democratic Party....
President Bush met with the Pope to try and undo the work President Clinton had done, and to divide Catholics from the Democratic Party, and each other.
Breathless... absolutely breathless!
I learned their pattern last with the Gulf War. For now, nothing but praise, so they can be seen on his side. Why not? The man is dead, they figure, so why not magnify him? Then, when his replacement is chosen, they can mourn the fact that he is no John Paul II.
"We haven't watched any network but Fox since the Pope began to decline last Thursday. It has been a bash free zone, and, for the most part, very well done."
We haven't watched any news at ALL since the pope began to decline. Total coverage of this non-event is insulting to Evangelical Christians who base their beliefs on the Bible.
Doh!
I'd've thought that 99.9% of non-practicing Catholics want married and women priests, so given the majority of non-practicing Catholics, I'm quite impressed that that number is only 55% and not closer to 90%.
That's why I only listen to Fox News anymore.
Well the revisionism "disingenousness" is on both sides, isn't it? Conservatives seem to have amenesia these days about the Pope's strident opposition to the war in Iraq and anti-Israel views.
I believe you.
I'll be watching for that very tactic.
Are you saying Catholics don't base their beliefs on the Bible?
If it is the same one I saw, she was on yesterday. She was wearing jewelry! Someone must have pulled her aside and boxed her ears or something. Today she wore a crucifix. She is way over the top, this has become her personal cause. I wonder if she bothers praying and performing good works, or is just totally consumed with this. She is doing no justice to the holy nuns of the world.
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