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 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. <<
The leader of a billion people and who brought communism to an end isn't worth the sort of attention that Princess Diane or John Kennedy, Jr. or Laci Peterson got?
And where do you think the Catholic church GETS its doctrines? Do you know why the Gospel of Mark is in the Bible, but other gospels (Gospel of Phillip, etc.) is not? The Catholic Church saw that the Gospel of Mark accorded with its doctrines, and the Gospel of Phillip did not.
But see, Catholics recognize that people can read the bible in isolation and come up with different meanings, so they also cite Tradition. Tradition only means "This is what the Church Fathers understood what meant by this." This causes confusion among Protestants who see the catechism, for instance, cite St. Augustine. This doesn't mean that the Catholic doctrine is based on St. Augustine! If you read the work they are quoting, you would find that St. Augustine was citing, in turn, the bible.
Sorry I had to say it.
Has to be the same bejeweled one.
Crucifiz today? Oh my. Nothing like staged dressing.
No amnesia here. Sparks are always going to fly where the City of God brushes against the City of Man.
Which was written and perserved for them by the Roman Catholic Church.
Try a little Protestant charity towards a fellow Christian.
<< I saw one today who was so damn off-putting.
A truly sorry creature.
Pathetic. >>
You mean they come in more than one variety?
Well, I'll be darned!
[Haven't noticed that meself]
"Are you saying Catholics don't base their beliefs on the Bible?"
Yeah, everyone knows us Catholics read from the National Enquirer at Mass on Sundays...
I stand corrected on you, sir!
We know what the truth is; unfortunately AP isn't interested in the truth.
Are you jumping to every thread that is related to the death of the Pope, just to bash Catholics ?
We get your opinion.
Go watch something else on TV, or go read a book.
I don't understand why FReepers jump on threads just to bash each other.
I'm curious ... what kind of "Evangelical Christian" picks as her screen name a reference to someone who promoted prostitution? Does your Bible not include Paul's condemnations of whoremongering?
My guess is you are no "Evangelical Christian" at all.
Unless they're not a real FReeper.
Jesus answered this before anyone even asked Him the question:
Matthew 5:11-12 NAB
Blessed are you when they insult you and persecute you and utter every kind of evil against you (falsely) because of me.
Rejoice and be glad, for your reward will be great in heaven. Thus they persecuted the prophets who were before you.
If it weren't for the Catholic Church, you wouldn't have a Bible.
How do you explain the differences between all the protestant denominations when they all claim to be led by the same Holy Spirit in interpreting sacred scripture? How can they all be correct and yet be so very, very different?
The Bible alone will not get you there, will not get any of us there. Sola Scriptura is a concept that Jesus would have laughed at. Jesus founded a Church. One. Holy. Catholic (from the Greek: Universal). Apostolic. He didn't write a book and tell the Apostles, 'Go read this and do what it says.' You should have a big problem with that. Regardless of what mis-information you may have willingly swallowed about Catholicism, the fullness of the faith resides with it. Same now as ~2000 years ago.
The truth is out there, but you have to pull your head out of the protestant paradigm to find it.
The fact that you wrote your thoughts of the Holy Father passing as a non-event glaringly magnifies your ignorance of his impact on 'course of history altering' world events the past 26 years. Perhaps someone should wake you up when Mama's Family comes back on.
Hey brall!
Good to *see* you.
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.
I see it didn't take long for them to show their true colors. I was wondering about that.
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