His Was no "Act" - (Colonel Robert Pappas, USMC (Ret) on Pope John Paul II)

GULF1.COM ^ | APRIL 5, 2005 | COLONEL ROBERT PAPPAS, USMC (Ret)

[CHARLITE]

As one who is not a Roman Catholic and for the first four decades of life viewed Catholicism with a jaundiced eye, this writer mourns the death of Pope John Paul II.

It wasn't until a midlife crisis that the writer ever looked at religion beyond his conservative Methodist roots. He knew little about them except that other religions existed, and that included Roman Catholicism. In fact, he held many of the same views that condemn Catholics as Pope, statue and Mary worshippers, even toying with the notion, that far from being Jesus' representative with a lineage that began with St. Peter, that the Pope, any Pope was the antithesis of that most holy estate.

Then a strange thing happened, a dear Mormon friend who happened to be the writer's "back-seater" in Vietnam was killed, years later, in a crop dusting accident. Jerry McClure's death was the "straw" that broke the proverbial "camel's back" and set the writer into a personal and spiritual crisis. It resulted among other things, in a top to bottom examination of the Mormon religion, after careful consideration of which the writer concluded that that there will also be Mormons in Heaven. That was his first eye opener about religion other than his own, and that event was followed some time later with an introduction to the Catholic faith.

At about that time Pope Paul VI died and Pope John Paul I was elected as his successor. Thirty-three days later he too died and Pope John Paul II was elected. Those events captured my attention for all the same reasons and more, that the media are in the process of airing. For one, the name John Paul is similar to the writer's father's name, Paul John and that is not where the similarity ended. Over the years of his Papacy, Pope John Paul II lived the kind of life that Paul John Pappas fervently advocated during his own ministry.

It wasn't too long before it became obvious that despite their warts, and any organization has them, Catholics too will be found in Heaven. Now, as the writer remains a committed Methodist disciple of Christ, he has concluded that there will even be Methodists in Heaven.

For these, and additional sentimental and spiritual reasons, he, along with millions now mourns in a flood of bittersweet emotions, that in the writer's case, the Pope whose reign spanned the best years of the writer's life, has gone to his great, well-deserved and eternal reward.

May the Heavenly Father bless his memory and bring much good fruit to the witness and ministry of Pope John Paul "the Great."

Semper Fidelis

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