Posted on 06/08/2003 11:12:07 AM PDT by Notwithstanding
NewsMax.com's religion editor Fr. Mike Reilly notes that relations between President Bush and Pope John Paul II remain warm despite their disagreement over the war in Iraq.
While Pope John Paul II joined the chorus of European critics urging President Bush not to make war on Iraq, Bush had nothing but praise for the Pope during his recent visit to Poland.
Zenit news reported that on the eve of Secretary of State Colin Powell's meeting with the Pope, President Bush told cheering crowds that, "At Wawel Cathedral in 1978, a Polish cardinal began his journey to a conclave in Rome, and entered history as Pope John Paul II -- one of the greatest moral leaders of our time."
"A young seminarian, Karol Wojtyla, saw the swastika flag flying over the ramparts of Wawel Castle," Bush said. "He shared the suffering of his people and was put into forced labor. From this priest's experience and faith came a vision: that every person must be treated with dignity, because every person is known and loved by God."
Meanwhile, Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski took the opportunity to weigh in on the debate over the European Constitution.
While the Constitution acknowledges the contributions of the Greeks and the Romans, the framers ignore the influence of Christianity.
"I am an atheist and everybody knows it," he the London Telegraph this week. "But there are no excuses for making references to ancient Greece and Rome, and the Enlightenment, without making references to the Christian values which are so important to the development of Europe."
No.
But it sure felt good.
Actually, all 20 were the same as post 56. 21 copies of the same exact thing, all to the same person.
Thanks, AM
God is Sovereign, and in control of all earthly events, using His Church Universal in part to do His will.
btw, the Pope's disagreement with the President, as I understand it, was that it must be proven that war was a last resort (and he didn't believe that it was prior to the war).......and that was the only thing keeping it from being a just war. President Bush, and many other Christians believed that it was indeed just, and that, IMO has been proven without question with the revelation of the extent of the brutality in Saddam's regime.
Has the Pope made a statement since then?
The Baptists I know personally who lived under Soviet domination in Ukraine had grandparents sent to the gulags and died there, and even in the 1980's were not permitted to attend college or work in professions of their choice. All they could do was meet in secret and pray, and that they did.
Orthodox Christians were not the only ones to suffer for their faith under the godlessness of communism.
HA!
Again and again, people told us that it was. John Paul II's 1979 trip was the fulcrum of revolution which led to the collapse of Communism. Timothy Garton Ash put it this way, "Without the Pope, no Solidarity. Without Solidarity, no Gorbachev. Without Gorbachev, no fall of Communism." (In fact, Gorbachev himself gave the Kremlin's long-term enemy this due, "It would have been impossible without the Pope.") It was not just the Pope's hagiographers who told us that his first pilgrimage was the turning point. Skeptics who felt Wojtyla was never a part of the resistance said everything changed as John Paul II brought his message across country to the Poles. And revolutionaries, jealous of their own, also look to the trip as the beginning of the end of Soviet rule.
The Canadian reporter, Eric Margolis, described it this way: "I was the first Western journalist inside the KGB headquarters in 1990. The generals told me that the Vatican and the Pope above all was regarded as their number one, most dangerous enemy in the world." Soon enough, people of all sorts--world leaders, clandestine dissidents and ordinary Catholics--sensed the Communists were impotent before the Polish Pope. In 1979, when John Paul II's plane landed at Okecie Airport, church bells ran throughout the country. He criss-crossed his beloved Poland, deluged by adoring crowds. He preached thirty-two sermons in nine days. Bogdan Szajkowski said it was, "A psychological earthquake, an opportunity for mass political catharsis..." The Poles who turned out by the millions looked around and saw they were not alone. They were a powerful multitude.
The Canadian reporter, Eric Margolis, described it this way: "I was the first Western journalist inside the KGB headquarters in 1990. The generals told me that the Vatican and the Pope above all was regarded as their number one, most dangerous enemy in the world." Soon enough, people of all sorts--world leaders, clandestine dissidents and ordinary Catholics--sensed the Communists were impotent before the Polish Pope. In 1979, when John Paul II's plane landed at Okecie Airport, church bells ran throughout the country. He criss-crossed his beloved Poland, deluged by adoring crowds. He preached thirty-two sermons in nine days. Bogdan Szajkowski said it was, "A psychological earthquake, an opportunity for mass political catharsis..." The Poles who turned out by the millions looked around and saw they were not alone. They were a powerful multitude.
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