Posted on 12/17/2009 12:14:02 PM PST by markomalley
The late Pope John Paul II is one step closer at getting a spot on the altars, now that Benedict XVI will name him venerable.
Benedict XVI is expected to sign the decree Saturday December 19th.
When the Pope gives a candidate to the altars, the title "venerable" that means he recognizes that they lived the Christian virtues as heroes.
To beatify a candidate, the commission of cardinals and Vatican theologians must certify that God has performed a miracle through his intercession.
In the case of John Paul II, just two months after his death, several medical teams have classified the cure of a French nun with Parkinson's, as “scientifically inexplicable”. The nun says, with much difficulty, she wrote John Paul II name on a piece of paper and a couple of hours later she was 100% cured.
To name venerable John Paul II, Pope Benedict XVI analyzed the documentation collected during the last 5 years by the postulator of the Cause of beatification, Father Slawomir Oder. Thousands of pages with specific facts and that show what many proclaimed the day of his funeral: that John Paul was a saint.
John Paul II road to sainthood, is perhaps one of the shortest on record. It started just one month after he died.
And lasted only 5 years. The traditional road to sainthood usually takes 10 times as long.
He belongs there just for his role in helping secure the freedom of millions behind the Iron Curtain, although I know that isn’t he criteria. He was a very great man.
I am not Catholic, but Pope John Paul II should be made a saint right after he died. The other miracle is the collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe and Soviet Union. He contributed it to the downfall.
Freeing millions from the Iron Curtain is a true miracle that triumphs all.
I think he was a very great man... but I am displeased to find out what makes someone a ‘saint’
Two years later after caring for my mom, painfully dying from ALS, my prayers to him again were answered as she passed on that very night of my asking for his intercession.
Sorry, please excuse me for saying this. PJP kissing the Koran and inviting every known (in some cases unknown) “religious’ leader to an ecumenical counsel in Rome, featuring everything from Animists to Muslims was enough for me.
The “Pope” is an Apostate. Always has been, always will be. Sorry about your wife though,
*thumbs up*
LOL.........thanks for clearing that up for us!!
John Paul II deserves this high honor. He did so much for the Church, the world and the peoples held in bondage. I believe is canonization should be sped up. He wasn’t perfect—true—there was only one perfect man-—and they nailed him to a cross.
“John Paul II road to sainthood, is perhaps one of the shortest on record. It started just one month after he died.
“And lasted only 5 years. The traditional road to sainthood usually takes 10 times as long.”
Poor reporting. Being declared venerable is two [very large] steps from being a canonized saint.
I look forward to Pope John Paul II’s canonization, but it ain’t here quite yet.
The “Pope” is an Apostate. Always has been, always will be.
LOL.........thanks for clearing that up for us!!
Really, that revelation was just what I needed. I now feel free to embrace my inner protestant...ROFL
I think that the word “apostate” is going a tad far but your point is well taken. He really did go way too far in the mindless ecumenical direction. Kissing the Koran and saying nice things about VooDoo really sends the wrong message in this mixed up world of ours.
To my mind the really big reason not to rush to judgement on the sainthood issue is that JPII presided over decades of priestly sex abuse of children and did nothing about it. He sure appears to me to have been part and parcel of the Church’s coverup of child abuse. He didn’t do much to clean up the “pink” seminaries in the States and Ireland, either.
And let’s keep in mind as well that Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger - now Pope Benedict XVI - was the head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (used to be called the Holy Inquisition) that had jurisdiction over such matters.
I freely recognize JPII’s astonishing accomplishments. And it wasn’t just his courageous and pivotal role in the defeat of the USSR. JPII also pushed through the Catechism, which was urgently needed, not to mention a complete updating of the Canon Law. His towering personality was a tremendous force in world evangelization.
But we shouldn’t rush to judgement. The fact remains that untold numbers of kids, mostly young boys, had their lives ruined and their souls polluted by priest-perps - including a couple of guys close to me - while JPII sat on his hands at best.
“To my mind the really big reason not to rush to judgement on the sainthood issue is that JPII presided over decades of priestly sex abuse of children and did nothing about it.”
So says you.
Pope John Paul II was elected to the papacy in late 1978. Child molestation by priests in the United States peaked in 1980 or 1981. Abuse had declined by 90% by the early 1990s.
It is true that the scope of prior abuse didn't become public to the last few years of his pontificate, but it's very, very clear that someone in the Church took the problem in the United States very seriously and began to turn the problem around very early in Pope John Paul's pontificate.
Who knows? Perhaps the pope even had something to do with it.
We don't really know what happened behind the scenes to cause the dramatic decline in priestly sex abuse starting early in Pope John Paul's pontificate. We cannot say that he did nothing about this problem. We really don't know.
There isn't really any evidence to support your assertion, and what evidence we have suggests that perhaps the late pontiff WAS doing something about the problem.
sitetest
You say that child abuse "peaked" in the early 80s, but tell that to my nephew who was abused after that. How can we explain the fact that Mahoney and Law were allowed to stay on as long as they did? There was a priest under Mahoney's jurisdiction named Oliver O'Grady (excellent documentary out about him called Deliver Us From Evil, by the way) who abused and abused and raped and then abused some more even as he was shuttled from place to place. Why didn't JPII or Cardinal Ratzinger have Mahoney's hide taked to the door of the Sistine Chapel?
I think it's way too easy to let either JPII or Benedict XVI off the hook without a very detailed explanation to the faithful of what exactly happened and why. Given all the cover ups in the past we really must assume they're guilty until proven innocent. Surely the burden of proof has shifted in regard to the Catholic hierarchy on this issue.
And what do they intend to do about it in the future? The fact that a large majority of our American Catholic clergy are gay (often openly so) and/or are suffering some other type of basic personality flaw remains unaddressed. What precisely did JPII do to close the seminary doors to homosexuals and psychological deficients? What is Benedict XVI doing about that? Requiring that all new ordinations be married - which I would heartily support - is rejected out of hand. Great, then what's the plan to keep out the gays and weirdos?
And if you don't believe that's true you need to spend more time at a typical parish in Wisconsin, where I'm from.
I see no action aimed at ridding the clergy of the dross. And to my mind it does no good to say it's happening "behind the scenes." Until we actually see the plan and its execution out in the open then, given all the circling of the wagons by our clergy in the past, we have to assume that nothing is being done.
Meantime, I urge all of my fellow Catholics to take extreme care in any contact your children have with the clergy. I would never, ever let my kids be alone with a priest. It's sad, but our first duty as parents is to our kids and their physical and spiritual health. Our Catholic clergy is overwhelmingly gay. We need to deal with that tragic fact and not to confuse our loyalty to the Bride of Christ with fealty to the sickos and fools who all too often - and with many notable exceptions - administer the organization here in America.
Your initial post said:
“...that JPII presided over decades of priestly sex abuse of children and did nothing about it.”
If you now wish to retract the statement because the evidence suggests that you're wrong, and replace it with the far milder:
“I'm just saying it's an issue and that we shouldn't rush to judgement on anything, such as his canonization.”
I'm fine with that. Still disagree, but not as strongly.
“You say that child abuse ‘peaked’ in the early 80s, but tell that to my nephew who was abused after that.”
Whether your nephew was abused after that or not doesn't change the fact that in 1980 or 1981, there were nearly a THOUSAND children molested IN THAT ONE YEAR ALONE, and by the early 1990s, the numbers of children molested were under a hundred.
That's still a horror!
But Pope John Paul II didn't molest any of those kids, and he DID preside over the real mitigation of the problem.
And I gotta tell ya, by the early 1980s, the episcopacy and the senior hierarchy of the Catholic Church in America were riddled with homos and fellow travelers. I really don't believe for a second that whatever it is that was done to achieve this tremendous reduction of child molestation came from within the US hierarchy.
If coming in while the problem was still rising, and three years into his reign starting to turn it around, and reducing it by 90% over the next dozen or so years is just not enough for you, then I can't help you.
“How can we explain the fact that Mahoney and Law were allowed to stay on as long as they did? There was a priest under Mahoney’s jurisdiction named Oliver O’Grady (excellent documentary out about him called Deliver Us From Evil, by the way) who abused and abused and raped and then abused some more even as he was shuttled from place to place. Why didn't JPII or Cardinal Ratzinger have Mahoney’s hide taked to the door of the Sistine Chapel?”
I don't know. Popes ordinarily deal with bishops privately.
But it may have something to do with the size of the problem and the size of the Church. There are roughly 5,000 bishops in the world and the problem in the United States was very large.
I think that perhaps the pope focused on developing solutions that could be universally applied that would mitigate the problem. From his perspective, reducing the overall scope of the problem may have been his first priority. That there were some bishops who were especially egregious in their actions may not have been the most important issue that the pope thought to address.
Another point to remember is that it may well have been even as mitigation of the problem proceeded apace, quite likely many of the bishops lied to the pope about what had gone on before. And in that the numbers of abused children were huge and the number of abuser priests was, in absolute numbers, not inconsiderable, that the pope chose not to focus on specific abuse victims or specific abusive priests. Remember, there were over 4,000 priests credibly accused.
“The fact that a large majority of our American Catholic clergy are gay (often openly so) and/or are suffering some other type of basic personality flaw remains unaddressed.”
A “large majority”?? I don't think so. The highest estimate I've ever heard is about 40%, which is 40% too many, but quite a ways from a “large majority.” Your arguments, such as they are, would be strengthened if you cut out the hyperbole and exaggeration.
For some time, now, at least since the late 1980s and the early 1990s, the Vatican has been making efforts to clean up the seminaries. In many dioceses, Rome has been strong-armed, and initial efforts didn't go very far. But many folks agree that by the late 1990s, the efforts began to get traction and to take hold in many dioceses. THESE EFFORTS WERE ACTUALLY AT THE EXPLICIT DIRECTION OF POPE JOHN PAUL II. So much for doing “nothing about it.”
After bottoming out, new ordinations are increasing in many dioceses (including my own), and have been for a decade or more, and the priests from this renewal of vocations are far more orthodox and psychologically normal than have been the case in decades.
“Requiring that all new ordinations be married - which I would heartily support - is rejected out of hand. Great, then what's the plan to keep out the gays and weirdos?”
Oh give me a break. You think that there aren't plenty of MARRIED weirdos? You just haven't been paying attention.
Your views are so far overboard that they demean the charism of celibacy, itself, a charism found in Jesus Christ, Himself.
Are you actually a Catholic, or just pretending?
“And if you don't believe that's true you need to spend more time at a typical parish in Wisconsin, where I'm from.”
Perhaps where you are in Wisconsin doesn't represent all dioceses in the United States.
We don't know what the pope did precisely to mitigate this catastrophe. We know that he started making serious efforts to clean up the seminaries in the 1980s, but by then, the actual abuse problem was already declining dramatically. Personally, I find it almost impossible to believe that the solutions to the abuse catastrophe were developed and pushed from within the American hierarchy. That strongly suggests that the solution came from Rome.
There is no evidence that Pope John Paul II did nothing, as you initially alleged, to stop the abuse catastrophe, and thus your argument fails.
sitetest
Amen to that!
There are documented cases of credible allegations that go back to the 1920s.
But there does seem to be a modest but noticeable uptick in the number of cases by the mid- or late-1950s. The question becomes, then do the generally lower numbers prior to that time represent an actual lower level of abuse cases, or just the fact that a lot of the folks involved, both victims and priests, were, by the late 1990s and early 2000s, already dead?
But clearly by the 1950s, it's obvious that something systematically evil is happening. By 1960, there are something like 75 or 80 cases in the US. And it rises through the 1960s and through the 1970s. It really skyrockets when the bishops nominated by Archbishop Jadot start to take power in large numbers.
The problem continued to worsen for two-and-a-half decade before peaking in 1981 at around 800 per year. And then, by the early 1990s, the number of abuse cases declined dramatically. By 1995, the number of abuse cases is down to around 50. By the early 2000s (ironically, when the public scandal got under way), annual cases were in the range of 25 - 30.
But that had nothing to do with the fact that Karol Wojtyla became pope three years before the problem peaked and the entire decline happened on his watch. Nooooo. He did “nothing about it.” Yeah, right.
sitetest
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