Posted on 04/05/2005 7:44:40 AM PDT by Thorin
But What Made Him Great?
Even the secular world against which he stood so defiantly recognized his greatness. But what was it that was so special about John Paul II, the supreme pontiff of the Roman Catholic Church? What set him apart and above all the secular leaders of his time?
At 84, he was old, stooped, suffered from Parkinson’s and slurred his speech. He was decried by our media and cultural elites as a moral reactionary who had failed to bring his church into the 21st century.
Yet, even as the editorial writers fulminated and the dissident clergy fumed, the Holy Father drew the young in the tens of millions. The great politicians of his time came and went, most of them long forgotten, save Ronald Reagan, who was very much like this pope in his humor, serenity and core convictions. And yet, this pope endured into his ninth decade as the most revered and beloved figure on earth. The world’s reaction to his death testifies to it.
But wherein did his greatness lie?
What set John Paul II apart from the other leaders of his time was his goodness, his holiness, his sanctity, his moral courage in defending the truths of the church and his uncompromising refusal to alter moral truth to accommodate the spirit of an immoral age. His charisma, like that of Mother Teresa, came of the fact that he was a Man of God, not a man of this world. He became popular by testifying to the unpopular truths of Jesus Christ.
What those most disappointed with John Paul’s failure to conform church teaching to trendy views on contraception, abortion, stem cell research and homosexuality fail to understand is that it was because the pope defied the spirit of the age that he was great. He believed in moral absolutes in a world of moral relativism. He was a beacon of light in a darkening age, a beacon of truth in a moral wilderness.
He died in the 40th year following the close of Vatican II, the church council called by a predecessor, John XXIII. And by the time John Paul II died, all the fashionable and trendy clerics of that time, from Hans Kung to the “Are-You-Running-With-Me-Jesus?” clergy were gone and forgotten
“How many divisions does the Pope have?” Stalin cynically asked. But it was this Polish pope with no army who would inspire Solidarity to stand up to Stalin’s empire and help bring it down peacefully in 1989.
“We’re more popular than Jesus now!” John Lennon exclaimed back then. Where are the Beatles now? “Is God Dead?” Time famously asked in the 1960s. Now people ask, “Is AOLTimeWarner dead?”
But if John Paul II achieved greatness as a man, a leader, a pope, the same cannot be said of the church he led.
Here in America, there has been a dramatic contraction in the numbers of nuns, priests, churches and parish schools since Vatican II. The church in America has been horribly scarred by the ugliest scandal in its history, the abuse of thousands of altar boys and Catholic children by pedophile and homosexual priests, who crept into the seminaries and were not purged when their predations were discovered.
Moreover, there has been a widespread loss of faith and belief in traditional teachings. On birth control, divorce, sexual morality, abortion, assisted suicide and euthanasia, millions of Catholics now embrace Hollywood values and the culture of death. Indeed, it was because John Paul II would not yield on any issue that the “Cafeteria Catholics” still cannot concede his greatness.
Today, we are told a new pope must reconcile Catholic teaching to the views of American Catholics. But the proposition is demonstrably absurd.
All the churches that have drunk the Kool-Aid of modernity are dying. Beginning with the Lambeth Conference in 1931, which approved of artificial contraception, the Episcopal Church acceded to the spirit of the age. Today, that church has women priests and homosexual bishops living with male lovers. Meanwhile, many of its most devout priests are defecting to the Rome of John Paul II, while its devoted faithful are splitting away.
While the mainstream Protestant churches shrink, the more orthodox and militant churches that make demands upon their flocks to live by Christian truths are attracting converts.
It was the philosophy of John Paul II that he would do all he could to defend and advance the truths Christ came to earth and died to teach the world. After that, it was up to the Holy Ghost. Now that God has called his good and faithful servant home after a long lifetime of labor, it is up to the Holy Ghost.
JPII was very clever in his balance on the fine line. In order to become guilty of formal heresy, he would have had to acknowledge the context of the topic in the light of tradition and then say that he rejects that, and instead proclaims something else. He never did that. He just went about behaving as though he could establish new principles, without making any acknowlegement of established principles. This is otherwise known as innovation.
What is now coming out is how much he protected wayward clarics over the years. This behavior could become very costly for the Church he left behind.
Archbishop Paul Marcinkus, one of the most notorious figures in the history of the New Vatican, is alive and well, absconded just outside of Phoenix. Marcinkus was president of the Vatican Bank from 1971 to 1989.
And who hid him? First of all, the late pope JPII, whose reign was riddled with scandal. It is becoming more and more clear that JPII was far from a "saint," but actually suborned sex crimes and embezzlement from the Church, certainly by his silence if not by aiding and abetting the crimes himself. (E.g., Cardinal Law, ousted from Boston.)
It will be years before this is all put to rest, and hopefully it will eventually be so put! Pope Benedict XVI has a very big job ahead of him, and a return to Tradition will be just about his only resource, it seems to me.
Thanks. Do you have a link?
Interesting question.
I knew the late Fr. Frederick Schell, who advised strongly against using the Internet. He was old school in that way, and believed in using pen and paper if not just picking up the telephone.
Now I wonder if there were any priests who grew up without telephones in the house who counseled against their use!
In any event, the answer is "no." Fr. Poncelet takes his crusade against TV all the way to the use of computers. He is absolute in his denouncement of every kind of visual electronic display. He has written two books on this topic, Air Waves From Hell, and TV: Prelude to Chaos. You might know about them.
Therefore, he has no website. He has no e-mail address. But if you would like his mailing address, I'll look it up for you.
Fr. Schell is a ledgend. My own late pastor, Fr. Paul Wickens, learned a great deal from Fr. Schell about the establishment of Traditional chapels. We had a detailed discussion of his experience in CA.
I wish I could have met Fr. Wickens. He sent me a free video of his requiem Mass for Fr. Malachi Martin, which I enjoyed watching.
Ok. I will.
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