Posted on 04/07/2005 1:35:08 PM PDT by Coleus
Pope had critics, too
As Pope John Paul II is laid to rest this week, debates he fueled in churches throughout the Americas continue to swirl.
In the United States and Latin America, John Paul left a church with declining membership, short on clergy, and attempting to heal from the priest sex-abuse scandal.
For critics and lay reform groups, his biggest weakness was his refusal to engage in open dialogue.
Polls have shown the majority of American Catholics out of step with church doctrine on issues such as contraception, divorce, homosexual unions, married clergy, and women priests, even as they praised the pope's stance on Third World debt relief and opposition to the Iraq war.
"It's clear there was a certain amount of disappointment attached to his papacy in terms of the way he handled matters within the church," said Maria Cleary of Parsippany.
Cleary is a member of Voice of the Faithful, a Catholic lay organization formed in 2002 in response to the priest sex-abuse scandal. The group has more than 700 members in New Jersey.
"He never really apologized to survivors nor did he acknowledge the vastness of the problem in any kind of an official way," she said.
"I think that because of his training he wasn't molded to look for these kind of problems," said Stephanie Zonenberg, of Paterson, also a Voice of the Faithful member, who said she otherwise had "tremendous respect" for the pope.
Mary Ann Hain, 908-665-0919, a member of the New Jersey chapter of Call to Action - a nationwide lay organization that supports the ordination of women and optional celibacy for priests - said she was saddened by the pope's death. Although she admired his strong advocacy of peace and human rights, she was sometimes frustrated by his leadership.
"In some ways he was very authoritarian," said Hain, a resident of Berkeley Heights. "He silenced people. He spoke very highly of collegiality, but he didn't really practice it, he didn't consult with lay people.
"On the one hand, he spoke of the dignity of gay people, but on the other he would deny all their rights, including gay unions," she said.
"He spoke of the equality of women often, but yet he silenced women when they wanted to talk about women's ordination."
Hain cited the case of Sister Jeannine Gramick, an American nun who in 1999 was ordered not to speak publicly about homosexuality by the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
One of the biggest issues confronting the American Catholic Church is the shortage of priests to say Mass and administer the sacraments.
Even self-described "conservative Catholics," such as Clifton City Councilwoman Gloria Kolodziej, said they would support the ordination of women and married priests in order to resupply the ranks.
"We're told all the time that the shortage of priests will have a very direct impact on all the churches in the Diocese of Paterson," Kolodziej said. "Would I like to see women ordained? Absolutely. Do I think the pope is going to do that? Not really. The attitude from the pope has been 'this is not part of Church tradition and never will be.'"
In Latin America, the pope's legacy was a complex one. Although he traveled to the region more than any pontiff before him, his condemnation of priests who mixed revolutionary politics with liberation theology - an interpretation of the Bible that emphasizes solidarity with the poor - alienated many Catholics in the region.
It wasn't the message that the Church should serve the poor that John Paul opposed - he had often emphasized it himself - but the way certain priests implemented it.
In his most public rebuke, he denounced four priests who held cabinet positions within the revolutionary Sandinista government during a visit to Nicaragua in 1983.
The pope's stance on liberation theology created a rift within the church in Latin America that was part theological and part political, according to Jo Renee Formicola, a professor at Seton Hall University and the author of John Paul II: Prophetic Politician.
"A lot of the liberation theologian priests were saying that the church should play a major part in changing the economic and political structures of power in Latin America," Formicola said.
"The pope said they were supposed to be pastors, not politicians, that their job was to teach the social magisterial of Jesus Christ, and not ally themselves with ideology; left or right."
Formicola said that the Vatican was also uncomfortable with liberation theology teachings that depicted Jesus as a radical revolutionary figure.
Others saw the pope as an astute politician, continuing the legacy of a church that helped colonize Latin America.
"The pope was always supported by powerful forces," said Jose Juarez, owner of a religious goods store in Clifton. "I don't have anything against him, I never did, but I have some issues with his power."
Juarez said the pope's many trips to the region may have had another purpose, such as stemming the exodus of Latin American Catholics to Protestant sects.
"Why was he lauded as such a world traveler?" Juarez said. "He traveled a lot as a form to reorganize and re-enforce the Catholic religion. There was always a strong agenda behind it."
Throughout the Americas, devout Catholics like Zonenberg do not see criticism of the church hierarchy as contradicting their faith.
"We need to challenge!" Zonenberg said. "It's OK to challenge our priests and our other laity to uncover evil and expose it to the light."
It's just one of those articles where you laugh and just roll your eyes. I knew sooner or later the frustrated liberals in the press trying to be activists instead of reporters and the liberal lay community would start trying to push groups like Call to Action and the Voice of the Faithful which used the scandal as an impetus for the liberal Catholics in the group to push their hidden, Marxist, liberation-theology agenda.
The liberals in the Church and the Press still can not get over their loss in the presidential election and are now hedging towards a John-Kerry like Pope, pushing for one of the more-liberal South American Cardinals to be named a pope ignoring the Nigerian Cardinal Francis Arinze and other more traditional Cardinals. What they don't know is that even if a liberal cardinal was named, he may speak ill of capitalism but he will not acquiesce with the traditional tenets of the church: abortion, embryonic stem cells, population control, birth control, euthanasia and gay marriage.
The reporters, as usual, failed to note that Call to Action members can be excommunicated and I think some were in Nebraska.
And I have to laugh that the reporters found a democrat, catholic politician who claimed to be a self-described "conservative" Catholic and asked this person questions that the liberals want to hear. The Pope isn't buried and yet they can't keep out their liberal agendas and mouths shut while the world mourns. Shame on all of them.
Imagine, a Pope being authoritarian...What's Catholicism coming to?
I'll point out that every time there is a poll of the "majority of American Catholics" they never say whether their sample achieves the minimum level of Catholicity: (1) Do you attend Sunday Mass regularly and (2) If you are married, are you married in the Church?
"...polls show..."
My favorite. Polls are a bunch of horse manure and all the arguments that are backed by "polls show" are bunk.
lol!!!! greatest pic ever.
A quick google shows she is a democrat, what a shock!!!!
The Inside Edge | PoliticsNJ.com, New Jersey's Online Political ... ... member ROBERT YUDIN and Washington Township Councilwoman JANET SOBKOWICZ. ... Clifton Mayor GLORIA KOLODZIEJ, a Democrat who ran as an Independent, ...
Obviously any person in public life in any kind of leadership role will have critics. I'm not Catholic so I don't know as much about the internal church doctrines and so forth, but one thing about this article and others like it is clear: The media couldn't wait to start pointing out the Pope's critics, as though the very existence of critics proves their criticisms well-founded. I also saw that Bill Clinton said that the Pope has a "mixed legacy" just like "many of us." That's just a case of him wanting company and wanting to once again try to whitewash and sugarcoat his own deeds as though he can be mentioned in the same category as the Pope.
Man.
They can't even wait til he's buried.
Disgraceful.
The Pope, should have handled the molestation fiasco with more authority than he did. He, in some ways , protected these vile animals that abused innocent children, by allowing them too be sent too other Parishes without telling anyone what they had done. This is unbearable, and I will never back down on this issue. I do understand also that we all sin and do wrong, so I am no better than anyone else. I must therefore forgive the Pope for his inactions and I never wished him any malice, he did a great many things. Be well Your Holiness, may your soul find rest in the next realm of life.
Jeff
I haven't seen an article on this, but did anyone see Fonda on Larry King last night where she said that the first thing Ted Turner told her on the first date they went on was that he had lots of friends that were communists, that he was a supporter of Castro and visited Cuba several times and she said she found it so endearing?
I mean come on, how is this not front page news?
Jesus Christ had his critics as well.
If Cardinal Arinze is elected to be the next Pope I wonder how long it will be before the Libs call him an Uncle Tom?
I heard Bill Donahue on Hannity the other day. He said to expect this and far worse.
I wouldn't be surprised if this was mentioned prior to the conclave, in a rhetorical preemptive strike.
Liberals. If you don't believe what the Church teaches then go form your own church just like the gazillion protestant sects did.
Pedastery cases shrank more than 90% between 1981 and 1994, before the press even got wind of the problem. The incidence rate was lower in 1994 than in the 1950s -- and that 1950s rate is probably only as low as it was because most of those pederasts are dead now, so there is no-one to accuse.
What you perceive of as inaction was apparently very effective subtlety. But there was nothing subtle about his condemnation of such abuses when he came to America in 1996 and publicly eviscerated the American episcopacy for tolerating abuse.
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