[Beck_isright]

"You're privy to the Pope's prayers, are you?"

So what you are saying is that despotism is ok in private according to the Pope and communism (now) in public is acceptable??? The Catholic Church has fallen in these Protestant eyes. First the blind eye turned to the rape of children in America and now the torture and murder of innocents in Iraq. When he speaks publically and quits inviting the Foreign Ministers of dictatorships (Aziz) into his offices, then and only then will I start to move back to respecting the "Church". In the mean time, I shall be part of the pragmatic realists who say the Pope and Catholic Church is nothing more than a bunch of dirty old men who have a political agenda which favors the Eurocrap.

[A. Pole]

The Catholic Church has fallen in these Protestant eyes.

Is it something new? Did Luther or Calvin had a higher opinion?

[Byron_the_Aussie]

..I shall be part of the pragmatic realists who say the Pope and Catholic Church is nothing more than a bunch of dirty old men who have a political agenda which favors the Eurocrap...

Don't flatter yourself, Beck. You're no 'pragmatic realist.'

You're a no-hoper, who's too up himself to give credit and respect where it has been clearly earned. The poster A. Pole has shown you just how important JPII was in the fight against communism, but you and Robert still bluster on. The props have been kicked out from under your BS, but you shrug it off, somehow thinking that vehemence can substitute for fact. How liberal an attitude is that?