Interred with their bones

Amanda Marcotte makes a good case for speaking ill of the dead.

She's found a perfect example of a dead person who deserved to be spoken of in very ill terms but instead got eulogized as something of a saint on earth, a boxer sentimentally gushed over in his obit for his "love for his family and friends and their love for him in return."

Turns out, the boxer's love for his family took the form of kidnapping his estranged wife and beating her mother so badly he left her brain damaged.

But the boxer is only an illustration to help make her point.

The dead Amanda wants to speak ill of is John Paul II.

Two simple things were at hand for him to promote that would have done enormous good for his flock--the condom to stop a disease that kills and contraception to make poverty more manageable. On top of that, his complete refusal to expand the church's view of women as anything more than helpmates and breeders certainly damaged the status of women in this world and may have damaged the overall well-being, as it's a well-known fact that in order to best improve a society, you improve the lot of the women in it.

How many people died of AIDS and in childbirth because of the Church's stand on contraception?

The answer is...

Some.

How many people are alive because they listened to the Church's teaching on chastity, fidelity, and the sanctity of marriage?

Some.

I don't know how many in either case, and Amanda doesn't know.

How many are alive because of the stand he took against the Soviet Union 30 years ago?

Many.

But how many are dead in Central America because of his reining in of the Liberation priests and then pretty much ignoring the Right Wing governments that went their merry, murderous ways with no more serious opposition from the Church?

Many, although probably not as many.

He was a great man.  Great man are rarely good men.  No good men, or women, want the power over other people that the great wield as a matter of course.  This means that few good people ever achieve power because power is not given, it must be taken.  This is the theme of The Lord of the Rings.  If you want the ring, even to do good, you are corrupted from the first.

But if you do not have power your ability to do good is extremely limited.

So to do good, rather than just continue on as a nice, cheerful little hobbit simply staying at home and doing no harm, you have to aquire some power.

The good who manage to aquire power do not stay good very long.  "Power corrupts" does not mean that all hobbits who touch the ring turn into Gollums.  It means that once you have power, your ability to do good is always governed by the karmic equivalent of Newton's law---for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.

Power is like a twelve foot long two by four on the shoulder of Stan Laurel.  When Stan turns so he doesn't hit the passing little old lady with the front end of the board, he whacks Ollie on the back of the head with the other end.

You can't save everyone.  You can't be everywhere.  Once you start making those choices, about who you will help, who you will have to leave to fend for themselves, you are doomed.

How many people are alive because of that hundred bucks you gave to Doctors Without Borders to help the tsunami victims?  How many people died because you didn't give that hundred dollars to Catholic Relief Services to feed more people in Darfur?

My goddaughter, who somehow has gotten to be 21 years old in the time I have only aged 10 years, is here on earth because of what Karol Wojtyla helped bring about.  Without him it's unlikely her Polish father and her American mother could have gotten married, could even have have gotten together.  If the Poland in which they met had been like the Poland of five years before, before Solidarity, before Lech Walesa, before this Pope, she probably would not have been allowed in to teach, he would almost certainly not have been allowed out to join her in America, marry her, and start their family.  My goddaughter would not have been born.

This means that Richard Nixon, because of detente is responsible for her life too.  And George Kennan, because of containment.  And Nikita Khruschev, John Kennedy, Harry S. Truman...

Her mother, my very dear friend, believes that Ronald Reagan also gave her her family and for this he is one of her heroes, which means for all of her daughter's life she and I have never been able to discuss politics, although talking about politics is one of the things that first brought us together as friends.

I was an admirer of this Pope but I never liked him.

From the first he seemed to have written off the United States as a lost cause.  He made one of those choices great men have to make.  He decided he couldn't save us, so he concentrated more of his energy and attention on Africa and Asia.  His interest in the US was limited to how much we as a nation could help him in his causes in other countries.

This was odd, considering that we have a growing Catholic population.

He absolutely and totally misunderstood America and what it means to be a conservative here and so he saddled us with a whole sorry gang of right-leaning bishops and cardinals of uncertain sexuality who were far too comfortable with the Republican rich and far too easy with living like the Republican rich themselves, who cared far more about ending abortion than about any other social or political issue, who let too many people like themselves into the priesthood until the sacrisities were full of strange, misogynistic, sexually conflicted, and weirdly self-satisfied men convinced of their own entitlements.

Here in New York, thanks to John Paul II, because he appointed John J. O'Connor, who couldn't stand Mario Cuomo because of Cuomo's abortion rights beliefs, we got rid of the governor who single-handedly prevented the re-institution of the death penalty and replaced him with a pro-death penatly but pro-choice Republican.  And weirdly the Church is happy with that.

Reportedly the Pope did not like George W. Bush.  His opposition to the war in Iraq was not token.  It just wasn't well-reported here in the United States because it didn't fit with the story the American media wanted to tell, that only French surrender monkeys were against invading.  But I doubt that John Paul understood how his own appointed bishops here helped elect and then re-elect George Bush, and I think he didn't understood because he didn't care about us enough to try to understand our politics.

He seriously crippled the Church in America by making it awfully hard for progressives to continue to be Catholics.  He may have doomed it by refusing to allow priests to marry.  If his successor is just as adamant, he will have doomed it because in 20 years there will be no American priests.

So I think he was a bad pope for us.  I don't know how he was for Africa and Asia.  Or even Central America.

Amanda believes that the Pope's views on women were that they should be nothing more than helpmates and breeders, and here I think she is confusing the Catholic Church with the Protestant Right.  Not allowing women to be priests and forbidding all forms of birth control except for "natural family planning" does not condemn women to a life of barefoot continual pregnancy in the kitchen.  Women can't be priests, but the Church and the Pope had nothing to say against their being doctors, lawyers, and Indian chiefs.  The Church's positon on the role of women is probably 50 years behind the times here in the United States, which makes it several hundred years ahead of the times in most of the rest of the world.

The Church has always educated girls and as any good feminist can tell you the best form of contraception in undeveloped nations is education.  Every thing else follows from that  The Church's stands on education for women, the dignity of all human beings, medical care, and social justice have saved many more women's---and children's---lives than unplanned childbirths have killed.

I'm guessing.

Amanda's guessing too.

We can go around and around.

Objecting that the Church's stands on abortion and contraception cause the death of many women ignores the fact that the result of an unwanted pregnancy is a baby and so the Church has brought into the world many human beings who otherwise would not exist.  (In China the Church's stand on abortion is about all the opposition there is to the growing custom of aborting fetuses because they will be girls.)  But then you can say that many of those babies are born into poverty, war, famine, and lives of misery and abuse, and die by the thousands because of that.  Ah, comes the reply, but if the Church had its way those terrors would not exist, and because of what the Church does, in many places those terrors are mitigated and alleviated and even wiped out.

The Right Wing rush to canonize Ronald Reagan, besides deliberately ignoring all the bad that he did, attributed to him all sorts of power to do good he did not possess.    The same over-praising has been done for John Paul II.

What has been dismaying is to listen to Liberals reacting as if Reagan and John Paul did have all that power.

The Pope couldn't do everything, couldn't be everywhere, couldn't save us all.  He could not stop being Catholic.  If he had been more concerned with the molestation scandal here, if he had worked harder to help make American feminists feel better about themselves, would he have still been as tireless in his work in Africa and Asia?  If he been the kind of Pope who would have relaxed the Church's strictures on birth control, would he have also been the kind of Pope who opposed the war in Iraq?  Being pro-choice is not incompatible with being pro-Republican wars of choice.

I don't know.  Amanda doesn't know.

It is foolish, if not downright petty, to judge a great man or woman by how well he or she managed to be the kind of person you think you would have been had you been in their shoes.

It is foolish, if not downright petty, to judge great men and great women by how well they flattered your vanities, rode your hobby horses, and advocated your personal life choices as the way everybody else should live their lives.

I didn't like this pope.  Amanda didn't like him.

But I'm pretty sure History will.

Further reading with my imprimatur:  Tom Watson has written two of my favorite posts on the life of John Paul II.    The first was an assessment of John Paul's life and works written before died.  The second one looks at John Paul's internet savvy.

And Bill Altreuter dealt with the peculiar self-torturing disciplines required of people who want to be good Catholics.  Scroll down and look for the post datelined Monday April 04, 2005.

Comments

[Nance]

Well said, Lance. Why aren't you working for a major metropolitan daily?

[j. bryant]

I think we're all looking for the license to love/admire/accept/acknowledge without the necessity of whitewashing. As you said, the Pope was a mixed bag (okay - you said it much more eloquently than that but you know what I mean). I think the Pope's stand on liberation theology was a huge loss for the Church, but I also see a lot to admire (if not like).
I think you can appreciate someone but not be blind to their faults and - may I throw politics in here - that is what I don't think the right allows. For example, you can love America and be against this president (well, nevermind - that one is the same thought); you can find Reagan a likeable man and dislike him as a president; you can like Clinton as a president and not be a fan of his extramarital sex or how he handled Rwanda; you can be pro-choice but have trouble with abortions. We are not allowed the complexities of others or of ourselves.
One of the complaints of the right that I think could be valid is liberals can get mired down in those complexities - but that was once reason it used to be a good thing to have two or more parties - at the least, it helped encourage resolution.
The fighter she brought up sounds reprehensible but, it also sounds like he was a friend to someone else and I don't doubt the truth of both.

[Linkmeister]

j. bryant says "We are not allowed the complexities of others or of ourselves."

Which is why GWB gets away with cracks like "I don't do nuance." To the right (and to the Pope) everything must be black/white (or red/blue, or urban/rural, or name your poison). Those of us who say "yeah, I'm for that, but..." are denigrated as "wishy-washy," and it seems to work politically.

[Jeff]

That was simply a joy to read and a mindstretcher of the first order. Thank you, sir. Liking, admiring: two very different categories that are clearer for having read your meditation. I may actually like JPII a bit more than you, but a sense of what was not successful about his papacy is visible here in a way i would not have seen otherwise. Again, i thank you.

Peace, Jeff

[urban]

The Pope - RIP - and his church give out "guidelines". We, the people have a free will and choices to make. You are not to completely and blindly follow "the rules".
Americans don't seem to believe that you have to fight constantly, (for democracy or religion or life) and keep changing, growing. Its all organic. You can not just sit back and have others tell you what to do, what to think and what path to follow.
Its a joy reading your posts.

[Michael G]

While I read the Pope stuff on the Nance and Lance blogs a couple of days ago, I just got around to pitching my two pennies this AM...The topic was the putative greatness of His Holiness, Pope John Paul II. Much has been made of the Church's rejecting the opportunity to advance the level of female participation in Church activities, the use of contraception, the acceptance of gays, allowing clergy to marry and sheltering child abusers. I won't go into the latter except to say that it is inconceivable to me that in an organization as relatively small and close knit as the Catholic Church middle and upper management could be unaware of the child abuse problem given its size and its dozens of years of existence. As for the other points, not only did the Church pass on the opportunity to advance the causes noted above, but the JPII administration worked hard to push back any attempt on the part of others to advance those causes and to ensure that any future attempts at progress would be as difficult as they (the administration) could possibly make them. The administration of Pope John Paul II appears to have been one which strove not to expand the teachings, appeal and membership of the Church, but to work for its own benefit to consolidate and tighten its control of thought and _expression within the Church and to enforce the commitment of all insiders to an extremely conservative and rigid ideology. Pope John Paul II installed an unprecedented number of cardinals during his reign. All of them picked for their agreement with his very conservative ideology and for their commitment to preserve it. None of them picked to provide new ideas, a dynamic range of thought, discussion or, God forbid, loyal dissension. Witness the dramatic rise in membership and prominence of ultra conservative lay organizations such as Opus Dei and the Pope's sponsorship of them. Note the unseemly haste to canonize Jose Maria Escriva and the message that conveys. Again, all designed to advance and preserve his very conservative ideology At the same time any member of the clergy who questioned, debated or posed alternatives was quickly stifled. This is all certainly within the Pope's rights, but how has it worked to improve the Church through twenty odd years of JPII? Pope John Paul II worked very hard at promoting himself. He traveled constantly, met people, kissed babies and glad-handed like a champion ward heeler. The enduring image is of him getting off an Alitalia flight and kissing the ground. Having flown Alitalia, I can appreciate his feelings. The question is how did all this promotion work to advance the interests of the Church? During his tenure, the Church has lost members (present company included) in droves from Europe and the US. There is a critical and growing shortage of men willing to enter the priesthood. As third world areas develop, the same issues that alienate Europeans and Americans will come into play there. The Church is facing a very serious financial situation. Historically, the bulk of monetary contributions to the Church have come from Europe and particularly from the US. There is a large membership in third world areas but they have never contributed $$ like Americans and Europeans. All over the world -- including Europe and the US -- the Church is facing increasing and increasingly serious competition from Islam, the Mormons and to a lesser extent, the Evangelicals. John Paul II did nothing to advance the basic interests of the Church. He did not do anything to grow the membership, to make the Catholic Church more attractive against growing competition. He did noth ing to make the organization responsive to or even respectful of its members. He did nothing to advance the Church as a Catholic institution embracing all, providing succor and hope to all. In fact, quite the contrary. The Church has retreated to some narrow, old fashioned, constricted version of itself and told the faithful to take it of leave it. The difference between Pope John XXIII and Pope John Paul II couldn't be deeper or more dramatic. It's as if JPII had a vision of a smaller, tighter Church, almost a boutique religion that would appeal to a relatively small but extremely committed membership. The masses are welcome to join but their concerns are of no interest to Rome. Whatever. It's clear that the hierarchy's interests and the membership's interests don't coincide. The decline of the organization against the flourishing and the growth of the Mormons, Islam and Evangelicals is the real legacy of Pope John Paul II and the real probl em facing his successor. Greatness is measured in many ways. Was JPII as great man? I don't doubt his personal sincerity or his personal beliefs. I do doubt that he made any positive contribution to the long term health and prosperity of the Catholic Church. Whatever greatness he had lay in his genius for self promotion. His failure lies in his inability to parlay that exposure into any real benefit for the organization and its millions of members. This was not a case of a man valiantly striving to do good for as many as he could while handicapped by the inherent limitations of his position. This was a man with a clear agenda which he successfully pursued with a powerful single-mindedness. His advancing the interests of the Vatican may have had some positive fall out in encouraging the Solidarity movement and the like, but his contributions to the fall of communism are vastly overrated. Enough. If this is greatness, so be it. Given the late Pope's huge popularity and the current w idespread interest in Catholicism, the incoming Pope has a wonderful opportunity to strengthen and expand Church membership, to reconcile with the many people it has alienated and to drag the Catholic Church into at least the twentieth century. While no longer a member, I sincerely hope the new Pope is up to the task.

[Mychelline]

I was born and raised Catholic, in a family that remains devoutly Catholic (although I've personally left the church and Christianity behind).

The way the clergy have handled the sex abuse issue made me so angry I would've left the church over it, had I not already done so of course.

BTW, I read the papal encyclical in which JPII talked about the roles available to women. His take seemed to be that all women should aspire to being mothers and wives, and leave all that interesting other stuff to their sons and husbands. Women who couldn't have children or didn't want them apparently have no useful purpose in his view. I find that infuriating at best.

It's really ironic that my husband, a baptised Southern Baptist, could *technically* become Pope, but *I* couldn't, nor could my sister or mother or grandmother. Thirty years ago, when I was growing up Catholic, I couldn't even aspire to being an altar server, but I *could* be a nun, at the mercy of any and every priest. No thanks.

[Paris]

The Pope John Paul II clone Benedict XVI's latest book

In his latest book, Jesus of Nazareth, Benedict XVI in chapter seven interprets "The Message of the Parables" and cites the "3 Major Parables" of Christ: The Good Samaritan, The Prodigal Son, The Rich Man and Lazarus. Obviously the clone of John Paul II missed out one of the most important Parables of Christ in Mathew 18:6-7 --- which today is known better as the John Paul II Millstone

http://www.jp2m.blogspot.com/

Watch the Google video of the latest video of Benedict XVI role in the cover-up of priest pedophilia.
http://pope-ratz.blogspot.com/

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