2005-04-06
HIS HOLINESS
I like to think that Pope John Paul II did much to be remembered for | Opening the Papacy to the world, his constant [if unpublicized by corporate Greed Media] exhortations to lift the poor from their suffering, his reaching out to Muslims and apologizing for the Catholic Church's horrendous collaboration in the World war II Holocaust |
But I also agree with pundit Andrew Sullivan who writes
I like to think that Pope John Paul II did much to be remembered for | Opening the Papacy to the world, his constant [if unpublicized by corporate Greed Media] exhortations to lift the poor from their suffering, his reaching out to Muslims and apologizing for the Catholic Church's horrendous collaboration in the World war II Holocaust |
But I also agree with pundit Andrew Sullivan who writes
Under John Paul II (and his predecessors), the Roman Catholic church presided over the rape and molestation of thousands of children and teenagers. Under John Paul II, the church at first did all it could toIt is not enough to devote oneself to good works if you also knowingly sit atop evil and do nothing to correct it | ¶ 20:23protect its own and to impugn and threaten the victims of this abuse. Rome never acknowledged, let alone take responsibility for, the scale of the moral betrayal
...that was the central reaction of the late Pope to this scandal: he sided with the perpetrators, because they were integral to his maintenance of power.
When you hear about this Pope's compassion, his concern for the victims of society, his love of children, it's important to recall that when it came to walking the walk in his own life and with his own responsibility, he walked away.
He all but ignored his church's violation of the most basic morality - that you don't use the prestige of the church to rape innocent children.
Here was a man who lectured American married couples that they could not take the pill, who told committed gay couples that they were part of an "ideology of evil," but acquiesced and covered up the rape of minors. When truth met power, John Paul II chose truth. When truth met his power, John Paul II defended his own prerogatives at the expense of the innocent. Many have forgotten. That's not an option for the victims of this clerical criminality.
