"Pope's reign is over. It was magnificent,but was it really Christianity?"

[Bluebear]

This commentary from Britain was just published, so please don't accuse me of a lack of sympathy. I have expressed condolences to our Catholic DU friends. But since our own President has chosen to politicize the Holy Father's passing by bringing his Culture of Life crusade into the proceedings, you may find this editorial discussion-worthy, especially as it speaks about Ratzinger, an early favorite to be elevated to the Papacy. Peace.

====

....He did not much care for capitalism and the American way either. Divorce, homosexuality, abortion, contraception, even feminism, were all facets of what he termed a culture of death in the west.

Democracy he never really understood. It was fine when it produced results in line with the narrowest interpretations of Catholic morality. When democracies disagreed with that, however, he seemed to think they could somehow be overruled. A coup d'état by Catholic bishops, perhaps?

But this was also a man who added to the Catholic catechism the unexpectedly liberal doctrine that capital punishment had no place in the modern world and who vehemently denounced both of America's wars against Iraq, even the first. The excesses of US-led economic globalisation he denounced as "savage capitalism", and blamed the US for "materialism, consumerism and superdevelopment". And though he may not have run the internal affairs of the Catholic church itself as a beacon of justice, openness and accountability, few of his speeches failed to contain words in praise of human dignity and human rights. The corrupt alliances between the rich, the military and ultra-conservative Catholic hierarchies that blighted most of South America for a century were finally made unsustainable when this Pope pulled away the carpet of pious acquiescence from under them....

But then there is also the downside: the stark declaration not only that women could never be priests but that that ruling was tacitly part of the church's infallible teaching; the obstinate rejection of condoms as a protection against the spread of Aids; the description of homosexuality as "intrinsically disordered" and even "evil"; the insistence that abortion was always murder, even including measures to prevent the implantation of a fertilised ovum in the first moments of its existence; and the ruthless weeding out by the Vatican's thought police under Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger of any theologian who dared challenge the artificial consensus in support of these teachings. They were, usually, the smartest of the set. To lobotomise the Catholic theological enterprise in this way was a serious blow to the church, which has to survive not just by its faith but by its brains.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1450710,00.html

[Maple]

1. The best and most

even-handed eulogy we'll likely hear.

[Bluebear]

5. I agree. It examines his reign from both sides.

Very open-ended and even-handed as you say.

[NC_Nurse]

2. Interesting.

Thanks for posting it. I don't know enough about the church and the new papal candidates to come to any conclusions, but it does sound ominous that "second-rate" cardinals will be deciding.

Unfortunately, we have a lot of second-rate leaders deciding important precedents these days. Sigh.

[stray cat]

3. It was certainly the Pope's interpretation of Christianity.

In some ways the only true Christian was Jesus Christ - everything else is human interpretation and none of is will ever hit it right all of the time.

[Kerrytravelers]

4. Thank you for this.

As a Catholic, I will print out the entire article, read it carefully and I know it will lead to me thoughtful discussions with my family and other Democratic Catholics.

[Bluebear]

7. You are most welcome, and again, thinking of you and yours n/t

[DoYouEverWonder]

6. The pope definitely wasn't

the all round great guy that everyone saw on TV.

The RCC is one of the most corrupt institutions on the planet and he mostly turned a blind eye to the serious problems within the church. At the same time, he was a strict traditionalist of Pauline Christianity. Pauline Christianity has little to do with the true teachings of Jesus.

[mmonk]

8. somewhat Pauline.

But not quite. Traditional Protestantism seems more Pauline to me.

[Bluebear]

22. Who is Pauline Christianity?

;)

[achtung_circus]

23. "Who is Pauline Christianity?"

Ask rather what is Pauline Christianity? The hijacking of Christianity by Paul, the clearly delusional author of far too many of the "Books" of the New Testament. His revisionism has done more harm to the Church that any other.

He was hugely responsible for the marginalization of the contemporaries of Jesus including Phillip, Thomas and Mary.

A curious resource but interesting rewading here:

<http://altreligion.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?site=http://www.gnosis.org/naghamm/nhl.html>

[REP]

28. Another Reading on Pauline Christinanity

from PREFACE TO ANDROCLES AND THE LION: ON THE PROSPECTS OF CHRISTIANITY; George Bernard Shaw 1912
http://digital.library.upenn.edu/webbin/gutbook/lookup?num=4004


THE SECRET OF PAUL'S SUCCESS.

Paul must soon have found that his followers had gained peace of
mind and victory over death and sin at the cost of all moral
responsibility; for he did his best to reintroduce it by making
good conduct the test of sincere belief, and insisting that
sincere belief was necessary to salvation. But as his system was
rooted in the plain fact that as what he called sin includes sex
and is therefore an ineradicable part of human nature (why else
should Christ have had to atone for the sin of all future
generations?) it was impossible for him to declare that sin, even
in its wickedest extremity, could forfeit the sinner's salvation
if he repented and believed. And to this day Pauline Christianity
is, and owes its enormous vogue to being, a premium on sin. Its
consequences have had to be held in check by the worldlywise
majority through a violently anti-Christian system of criminal
law and stern morality. But of course the main restraint is human
nature, which has good impulses as well as bad ones, and refrains
from theft and murder and cruelty, even when it is taught that it
can commit them all at the expense of Christ and go happily to
heaven afterwards, simply because it does not always want to
murder or rob or torture.

It is now easy to understand why the Christianity of Jesus failed
completely to establish itself politically and socially, and was
easily suppressed by the police and the Church, whilst Paulinism
overran the whole western civilized world, which was at that time
the Roman Empire, and was adopted by it as its official faith,
the old avenging gods falling helplessly before the new Redeemer.
It still retains, as we may see in Africa, its power of bringing
to simple people a message of hope and consolation that no other
religion offers. But this enchantment is produced by its spurious
association with the personal charm of Jesus, and exists only for
untrained minds. In the hands of a logical Frenchman like Calvin,
pushing it to its utmost conclusions, and devising "institutes"
for hardheaded adult Scots and literal Swiss, it becomes the most
infernal of fatalisms; and the lives of civilized children
are blighted by its logic whilst negro piccaninnies are rejoicing
in its legends.


PAUL'S QUALITIES

Paul, however, did not get his great reputation by mere
imposition and reaction. It is only in comparison with Jesus (to
whom many prefer him) that he appears common and conceited.
Though in The Acts he is only a vulgar revivalist, he comes out
in his own epistles as a genuine poet,--though by flashes only.
He is no more a Christian than Jesus was a Baptist; he is a
disciple of Jesus only as Jesus was a disciple of John. He does
nothing that Jesus would have done, and says nothing that Jesus
would have said, though much, like the famous ode to charity,
that he would have admired. He is more Jewish than the Jews, more
Roman than the Romans, proud both ways, full of startling
confessions and self-revelations that would not surprise us if
they were slipped into the pages of Nietzsche, tormented by an
intellectual conscience that demanded an argued case even at the
cost of sophistry, with all sorts of fine qualities and
occasional illuminations, but always hopelessly in the toils of
Sin, Death, and Logic, which had no power over Jesus. As we have
seen, it was by introducing this bondage and terror of his into
the Christian doctrine that he adapted it to the Church and State
systems which Jesus transcended, and made it practicable by
destroying the specifically Jesuist side of it. He would have
been quite in his place in any modern Protestant State; and he,
not Jesus, is the true head and founder of our Reformed Church,
as Peter is of the Roman Church. The followers of Paul and Peter
made Christendom, whilst the Nazarenes were wiped out.

[mmonk]

9. I do dislike Ratzinger.

If ever there needs to be a change, it should start at his office.

[ngGale]

26. I'm terrified of Ratzinger...

all the right-winged Catholic's have been bringing his name up. They want him, I never see him sitting down with foreign leaders the way Pope John Paul II did. He would swing more to the right in Bush's direction, plan for a disaster if it's Ratzinger! <shiver>

[Bluebear]

29. Your point is very chilling

"He would swing more to the right in Bush's direction"

[Selatius]

10. I like an honest, sober reflection on things

This certainly goes up there in that respect looking both at the good and the bad things.

[jonnyblitz]

11. interesting article, as usual, from you.

you know how to find them. :thumbsup:

[Mr_Spock]

12. kick

[Mr_Spock]

15. kick?

[markus]

13. And the eradication of liberation theology

in favor of the openly fascist cathlic movements such as Opus Dei.

Yes, he spoke out against the evil of capitalism, and made sure no one in his church did anything about it.

Ok, I have to calm down before I go to my in-laws. My walked right into the house and, without so much as a a hello, she said, "You'd better behave yourself tonight."

(As a recovering cathlic, I can sometimes be as, well, obstinatly obnoxious as an dry drunk or an ex-smoker).

[mmonk]

14. As a recovering cynic,

things are quite convoluted in the world of humanity. I'm agnostic but still consider myself Catholic because of something deeper and beyond temporal office holders in the Church.

[scarletwoman]

17. I prefer to refer to myself as an "escaped" Catholic.

I have quite recovered, and made my peace with the RCC long ago. Of course, it's been over 40 years now, so I've had plenty of time and distance to gain perspective. ;-)

Anyway, excellent post. I can appreciate that John Paul II accomplished *some* good -- as in this from the article:

It is true that every step made by the Catholic church towards overcoming its tradition of anti-Jewish hostility, every gesture destined to deal with the doleful legacy of Pius XII, for instance, was met by complaints of inadequacy and accusations of bad faith. But the reality is that he pushed the frontiers of Catholic teaching with regard to the Jews beyond the limits most thought possible. He has of course reiterated the teaching of the second Vatican council that the Jews cannot be blamed of the death of Christ, and that anti-semitism is a grave sin. But he has gone much further, coming close to declaring Judaism an open channel to God, a valid parallel to Catholicism. As a result the Catholic church has officially stopped evangelising the Jews. For them - and them alone, frankly - conversion is no longer deemed necessary for salvation.

This revolution was encapsulated in the few words of the famous prayer which he posted into a niche in the Western Wall in Jerusalem during his millennium year visit to Israel. This is the most solemn and serious method pious Jews use to communicate with their God. By his action, Pope was declaring that the method works. By his words, he was undoing 2,000 years of Christian supersessionism. No matter what generations of churchmen had written and said and the clear impression in the New Testament to the contrary, the ancient Jewish covenant with God was still in force. The prayer simply stated: "God of our fathers, you chose Abraham and his descendants to bring your name to the nations. We are deeply saddened by the behaviour of those who in the course of history have caused these children of yours to suffer, and asking your forgiveness we wish to commit ourselves to genuine brotherhood with the people of the covenant." This was the high moral moment of his reign. If all else is forgotten, this deserves to be remembered in a thousand years.

You are right to bring up Opus Dei and the destruction of Liberation Theology. Sadly, it seems that the same darkness infesting and corrupting our own institutions of power also infess and corrupts the corriders of power within the Church.

sw

[Mr_Spock]

16. kick

[tishaLA]

18. A really great piece

[ultraist]

19. Feminism is a facet of the "culture of death?" wow.

"Divorce, homosexuality, abortion, contraception, even feminism, were all facets of what he termed a culture of death in the west."

[Swamp Rat]

25. >:-(

x(

[shockra]

27. That's a case of projection, right there.

Feminists have been pointing out for years the numerous ways in which patriarchies are death-oriented.

And what's more patriarchal than the church?

[Merope215]

20. Kick

It's an interesting and insightful analysis and provides much food for thought and discussion. Thanks for posting it.

[mrfrapp]

21. Quote

"The Wall Street Journal attacked his economic theories as "warmed-over Marxism", but to him belief in the "invisible guiding hand" of market forces was as much a false faith as belief in the inevitable dictatorship of the proletariat."

Crikey. This man was more interesting and more complicated than I thought. I feel compelled to read more about him and his ideas in the coming days.

[Iterate]

24. Finally, some thoughtful reflection

Somehow I managed to listen and to learn some things from the RCC along the way. I thank them for that. Pope John Paul II tried, imperfectly, to bring out the better parts of our nature. For that he will be missed.

When I see an analysis such as this I, however good it might be, I still feel that they missed the point by looking at his influence at the top of the church, as if the church were an authoritarian political party.

I learned along the way that the value of the church, its core, is in its community, at the parish level, and it's the support and sharing there that matters most of all.

The church is not a democracy, and if you expect it to behave that way you will be endlessly frustrated. Ill-behaved school boys learn this.

It's also a large, diverse, and relatively inclusive church. I know very few Catholics who would follow any particular tenet simply "because the church says so", especially when it comes to their personal lives. That makes many of the churches authoritarian "teachings" somewhat moot. The left side of the church, from the Catholic Worker Movement to activist priests in Latin America, hasn't gotten much acknowledgment lately, but it's there and very active.

These aspects set up a tension which will never be resolved. There will always be inconsistencies, nothing new in that. We can only hope that the next pontiff will carry on his work, extending it to be even more inclusive: a larger, more flexible, more accepting parish.