Commentary: The Pope has blood on his hands

[Bluebear]

I don't dare post it elsewhere, I don't want to cause our Catholic friends any sorrow at this particular moment, but here is an interesting editorial from Britain.


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......Once ensconced in power, John Paul II set about rolling back the liberal achievements of Vatican 2. Prominent liberal theologians were summoned to his throne for a dressing down. One of his prime aims was to restore to papal hands the power that had been decentralised to the local churches. In the early church, laymen and women elected their own bishops. Vatican 2 didn't go as far as that, but it insisted on the doctrine of collegiality - that the Pope was not to be seen as capo di tutti capi, but as first among equals.

John Paul, however, acknowledged equality with nobody. From his early years as a priest, he was notable for his exorbitant belief in his own spiritual and intellectual powers. Graham Greene once dreamed of a newspaper headline reading "John Paul canonises Jesus Christ". Bishops were summoned to Rome to be given their orders, not for fraternal consultation. Loopy far-right mystics and Francoists were honoured, and Latin American political liberationists bawled out. The Pope's authority was so unassailable that the head of a Spanish seminary managed to convince his students that he had the Pope's personal permission to masturbate them.

The result of centring all power in Rome was an infantilisation of the local churches. Clergy found themselves incapable of taking initiatives without nervous glances over their shoulders at the Holy Office. It was at just this point, when the local churches were least capable of handling a crisis maturely, that the child sex abuse scandal broke. John Paul's response was to reward an American cardinal who had assiduously covered up the outrage with a plush posting in Rome.

The greatest crime of his papacy, however, was neither his part in this cover up nor his neanderthal attitude to women. It was the grotesque irony by which the Vatican condemned - as a "culture of death" - condoms, which might have saved countless Catholics in the developing world from an agonising AIDS death. The Pope goes to his eternal reward with those deaths on his hands. He was one of the greatest disasters for the Christian church since Charles Darwin.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1451484,00.html

[Fenris]

1. "full of maudlin Mary-worship" probably wouldn't go over well in GD

Or anywhere other than here, I suppose.

Cannot say I disagree with Eagleton's points, though. I thought it was pretty spot-on in terms of criticism of the "Holy Father."

[beam me up scottie]

2. You know, for all their love of tabloids,

the British news media kicks ass.

"The greatest crime of his papacy, however, was neither his part in this cover up nor his neanderthal attitude to women. It was the grotesque irony by which the Vatican condemned - as a "culture of death" - condoms, which might have saved countless Catholics in the developing world from an agonising Aids death. The Pope goes to his eternal reward with those deaths on his hands. He was one of the greatest disasters for the Christian church since Charles Darwin"

That's what I'll remember him for.

[onager]

3. A friend posted this in another forum

Well, the head of the largest organised crime family in the world is dead. His days of money laundering through a religious front, apologising for past genocidal behaviours, enforcing discimination against women, destroying human life through denial of access to reproductive choice, helping cover for and supplying organisational logistics to the largest ring of paedophiles in history and generally being the drag-wearing sex-pervert leader of a voodoo-style religious cult are passed.

God rest his soul.

[beam me up scottie]

4. Wicked!

I tried to explain the pope-picking thing to a gal at work but I lost her at the part where a bunch of old, white, men with who have never had sex, wives, or children will pick the next leader who will affect millions of men, women and children. She didn't get it.
I don't either.