I promised some time ago to write on this topic, but have not felt motivated to do so. I am now.I made mention that I did not think John Paul II was a good candidate for Sainthood. Now calm down, I know he was popular and everybody loved him, he was a rock star, yadda, yadda.
That doesn't make him a Saint. And while I am not doubting his virtue or his sincerity, the failures of the late Pontiff were in his role as a shepherd and guardian of the Deposit of Faith.
And please don't leave me comments bemoaning the fact that I did not know his heart and all of that guff. I know what he did and what he didn't do, and that is all I need.
Here's a few of the stupid things he did, which the Pope should never do.
1. He kissed the Koran. Plus he actually said the words "I receive the word of God" If the word of God is contained anywhere in the Koran then the Catholic faith is a sham. There are Martyrs of the Church that died rather than kiss the Koran. He did it willingly.
2. He refused to reign in his Bishops who worked diligently to destroy the faith of Catholics worldwide.
3. During his reign the Catholic Church had fallen deep into disrepair. The current crisis in the Church is a direct consequence of his inability to shepherd it and his nurturing of the false "Spirit of Vatican II".
4. He allowed, promoted, and engaged in heretical gatherings at Assisi, standing among pagans, joining in their rituals. Never once did he try to evangelize them, giving scandal to the faithful and Holy Mother Church.
5. In Evangelium Vitae he contradicted 2000 years of Church teaching when he wrote that unbaptized babies go to Heaven. His error was later removed by the Vatican.
6. Let's not overlook his "World Youth Day" rock extravaganzas! Previous Popes behaved with decorum and modesty. Not this one.
In my opinion, Pope John Paul II brought scandal to the church, he disgraced the office of the Papacy by his poor Catholicity, he left virtually nothing of the faith to hand down, not to mention his many intentional breaks with Tradition. A bad Pontificate.
3 comments:
This is a tough subject. I get upset at the kinds of things JPII allowed and participated in. And yet, my father who is magically ultra conservative and surprisingly liberal all at once, will always remind me when I blow my top in conversation about the "urgent need to excommunicate modernist Catholics in order to purify the Church" that we should "give thanks we have anyone going to Church these days" and "we must forgive".
Of course he is right...and of course I like to think I am right ;-)
So we have two diametrically opposed sides of our faith here and I think both sides need to keep living as they do con mucho gusto and somehow God will use it for good. I think JPII represents an ecumenical face of the church, and perhaps he will one day be the Patron saint of Ecumenism.
Like the early Church Christians had to do in the book of Acts, I can and will make a judgment call for what is "lawful" for me. Even within my own parish I choose to not attend any mass after 9am because I find the crowds consistently disrespectful and sacrilegious. On a similar sidebar, I have a hard time understanding the mission of people like Fr. Stan Fortuna, an ordained Catholic Priest and a rapper. See his video here
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kgZbP8nddhU
I don't understand rap, I don't understand the gangsta look and appeal. To me it just looks like he is angry. I have great cognitive dissonance seeing Christ in Fr. Stan's work...or is it me, Lord, is it just me who cannot see you?
Jim
“5. In Evangelium Vitae he contradicted 2000 years of Church teaching when he wrote that unbaptized babies go to Heaven. His error was later removed by the Vatican.”
I assume you are referring to EV 99, addressed to women who have had an abortion. This is something I have puzzled over for years and still do not quite understand.
In some places I have seen in EV 99, “You will come to understand that nothing is definitively lost and you will be able to ask forgiveness from your child, who is now living in the Lord.” I question the last part; we cannot definitively know that an unbaptized child is in heaven.
In another place I have read in the same location in the document, “To the same Father and his mercy you can with sure hope entrust your child.” I think we can at least agree that much. We can always trust in God’s mercy. We also know that God CAN work outside the sacraments if He chooses to do so.
I have heard different stories on the discrepancy. One is that the first version was a mistranslation of JPII’s actual words. Another is that he changed his mind and issued a correction. You say his error was removed by the Vatican. I simply don’t know.
Here are my questions which speak to the canonization issue: Which was it, mistranslation or backpedaling? And is there room in the canonization process for someone who makes errors and then corrects them? Saint Augustine comes to mind.
I'm not sure you can so flagrantly say that he failed in his role as shepherd and guardian of the faith. I'm pretty sure he oversaw the authoring and orgainzation of both the Catechism as well as the 1983 Code of Canon Law. In addition, he worte Veritatis Splendor, which both corrected errant philosophical tendencies related to Natural Law and formed a solid basis on which the discipline of moral theology could advance. At the same time, he was an ardent defender of the necessity of an all-male priesthood. His pontificate re-established the doctrinal (both philosophical and theological) renewal on which the current pontificate could continue to make an authentic liturgical renewal. Pope Benedict (then Cardinal Ratzinger) and Pope John Paul II worked collaboratevly on many theological issues, many of which owe their germinate reality to John Paul II's publishing of Fides et Ratio - the Magisterial document about the proper recovery of the Thomistic notion of the interface between faith and reason, or about the reciprocal interpenetration of philosophy and theology. In fact, Pope Benedict was the Prefect of the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith under John Paul's pontificate. There is certianly no argument about some of the rather interesting liturgical practices that John Paul II allowed to take place. However, we need to be very clear about the contribution that he has made to the Tradition (I emphasize a capital "T") and its impact on the further development of the discipline of Sacred Theology, and how those profound mysteries are lived in the lives of the faithful.
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