SwiftVets.com

[PhantomSgt]

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Retired AF E-8

Independent that leans right of center.

[Curtis H.]

Rest in peace, Pope John Paul II.

Live stream from the Vatican: http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tm...u=/pope1/static

[I B Squidly]

I don't care for organised religion and Western Civ' is largely a listing of the crimes of the Church of Rome. Vatican II had the church drifting towrds irrelevance, Paul VI was uninspiring, John Paul didn't last long enough to tell and the Vatican Bank scandal threatened to end the franchise.

Pope John Paul II singlehandedly, through character and will saved the church from the dustbin, made it a meaningful voice in the modern world, challenged the 'Evil Empire', and established the Papacy as something more than old Italians in funny hats.

Now, if the church could only hold to his legacy.
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"KILL ALL THE LAWYERS!"

-Wlm Shakespeare

[I B Squidly]

Works for me:

[/quote]
A Man for All Seasons
The very modern papacy of John Paul II.
April 2, 2005

http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110006504

When the white smoke curled up from the Sistine Chapel on that October evening back in 1978, it signaled that a new Pope had been chosen. His name was Karol Wojtyla. He came, as he said, from a distant land, and as he looked upon the faithful who had gathered on St. Peter's Square he offered words that would sum up his pastoral mission: "Be not afraid."

Pope John Paul II died today. In the post-Berlin Wall world this man did so much to shape, it's difficult to recall the much different circumstances that obtained when he assumed the chair of St. Peter. Former Italian prime minister Aldo Moro had been kidnapped and executed by terrorists. In Iran bloody protests were brewing that would within months pull down the Shah and usher in the ayatollahs. In the Soviet Union the dissident Anatoly Shcharansky (now the Israeli Natan Sharansky) was dispatched to the gulag, while Afghanistan had already endured the leftist coup that would, in short order, lead to a full-fledged Soviet invasion.

Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher were still in the future, and so was a workers' strike called by an unknown Pole named Lech Walesa. Everywhere one looked, the truth of the Brezhnev Doctrine seemed brutally self-evident: Once Communist, always Communist. Oh, yes: The Catholic Church which this first Slavic pope found himself bequeathed was thought by many to be hopelessly irrelevant to the crises of modern times.

The bishop from Krakow knew all this--better than his critics. For this was a man eminently comfortable with modernity--even while he refused to accept modernity's most shallow assumptions. Just as he offered his first public words as pope in Italian to make himself understood by those below his balcony, he held that ultimate truths about man and his relationship with his Creator are never outdated, however much they require constant expression in new languages and new circumstances. As he never ceased to declare, Communism's core failure was not economic. It was anthropological, stemming from its false understanding of human nature.

Karol Wojtyla did not learn this from textbooks. He was old enough to recall how the twin totalitarianisms of our age--fascism and communism--were each once lauded by intellectuals as the inevitable destination and promise of the future. In Poland he tasted them both, yet he remained unintimidated. This experience would shape his entire papacy, a testament to his conviction that moral truth has its own legions.

And so he set that splendid Polish jaw against all the prevailing winds and . . . well, we know the rest of the story. Ironically, better than even some of his allies, the Communists themselves grasped the threat posed by a man whose only power was to expose the moral hollowness at the core of their claim. When the leader of Communist Poland tried to explain to the leader of the Communist U.S.S.R. that, as a fellow Pole, he knew how best to handle this new pope, Leonid Brezhnev responded prophetically. If the church weren't dealt with, Brezhnev retorted, "sooner or later it would gag in our throats, it would suffocate us." It did.

>From today's vantage, even that victory has quickly receded into history. In the years since the Berlin Wall was pulled down, the new take on the Bishop of Rome was to try to distinguish between two popes: The liberal Cold Warrior who took on totalitarianism and the social scold who would replace it with a Christian authoritarianism of his own.

We had our own disagreements with this pope, notably over America's efforts in Iraq in two wars. But even in disagreement we have always understood that this pope was no schizophrenic. It is possible, as many who otherwise admire him do, to disagree with Pope John Paul's teachings on marriage and homosexuality, on abortion, and so on. But it impossible to understand him without conceding the coherency of his argument: that the attempt to liberate oneself from one's nature is the road to enslavement, not freedom.

In progressive circles in the West, religion in general and Christianity in particular tend to find themselves caricatured as a series of Thou Shalt Nots, particularly when they touch on human sexuality. But it is no coincidence that George Weigel entitled his biography of John Paul "Witness to Hope." For billions of people around the world--non-Catholics included--that's exactly what he was. Perhaps this explains why China, where only a tiny fraction of its people are Catholic, remained to the very end fearful of allowing a visit from this frail, physically suffering man, fearing what he might inspire.

We don't expect the secularalists who dominate our intelligentsia ever to understand how a man rooted in orthodox Christianity could ever reconcile himself with modernity, much less establish himself on the vanguard of world history. But many years ago, when the same question was put to France's Cardinal Lustiger by a reporter, he gave the answer. "You're confusing a modern man with an American liberal," the cardinal replied. It was a confusion that Pope John Paul II, may he rest in peace, never made.

[buoybob]

Yes, rest in peace, John Paul. President Bush should proclaim Monday a Day of Mourning in this country for you. But he won't. Know why?
A basketball game.

[Navy_Navy_Navy]

The ink wouldn't be dry on a declaration of a day of mourning before the President would be slapped with a few thousand injunctions citing the (mythical) "separation of church and state."

I'm not Catholic, but I love John Paul II - papacies in the future will be compared to his for centuries. He's left a very big legacy to try to fill.

I hope that he has found the heaven that he always believed he would find.
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~ Echo Juliet ~
Altering course to starboard - On Fire, Keep Clear
Navy woman, Navy wife, Navy mother

[kate]

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2005/04/print/20050402-3.html

President Bush Orders Flags Flown at Half Staff in Honor of Pope John Paul II

GW may get some flack for that, however isnt the Pope considered a head of state.....?
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one of..... We The People

[PhantomSgt]

[Guest]

There will be no one to ever refil his shoes....it took 2000 years before we had such a great Pope, I pray it will not take that long again.

He will be missed. I loved the Pope. What a great humanitarian. Such a huge loss for the world. I am sure he has found the Heaven we all imagine.

[DLI78]

Another man from the Greatest Generation has left us. We are poorer for that, but richer because he encouraged our planet to better things.

I couldn't ever be a Catholic, but I greatly respected Pope John Paul II. I hope his church finds another man to fill his role in the world. A man of character, a man of hope, and a man of vision.
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DLI 78
Army Linguist
1978-1986

[lonevoice]