If you missed it, you should know I consider myself Catholic.

The presumedly imminent death of Pope John Paul II is affecting me deeply. If you can only take this news with sarcasm and disrespect please leave this site at once.



I'm mostly exposed to co-workers making pretty base jokes at the expense of JP2. I'm trying to ignore them, for the sake of my blood pressure. Plenty of folks both online and off have drawn connections between JP2 failing health and Terri Schiavo's passing. If I were in a mood to enjoy it I would remark that both sides of the debate have drawn specious connections - some poetic irony that JP2 needs a feeding tube to survive versus attributing his failing health to being heartbroken over the death of Mrs Schiavo.

People. the man is 84 years old has been in crap health for years. He was shot more than 20 years ago and ever since he's been falling apart ever since the major operation it took to save his life, and then the ravages of Parkinson's and arthritis. And just because the news calls it "last rites" doesn't mean it's his death bed. The real name of the rite is "Extreme Unction" and it's given to anyone in a serious condition that could potentially cost their life. He was given the rite when he was shot in 1981.

Technically JP2 is my third pope but since Paul VI and JP1 both died in 1978, when I was year old, I don't think it can really count.


For a quick sketch of why JP2 has really mattered you can go here: http://www.news.com.au/story/0,10117,12720554-2,00.html
There's much to his leadership that I have disagreed with but it pales in context next to how radical he has been to bring the Catholic church not only to relevance among the faithful but into communion with people of other faiths. Through a true and rare synthesis of humility and determination JP2 has met and found common ground with religious and secular leaders around the world.

Though criticized by social progressives (that can include me) for positions that limit personal choices, the moral authority of the Vatican has been reinforced by JP2's unwavering support for human dignity. It is this support that worked to bring down communist rule in the USSR and Eastern Europe in order to end their fearsome oppression of religious worship and expression, and to liberate people from the tyrannical rule of individuals who wouldn't know socialism if you smacked them with The Red Book. It is this support that has encouraged (perhaps conversely from above) values for a labor movement in the "free" world, so that people in capitalists societies may know they can and should work for an honest wage and that no one deserves life as an economic slave.

There have been missteps. The Vatican, like many central source of leadership, can be very insular and easily misread what the common laity thinks and believes. Sometimes it can just put forth the idea that the common folk just need to "get with the program." Sometimes it doesn't read the culture of different peoples. The Vatican had nothing at all to do with the sex abuse scandals and if there is scandal in that it is simply that the Vatican did not involve itself until after an outcry for its involvement. While JP2 had worked hard to get to know the poorest and simplest adherents to Catholicism, found in Africa and Latin America, he and his had not tried to really incorporate American thinking and attitudes. Thus they did not entirely understand that while in many other parts of the world it is intuitively understood that an individual may be a criminal but that in no way indicts their sponsor, employer or other associate. Wrong or not, the Vatican simply didn't understand that in the US we assume that someone commiting a crime on company time directly reflects on the company.

It doesn't seem like much for leaders to meet with other leaders. It doesn't seem like much for a leader to travel around the world and visit places of cultural and historical significance. It doesn't seem like much for a leader to preach the values of his enterprise. It doesn't seem like much for a leader to go absolutely anywhere to reach his followers.

But trust me. It is.

Timeline of the potificate of John Paul II

And He will raise you up
on Eagle's wings
Bear you on the breath of dawn
Make you to shine like the sun
and hold you, hold you in the palm
of His hand
--based on Psalm 91