I’ve tried over the life of this blog to avoid the subject of religion but like Michael Corleone, they just keep dragging me in. Yes, I spent 22 years in Catholic schools before deciding that no one needs organized religion to speak to God.
One of the reasons I feel that way is the fiasco currently talking place in Rome where the Pope is trying to turn a previous Pope into a saint, possibly in the hope of having one of his successors return the favor.
I have nothing against Pope John Paul II but from everything I learned in my long trek through the halls of Catholic education, it appears that no one in a position of such political power could ever qualify for anything close to sainthood. I don’t think John Paul II, who made some very touchy decisions that involved protecting Holy Mother Church from scandal at the expense of protecting her most vulnerable children from in-house predators is even close to the qualifications of sainthood as described in my many years of Catholic education.
John Paul II was certainly a great political motivator when it came to encouraging those behind the Iron Curtain to rise against their masters. This is a heroic stance but not in the least Christ-like. Christ-like would have been a serious crackdown on those priests who had made an almost institutional process of abusing children. Those priests and the Bishops who failed to deal with the problem should have been prosecuted not protected and as my old grandmother used to say, the fish stinks from the head.
This was a massive betrayal of responsibility, and of the faithful who depended on him for leadership, and it alone should stand in the way of any consideration of John Paul II for sainthood.
I know the Vatican Square is always filled with miracle seekers but any reasonable person knows that the inexplicable, often extraordinary variations from nature that some like to call miracles are actually nothing more than natural phenomena that have varied from their normal predilections. The miraculous cure of some nun’s cancer isn’t because she prayed to John Paul II, it’s because like so many other medical “miracles,” s— happens, sometimes for the good.
Like any other big organization, the church, from time to time needs affirmation and good press. Obviously nothing fits that schedule better than finding a new saint to promote, but finding a Pope who fits that mold is almost impossible. The Pope’s job is basically to run a huge business, A look at history will tell us that when faced with a choice between Church and faith or between Church and flock, the Pope has always chosen Church, just as John Paul did with abusive priests, just as Pius XII did with Hitler during WWII, just as countless others have done before them.
Pope John Paul II did a lot of things right but he also did a lot of things wrong… right up until he died. This makes him a man like many other men… maybe even a good man… not a saint.