Saturday, April 09, 2005
My Pope is Dead
I was raised Catholic, served as an altar boy until I was about 14, and left the church around the time my mother died in 1978, the year John Paul the II was "elected". If you want to know how I feel about the Catholic church now, just download this. I haven't actively watched any of the media coverage. I'm not watching much of any media coverage of anything these days, as real news reporting (at least on television) has gone the way of the dinosaur. Actually, it has recently been discovered right here in the triangle area that dinosaur bones have more flesh on them than most TV news reports these days. Still, traveling through airports this week made JPII funeral coverage unavoidable. What I do remember about the teachings of Jesus Christ are far far removed from the pomp and circumstance I briefly saw on those TV screens. I heard enough superlatives about the Pope in 5 minutes to know that no one was discussing his ridiculous (and dangerous in a world where AIDS is still increasing exponentially) ban on condom use, or any kind of birth control, his refusal to consider women for the priesthood, his refusal to consider to allow priests to marry, his lack of decisive action in the church's massive child abuse scandal. It's unbelievable that Cardinal Law, who did everything in his power as archbishop to cover up the scandal in his Boston diocese was allowed to lead one of the masses at JPII's memorial service. Maybe such discussions are not appropriate for a funeral, but I saw the same elevation to sainthood of an equally flawed world leader in the Reagan funeral. At least the Pope spoke out strongly against the Iraq war, although the media in this country hypocritically buried that voice at the time, and many devout Catholics are ignoring that obvious disconnect with their own support of the war. I'm not keeping my fingers crossed that the church will "elect" any pope that will give any ground on any of these issues. I think it's more likely that we will see more of the "morality" police (as if advocating against a practice (condom use) that could save the lives of thousands of people is moral), and more political capitulation. I'd love to be proven wrong.
