Blogmocracy in Action!
Guest post by: MTC!

I’ve never written a blog post before. I hope you like this one.

April second marks the fifth anniversary of Pope John Paul II’s death. He died after a lon bout with Parkinson’s disease. He was beloved around the world and some of his greatest contributions were toward the end of his life. He practiced what he preached; simply by remaining in office, he gave hope to the marginalized of society as well as hope to the physically challenged.

I had the pleasure of seeing him at Yankee Stadium in 1979. It was magical. When he drove around the stadium in the popemobile, I could feel the presence of God. There was an electricity in the air and his vestments were whiter than white. He seemed to be extraordinary yet he was also very ordinary. He seemed to be the type one could sit down with and have a normal conversation.

The greatest tribute I heard after he died was when I asked one of the developmentally disabled adults I had worked with what made her sad about the Pope’s death.

She said, “He was my friend.”

I think that sums it up nicely. Also, the fifth anniversary of Pope Benedict’s election is coming up on April 19th. He was elected on his 78th birthday; I guess the cardinals wanted to give him a present he would never forget!

Lately, he has been hammered by the press for the Vatican’s response to the abuse of children in the Church. I have tried to make heads or tails out of it. The Anchoress’s blog has a lot of good links and so does www.wdtprs.com by Father Z. There is a greater agenda at work here. The Pope came into office with an undeservedly bad reputation. As the prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, he was the Church’s chief theologian. He was thought to be rigid (not true). His nicknames were God’s Rottweiler and Der Panzerkardinal. He was the one who sent the abusive German priest away when he was Archbishop of Munich. He also took charge of investiating abusive priests starting in 2001. Once he saw how slow the process was for removing abusers, he did his best to speed things up. Unfortunately, he wasn’t always able to move as fast as he would like.

The Vatican is very hierarchical; only the Pope can make a final decision about a priest. Pope Benedict thinks that the best cure for abusive priests is to keep gay men out of the seminary as well as tighter standards for admission. He is the first Pope to meet with abuse victims and, shortly before his election, he called on the Church to get rid of the “filth”. This campaign, in the MSM and in certain blogs, to call for his abdication is just an excuse to bring down someone they don’t like. “We want another John Paul”, they say but they forget that they didn’t care for his ideas either. The Achoress, among others, thinks that if this papacy is ruined, it would be damaging to the church. The liberals can’t tolerate someone who thinks life begins at conception and it really burns them that Pope Paul’s encyclical Humanae Vitae is correct. Pope Benedict also advocates improved worship and sticking with an all-male priesthood. So for this Easter season, let’s remember Pope John Paul II and pray for Pope Benedict XVI.

Maybe we could share some of our memories of John Paul II

-mtc