ian-mstm

I'm not a Catholic, but a great man has died - great, because he worked to bring the Catholic church into the 21st century while trying to keep alive those traditions most important to the faith. It is a difficult job, and I believe he did his best to keep peace in the world.

Ian

Noorah101

I'm not Catholic either, but Amen!

Rene

USimmigrant

God bless his soul

eggysbrain

I'm not catholic either, but I still had great respect for the man. May he rest in peace.

Hypertweeky

I am catholic, I try to go to church oftenly.
I know he has been sick for a very long time but I never though his life would come to an end, I know this doesn't make any sense.. but I feel very weird right now. He is the ONLY pope I have ever known and the ONE for me.
Sorry guys.. I don't feel good

mvjenno

He was a blessing to the world - rest in peace, JPII! x

shepslady

Not a Catholic here either but still had a lot of admiration for this man & the amazing thing he achieved in his time. I think the thing that hit home the most with me was that he was the only Pope my youngest son had ever seen during his life time. My son is now 26 so that kind of put it all into prospective for me & my respect & sympathy goes out to the millions of people who will be grieving at this mans passing.

nce

I am not Catholic either, but I had the pleasure and honor of performing for him, and meeting him in 1997. We sang him happy birthday and he shook his cane at us and laughed. It was an experience I will never forget.

God Bless him...

nce

maximus76

God Bless Him,
Amen.

Donut

In article <[email protected]> ,
maximus76 <member18167@british_expats.com> wrote:

    > > I am not Catholic either, but I had the pleasure and honor of
    > > performing for him, and meeting him in 1997. We sang him happy
    > > birthday and he shook his cane at us and laughed. It was an experience
    > > I will never forget.
    > >
    > > God Bless him...
    > >
    > > nce
    >
    > God Bless Him,
    > Amen.

I respect everyones feelings, but I find it hard to understand why the
man was so great. He maintained the dogma, did not change a thing and
left the catholic church under a huge cloud of sexual molestation
issues. Where's the greatness? I see a missed opportunity, the first non
italian pope in centuries and there's nothing good to show for his term.
No progress, just platitudes. I just cannot understand why women
continue to blindly support this bigoted crap? I am a guy, and I watched
some of the Pope related news today...all I saw, was a bunch of pious
men, not a single woman among them. And we think islam is bad? Yeah,
Yeah, we should not speak ill of the dead, but let's not exaggerate
either.

Bluegrass Lass

I'm sad that an old man has died. But old men die of horrible diseases everyday and we don't televise their funerals all across the world. No matter how I look at it, all I see is a mortal man that was a sinner like everyone else.

anti-climacus

Pope John Paul II died on April 2, after a twenty-six year papacy that changed the church and the world. The “pilgrim pope” understood intuitively that his ancient office was perfectly suited to a global audience in a media age. He gave peace, justice, and human dignity a personal face that was somehow perfectly suited to the times, but he also reminded people that those values are older and more permanent than the institutions of modern politics. Presidents and prime ministers in sober, dark suits waited nervously for a word with the genial pastor in a white cassock, because they understood that this pope could speak directly to their constituents in words that made a difference. In a nice variation on the fable about the emperor’s new clothes, an old man whose costume was medieval told the powers that ruled the modern world that they were naked, and all the people began to laugh.
John Paul II was also the “philosopher pope.” He changed the intellectual terms of engagement between faith and the modern world. For a century and more, progressive voices in Christianity had called for greater theological responsiveness to modern thought. In the process, a good deal of extraneous baggage had been jettisoned, and theologians had become more adept at distinguishing Christian proclamation from shifting historical patterns of expression. By the 1970’s, however, even liberal Protestants had begun to ask whether the forms of modern thought were setting limits on the proclamation, rather than providing a voice for it. Karol Wojtyla, whose studies in phenomenology shaped his concept of the human person living in solidarity with others, knew how to use philosophy to make the Gospel comprehensible in the modern world, but he understood that the reality of God at the beginning and end of history will always transcend the limits of human reason and limit the ambitions of human morality. John Paul II rejected the demands of an adolescent modernity that insisted on having every truth reformulated in its own terms, and he could be harsh in dealing with theologians who seemed to him to be catering to these modern whims. A world that has truly “come of age,” however, is a world that has encountered some of its own limitations. John Paul II dealt tenderly with that world’s wounded aspirations, teaching it that suffering can be redemptive and offering it a realistic vision of what a passion for peace and justice might yet accomplish. In a way, he honored the modern world with the assumption that it was mature enough to hear the Gospel on the Gospel’s own terms, no longer requiring simplified versions edited to avoid shocking modern sensibilities. All of us, in every tradition, who try to preach the Gospel will do it differently because of the possibilities that John Paul II demonstrated for us.
If the Pope embodied and proclaimed the truths of Christian faith, he sometimes seemed less adept at strategy. Perhaps he did not really see that as central to his universal office. He understood the variety of the world in which the church lives better than any previous pontiff, but he knew that his teaching had to transcend that diversity in order to speak to all of it. Strategy was for him a task of what Roman Catholics call the “local” church, the bishops and pastors in a particular social, economic, and political context. As a bishop, Karol Wojtyla was a brilliant strategist for the church in Communist Poland, and as Pope, he did much to hasten the transformation of Eastern Europe and the collapse of the Soviet Union. In Latin America, however, he rejected the strategy of liberation theology, which used Marxist economics in service to movements of solidarity. Marxism was in his mind essentially tied to oppression, and concern for the material conditions of progress seemed to compromise spiritual truth. As for the church in North America, the Pope who had known political oppression had perhaps too little sympathy for the pastoral needs that go with freedom and affluence. He did not appreciate the demands for hierarchical accountability and lay participation that grew louder following the clergy abuse scandals. He could not admit the possibility that the role assigned to women in his church reflected an ancient strategic choice that had been elevated to the level of universal truth.
The next Pope will inherit a church and a world very different from those that Karol Wojtyla knew when he entered the conclave in 1978. Christian unity and interreligious cooperation have become even more urgent as a result of the political changes of the last two decades. Christian life in Africa and in China will, by sheer force of numbers, raise questions for all denominations that none of them have yet faced. Many strategies of the long papacy of John Paul II will take their place in history, to await further evaluation. What endures is one man’s discovery for all of us that Christian faith, taken on its own terms, is more necessary and more powerful in today’s world than we could have imagined without him.

Bulletin from Christian Century

Hypertweeky

I am normally very nice to everyone but you have just pissed me off, you idiot..
Go post your crap somewhere else

ian-mstm

The Pope is not only the head of the Catholic church, he is also the head honcho of Vatican City which is recognized by the United Nations, and so he is accorded the same status as any other head of state. I'm sure the Queen's funeral will be televised, as was Reagan's (even though he wasn't a sitting head of state when he died), as was Anwar Sadat's, as was Yasser Arrafat's, etc. When a world leader dies, it's big news.

Ian

Hypertweeky

Thanks Ian..