Our archdiocese has been given permission to celebrate a memorial feast in honour of the late pope today and I will be away for a good chunk of this day doing that.
This day is a humbling one for me. When JP II became pope I didn't not think he would amount to much and said so at the least provocation. It's hard to imagine how I could have been more wrong.
And it's not just that I was wrong about him; I was also wrong about myself. I never anticipated that my understanding of the Catholic Church and the world would change so radically as it did. The pope was right about most things and I was wrong about most things.
Many liberal Catholics I know now profess to have loved JP II. This is nonsense. They disdained and sometimes hated the man. They said far worse things about him than they now do about Benedict XVI. Now that JP II is safely dead, there is a lot of revisionism going on. Liberals remember the warm glow they had for him in his final years. They forget the seething anger they felt in the early days when he started leading the church in a direction they were not comfortable with.
I do not forget. I was very unhappy when JP II did not move things in the more liberal direction I hoped for all those decades ago. Now I thank God and his pope that I did not get what I wanted.
This day is a humbling one for me. When JP II became pope I didn't not think he would amount to much and said so at the least provocation. It's hard to imagine how I could have been more wrong.
And it's not just that I was wrong about him; I was also wrong about myself. I never anticipated that my understanding of the Catholic Church and the world would change so radically as it did. The pope was right about most things and I was wrong about most things.
Many liberal Catholics I know now profess to have loved JP II. This is nonsense. They disdained and sometimes hated the man. They said far worse things about him than they now do about Benedict XVI. Now that JP II is safely dead, there is a lot of revisionism going on. Liberals remember the warm glow they had for him in his final years. They forget the seething anger they felt in the early days when he started leading the church in a direction they were not comfortable with.
I do not forget. I was very unhappy when JP II did not move things in the more liberal direction I hoped for all those decades ago. Now I thank God and his pope that I did not get what I wanted.
No comments:
Post a Comment