Pope John Paul II: Most harmful person of past 25 years?

[Clutch Munny]

Right now the mainstream media is awash in glowing eulogies of JPII. The critical notes that are sounded -- he was internally authoritarian, stacked the college of cardinals with conservatives, stifled discussion on the ordination of women -- are depicted as trivial or at least forgivable in comparison to his love of peace, his campaigning for human rights, and his outreach work to the young.

But if you consider the misery and death that the poorest people in the world have continued to endure over the past decades, especially the women and children, as the result of

-- having too many children to care for and
-- the spread of AIDS

it's hard to think of any one person in the world who was in a position to do more good, but did more harm, than JPII.

By not reversing the prohibition on birth control pills, and by vehemently opposing at every level, in every way possible, the distribution and use of condoms, the Church under JPII actively contributed to the foreseeable misery and death of the most vulnerable people in the world.

To see the media praising him in cultures sufficiently free and cosmopolitan for even most Catholics to disregard the pope's birth control policies to some extent is very frustrating. I think his standing with the Western media stems largely from his opposition to communism in Poland. He was on the "right side" in the Cold War; everything else can be sugar-coated.

Whether he was the most harmful person is an open question. That he was responsible for enormous suffering, I think, is not. It would be useful to see the effects of his policies discussed openly in the media.