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Originally Posted by Ronin
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What does "uneducated" mean, in this context, if not unawareness of the consequences of actions, and/or unawareness of better options, when it comes to the spread of STDs and the prevention of pregnancy?
On both fronts the church under JPII was resolutely against sexual education and the availability of prescriptions for the poorest and least autonomous, a determination particularly harmful where the local priests and nuns are the sole or major source of education and counselling, and socio-politically powerful as well.
When people are kept ignorant, thus closing off their options, hand-waving about their "accountability" is misguided and callous. I remarked in the OP that the rich, educated, and sophisticated of the West seem to find it easy to minimize the ways in which millions of others are kept poor, uneducated, and naive.
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The priests and nuns that are the sole or major source of education and counseling also promote other RCC directives regarding monogamy, sexual responsibility and abstinence which are consistent with the Pope’s position on contraception. |
Indeed. As do "abstinence only" educations campaigns even in America, which suppress birth control information -- and do harm.
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These emissaries also provide many other practical services (consequences of actions and “better” options) to the poor and uneducated that they would otherwise never have ever been exposed to.
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This is of course
consistent with doing great harm.
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In short, I don’t hold the Pope responsible for suffering that occurs regarding the issue of contraception because the rest of the message regarding sexual responsibility is also taught consistently with the original position.
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If that's what floats your boat, fine. No doubt much in the Taliban's ethos was internally consistent, too. Yet they did much harm.
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Nobody has said that the problem is who JPII disagreed with, so it's hard to see the relevance of this remark. The problem was the harm he did -- to men, women and children -- by refusing to regard women's rights as human rights.
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That said, the relevance of my remark is that the Pope did not “harm” men, women and children by promoting consistent options and promoting health and educational benefits from a RCC point of view.
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This entirely fails to follow, however. All sorts of "consistent" perspectives are harmful. My claim is rather clearly not the JPII was self-consciously evil, nor even self-consciously hypocritical. It's that he did great harm.
Not by his own lights, you reply. Well and good. But great harm is often done by those whose actions are justified by their own lights. It's simply not relevant to my claim.
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The reasoning here is unrecoverable. Do you think Stalin wasn't mourned by millions? This man is taken as God's representative on Earth. He is regarded as a father in way that goes well beyond the metaphorical; he was genuinely trusted to be a good father by tens of millions. Of course they mourn him. Does this mitigate or exacerbate any respects in which he did not act in ways that respected their rights and well-being?
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The glaring difference is that Stalin directly ordered the killing of millions and advanced an ideology that promoted no other beneficial option. Fear was all that was represented.
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Certainly false, as many people did mourn him. (And he did take a nation directly from the feudal to the industrial age; don't suppose that Stalin apologists have nothing to work with.) But I certainly agree that the differences between JPII and Stalin are many and weighty. The point was not that they were morally equivalent. The point was that your reasoning fails. Recall your claim: The fact that so many people were mourning shows that JPII did more good than harm. But this is a non-sequitur -- as the Stalin example shows, and any number of others besides. Mao was mourned with hysteria, but he did enormous harm. (And non-trivial good.)
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The casual weighing, moreover, of "feelings of comfort" against the misery of people's lives and deaths is hard to fathom. I don't underrate the former. But the two rather don't compare.
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That is because misery exists regardless of the Pope and that feelings of comfort existed for some because of him.
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I don't recall claiming that JPII invented misery, so this seems to be a red herring.
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And with argument, this claim might even be made reasonable. I have no deeply vested interest in seeing JPII at the top of the list in any case; I'd just like to see a discussion of the harm he did -- one that takes the suffering of the relevant people seriously.
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Sorry for the interruption then, I must have misunderstood the thread title and OP.
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You must have. You seem to have missed everything from the question mark in the thread title to the closing summary:
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Originally Posted by Clutch
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.
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Apology accepted.
Re: Pope John Paul II: Most harmful person of past 25 years?
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