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

[Sauron]

Originally Posted by Clutch Munny

Hang on, now; by the same reasoning, a "traditional" Queen would be beheading rival claimants and invading France. The relevant trends are recent ones, and here the comparison is not as favourable to JPII as you make out. Sweeping reform has been accomplished in the church as recently as the Second Vatican Council; JPII actually counts as regressive by that standard.

Well, not really. JPII was an advocate of the 2nd Vatican Council. Part of the job requirement, actually.

You can take it as a given that contraception, gays, female clergy, and opposition to abortion are going to be the traditional positions, and not open to compromise.

No. You can't. It was only 1951 when Pius XII declared that the rhythm method was acceptable.

The rhythm method is *barely* contraception at all. Timing the sexual act is hardly contraception - we're talking about artificial contraception, remember?

I understand RCC doctrine, the rhythm method still leaves open the (very) large possibility of conception, thus the sex act is not entirely for recreational purposes. But with an artificial contraceptive, you introduce a deliberate tool to frustrate the natural divine intent, and the percentage chance of conception is reduced to almost zero. So the fact that rhythm was OK, but condoms/the pill are not -- well, it's not really that hard to understand. And I don't think that the rhythm method really qualifies as contraception, except in a very haphazard way of the definition.

For most of the 1960s Western Catholics were confident that Paul VI was going to accept the use of the Pill.

Hard to see why.

http://are.as.wvu.edu/Slominski.htm
In 1968, Pope Paul VI leaned toward their position when he denied the usage of contraceptives in the official statement “Humanae Vitae.”

http://www.ewtn.com/library/SCRIPTUR/MARRIAGE.TXT
On November 25, Pope Paul took action and. . . sent four special
amendments on the marriage section to the joint commission. Each
commission member was given a copy, but before hand the "periti" were
asked to leave the room. Tension immediately mounted and Cardinal Leger
sprang to his feet in angry protest. . . . the members were informed by
another letter on the following day that they were not free to reject the
amendments, but only to determine their phrasing.

The first. . . called for the insertion of two words 'artificial
contraceptives' among the 'deformations' detracting from the dignity of
conjugal love. At the same time the Pope called for a precise footnote
reference to two pages in Pope Pius XI's encyclical, "Casti connubii"
where the use of artificial contraceptives was condemned. The commission
excused itself from introducing 'artificial contraceptives', used instead
'illicit practices against human generation, ' and omitted the reference
to "Casti connubii."

It was only 1968 that this was decided otherwise, and in making this decision Paul overrode the recommendation of the papal advisory board on the matter.

Remember, we're talking about whether or not JPII was any worse than some other pope would have been. That's a hypothetical situation, comparing JPII to historical precedents of other popes. And you've just admitted that it was an earlier pope that went against the advisory board that favored contraception.

Whether the decision was overridden or not, mypoint still stands: the pope wasn't going to approve contraception. It's simply not in the realm of possibility. Any Roman Catholics that got their hopes up otherwise, were simply not connected to reality. And your example of Pope Paul undercuts your argument, because he, too, went against the modernization trend and refused to approve contraception. So if you want to claim that JPII was worse, or more reactionary, than some other pope then you'll have to find some other example. Pope Paul -- by your own admission -- went against the trend of modernization.

It was an entirely open question only a decade or so before JPII became pope.

No. It wasn't.

But John Paul II gave something positive as well, to offset a lot of the traditional RCC baggage / damage. John Paul II used his popularity for getting something positive done.

He was the first pope of the real mega-media age, and it showed. His profile was enormous, and it sometimes made a positive difference. I don't think he did a great deal of good, but if he did, that's wholly consistent with his being responsible for a great deal of harm as well.

Now contrast with the usual pope who almost certainly would not have done as much good. Even your recent example of another pope - Pope Paul - regressed against the general flow of Catholic thought.

He tried to heal divisions between Jews, Christians, Eastern Orthodox, Coptic, Russian Orthodox, Muslims, etc.

Did he? He alienated the Eastern/Russian Orthodox churches by working to expand the RC presence in their "spheres of influence", and by overtly asserting the RC's primacy as Christian church.

Some of the leaders may have been upset. But I don't think that was the universal reaction.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Jo...rthodox_Church

In May 1999, John Paul II visited Romania. This was the first time a Pope had visited a predominantly Eastern Orthodox country since the Great Schism, the event that separated Eastern Orthodoxy and Western Roman Catholicism in the year 1054. The visit was prompted by an invitation from his Beatitude Teoctist, the Patriarch of the autocephalous Romanian Orthodox Church. On his arrival, the Pope was greeted by the Patriarch as well as by the Romanian president at the time, Emil Constantinescu. The Patriarch stated that "The second millennium of Christian history began with a painful wounding of the unity of the Church; the end of this millennium has seen a real commitment to restoring Christian unity."

On May 9, the Pope and the Patriarch each attended a worship service conducted by the other (an Orthodox Liturgy and a Catholic Mass, respectively). A crowd of hundreds of thousands of people turned up to attend the worship services, which were held in the open air. The Pope told the crowd, "I am here among you pushed only by the desire of authentic unity. Not long ago it was unthinkable that the bishop of Rome could visit his brothers and sisters in the faith who live in Romania. Today, after a long winter of suffering and persecution, we can finally exchange the kiss of peace and together praise the Lord." A large part of Romania's Orthodox population has shown itself warm to the idea of Christian reunification.

His much-hyped apology for the church's wrongdoings was almost hilariously vague, apologizing for nothing specific though receiving great press anyhow;

No, I don't think so.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Jo...rthodox_Church

In Athens, the Pope met with Archbishop Christodoulos, the head of the Greek Orthodox Church in Greece. After a private 30 minute meeting, the two spoke publicly. Christodoulos read a list of "13 offenses" of the Roman Catholic Church against the Orthodox Church since the Great Schism, including the pillaging of Constantinople by crusaders in 1204, and bemoaned the lack of any apology from the Roman Catholic church, saying "Until now, there has not been heard a single request for pardon" for the "maniacal crusaders of the 13th century."

The Pope responded by saying "For the occasions past and present, when sons and daughters of the Catholic Church have sinned by action or omission against their Orthodox brothers and sisters, may the Lord grant us forgiveness", to which Christodoulos immediately applauded. John Paul also said that the sacking of Constantinople was a source of "deep regret" for Catholics.

Later, John Paul and Christodoulos met on a spot where Saint Paul had once preached to Athenian Christians. They issued a "common declaration", saying "We shall do everything in our power, so that the Christian roots of Europe and its Christian soul may be preserved. … We condemn all recourse to violence, proselytism and fanaticism, in the name of religion." The two leaders then said the Lord's Prayer together, breaking an Orthodox taboo against praying with Catholics.

it was one of those apologies that actually shows less real regret and determination to change than no apology at all. He canonized as a martyr a Jewish convert to Catholicism murdered at Auschwitz -- patently murdered because she was a Jew, not because she was a Catholic -- thereby inciting Jewish resentment at the attempt to co-opt the Holocaust.

1. She wasn't canonized for her murder, she was canonized for miracles associated with her after beatification:
http://www.justpeace.org/stein.htm

2. The Jewish protest wasn't about co-opting the holocaust:
http://www.cwnews.com/news/viewstory.cfm?recnum=34524

He stood against war in Iraq, both under Bush I and Bush II. He stood against organizations like the World Bank and large corporations that steamrolled over poor people.

These were positive things to say. It's unclear they made any practical difference.

Light a candle....or do we tell the 1,000,000 protesters around the world that their efforts also made no practical difference?

He broke the mold for the pontificate, and made many of the fossilized "Vatican handlers" nervous by his active and face-to-face approach to his role.

Is that obviously a good thing? The nervousness was at least partly borne of JPII's contempt for consensus-building within the church. Even lots of Catholics were put off by the tension between his preaching against totalitarianism in the wider world and his near-totalitarianism within the church.

I'm not a scholar about inter-RCC squabbles. I, too, have heard that JPII was a centralizer of authority, and that many cardinals and bishops resented their lack of ability to run their dioceses the way they would like. However, I would say that any time an organization gets fossilized and out of touch with the people it supposedly serves, it needs a good shaking-up. The RCC struck me as an organization that was too afraid of getting soiled by the touch of the poor, the sick, or the unloved. I think JPII changed some of that attitude.

And within certain parameters, he expanded the role of women in the RCC church.

Yuck. Within certain parameters? He forbade so much as discussion of the ordination of women, and his actions on birth control hurt women "in the RCC" most of all.

However, he expanded their ability to participate in church functions and roles - something none of his predecessors did.

I'm not addressing the diatribe against birth control, since that is a re-hash of the first point in this post.

And no matter how bad you think things *are* with the RCC and its influence, they could have been a hell of a lot worse under a traditional, stuffy Italian pope.

Could have? What does this show?

That life is a game played without total wins or total losses. And that no matter how bad you think things are at the moment, they can always get worse.

Perhaps Russia could have been worse under Beria than Stalin; perhaps the USA could have been worse under Alan Keyes than under GWB. My point is, how much harm was done?

Your examples, however, don't work. All the previous popes before JPII failed to make any of these advances you wanted to see. JPII also didn't make many of them. However, he did do a lot of other positive things - which his predecessors left undone. So they are the same, with regards to things they refused to change. But JPII did other positive things, which differentiated him greatly from his predecessors.

Your example is busted, because you start out at the middle, and show a worse example as the contrast. But in the RCC case, the worse example is the baseline, and the contrast is something better.

In concrete terms, the Philippines were better off under Aquino, than under Ferdinand Marcos. Did Corazon Aquino do everything that we might have liked? Did she rid the govt of corruption, institute universal education and healthcare, and reform the police? No. And in fact, there was corruption in her govt, and nepotism. But in the final balance, she was a damn sight better than Marcos and his thugs. Aquino and JPII are similar in that regard - not perfect, but better than their immediate predecessors.

With John Paul II, the glass is at least half full, instead of being totally empty as it usually is.

I don't claim that the glass was totally empty. I see no grounds to think it was anywhere near half-full, and I don't really understand the "usually" qualifier, when we consider a realistic cohort for comparison.

1. Well, I think the glass was half-full.

2. You haven't provided any examples of "realistic cohorts" (other popes in recent times) who have done better. The only example you did manage to provide (Pope Paul) actually undercuts your argument, because he went retrograde against the tide of modernity by failing to approve of artificial contraception.

And note to the audience - I am not Roman Catholic. I was actually raised Baptist/Pentecostal. But I think it's important for people to understand why they don't like someone / some group, and to make sure those reasons are valid. Anyone who's watched me over on Infidels knows that I also defend Islam and Muslims the same way.

Or, at least, I *used* to do that, until the moderators over there decided it was more important to shield one of their own kind, rather than to be impartial in the execution of their duties. But I digress.....

[Clutch Munny]

Originally Posted by Sauron

You can take it as a given that contraception, gays, female clergy, and opposition to abortion are going to be the traditional positions, and not open to compromise.

The rhythm method is *barely* contraception at all. Timing the sexual act is hardly contraception - we're talking about artificial contraception, remember?

Thanks, I remember. But just saying "artificial" amounts to clearing one's throat; to simply equate artifice with pharmaceuticals and condoms is to uncritically project the current doctrine back onto the earlier debate.

Of course consulting a calendar is thoroughly artificial as a reason for engaging in sex, from the perspective of the Church prior to 1951. That church was stuffy, conservative, even (gasp!) Italian... but it permitted a new form of birth control. JPII could have, but did not.

I understand RCC doctrine, the rhythm method still leaves open the (very) large possibility of conception, thus the sex act is not entirely for recreational purposes.

The doctrine is foggy to most Western Catholics on this count, so you're lucky to understand it so well.

Permitted is permitted; so if a couple happens, by careful planning and lucky biological regularity, to master the technique of avoiding pregnancy via the rhythm method, they can quite permissibly have no children while having plenty of sex. But this will not exempt them from the underlying injunction not to treat each other merely as instruments of pleasure. (It's basically the Kantian idea of not treating persons as means to ends.)

For otherwise fertile couples to take active measures to have sex without having children is acceptable, even if they are able to take much of the guesswork out, and this is moreover consistent with treating each other as more than means to ends. This provides an intuitive bridge to the use of condoms and the pill by emphasizing that it's the underlying attitudes towards persons that are key, and that these can be separated out from the probability of conception.

But with an artificial contraceptive, you introduce a deliberate tool to frustrate the natural divine intent, and the percentage chance of conception is reduced to almost zero. So the fact that rhythm was OK, but condoms/the pill are not -- well, it's not really that hard to understand.

No doubt Paul VI and his advisors were just being thick in taking so long on the question, then. But I was under the impression that few concepts are more amenable to post hoc rationalization than the natural-artificial distinction.

The rhythm method, again, is thoroughly unnatural, and was once seen as such by the Church. And consider, by contrast: The "natural divine intent" is that our bodies work as they naturally ought; condoms, being entirely external to the male body, do not frustrate the workings of either individual body in a marriage; but the Pill internally disrupts the workings of a woman's body, reworking God's plan -- for this reason, the pill is unnatural in a way that condoms are not. Well, it's not really that hard to understand: more or less arbitrary divisions can always be bolstered by spurious argument about what's natural and what's artifical. Miscegenation arguments, anyone?

And, to finally return to the OP: That the question is actually a deeply vexed point of Catholic doctrine is evidenced by the fact that people who regard themselves as very good Catholics in Europe, Canada, and the USA somehow aren't having 12-child families. They aren't broken by childbirth by 35. Their warm gushy feelings for the departed Pope, currently receiving limitless airtime, take rather little notice of the millions of people for whom this conveniently selective interpretation of doctrine was less of an option.

Hard to see why.

Maybe you find it hard. But the facts are clear: Because VaticanII and the rhythm method judgement indicated openness on the matter. Because many leading Catholics, up to and including those on the papal advisory group, were disposed to recommend it. Because Catholic doctors were prominently arguing that the pill was consistent with their faith and with church teaching as they understood it. All this in stark contrast to your claim that dismissal of birth control was somehow a foregone conclusion.

Your own sources indicate the extent to which Paul VI was regressive on this matter relative to his own high-ranking advisors; somehow you think this undermines my argument when it shows, as I said, that the use of the pill was an open question in the Catholic church as late as 1968. Of course I agree that Paul VI was regressive on this question relative to much of the Church. Hence it is false to say that the church's current attitude toward birth control was always a necessary foregone conclusion.

Remember, we're talking about whether or not JPII was any worse than some other pope would have been. That's a hypothetical situation, comparing JPII to historical precedents of other popes.

No, it's comparing him to the recent progressive direction of the Church up to that time. Bear in mind that they weren't going to select Paul VI to be pope again; he was dead. Your claim was that JPII was better than some stuffy Italian pope. My point is that there were quite progressive elements in the Church at that time, with respect to treating women's rights as human rights -- far, far more than there are now, after 25 years of JPII! -- as the debate over the birth control pill demonstrates, with the help of your quoted material.

Whether the decision was overridden or not, mypoint still stands: the pope wasn't going to approve contraception. It's simply not in the realm of possibility.

The evidence you've adduced points to exactly the opposite conclusion.

Any Roman Catholics that got their hopes up otherwise, were simply not connected to reality.

This unargued assertion -- indeed, it's clearly undermined by the evidence you've recruited -- carries all the weight of your argument.

And your example of Pope Paul undercuts your argument, because he, too, went against the modernization trend and refused to approve contraception.

No, that is the argument. There was a modernization trend; the question of birth control was its primary focus; this was an open question. Paul VI went against it -- that made him regressive. JPII continued radically against it, indeed, he's virtually killed it -- that made him still more regressive.

However, he expanded their ability to participate in church functions and roles - something none of his predecessors did.

I'm not addressing the diatribe against birth control, since that is a re-hash of the first point in this post.

I'm not sure which "diatribe" you have in mind, when you give this "empty evasion" -- or could we dispense with that? -- but what you're not addressing is the idea that JPII might be judged positively on account of letting women participate in some more church functions, notwithstanding the effects of his attitudes and policies on the poorest and most vulnerable women in the world. Once again: "In the West, where Catholic couples feel free to practice birth control and even have abortions at rates virtually indistinguishable from non-Catholics, things like having women do the occasional reading in church may seem noteworthy. But it borders on casuistry to offer such practices as relevant considerations against the effects of church teachings and influence in the poorest parts of the world."

And note to the audience - I am not Roman Catholic. I was actually raised Baptist/Pentecostal. But I think it's important for people to understand why they don't like someone / some group, and to make sure those reasons are valid. Anyone who's watched me over on Infidels knows that I also defend Islam and Muslims the same way.

There is no relevant point, in this context, to allusions to "some group" and Muslims in general. But while we're sharing irrelevant autobiography, I was raised Catholic, and much of my family are still staunch Catholics. And I too think it's important for people to understand why they don't like someone / some group, and to make sure those reasons are valid. Anyone who's watched me over on Infidels knows that I also defend Islam and Muslims -- and Christians -- the same way. I also mow my elderly neighbour's lawn. We all believe ourselves very noble, I'm sure.

This is already much too long. Let me simply say about your other claims that they are relevant, but show very little, as if the evidence for hard feelings at something that JPII had said (or not said) would be that the heads of other sects or religions would lash out while he was standing right there. There was indeed a Jewish resentment of the type I indicated; it occurred both at Stein's beatification and again at her canonization. Even though your link to the Catholic World News somehow did not mention this, the response about coopting the Holocaust was sharp and explicit in the NYT, for instance, and was widely discussed among Catholics too. Just a quick quote from Father Steven Payne, himself the Prior of a Carmelite monastery : "The church's decision to honor Edith Stein as a martyr has made her a "sign of contradiction" for many Jews today, who fear that Catholics are thereby attempting to co-opt the Holocaust."

But I am not much concerned to pursue those lines of discussion in any case, partly because the facts are on record to anyone who cares to find them, and partly because I believe: (i) the real harm done by JPII was on reproductive rights and (ii) the ease of feeling warmth at his memory in the West is a matter of overlooking how westerners, Catholic and otherwise, were largely free to depart from his teachings on contraception, where tens of millions were not.

Allusions to everyone's personal responsibility for their actions, and assertions that he could have been worse -- whether argued well or poorly -- amount to ways of discounting the harm done by policies JPII vigorously championed.