Of Gods and Men
By now of course, there are few people left on earth who don't know that Pope John Paul II has died. I guess I'm far too cynical and pragmatic to be truly affected by this. To start with, I am an atheist, which sort of kills the romantic notions of faithfulness. I can't weep for the only pope I've ever known (John Paul II was elected just a mere 6 1/2 weeks before I was born), I can't wail. I can only really pay some heed to a good sort of man.
I disagreed strongly with his social conservatism as I felt that a celibate man really had no right to dictate to millions of people how to handle their private affairs, but I have to admire someone who's held on to his beliefs as strongly as I do to mine.
But with the pope's passing, there is a danger that a far more conservative pope could be elected out of the conclave, and that's a scary prospect. I think what got John Paul II so much fanfare was that he seemed like a genuinely likable guy, and people could sort of forgive his tough social agenda. Will the next pope have that kind of charisma? Could he yield the same results? We'll have to wait and see, though I'm not optimistic about this dramatic public shift towards Old Testament religiosity.
posted by Fancy C. Poitras @ 12:14 PM
3 comments
3 Comments:
Chris and I had a discussion about JP2 and I must say I agree with him: Let's hope they vote in a most extreme and unforgiving conservative pope who even further makes people aware of the discrepancy between current moral values and archaic ones from several millenia ago. We need someone who chamions taking away women's rights (you want a job, pah, your main aspiration should be to mother more catholics), condemns birth control and means to stem the tide of HIV/AIDS. Only then, when people are dying, sick and in agony, and the church has no recourse to help them, will people be angry enough to demand a systemic change to religion, or, better yet, abandon such a debilitating notion of goodness.
Chris would also like to elect *me* as pope because I'd change things fast enough.
I disagree with Chris's assessment though. A hardliner would only validate the current swing towards Old Testament Catholicism and in today's world where Politics and Religion make strange bedfellows, you end up with a motto something along the lines of "Devotion and compassion...but only to those who can pull themselves up by their boot straps."
Hardliners will only continue to raise hardliner children and so on. The Church has survived this long precisely because it can always count on the poor devout, not the rich elite, to pass on it's social agenda. As long as there are poor people with deep faith, the Church will remain a powerful player in the world.
Good point. Still, I would hope that eventually the poor would realize that the teachings of this relgion don't mesh well and acknowledge the reality of their lives. How many people claim to be Catholic but nonetheless use birth control, etc.? A hardline return to older mores should shock people out of belief and faith, and subsequently spur on social progress (hey, it's sort of what happened in Europe) but I think that you as a pope would work well, too. If only you could do something about that whole "being a woman" thing (and, you know, not believing in god)...
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