Poping and praying

  There’s an old story about Joseph Stalin — probably apocryphal — in which the Soviet dictator was told that the Pope strongly objected to one of old Joe’s invasions or purges or various crushings of dissent.

Stalin’s reply, or so the story goes: “Screw the Pope. How many divisions does he have?”

Of course the RC church got the last laugh on Stalin, as his empire crumbled under the watchful eye of Pope John Paul II, for whom the fight against communism was a spiritual cause of the highest order. History will show that JP II was a key part of the dissolution of communism in general and the Soviet empire in particular, and rightly so.

(Both men, though, lived to ripe old ages, thus confirming that the Lord does indeed work in mysterious ways.)

After the mourning, grief and attendant media circus around John Paul II’s death fades, however, we’re left with some cold, hard, uncomfortable facts that a tough-minded pragmatist like Stalin would himself be quick to point out:

1) Under John Paul II’s watch — or non-watch, as is nearer the truth — the Roman Catholic Church engaged in a shameful cover-up of global proportions, turning a blind eye to repeated, massive pedophilia by its priests. I believe there is no worse sin than traumatizing children sexually. The Catholic church, and by definition its head, the Pope, Christ’s representative on earth, bear full responsibility for these awful acts and the subsequent cover-up.

The pedophile priest scandal is not only the reason I became an Episcopalian, but in my opinion one of the worst human tragedies in recent history. As undisputed head of the church, John Paul II was a key part of that tragedy, and we should not let that fact get swept under the rug with the inevitable white-washing of his career in the wake of his death.

2) Under John Paul II’s watch, tens of millions of Catholics around the world left the Roman Catholic Church entirely. If he were CEO of a corporation, his board would have pushed him out of the plane with a healthy golden parachute a long time ago. His stubborn adherence to old-school ways — oh, hell, let’s just go ahead and say it, his friggin’ misogyny — was a large part of the drastic drop-off in Catholic identification all over the world.

Except in Africa, where their numbers grew. Except in Africa, where a huge percentage of the population has HIV.

So what does the RC church do to show its gratitude to the Africans for sticking by them? Why, it renews its attack on condom use. In Africa, where everybody and his brother has AIDS. Brilliant.

3) Under John Paul II’s watch, the Roman Catholic Church became a strictly partisan group. Now, I’m not naive or stupid — I realize the RC church has been heavily involved in politics pretty much since Peter and the boys got together in that upper room. But never before in living memory has the RC church become so deeply involved in specific political campaigns, specifically endorsing one candidate over another.

The church’s decision to deny communion to John Kerry over abortion was another stain on the church’s already soiled robes. It was not a principled stand, either morally or spiritually; it was purely political and the church made little effort to hide that fact.

Communion was not denied to pro-choice Catholic Republicans, like Rudy Giuliani or Arnold Schwartzenegger. Nope. Just Kerry, the Democrat.

This kind of gutter politics is not only beneath a church, but beneath contempt entirely. I don’t know what John Kerry thinks about it, but as for me, I will always hold it against the Catholic church.

And this Schiavo thing — what can you say? What can you say when the Vatican injects itself into a purely political American domestic situation? At least Congress, when it did the same thing, had the excuse of being actually American. For the Vatican to involve itself in the Schiavo case made it, for all intents and purposes, just another loud and petty activist group making a cheap, short-term play for publicity. Sad, really.

So while of course the death of a Pope is always a time for mourning, reflection, and prayer, we also must remember that all God’s children go home to their father at one time or another.

JP II lived a long, active life and had an enormous impact — pro and con — on the world around him. We all should be so lucky.

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