"A Pope and His Critics"

"What the young people are responding to and the elites don’t get."

A fine article, including remarks on subversive traitors, by Michael Novak at NRO today:

.... The pope's great gifts as a professional philosopher and man of profound, almost mystical prayer life give a rare depth to his papal writings, which guarantees their durability over many generations. Catholic "progressives" in North America, however, will never forgive him. Among them, Pope John Paul II has many harsh critics, not to say sworn enemies. I have met two priests who say with some intensity that they pray every day for his speedy passage to God, so greatly do they resent his interpretation of Vatican II. Former priest James Carroll calls for the pope's resignation, and preposterously describes the pope's policies as "anti-reform-closed, secretive, dishonest, totalitarian." The reason is that "progressives" such as Carroll have developed their own legend about Vatican II. According to them, Vatican II repealed the strong papacy of Vatican I and even the Council of Trent, and gave the church in a revolutionary way to "the people of God." Power to the people! ....

The "progressives" will not forgive John Paul II because what they call sexual liberation the pope, in a quite well-founded, traditional way, regards as the tyranny of the libido, a form of slavery. Whereas they want eagerly to accept the norms of secular society on divorce, homosexual acts, premarital sex, and other pelvic desires, the pope stands with "the democracy of the dead," the voice of the faithful of the past, so many martyrs, so many lovers of chastity. That stand is an outrage to those who regard "Vatican II" as their own playpen, within which to do what they feel like doing. In their minds, "Vatican II" overturned everything unpleasant and challenging in the teaching of the Church. It liberated their desires. It made them feel liberated and modern. Among the most powerful and deepest of the pope's intellectual initiatives is the new, phenomenological foundation he has given "the theology of the body." "Progressives" avoid arguments at that depth. But it is exactly the unity that the pope sees between soul and body, the unity arising from our persons being thoroughly embodied, and our bodies being thoroughly pervaded by our personhood, that makes the pope's vision seem so "together." He looks at young people whole. He calls them to their wholeness. That is what young people are responding to....

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Fri. 07/26/02 03:54:24 PM
Categorized as Classic & Pope John Paul the Great.