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Pictures of John Paul Second and a Critical Assessment of his Pontificate

John Paul the Great!?

Twenty-five glorious years!  Where have they been living?  The planet Zog?  With the sordid details of the disintegration of the human element of the Church having been splashed across the world’s front pages for decades, isn’t it just a tad over the top to call these 25 years “glorious”?  While I would hardly expect a Catholic college to have heaped public criticisms on the aging pontiff at that point in time, I do wonder why sane men don’t see a need to observe at least a decent silence when it comes to such a disastrous pontificate.  Even the Pope himself just before his death had the good grace to question his own lack of governance over these same 25 years. He wasn’t a mere observer, after all; he was the man in charge of the debacle!

This is the “great” pope who gave us the cerebrally challenged Comic Murphy (condoms are okay) O’Connor as primate of England (A prelate so depraved that he was able to give his approval to a regular Mass in his diocese for practising sodomites!); the rascally careerist Keith (no problem with sodomite teachers) O’Brien as primate of Scotland and not to mention giving the renowned German heretic, Walter (doesn’t believe in the apostolic succession) Kasper, the Cardinal’s hat!  Pope John Paul the Second gave us a cringing decadent bureaucracy where once stood the noble courageous hierarchy of the Catholic Church.  We’ve endured a 25-year-long ecclesiastical nightmare, marked by spiritual annihilation, church closings, sex scandals and a mass exodus of nuns and religious from the Catholic landscape. We can no longer ignore the fact that the American priesthood and episcopacy has become a hotbed of predatory sodomites, thanks in large measure to the laxity of that same decadent bureaucracy and their “new and improved” seminaries, all of course imbued with the “reforms” of Vatican II.

Humanly speaking, the Church has been dragged to the brink of collapse during the 25 years of Pope John Paul II’s reign.  As one who prayed for Pope John Paul regularly, I ask what “glorious” goings-on are we talking about?  Trips to Denver?  Verbose encyclicals that very few Catholics can be bothered to slog through and even fewer understand - and almost all the clergy ignore?  Altar girls?  Communion in the hand?  Bob Dylan concerts inside the Vatican?  The Assisi scandals?  Heretical loons such as the self-styled “Archbishop” of Canterbury invited to participate in the opening of the Holy Door? 

Or is it the fact that the Vicar of Christ, the Successor of St. Peter, the visible head of the Catholic Church doesn’t approve of abortion?  Have we sunk so low into the cesspool of mediocrity that even merely being pro-life - a given for any genuine Catholic - is now deemed a mark of greatness?

The governing policies of Pope John Paul 2’s pontificate have failed, and history will record that failure. It’s not a matter of opinion; every available statistic and indicator heavily underscores it.  No matter how much we loved him, it simply cannot be denied that the Church on Pope John Paul the Second’s watch went from bad to disastrous. He traveled the globe and said many good things, but he relaxed discipline and refused to govern. Up to the day he died he was still promoting the same old hackneyed policies that have brought the human element of the Church to a grinding and embarrassing halt.  He praises the failed Second Vatican Council ad nauseam; lauded the disastrous ecumenical debacle; waxed rhapsodic about the diabolical liturgical revolution which has left millions spiritually marooned because it produced a liturgy which even his then right-hand man, Cardinal Ratzinger, called a “fabrication, a banal on-the-spot product”.  Catholic churches closed by the dozen, the well of priestly vocations fast running dry, children no longer taught how to say a Hail Mary in most Catholic schools (let alone their catechism), Sunday Mass attendance numbers plummeted, and John Paul was utterly at sea as to what to do about it all - except schedule yet another trip somewhere.

And unbelievably, the smothering permafrost that was exterminating the Catholic world was, for Pope John Paul, a “new springtime”!  In a time of devastation of the vineyard, what could be more horrendous for Catholics than to look to the Pope - to Peter himself - and see a wandering idealist, muttering about his visions from the 60s and seeing spring where there is nothing bar nuclear winter?

Some will argue, this frozen tundra wasn’t his entire fault.  Yet a little while before he died, Cardinal Law, the overseer of the most egregious priest/sex scandal cover-up in history, slipped American jurisdiction and sought sanctuary in Rome.  This bizarre prelate was welcomed with open arms and given a comfortable and prestigious Roman position by none other than Pope John Paul 2nd himself!  Would it have been possible for the pope to signal his personal indifference to his children spiritual welfare any more clearly?

John Paul II has either contributed mightily to the auto-destruction or he did absolutely zero to stop it - either way, what on earth are we celebrating?  But good and decent Catholics look at the same madness, the same reality, the same naked emperor and the same overwhelming evidence and say: “Hey, let’s celebrate this glorious epoch and the man who oversaw the whole bloody fiasco”!