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25 Glorious Years

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 a tad overdone to call the past 25 years "glorious"? While I would hardly expect a Catholic college to heap 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 that disastrous pontificate. Even the Pope himself had the good grace to question his own lack of governance over those same 25 years. He wasn’t a mere observer, after all; he was the man in charge of the debacle!

This is the pope who has given us a cerebrally challenged comedian and a rascally careerist (in the UK) and a renowned German public heretic, as cardinals! This is the pope who has given us a decadent bureaucracy where once stood the noble 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 priesthood has become a hotbed of sodomites, thanks in large measure to the laxity of that same decadent bureaucracy and their "new and improved" seminaries, all imbued with the "reforms" of Vatican II of course.

To quote Pat Buchanan, "Vatican II has been an unmitigated disaster for Roman Catholicism. Four decades of devastation wrought upon the Church, and the final disgrace, a hierarchy that lacked even the moral courage of the Boy Scouts to keep the perverts out of the seminaries, and throw them out of the rectories and schools of Holy Mother Church."

Humanly speaking, the Church has been dragged to the brink of collapse over these 25 years. As one who prayed for Pope John Paul regularly, I ask what "glorious" accomplishments 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 the fact that the Vicar of Christ, the Successor of St. Peter, the visible head of the Catholic Church doesn’t approve of abortion? Surely we haven’t sunk so low into the cesspool of mediocrity that even merely being pro-life - a given for a true Catholic - is deemed a mark of greatness.

The governing policies of JP2's pontificate have failed, and history will record that failure. It’s not a matter of opinion; every available statistic and indicator heavily underlines it. No matter how much we love him, it simply cannot be denied that the Church on Pope John Paul’s watch went from bad to disastrous. He traveled the globe and said many good things, but he also relaxed discipline and refused to rule. Even now he’s still promoting the same hackneyed policies that have brought the human element of the Church to a grinding, embarrassing halt. He praises the failed Second Vatican Council ad nauseam; lauds the disastrous ecumenical debacle; waxes rhapsodic about the diabolic liturgical revolution which has left millions spiritually marooned because it produced a liturgy which even Cardinal Ratzinger calls a "fabrication, a banal on-the-spot product". Catholic churches closed by the dozen, the well of priestly vocations is fast running dry, children no longer are taught how to say a Hail Mary in most Catholic schools (let alone their catechism), Sunday Mass attendance numbers plummet.. and John Paul seems utterly flummoxed as to what to do about it - except schedule yet another trip somewhere.

And incredibly, the smothering permafrost that’s exterminating the Catholic world was, for Pope John Paul, a "new springtime!" In a time of devastation such as this, what could be more terrifying 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 but nuclear winter.

Some will argue, this frozen tundra isn’t all his fault. Yet towards the end of his reign, Cardinal Law, the overseer of the most egregious priest/sex scandal cover-up in history, was promoted to a comfortable and prestigious Roman position by none other than Pope John Paul himself! Would it be possible for this pope to signal his personal utter lack of concern for his children any more clearly?

He has either contributed mightily to the auto-destruction or he did absolutely nothing to stop it - either way, what are we celebrating? But good and decent Catholics, look at the same madness, the same reality, and the same overwhelming evidence and say: "Hey, let’s celebrate this glorious epoch and the man who oversaw the whole bloody fiasco"!

This article was adapted from an article in the Remnant