Evaluating John Paul II

I have a big problem with the idea that when someone dies, we should only say nice things about him/her. This is the time when history is written in the minds of a generation. Kids too young to remember all the bad shit that Reagan pulled now think he was a swell guy, the "most popular president in modern history", cuz that's what the MSM kept repeating in the days after his death.

Yet, lately even liberals who are harshly critical of misogyny when it's displayed by, say, Snoop Dogg, think that since it's the dead pope, we should let it slide. To this I say, "Hooey!"

Some people have developed the mistaken notion based on his anti-war and anti-poverty statements that John Paul II was "progressive". These people have forgotten what a progressive pope or a truly progressive catholic looks like. John Paul I was progressive! Perhaps that's why he was (quite possibly) murdered. Being to the left of the Christian Right in America does not make someone "progressive". It makes someone "not completely evil and insane." Hey, isn't the Pope supposed to be the holiest guy on the planet? Shouldn't we hold him to a higher standard than "not completely evil and insane"? Being anti-war and anti-poverty should be a given.

Some people have responded "okay he was bad on sex and gender, but he was good on other stuff, right?" I say, by alienating the women, queers, and liberals, JP2 drove them from the church. Thus, JP2 has ensured that the church will remain strongly conservative for the forseeable future. Remember that women are 51% of the population. Many of the people who would be the Daniel Berrigans and Dorothy Days of today no longer feel they have a place within the catholic church.

Now, this isn't meant to suggest he didn't do a few things right. Sure, he hastened the fall of communism (although his knee-jerk opposition to anything vaguely Marxist-sounding, a product of his youth in Poland, led him to squash the liberation theology movement in Latin America). And he did take a firm stance against capital punishment.

Still from a global/historical perspective, a basic statement against a war that the international community already declared unjust and unnecessary doesn't make someone a wide-eyed liberal loony. It just makes him not completely evil and insane.