The Anti-Pope

[bemildred]

The Two Faces of Pope John Paul II

The death watch is over now, and the courtiers and vultures have begun perching over Pope John Paul II's casket in search of more flashbulbs to capture their god-awful preening. You would think that now would be the time that we could discuss what John Paul accomplished in his life, and make some kind of comprehensive judgment. You'd be wrong.

Instead, five news channels have devoted around-the-clock coverage to interpreting for us the "legacy" of the late pope in the most saccharine manner imaginable. Newspapers and websites across America have been reaching deep into the well to find political commentators, journalists and professors who all have largely the same things to say: that Pope John Paul II was one of the greatest men in history.

It's not exactly journalism. It's still less history. It's public relations run wild. John Paul, we're told, was loved by young and old alike. Yes: journalists, trained in objectivity, are really juggling platitudes like that. A man in a clerical collar informs us on behalf of 800 million Hindus that the hell-bound pagans of India saw him as a "man of God." John Paul beat the Communists, flailed dictators and was a champion of human rights. He could also leap tall buildings in a single bound and catch bullets in his teeth... well, if given enough warning.

There are certainly criticisms which could be aired against any man, even one rendered luminescent by an aura of holiness. If we're going to seriously look at a man's legacy, or purport to do so, they have to be discussed. Hundreds of thousands of words are being poured out in single-minded praise of the late pontiff, and the slightest word of caution or reproach must be considered, for lack of a better term, blasphemous. What is being said and done now isn't journalism or history. It's mythmaking.

Sobaka