Reply #6: While I salute the Holy Father for his general support of peace [View All]

[Ken Burch]

and social justice(and his opposition to the death penalty)I personally have been greatly disturbed by his longstanding and extreme opposition to women's equality in the Church and his determination to suppress and silence dissidents in the Catholic intellectual world(his treatment of Hans Kung, for example).

Also I find it greatly regrettable that, while he called for justice for the world's poor, he did everything he could to suppress and destroy the Liberation Theology movement within Catholicism that had greater promise than anything else for emancipating "the wretched of the Earth."

His opposition to the Sandinistas and to virtually all movements of the poor and the workers in Central America also was unfortunate, in my view.

I did like it that he gave Dylan a papal audience though. And he was probably the keenest thinker of any Bishop of Rome in recent memory.

He'll be missed, but hopefully the next Pope will allow more breathing space and intellectual life within the Church.