Dean's World

People around the world are reacting to and pondering the death and life of Pope John Paul II — and so is the blogosphere. Here's a cross section of opinion. Links are NOT limited to only one viewpoint:

---The Talking Dog: "I'm sure many more eloquent than I will comment appropriately. Let's just say that John Paul II, longest serving pope of the 20th century and third longest of all time, was a towering figure, a man whose moral and rhetorical stature was just about as large as the post he held."

--Glenn Reynolds has (as expected) tons of links.

--Outside The Beltway'sLeopold Stotch:"There's a saying that it's hard to live as a Catholic, but it's easy to die as a Catholic. I'm fascinated by all the coverage of Pope John Paul II's death in that there is a serene peace among all the mourners; a faithful feeling of gratitude rather than a sense of loss. It's touching and quite beautiful."

--AmbiaBlog:"John XXIII and John Paul II. Two men who embodied, reflected, and influenced their diametrically opposed times. Each both riding and pushing the cultural wave — in opposite directions. Each surmounting the crest of world culture's great slosh left and then right. Two men who took the Church in drastic directions many rejoiced in and many decried. Two men you might vehemently disagree with, depending on who you are. Two men you cannot help but admire and love."

--Jeff Jarvis has a huge batch of links in his great roundup.

--Pejman Yousefzadeh:"This Pope was by no means perfect, but his example and words set people free. He should be praised and remembered generously for that legacy."

--Michelle Malkin has some excellent links here.

--Ann Althouse:"Such a well-lived life! Like Nina, I'm not Catholic. Still, I greatly admire the man. Hearing the news stories about him today and yesterday, I wondered if it was not the case that he was the greatest human being to have lived during my own lifetime. The world is a poorer place. "

--Americablog:"I still say the man started off real well, taking on the Soviets and all, then slowly became a rather nasty bigoted religious right clone responsible for the deaths of a lot of people. It's high-time that church cleaned house, and they won't. And they will grow increasingly irrelevant in developed countries as a result. This is no time to wax glorious over the real tragedies this Pope oversaw and did nothing about, from pedophilia in his midst to AIDS. His record was checkered, to put it nicely. Let's see if the media reports on that."

--Baldilocks:"It’s over, thank God. I hope that John Paul II is enjoying his reward."

--The always-thoughtful Donald Sensing analyzes the Pope's role in the fall of communism in great detail. A small tidbit from this post that must be read in full:

What he did, in conjunction with Walesa’s Solidarity movement, was de-legitimize the Polish government and lead, not exactly to its collapse, but to its growing inability to monopolize the political life of the nation. Once men like Walesa found political effectiveness outside the Party, communist rule there was doomed.

--Tom Watson:

Poet, author, diarist, commentator, reader, writer. Karol Wojtyla of Poland was a blogger at heart. And his Papacy earned early adopter status amidst the cobwebs and Latin scrolls of the Church. Hidebound to tradition in many ways, progressive in many others, Pope John Paul II embraced new technology to the fullest, and used the Internet as a tool for evangelism from its earliest days of consumer adoption. Not only was he the most traveled Pope, he was the most wired Pope, and he understood the power of the worldwide network of digital information and opinion.

--The MUSC Tiger:

A robust playwright, actor, and athlete in his youth, the Pope also set an example of how to live with courage and dignity in the face of disabling illness in his suffering through Parkinson’s Disease. His strength in the face of sickness and commitment to life in all its forms, including both the debilitated and the unborn, was unmatched.

Through all of this he never compromised his faithfulness to the teachings of Christ and the Bible. Yet his kinship with those who disagreed with him on subjects such as war or homosexuality shows us that it is all right to have honest disagreements among people of faith and, above all, it is that faith which should be respected.

--Dan Darling:"This is even more so for me personally, who got to see His Holiness from a distance at World Youth Day in Toronto in 2002, the same year I converted to Catholicism. Seeing him there, and seeing the enormous impact he had on the youth. He was clearly suffering even then, but the purity of his spirit shined through even then, not only for me but for all the thousands who had come from all over the world to see him."

--A MUST READ by Arthur Chrenkoff, whose piece also describes what it was like for him in Poland when John Paul II was selected

I was six when he was elected the Pope, but I can still remember first the disbelief and then the euphoria that after four and a half centuries of Italian pontiffs the cardinals have chosen an outsider, and not just any outsider but one of ours. His first trip to Poland as the Pope, in 1979, had energized our society, demoralized and worn out after more than three decades of shadow life in workers' paradise. When Solidarity erupted onto the world scene a year later (and in some ways, as a result of his visit), he let us know that he was with us.

--Bull Moose:"Pope John Paul II powerfully answered Stalin's rhetorical query, "How many divisions has the Pope?" This Pope's moral force helped trigger the downfall of Stalin's empire. His spiritual and moral divisions overwhelmed one of the two horrific tyrannies of the twentieth century....He was a source of inspiration to people of all faiths. And he was a courageous fighter for freedom. We desperately need more leaders, both spiritual and political, like him."

--John Cole:"The Pope has died, but his legacy will live forever."

--Mark Daniels:

As many commentators have pointed out today, his continued functioning as pontiff even as his health failed dramatically was a witness for the fact that even the most disabled and frail among us have value because all of us are created in the image of God.

John Paul II was not perfect. I disagreed with him on many points. But the world loved him--I loved him--because he was an authentic follower of Jesus Christ, whose genuine passion for God and the inestimable value of every child of God, all made us dream of what might be possible if, powered by the living Christ, we learned to love God with every fiber of our beings and love our neighbors as we love ourselves.

--The Old Whig (which is NOT William Shatner's website):"Nobody needs to come here to find out that Pope John Paul II was one of the great... To heck with that, he was the greatest figure of the 20th century....He, Walensa, Reagan, Thatcher and Vaclav Havel were the main characters who brought down the Soviet Union. Alexander Solzhenitsyn should be in that crowd too. I say the Pope was the greatest of these people..."

--Stirling Newberry:

It is perhaps the greatest gift for a man to die before his time is over, and John Paul II, his timing impeccable as always, has gone out at the top of the wave that he, himself, rode to power. He will be remembered to history as one of the popes that towered, not only over those who came before and after, but over most of the other leaders of his time. His ability to meld fundamentally incompatible ideas and forces, and revitalize the position of the Papacy mark him, along with a few others, as one of the greatest of popes. But pity the man who must follow one.

--Caliblogger:"While media outlets and speakers around the globe mourn his death I find my feelings about John Paul II rather more mixed. Certainly his accomplishments were many and important, most especially the credibility his support gave the anti-Communist movement in his native Poland. And while, unlike the Republican party, the Pope's commitment to a "culture of life" was vastly more self-consistent and defensible, I find the real-world results of his hard-nosed conservatism a good deal less so."

--Pennywit'sBat One:"There were only a handful of people intimately involved in the deliberate destruction of the Soviet empire. ...Nearly the last of the great conspirators, a young, exceptionally devout, and utterly fearless catholic priest from Poland who became Pope, now lies on his deathbed in the Vatican, about to account to his God for the life he has lived...Godspeed, Karol Jozef Wojtyla."

--The Glittering Eye:"Like all of the great there were those who loved him and those who hated him. Like all of the influential he was both supported and opposed. Tomorrow we can assess his legacy, measure his accomplishments, or count his failures. But for today we mourn our loss. A great man and a good man has died."

--Rooftop Report:"An amazing man, who led a life that inspired and helped millions, if not billions. R.I.P Karol Józef Wojtyła. Your spirituality will be missed by Catholics around the world and your humanity will be missed by all."

--Mark Noonan:"John Paul II taught us to adhere to the fundamental moral principles while engaging the world on its own terms, knowing that if you are right, the world will eventually follow. Yesterday I broke up a little upon hearing that the end was near, but today there is nothing but joy in my heart: God has called home his humble servant; a man He lent to us for a while to encourage and instruct us."

--Billmon's extensive analysis written just before the Pope's death is worth reading in full. A small part of it:

John Paul II spoke, if not always loudly, for economic justice and the needs of the poor. He was a courageous champion of freedom for those suffering under Soviet tyranny in Eastern Europe; less bold in condemning death squads and covert aggression in Central America. He opposed the death penalty and the War in Iraq. And he made a good faith effort (pun intended) to advance the church's painful reconcilation with its anti-Semitic past, despite considerable internal opposition.

On the other hand, John Paul II was a cipher, or worse, on most of what we here in the States would call the "social issues." His refusal to budge on Human Vitae — the low point of the post-Vatican II reaction — was particularly discouraging, as was his equally adamantine position on clerical celibacy. And of his attitude towards the gay and lesbian members of his human flock, there's little to say and less that's good.

--Kieran Healy's MUST READ on when the Pope visited Ireland.

--The inimitable James Wolcott, in a post before the death announcement, notes a fascinating fact about media coverage:

I've been hopping from cable channel to channel for hours while working--keeping the TV sound low--and it's been a procession of priest, priest, priest, priest, priest, priest--wall-to-wall white collars. Not a nun in sight, and barely a prominent Catholic laywoman. Some of the conversation touches on the ordination of women, the role of women in the church, the Pope's stand on abortion, but the conversation has been conducted almost exclusively among men.

--Carpe Bonum:"Defeating Communism with Reagan and Thatcher was just one of his many world-changing achievements."

--Steve Gilliard, in a long post, notes the scandals of child abuse in the church during the Pope's stint. Read it in its entirety. A small section 4 U:"Yet, in many ways, the Pope was such a social conservative, that facing these issues honestly was impossible. The Vatican had to be dragged into dealing with pedophile priests and encourage DA's to get reports of these criminal acts. No one Pope's reign can be judged by one issue, but this, the refusal to deal firmly and decisively with pedophilia and the harm it has caused to the church will last far longer than memories of his trips and his calls for peace."

--Secular Blasphemy:"I am no fan of Karol Joseph Wojtyla, a deeply conservative man, but one positive thing he leaves the world was his tremendous part in bringing down communism in Eastern Europe. That is something nobody can take away from his record. Now begins the official political process of electing a new pope. The unofficial positioning has been going on for a long time."

--DemRealists (excellent blog by college students):

Karol Wojtyla, the only pope I have ever known, has passed on to heaven, where he'll join my late grandfathers and the angels and saints in the company of God.

One of the most important things my faith has taught me in my short life is humility and John Paul II was the exemplary model of humility on earth. I think one of his greatest and most heroic acts during his papacy was when, two years after the assassination attempt on his life, he visited the jail cell of his assailant to offer forgiveness. How extraordinary and how telling.

--PaleoJudaica:"Few would have predicted then that the first non-Italian Pope in 455 years would throw off the stiff trappings of the papacy, travel the globe and leave an indelible mark on history.In over a quarter century on the world stage, he was both a champion of the downtrodden and an often contested defender of orthodoxy within his own church....A decade after witnessing the fall of communism, he fulfilled another of his dreams. He visited the Holy Land in March 2000, and, praying at Jerusalem's Western Wall, asked forgiveness for Catholic sins against Jews over the centuries."