John Paul II: Unfit for Sainthood

Last weekend to my utter disgust the late Pope John Paul II was beatified in what can only be viewed as a political move within the Roman Catholic Church to silence critics of both John Paul II and his equally reactionary successor, Benedict XVI, a/k/a the Nazi Pope or God's Rottweiler. I suspect that with a more distant view of history in the future, both Popes will be viewed as having set the stage for the continued collapse of Catholicism in the developed world and the relegation of Catholic Church authority to backward uneducated nations principally in Africa. The ruling of Brazil's Supreme Court this week shows that even in South America the Catholic bishops can be ignored with impunity by the civil governments and the court systems. Yes, separation of church and state justify that result, but the continued moral bankruptcy of the Church hierarchy as embodied in John Paul II and Benedict XVI makes it all the easier for civil authorities to ignore the anti-gay, anti-woman mantra of the bitter old men in dresses at the Vatican and in bishoprics around the world - at least in nations where the populace have some degree of education. A column in the Los Angeles Times looks at the unfitness of John Paul II for sainthood. Here are some highlights:
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On Sunday, an estimated 1.5 million people crowded into St. Peter's Square and surrounding streets to celebrate the beatification of Karol Wojtyla, who as Pope John Paul II reigned for more than a quarter of a century as pontiff of the Roman Catholic Church.
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Beatification is the penultimate step in the process that confers sainthood, and the church has suspended its normal rules to accelerate John Paul II's elevation to that honor.
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Those Catholics attentive to the substance of John Paul II's pontificate and legacy — as embodied in the reign of his longtime collaborator, Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI — tend to be divided on Sunday's ceremony. The two pontiffs' admirers see them as heroic figures who have restored traditional notions of sanctity and moral authority. Those with reservations see them as reactionaries bent on restoring a hollow and corrosive authoritarianism.
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As the dissident Swiss theologian Hans Kung told the Frankfurter Rundschau: "John Paul II is universally praised as someone who fought for peace and human rights. But his preaching to the outside world was in total contrast with the way he ran the church from inside, with an authoritarian pontificate which suppressed the rights of both women and theologians.... Wojtyla and Ratzinger are the people most responsible for the chronic sickness of today's Catholic Church."
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Part of that sickness, of course, stems from the sexual abuse scandals that continue to be revealed in one country after another, and to flare anew. There is little doubt that John Paul II was obtuse and derelict in his handling of the crisis, perhaps because, as his defenders argue, sexual misconduct charges were so frequently fabricated against clerics by communist authorities in his native Poland. Still, difficult questions remain about his close association — and that of members of his household — to moneyed sexual predators like the now-disgraced founder of the Legionaries of Christ.
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Equally troubling are continuing attempts to bring the church's theologians and more outspoken bishops to heel . . . . Many Catholics worry about a Vatican that fires an Australian bishop for speaking in favor of ordaining women and married men, but declines to act against a Belgian prelate who unapologetically admits to molesting young boys.