(no subject)

I have a few fragments swirling around trying to form coherent thoughts about John Paul II , but they're not quite there yet. (I was raised a Catholic although I don't currently identify as one, and my education is courtesy of the School Sisters of St. Francis, the Sisters of Mercy, and the Jesuits, so it would be hard to not have some thoughts about the topic, eh?) In the meantime, I point you at this: Shoes of the Fisherman

You have to have a certain respect for an organization that has managed to retain the loyalty and deep affection of millions of human beings for almost two millennia, despite its own enormous flaws. Like an ancient olive tree, one which often appears completely bleached and dead from the outside, the church keeps sending out new moral shoots every so often: the Catholic Worker movement, Vatican II, liberation theology. John Paul didn't do much to tend these shoots, but he didn't, and couldn't, make them disappear entirely -- because they grow from the church's deepest longings for fellowship and justice.

If all this sounds like an extended apologia for the Catholic Church, I suppose it is. After the disgraceful way some -- but only some -- church leaders behaved during the Terri Schiavo nightmare, this may seem undeserved. But, like I said, there's something about the historical depth of human experience that Catholicism represents that commands my respect, even if the church's behavior doesn't always earn my admiration.

As the church moves through the ancient rituals of succession, I'll be watching closely -- to see whether the old graybacks in the College of Cardinals can transcend their own limitations and produce a pope like John XXIII, or whether the reactionaries will, as usual, have the upper hand and the kind of papacy that goes with it.

The answer may not determine the fate of the church -- for a 2,000-year-old institution, what's another CEO, more or less? But it will go a long way towards telling me whether I should, on balance, regard that ancient institution as an ally or an enemy of the moral values I believe in.