from OC Weekly: Pope Was A Moral, Abject Failure When It Mattered

EX CATHEDRA: A Moral, Abject Failure When It Mattered
Pope John Paul II, 1920-2005
by GUSTAVO ARELLANO

Let’s cut the beatitudes: Pope John Paul II was a moral, abject failure when it mattered.

Screw his ecumenical efforts. Never mind his opposition to communism. Forget his apologies for the horrors that the Roman Catholic Church inflicted upon so many of the world’s innocent throughout two millennia. All those “breakthroughs” were inevitable, none of them particularly revolutionary, the media spectacles surrounding each vanity and striving after the wind.

Pay attention to the times when the pope, who died on April 2, had the opportunity to right the Catholic Church in the here and now. Pay attention to the Americas. In two of the more profound matters to affect Roman Catholicism during his 25-year reign—the struggle of liberation theology in Latin America during the 1980s and the sex-abuse scandal in the United States—the man born Karol Wojtyla did worse than nothing: he comforted the comfortable and afflicted the afflicted. (more)

YES! Someone who has it right. Far from being a great pope or even a decent human being, Pope John Paul II was a protector of the strong, a denier of the truth, and a defender of the guilty. In other words, an average, TYPICAL pope. No saint. No great leader. No different. Comparisons to a true holy man like Pope John the 23rd border on obscenity. And poor gentle John Paul the First who never got the chance to save his church from the likes of Popes Pius and JP II, well, he must spinning in his grave.