The Pope and Politics

Today, the Roman Catholic Church's leader died.

Pope John Paul II was unquestionably a conservative in the very classic sense of the word. He took firm, absolute positions on many issues that were rooted in the oldest teachings of the Roman Catholic Church. Whether the topic was the ordination of women into the priesthood, contraception, divorce, family it didn't seem to matter. This Pope stood by the word and interpretation of the Catechism and Vatican II. Per se, I am not adverse to this, the Pope was doing exactly what I would expect a true conservative to do - preserve the way things are. Within the microcosm of the Roman Catholic Church, that's what he did.

Of course, in the intervening years of his papacy, many events have unfolded that suggest equally that some of that conservatism may have been misguided.

The uncovering of child molesting priests that had been shuttled from diocese to diocese among the most serious of the events to come to light. The Roman Catholic Church's apparent silence and complicity in this matter has deeply damaged the credibility of the moral high ground that the church is in theory supposed to represent.

The outbreak of AIDS in the late 1970s, and its spread into a generation killing pandemic in Africa is another deeply troubling aspect of the practical application of Church doctrine. The refusal to even allow medical practitioners in Roman Catholic sponsored hospitals to talk to patients about the safe use of condoms is reprehensible. It's all fine and dandy to talk about monogamy, abstinance and the like, but when the cultural reality that you are dealing with isn't working from those assumptions, your assumptions need to be reviewed - very carefully. That position alone is costing an entire continent a generation of its people, possibly more.

Combined with a history where the Church has a long record of acting in terms of its own beliefs and self interest without acknowledging where it has gone awry (e.g "forgiving" Galileo some 300 years later), or the condemnation of thousands in Europe to burning for "witchcraft" - a practice that in the cold light of history has more to do with power and the acquisition of wealth, which the Church has been suspiciously silent about.

When those in the Church hierarchy step forward and assert possession of some kind of moral high ground in the affairs of mankind today, I look over the history, and the failure in so many cases of the church to "come clean" - acknowledge both successes and errors - and I cannot help but wonder if those same people are not in fact speaking from a cynical desire for some kind of personal gain - political prominence, media attention, whatever.

In some of the Western democracies, there has been a rising movement to make the Church once again a prominent player in the politics of our nations. To say the least, this is deeply suspect, and highly problematic. The western nations are no longer homogenous (were they ever?) Canada and the US both face a time in the not too distant future where those of Western European descent will become population minorities. It would be the height of arrogance to assume that there is any true unity of belief once one gets beyond certain fundamentals such as freedom of speech and association.