Must the Catholic church dehumanise John Paul II to make him a saint?

[rug]

Sadly, the process of canonisation seems to require stripping the former pope of his personality, to fit the sterile mould of a saint

Sophia Deboick
theguardian.com, Thursday 24 April 2014 06.30 EDT

When John Paul II is canonised on Sunday, it will be as much a result of his own actions on earth as any heavenly intercession. In streamlining the canonisation process during his pontificate, reducing the number of miracles required to prove that the candidate is reliably in heaven (all that canonisation amounts to), John Paul unwittingly made it possible for himself to be made a saint a mere nine years after his death. Two miracles – the apparent cure of a French nun from Parkinson's disease and of a Costa Rican woman from a brain aneurysm – were sufficient for both canonisation and the extension of the PR value of this most charismatic of popes well into the 21st century – a century that, until the election of Pope Francis, seemed to be without any spark of vitality for the Catholic church.

In reality, the former Karol Józef Wojtyła is a saint already in the popular imagination, and this canonisation is the formalisation of a process of idolisation common to many "secular saints". But like any celebrity, John Paul's popular representation is contested, fluid and controversial.

At the outset of his 300-page take-down of John Paul, The Pope in Winter, John Cornwell could not help but fully acknowledge the very real human qualities of this "man of rare depth of soul, an evangelist of tireless energy", well deserving of the sobriquet "Karol the Great". Playwright, actor, footballer, outdoorsman, linguist, traveller, priest, theologian, ecumenicist, international statesman, and radical reformer of the papacy, John Paul was dynamism itself.

Yet, the colossal "Nie lękajcie się!" ("Do not be afraid!&quot John Paul II Centre still being built on the outskirts of Krakow is hardly a fitting tribute to the man who stood in Warsaw's Victory Square in 1979 and pronounced that phrase to hundreds of thousands of his countrymen, soon to see a year and a half of martial law and a decade of tumult. Here it is clear that, even before his canonisation, John Paul is already undergoing a process of stripping away of individuality to fit the pre-cast mould of the saint – benevolent, unearthly and one-dimensional – and this process may be seen in his wider popular representation too.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/belief/2014/apr/24/catholic-church-john-paul-ii-saint-pope-canonisation

[Fortinbras Armstrong]

1. I am no fan whatsoever of John Paul II

He seemed to think that he had all the answers, and I believe that many of his answers were wrong. His Mulieris Dignitatem -- "The Dignity of Women" is a quite sexist document, and clearly written by a man who had little knowledge of actual women. It proclaims the equality of men and women, while simultaneously saying that women are unfit to be priests. In other words, women are not equal to men.

He was notorious for not listening to dissenting voices. Vatican II's Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, Lumen Gentium says in section 25,

[T]hrough the light of the Spirit of truth, [revelation] is scrupulously preserved in the Church and unerringly explained. The Roman pontiff and the bishops, by reason of their office and the seriousness of the matter apply themselves with zeal to the work of enquiring by every suitable means into this revelation and of giving apt expression to its contents; they do not, however, admit any new public revelation as pertaining to the divine deposit of faith.

This requires that the Pope and the bishops use "every suitable means" to discover the revelation affirmed in the faith of the believing community. This faith is embodied in the Scriptures, in the writings of the Church fathers, in the prayers of the liturgy, the teachings of councils, and the living convictions of the baptized. It is not enough for Church leaders to pray, to reason, to reflect, and to remember. It is necessary to inquire. John Paul did not listen to any voice which did not agree with his.

He attempted to whitewash Pius XII's refusal to denounce the Holocaust while it was going on. In 1998, the Vatican put out a document, We Remember: A Reflection on the Shoah, which does not even acknowledge that there is a controversy about what Pius did or did not do; even though the only thing he himself could point to was a single rather ambiguous paragraph in his Christmas address in 1943. We Remember divides German Catholics into two groups: Those who opposed the Holocaust completely, and those who did not oppose it enough. Nowhere is mentioned a third group: Those who acquiesced. It glosses over the long history of anti-Semitism in the Catholic Church, saying

Despite the Christian preaching of love for all, even for one's enemies, the prevailing mentality down the centuries penalized minorities and those who were in any way "different". Sentiments of anti-Judaism in some Christian quarters, and the gap which existed between the Church and the Jewish people, led to a generalized discrimination, which ended at times in expulsions or attempts at forced conversions. In a large part of the "Christian" world, until the end of the 18th century, those who were not Christian did not always enjoy a fully guaranteed juridical status.

No, We Remember is a fundamentally dishonest document.

I could give other examples, but I have other things to do this morning.