Faith for Pope John Paul was a lifestyle. It was a way of situating yourself in front of reality
TERRY Schiavo is history. Her husband, Michael, whom the media lynched as a heartless creature pulling the plug on his wife and forbidding his in-laws at her deathbed, must thank his lucky stars for a timely intervention from the Lord of the heavens.
A day after Terry died, Pope John Paul, it was announced, was “near death.”
The creme de la creme of our anchors exited sunny Florida and jetted off to Rome en route to the magnificent Vatican City, abandoning Terry on the autopsy table to be knifed and brain-probed proving she had been a vegetable for 15 years and that it was okay for Michael to ask the Florida courts to starve her to her death.
Still, it took Terry two weeks to die; her body denied food and water while her helpless parents sat by ...
Hours after the death of the pope, the CNN and its likes exalted the greatness of the man who had for 27 years shepherded the Catholic church around the world, never faltering, always a hero.
“So what should I tell the CNN about you when you die?” asked Monsignor Lorenzo Albacete of his old friend Pope John Paul. Pat came the pope’s reply, “how do you know that I’ll go first? But if I do, I hope you’ll say nice things about me!”
Albacete, a cheery professor of theology in New York, put a human face to a friend, he had known long before he became the pope. And sure enough, he was on CNN! “The curtain has dropped, his act is over, he played his part well,” said the professor, who has read Pope’s poetry and plays that he penned as a young man in Poland.
Who was this pope? Who were his parents? What did he do before being elected the pope? How was his transformation from a pauper to prince of the papacy?
As is the capricious way of the corporate media, it deifies the dead it wants to — sending them straight to heaven, but never actually dissecting their hearts and souls, stripping the varnish off to show the human face behind the high office. I guess if they did that, all the fun would go out, all the romance would evaporate ...
Viewers are so indoctrinated by the overdose that they often lose sight of reality, entering Neverland. And that’s where we were headed as soon as news of the pope’s death arrived, but for the timely airing of a documentary on the Millennial pope by Channel Thirteen, a public broadcast network, so refreshingly different from other TV offerings.
Surely, if the dead Terry Schiavo required her brain examined literally, shouldn’t the dead pope from Poland be put under the microscope, not clinically, but unemotionally?
Channel Thirteen gave the viewers a bold and fascinating glimpse of the man who called the last century the worst and the controversies that he raked up on his journey through the 20th century, spotlighting his character and beliefs, his fierce challenge to the modern world, especially the moral decadence of the West.
His parents named him Karol Wojtyla. He worked in a factory and was very poor.
People who knew the pope at various intersections of their lives and careers, assessed his legacy for the Catholic Church and the world — from his role in the fall of communism and his rapprochement with the Jews, to his respect of Islam, to his fierce opposition to contraception, abortion and married priests, to his views on women, the ‘culture of death’, and, his exhortation to faith in a secular age.
Fascinated, we watched an angry pope land in Nicaragua and scold a kneeling priest Ernesto Cardenal, many years ago, not to side with Marxism; we saw a politically correct pope punish another cleric Archbishop Romero from Salvador who threw his lot with “liberation theology” in a bid to fight the corruption and greed of the leaders. We witnessed Romero being gunned down and told that while the pope condemned his assassination, he never visited his grave before one year was over, so angry was he with the archbishop.
Horrific scenes from Salvador’s 1980’s war killing 3,000 each month, with cadavers clogging the streams, and tortured bodies thrown in garbage dumps suddenly confronted the unsuspecting TV viewers. Such graphic scenes only reinforced the pope’s let down of Romero, who had refused to ever attend a government function until the repression of the people was stopped.
While the pope fought communism in Poland returning home each time to tell his compatriots, “Don’t be afraid”, he stumbled in Latin America, remarked James Carroll, once a priest, now a writer: “This pope was needed on the side of the revolution there so it could be non-violent, it’s a tragedy he didn’t recognize it as such. And I can only understand his failure to do so because he applied it too narrowly to the lens of his own fight against communism.”
Channel Thirteen explored why John Paul set in motion a deliberate strategy to crush “liberation theology”, closing many institutions which had fostered it-seminaries, schools, some churches.
Monsignor Albacete (our CNN friend!) presented another side of the pope: his fierce belief in faith despite the horrors of the Holocaust and his personal tragedy. It softened the rough edges that the pope may have betrayed (as seen earlier on TV footage).
“He has had this faith while living miles from Auschwitz. How can one believe after that experience? How is it possible? Many years later something comes in, but even then to find sense in it is almost an insult to the victims (murdered Jews). Yet, this very sensitive poet and dramatist, this man lives miles from Auschwitz. That must be a constant torment. The pope has faced communist totalitarianism, has faced the intention to wipe his country and culture from history, and he has had to believe. As a little kid, his mother drops dead. His brother drops dead when he is 12 years old. I mean, how do you believe? He knows that belief is a profound struggle.”
Faith for him was a lifestyle. It was a way of situating yourself in front of reality, starting with your own self. It was a judgment, a position, and a stand that you take, with respect to everything. If you fail to take that stand then, at best, you are superficial. You have no depth, said Albacete.
Showing one’s physical and emotional suffering in public was the pope’s belief: that life comes from sharing in the sufferings of Christ on the cross. “So, suffering to him is not the ultimate challenge to faith, but the crucible where real faith is born ... where one’s humanity emerges in its greatness, in the ability to overcome suffering with hope and joy, and serenity and hope above all.”
Bent, trembling with Parkinson, drooling, staggering, mumbling ... viewers often saw these papal sights on TV, “the pope didn’t want anything hidden from the public.”
I recall the pope’s stinging attack on UN’s Population Fund (UNFPA) when it convened a population conference in Cairo. He singled out Pakistan-born Dr Nafis Sadik, the head of UNFPA, and told her not to advocate family planning.
He was also against use of condoms in prevention of Aids. We saw him visiting and solacing Aids victims in South Africa, still he stuck to his grounds against use of condoms.
Gloria Steinem, a women libber once said: “Television reveals character”. How true, watching Pope John Paul’s beautiful stillness when deep in conversation with God with a pained, contorted and twisted expression, as he cradles his face in his right hand, will forever image a man special to his Maker.
Faith for Pope John Paul was a lifestyle. It was a way of situating yourself in front of reality 
