Andrew Sullivan crushes Peggy Noonan for her praise of Pope John Paul II, who did little to stop sexual abuse of children

She is now comparing Pope John Paul II to Barack Obama in terms of leadership. Guess who wins! For some reason, she fails to acknowledge that under John Paul II, thousands of children were raped by members of the organization John Paul II ran, and the machinery he was in charge of not only failed to stop this, but actively perpetuated it and covered it up. Nowhere in her column does this come up – it’s yet another reality (like American torture) she wants to walk swiftly past (“Some of life has to be mysterious”). Noonan goes on to say:

Great leaders are clear, honest, suffer for their stands and are brave. They conduct a constant dialogue.

Whatever else one can say about the pontificate of John Paul II, the idea that it was about a constant dialogue is absurd. Under John Paul II and his orthodoxy-enforcer, Joseph Ratzinger, the scope for any dialogue within the church was essentially ended. Whole areas of theological debate were ruled impermissible; discussions about faith and morals were also discouraged and any hints of heterodoxy, i.e. thinking, were monitored and punished. John Paul II’s papacy was capable of detecting the most trivial form of theological dissent and punishing it relentlessly, while it found itself miraculously blind when it came to the endless rapes and abuse of children and adolescents that we know now were endemic.

This wasn’t leadership; it was the abdication of basic moral responsibility for the church John Paul II ran. And these were not only crimes of commission but also of omission. A monstrous figure like Marciel Macial was lionized by John Paul II even as he sold drugs, was a bigamist,  abused countless young men, and even raped his own son. Cardinal Bernard Law was rewarded for his own disgusting cover-up of child-rapists with a sinecure in Rome.

--Andrew Sullivan

Rightfully, hundreds of parents show up at the Charlotte Catholic High School after a nun stigmatizes gays during a student assembly

Imagine what those (closeted) gay students felt sitting there listening to this judgement and hatred of them. It boils my blood when I think about it!

Fortunately the Catholic Church leadership is beginning to realize that the laity is correctly rejecting its institutionalized homophobia, instead promoting Jesus' central teaching of love and acceptance of all God's children, LGBT included.

I recommend PBS Frontline's "Secrets of the Vatican": a searing look at the Church's financial and sex scandals, and other challenges faced by Pope Francis

Showing some backbone, Pope Francis demotes an extremely conservative and divisive American Cardinal

The genius of Pope Francis

I won't be at peace with the Catholic Church until gay people and women are accepted as full human beings by the church and birth control methods are okayed. However, I am glad to see a pope who is changing the tone of the Vatican and is beginning to express the true message of Christ: love, forgiveness, and service to the poor.  Read the words of Catholic commentator Raymond Arroyo who explains the reasons behind the popularity :

One is the great warmth, affection and magnetism of this man—Francis—and his willingness to allow the gospel to shape his ministry in a very profound and visual way. Additionally, the pressures of the culture we find ourselves in has, in a way, forced Catholics and Protestants together in a new way, where they realize that what divides them is far less than what unites them. … And when you hear a Pope stand up and talk about mercy, and forgiveness, and the broken hearts we all endure, and the need to push gossip aside and how destructive that can be in our lives, he’s getting down to the very granule level of faith that I think is appealing to the evangelical and Protestant mind. 

The thing that has always impressed me about my evangelical friends—my in-laws are evangelicals, by the way—is their deep concern for the people in the pews next to them. And their willingness to go out of their own comfort zones to help those in their own community. And if the mainline churches and Catholicism have a problem, it’s that at times we can get very isolated. And though we check the boxes, we’re going to mass, we’re living our lives and we’re trying to be good people, extending that into our everyday lives can be a problem. Francis is calling people to allow that message to go deeper and to have personal reverberations in their own lives. I think that’s what they’re finding most appealing. 

It’s also a very simple message. It’s a very blunt gospel, in some ways, which startles some people in the Catholic church. They go, “Wait a minute. What happened to the high theology? Where’s the graduate level exegesis here?” Francis isn’t that. I would argue that he’s boiling down the last two papacies with their the great messages and the intellectual heights that were scaled into a digestible message that the masses can absorb. And when I say “masses” I mean 99% of the people in the pews, whether they be Catholic or evangelical.

Dan Savage lets loose on Catholic leaders who condemn gay people who are parenting but protect priests who are child molesters

Pope Francis has a "revolutionary" agenda: supporting the spiritual practice of Catholics, withdrawing it from politics. Amen!

Andrew Sullivan continues to be surprised and amazed by this new pope, as do I. Here is Sullivan's latest take on the pontiff.

Last week, as the House Republicans held a gun to the country’s head, I failed to address yet another remarkable interview by Pope Francis, this time to the Italian journalist Eugenio Scalfari, who is an atheist, in La Repubblica. Like his America interview, I urge you to read it, whether you are an atheist, an agnostic, a believer or anything in between. I tried to absorb it all this weekend, and found it difficult. Difficult because it was so overwhelming in its power, and because I need time to pray and think some more about what he said. I mean, what can one say immediately about a Pope who can say:

Proselytism is solemn nonsense, it makes no sense. We need to get to know each other, listen to each other and improve our knowledge of the world around us.

Or this:

Heads of the Church have often been narcissists, flattered and thrilled by their courtiers. The court is the leprosy of the papacy.

Or this:

A religion without mystics is a philosophy.

Or this:

I say that politics is the most important of the civil activities and has its own field of action, which is not that of religion. Political institutions are secular by definition and operate in independent spheres.

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