He’ll be missed...



Over the last few weeks, I found myself wanting to write something about the Pope.

I probably don’t strike many people as the most religious guy. It’s the rather liberal, healthy sprinkling of profanity during the course of my conversation no doubt. I imagine though, the main thing I picked up from all those years of a Catholic upbringing, besides the healthy dosage of Catholic guilt (which could give Jewish guilt a run for its money any day), is a person’s religion isn’t something to force upon others or to carry around like a banner proclaiming one’s faith to the world. Such displays seem vainglorious and inappropriate.

Anyway, over the last few weeks I’ve watched the various news reports about the Pope’s failing health and I found myself feeling really bad. In my more private moments, I prayed for an ease to the man’s suffering. We live in a strange society where life is valued but, while we have the tools to prolong life, our tools don’t necessarily allow us to improve its quality.

Now, I haven’t stepped into a church in a long time. Part of that is the fear of the divinely inspired bolt of lightening with my name on it arriving as I cross the threshold into a church. More likely, there it’s also the disagreement with some of the church’s stances. In any event, the one thing I didn’t have a problem with was the Pope.

Yeah, the Pope wasn’t about to do things most American Catholics would like him to do, like ordaining women or married men into the preisthood but, he did come across as a ‘cool guy.’ Maybe the best analogy would be an older relative who wouldn’t always agree with you but, had a solid moral center and wanted nothing but the best for you. In a lot of ways, he always tried to make the world a better place and ultimately that was enough.

The world that Pope John Paul II was ordained Pope into was a very different one than the world we live in today. Terms like MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction), the Iron Curtain, the Soviet Bloc which were so common, so consuming don’t exist anymore and his being Pope had something to do with it.

So, before I go on for too long - I looked around trying to find something which would just be nice as some acknowledgement and I came across John Paul’s letter to artists:

Society needs artists, just as it needs scientists, technicians, workers, professional people, witnesses of the faith, teachers, fathers and mothers, who ensure the growth of the person and the development of the community by means of that supreme art form which is “the art of education.” Within the vast cultural panorama of each nation, artists have their unique place. Obedient to their inspiration in creating works both worthwhile and beautiful, they not only enrich the cultural heritage of each nation and of all humanity, but they also render an exceptional social service in favour of the common good.

The particular vocation of individual artists decides the arena in which they serve and points as well to the tasks they must assume, the hard work they must endure and the responsibility they must accept. Artists who are conscious of all this know too that they must labour without allowing themselves to be driven by the search for empty glory or the craving for cheap popularity, and still less by the calculation of some possible profit for themselves. There is therefore an ethic, even a “spirituality” of artistic service, which contributes in its way to the life and renewal of a people. It is precisely this to which Cyprian Norwid seems to allude in declaring that “beauty is to enthuse us for work, and work is to raise us up.”

All in all, I think Karol Wojtyla made the world a better place and the next guy to follow his act will have some big shoes to fill. His biography can be found here.