Goodbye, Karol Wojtyla, Pope John Paul II
Apr. 2nd, 2005 01:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
erikredRIP.
I remember when you became Pope, and so many of us Catholics were convinced that you were going to change the Church for the better. We wrote you letters when you came to the United States. I had a scrap book of your visit. I once even considered joining Opus Dei through the Boy Scouts because of you. On some level, I hoped to hear you say Mass at St. Peter's, but then I went apostate, and it just didn't seem as important anymore.
You were the Pope of my teens, the symbol of the religion I forsook, and later simply the head of an immensely influential organization that espoused beliefs and tenets that I abhorred. But all of this ignores that you brought closer ties between Roman Catholics and the Eastern Orthodox Church, between Roman Catholicism and Judaism and Islam, and that under your watch so many more non-Italians rose to positions of influence in the Church than ever did before. You never forgot Lech and Solidarity, and you helped the Church to look beyond its traditional borders.
I hope that you are with your God, and I hope you receive the welcome that you deserve, whatever that may be.
And now I hope, with little hope of it happening, that the Church will embrace a reformer and enter the 21st century. All eyes to the chimney, please, and look for the white smoke.
I remember when you became Pope, and so many of us Catholics were convinced that you were going to change the Church for the better. We wrote you letters when you came to the United States. I had a scrap book of your visit. I once even considered joining Opus Dei through the Boy Scouts because of you. On some level, I hoped to hear you say Mass at St. Peter's, but then I went apostate, and it just didn't seem as important anymore.
You were the Pope of my teens, the symbol of the religion I forsook, and later simply the head of an immensely influential organization that espoused beliefs and tenets that I abhorred. But all of this ignores that you brought closer ties between Roman Catholics and the Eastern Orthodox Church, between Roman Catholicism and Judaism and Islam, and that under your watch so many more non-Italians rose to positions of influence in the Church than ever did before. You never forgot Lech and Solidarity, and you helped the Church to look beyond its traditional borders.
I hope that you are with your God, and I hope you receive the welcome that you deserve, whatever that may be.
And now I hope, with little hope of it happening, that the Church will embrace a reformer and enter the 21st century. All eyes to the chimney, please, and look for the white smoke.
