John Paul 11: another RWDB?

We’ve all been inundated with information and opinion on the late pope over the past few days, almost all of it tending towards hagiography. The greatest pope in centuries, bestriding the world like a colossus, single-handedly bringing down the Berlin wall and the whole of European communism, repairing relations with Judaism and other religions, an inspiration to the poor and downtrodden everywhere, the great stabiliser of the catholic faith in degenerating times, a man of enormous personal courage, magnetism, complexity, simplicity, indefatigability, indomitability, humility, compassion, humanity, warmth and love.
I have to admit that this great tide of positivity did have an eroding effect for a while on my usual timid and beleaguered independence of judgement, and I clung gratefully to the scraps of criticism here and there re his uncompromising attitude towards homosexuality, women, abortion, religious radicalism. I noted with relief too that the adulators tripped over themselves badly in following their approving comments on J P’s insistence that the Church should not be meddling with politics in Latin America and elsewhere, with more approving comments regarding his decidedly political stand against the communists of Europe. However, this morning’s ‘Religion Report’ on Radio National has helped to crystallise my more critical position as well as bringing a lot of new evidence to bear.
The program aired an interview with Peter Hebblethwaite, a renowned Vatican watcher and historian, just before his death back in 1994, who presented another side to John Paul 11, an authoritarian conservative side as displayed in his encyclical letter of 1993, Veritatis Splendor (which basically, through the philosophical and ‘spiritual’ waffle, preaches obedience, presumably to the Church, which has the ‘burden’ of ‘recalling always and to everyone the demands of morality’, morality meaning of course Church doctrine). Hebblethwaite pointed out the biased nature of J P’s political interventions, undermining supposedly ‘left-wing’ dictatorships as in Poland, but refusing to countenance uprisings against right-wing dictators as in Nicaragua, not so much because he had sympathy for such dictators but because the Marxist rhetoric of some of the rebels in Latin America was beyond the pale for him. His hatred and fear of godless Marxism over-rode his concern for the downtrodden. Perhaps this can be forgiven, considering his personal history and his dogmatic faith, but another commentator, William Johnston, is even more critical, particularly in his analysis of J P’s dictatorial methods of enforcing obedience, which, he claims, were methods taken from the very oppressors J P struggled against throughout so much of his life. Publicly humiliating key dissenters so as to frighten others into submission, stacking the inner circle with dutiful yes men, increasing the use of loyalty tests, narrowing his vision of the righteous life more and more as he grew older, J P, in Johnston’s view, became increasingly the kind of controlling and intrusive bureaucratic presence that blighted the lives of Eastern Europeans for decades. And this conservative throttling of the Church will continue for some time yet, due to J P’s painstaking weeding out of liberal elements within the Vatican. Of course, I personally don’t give a flying fuck about the political machinations or indeed the underlying dogmas of the Holy Roman Catholic and Apostolic Church, but it exerts an undue influence over millions of poor people, and I’d hate to see their lives blighted by the pontificating pronouncements of a bunch of misogynistic male superannuated cross-dressers in their archetypical ivory tower.
Congrats anyway to Radio National for sailing courageously against the wind, even before the old fella’s been laid to rest.