ST. JOHN PAUL II

4/27/11

Pope John Paul II will be beatified, the last step before canonization, on May 1, only five yeas after the Pope’s death on 4/2/05. This “fast track” to sainthood has drawn some criticism, especially since the decision to fast track the former Pope was made by those who were personally, theologically, and professionally close to John Paul II, most notably his successor, Pope Benedict XVI who, as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, was Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, John Paul’s, for lack of a better term, doctrinal and theological enforcer.

The criticism of the haste with which all this is taking place concerns John Paul’s shortcomings, which center around his handling of the clergy sex abuse scandal, and its cover-up, which rocked the Church through the latter years of John Paul’s papacy and continue to this day. Most salient of these shortcomings, according to critics, were John Paul’s handling of Cardinal Law, who was given a lavish and well compensated sinecure in Rome after decades of covering up the clergy sex abuse scandal in Boston and his handling of the Legionaries of Christ, a conservative religious order that John Paul held up as a model of Catholic orthodoxy while its leader and founder, Marcial Maciel, was committing what the Vatican, under Pope Benedict, would call “true crimes,” primarily involving sexual abuse and leading what the same Vatican would call “an immoral” life “devoid of scruples and authentic religious sentiment.” No one is accusing John Paul of being aware of Maciel’s various perversions. The argument is that the Pope should have looked a little harder before so vociferously singing the praises of Maciel and holding him up as a shining example of orthodox Catholicism.

Some have argued that the John Paul’s failings on the sex abuse scandal have their roots in his having been raised and spent his pre-papal priesthood in Poland, where the Communist rulers, and before them the Nazi rulers, had a habit of dispatching priests they found bothersome by concocting tales of sexual abuse. Given this background, the argument goes, one could understand why the former Karol Wojtyla looked with suspicion on such charges.

Regardless of what one thinks of that argument, it is one that need not be made when arguing for John Paul II’s early beatification and certain canonization. John Paul’s former spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls, came close to making the more effective argument when he said, after reading the entire case study of the beatification “I think it is enough to be certain that he (John Paul) lived the Christian virtues in an heroic way,” the requirements for beatification. But the case for St. John Paul can be put more simply, to wit: John Paul II was a very good man and a great Pope who, among other things, helped bring down Communism, allowing his countrymen and their neighbors to exercise their faith with a freedom that they had never seen before, made the Church relevant to at least two new generations, and, by his personal charisma and piety, drew people to the Church and to God and provided an example of Christian obedience to the will of God. John Paul also did some bad, some might say very bad, things. But everyone, even the best of us, of which John Paul surely was one, does bad things. Perfection is not required for sainthood; if it were, heaven would be a nearly empty place.

A simple argument to be sure. But beauty, and sanctity, is often found in simplicity.