The Legacy of Pope John Paul II

[00:00:14] Speaker A: Do not be afraid. Do not be afraid. Open your hearts. Open up your hearts to Christ. The deepest joy there is in life is the joy that comes from God and is found in Jesus Christ, the son of God. Jesus Christ is the hope of yours. It's my hope. He is the hope of the world. [00:01:02] Speaker B: Pope John Paul II is the most dominant figure in the post Vatican II Catholic Church, shaping the church in ways both positive and negative. What was his legacy, and what can we learn from examining that legacy? That's what I'm going to talk about today on crisis point. Hello, I'm Eric Simmons, your host, editor chief of Crisis magazine. Before we get started, I just want to encourage people. Smash that like button like jp two. Smash communism. Subscribe to the channel. Other people know about it. Also, you can follow us on social media, ricesmag. You can go to our website, crisismagazine.com, put your email address and we will send you an email once a day with our articles for the day. We promise not to spam you as well. Also, I just want to note that because this is a live podcast, our Tuesday afternoon podcasts are typically live ones. Join us in the live chat if you're watching us live. And at the end of the program, I'll make sure we'll address some of the comments and questions in there. We'll select a few ones that we think need to be addressed. So I encourage you to do that while you're watching. Okay, so today, it's October 22, 2024, and this is the feast of Pope John Paul the second. And this is the anniversary, I believe, of his election to the papacy. That's why October 22 was picked. And so I thought it would be a good idea to talk about his legacy. I think this is very important. I think John Paul the two, like I said, was the dominant figure at your Vatican II. I mean, a lot of different people have influenced the church at your Vatican II, but clearly John Paul II is the leading figure of them, and it's becoming. It's always been hard, I think, to Judge John Paul II's papacy without some emotion involved. It's kind of like how for a long time and it's still true, it's impossible to Judge Vatican II because people involved with it, they have a lot of emotional attachment to it. The same thing's true of John Paul II, because he was such a massive figure that those of us who lived during his papacy, we can't always be completely objective. And I will admit that at the beginning of this podcast that I'm part of that. I became Catholic under John Paul II, and he was part of the influence that led me to become Catholic. I went to World Youth Day in 1993, and that was just months after I came into the church. That was a big deal for me. I saw him also when he came to Baltimore in 1995. I think it was May 96, something like that. I can't remember exactly what year he came to Baltimore. 97, but he came to Baltimore. I went to that as well. And so, like, I admit, I'm not 100% objective. I think as we get further away from his papacy, I think we can hopefully be a little bit more objective, both in analyzing the good things he did and the things that maybe weren't so good. Okay, so I want to get started here by kind of evaluating his legacy by talking about the good. I think the number one thing when you think of John Paul II is you think about his just completely dominant personality, his charisma, his personal witness. This is the thing that sets him apart. Like, when popes are picked, when men are picked to become pope, there's no guarantee that they're going to have charisma. Typically, if they rise the ranks in the church, they're going to have some. But, like, the idea of them being some dominant personality, like some great personality like John Paul II was. Is not guaranteed. But if you look at the 20th century and you look at the people, the men and women who. Who shaped the 20th century, both for good and ill, you see great men. You see men like, unfortunately, people like Hitler or Stalin, also people like FDR, Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher. You have to. And there's others, of course, you have to put John Paul II in that category of great men who influenced world events, influence, obviously, the church. And this I would put under, you know, obviously, on his legacy, on the good, because he was a force for good in the world in the sense that, you know, like I mentioned, some of these people, like some like Hitler, Stalin, were obviously forces for evil. Somebody like JP two was a force for good. And I think a lot of people who did not live through JP two papacy or were only alive maybe near the end of it, when he was very much restricted by his Parkinson's and other, uh, weaknesses of his. In his health. I don't think they necessarily understand how much he dominated the headlines and how. How great he was in this aspect during the 1990s. He was the world figure that was. That was, uh. I keep using the word dominate, but it's. It's. It's hard not to. Who dominated the headlines. It wasn't just that he influenced the catholic church. In many ways. He influenced the world. And he became the figure, the moral leader of the world, with no exception. I mean, everybody looked to him, Catholic, non Catholic, Christian, non Christian. He was considered that figure, that was the moral leader of the world. And even somebody like Bill Clinton, you know, President Bill Clinton in the nineties, who obviously was not Catholic, obviously was against Catholic teaching a lot of ways. He knew he had to look good with JP two. He could not say anything against JP two. I remember when Sunaid O'Connor, the obscure now musician in the early nineties, she ripped up a photo of John Paul II on Saturday Night Live. And the blowback was immense. And what was amazing is that she got canceled Saturday Night Live. Had to apologize. I mean, all these things happened because JP two was so beloved. He was one of the most beloved figures of the 20th century, probably the most beloved figure of the 20th century. And he was attractive to so many people, including myself, even as a Protestant, he was very attractive to me. I was like, this is a man who truly believes what he says, and he is willing to stand up for it and he's willing to preach the gospel. And so that was very attractive to me and to many other people also. I would say that his personality was just in comparison to all the bishops in the world at the time. I mean, he just, I mean, a lot of them came across very weak. I mean, there was, Cardinal O'Connor in America was a strong personality, but so many of them, like a weakling or somebody like that, or people of that nature, he just really stood apart from so many catholic leaders because, remember, we had the seventies and eighties, which were frankly a dark time in the Catholic Church. Obviously, he was pope during all the eighties, but he really hit his stride, I would say, by the nineties, JP two, that is. But in the seventies and eighties, I mean, the Catholic Church was just unsure of itself, especially in the seventies, unsure of itself, not confident in what it believed. And here comes this man who's like, no, we're Catholic. This is what we believe, and we're not going to back down from it. And this gave then Catholics confidence. This is, I think, the number one thing John Paul II did. Most Catholics, so many Catholics had lost their confidence in the church, in being Catholic, what it means to be Catholic in the 1970s and eighties. And JP two allowed Catholics, in a sense, to say, no, I am Catholic. I'm proud to be Catholic, and I'm going to proclaim it from the rooftops. I'm not going to be embarrassed to be Catholic, but Frank, because before that, a lot of Catholics were embarrassed to be Catholic. And so he brought this confidence, he brought a joy to being Catholic. And this was a lot just by his personality. Like I said, it wasn't anything necessarily he did. I mean, I had that clip at the beginning of the podcast to get a sense, which I know is a very small clip, and you might not see it, but just. It's just something about him. He had the it factor, for lack of a better term, that so many people don't have, but he had it. And so I think that was probably the number one positive thing that John Paul II brought to the church and brought to the world. He brought this confidence in being Catholic, this idea that the church really does have something to say to the world. I think we should be very thankful that, I mean, it really did changed the trajectory of a lot of Catholics lives. JP two did. Another thing I think obviously positive was that his fight against communism, he was an influential figure in bringing down the Soviet Union. And for, again, I'm going to sound like a boomer, by the way, I'm Gen X, I'm not boomer. But, you know, I get that for younger people, what's the difference, right? For younger people who didn't live through it, the Soviet Union was the evil empire. It was just the worst thing about in the world from the 1940s at least until the 1980s. I mean, they were before the forties, but yet the Nazi Germany also was an evil thing. But it was just the worst thing of the 20th century, probably, was the Soviet Union, communist Russia, and JP two was instrumental in helping bring it down. I mean, obviously he didn't do it all by himself. There was a lot of factors involved, but definitely this polish pope coming and talking, speaking against it, preaching against it, going to Poland in 1979, I believe it was. And just the outpouring of what, of support for him in Poland revealed to the world that people were not happy under soviet rule. And I know this sounds crazy now, but like they, you know, the media tried to make it like, even the western media tried to make it like people were happy. And in Soviet Union, in the Soviet Union and under communism, things like that. And the response to JP two coming to Poland made that. It made it clear that was a lie. And really it revealed a lot of lies of the Soviet Union. And so JP two's influence in helping to bring down the Soviet Union was just instrumental and was one of the great things of his papacy. And which is interesting. And this is kind of why after he died, there was a lot of talk about calling him John Paul the Great, and there's only been a few, three greats. And one of the things about each of the greats, particularly Leo and Gregory, is their political influence in the world. That's one of the reasons why they're called the great, because they had such a great influence outside the church, in the world, in the world of politics. And JP two did have that influence. Now, I don't think he will be called, I don't think he will be called the great JP two the Great. I think that's, that's kind of died out, even because of some other things we'll talk about later in the podcast. But the fact is, is that he definitely had a great influence. Now we still have communism in the world. Obviously, it's not like it went away, but the Soviet Union did go away, and he was part of the efforts that brought it down. Another thing that JP two brought that was just so part of his legacy that was so good was his defense of catholic moral teaching, his unambiguous and unapologetic defense of catholic moral teaching. He proclaimed the gospel of life. Like this is one of the things. He had two pronged approach to the world. While he was fighting against communism in the east, in Soviet Union, he was also fighting against this culture of death in the west. It was growing and growing in the west. And so he talked very clearly against abortion, against immorality and sexuality, things like that, against divorce, all the for marriage, for the beauty of life, all life, from conception till natural death, disabled life. It didn't matter. And this was something that was in stark contrast, frankly, to how many bishops spoke at the time, and priests, they were very apologetic. They didn't want to be clearly pro life. Yet JP two very much was. He wrote excellent encyclicals, veritas, splendor, familiaris, consortio. I mean, I could list a whole bunch of them. But he was very clear in this. And this was during a time when many people were questioning the catholic moral teaching. Obviously, this hat started in the sixties, I mean, a little bit before and the seventies. It grew in the eighties, though, is when JP two started to turn that around. And this was, like I said, a very clear teaching. And it made it obvious to the world this is where the church stands. And I think, you know, obviously today we see a backtracking of a lot of that among many catholic leaders. And so JP too should be very much thanked that during an era when a lot of church leaders were backtracking on catholic moral teaching, mostly in the sense that they were apologizing for it, or they were, they were very defensive about it, or they just would ignore it, undermine it, things of that nature. John Paul II was very clear. Abortion is evil, marriage is between a man and a woman, and for life. All the catholic moral teachings he was so good on. And I think this is something we should thank him for and be grateful for his legacy. It just is hard to understand, I guess it is, actually, today. This is something I think we can understand. A lot of bishops we know today are very poor on these issues, and it was very true back in the eighties and nineties as well. But you could say, but the pope is very clear on these issues. You always knew you had the pope in your corner when it came to things like pro life work and things of that nature. I remember when I was involved in the pro life movement, very involved in it in the early nineties, as a Protestant, I was very grateful that John Paul II made it very clear what the Catholic Church, what the Catholic Church taught on this. I was very. And of course, when I became Catholic, I was even more grateful for that. So these are, I think these are the big three, I would say, of the good things of his legacy. I'm not saying he didn't do, he did other good things, but these are the big three, I would say would be his, his personality, which was just made, it made us confident Catholics. Again, I would say his fight against communism, how much he helped bring down the soviet union, and also say his clear, unambiguous teaching on the catholic moral teachings, defense of catholic moral teaching. Now, there are other things that I would say are mixed in his legacy, things that were not necessarily great, but then not necessarily bad, I would say first on that is theology of the body. This is a very controversial teaching of his to this day. It was Wednesday audiences in the early eighties. So it's kind of a weird thing because it wasn't like he wrote a book on it himself. It wasn't like he had an encyclical. He never wrote an encyclical on theology of the body. A lot of Catholics think he did. No, he had these Wednesday audiences where he would teach a series of them where he taught on theology, the body. Now, I would say the worst thing that ever happened when it comes to JP two and theology of body is his proponents of it. The people who decided to take up this charge and defend it and teach it, I think that was some of the worst, because I think a lot of them did a horrible job, some better than others. And just to be, you know, blunt, I think one of the worst back in the day was Christopher West. I know he's still teaching. I think he's gotten better in a lot of ways. But early on, he popularized theology of body. In fact, anybody in America who knew about theology of body knew about because of Christopher west. They didn't know about because reading JP two, because his writings on it, I mean, his teachings are actually kind of dense, difficult to follow at times, and Christopher west popularized it. Now, to be clear, I think he did it with good intentions, and he was trying to help. I don't think he, in any way, he was trying to undermine catholic teaching like that. But I think the result is it didn't help always, because what happened is theology. The body became catholic. Sex education. It became like, okay, the world has sex education. It has its doctor, Ruth. Now we have a catholic version of that. And in a lot of ways, it then undermined traditional catholic morality when it comes to sexuality. Some of the very practical, basic wisdom that had been handed on to us throughout the generations was lost in this. Let's talk about, like, you know, the. It was like, okay, let's have this very great sounding, beautiful sounding teaching on sexuality, and we're going to ignore and not talk about just things like, okay, a man and a woman who aren't married shouldn't be together alone. Uh, you know, who are. You know, who are dating, they shouldn't. Or not dating, they shouldn't be alone. They should not engage in certain practices before marriage. It's just very clear cut. Like, I remember when I was, you know, helping my own son with this when he was younger, when he was growing, you know, becoming a teenager, things like that. I found a book from the 1950s or forties and used it because it just is very practical and clear. Like, do this, don't do that. And here's the reason why you don't do this with theology body. It became, okay, all this very deep and complicated and convoluted at times, to be honest, theology of love versus use and all these things. And I'm not saying they were wrong at times. They might have been a little bit not great, I think. But I think what happened is it distracted Catholics from the practical advice of the do's and don'ts when it comes down to it, because honestly, that's. That's the most important thing when it comes to sexuality. And, like, you know, doing the right thing is don't do these things. Do do these things. You don't necessarily have to have a deep understanding of the proper relationship between a man and a woman, all this stuff in order to know, okay, if I'm not married, I can't do these things with a woman. If I am married, I can with my wife and I can't with anybody else and all these things. So I think that theology of the body was a mixed bag because there are many beautiful things about. When you read theology body from JP two, not necessarily from his, like, people who tried to popularize it, there are many beautiful things you can get out of it. So I put this kind of under the mixed bag of JP two's legacy. Another thing I would put under the mixed bag was his travels around the world. Now, this might be a little bit surprising because it's hooked by his dominant personality and, you know, how he kind of strode across the world stage. But JP two really revolutionized the papal office, the modern papal office, by his travels, I mean, Paul the six also traveled some, but really for a very long time. For centuries, the pope basically didn't leave Rome, and he basically just ruled the church from Rome and didn't leave the Vatican. And JP two changed all that. And he made it where he went all over the world preaching the gospel. And I think it raised a question. Is the pope primarily an evangelist or is he primarily an administrator? And I think it's a valid question, and I think it's a question we should still ask ourselves. The Catholic Church, after all, has 2 billion members, is it or. No, a billion members. And it has all these bishops, diocese, all this stuff going on, and one man in charge with a massive bureaucracy under him, kind of helping him run it at the Vatican. And so he has to be an administrator on some level. I mean, that's going to help the church maybe more than anything, is how good an administrator. Now, I'm a person who kind of decries bishops being too much administrators and not much, enough evangelists, but I do think popes need to be on some level good administrators or have a good administrator under them who helps manage a show. But JP two's constant traveling really left the church then the hands of other people to administer it. Now, to be clear, I am not saying that the pope shouldn't be an evangelist and only should be an administrator. I'm just saying there needs to be a balance, I think, and I think that was perhaps unbalanced during JP two s or you could maybe a better way say it is, you got a lot of the good out of his travels and evangelization work, but it came with a cost. The benefits of his travels came with a cost, and we're going to get to that here in a minute. So I think we have to acknowledge that his travels were a mixed bag. They did a lot of good, like so many people were influenced, for example, by World Youth Day in Denver, 1993. I went to that. But there's a lot Catholic, there's a lot of priests today because of him coming to Denver in 1993. And so you can't say it was a bad thing all his travels. But the fact is, is like a lot of his administration, administrative decisions, we'll see, were problematic. And maybe that's because he just was out of the office a lot, to put it in a crude way. So I'm putting that under mixed bag. I also want to put under the mix bag, the mixed legacy, his relationship with traditionalists, the society of St Pius X, on the kind of good part of that is he is the one who did open up the traditional latin mass, the indult mass. Remember, under Paul VI, it basically was abolished. Now, Pope Benedict later said it was never truly abolished, but the fact is, in practice, it was abolished. Priests could not say the traditional mass and be in good standing with their diocese under Paul VI. And from 1970 until. Until JP two in the 1980s did open it up for the indult masses where you could get permission, things like, yes, it was very restrictive. Yes, there's a lot of ways it wasn't able to really grow, but the fact is that was a step in the right direction. JP two did understand on some level that people had a devotion to the traditional mass and they wanted to continue to hear it. And even though he was 100% pro Vatican two and he was very 100% pro the novus ordo mass, JP two did allow the traditional mass, so that's obviously a good thing. But in his relations with the Society of St Pius X and Archbishop Lefebvre, I think you have to see this as a mixed bag, maybe a negative. We can have criticisms of how Archbishop Lefebvre managed the situation with consecrating bishops and all that, and I have criticisms of that. But you can't read an unbiased account of what happened without saying that it did seem like JP two's Vatican just strung Lefebvre along and just kind of promised. Kept promising, oh, yes, we're going to let you do bishops. We're going to let you bishop bishops. But then always having reasons why it's got to be later, gotta be later, gotta be later. I think that that is, you know, I don't think if you, I mean, I'm a huge Ratzinger fan and Ratzinger was the kind of point man in these relationships. But I think you can't look at that and not say there was some, it wasn't always and didn't seem to be in good faith, how they dealt with Lefebvre and the society. And so I don't think you can put his relationship with the traditionalists in some super positive light, but not in a total negative light. Again, it goes under mixed. Another third thing, I guess, is a fourth thing with theology by his travels, the traditionalist. Another thing under the mixed bag, I would say, would be what he did to expand hyper papalism. I mean, obviously hyper papalism has existed, existed in the church far earlier than JP two. I mean, it was growing the church after Vatican one in a lot of ways. My colleague Timothy Flanders over at one Peter five has talked a lot about the spirit of Vatican one not being always in keeping with Vatican one itself. And a lot of that has to do with a growing hyperpapialism. This is the idea that kind of putting the pope beyond what the church teaches, he can do beyond just what Vatican II says, beyond reason and making him almost a cult figure. And like I said, this existed obviously before JP two. But there's no question the number one thing I said about the best thing about him also led to this hyperpapialism, which is his dominant personality as Catholics, as orthodox Catholics. We were basically just like, well, the pope said, JP two said this, so obviously you have to accept it. That was our argument. Now, of course it's been thrown in our face and deservedly so. Now, I put this under mix because he also is the pope who said Unum said, boy, I'm getting the name butchered of his encyclical about the east, about the papacy in eastern churches. He said, we need to rethink the papacy. I have a podcast about this I did about a year or two ago about this. Like, I do think it's true that we need to rethink the papacy. And by that I don't mean to the teachings of the church on the papacy, and neither did John Paul II. He didn't mean that either. What I mean and what JP two meant is the practice of the papacy, how it is looked at by Catholics, and how is exercise, how the office is exercised by popes. And JP two did call for this. And so I think it's kind of a mixed bag. I don't think he intended to increase hyperpapialism. I just think he did because of the very fact of the nature of his pontificate and how he practiced it just naturally increased hyperpapialism. And I think that's a negative for the church. Not intentional by JPT, but a negative nonetheless. But like I said, he also said we do need to rethink how the papacy is practiced. And so I think that was a good thing. So that's, like I said, a mixed bag of issues with Pope John Paul the second. Excuse me, I'm going to take a drink there for a second. Now, I do want to get into what I think you just had to classify as the bad, the negative legacy of JP two. I know this is difficult for some people. He's obviously a canonized saint. A lot of people are big fans of his. I'm a big fan of his. But I just feel like I've always thought this. We have to be very honest with history. We cannot put anybody up. The only person we put up on a pedestal is Jesus Christ himself. Even saints had flaws, and so we have to be willing to admit that in this case, we have to. I mean, this is a paper say affects us very greatly. So we have to look at it with clear eyes and even have criticisms of it and not be unwilling to look at that. Clearly, the number one negative thing I think about JPT's papacy was his wholehearted and complete embrace of ecumenism, inter religious dialogue. Now, obviously, he wasn't the first. This started really, I mean, John XXIII, but really, Paul Viticon two endorsed it. And I really feel like, and I dealt with this a lot. My book, deadly, whoops, wrong finger. Deadly indifference. You can see it up here. My book, deadly indifference. I encourage you to, if you want to know, kind of the influence of ecumenism, interreligious dialogue on the Catholic Church. Read my book, deadly indifference, and I talk a lot about JP two's impact on that John Paul. I said, I mean, I did a lot of research when I was writing that book about John Paul II. I was hoping to find like some, some slivers of kind of balance in his view, in the way he dealt with other religions, other christians, but I really didn't. If you look, for example, when he talks to muslim audiences, you know, he traveled all the time. And a lot of times when he was in a country, he would talk to a muslim audience. If he's in a muslim country, there isn't one example I could find, and I looked at a lot, I feel like I looked at all of them. There isn't one example I could find where what he said to them in any way encouraged them to become Catholic. I mean, I just, I understand, like what people say is, oh, what do you expect them to do? Say, you need, people need to convert? Well, first of all, why not? I mean, I don't think, like, just because popes in modern ages don't do that, why can't they do that? But I'm not even saying that. What I'm saying is, and there were some examples when he would speak to Muslims, for example, where it kind of sounded like he was saying it's okay to just keep being Muslim. I mean, basically implied that he never said to them when he was speaking to them. Consider Catholicism. I mean, St. Peter, when he was talking to the Jews at Pentecost, what did he do? He said, you all need to become Christian. He didn't quite say it like that. I don't know why he turned into a Southern Baptist preacher there for a second, but that's basically what he did. And so that's the model for popes. And JP two didn't do that. Now of course, in other writings and other times, he's talking, he's talking to catholic audiences. Like the clip I had at the beginning of this podcast, he makes very clear, Jesus Christ, you know, attach yourself to Jesus Christ. So Muslims who see that know obviously where he's coming from, but it would have been nice if he hadn't been at these when he's talking to muslim groups, things like that, if he had been a little bit more like, hey, I'm, why don't you guys consider becoming Catholic? I know that's not like, well, you're allowed to do anymore, but I don't see why not. And this was basically his attitude towards all inter religious dialogue with, with Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, whatever he allowed, he did not real. He very much embraced the dialogue model, which has been shown to be just a disaster, which again, in my book, deadly indifference I go through. And JP two, I mean, for any criticism you want to make of Pope Francis for what he does with, with interreligious dialogue, you have to then also point the finger at JP two. They're very consistent, the two of them, when it comes to this issue, unfortunately. And also, of course, if you bring this up, you have to bring up the Assisi prayer gathering. And I talk about, I have a whole chapter on it in my book. And if you look at it very closely, you will see that John Paul II clearly wanted this to be a gathering of people to promote peace in the world of various religions, a religion, people of various religions, that they would promote peace. He did not want to be a prayer service of a bunch of people all praying together, acting like they have the same religious beliefs, because he was very careful how it was, how it was set up. What happened is, is like he had different, all the different religious groups, they, they went to separate places and prayed for peace in the way they prayed. This is in Assisi. And then they came together for like a joint, like, kind of like, okay, we're for peace type of thing. But they didn't pray together. And he made that clear. He tried to make that clear, try to emphasize this. The problem is the optics were obviously, any normal people, when they look at, was, okay, these guys all are basically equal. There's no differences between these religions, and they're praying together. I just think it was a highly, highly imprudent action. In fact, at one point during the ACC gathering, the Buddhists basically covered, they were in a church, catholic church. They were allowed to use a catholic church. They covered the tabernacle and basically set up their idols on it. I mean, this is awful. I mean, that church, I hope, was reconsecrated after this. And JP two didn't know that was going to happen. But the way he set this up, I'm sorry. He shouldn't have been surprised that it happened. And so the Assisi gathering was definitely a horrendous event in the JP two papacy. Again, I don't think it was in. I think his intentions were sincere. I think it was obviously his intentions were sincere while being influenced by his kind of acceptance of inter religious dialogue and humanism, things like that. Nonetheless, regardless of his intentions, the actual result was disastrous for the Catholic Church, for the papacy in so many ways. So I think that was, that I think is near the top of my, probably the top of my list of the negative legacy, because this still impacts us today. Because when we see things like inter religious dialogue going on today under the current pontificate, it just hearkens back to JP two. And so it's a legacy that's still with us, a negative legacy still with us. I also think another big negative is the abuse crisis in, in the Catholic Church. It basically festered and grew under John Paul II. He did very little, very little to stop it. In fact, a lot of his things he did were, you know, helped make it greater than it should have been. Now, a lot of people make the excuse for him that he didn't really believe the accusations against bishops because he lived under communism, under soviet rule in Poland, where that was a standard method for, you accuse a priest of something like this so you can get rid of them. You know, if a priest is being a negative influence on the soviet way of life, then you just accuse them of something like this, and then you can get rid of them. And they're all false accusations. And JP two had to live. He saw that firsthand. That may be true, and I'm not saying it's not true, but the fact is, is that there were lots of real abuse allegations going on under a spontificate, and nothing was done. He is the man who he didn't appoint, he didn't consecrate McCarrick as a name, McCarrick as a bishop, but he did raise him, basically elevated him three different times, including making him a cardinal of one of the most powerful seas in the entire world, Washington, DC. And there is evidence, the McCarrick report that came out, there's evidence. He knew there was allegations against McCarrick when he did that. And so this is something, obviously, the, you know, he, Father Maciel of Masie, of the founder of Legion of Christ, that horrific monster who. I mean, the legion of Christ should have been shut down years ago. I believe that very firmly. I think Benedict made a mistake by not shutting it down. This was one of the most popular religious orders under JP two, and it was one that he basically endorsed. Now, do I know what he knew about Maciel? Am I saying no, I don't. But I do know that under him, these things happened, and. And he, you know, ultimately, in the Catholic Church, the buck stops with the pope. And this happened under. And I had started before him, but little was done in his papacy to stop it. And a lot of his appointments were problematic and helped it to fester. And that gets me into the last thing I'm going to say is a negative legacy of the papacy, of John Paul II, and that's his appointment of bishops. It was a well known thing that we would say in the nineties that, well, all the bishops stink, but at least we have the pope. The problem with that, of course, is most of those bishops were selected, appointed by the pope. So we have a situation which have these. All these bishops that are doing such a terrible job. A pope was doing a great job in a lot of ways, but that pope who's doing such a great job, actually appointed those bishops. I already mentioned McCarrick, obviously, that's an example. But there are so many heretical bishops that were either appointed by JP two or elevated by him to become a cardinal. I mean, there's. I have a. I have a few. Where did I. I think I have this written down here somewhere. Some of. Okay, Bernadine, Cardinal Bernardine, Cardinal Mahoney, Cardinal Daniels, Cardinal Caspar. I mean, these are just a few examples of cardinals that were made cardinals by. Maybe even. Some of them might even be appointed by. By JP two as bishops, but they were made cardinals by JP two. And they were all awful heretical. And this all just festered. I mean, he allowed this to happen. And this is what I was talking about before by administration. That was not his strong suit. His strong suit was definitely the evangelization, things of that nature. But this is something that we still, this is a legacy we still live with today, because some of these people are still men, are still bishops. But more importantly, then they influenced the church in so many ways. And then they have, they, they got priest appointed bishops through their influence who are, you know, who are like them. I mean, if you look at the bad bishops and cardinals of today, most of them, you can direct a straight line back to somebody under the. That was appointed or elevated by JP two as far as their influence. I mean, all the McCarrick bishops in our country. I mean, McCarrick, he was, like I said, he was made a bishop by Paul VI, I believe, but he was just a bishop in, like, Newark or something like that. He became the McCarrick who was so influential under JP, too. That's how it happened. And then he. Then, because of his influence, a lot of the bishops, some of the McCarrick bishops today, the Tobin's, the mcElroy's, people like that, that, that's how we got them. Because JP two elevated McCarrick. Whether he knew what he knew or didn't know, we don't know. But the just reality, it was a bad. It was, it's a negative legacy. There's no other way to put it. The far. The last thing I wanted to just kind of bring up was his canonization. Now, when he died, the crowds were in Rome are chanting, santosubio saint now. Make him a saint now. And there was a great groundswell to make him a saint. I don't know if I would have been chanting that if I was in Rome, but I definitely thought when he died, okay, we should make this man a saint. I now though look at it. And I don't doubt, by the way, he's in heaven. I just have no doubt of that. He was a. I know some people can say, well, cannonizations are infallible. That's a disputed point. I recommend the book edited by Peter Kwasneski about are canonizations infallible? I think there's good arguments for that, good arguments against that. But regardless, I think JP two is in heaven. I think he was a holy man. I think he was a devoted follower of Jesus Christ. And I think he's in heaven. That being said, canonizations aren't just as simply, we don't canonize people just because we think they're in heaven. There's a lot of people we think are in heaven, they're not canonized. You do it because you believe they're an example. And typically they're an example in their state in life and his state of life. I just feel like there's enough of a mixed bag with JP two. I think it was imprudent to rush his canonization. I'm not saying one day he shouldn't have been canonized. I am saying though, I don't think anybody should be canonized until they've been dead for at least 50 years because it allows for a more sober, objective assessment of their life and whether or not they're a model. I also think that's ridiculous how we seem to be obsessed with canonizing every pope after, you know, from Vatican II on. I just don't see the need to do that. It's not like popes are supposed to be our only examples. And so I just don't get that. I mean, we had one pope canonized from council Trent until today. You know, that was Pius X until recently. Now all of a sudden it's like if you basically, you're a pope after 1960, you're in, you're canonized. So I don't, I think that it was imprudent is what I'm saying, to canonized JP two when they did. I think that it sends a message that we're not really going to look that carefully at some of the negative aspects of his canonization, of his, of his papacy. And I also think it's all this idea of canonizing Vatican two, that if we canonize all the popes after, after Vatican two, then we've canonized Vatican two itself. So I do think that's, I just think it was imprudent. Okay, so my final kind of assessment is I think he was a great man. I think that's just beyond question. He was a great man, a great Catholic. I also think, though, he was human and he had flaws. But here's the thing with great men, the greater you are, the more your flaws and your positive aspects, the greater impact they have on the world. So we all have flaws, but a lot of us, our flaws aren't as noticeable to the world because we don't have such an influence. We're not so great. I mean, somebody like me, I mean, I have my flaws. You probably can tell a lot of them, but, like, they don't have such an impact. When JP two has a flaw, all of a sudden it impacted the church in a great way. And so I think he helped the church in a very dark time. He was definitely a force for good. But here's what I'm going to just say it. I don't think the JP two catholic way is the way forward. I think it's already died out a lot since his time, because that was the thing. You were a JP two Catholic, and that was when you said that you meant something, you meant you were modeling your belief about how the church should be after John Paul II's vision. I personally don't think that in 100 years there's going to be JP two Catholics in the sense that we're going to see that some of his things, yes, we embrace, we support, we love, but some of them, we have to move beyond and realize they're not the way forward for the church. And I think that. I really do think that we have to recognize that JP two Catholicism is not going to last. I think it's already. We can tell that now. There's so few. If you look at young people in the church today, they're not JP two Catholics. The ones who are really on fire, they're more traditionalist, and they're not JP two. I mean, JP two Catholics come from my generation, Gen X more than anybody. And a lot of us in the Gen X are. I mean, am I a JP two Catholic? I don't know. I don't think I am. I mean, if I had to pick a pope, I'd say I'm more Benedict, but even I'm not that. I mean, I'm more traditionalist, so. Yeah, and a lot of people my age are kind of moving that direction. So I think, like I said, he had great influence on the church when he was pope, but I don't think his way, the complete vision he had is the way forward for the church. Now, what I'm going to do is I'm going to link in the show notes, an arc I wrote four years ago for crisis, actually, before I became editor in chief, it was how great was John Paul II? And I kind of talked about his legacy there as well. And so I think, you know, I'll link to it. I encourage you to read that to get some more of my thoughts on this issue. I kind of see a lot of things I say here in that article. So. Okay, so we are going to, again, at the end, I want any comments, any questions people have, I want to address them in live chat. So Cave Bear says, according to Father Murr, his travels were the cause excuse for not acting on the Gagnon report. I think if I remember correctly, that's the one that came out that, you know, kind of talked about Freemasonry, things like that. I think it's hard to say they were like an excuse, like he traveled for that reason. But I wouldn't. But I would agree that clearly his travels kept him away from the Vatican. And you simply can't manage a organization like the van, like, like the Vatican without being there a lot. And he wasn't there a lot, and he didn't have. I mean, people talk about Ratzinger as his right hand man, but Ratzinger was not an administrator either. And we saw that when he became pope. And so what he needed was like a coo to see his CEO, like somebody who really was. I mean, he had secretary of state, different ones, but they weren't like him. They weren't able to really embrace orthodoxy in appointing bishops and running the church. And that was a big problem. Okay. Mark says Eric's flow is he no longer has his beard. Okay, I do know. I do not anymore have a beard. I don't know if I'm like Samson, and that affects me in some way. I've had a lot of comments from people about the beard, people saying they miss it. Some people saying it makes me look a lot younger. I don't. I'm not trying to look younger. I'm old. I recognize that. I'm not trying to act like I'm not. Okay, so last comment here is, what is a JP two Catholic? See, I mean, just the fact that somebody asked that question tells me it's kind of dying off because nobody would have asked that question the year 2000. A JP two Catholic is essentially somebody who follows JP two as kind of the model for how a Catholic should be. And typically what that was is if you. Okay, this is a very crude way of describing it. But you kind of think of like three different types of Catholics back in the day. There's liberals, conservatives and traditionalists. The liberals or progressives are the ones who try to have the spirit of Vatican two. They try to, they want to change the church. You have women priests and things like that. There's, then there's the traditional Catholics, which are the people who would embrace the latin mass. They want to go back to how things were in a lot of ways before Vatican II. They don't really embrace the changes in Vatican II. A JP two Catholic, which was kind of, it kind of falls in the conservative Catholic. What that means is they embrace Vatican II, but they would argue that Vatican II has to be properly implemented and understood. And they would say JP two is the number one person who understood and tried to implement Vatican II. So they would embrace ecumenism, inter religious dialogue, things like that. But they would also embrace orthodoxy, especially morality. But they would be fine with the novus ordo mass, but would want, wouldn't want the clown masses, shenanigans, although JP two allowed some of that stuff in his own papal masses. So that would be kind of my description of a JP two Catholic also would be kind of personality, very positive, very much joyful. Let's, let's, let's not talk about the bad things about Catholic in the Catholic Church, but kind of focus on the good. That's a JP two Catholic. And like I said, I don't think it's all bad, you know, JP two Catholicism, I just don't think it's going to survive. I don't think it's going to be the way forward for the church. Okay. Oh, I appreciate those comments. Like I said, whenever I do the live show, just feel free to make sure you have your comments or questions in there and I'll try to address them at the end. Okay, that wraps up for today. So like I said, today's feast of John Paul II. Let's remember his legacy, both the good and the bad, and work to make the church one that always preaches the gospel in season and out of season. Okay, until next time, everybody. God love.