Pope defined the times; times defined the Pope?
God says to George W. Bush "I do not think it's a good idea to invade Iraq. It is not a moral crusade for several reasons." God proceeds to make a list of the reasons. There are no Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq. After all it was the U.S. which supported Saddam Hussein, and helped install him once upon a time, and so on…

Bush replies to God "I think you are wrong. I decide what's moral around here; besides I am doing it in the cause of freedom and democracy which are ideas springing from Christian values'' A British satirist cooked up an exchange which went roughly like that. It appeared in a syndicated column when the war had begun, and American troops were beginning to pour into Baghdad.

If Bush thought he was the moral superior of God he would have certainly figured that he was the moral superior of Pope John Paul II who clearly denounced the invasion of Iraq. Bush sold the American people the idea that he is righteous, and that he is the moral superior of the Pope -- and therefore, at least by extension, of God, considering that the Pope is God's representative on earth…

The American people bought the story and they re-elected him. Therefore, when Bush left Washington to attend the funeral of Pope John Paul II he would have been smug in the notion that he is only attending the funeral of his junior-partner in the moral department. He was the moral crusader, in his estimation, and the Pope simply did not have the moral courage to be as righteous as he was.

It's in this harrumphing atmosphere of moral superiority on the part of the Americans and their leader that Pope John Paul II endured the last years of his Papacy.

Some say that his Papacy was marked by a conservatism in the moral department. Pope John Paul did not give his assent to the use of condoms, even if it was for the express purpose of prevention of AIDS. For example, if Catholic wives wanted to protect themselves from contracting AIDS from philandering husbands, particularly in an African context, they were not supposed to. Consider the implications of that, when Africa is where Catholicism has flourished in contrast to Europe where Catholic churches are hard put to find parish priests.

But, the Pope's Pontificate was in a morally conservative era, where his flock in America seemed even more 'righteous' than he was -- judging by the fact that they endorsed a leader who professed 'moral values' when he invaded another country.

It appears then that the Pope wasn't conservative to suit the times -- the times were conservative to suit the Pope. At least that's one way to look at the Pope's 26 year Papacy which enjoyed enormous appeal for one that was at its point of origin called "accidental.'' Karol Wojtyla who became Pope John Paul II was a compromise candidate, because the College of cardinals was said to have been depressed over the death of their first choice, Albino Luciano, an Italian Cardinal who chose to be called Pope John Paul I.

But a papal conclave is not an election in which, as in a political election, the choice is between the "disastrous and the unpalatable'' as John Kenneth Galbraith once put it in a book on political economy. The much repeated story in the wake of the Pope's death was that he was elected at a time when the Cardinals wanted an understated Pontificate.

They wanted the Pope to be the Bishop of Rome, which he is - - and not a crusader who laid down the line for Cardinals and Bishops everywhere. This was in the interests of granting more autonomy to Catholic Bishops elsewhere, it was said. It was assumed that the Catholic Church was ready to come out of its conservatism -- and eventually endure certain rights of passage which would even involve the ordination of females into the priesthood.

The College of Cardinals were said to have chosen the most palatable candidate to carry out that mandate of shrinking the Papacy, but were they in for a surprise. The common reading of what followed the Pope's election was that the man defined, and then gave shape to the times.

But, the times defined the man, it was more like it. In America, as in most parts of Europe, there was a return to a moral conservatism after AIDS had peaked pricking people into the realisation that it’s about time they woke up to having an attack of conscience. And in Poland, as in the rest of Eastern Europe, there was a moral resurgence of an entirely different sort, where submerged religious values were resurfacing after years of autocratic rule under pro-Soviet despots such as Jaruselski and Ceausesco. Why would a re-emerging Catholic Church in those places, want a shrinking Pope??

College of Cardinals notwithstanding, it was clear that in the light of all of this that it was the changing nature of Catholicism's global congregation which at least in major part defined Pope John Paul II's Papacy, even though undoubtedly this was a very charismatic Pope who could say boo to the designs of the Pope-makers who had elected him (..in the process misjudging the mood of Catholics from America to Poland, not to mention misjudging their choice's calibre as Pope material.)

But compared to George W. Bush this conservative Pope who stomped on condoms even at the risk of being held partially responsible for an AIDS epidemic in Africa, was a liberal. Somehow, the Catholic world was not ready for what one writer had called "a la carte Catholicism'' which the electors of Pope John Paul II seemed to have envisaged. Catholics everywhere wanted to move away from the old Catholicism, it was assumed, but did they?

For instance, Popes much before John Paul II had endorsed the crusades and claimed that conversions by the sword were God's wish. That's exactly what George. W. Bush is echoing now, when he claims that his 'moral crusade'' in Iraq is for freedom, democracy and right values.

In sum, then, it appears that the Catholic Church of the past, as in the time of the Crusades or in the time of the persecution of Galileo, was at a point of being self-righteous. Pope John Paul II chiselled away at these self-righteous edges and brought the Catholic Church into a more righteous (as opposed to self-righteous..) shape, considering that he apologised not only for the crusades but also for the persecution of Galileo for uttering his "heresies.''

But then the Cardinals who elected him were delusional in that they figured the Catholic Church was ready for so-called la carte Catholicism where females are ordained -- when in reality American Catholics for instance were still self-righteous, and still in the era of the crusades, judging by the fact that they endorsed a man like George W. Bush with his morally self-righteous campaigns.

It appears therefore that the departed Pope's Papacy was like some self correcting valve. The Cardinals elected him as a liberal who would shrink the Papacy and make Catholicism more palatable to ordinary folks; but they misjudged the mood swing badly, because the Catholicism they thought was 'unpalatable' to the people was very much the rage again in the world. The Pope championed that mood; he would have been happy for it, but not too much. He endorsed the liberalism of the Cardinals, but only to an extent.

He did so via his apologies for instance. His embrace of the Jews who were the Church's long-time antagonists, was very much in that spirit. The rest of the way through his Papacy, he maintained the conservatism of the Catholic Church, much to the chagrin of some of the Pope-makers who elected him, it seems. But, he pointedly rejected the crusades of Bush, and he was ergo a liberal, but he wasn't too much of a liberal in a vastly conservative common denominator. He couldn't probably be less than 'righteous' to an almost self-righteous flock, could he?? As far as Catholicism's core values, therefore, are looked at in the context of their definition, the departed Pope struck the mean, and tried to hug the pendulum to the centre. Maybe that explains why he was in the end loved by all Catholics - and many others too -- liberal and conservative alike.

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