Vatican Watcher

Jewish Ladies

2009-12-30T16:11:00.002-06:00

Catholic bloggers and blog readers may remember the blog Once A Chicken, Now A Fish by Janjan from the Boston area who recounted in her blog her religious journey from the Reform Judaism of her youth to Messianism and finally to the Holy Catholic Church. Janjan kept up with blogging for awhile, but eventually deleted all her posts except for her multi-post recounting of how she became Catholic along with her husband.

As is usually the case, I came upon Janjan's blog late in the game when her story was about done after reading about at Amy Welborn's Typepad blog. Janjan's story is one that I've kept in mind since I first read it not only because of its content, but also because Janjan bore a resemblance to a friend of mine, a Jewish lady who is also from the Boston area.

This afternoon I was checking up at a political blog I read now and then and I read a post by one of the blog's many contributors who goes by the nom de plume of Robin of Berkeley [California], a Jewish lady herself who has made her own journey from liberalism to conservatism. She recounted her experience in attending Christmas Eve Mass. It reminded me of Janjan's story and so I thought I'd post a link back to Janjan's old blog and Robin's post for consideration.

Merry Christmas!

Rorate: On the loss of Latin

2009-12-09T09:31:00.001-06:00

This post from Rorate Caeli is a good starting point for investigating the anti-intellectualism that has come upon the Church in the last forty years.

Quotes

2009-12-07T10:00:00.002-06:00

In email or in posts at messageboards, little quotes at the end of each message have been a common sight since the beginning. Below is a series of quotes I've used over time that I rediscovered the other day when I was checking something out.

My indifference has shut me out. I live in a world of ghosts, a prisoner of dreams. I want God to put out his hand, show his face, speak to me. I cry out to him in the dark but there is no one there.
-Antonius Block, 'The Seventh Seal'

Block is of course the protagonist in Bergman's The Seventh Seal. Block here is expressing his existential crisis of faith as he struggles with Death to learn what comes after.

But I say to you, King of the Numenoreans, not till now have I understood the tale of your people and their fall. As wicked fools I scorned them, but I pity them at last. For if this is indeed, as the Eldar say, the gift of the One to Men, it is bitter to receive.
-Arwen Undomiel, 'The Lord of the Rings'

This passage spoken by Arwen the daughter of Elrond in an appendix of The Lord of the Rings is one of my favorites. Tolkien's elves are immortal, bound to the earth unto the end. Men on the other hand are granted at their creation the Gift: they are allowed to die and their souls pass beyond the circles of the World to heaven. Of course, immortal elves view death as a release while mortal men view death and the great unknown beyond as a punishment. Hence Arwen's words as she goes from immortality to mortality.

There should be a science of discontent. People need hard times and oppression to develop psychic muscles.
-from "Collected Sayings of Muad'Dib" by the Princess Irulan

This is one of Frank Herbert's epigrams attributed to the protagonist that preceded each chapter of Dune. The idea that 'hard times' and 'oppression' bring out human ingenuity in coping and overcoming is certainly not new, but Herbert's expression of the concept is eloquent.

Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
-Roy Batty, 'Blade Runner'

All the best lines from the science fiction/cyberpunk classic Blade Runner are given to the antagonist Roy Batty (played by Rutger Hauer). In the movie, Roy is an artificially created and enhanced being whose ranks are used by Man to fight, to work in hazardous environments and to provide sexual services. Roy escapes in order to track down his creator in a bid to obtain more life (his kind live and die in a span of only a few years). In this quote, Roy expresses to the protagonist as the protagonist hangs off a building about to fall to his doom the sense of what it is to be a slave.

The Zero Sum Game

2009-12-03T08:17:00.003-06:00

It's been awhile since I've written about the People's Republic of China (mainland, communist China). The Holy Father issued his letter back in 2007 and after that, things in the Far East dropped off my radar screen.

Now we have this: China: One Bishop's About-Face Reignites the Dispute between Bertone and Zen by Sandro Magister.

I'll sum up very briefly: The secretary of state Cardinal Bertone believes that now is the time to come out of the shadows, even if it means accepting the directions of the communist regime; this is based on the Pope's phrasing on how the clandestine Church is not a natural state. He makes other points as well on the state of the clergy in China. Cardinal Zen of Hong Kong on the other hand believes that the Pope's words about the clandestine Church not being a normal feature of Church life, the Pope means that the Church should continue until the abnormal circumstances of communist oppression are at an end.

My first instinct in this matter is to go with Cardinal Zen and give nothing to the communist Chinese.

Just as it is easy to connect to the clandestine community Bertone's statement that "a truly Eucharistic community cannot retreat into itself, as though it were self-sufficient, but it must stay in communion with every other Catholic community."

This point of Bertone's quoted by Magister is on the outside convincing, but I am reminded of various instances throughout history when Christians have been persecuted or when a small, orthodox faction of Christians have been at odds with a far larger faction of heterodox Christians that have the backing of the State. Does communion with other Catholic communities trump the freedom of the Church to govern its own affairs? I would say no.

Health Care

2009-11-22T20:04:00.003-06:00

I wrote this as a comment at TitusOneNine:

It’s a slippery slope. All the things that may end up left out of the bills now (abortion, euthanasia, etc.) may be slipped in later once control is handed over. What I am fearful of is that the bishops are either letting their own personal or ‘institutional’ (USCCB) opinions intrude or else simply being short-sighted by approving of a concept that will subvert the autonomy of the individual conscience.

As history abundantly proves, it is true that on account of changed conditions many things which were done by small associations in former times cannot be done now save by large associations. Still, that most weighty principle, which cannot be set aside or changed, remains fixed and unshaken in social philosophy: Just as it is gravely wrong to take from individuals what they can accomplish by their own initiative and industry and give it to the community, so also it is an injustice and at the same time a grave evil and disturbance of right order to assign to a greater and higher association what lesser and subordinate organizations can do. For every social activity ought of its very nature to furnish help to the members of the body social, and never destroy and absorb them.
—Pope Pius XI, Quadragesimo Anno, 79

If you want to talk about conscience, then feel free to discuss free will and each person’s willingness to give to charity to help those in need. But I for one do not accept the premise that government confiscation of revenue for whatever reason beyond the most basic necessities is a legitimate means to provide for those in material need.

The Apostolic Constitution

2009-11-09T10:45:00.003-06:00

Anglicanorum coetibus Providing for Personal Ordinariates for Anglicans Entering into Full Communion with the Catholic Church (November 4, 2009) - in English

Complementary Norms for the Apostolic Constitution Anglicanorum coetibus (November 4, 2009) - in English

I'm waiting to see what some canonists think, but at a first reading, it all looks pretty impressively done.

Pro-Life Advocates Beware

2009-11-04T19:45:00.002-06:00

From AveWatch.com: Ave Maria Loses Catholic Moral Authority, Moves Focus to Pro-Life Crowd.

Everyone who frequents this blog should by now know of my fascination with all things Ave Maria and Tom Monaghan. AveWatch.com is the premiere watchdog site that keeps track of the pizza baron and his great boondoggle down in Florida. In an article posted on Tuesday, Ave Watcher analyzed recent data points and draws the conclusion that with large segments of orthodox Catholicism onto his MO, Tom and his co-conspirators are moving to woo the pro-life movement at large in a bid to further the brand of Ave Maria.

Read it all, it's pretty damning.

No More Crucifixes

2009-11-03T20:15:00.003-06:00

Reuters/Yahoo!: Italy, Vatican in uproar over court crucifix ruling

The European Court of Human Rights ruled on Tuesday that crucifixes should be removed from Italian classrooms, prompting Vatican anger and sparking uproar in Italy, where such icons are embedded in the national psyche.

"The ruling of the European court was received in the Vatican with shock and sadness," said Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi, adding that it was "wrong and myopic" to try to exclude a symbol of charity from education.

Read the whole thing for various responses, etc. Will Italy tell the EU courts to stick it or will it knuckle under? Only time will tell.

EDIT; Zenit's in my inbox, so here are more links...

Vatican "Regrets" European Court Ruling on Crucifix

and

Crucifix Ruling Seen as Severing Italy From Roots

"It ignores or neglects the multiple meaning of the crucifix, which not only is a religious symbol, but also a cultural sign," a communiqué from the conference stated. "It does not take into account the fact that, in reality, in the Italian experience, the display of the crucifix in public places is in harmony with the recognition of the principles of Catholicism as part of the historical patrimony of the Italian people, confirmed by the Concordat of 1984."

Notes on All Saints Day

2009-11-01T09:36:00.004-06:00

I've read through the clarification from the Press Office on married men being ordained and I've read reaction and analysis to it around the blogosphere both saying that it both clarifies and muddies the issue. We'll wait for the apostolic constitution.

For those of you who have come upon this blog looking for information on papal appearances, I'm sorry to disappoint, but I do not have the fluency in Italian to serve as the Holy Father's social diary. I wish you well though in finding what you're looking for.

Rorate always has good posts compiling relevant excerpts from Catholic history and tradition: this is one of them.

A Disgusting Case

2009-10-26T08:42:00.002-05:00

Dr. Edward Peters, the esteemed canon law expert, has posted this morning on the case of Sister Donna Quinn of Sinsinawa Dominicans who is known for serving as an escort at abortion clinics.

You can read more about the Sinsinawa Dominicans at the left under the Father Mazzuchelli link (yes, those sisters).

Dr. Peters suggests a few canons under which Sister Donna could fall, but he is not enthusiastic as to if any consequences will come from her actions. I wonder though if this lack of action on the part of the community could be brought before those undertaking the current examination of women religious here in the US?

Homeless Widows and Orphans

2009-10-26T08:25:00.004-05:00

From the Belfast Telegraph care of Kendall Harmon:

At the moment when a Catholic priest retires, the church only has responsibility towards him.

But what if the priest was married, has a wife and family?

Where would they go if they had to vacate their parochial home? What would they live on? What would happen to clerical widows or, even more distressingly, orphaned children?

Secondly, how could the Catholic Church maintain its stance on clerical celibacy?

It cannot argue logically that it is permissible for married Anglican clergy to convert to full communion with the Catholic Church and yet deny Catholic clergy the right to marriage.

Bolding mine. I don't bring all these questions up in my posts because I'm opposed to this move by the Pope. On the contrary, I am all for it. The Anglican Communion has been a mess for years now and it's about time Rome stepped in in an authoritative way, especially with the TAC petitioning for entrance. However, these are all questions that are going to need to be answered in the Apostolic Constitution or any companion documents before people start coming over or else Rome is going to have a real mess on its hands as the usual circumstances of human life rear their ugly heads.

Kudos to Kendall Harmon for bringing together so many good links on all of this.

Contraception

2009-10-25T18:48:00.002-05:00

From a Commonweal blog post linked to by Kendall Harmon:

A friend of mine, a former Anglican actually, brought up an issue that I hadn’t thought about with respect to the new Anglican rite: contraception. In 1930, the Lambeth Conference declared that contraception was not always immoral, and could be used (for serious reason) to regulate the number of children that a married couple had. That declaration prompted a negative response from the Roman Catholic Church–the encyclical Casti Connubii, which declared that the use of contraception was never morally permissible. As most people know, that stance was reaffirmed by Humanae Vitae.

Now, the Roman Catholic Church teaches that the prohibition against contraception is not a matter of “rite” or religious practice–it is a matter of natural law, binding not only upon Catholics, but upon all persons. So Anglicans who join the Catholic Church will be expected to conform to the prohibition There is no such thing as a dispensation from the strictures of negative moral absolutes. It’s true, of course, that many Roman Catholics make their own decisions about this matter, and come to their own private peace with God in the “internal forum” of their conscience. But the new influx of Anglicans will include people who will not be able to come to a purely private peace–the married members of the clergy, who will be required to follow Humanae Vitae no less than other married persons.

As far as I am aware, however, the morality of contraception under certain circumstances has been more or less a settled issue among Anglicans–even traditionally minded Anglicans. How will this change work out?

As we know, the leaders of the Traditional Anglican Communion have already signed the Catechism of the Catholic Church and they and their followers must be prepared to accept Catholic dogma and doctrine and all that it requires.

But for other Anglicans who may have issues with the Anglican Communion, but are not so interested in all that comes with Rome, one hopes Rome is prepared with its requirements for ordaining married Anglicans that this is singled out as a primary point.

Marriage

2009-10-24T22:51:00.001-05:00

From Rorate, a quote by John Hepworth in an interview:

JH: Bishops in the new Anglican structure will be unmarried. This is out of respect for the tradition of Eastern and Western Christianity. But priests who come from Anglicanism will be able to serve as priests in the new structure, whether married or not, after satisfying certain requirements. The truly radical element is that married men will be able to be ordained priests in the Anglican structure indefinitely into the future. It is anticipated that Anglican bishops who are married when they joined the new structure will still be able to serve as priestly ordinaries, exercising some of the responsibilities of bishops.

Yeah...

2009-10-24T18:00:00.004-05:00

...I was afraid of this. Ruth Gledhill yesterday:

A source in Rome tells me that the African bishops have been watching the Anglican developments with interest, in some cases with amazement. Even though England, Wales and the US have been quietly receiving married former Anglican priests to work as Catholic priests for decades, it seems that until this new Apostolic Constitution with its juridical implications was announced, the African bishops had no idea this had been going on.

Now that it is to get canonical standing, some of these bishops are asking, understandably, 'If they can, why can't we......?'

Maybe those who are suggesting the Anglican annexe about to be built onto Rome may be better described as a Trojan horse are on to something. Even the superbly-informed Francis Rocca is writing about the new light this throws on the celibacy issue, so you never know.

Ruth certainly represents a specific constituency (above the passage cited here, she was giving praise to NCReporter for its reporting on the Anglican ordinariate announcement), but if her source is reliable, then certainly such rumblings will have to be headed off immediately. Hard and fast rules are needed now to both clarify the situation for possibly incoming Anglicans and answer those Catholic clerics who are less attached to celibacy than the Pope, especially with Archbishop Milingo still in recent memory.

Anglican Ordinaries

2009-10-20T12:30:00.003-05:00

I don't have all the links to the statements and responses just now as I've been off to the dentist this morning. As it has been noted by various people, there are several key points that await clarification when the apostolic constitution is made public:

-There there be one uniform 'Anglican' liturgy?

-Will married clergy be permitted past the first generation?

-What are the differences between the new structure and existing ones?

And so on. Past posts at this blog do much to lay out the background of today's announcements.

Quinceanera Season?

2009-10-12T10:31:00.003-05:00

One of the top images provided by a search for the term 'quinceanera' at Google is found at this blog, specifically this post.

The Twilight Zone

2009-10-09T09:50:00.004-05:00

NORWAY PM SAYS OBAMA TO COME TO OSLO TO ACCEPT NOBEL PEACE PRIZE... DEVELOPING...

SOURCE: Obama will accept award on 'behalf of Americans and America's values'... Developing...

OCTOBER SURPRISE: OBAMA WINS NOBEL PEACE PRIZE...

MIXED REVIEWS; 'EMBARRASSING JOKE'...

PAPER: This makes mockery of peace prize...

White House Aide: 'It's Not April 1st, Is It?'...

Carter: 'Bold statement'...

Lech Walesa: 'Too early. He has no contribution so far'...

Oslo 'political endorsement'...

The headlines off Drudge this morning as of 9:55 AM CDT. Everyone is a winner, right? :P

UPDATE: There are a lot of blog posts out there this morning on this subject. I'm not going to duplicate the effort, but the one observation I find most relevant is that nominations had to be in by February 1st. Do ten days worth of being a rookie president of the United States merit the Nobel Peace Prize? Apparently the committee thought so.

Or Else!

2009-10-08T22:43:00.002-05:00

Via Drudge, we have this blog post from ABC News' George Stephanopoulos:

In a letter just released, the three Catholic bishops leading the Church’s efforts on health care warned Congress that “we will have no choice but to oppose the bill” unless current bills are amended.

The letter signed by Bishop William Murphy, Cardinal Justin Rigali and Bishop John Wester outlines three main areas of concern: “that no one should be forced to pay for or participate in abortion, that health care should be affordable and available to the poor and vulnerable, and that the needs of legal immigrants should be met.”

Of those, of course, abortion poses the gravest threat to the bill. The bishops simply don’t buy the argument that House Democrats found a way to block public funding for abortions with the Capps amendment, and they insist that the Hyde amendment doesn’t apply to the bills because they are not appropriations measures. A sizable bloc of House Democrats, led by Bart Stupak of Michigan, agree and are pressuring for a clear prohibition on public funding.

Not really much new here, but the reference to /legal/ immigrants (my emphasis) is heartening.

More Ave Maria News

2009-09-23T09:53:00.002-05:00

AveWatch: Safranek Wins Settlement from Ave Maria and Monaghan

Detroit attorney Deborah Gordon announced today that former Ave Maria School of Law professor Stephen Safranek accepted a settlement offer in his October 2007 wrongful termination suit against Tom Monaghan, the Ave Maria Foundation, the Law School, and Bernard Dobranski (the recently-resigned AMSL Dean and President). The Law School’s Board of Governors will rescind its earlier revocation of Professor Safranek’s tenure; further, the Board will rescind the preceding suspension and all censures imposed by then-Dean Dobranski.

Lots of links and reaction. Check it out.

Ouch

2009-09-23T08:45:00.003-05:00

Peruse this article in American Thinker: The Catholic Bishops and ACORN by Mark Wauck. He goes into detail, quoting many previous articles, in describing the Catholic Campaign for Human Development's history and relations with the world of ACORN (before CCHD severed ties with it amid news of massive embezzlement at ACORN) and community organizing at large. (Guess which organization funded a few of our present president's jobs?)

Summing up:

The article [a CNS article quoted by Wauck] goes on to relate a CCHD spokesman's claims that CCHD subjects its grantees to a great deal of scrutiny, and that they had no suspicion of irregularities in voter registration drives. You can take those claims for what they're worth, but the fact remains that CCHD -- which is to say, the Catholic Church in America -- has for decades been funneling millions of dollars into an organization founded by radical leftists.

That's bad news. Bad for the bishops, bad for the Church, bad for America.

In an addendum written after the new revelation on CCHD's funding of pro-abortion and prostitution groups, Wauck refers to the widely-quoted words of Father Neuhaus of First Things regarding where the Catholic laity's money is going: down the rabbit hole:

He called the organization "misbegotten in concept and corrupt in practice," and went so far as to urge that it be terminated. "What most Catholics don't know, and what would likely astonish them," wrote Fr. Neuhaus, "is that CHD very explicitly does not fund Catholic institutions and apostolates that work with the poor." Neuhaus suggested that the bishops would do better to spend their money on more Catholic-related projects, such as "Catholic inner-city schools."

Bolding mine.

Pretending and Reality

2009-09-02T18:10:00.004-05:00

Father Z has pointed out an article at the website of the Cincinnati Enquirer regarding the actions of the local ordinary in dismissing a female religious for advocating on behalf of women's (pretend) ordination. They're also doing a poll.

Check it out.

Last checked: 6:10 PM CDT

WHAT DO YOU THINK?
Should the Church allow women to be ordained as priests?
Yes (1560) 55.85%
No (1157) 41.42%
I'm undecided (76) 2.72%
Total Votes: 2793

Dipping Into Health Care

2009-09-01T13:48:00.003-05:00

His Excellency R. Walker Nickless of Sioux City has this to say regarding the health care debate (hat tip to Hotair.com):

First and most important, the Church will not accept any legislation that mandates coverage, public or private, for abortion, euthanasia, or embryonic stem-cell research.

We refuse to allow our own parish, school, and diocesan health insurance plans to be forced to include these evils. As a corollary of this, we insist equally on adequate protection of individual rights of conscience for patients and health care providers not to be made complicit in these evils. A so-called reform that imposes these evils on us would be far worse than keeping the health care system we now have.

Second, the Catholic Church does not teach that “health care” as such, without distinction, is a natural right.

The “natural right” of health care is the divine bounty of food, water, and air without which all of us quickly die. This bounty comes from God directly. None of us own it, and none of us can morally withhold it from others. The remainder of health care is a political, not a natural, right, because it comes from our human efforts, creativity, and compassion.

As a political right, health care should be apportioned according to need, not ability to pay or to benefit from the care. We reject the rationing of care. Those who are sickest should get the most care, regardless of age, status, or wealth. But how to do this is not self-evident. The decisions that we must collectively make about how to administer health care therefore fall under “prudential judgment.”

Third, in that category of prudential judgment, the Catholic Church does not teach that government should directly provide health care.

Unlike a prudential concern like national defense, for which government monopolization is objectively good – it both limits violence overall and prevents the obvious abuses to which private armies are susceptible – health care should not be subject to federal monopolization.

Preserving patient choice (through a flourishing private sector) is the only way to prevent a health care monopoly from denying care arbitrarily, as we learned from HMOs in the recent past. While a government monopoly would not be motivated by profit, it would be motivated by such bureaucratic standards as quotas and defined “best procedures,” which are equally beyond the influence of most citizens. The proper role of the government is to regulate the private sector, in order to foster healthy competition and to curtail abuses. Therefore any legislation that undermines the viability of the private sector is suspect.

Emphasis mine. The bolded parts are excellent illustrations of his point.

2009-08-25T09:40:00.002-05:00

FUMARE has a post on monetary policy and the Pope's failure to address it in his encyclical. The post references a critique by Thomas E. Woods, Jr. in Taki's Magazine.

I'm not so interested on the monetary policy bits as I am the general response of Woods to Caritas in Veritate:

I actually didn’t want to write anything about the Pope’s encyclical. In 2007, I wrote a book, Sacred Then and Sacred Now: The Return of the Old Latin Mass, in defense of the Pope’s restoration of the traditional Latin liturgy, an area in which Benedict XVI is quite knowledgeable and has much of value to say. I like this Pope. He is smart and serious, not frivolous or vain. He is in many ways a substantial improvement over his predecessor. (I cite as evidence the very fact that the media believes the opposite.) And having been viciously denounced and ridiculed by some pretty despicable people, he certainly has all the right enemies.

I have reluctantly yielded to the urging of quite a few correspondents and typed up a few thoughts. So here goes: Caritas in Veritate strikes me as at best a relatively unremarkable restatement of some familiar themes from previous social encyclicals. At worst, it is bewilderingly naïve, and its policy recommendations, while attracting no one to the Church, are certain to repel.

The response to the encyclical throughout the right-of-center Catholic world was drearily predictable: with few exceptions, it was a performance worthy of the Soviet Politburo, with unrestrained huzzahs everywhere.

It is one thing to receive a statement from the Pope with the respect that is due to the man and his office. It is quite another to treat his every missive as ipso facto brilliant, as if the Catholic faith depended on it. If his supporters are trying to live down to the Left’s portrayal of Catholicism as a billion-person cult, they could hardly do a better job.

Woods then launches into an explanation of the concepts of his book and how economics should be viewed only as what it really is, an objective study of economic processes and the theories that attempt to describe those processes. Then Woods goes on:

Nothing in the Deposit of Faith even comes close to deciding this and countless other important economic questions one way or the other. Not even the most uncomprehending or exaggerated rendering of papal infallibility would have the Pope adjudicating such disputes as these. Yet misunderstandings or ignorance regarding such seemingly abstruse points are so often at the heart of the policy recommendations that bishops’ conferences propose and papal encyclicals can seem to imply.

It is obviously not “dissent” merely to observe that the cause-and-effect relationships that constitute the theoretical edifice of economics are not a matter of faith and morals. They simply do not fall within the range of subjects on which a Catholic prelate is endowed with special insight or authority. Catholic laity cannot head up petition drives against them. They are facts of life. Facts cannot be protested, defied, or lectured to; they can only be learned and acted upon. There is no use in shaking our fists at the fact that price controls lead to shortages. All we can do is understand the phenomenon, and be sure to bear it and other economic truths in mind if we want to make statements about the economy that are rational and useful.

Woods closes out the section of his critique by basically saying what we already know in the real world (and the Holy Father does in his Catholic world when dealing with Catholic things): just saying it should be this way won't make it so, especially when economics is a trade-off. One can't ask for higher wages for all bread winners and expect employers to be able to pay to hire as many bread winners as before.

Anyway, go read through the rest. It's pretty interesting.

Unidentified Body

2009-08-21T09:56:00.002-05:00

I follow a few cases at websleuths.com including the following:

We have a few readers out that way. Leave a comment if you know anything.

The Canonization of John Paul II

2009-08-20T10:23:00.003-05:00

Damian Thompson at his blog Holy Smoke takes a look at a post by a law student named Eric Giunta at RenewAmerica.

Thompson includes long excerpts of Giunta's column, including:

Though Catholics and others are loathe to admit it of an otherwise beloved Pope, John Paul II oversaw a church which deteriorated in both its inner and outer life. His callous indifference toward the victims of priestly sexual abuse in refusing to meet personally with a single one of them, and his stubborn refusal to compel the resignation from office of any of the bishops who aided, abetted, and covered-up the abuse, are testamentary to his utter failure: not as a Catholic or a theologian, but as a Pope.

And so on. Read the entire thing at RenewAmerica, but that's the gist. After the long excerpts, Thompson concludes with the following:

I don’t endose these views: in fact, it seems perfectly obvious that the reign of John Paul II was one of slowly growing orthodoxy in the Church, nurtured by his Catechism and a series of magnificent encyclicals. And those Catholics who want to draw a sharp distinction between the agendas of John Paul and Benedict are overlooking the fact that the theological direction of the last pontificate owed an enormous amount to the current Holy Father, who would be horrified by Giunta’s article.

Yet this debate is clearly gathering pace. JPII loyalists are also on the warpath. (George Weigel is using the Maciel scandal as a stick with which to beat this administration, not the last one.) So I’d be interested in your views.

Though Mr. Thompson is right that a lot of good that we're seeing now began first during the pontificate of John Paul II through the continued influence of Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, I think that Mr. Thompson ignores by painting over Giunta's comments as just more anti-JPII rhetoric that Giunta's points deserve at the very least direct refutation since they aren't dealing necessarily with /theology/. John Paul II was by most accounts an indifferent administrator at best. Whether that in itself is grounds for blocking canonization I cannot say, but that indifference certainly had consequences that we're living with and cleaning up to this day.

This comment left by Hamish McGlobbie contains the best advice:

I think we could wait 20 years or so before rushing to canonize anyone. Presumably it is God who decides whether they go fast-track to Heaven, rather than a Vatican committee, and it will be easier to make such evaluations when we have had more time. JP2 = good guy? (yes). JP2 = saint? (hard to tell).