FAREWELL JOHN PAUL II

From the AP via the Houston Chronicle:

A fierce enemy of communism, John Paul set off the sparks that helped bring down communism in Poland, from where a virtual revolution spread across the Soviet bloc. No less an authority than former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev said much of the credit went to John Paul.

But his Polish roots also nourished a doctrinal conservatism — opposition to contraception, abortion and women priests — that rankled liberal Catholics in the United States and western Europe.

A man who had lived under both the Nazis and the Soviets, he loathed totalitarianism, which he called "substitute religion." As pope, he helped foster Poland's Solidarity movement and bring down Communism. Once it was vanquished, he decried capitalist callousness.

During World War II, he appeared on a Nazi blacklist in 1944 for his activities in a Christian democratic underground in Poland. B'nai B'rith and other organizations testified that he helped Jews find refuge from the Nazis.

While the pope championed better relations with Jews — Christianity's "older brothers," as he put it — the Vatican formally recognized Israel in 1993. He also met with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and urged the Holy Land's warring neighbors to reconcile.

John Paul was intent on improving relations with Muslims. On a trip to Damascus, Syria, in May 2001, he became the first pope to step into a mosque.

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On the one hand, I despised his traditional Catholic sexism and lunatic opposition to birth control. But I have to give the man his due: he accomplished great things and was truly a symbol of peace, the true and correct position for a follower of Christ. I was thrilled, in fact, by his opposition to the US invasion of Iraq. And his criticisms of capitalism...well, you'd never hear talk like that coming out of his American Protestant fundamentalist counterparts. It's strange to me, but I find myself saddened by his death.

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