Earlier this week, there was a report that humans are eating and using up resources in a rate that is so destructive that there’s only one way out: to the moon!
But in all seriousness: the pope is dying, if you weren’t aware of it yet. All the channels on my black box have something to say on this matter too: you know, the Paula Zahns, Soledads and Costellos. The legacy that is the Pope: with plenty of misquotes
For example, over at Lou Dobbs, a priest claimed the following:
“And Reagan’s advisers were saying don’t trust Gorbachev, he’s a communist, don’t trust him. So he went and met with the pope and the pope said this is a man you can — Gorbachev is a man you can do business with. And Reagan believed the pope rather than his advisers and went on to make these deals, which began the collapse of Communism in the Soviet Union.”
Give the pope a dress and he looks like Thatcher (it was Thatcher who briefed Reagan about Gorbachev). The US’s and Vatican’s (read: Pope) position on how to deal with the East European countries during the Eighties were not completely compatible, particularly on how to force a communist Poland to accept the demands of Solidarnozs.
Looking back at those days, the Cold War, I find it amazing to see that the Pope’s intelligent approach (uh, as in political) toward Communism didn’t match the way how he dealt with birth control and overpopulation. The Pope was a staunch opponent of birth control, anti-conception and particularly the use of condoms. Millions of African lifes could have been saved from starvation and HIV, if only the Church had not opposed the UN’s initiatives. Literally, The Pope’s ‘Culture of Life’ theme has killed more people than the media wants you to know. Ironic how his words now play and resonate in the Bush administration.
Sidenote: the John Paul II was the most travelled Pope too. I always wondered who paid for those bills. I could never imagine why there were so many happy faces at places he visited and why he was met with the same allures as a rockstar. It must have been the Eighties.
Politically he was mostly right. During his “reign”, he harshly condemned several wars, and also sided rather consistently with the Palestinian refugees. Though I think that siding with Arafat was mainly because of Jeruzalem.
But he was generally liked, though.