I am a woman and a sometimes-lapsed Catholic with many, many reservations about the Pope, mainly in his later years. Certainly, there are things I disagree with, ranging from birth control to staunch homophobia - two things that have me lapsing every other day.
But I'd also like to comment on his personal influence on me and people like me.
I was born behind the Iron Curtain. We were supposedly atheist, people would get thrown into prison for attending church or being religious. You were kept from promotions, and could not openly celebrate religious feasts. My mother was a professor, so she had a "highly visible" government job, which meant when I received the sacrament of the first communion, I had to put my dress on in the car, and on the way back from church, change back to my regular jeans in the car so that none of our neighbours would see we were religious and report us, or my mother would not only lose her job, but have immense political trouble.
When the Pope spoke in Poland in 1979 and told the people they were free and they did not have to crawl on their bellies, that the rest of the free world was with them, that was something amazing for us.
I know that Americans and West Europeans, etc, cannot understand this, can't understand the promise of liberation, the notion that somebody out there encouraged our tiny glimmer of faith to live on. Hope is maybe the greatest of things, and everything changed in 1979 for Eastern Europe. Without TV coverage, without sanctioned news reports, everyone heard about the Pope in Warsaw and it meant something that you can never put into words.
What I do find disappointing is that he forgot that 90% of the faithful in those countries were women, in any church on any given day. Like the women who stood by Jesus, it was women in Communism who kept the faith and passed it onto their children. And so I am disappointed today that the Pope is so adamantly against ordaining them and that his views towards women are really not all that inspiring considering it was women who kept the faith in Jesus alive for all those decades, almost exclusively.
At the same time, I will always remember the man who promised millions of people not only spiritual, but personal freedom.
He will probably always stay a paradox to me, but I don't see him as wholly good or wholly bad.
I wish him a peaceful death. Farewell to a man who was extraordinary in so many regards.
But I'd also like to comment on his personal influence on me and people like me.
I was born behind the Iron Curtain. We were supposedly atheist, people would get thrown into prison for attending church or being religious. You were kept from promotions, and could not openly celebrate religious feasts. My mother was a professor, so she had a "highly visible" government job, which meant when I received the sacrament of the first communion, I had to put my dress on in the car, and on the way back from church, change back to my regular jeans in the car so that none of our neighbours would see we were religious and report us, or my mother would not only lose her job, but have immense political trouble.
When the Pope spoke in Poland in 1979 and told the people they were free and they did not have to crawl on their bellies, that the rest of the free world was with them, that was something amazing for us.
I know that Americans and West Europeans, etc, cannot understand this, can't understand the promise of liberation, the notion that somebody out there encouraged our tiny glimmer of faith to live on. Hope is maybe the greatest of things, and everything changed in 1979 for Eastern Europe. Without TV coverage, without sanctioned news reports, everyone heard about the Pope in Warsaw and it meant something that you can never put into words.
What I do find disappointing is that he forgot that 90% of the faithful in those countries were women, in any church on any given day. Like the women who stood by Jesus, it was women in Communism who kept the faith and passed it onto their children. And so I am disappointed today that the Pope is so adamantly against ordaining them and that his views towards women are really not all that inspiring considering it was women who kept the faith in Jesus alive for all those decades, almost exclusively.
At the same time, I will always remember the man who promised millions of people not only spiritual, but personal freedom.
He will probably always stay a paradox to me, but I don't see him as wholly good or wholly bad.
I wish him a peaceful death. Farewell to a man who was extraordinary in so many regards.
anitram
and sad, and still shocking. I think many still hope there is a chance he might hang on a while longer...
(And 
It's a small gesture to show that you're truly sorry.
