Word: vaticans
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John Paul can also impose his will, and there was no more formidable and controversial example of this than the Vatican's intervention at the U.N.'s International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo in September. There the Pope's emissaries defeated a U.S.-backed proposition John Paul feared would encourage abortions worldwide. The consequences may be global and -- critics predict -- catastrophic, particularly in the teeming Third World, where John Paul is so admired...
John Paul was not in Cairo, but he kept in constant touch with his delegation. Vatican spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls recalls the Pope's reaction to Paragraph 8.25: "He feared that for the first time in the history of humanity, abortion was being proposed as a means of population control. He put all the prestige of his office at the service of this issue." For nine days the Vatican delegates, under his direction, lobbied and filibustered; they kept their Latin American bloc in line and struck up alliances with Islamic nations opposed to abortion. In the end, the Pope...
...Spanish critic said the Pope had "become a traveling salesman of demographic irrationality." Says dissident Swiss theologian Hans Kung: "This Pope is a disaster for our church. There's charm there, but he's closed-minded." The British Catholic weekly the Tablet summed up Cairo, "Never has the Vatican cared less about being unpopular than under Pope John Paul...
Both men were by temperament religious traditionalists. It is true that Pope John under the direct guidance of the Holy Spirit (this is the only way I can rationalize his decision to summon the Second Vatican Council) was capable of making startling and creative decisions. But his family background, training and career were totally unadventurous. He was steeped in old-style Catholicism. This made him, like the famous 19th century reformer W.E. Gladstone, a "conservative in everything but essentials." His spiritual diary reflects an almost childish simplicity in his devotions. The rosary was hardly ever out of his hands...
...happened, John made himself into a conscientious and accomplished diplomat. But he never particularly liked the work, and it gave him a huge distaste for the Vatican court as it existed under the long-reigning Pius XII (1939-58). He found it artificial and impersonal -- and undemocratic. He wanted to bring into the running of the church the thousands of bishops, hundreds of thousands of priests and the countless millions of ordinary Catholics throughout the world. Hence, in 1959, only a year after he became Pope, he summoned the Second Vatican Council. He compared the idea to a flinging open...