I've held my tongue these last days, watching and judging Pope John Paul II's final week in silence. There are debates I join carefully and infrequently; there are matters I avoid altogether out of regard for the subject, this weblog's readers and my own inability to gather thoughts without a cut from ardor's brambles. After all, I left the pope's church to become an American Baptist nearly three years ago for, if you were to ask me in person, strong reasons.
That divergence stands. But the few criticisms of the church I've written over these two-and-a-half years have done good for neither the church nor myself. If not means, do we have the same end?
Such an ecumenist as this last pontiff must be moved, from his view atop the heights of Paradise, by the depth and sincerity of a memorial to his life and work — in sentiment and action — from the hearts of so many men. The relativist accepts all followings as loosely as his own, a buzzing crowd of permissive minds; while the pluralist conjoins all practices by the principle they share, a unification — a figure concord. As the professorial George Melloan writes in the Wall Street Journal today, "For John Paul, 'human dignity' was everything." It was for him, as it is for us all.
Melloan is one of many this week from whom I've learned a lesson. John Paul, peace be with you.