Biden: "I'm Not a Pope John Paul [II] Guy"

(Hat tip: Opinionated Catholic and Whispers in the Loggia)

Sen. Biden sticks his foot in it again over abortion, this time dissing the late Holy Father, Pope John Paul II:

... Q: This [abortion] was an issue for John Kerry, do you see this as being an issue for you?

A: I think it's going to be an issue for everybody. Anyone who's a Catholic, a practicing Catholic, this is a dilemma for. There's an expression in law school: hard cases make bad law. These are just very, very, very difficult moral, social and societal choices.

And for me, I am prepared as a senator to say that the framework of Roe v. Wade based upon this imperfect trimester notion captures the gravity of how you should approach this most serious of decisions relating to life and death. First trimester, the state should stay out of it completely because it's a matter of faith, basically, there. Second trimester, there are competing interests, but they're both legitimate to look at. Third trimester, there's an overwhelming burden to say, there isn't a good reason to abort unless it relates to the mother's health. I'm as comfortable as I can be on a really difficult moral dilemma.

To sum it up, as a Catholic, I'm a John XXIII guy, I'm not a Pope John Paul guy.

(emphasis added)

Well, isn't that special? On the bright side, at least he didn't refer to Pope John XXIII as "Pius the XXIII".


[cross-posted at Catholics Against Joe Biden]

Paul Johnson on Pope John Paul II's Steadfast Commitment to Life

John Paul was a philosopher by inclinations and training, and his philosophy was infused by reverence and respect for human life in all its multitudinous epiphanies. Humans, albeit fallible and often foolish, were made in God's image, and to take a life, without the strongest possible justification, was an assault on God. . . .

This love for life made John Paul a stern and unflinching upholder of traditional Catholic teaching in three important respects. He refused to countenance any form of artificial contraception, allowing Catholics to plan their families only by natural methods. As a priest he had made a special study of the medical sciences which affect families, and as Archbishop of Krakow he set up an institute devoted to the problems of conception, birth and parenting. He believed to his dying day that nature was the only reliable and health-preserving guide in such matters.

The pope was likewise a vehement opponent of any form of euthanasia, believing that life in the extremely old or chronically sick, even seemingly insensible sufferers, was just as precious--and to be defended just as passionately--as in the young and vigorous. To him, the battle to preserve life was all-important, uncompromising and perpetual.

In his last years, and especially his last weeks, he fought this battle himself with all the obstinacy of his enormous will. His struggle to perform his global duties right to the end was a painful but hugely effective demonstration against the iniquity of a compulsory retirement age, but also a gesture of protest against all those who would sideline, condescend to, and render impotent the very old. He reminded the world that the aged and frail might lack everything else but could be rich in the quality always in the shortest possible supply in the world--wisdom. His last gift to humanity was a moving and electrifying demonstration of what Christians call a bona mors--how to die.

John Paul was, perhaps, most vehement in his condemnation of abortion, especially when practiced under the sanction of law and on a huge scientific scale, in the clinics specially created to smother the spark of life before birth, which he compared to the death camps erected by Nazi and Soviet mass murderers. It was a sharp sword in his heart which filled him with righteous indignation that, after the world had been scourged for more than 50 years by the mass killings of totalitarianism, anti-life politicians, above all in the democracies, should have set up a holocaust of the unborn which has already--as he often asserted with awe and anger--ended the existence of more tiny human creatures than all the efforts of Hitler, Stalin and Mao combined. . . .

"The Philosopher-Pope", by historian Paul Johnson. Wall Street Journal April 9, 2005.

Christ Opens the Door to our Holy Father

. . . We are a culture of death because we are a culture of fear. Far from being irrelevant, John Paul was feared and hated because his message was exactly the message we needed to hear. We said that he did not understand us, because he understood us too well. He did not accept our heroic vision of ourselves, so we said he was blinded by his archaic prejudices. But in fact, like all prophets, he saw through our false images of greatness. He saw our pitiful souls, made for holiness and contented with mediocrity--he saw us and he loved us, as his Master loves us. And we could not stand it.

May he rest in peace, and may light perpetual shine upon him. And by his prayers, may we obtain the grace to follow his example. May we love without fear, and hope without shame. May we never rest content with anything less than the full humanity that is ours in Christ. And may we be gathered together, with Karol Wojtila and all the faithful departed, in the presence of our Lord who bought us with his blood.

-- Requiescat in pace JPII, from the blog Ithilien.

Taking Away That Which He First Had Given Us

From the pages of Times Against Humanity . . .

These thoughts expressed to his mother by the 16th-century saint Aloysius Gonzaga on his approaching death are worth meditating upon, as we mourn the loss of our Holy Father, Pope John Paul II:

Not long will last that separation: there we shall see one another again and be happy without ever growing tired, united with our Redeemer, praising Him with all our strength, and singing forever His mercies. I do not at all doubt that, leaving aside all that the reasoning of human nature says, we shall easily open the door to faith and to that simple and pure obedience to which we are held by God, offering Him freely and promptly that which is His, and all the more willingly the dearer to you is the thing that He takes from you, believing firmly that which God does is all of it well done, taking away that which He first had given us, and for no other reason than to put it in a safe and sure place, and to give it what we all desire for ourselves.

I have said all this for no other reason than to satisfy the desire that I have that Your Most Illustrious Ladyship and all my family may receive this my departure as a dear gift, and that you may accompany and help me with your Mother's blessing to pass this gulf and reach the shore of all my hopes. I have done it with all the better will because I have nothing else left with which to give you some little proof of the love and filial reverence that I owe you. I end by asking once more very humbly for your blessing.

Joannes Paulus Magnus, John Paul the Great

Reuters photo

"[A] civil law authorizing abortion or euthanasia ceases by that very fact to be a true, morally binding civil law. . . . There is no obligation in conscience to obey such laws; instead there is a grave and clear obligation to oppose them by conscientious objection."
John Paul II, Encyclical Letter The Gospel of Life (Evangelium Vitae), no. 72 (March 25, 1995) (original emphasis).

John Paul on Episcopal Courage

Earlier this year, John Paul II published a book of reflections aimed at his fellow bishops, Rise, Let Us Be on Our Way (Warner, 2004). But the book is well worth reading by all Christians. The title comes from Christ's words to his apostles as they leave Gethsemane and are faced with the approach of Judas accompanied by an armed crowd (Mk 14:42).

And the Pope has words indeed for his fellow bishops, words he quotes from the late Cardinal Wyszynski of Poland in 1946:

Lack of courage in a bishop is the beginning of disaster. Can he still be an apostle? Witnessing to the Truth is essential for an apostle. And this always demands courage.

Rise, Let Us Be On Our Way, pp. 189-90 (quoting Wyszynski).

The Pope quotes at length from later comments by Cardinal Wyszynski:

The greatest weakness in an apostle is fear. What gives rise to fear is lack of confidence in the power of the Lord: this is what oppresses the heart and tightens the throat. The apostle then ceases to offer witness. Does he remain an apostle? The disciples who abandoned the Master increased the courage of the executioners. Silence in the presence of the enemies of a cause encourages them. Fear in an apostle is the principal ally of the enemies of the cause. 'Use fear to enforce silence' is the first goal in the strategy of the wicked.

Rise, p. 190 (quoting Wyszynski; emphasis added).

The Pope adds his own comments to the above quotations:

Here there is no room for compromise nor for an opportunistic recourse to human diplomacy. We have to bear witness to the truth, even at the cost of persecutions, even to the shedding of our blood, like Christ Himself.

Rise, pp. 190-91.

Inevitably, I think of a blonde Canadian-born Michigan governor, with a soft, seductive voice, who claims to be Catholic, who claims to venerate Mother Teresa of Calcutta, but who is in fact a radical proponent of the killing of the innocent unborn and partially born. Then I think of the other numerous supporters of abortion, in and out of politics, who also claim to be Catholic. The silence of too many bishops merely encourages them; and, in the words quoted by the Pope, this silence is "the beginning of disaster."