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Author: Jimmy Akin
Jimmy was born in Texas, grew up nominally Protestant, but at age 20 experienced a profound conversion to Christ. Planning on becoming a Protestant seminary professor, he started an intensive study of the Bible. But the more he immersed himself in Scripture the more he found to support the Catholic faith, and in 1992 he entered the Catholic Church. His conversion story, "A Triumph and a Tragedy," is published in Surprised by Truth. Besides being an author, Jimmy is the Senior Apologist at Catholic Answers, a contributing editor to Catholic Answers Magazine, and a weekly guest on "Catholic Answers Live."
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Yeah . . . we’re now getting the Frances Kissling’s of the world coming out with their (solicited-or-not) assessments of our Holy Father’s reign. I’m trying not to read any of them. It’s the same old canards, trotted out in order to keep these folk’s faces just beneath the soft white underbelly of the MSM’s consciousness.
And amongst all the kind & heartfelt pieces by Evangelical Protestants I’ve read that have genuinely touched me, I’m now coming across ones that, while have many wonderful & things to say, they just have to say something like, “despite the Catholic Church’s doctrine of salvation by works & an abnormal admiration for Mary” & perpetuate the old misunderstandings. (SIGH)
If you read James White’s blog, try not to be offended; he didn’t even bother with the kindness and heartfelt-ness.
Good to know, Brad, thanks. I tend not to read Mr White’s blog. I did, however, kindly & charitably inform an Evangelical gentleman in the ways he was misunderstanding the Church on the “doctrine of works & abnormal admiration of Mary” thing. He responded by quoting the Council of Trent at length (& out of context, conveniently ignoring specific passages that contradict his POV)& then blocked me from posting again saying the thread was not up for discussion! (Then why the link to the com-box in the first place?) Strange. Well . . . at least I was kind. Had I been rude, I’d be feeling really bad right now.
I noticed that a couple of Canadian newspapers today were lionizing some cardinal(s) they perceived as being “open minded” and “wanting to open up the church and bring it into the modern world” (read contraception, abortion, fetal stem-cell research, gay “rights” etc.). They were deliberately exaggerating and hyping the chances of these guys being elected (as well as their liberal credentials) so that when the dream dies and we get an orthodox pope they can scream “authoritarian dictatorship” and cry for “freedom and democracy for the church” while expressing their “deep disappointment” in the “lost opportunity” and banishing the church “to the ash heap of history” for “failing to get with the times”. They’re setting themselves up nicely for some post-conclave condemnations.
If it weren’t so true that it makes me cry, BillyHW, I’d be LOL! That’s gotta be one of the MSM’s scripts for this story!
Yes, it’s sad, but certainly not surprising, that the usual suspects continue to blast the saintly John Paul II.
The idea of the news media being concerned whether the pope was a failure is humerous, kind of like them getting upset about the violence or the alleged lacked of historcity of Mel Gibson’s The Passion.
At the same time, it is interesting to see a more balanced portayal of the pope. Europe underwent a significant secularization during the reign of JP II. In fact, he unwittingly encouraged it by supporting the European Union and Islamic Immigration. It’s certainly questionable whether his existentialist personalism and his attempt to engage “modernity” were good ideas.
The very fact that a supposed “conservative” and ally of JP II (Cardinal George) permits Greeley to spout his liberalism unmolested should make us question how intent the pope was in changing the direction of the church.
Hey, nothing cheers me up like a disappointed liberal!
I think the Pope saw the EU as kinda like a Happy Meal…all I need in one package. It makes it easier if you have just one entity to deal with in evangelization. However, he underestimated the selective nature of the European memory.
It always seemed to me that JP II had an excessive optimism about where the world was going.
Right, Steve. That’s why he was always talking about our “culture of death” and the like – because of his excessive optimism. (As for “his existentialist personalism,” you don’t even know what that means, let alone what it could possibly have to do with secularization.)
Kevin,
I think JPII was probably the most parodoxical man of the century. Yes, he realized that there was a “culture of death” but at the same time he encouraged Catholic nations to join the EU apparently ignorant of the fact that it is an attempt to impose secularization continent wide. The same thing could be said about immigration, which is a tool of the left to de-Christianize Europe. The pope encouraged the countries of Europe to legalize all illegal immigrants in spite of the fact that Moslem immigrants vote for leftist parties.
I certainly do know a fair bit about JPII’s theology. I have read several books on it, including Johannes Dormann’s four volume work JOHN PAUL II’S THEOLOGICAL JOURNEY.
I think JPII was an important man and did many good things. I applaude him for taking a stand against abortion and euthenasia.