Rrhain writes me:
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And when those bad qualities outweigh the good qualities, and when the bad qualities are considered virtues held onto so tightly that they will never, ever be repented despite repeated evidence of the harm they cause to real people's lives, then the person goes from beyond simply "flawed" and into the realm of evil.
Then this is just a judgement call that we're going to have to disagree about. I do agree that the bad outweighs the good by far (I would've been happy to help you compile your list - you left out a thing or two), but the way you say it makes it sound as though this pope had purely evil intentions and I don't believe that. To say he was evil - at least as I interpret the word - is to say that this pope deliberately set out to kill millions of people.
One of the saddest things about this pope is that his was a move back to the right in the papacy. His election ended a fairly long run of moderately liberal popes. Had most any of those other popes been in power during this time, the world would be a better place today - at least in some ways.
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(*blink!*)
(*have you got something in your eye?*)
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Do you have any understanding about how, say, the United States' policy on prevention of HIV in Africa changed when Bush took over from Clinton?
Of course I do, but if you want an example of someone I
would consider evil, it's George W. Bush. George Bush may love his daughters, but beyond that as far as I'm concerned he
is pure evil.
My point was that for any leader who might have been better than the pope, you can still find some humanitarian crisis somewhere in the world that that leader could have done much, much more to relieve. So it becomes a question of degrees, and to me the word 'evil' sounds like an absolute.
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But that said, what makes you think that I don't consider those other leaders to be evil, too?
Maybe you do. I don't; I would reserve that term for only the worst.
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Wojtyla doesn't seem to have a problem throwing around the e-word, himself. You do recall that he called gays "intrinsically evil," yes?
I had forgotten about that specific quote, but yes I do remember it. I hadn't forgotten the attitude that produced it, so it really doesn't make much difference in how I feel about him. He was no saint. He was a man who missed an opportunity at greatness because of his own bigotry. But again, to call him evil is to call say that he committed genocide, at least as I see it. I can't go quite that far with you.
Speaking of him being a saint, that may be a tragedy waiting to happen if the news reports I've heard are accurate. I don't think he was evil, but to enshrine this man's deadly polices with beatification is an idea that makes my stomach turn.
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