berberry responds to me:
quote:
but the way you say it makes it sound as though this pope had purely evil intentions
And in a great many number of things, he did. The actions he was witnessed engaging in were done for no other reason than to consolidate his power, indicate his authority over the lives of people, and resulted in nothing but misery and death for which he felt no sense of shame.
That is, indeed, pure evil. We're all capable of it at one point or another. But there comes a point when someone does it over and over and over again that it ceases to be the actions of someone who didn't know any better, who didn't realize just how far afield he had gone, just how far astray he had wandered, but rather the actions of someone who deliberately, consciously, and purposefully did it, would do it again, and is actually trying to figure out how to go about it again.
quote:
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.
I know.
He did.
He knew his actions were killing people, but he did not stop. No matter how many times it was brought to his attention that his philosophy of life would lead to the suffering, misery, and death of
millions of people, no matter how many times it was brought to his attention that his philosophy in life was actually leading to the suffering, misery, and death of thousands of people, he refused to budge.
If that is not deliberately setting out to kill people, I don't know what is.
This is what he said in 1989:
It is morally illicit to champion a prevention of the AIDS sickness based on recourse to means and remedies that violate the authentically human sense of sexuality.
If you get AIDS, it's your own fault, sayeth Wojtyla, it's your own damned fault. Never mind that it's the
women who are the ones who are getting infected most. Never mind that monogamy only works when
both partners are practicing it and she can remain monogamous all she wants but she's still going to get infected from his screwing around. It's her fault. She "violated the authentically human sense of sexuality."
quote:
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.
Nobody can fight all the battles. I'm well aware of that. But there is a difference between being having to choose your battles and thus being unable to make a situation better and deliberately choosing to make a situation worse.
quote:
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.
That's fine. You're entitled to your opinion. I have laid out my criteria for why I call him evil and I don't expect others to fall in line.
quote:
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.
But that's precisely my point. People seem to think that the truly horrendous things he did were actually good things and that he should be made an object of worship and devotion. He wouldn't have done them if he didn't think that they were something worthy of worship and devotion.
If that isn't evil, I don't know what is.
Rrhain
WWJD? JWRTFM!
™ Version 4.2