(no subject)
No matter how one chooses to believe, there is no denying that Pope John Paul II was a truly good man. Much like Mother Teresa or the Dalai Lama, he embodied virtues that are fundamental to our species as a whole.
(Mind beginning to wander--sorry I don't know about LJ cuts). For some reason, the idea that we can all look upon this guy and respect him brings to mind how, deep down, it really shouldn't matter how we choose to believe. Hell, I have friends raging from moderate Christians and secular Buddhists, all the way to die-hard creationists, athiests, and at least two Wiccans/Druids. We all manage to get along.
Personally, I may even go so far to conjecture that true moral principles are independent of any particular faith, though we're not quite at the point where we can completely gauge all actions outside of some religous model. We've made a lot of progress over the past few millenia, but many difficult questions (i.e. abortion, right-to-die, etc.) with no definite answer remain. And as has been made painfully clear in recent years, the age of killing others in the name of one's faith has not passed (nor is it limited to a single religion).
I don't know much of the history of John Paul II, so everyone's free to correct me if I'm wrong, but he seemed one of the more progressive Popes in recent Catholic history. From his active stance against anti-Semitism in Nazi Germany (which sadly was not uniform among Catholics and many other faiths at the time), to the active recognition of Israel by the Vatican, to the absolution of Gallileo in 1992 (though I'm sure that was on the backburner for a while ;-) ), and even his respect for the theory of evolution (I swear he gave a press release on this a decade ago); he always appeared to me to have a view of faith far beyond rigid adherance to dogma.
Not everybody would agree on the Pope's view of many things (I doubt I would, but only because I'm stubborn :-P), and we may still have a long way to go before we can finally answer questions of faith and morality to enough satisfaction to guarantee at least a little more peace on this world. Regardless, we can all still look beyond his, and our, particular beliefs to respect him as a human being. Hopefully this can inspire more of us to look beyond faith to understand and respect others as well.
God Bless him, and may God watch over us all (we definitely need it).
(Mind beginning to wander--sorry I don't know about LJ cuts). For some reason, the idea that we can all look upon this guy and respect him brings to mind how, deep down, it really shouldn't matter how we choose to believe. Hell, I have friends raging from moderate Christians and secular Buddhists, all the way to die-hard creationists, athiests, and at least two Wiccans/Druids. We all manage to get along.
Personally, I may even go so far to conjecture that true moral principles are independent of any particular faith, though we're not quite at the point where we can completely gauge all actions outside of some religous model. We've made a lot of progress over the past few millenia, but many difficult questions (i.e. abortion, right-to-die, etc.) with no definite answer remain. And as has been made painfully clear in recent years, the age of killing others in the name of one's faith has not passed (nor is it limited to a single religion).
I don't know much of the history of John Paul II, so everyone's free to correct me if I'm wrong, but he seemed one of the more progressive Popes in recent Catholic history. From his active stance against anti-Semitism in Nazi Germany (which sadly was not uniform among Catholics and many other faiths at the time), to the active recognition of Israel by the Vatican, to the absolution of Gallileo in 1992 (though I'm sure that was on the backburner for a while ;-) ), and even his respect for the theory of evolution (I swear he gave a press release on this a decade ago); he always appeared to me to have a view of faith far beyond rigid adherance to dogma.
Not everybody would agree on the Pope's view of many things (I doubt I would, but only because I'm stubborn :-P), and we may still have a long way to go before we can finally answer questions of faith and morality to enough satisfaction to guarantee at least a little more peace on this world. Regardless, we can all still look beyond his, and our, particular beliefs to respect him as a human being. Hopefully this can inspire more of us to look beyond faith to understand and respect others as well.
God Bless him, and may God watch over us all (we definitely need it).