Sherry Chandler » The Pope and Politics
The Pope and Politics
I was raised a Southern Baptist and, before everybody starts to boo and hiss, all I want to say here is that the Pope has always been pretty irrelevent to any religious life I may have had both in and out of any church. Baptists (are supposed to) have only one doctrine – that no one stands between the individual human being and God (and that includes the Southern Baptist Convention). So I took that in with my baby formula and, for good or ill, it informs the way I live my life today.
But John Paul II has been a difficult Pope to ignore, and I can’t help but notice that during this week when his dying and his death have been the only news there is, that the American right has pretty much claimed him as an ally. I don’t think Karol Wojtyla was that easy. For a (long) look at another side of John Paul II – the side that opposed the death penalty and the war in Iraq, the side that found laissez-faire capitolism as evil as Stalinism – I recommend this article by Juan Cole at Informed Comment.
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