Pope John Paul II
In the fall of 1978 I was in graduate school, a teaching assistant in the math department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. I was living in an apartment on Langdon Street in Madison. And— somehow this is the way it sticks in my memory— I clipped two articles to save, just weeks apart, out of Newsweek. One article had to do with the steep decline in the number of breweries in the United States. The other had to do with the election of a new pope.
Actually, it was the second new pope in a matter of weeks. When
And now, after a papacy of 26½ years, John
He was a spiritual giant. Agree with him or disagree with him, he was a spiritual giant. One of the quirks of contemporary Western culture— and it is greatly to our discredit— is the incapacity of many to see greatness except where the "great" is already in seamless agreement with them (or except where the "great" is even further to the left than they are, which is even more to our discredit). I like to think that Pope John
He also provided the Roman Catholic Church with an infusion of backbone, at a time when Catholicism seemed to be headed
(Now when are they going to bring back the Latin Mass? Never happen, I know; but I'm only halfway joking. Also, why can't Catholics sing??!)
And of course there's John
Pope John Paul II. Born May 18, 1920. Ordained November 1, 1946. Became a bishop, July 4, 1958; archbishop, December 30, 1963; cardinal, June 26, 1967; pope, October 16, 1978. Died April 2, 2005.
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