The Imminent Beatification of John Paul II

Pope John Paul II is on the fast track to beatification, presumably because his successor, Pope Benedict XVI has determined that among the requisite miracles a deceased Pope must perform was that of curing a French nun with Parkinson’s disease who prayed to John Paul within months of his death. The fact that John Paul also suffered from Parkinson’s perhaps being the pump priming the post Pope needed to perform this miracle. Apparently he couldn’t cure himself of the disease when he was alive, but could, under just the right circumstances, cure a single nun of the disease after he vibrated into the afterlife.

Kind of makes you wonder, if this lucky nun had brought a dozen or so similarly afflicted souls to also pray to John Paul, if they would also have been as miraculously cured.  Or was there something uniquely special about her. Perhaps John Paul simply liked the mellifluous flow of her name, Maria Helena Pombo. Too bad then, if your name is Jane Jones with the same disease.

A few things bother me about this. The first, obviously, is that this beatification, this sainthood, is being bestowed upon John Paul based, at least in part, on the testimony of a single individual. Of the more than 300 miracles being attributed to John Paul this one wasn’t the strongest, but it was apparently strong enough, whatever that means in Vaticanese. I guess the burden of proof for something as magnificent as a miracle lies with those who find it suspect. Prove a negative, prove the miracle didn’t happen.

Secondly, the proof of this alleged miracle is being sworn to by the medial investigators of the Vatican’s Congregation for the Causes of Saints. Without knowing anything else I would at least want to know the medial credentials of these individuals and to whom their loyalties lay, with the truth or the Vatican. The skeptic in me suspects the latter, making this a bit like the board of directors of BP investigating the Deepwater Horizon oil spill behind closed doors and finding themselves completely absolved of all responsibility.

Thirdly, part of the reason for the fast tracking of John Paul’s beatification is due to a public outpouring of affection for John Paul. Well what is it? Is it the alleged miracles performed after his death that grants him sainthood, or the fact that the public will think of him as saint whether or not Benedict XVI declares him so to be?

And of course the issue of faith once again rears it unwieldy head and demands “How can you judge the faith of the faithful?” Well, I’m not. I am merely pointing out what, to me, seems, well, suspect. There is no other way to put it. The cards are all tipped in favor of beatification, even though the soon to be saint presided over two decades of priestly molestation of minors and managed to turn a blind eye toward his deviant minions until he saw the prospect of sainthood sailing past his window and decided, too late, that maybe there was something to this nagging little problem after all.

My brother ran away from home

My brother ran away from home. Unlike most who do that sort of thing, though, he waited until he had passed the half century mark to make his escape. We have a vague idea that he is on the west coast somewhere. Washington state presumably. Letters, notes, general queries and pleas concerning his well being were initially answered, if curtly, but are not anymore. Letters sent are not returned. So he either gets them, reads them, and doesn’t respond ( or maybe he doesn’t read them at all, maybe he just recognizes the return addresses and tosses them in the trash like junk mail) or somebody else at that address does something similar, if for different reasons.

We don’t really know why he left, except that, or so it seems to me, from the end of high school onward he seemed to have lost any enjoyment he might ever have known of living.

We hope that by leaving he has managed somehow to reinvent himself to the extent that he has rediscovered some enjoyment in life or has at least deluded himself into believing he has rediscovered that enjoyment.

We of course hope he returns someday. I personally hope he returns happy, or at the very least content. But I would be happy to see him no matter his condition.

But maybe, and this could be a good thing, for him, sad for us, he’s happy where he is and never plans to return.