"The attempt to liberate oneself from one's nature is the road to enslavement, not freedom."

The FOXNews banner says it all.  May he rest in peace, and may his nattering detractors hold their tongues at least for a decent period of time. As for you, Christopher Hitchens [via Michelle Malkin]? That's just what we expected.

"We had our own disagreements with this pope, notably over America's efforts in Iraq in two wars," write the Opinion Journal editors:

But even in disagreement we have always understood that this pope was no schizophrenic. It is possible, as many who otherwise admire him do, to disagree with Pope John Paul's teachings on marriage and homosexuality, on abortion, and so on. But it is impossible to understand him without conceding the coherency of his argument: that the attempt to liberate oneself from one's nature is the road to enslavement, not freedom.

The cables are running what one of the FOXNews anchorettes calls "wall-to-wall" coverage of the rituals of tribute for John Paul II, an eye-and-ear-and-soul-refreshing change from the hideous image of Terry Schiavo being taunted with a Mickey Mouse balloon and the profane family bickering that saturated our screens only days ago. After yesterday's rain, the sun is shining at midday in Vatican City as multitudes of the faithful -- and others only wanting a front row seat at history in the making -- gather to celebrate a mass for the repose of the Holy Father's soul. With Bramante's basilica and Bernini's piazza as backdrop, the pageantry of robes and rituals, tolling bells and haunting choral music are awesome and uplifting. CNN (we're channel surfing) takes a brief look at a simultaneous tribute in London's Westminster Abbey and then back to St. Peter's. The world is watching. More from Opinion Journal:

Pope John Paul II died today. In the post-Berlin Wall world this man did so much to shape, it's difficult to recall the much different circumstances that obtained when he assumed the chair of St. Peter. Former Italian prime minister Aldo Moro had been kidnapped and executed by terrorists. In Iran bloody protests were brewing that would within months pull down the Shah and usher in the ayatollahs. In the Soviet Union the dissident Anatoly Shcharansky (now the Israeli Natan Sharansky) was dispatched to the gulag, while Afghanistan had already endured the leftist coup that would, in short order, lead to a full-fledged Soviet invasion.

Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher were still in the future, and so was a workers' strike called by an unknown Pole named Lech Walesa. Everywhere one looked, the truth of the Brezhnev Doctrine seemed brutally self-evident: Once Communist, always Communist. Oh, yes: The Catholic Church which this first Slavic pope found himself bequeathed was thought by many to be hopelessly irrelevant to the crises of modern times.

The bishop from Krakow knew all this -- better than his critics. For this was a man eminently comfortable with modernity -- even while he refused to accept modernity's most shallow assumptions. Just as he offered his first public words as pope in Italian to make himself understood by those below his balcony, he held that ultimate truths about man and his relationship with his Creator are never outdated, however much they require constant expression in new languages and new circumstances. As he never ceased to declare, Communism's core failure was not economic. It was anthropological, stemming from its false understanding of human nature.

Karol Wojtyla did not learn this from textbooks. He was old enough to recall how the twin totalitarianisms of our age -- fascism and communism -- were each once lauded by intellectuals as the inevitable destination and promise of the future. In Poland he tasted them both, yet he remained unintimidated. This experience would shape his entire papacy, a testament to his conviction that moral truth has its own legions.

From today's vantage, even that victory has quickly receded into history. In the years since the Berlin Wall was pulled down, the new take on the Bishop of Rome was to try to distinguish between two popes: The liberal Cold Warrior who took on totalitarianism and the social scold who would replace it with a Christian authoritarianism of his own.

We don't expect the secularalists who dominate our intelligentsia ever to understand how a man rooted in orthodox Christianity could ever reconcile himself with modernity, much less establish himself on the vanguard of world history. But many years ago, when the same question was put to France's Cardinal Lustiger by a reporter, he gave the answer. "You're confusing a modern man with an American liberal," the cardinal replied. It was a confusion that Pope John Paul II, may he rest in peace, never made.

You know what's good about these media orgies of coverage?  Maybe some of the history that so many of us do not study will seep in so we won't have to repeat it.

Comments

[goomp]

An excellent analysis.