Mark Steyn: Why progressive Westerners never understood John Paul II

The Telegraph (U.K.) ^ | 04/05/05 | Mark Steyn

[Malesherbes]

"If his beloved Europe survives in any form...." I go to Poland twice a year. Poland will survive with its European culture, because most there hold the same values John Paul II held. Western Europe is another matter entirely. It has embraced the culture of death.

[Fred]

VERITATIS SPLENDOR (The Splendor of Truth) Pope John Paul II

[Fred]

Should the Catholic Church then allow DIVORCED PRIESTS??? SAME SEX MARRIAGE PRIESTS???

[Tench_Coxe]

"Why progressive Westerners never understood John Paul Ii."

There should be an addition to that saying, " ...and why they never will. "

[GraceCoolidge]

once you allow married priests, the recruitment problem should be solved, the pedophilia problem may be reduced...

I do not think marriage is a remedy for pedophilia.

[goldstategop]

The Pope's legacy will outlast the impatient trendiness of liberal secularists. What's cool today is a dud tomorrow and so forth. I don't expect secular societies to survive more than a generation. Mark Steyn's right; the late Pope will have the last laugh. Absolute standards and eternal values matter because they last forever.

(Denny Crane: "Sometimes you can only look for answers from God and failing that... and Fox News".)

[prairiebreeze]

bump for later read

[maica]

A very serious unintended consequence of China's one child policy is a nation with a serious shortage of marriageable age women and a serious surplus of men who need wives. That does not encourage a stable future for China, and does encourage enormous emigration of Chinese men to other countries. It could also be argued that this surplus of men might make it easier for China to think in terms of war, if the leaders should want to annex more territory.

[Clock King]

Steyn Rules!!

[alwaysconservative]

Thanks for the ping, Pokey! Once again, Steyn gets to the heart of the matter in a succinct and brilliant way.

[beckett]

"The values of the weak prevail because the strong have taken them over as devices of leadership."

Nietzsche

"What Nietzsche grasped that many modern conservatives, who dislike Nietzsche almost as much as Karl Marx and Hillary Clinton, don’t grasp is that what looks like decline, decadence, and decay to conservatives appears to the champions of such trends as progress and the birth of a new civilization."

Dr. Samuel Francis

"It is commonly said that the modern world is reverting to paganism, and [G.K.] Chesterton would agree, but for quite a different reason than that commonly proffered. When alarmed pietists say the world is reverting to paganism, they mean the modern person is enjoying himself too much. When Chesterton says the modern world has reverted to paganism, he means the modern person is, like the pagan, no longer able to enjoy anything. "The pagan set out, with admirable sense, to enjoy himself. By the end of his civilization he had discovered that a man cannot enjoy himself and continue to enjoy anything else." The secret sin we share with the pagans is egocentric despair. We, like they, are first sated, then satiated, then bored, then unhappy. The twenty–first century may become even more pagan than the twentieth, and if it does, it will not be because its citizenry is shamelessly happy, but for the very opposite reason: they will have reached the same end that paganism reached. "When the pagan looks at the very core of the cosmos, he is struck cold. Behind the gods, who are merely despotic, sit the fates, who are deadly. Nay, the fates are worse than deadly; they are dead.""

David W. Fagerberg

[Rummyfan]

Bump for that.

[lepton]

bookmark bump

[HighlyOpinionated]

much as there is to abhor about the Communist government, for many reasons, would it be better to allow millions of Chinese to starve instead? in the name of "principle"

---

If Communism could be replaced with Freedom . . . would that solve the starving problem?

[GOPJ]

Ahhh, great stuff:

...when you seek to find consensus between truth and lies you tarnish that splendour.

[Experiment 6-2-6]

It appears that Pope St. Victor was black..

[Blind Eye Jones]

"The secret sin we share with the pagans is egocentric despair. We, like they, are first sated, then satiated, then bored, then unhappy."


Are all pagans dour? In the postmodern world are they not playful (Derrida)? Free from the heavy constraints of authority? If god is dead then all is permitted... a time for creative nihilism?

But I suspect that is why they should be sad... in the end there is only death. But I wonder if death alone is a sufficient enough reason for living an unhappy life. Can we still be happy in the face of death? Some existentialists would argue that the realization of our death is the true condition of any kind of meaningful, authentic happiness...

[IrishCatholic]

Could you add me to the Steyn Ping? He is the clearest thinker writing today.
Thanks
IrishCatholic

[Blind Eye Jones]

"This is one of several "gifts" to current political culture from one Karl Marx."

... and Hegel and a sh*t load of German historicists from the enlightenment.


"It's a bitterness with which I find it impossible to sympathize."

They are ineffectual and envious -- but they'll never admit it.

[The Iguana]

Clibacy is of course a dicipline, not a doctrine, albeit a discipline with some scriptural justification. There are actually thousands of married Catholic priests right now - mostly Eastern Rite Catholics, who share the Orthodox practice of allowing celibacy as an option. Others are Protestant minister converts given special dispensations to be ordained.

Getting rid of it would solve some problems. It would also create other ones.

I am not necessarily irrevocably opposed to it, but I always urge people to consider the drawbacks before getting too excited.