Hugh Hewitt has a good piece demonstrating the MSM's ignorance of the internal workings of the Roman Catholic Church. They seem to look on the Church as a social welfare organization that is beholding to the vagries of an everchanging social morality du jour. His Holiness was not as conservative as the media would have you believe, he just held the ground for the core values of the Church in the face of those that would bend the Church to the fluidic morality of the situational ethicists and Humanists. I did not always agree with His Holiness on some issues, but on the core issues, I believe He was correct.

In some ways, I am more conservative than He was, I still believe that switching to the Vulgar Mass was a mistake, but that is just a matter of form, not a core value. I disagreed with Him on birth control, but I could see his reasoning, and believed He had a valid point, just that the exingencies of modern life required a bending of orthodoxy in that case. On abortion He was correct. On the sex scandals that plauged the American Church, he was remiss...although I believe that by that time, he was not in the best of health and not totally in "the loop" of what was actually occurring. People forget that, in many ways, the Papacy is a golden cage, many decisions are carried out on levels below the Pope without his being aware of the totality of the situation, He was still remiss, as it is his responsibility in the end, but I am willing to allow him the benefit of the doubt unless and untill I can ascertain just how involved he really was in the cover-up.

John Paul ll was a prolific writer, and it will be decades before the extant of his knowledge will truly be plumbed for it's wisdom. The fact is that he was a practical man that still managed to keep his spiritual core intact and strong, it will be a long time untill we have the privalege of seeing his like again.

"A flame rescued from dry wood has no weight in it's luminous flight yet lifts the heavy lid of night".