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I well remember the election of Pope John Paul II in 1978. I was then the managing editor of the local daily, whose publisher then and now was Merle Baranczyk. As you might have guessed, he had heard every Polish joke known to humanity, and he was so good-natured about it that he told a few himself.
He was out of the office while the news staff and I were toiling on the next edition. The Mountain Mail was unique among Colorado dailies in that it had no wire service. So we didn't get the news from the Associated Press Teletype. Instead we heard on the radio that the Archbishop of Krakow had been elected by the College of Cardinals; a priest from Poland was the first non-Italian pope in centuries.
When Merle walked in, we asked him Did you hear
there's a Polish Pope?
He paused and kept waiting for the punchline, and it took us quite a while to persuade him that this was news, not another ethnic joke (this was, of course, back in the happy days before Political Correctness).
No pope that I can remember exerted such an influence on
American politics. The Founding Fathers were, by and large,
men of the Enlightenment who wanted to found a republic
free of the influence of ignorant or wicked priests.
John Adams also observed that The question before the
human race is, whether the God of nature shall govern the
world by his own laws, or whether priests and kings shall
rule it by fictitious miracles.
After the Civil War, Catholic immigrants tended to vote
Democratic, and the new Republican Party saw a duty to
protect America from Catholics. In 1875, President Ulysses
S. Grant saw an evil that, if permitted to continue,
will probably lead to great trouble in our land ... It is
the acquisition of vast amounts of church property
which could be prevented by the taxation of all property
equally, whether church or corporation.
Grant also wanted to encourage free schools, and
resolve that not one dollar of money shall be appropriated
to any sectarian school.
One major Republican orator of
the era, Robert Ingersoll, was an avowed atheist who
equated religion, especially Catholicism, with the slavery
that the Union had abolished in America's bloodiest
war.
Nor did this attitude change much in the early 20th
century. Al Smith, governor of New York and Democratic
nominee for president in 1928, was the first Roman Catholic
to run from a major party. He was mercilessly attacked for
his religion. One Texas newspaper said that if Smith were
elected, the Romish system will institute persecutions
again, and put the cruel, blood-stained heel upon all who
refuse her authority.
H.L. Mencken observed that it was a campaign which
brought bigotry out into the open
as Smith was
denounced as an agent of a foreign power.
In Colorado during the 1920s, the Ku Klux Klan took over the Republican Party for a few years. The Klan strongly supported public schools -- because it was opposed to Catholics and their parochial schools.
How things have changed. When John F. Kennedy campaigned for the presidency in 1960, there was whispered opposition on the grounds of his Catholic faith. When John F. Kerry campaigned last year, he wasn't attacked for being a Catholic -- he was attacked for not being sufficiently Catholic, since he supported abortion rights, rather than church doctrine which equates abortion with murder.
But those who voted for George W. Bush on that basis were certainly being selective about which teachings of John Paul II they chose to follow.
The late pope opposed capital punishment; as governor of Texas, Bush presided over dozens of executions.
Bush believes that it was right to invade Iraq in 2003.
John Paul II said that When war, as in these days in
Iraq, threatens the fate of humanity, it is ever more
urgent to proclaim, with a strong and decisive voice, that
only peace is the road to follow.
As for economics, John Paul II was as anti-communist as
any man on earth. He saw virtues in capitalism, but urged
restraint. He cautioned that In our society of
consumerism and image, we easily run the risk of losing
ourselves ... In a world that offers easy pleasures and
deceptive illusions, you must swim against the tide, taking
your inspiration from the essential moral values which
alone can lead to a harmonious, prosperous and peaceful
life.... People find they are becoming arid, aggressive,
unable to smile, to greet others, to say thank you, to take
to heart the problems of others.
Our society in recent years might have been better if all those people who insist that we follow the pope's stance on abortion had also urged us to adhere to some of his other teachings.
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