Godspeed Il Papa!

In May, 1996, I walked out the doors of St. Meinrad School of Theology with a Masters Degree for the last time. It marked for me the end of a process, the end of an epoch. Because when those doors shut, my 38 years as a Roman Catholic came to an end. I loved the Church, it had nurtured and cared for me through some very rough times, and through some beautiful times.

But for me, the path on which the Church had set itself was unsupportable. The words and policies of my own Archbishop had cut me to the core, had killed within me something precious. I could, I found, no longer practice as a Catholic with good conscience.

I professed a love for that institution, even as I walked away from it. Not considering myself to be a "Recovering Catholic" (a term I found, and find, offensive) I considered myself, instead, a Catholic in Exile... an exile from which I knew then, and know now, I would never be able to return.

As the years have passed, I've found a new church home, a new Church, "True" for me in the same way that the Catholic Church is True for it's followers. As unjust edict after unjust edict spewed from the antiquated walls of the Vatican, I found myself hurt more and more. It came to a place, a time, when the thought of walking through the doors of a Catholic Church became unthinkable to me.

But through it all, I've held an abiding love for the man who has led that institution for all my adult life. I personally believe he will go down in the annals of the Roman Catholic Church as one of, if not THE, greatest popes of all time. And the history of the world will, I also believe, rank him as one of the greatest and most important leaders in the world in the last quarter of the 20th Century. I know in the last 20 years there are none who have had as much respect from the greatest number of people. Next to him the current fraud in the US White House is a pale shadow of a human; in stature, John Paul is a giant next to a toy soldier compared to the "Leader of the Free World" (Side note: Please, someone, help me stop laughing!)

It's true, some of the documents and words that have hurt me the most have come from John Paul, or with his blessing. To me, though, that has proved nothing other than John Paul II is, above all, a human with all the failings that humanity suffers. I still see him as a deeply spiritual man, with a heart for Jesus that is huge. I believe he doesn't see that his words are hurtful, that they are, in deed, wrong.

In a funny way, he is one of three people who keep my ties to the old RCC alive. With his passing, I know that that period of my life is truly over.

And so, as I watch the news, anticipating the worst with every minute, my heart breaks, my eyes tear, and my mind grieves for the loss of this great man. But to see his ongoing suffering wounds me even more.

So, Godspeed, Il Papa!