Christopher Hitchens is always interesting, even when he's disagreeable. But today he hits the nail on the head regarding the Pope, whose body was finally buried this morning. He says of the fact that the Pope apologized for multiple errors in the history of the Church: "They are and were admissions that the Roman Catholic Church has been responsible for the retarding of human development on a colossal scale." But even as he admitted these past errors, John Paul II refused to consider the possibility that his own positions on matters of sex were just as fallible as the positions of prior popes for which he apologized, and likely to do just as much harm. Thus the final words of Hitchens on the subject:
Unbelievers are more merciful and understanding than believers, as well as more rational. We do not believe that the pope will face judgment or eternal punishment for the millions who will die needlessly from AIDS, or for his excusing and sheltering of those who committed the unpardonable sin of raping and torturing children, or for the countless people whose sex lives have been ruined by guilt and shame and who are taught to respect the body only when it is a lifeless cadaver like that of Terri Schiavo. For us, this day is only the interment of an elderly and querulous celibate, who came too late and who stayed too long, and whose primitive ideology did not permit him the true self-criticism that could have saved him, and others less innocent, from so many errors and crimes.Amen. Rest in peace, John Paul.
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