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	John Paul and the Church of Public Relations By Leon J. Podles Dialogue January 21, 2011 http://www.podles.org/dialogue/ Sardath said in the comments: This is a man who survived the Nazi genocide against the Poles, out-maneuvered the Soviets, and utterly crushed liberation theology; and yet we are to believe that he had no idea what he was doing when he signed false bank documents, had no idea that bishops and priests in Latin American were giving aid and comfort to state terrorism, and had no idea what Law, Groer, and Maciel had been up to all those years? The “santo subito” people can’t have it both ways. If JP2 really was the intellectual and spiritual titan that he pretended to be, then he must have had the capacity to know and understand what his own people were up to. If he knew and did nothing, he was an accomplice in their crimes; if he could have known but chose not to, then he was criminally negligent, which is almost as bad. Either way, they have no business putting him up for sainthood, because he doesn’t even remotely qualify. There’s also a big problem with some of the theological positions that Ratzinger staked out on these issues while he was head of the CDF, including the claim that while the pope may not be infallible in his disciplinary decisions, those decisions are nevertheless “not without divine assistance” and therefore “call for the adherence of the faithful.” So if JP2 was not without divine assistance in the way he ran his shop, why has everything come to ruin? What sort of saint is it who holds the position of “Vicar of Christ on earth” but somehow consistently fails to avail himself of the divine assistance which, we are assured, was always available to him if he only asked for it? And now Ratzinger is pope himself, and so is also presumably not without divine assistance in the decisions he makes–and yet he is not only rushing headlong toward a disastrous premature canonization of his predecessor, but has continued to surround himself with the same people who, we are now being told, wrecked the papacy of JP2 with their lies and corruption. We have been told that it was Ratzinger who tried and tried to clean up the corruption around JP2, but was checkmated at every turn by the evil Sodano. So what is his excuse now? He of all people must know what Sodano and the others were up to, and he of all people has the power to send them packing. Why has he not done so? John Paul’s refusal to act was inexplicable. Benedict’s is explicable but discouraging. I am of course an outside observer, but even Cardinal Schonborn, who pleaded with John Paul to make a statement about Groer and to stem the resignations for the Austrian Church, was baffled by John Paul’s refusal even to say anything. I repeat. Cardinal Schonborn read my book Sacrilege, and he said that in the case which he was familiar, that of his predecessor Cardinal Groer, things were worse than I knew. Groer had made strongly homoerotic gestures to almost every student he had come into contact with over the years; Groer stopped short of penetration, but that was the only thing he didn’t do.
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