The Official Beatification of John Paul II

[Metahive]

VATICAN 1 May 2011 Pope Benedict XVI sets predecessor on path to sainthood

The Vatican heeded the calls for "sainthood now" for Pope John Paul II from pilgrims at his funeral on 2 Apr 2005. The Polish, globe-trotting pontiff will be beatified by his successor, Pope Benedict XVI, years earlier than normal. The St. Peter's Square ceremony could bring millions of Catholics to Rome, presenting a daunting logistical challenge for the city, a morale boost for the beleaguered Church. And it might take scandal-mired Italian premier, Silvio Berlusconi, out of the headlines for a day.

The event introduces a happy note in recent Church news, which has been dominated by a wave of violence against Christians and years of reports of clerical sex abuse scandals -- some involving high-level cover-ups. The Italian premier, meanwhile, is trying to trying to cope with the fallout from his latest scandal: he is being investigated for allegedly having sex with an under-age prostitute and then trying to cover it up by abusing his power as premier.

One of the first acts of the new pope was to dispense with the normal five-year waiting period before the process is started. A miracle, or cure, that cannot be explained by medicine and can be attributed to the intercession of the individual under review is needed to begin the process. In January, the medical committee of the Vatican's Congregation for the Cause of Saints confirmed John Paul's first miracle, the cure of a French nun of Parkinson's disease. A second miracle that can be attributed to his intercession will be required for his canonization.

John Paul II addressed a public audience from the window of his apartment at the Vatican on Jan 31, 2005. It was his last public appearance. A cold quickly became a health crisis for the already ailing Pontiff that led to his final illness.

http://www.newsahead.com/preview/2011/0 ... /index.php

Obstruct any efforts to clear up the child abuse scandals, blame anyone but themselves for it but take utmost and unprecedented hurry to shove a corpse through the pearly gates. Nice to know where the priorities of the RCC lie.

[Edi]

The St. Peter's Square ceremony could bring millions of Catholics to Rome, presenting a daunting logistical challenge for the city,

Having just come back from a holiday in Rome, I can attest to this bit. Having this event right on the heels of Easter, the city was already chock full of people, but from Thursday onward it was just ridiculous. Of course, they had been preparing for this well in advance and since they already had to have beefed up logistics and security for Easter, it was just a matter of keeping the same setup in place just a bit longer.

You know it's bad when the Roman public transport has all of the traffic bulletins in Italian, English AND Polish. Fortunately our Friday and Saturday plans didn't involve any of the main attractions, because those were packed like canned sardines.

At least we got out right from under the main crush. The streets around Vatican were closed off to traffic, St. Peter's Square was accessible only through airport type security check points (metal detectors, all bags x-rayed).

[Jawawithagun]

They hand out sainthoods like cheap candy now. Are they even worth anything anymore?

[Serafina]

They hand out sainthoods like cheap candy now. Are they even worth anything anymore?

Beatification isn't the quite same thing as sainthood. It's granted to martyrs or those whom god granted a miracle according to their prayers. The latter is of course pretty vague, the fall of the Berlin Wall could be seen as such a "miracle". You need one such miracle to be beatified instead of two for a miracle. You can direct prayer at such a person, and they can supposedly intervene on your behalf. Saints have a higher status and get an official (tough not always mandatory) holiday, churches with their names and so on.
The interesting question would be what the supposed miracle that justified John Paul II's beatification.

And you're quite right, beatifications are quite cheap these days - John Paul II himself beatified more than a thousand people.

[HMS Sophia]

The interesting question would be what the supposed miracle that justified John Paul II's beatification.

A nun maintains that he cured her Alzheimers(sic). Apparently.

ETA: Sorry, It was Parkinson's.
She is reported to have experienced a "complete and lasting cure after members of her community prayed for the intercession of Pope John Paul II"

[K. A. Pital]

I saw people kissing the sarcophagus and man, I was offset. Kissing coffins? Or believing that kissing coffins or praying to the remains of the dead will give you something... uh... blessing? Healing? Of course, fake miracles are par the course for the Church, just a bit earlier during Easter there was mass hysteria on our already not-so-secular TV, which claimed the Holy Fire is a real miracle (boo-hoo!). All this ceremony looked just as idiotic as another event this week, the wedding of Prince Nobody and another nobody - for some reason, BIG NEWS for Russia. These news just make me sick and tired of the stupidity.

[Simon_Jester]

Enthusiasm is catching; the fact that something is news in one place makes it news in others. It's one of the predictable consequences of the Information Age: celebrity events, to go with celebrity personalities.

[Shroom Man 777]

Hey, over here people die in stampedes when they try to rub their hands on sacred statues and relics. Kissing some dead holy guy's coffin for blessings, and not getting killed in a stampede, is pretty tame by our standards.

[Phantasee]

At least we got out right from under the main crush. The streets around Vatican were closed off to traffic, St. Peter's Square was accessible only through airport type security check points (metal detectors, all bags x-rayed).

As far as I know they've had that all the time for a number of years. It is a border crossing, after all. I remember the metal detectors and bag x-rays from my visit in 2006.

[Count Chocula]

I saw people kissing the sarcophagus and man, I was offset. Kissing coffins? Or believing that kissing coffins or praying to the remains of the dead will give you something... uh... blessing? Healing?

Yeah, I can see how atheist would find that off-putting or a little creepy. Being a Catholic I practice cannibalism by proxy every Sunday, so..meh. Considering what I'm asked to believe on a weekly basis, viewing an under-saint is no big deal.

It'll be a temporary thing, anyway. After the beatification, he'll be interred in the Vatican basilica. It'd be a lot more creepy if the guy being beatified was a Communist mass murderer head of state who died in 1924, and is still on display for tourists and citizens at the seat of the government he founded. Even after that government is putatively no more. Just sayin'.

[Serafina]

I saw people kissing the sarcophagus and man, I was offset. Kissing coffins? Or believing that kissing coffins or praying to the remains of the dead will give you something... uh... blessing? Healing?

Yeah, I can see how atheist would find that off-putting or a little creepy. Being a Catholic I practice cannibalism by proxy every Sunday, so..meh. Considering what I'm asked to believe on a weekly basis, viewing an under-saint is no big deal.

It'll be a temporary thing, anyway. After the beatification, he'll be interred in the Vatican basilica. It'd be a lot more creepy if the guy being beatified was a Communist mass murderer head of state who died in 1924, and is still on display for tourists and citizens at the seat of the government he founded. Even after that government is putatively no more. Just sayin'.

Given that John Paul II could also be qualified as a mass murderer.....just sayin'.

[Count Chocula]

Serafina: how so? That's a pretty bold assertion.

[Serafina]

Serafina: how so? That's a pretty bold assertion.

He encouraged people over which he had (religious) authority to abstain from measures which could save their life and that of others, for purely religious reasons. Due to this, hundreds of thousands of people might have died from preventable causes.
Specifically, he told christians in Africa not to use condoms, even if they had AIDS. Naturally, this greatly helped the spread of HIV, the anti-HIV campaigns of several countries got ruined due to this, with a corresponding raise of AIDS afterwards.

This would be no different than telling people not to use antibiotics for religious reasons. Or togiving people fraudulent health advice, such as saying that Vitamin C can cure cancer. We can argue whether this is legally wrong, but it is clearly morally wrong to do so, since it leads to the death of a lot of people who could have survived if they had not listened to your advice.

[Count Chocula]

OK, that's fair enough. So in degree, by encouraging Church doctrine, he's an approximation of Karl Marx, vs. the activist, um, implementation of the philosophy that Lenin performed. If you look at it on the surface, that is. The WHO's 2000 survey on AIDS in Africa doesn't support your conclusion. Here's a link to the spreadsheet. Overall, African states with the highest proportion of Catholics had the lowest proportion of AIDS.

That doctrine is still in effect today, and one with which I disagree, for both practical reasons and because I question the whole doctrine of papal infallibility.

[Edi]

At least we got out right from under the main crush. The streets around Vatican were closed off to traffic, St. Peter's Square was accessible only through airport type security check points (metal detectors, all bags x-rayed).

As far as I know they've had that all the time for a number of years. It is a border crossing, after all. I remember the metal detectors and bag x-rays from my visit in 2006.

I've been to Rome several times and while the equipment is there, it is not in use most of the time. Only on occasions when a huge number of people are expected, such as on major holy days like Easter or special events like the John Paul II Beatification.

You do get the security treatment every time when going inside the cathedral, but not normally simply when entering the square.

[Bakustra]

OK, that's fair enough. So in degree, by encouraging Church doctrine, he's an approximation of Karl Marx, vs. the activist, um, implementation of the philosophy that Lenin performed. If you look at it on the surface, that is. The WHO's 2000 survey on AIDS in Africa doesn't support your conclusion. Here's a link to the spreadsheet. Overall, African states with the highest proportion of Catholics had the lowest proportion of AIDS.

That doctrine is still in effect today, and one with which I disagree, for both practical reasons and because I question the whole doctrine of papal infallibility.

Infallibility has nothing to do with the orthodox position on contraception- the only ex cathedra position stated since its formal definition in Vatican I was the doctrine of the Assumption of Mary, and the only clear one before the formal definition was the 1854 Immaculate Conception of Mary. In any case, nobody has proposed ex cathedra infallibility for any part of the Church's contraceptive dogma.

But I looked at your spreadsheet. It is quite poorly formatted, almost unreadable. Some parts simply do not add up. For example, Equatorial Guinea cannot have the numbers provided. It switches between representing individuals and representing thousands of individuals in the first column. It also doesn't really show a strong negative correlation between percentages of Roman Catholicism and percentages of HIV. There is a slight negative correlation, but overall there's hardly any defined trend, probably because whoever made the chart didn't correct for anything else, which, given that you plucked it from an apologetics site, is hardly surprising.

Really, try a little harder. I haven't even bothered to go through the WHO study completely.

[PeZook]

It'll be a temporary thing, anyway. After the beatification, he'll be interred in the Vatican basilica. It'd be a lot more creepy if the guy being beatified was a Communist mass murderer head of state who died in 1924, and is still on display for tourists and citizens at the seat of the government he founded. Even after that government is putatively no more. Just sayin'.

Frankly, while I do not often agree with Chocula, this is one of these moments

Celebrity worship isn't really a religious thing. People go apeshit over all sorts of people, from princess Diana through a mediocre Polish president right down to Lenin and Hitler.

I don't see why Stas is so surprised people do all sorts of stupid things to show their worship of celebrity figures.

[Bakustra]

GHETTO EDIT: Chocula, why are you posting apologetics from a site claiming that transubstantiation is heretical? You should check your sources better.

[Count Chocula]

Bakustra, you're correct. I concede. I did a ten-minute Googles and this is what I found. I just looked at the summary tables, and there's no comparison in the WHO report of different religious groups. It appeared the site I referenced did its own correlation of percentage Catholic vs. infected population.

My conceding the facts does NOT mean I agree with Serafina that JP II is in the same category as Marx or Lenin.

[Serafina]

Bakustra, you're correct. I concede. I did a ten-minute Googles and this is what I found. I just looked at the summary tables, and there's no comparison in the WHO report of different religious groups. It appeared the site I referenced did its own correlation of percentage Catholic vs. infected population.

My conceding the facts does NOT mean I agree with Serafina that JP II is in the same category as Marx or Lenin.

I never said that he was AS BAD as either, or that his actions are comparable on all grounds. Certainly there is a difference between asking people to do something that will kill them and forcing them to do so. But that's the difference between a cult leader asking his followers to volunteer for suicide and another cult member forcing them to do so at gunpoint.

However, he CAN be held responsible (if not legally then morally) for the deaths of a lot of people. In that regard he is actually quite comparable to Marx (who never had any authority to order anyones death), and arguably worse because Marx did not use an existing authority to spread his ideology.

So yes, on second thought i would not put John Paul II in a category with Marx - i would put him in a worse one. Marx is guilty of "creating an ideology that killed a lot of people". John Paul II is guilty of "knowingly using a position of authority to kill a lot of people by neglect". The only difference between him and Lenin is that he did not force them directly, and the actual bodycount.

[Vendetta]

They hand out sainthoods like cheap candy now. Are they even worth anything anymore?

Since you have to be dead to apply, it's hard to see what they were worth to begin with.

[FSTargetDrone]

Since you have to be dead to apply, it's hard to see what they were worth to begin with.

If they are worth anything at all, it is to the Church itself. Saint (I amusingly typed "Stain" just now) John Paul II is good for even more tourist spending.

Are there any details on the state of the corpse?

[Alphawolf55]

Serafina: how so? That's a pretty bold assertion.

He encouraged people over which he had (religious) authority to abstain from measures which could save their life and that of others, for purely religious reasons. Due to this, hundreds of thousands of people might have died from preventable causes.
Specifically, he told christians in Africa not to use condoms, even if they had AIDS. Naturally, this greatly helped the spread of HIV, the anti-HIV campaigns of several countries got ruined due to this, with a corresponding raise of AIDS afterwards.

This would be no different than telling people not to use antibiotics for religious reasons. Or togiving people fraudulent health advice, such as saying that Vitamin C can cure cancer. We can argue whether this is legally wrong, but it is clearly morally wrong to do so, since it leads to the death of a lot of people who could have survived if they had not listened to your advice.

Wait a minute, didn't he specifically say that people with aids should not use condoms but should abstain from sex all together? I'm not trying to say that abstinence is a reasonable policy but is it fair to say that a man is responsible for others death because they only followed half of his teachings?

[Bakustra]

Catholic dogma holds that it is immoral to use any method of contraception besides the rhythm method. John Paul II declared that people with HIV should abstain from sex. However, years of study within and without the Church have found that such methods are horribly ineffective. A organization founded on the principle of human fallibility should be able to recognize that people cannot really control their urges to the extent demanded by the Church, and thus modify its response to try and halt the ravages of HIV. Benedict has made small moves in that direction. Not quite what is necessary, but still promising. John Paul II issued encyclicals to reaffirm that contraception was highly immoral, and regardless of whether you can fairly place blame on his head for it, it should surely be a matter of concern before beatification!

[K. A. Pital]

Yeah, I can see how atheist would find that off-putting or a little creepy.

Indeed.

It'll be a temporary thing, anyway.

Until the next one dies.

After the beatification, he'll be interred in the Vatican basilica. It'd be a lot more creepy if the guy being beatified was a Communist mass murderer head of state who died in 1924, and is still on display for tourists and citizens at the seat of the government he founded. Even after that government is putatively no more. Just sayin'.

Mausoleums have a longer history than beatification. Ataturk had one, Rotshilds had one, British royalty had lots of them, elder Islamic scholars had lots of them, national heroes of Central Asia had them. Mausolea aren't creepy, because people just come to the dead people to pay their respects. I said kissing the coffin is specifically creepy, not the fact that John Paul II will get a sarcophagus or a mausoleum - there'd be nothing wrong with that. Of course, considering the mausoleum tradition comes from the predominantly Islamic east, I could see how such simple displays of respect could put off a Christian like you.

I was wondering just why people are kissing the burial place of a dead person, that is all. Mausolea are not places bestowed with some sort of mystic power, you know.