Pope John Paul II not only held an advanced degree in theology, but obtained a doctorate in philosophy. This shows in reading his encyclicals, especially Evangelium Vitae published ten years ago.

"[W]e are facing an enormous and dramatic clash between good and evil, death and life, the 'culture of death' and the 'culture of life,'" proclaimed the Pope. "We find ourselves not only 'faced with' but necessarily 'in the midst of' this conflict: we are all involved and we all share in it, with the inescapable responsibility of choosing to be unconditionally pro-life." Does pro-life refer just to the unborn? No. In addition to abortion, one finds Evangelium Vitae (the Gospel of Life) condemning ghoulish medical experimentation, unnecessary war, infanticide, the death penalty, and euthanasia.

Abortion: "Choices once unanimously considered criminal and rejected by the common moral sense are gradually becoming socially acceptable. Even certain sectors of the medical profession, which by its calling is directed to the defence and care of human life, are increasingly willing to carry out these acts against the person. In this way the very nature of the medical profession is distorted and contradicted, and the dignity of those who practise it is degraded."

"No one more absolutely innocent could be imagined. In no way could this human being ever be considered an aggressor, much less an unjust aggressor! He or she is weak, defenceless, even to the point of lacking that minimal form of defence consisting in the poignant power of a newborn baby's cries and tears."

Capital Punishment: "Modern society in fact has the means of effectively suppressing crime by rendering criminals harmless without definitively denying them the chance to reform."

Medical Experimentation on Human Life: "[T]he use of human embryos or fetuses as an object of experimentation constitutes a crime against their dignity as human beings who have a right to the same respect owed to a child once born, just as to every person.... The killing of innocent human creatures, even if carried out to help others, constitutes an absolutely unacceptable act."

Euthanasia: "Here we are faced with one of the more alarming symptoms of the 'culture of death,' which is advancing above all in prosperous societies, marked by an attitude of excessive preoccupation with efficiency and which sees the growing number of elderly and disabled people as intolerable and too burdensome. These people are very often isolated by their families and by society, which are organized almost exclusively on the basis of criteria of productive efficiency, according to which a hopelessly impaired life no longer has any value.... True 'compassion' leads to sharing another's pain; it does not kill the person whose suffering we cannot bear.... The choice of euthanasia becomes more serious when it takes the form of a murder committed by others on a person who has in no way requested it and who has never consented to it. The height of arbitrariness and injustice is reached when certain people, such as physicians or legislators, arrogate to themselves the power to decide who ought to live and who ought to die."

Pope John Paul II wrote, "when the sense of God is lost, there is also a tendency to lose the sense of man, of his dignity and his life."

God needed only four words to say that murder is wrong. It is the shame of our age that the Pope needed nearly 50,000 to explain why.

Thank you, Dan. Only yesterday I was nozing round the'net for Pope quotes and was having a surprising lack of luck. Here on Flynn Files I find a plethora of palpable Papal passages. The biography of Pope John Paul II on wikepedia has been greatly enhanced in recent days [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_John_Paul_II]

April 5, 2005

Dear Dan:

Thank you for these excerpts. They are truly a public service. May I encourage you to post them annually? Our culture is really in trouble when it has to be reminded of things that are in the domain of common sense.

Regards,

Patricia Alvarez
Washington, DC

Good idea, Patricia.

The Pope wrote fourteen encyclicals, and not all of them lend themselves to hot-button issues of the like you'd find debated on blogs. Nevertheless, I intend to read more and encourage FlynnFilers to do the same. The Pope, and perhaps his handlers too, wrote in a clear style which is a fresh contrast to the abstruse prose and rhetoric of politicians seeking to obscure their positions.

Anyone see Jude Dougherty (Dean Emeritus for the Catholic University of America's School of Philosophy) on MSNBC the other night explaining to some deer-in-the-headlights host that JPII was a philosopher schooled in Husserlian phenomenology?

Brad, I didn't see that but wish I had. Do you know what show it was on? Maybe I can locate transcripts.

Those quotes are spot on Dan, great idea to pay tribute to JPII's serious intellectual output. There has been much commentary on whether he was a saint and will one day be canonized. This certainly may happen. Additionally though, the theological/philosophical strength of his encyclicals may very well be enough to make him a Doctor of the Church along with at least two other popes (Pope St. Gregory the Great and Pope St. Leo the Great . . . hence as well talk of him being called the "Great" one day). Since there are only 33 doctors of the Church so far that would really be quite spectacular and in my opinion his intellectual output deserve that highest honor both for rigor and clarity.

His Apostolic Letters as well are great reading. For anyone interested in any of his writings you can find them at this website:

http://www.papalencyclicals.net/

For an example, you will be hearing much this week from pundits, particularly from so-called "Catholic theologians" (who sadly happen often to be technically "sisters" or "priests"), about issues they wish to see discussed or addressed by the next pope, including, women in the priesthood. Well, if the mainstream media was interested in truth rather than controversy and attempting to subvert the Catholic Church, they would take one look at JPII's apostolic letter "Ordinatio Sacerdotalis" and realize that the issue of priestesses has been settled decidedly and permanently in the negative; so it is a total non-issue.

We can rebuild him. We have the technology.

We have the capability to make the world's first Bionic Pope. John Paul II will be that Pope. Better than he was before.

Better... stronger... faster.

I have noticed lots of lefty kooks have been talking about JPII in the sci-fi conspiratorial way that Obi Juan does here. The conspiracy (by some said in jest but not by all) seems to be "what if the pope the last several years has just been a mechanical robot/drone and he actually has been dead for a long time."

What this seems to indicate is that the people who say these things are quite pitiable and immature. They see someone crippled and rigid-faced as a natural result of the degenerative disease of Parkinson's, forced to be wheelchair bound, and they treat such a person as inhuman, robot-like, in fact, and thus not deserving of compassion. These same people were all for the murder of Terri Shiavo, clearly, they have the bigotry of the healthy for those who are crippled and weak and this bigotry allows them to see someone "different" as the result of trauma or disease and thus miserable and not worthy of life. If you ever wondered how the German people could become so desensitized and inhumane as to take part in genocide look at some of these lefties blogs about the pope-"bot." So much for celebrating human "diversity."

These people are truly sad and deserving of pity. I wonder if they will be calling Janet Reno or Michael J. Fox a "robot" or "droid" when Parkinson's finally turns their bodies into crippled caricatures of their former health?

I have a bad typo above that completely turns around my menaing. In the 3rd sentence of the 2nd para it should end ". . . AS thus miserable . . . ". It should not say "AND thus"

Brian: are your serious that leftists are claiming that the pope for the last several years was a robot? I don't understand. Could you give us a link?

Man, this is what happens when I read a "6 Million Dollar Man" strange-joke-pope-reference by Obi Juan on 3 hours of sleep.

I had, uh, read a post on a Boston feminist socialist girl's blog on Friday. She mentions how the Pope was really sick and then remarked that b/c it was April Fools Day it made her wonder if it was all an elaborate hoax and he had died a while back and was just a robot. Anyway, her post made it sound like she had taken the idea from someone else's post and in the comments a couple people said they had thought the same thing and one said that the socialist girl had plagiarized her idea. Another girl referred to JPII as the "Energizer pope" and wondered how anyone who was just human could have kept going so long.

If you want the link email me but I don't want to post it here since I think I have made wild claims based on a vague recollection of this girl's post and the comments to it. I went back now to actually try and trace the comments to those bloggers sites to see if this had been an actual joke/conspiracy going around and it turns out they were actually all dead ends. The socialist girl's whole post was half-serious mocking (she linked to a site about the Rapture as well) but I think earlier today when I read Obi Juan's comments I remembered the exchange from Friday and so had a moment of "Truth" if you will.

I had also read this same Boston girl's and another socialist girl's posts on Terri Schiavo though and I do stand by my depiction of the attitude of both to the weak, disabled, and infirm; but the whole pope-bot thing was more the result of lack of sleep on my part and an inaccurate recollection of the tone of a blogger's post making that conspiracy claim.

Sorry about that. I will get some sleep before the next time I comment.

excellent sentiments but I disagree with the late pontiff on capital punishment. In fact, I think it leaves ample time for spiritual reform. How many of us can know with as much certainty the day and hour of our demise. No one knows for certain, but the security measures of death row and the scheduling of the execution date set ample time for reflection and repentance to bring the killer, deserving of death, to the mercy seat of Christ

Ken: The death penalty is a tough one for me, but the argument you make above is the same feeling I took away from watching "Dead Man Walking" when it came out eight years ago. I understand that wasn't Sarandon, Robbins, Penn, and Co.'s intention, nevertheless Penn's character didn't come to grips with the evil he committed until it came time for him to die. Could it be said that he couldn't redeem his soul until he realized he would lose his life?

Well said, Dan. And I thought the same thing about the movie. The way the movie goes, Penn's character needed to become a victim before he could understand what his victims went through. That is the sorry state of men.

Scott Ross put it a good way years ago, Jesus accepted Pilate's right to put him to death and he promised the one theif that he would see heaven. Now in order to be accepted into heaven, our sins must be forgiven. But the thief still died for his crime.

how can a pope ever be considered a philosopher? his thinking will be at all times stifled by his attachment to religious dogma.
please read 'History of Western Philosophy' - Bertrand Russell