The end of an era - death of John Paul

Fintan O'Toole is speaking at the wake that has been taking place on Irish radio since yesterday evening. Hopefully he will make a few realistic comments that will cut through the fug of typical Irish "don't speak ill of the dead" cant and the morose hagiography that is polluting the airwaves at the moment.

Yes, he's mentioned Hans Kung already! Good man, Fintan.

Queenie has nothing but hard feelings towards this pope. He came to power when Queenie was only eight years old. With his ascension to Peter's throne, all the potential emanating from Vatican II was immediately buried. His papacy was a twentieth century Counter-Reformation that resulted in profound confusion and alienation in Western world Catholics, and a grotesque failure to meet the needs of the newer churches in Latin America and particularly Africa. Being Irish, Queenie was a special figure in JPII's eyes. Ireland was one of the keepers of the flames of the faith (along with his beloved Poland) and in 1979, soon after he came to power, the Pope came to Ireland for a few days.

Queenie remembers it well. It was the first time her 'difference' struck her - Queenie is a dolly mixture, a child of a mixed Catholic-Protestant marriage. As every other family in the town made sandwiches, hung out flags, packed the car, and set off to go to Mass in the middle of the night, Queenie's parents went to a conference for the weekend. Didn't put out a flag. Didn't bring her to a Mass. Didn't make a big deal of it, btw, Mr. and Mrs. Queenie are firmly in the 'turn the other cheek' camp of religion. Just neatly sidestepped the issue, with no fuss, or bible-thumping.

It was the first time in Queenie's life that she stood outside a national hysteria and watched it unfurl. An incredibly informative and educational experience for a nine year old. Queenie remembers being incredibly proud of her parents and not feeling a bit left out or alienated. (She was also hoping that the endless trips to Mass and other services would end, but unfortunately, it took another few years for that to happen).

Later, and Queenie is using the tool of hindsight now, changes began to creep in.

The folk masses that were part of Queenie's youth, a joyful, if slightly tuneless expression of community and faith, began to disappear. Nowadays, people can only use 'approved music' in ceremonies to mark key moments of their lives. This type of orthodoxy makes Church of Ireland services seem like a picnic by the riverbank by comparison. A particularly tuneless picnic!! At the same time, the rate of ecumenical activities in Queenie's unusually mixed Irish town started to drop, or to become somewhat token gesturish.

In the mid-eighties, Queenie was made attend a week long Redemptorist retreat held in the town (surely it should have been a thing of the past) where the blustering priest seemed to be as obsessed with sex as she was at the time. Hindsight is a wonderful thing, isn't it - sure they were all at it.....................!

When Queenie's political antennae began to twitch in her late teens, she took a particular interest in Latin America. Particularly the assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero at the altar in the early eighties. Queenie feels the Vatican should have protected him more. Particularly when he flew to Rome to beg for assistance, and was refused an audience for days on end. But liberation theology smacked of communism to the Pole, so he sacrificed a charismatic and brilliant leader for political ends.

If there is any justice in the world, then the head of the Church in Honduras will be the next pope.

Hostility to gay people, to contraception, to family planning even, and to revised moral values increased at the same time as AIDS began to become an issue. Queenie will never really understand how the Vatican could scupper the UN Population Conference held in Africa a few years ago, and then use the same anti-family planning arguments to prevent African Catholic women from practicing safe sex.

And then the shit hit the fan. Across the world, in the USA and in Europe, and in Ireland. By God, we were up there with the best of them. Kiddy fiddlers. The lot of them. And this Pole, who even though he was an autocrat and and a conservative, had fought totalitarianism and Communism and modernity and consumerism and all the beasts of the modern age, was shown up for the hypocritic leader of a shower of hypocrites that he really was.

And he did not destroy Communism. Consumerism destroyed communism.