As the round-the-clock Pope Deathwatch coverage on the cable news channels shifted from Friday night to early Saturday morning, and the Pontiff stubbornly lived a little longer, I am a little surprised that CNN didn’t change their news banner from “Pope Nears Death” to “Pope: Not Dead Yet” or “Pope: Any Minute Now.”
However, as soon as he passed on (a day after April Fools, alas), the news channels and websites immediately rolled out their long-in-the-can obituaries, and sidebars on pomp and ceremony and Papal bookmaking.
The best so far?
The London Guardian’s obituary notes that the original author of the obit died long before Karol Wojtyla, in 1994 to be precise.
Fox News inevitably credits John Paul II with bringing down Communism. It’s amazing how many people it took to “single-handedly” defeat the Red Menace. Actually, Lech Walesa only gives him half the credit:
“Fifty percent of the collapse of communism is his doing,” Walesa told The Associated Press on Friday. “More than one year after he [visited Poland], we were able to organize 10 million people for strikes, protests and negotiations. Earlier we tried, I tried, and we couldn’t do it. These are facts. Of course, communism would have fallen, but much later and in a bloody way. He was a gift from the heavens to us.”
The Washington Post, in the most incisive and even handed analysis of the promises, disappointments and contradictions of John Paul’s papacy that I have read so far notes:
But over the years, it became less clear if his popularity translated into moral authority. Communism in Poland was an easy, familiar target and his victory was clean. But later in his pontificate, John Paul began to focus on more difficult targets such as capitalism. And here, the will of the people was not always on his side…Ultimately, he was hard to categorize in the American context. The terms liberal and conservative “just don’t apply to him,” said Mary Anne Glendon, the philosopher. He opposed abortion and the death penalty; he was equally passionate about the role of the male priesthood as he was about workers’ rights. Conservatives accepted his teachings on morality but played down his emphasis on social justice and the limits of the free market. Liberals did the opposite. “But you can’t pick and choose,” Glendon said.