The Pope Is Still Dead

Yup. Still dead. Having skipped all the TV coverage of the double-header of death of Terry Schiavo and JP2, I'm catching up on the critical reviews.

Frank Rich has this to say in "A Culture of Death, Not Life":

What's disturbing about this spectacle is not so much its tastelessness; America will always have a fatal attraction to sideshows. What's unsettling is the nastier agenda that lies far less than six feet under the surface. Once the culture of death at its most virulent intersects with politicians in power, it starts to inflict damage on the living.

When those leaders, led by the Bush brothers, wallow in this culture, they do a bait-and-switch and claim to be upholding John Paul's vision of a "culture of life." This has to be one of the biggest shams of all time. Yes, these politicians oppose abortion, but the number of abortions has in fact been going down steadily in America under both Republican and Democratic presidents since 1990 - some 40 percent in all. The same cannot be said of American infant fatalities, AIDS cases and war casualties - all up in the George W. Bush years. Meanwhile, potentially lifesaving phenomena like condom-conscious sex education and federally run stem-cell research are in shackles.

Moving on to the ever-caustic James Wolcott, who in Signs of the Crosstakes CNN to task for its inane worship at the shrine of Bob Novak. Hey, Novak's a Catholic now! Apparently one of the Opus Dei guys. At least I don't have to be ashamed to share the same religion as the Prince of Darkness.

And the astute Jeanne at Body and Soul gives a thorough round-up of the differences between many U.S. Catholics and the fundamentalist Protestant Chrisitans who claim the Pope as their own in "The fundie Pope and the whining bishops."

Happy Sunday!