Monday, April 04, 2005

"Were you the best Pope you could be?"

I'm not going to write a screed about the late Pope, as most everything that could be written has been written. Some of our fellow-bloggers seem to be a little ungenerous in their appreciations. As I commented on DovBear:

"DB: The Pope was not the Chief Rabbi. To paraphrase the Hasidic story, when he gets to the World to Come, G-d will not ask him why he wasn't a Rebbe; He will ask him whether or not he was the best Pope he could be. On that scale, it seems to me that he will get an excellent score."

1 comment:

DovBear said...

Paul,

Unfortunately it doesn't take much to be a great pope; so many of them were perfectly lousy. Is it wise to judge JP II against other popes? Shouldn't we be judging him against other men?

Also, it's just not in my nature to uncritically accept this abundant praise. And the idea that we should apprciate JP II simply for ommitting to hate us really gets my back up.

DB