Oops

I made the mistake of reading other JPII-related posts a "Just a Bump in the Beltway". In the comments of this one, a number of issues were brought up, which elicited this response from yours truly:

Actually, Rodger, the two days of prayer for peace in Assisi were well-publicized, as were Catholic-Jewish relations and Catholic-Muslim dialogues. Interfaith dialogue was probably more active than during any other papacy in history.

Liberation theology was problematic because it rather uncritically assimilated problematic dimensions of Marxism.

A formal Notification was issued pertaining to one of Jacques Dupuis' books. It reads in part, "The present Notification is not meant as a judgment on the author’s subjective thought, but rather as a statement of the Church’s teaching on certain aspects of the above-mentioned doctrinal truths, and as a refutation of erroneous or harmful opinions, which, prescinding from the author’s intentions, could be derived from reading the ambiguous statements and insufficient explanations found in certain sections of the text." I don't see that as blacklisting, for what it's worth.

Melanie is also right that married men were allowed to become priests until the 11th century (you could never marry after ordination). However, these men were expected to *be forever continent*, i.e. never have sex with their wives again. This expectation remained (even though it was not always followed) until the Church finally decided that it was too difficult to ask it of a man, and henceforth celibacy was required. (Cf. the New Catholic Encyclopedia entry, "Celibacy, History of" as well as Cochini, "The Apostolic Origins of Priestly Celibacy," a text encouraged by Cardinals Danielou and de Lubac, themselves never regarded as arch-conservatives.)

Women have never been priests in Catholicism or Eastern Orthodoxy. I expect to seem women ordained in the Catholic Church around the same time that actual remarriage is allowed and when it is affirmed by the Church that Mary had other children besides Jesus.

I debated posting it there, but decided to do so in the end. I don't plan on arguing with people... my comment is pretty matter-of-fact.

In this post, Melanie does have some nice things to say about JPII, but then opines,

As a theologian (and he was that) his theology of the human body took the Church back to the 12th century, overturned most of what science has learned about the human person, in biology and psychology, and returned it to a "natural law" tradition that never met the Enlightenment or modernity.

In fact, JPII's theology of the body leans heavily on his phenomenological philosophy and is considerably different from a natural law approach to theological or philosophical anthropology. And then there's the fact that the natural law tradition has most definitely met the Enlightenment and modernity, and both the Macintyre and the Grisez/Finnis schools of natural law demonstrate. But I didn't bother posting on this... one contrarian post at a liberal website per month, I say.