I miss the Pope too

I'm a recovering Catholic. I don't go to church anymore, and I don't plan to start anytime soon. I have a deep and very personal relationship with my higher power, and I don't feel a need to be a part of a huge machine, run by old men who make up rules about how people live their lives. I will say that, although I didn't always agree with this pope, I admired the little man from Poland. He stayed true to his convictions. I heard Mike Malloy on "Air America" (am 1090 if you are in Seattle) say that this pope had more to do with the end of the cold war than that simple, senile old fascist Ronnie Rayguns. Pope John Paul weighed in consistently on the right side of a majority of human rights issues, including strong opposition to this fucked up war we are in now. He summoned U.S. Cardinals to Rome in April 2002, telling them that "there is no place in the priesthood and religious life for those who would harm the young." (USA Today, April 5, 2005). Like others, I wish he had gone further. I wish he had launched a full-scale investigation into who in the Catholic hierarchy knew about these predator priests and did nothing to stop them from abusing again. Anyone who was complicit should have been sacked immediately. I believe that strong action to scour the church of scum who would knowingly transfer a priest convicted of abusing would have won back some of the church's lost credibility. That being said, I acknowledge that life does not always go the way I want it to and that I, like everyone else including the Pope, lack perfect knowledge. He was, after all, in the end, merely a man.

I had dinner tonight with Ronda, an ex-girlfriend. We talked about who we were dating, laughed about politics and family stuff. It was nice. It is not always possible to make the transition from lover to friend, but we have been able to do it. It feels grown up. What a concept.