[Buddha-l] Silence ?

[Richard P. Hayes]

On Tue, 2005-04-05 at 11:47 +0100, Mike Austin wrote:

> Erik,
> 
> You sound more grumpy than any of these guys!

He can't help it. He's Dutch. Centuries of Calvinist interbreeding are
showing their effects, I think, in his anti-papist outbursts, sweetened
only by occasional puffs of Calvinist self-loathing turned miraculously
into contemptuous condemnation of others. But that's all perfectly fine,
for it enables Eric to fit in with all the rest of us grump-budgets at
buddha-l.

> I have a great respect for the late pope.  That does not mean I 
> agree with everything he says.

There was an excellent editorial in the NY Times this morning by Thomas
Cahill, called "The Price of Infallibility." Cahill argues convincingly
that Pope John Paul's tendency to surround himself with yes-men, and to
condemn the works of liberal Catholics such as Küng and Schillebeekx
with all the fervor of a Grand Inquisitor, caused thousands of excellent
priests and women religious to flee the church for less suffocating
environs. Cahill thinks the legacy of the recently departed pope may be
the destruction of the very church he strove to defend. 

Among my many Catholic friends, I cannot think of one who admired this
pope. I am inclined to see him as something like the protagonist in a
Greek tragedy, that is, a potentially great man undermined by a major
flaw in character. His flaw was a certain rigidity of temperament that
was no doubt his particular defense mechanism against the painful
experiences of growing up in a country dominated by totalitarians, first
the National Socialists of Germany and then the Soviet Communists. His
life shows that all men are conditioned by circumstances completely
beyond their control and for which, therefore, they do not deserve to be
blamed or held in contempt.

-- 
Richard Hayes
***
"Above all things, take heed in judging one another, 
for in that ye may destroy one another...
and eat out the good of one another."-- George Fox