Shoes, Ships, and Sealing Wax

A better remembrance

As I have been self-absorbed, depressed, and grumpy this past week, what I wrote the other day about the Church and the Pope may have come across as bashing. That wasn't my intent. I may disagree with some of the fundamentals of the religion, but I think His Holiness got the really big stuff absolutely right, and in those teachings he is still my hero.

I was reading an archived issue of Time magazine, from January 1984. I remembered the cover picture:

From the article:

All during the past year, the 1,950th anniversary of Christ's death and hence of the Christian redemption, John Paul has preached the theme of reconciliation. The visit to Agca was his culminating gesture on the theme. The sermon that he preached with his visit to Rebibbia was an elaboration of what he had said in a town near Northern Ireland's border with Eire in 1979: "Violence is evil. Violence is unacceptable as a solution to problems. Violence is unworthy of man. Violence is a lie, for it goes against the truth of our faith, the truth of our humanity."

Posted by Nic at April 5, 2005 09:22 PM