Pope who loved too much

When I conjure up an image of John Paul II, it is invariably in connection with some gesture of loving kindness to a child, to a widow, to the poor.

John Paul devoted his ministry principally to the suffering Third World countries. His dedication to those in pain electrified the world and inspired our own goodness. I confess to a considerable sadness at his passing, attached as I am to the image of a gentle man, battling illness and continuing to shower affection on the suffering masses.

In this sense, the papacy of John Paul will forever be remembered as an outstanding success because he came to symbolize established religion's foremost premise: that leading a life of faith transforms its practitioner into an exemplar of compassion.

The love that the pope came to represent helped those who found the history of the Catholic Church scarred by hypocrisy. The pope may even be considered Christendom's greatest pope because of the long ministry of love that he practiced. All who call themselves religious owe John Paul a debt of gratitude for the respectability he brought to those who believe in God.

But for all that, John Paul's legacy is mixed. He rose to the challenge of defeating communism early on but failed to confront the terrorist threat at the end of his pontificate.

As the Solidarity movement in Poland began to pick up steam in the late 1970s, John Paul II, still a very new pope, wrote the secretary of the Soviet Communist party to say that he would resign the papacy to join the front lines of the Solidarity movement if Russian tanks entered his homeland. With that letter, he helped to save Poland and played an integral role in the collapse of communism.

Yet 20 years later, as George W. Bush prepared the world for an invasion of Iraq to rid that country of a tyrant who had slaughtered more than a million of his own people, the pope saw fit not only to oppose going to war but to summon Tariq Aziz, Saddam's diplomatic puppet, place his holy hands on Aziz's head and say, "God bless Iraq."

An American politician could have seen Saddam's evil and scoffed at world censure in order to topple a barbarous dictator while the world's foremost religious authority was gripped by an inexplicable moral blindness.

Two years later the Vatican made stunning comments on the death of Yasser Arafat: "At this hour of sadness ... His Holiness Pope John Paul is particularly close to the deceased's family, the Authorities and the Palestinian People. While entrusting his soul into the hands of the Almighty and Merciful God, the Holy Father prays to the Prince of Peace that the star of harmony will soon shine on the Holy Land."

The world's foremost spiritual shepherd describing himself as being close to Arafat's family, rather than the thousands of murdered men, women and children who were Arafat's victims, was an astonishing act of sacrilege.

Likewise, the pope did not visibly employ his authority to condemn Osama bin Laden, the al-Qaida network and other terrorist organizations that have made our planet so dangerous to inhabit.

How can we understand such actions coming from a man so devoted to the human family? Because John Paul was the pope who loved too much. Like a parent who cannot see the failings of a child, he refused to accept that real evil lurks in the heart of men. He could not see that some people's actions had forever severed themselves from a compassionate creator.

John Paul loved the innocent but he never hated the wicked. He loved justice but seldom condemned injustice. He fought for the poor and the oppressed, but he would not - aside from Soviet Communists - fight their oppressors.

Declaring in word and deed that hatred of any sort was an ungodly emotion, John Paul II never summoned the faithful to have contempt for the wicked but instead extended them the softness of his gentle touch. The result of such misguided affection is that as he departs this world widely loved and admired, he leaves behind a planet where it is American soldiers, fighting and dying for democracy, who are doing more to create a Godly Earth than his own priests and pastors.

I shall forever remain indebted to John Paul for the respect and affection he extended to the Jewish people. He twice visited Rome's synagogue, diplomatically recognized and visited the State of Israel and met frequently with Jewish leaders.

But as an American I am saddened that, as the world condemned America for removing the Taliban in Afghanistan and establishing a democracy in Iraq, the pope did not say that the real enemy is not those who fight evil, but those who soil God's green Earth by drenching it in the blood of innocents.

Rabbi Shmuley Boteach is an author and nationally syndicated talk radio host. His new book is "Hating Women: America's Hostile Campaign Against the Fairer Sex."

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