Karol Wotyla, Rest in Peace

We have just witnessed the passing of a truly great man.

We will not see the like of Karol Wotyla, Pope John Paul II, anytime soon. As a liberal ex-Catholic (or is it ex-liberal Catholic?), it's become sort of mandatory to first point out where I differed with him: his antiabortion stance (I am antiabortion, too, but uneasily pro-choice), his opposition to gay marriages and women in the priesthood, even his silencing of liberation theologians in the 1980s.

But these are petty, ultimately political differences. He was a warm, gentle man, who spoke Truth to power. Defying mere differences of "liberal" or "conservative," he spoke for the poor against the powerful, for social justice, grounded in unwavering Christianity. If there was a single man responsible for the fall of communism, it was him, not Mikhail Gorbachev or Ronald Reagan.

Even in disagreement, his voice was one I paid attention to.

On Friday night, I felt that I had to be at St. Patrick's Cathedral, as several hundred other New Yorkers felt. (I live in New York.) I didn't stay for mass, but I sat in a pew, praying for John Paul, alone in my thoughts, as the organ played. I found myself thinking of the one time I saw him. I was a high school freshman when he first visited New York City in 1979. As part of his visit, I am sure he said a few masses. (I seem to remember both Shea and Yankee Stadiums.) But I either could not get tickets or I wasn't ambitious enough; I forget which. I read somewhere that he was flying out of La Guardia.

So I rode my bike there. At the time, there was a small off-road that ran along one of the ends of the airport, guarded only by a metal fence. I was able to ride right up to the fence, and I was able to see him looking out of the airplane from his seat. There were maybe a dozen of us there, and he waved at us as the plane taxied for takeoff.

A lot of time has passed since then.

As I sat in St. Patrick's, I also thought about all the people I knew who had died too early--my mother and father, my brother, a friend from law school, a friend's girlfriend. I felt a great comfort in the quiet beauty of the cathedral, and I remembered fondly my childhood faith. (I still love the Catholic church!)

The weekend was spent with members of my new faith; I was in Poughkeepsie for the Representative Meeting of the New York Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends; it was sort of a "Quaker Jamboree" We "held the Pope in the Light," as is our custom when we pray for someone. I did not have access to TV or radio all day Saturday, so I did not find out he had passed until I bought the Sunday Times in Grand Central.

I was very touched by his reading the part of the Gospels where Jesus was taken off the Cross and laid in His tomb as he awaited his own time. John Paul was not scared at all of his death, and I know that he was granted the vision of Christ he sought.

Rest in Peace!