Final thoughts

At first I thought I would have loved to have live-blogged the funeral of Pope John Paul the Great, but it wasn’t necessary, was it? The images, the spontaneous outbursts of applause and cheering – it was most eloquent.

But I did have a few thoughts:

Today, an event occured which was witnessed by the whole world. A million people knelt in prayer on the cobblestone of St. Peter’s. Hundreds of thousands of people publicly received communion in this, the year of the Eucharist. Leaders from all over the world gave a “sign of peace.”

Something will come of it. MUCH, I think, will come of it.

Mr Wong has a nice Java Applet in requiem for JPII.

I liked this very telling blurb over at NRO’s The Corner

YOU KNOW, SOME OF THOSE YOUNG PEOPLE ACTUALLY AGREED WITH HIM! A Gen-Xer in Rome tells me:
In line one of us talked to an ’embedded’ NBC reporter who said, as if it were a reportorial observation rather than a fixed dogma of his mind, how extraordinary it was that so many people should turn out to see a man they didn’t agree with on key issues. The one from our group said that everyone in our group of 9 professionals from NYC agreed with every teaching on personal morality ever taught by JP2, in many cases because of the arguments he made and because of him. ‘would you like to speak with any of them?’. Not at all. And the reporter headed off to re-embed himself where there was better shelter from the facts.

Yes…the press has a framework and a meme. The framework is, “Yes, they come for him but they don’t listen to him, the church demands that it bow to the times…” And the meme is: Mixed Legacy. We saw Clinton helpfully push it along, and Bush say “nonsense.”

Speaking of which, President Bush seemed to go out of his way to minimize himself at this event – to make sure that nothing overshadowed the pope’s final tribute. He made himself unavailable for photos and photo-ops. As did his father. Former President Clinton however made himself as available as possible – allowing himself to be taped walking thoughtfully through a garden, being interviewed by Brian Williams.

That’s our Bill. The bride at every wedding, the corpse at every funeral. He’ll never change; it is who he is. But I sure am sick of watching the press gleefully enable his narcissism and feed it.

Funny things go through your head sometimes. When the crowd began to chant SANTO, I wondered if Clinton thought, “hell, I shoulda been pope! Now THERE is a legacy for ya!” :-)

Ah, and a last thing. National Review Online was nice enough to invite me to scribble some of my poor thoughts for this symposium on John Paul II. I am quite, quite humbled to see the company I am in, there, and thank NRO for the invite.