A Protestant Looks at John Paul II
[The other day, I wrote a "spontaneous blog" about Pope John Paul II and it appears on this site. I edited it a little bit and submitted it as another installment of the column I write for the Community Press newspapers in metropolitan Cincinnati. Below is that edited version.]

In October, celebrations commemorating the twenty-fifth anniversary of Pope John Paul II's elevation to the papacy took place in Rome.

Upon his election by the College of Cardinals in 1978 and for several years thereafter, John Paul was an ecclesiastical wunderkind: poet, playwright, skier, hiker, multiple-linguist, resister of Nazis and Communists, peripatetic world traveler. Even after surviving an assassination attempt in 1981, there seemed little that this pope wouldn't or couldn't do.

And today, aging and suffering from Parkinson's Disease, he drives on with his work!

He also manages to drive many of my Roman Catholic friends crazy, mostly owing to his intransigence on the issues of priestly celibacy and the ordination of women.

Belonging to a denomination which allows the ordained to be married and which also ordains women, I have a slightly different perspective on John Paul, I suppose. Not engaged in controversy with him, but observing him from afar, I may be a bit more charitable and detached.

When considering this pope, I think it's worthy to note that John Paul tends to drive both conservatives and liberals--whether of the religious or political varieties--equally crazy. The moment you think you have him pegged as either conservative or liberal, he does or says something to defy your label.

The implacable foe of the communist system that once enslaved his native Poland has also opposed the materialist excesses of market capitalism. This "conservative," it turns out is a socialist who wants everyone to share the wealth.

Pleasing conservatives, he has ardently opposed abortion. (As did Mother Teresa, who was beatified by the pope during the celebrations for the anniversary of his papacy.) But displeasing those same conservatives, John Paul has also opposed the death penalty.

He pleases traditionalists of his own faith when upholding conventional Roman Catholic practices, whether it's the so-called "rhythm method" for birth control or the subordination of women to men in the hierarchy of the Church.

But he raises those same traditionalists' eyebrows when he repents for the Church's past treatment of Jews and reaches out to Protestants and Muslims.

As a Protestant, I believe that authority in the Church is not ultimately expressed in priests, bishops, or popes.

As a Lutheran, I reject the very notion of church authority residing in bishops and believe, as the confessions of my church hold, that the Bible is the authoritative source and norm of the Church's life, faith, and practice. The Bible, I believe, commends no hierarchy in Christ's Church. In fact, a passage of the New Testament written by the very man Roman Catholic tradition says was the first pope, the apostle Peter, pointedly rejects hierachical thinking. In First Peter 2:9-10, Peter writes that all followers of Jesus are part of a priesthood of all believers. Followers of Jesus, I believe, differ only in function, not status.

But for all these differences in theology and misgivings I have about the propriety of the very office of pope, I agree with evangelist Billy Graham, who has described John Paul II as the greatest pope of his lifetime.

Gerard Baker, in a recent edition of the "Financial Times," points out that behind all of John Paul's dizzying activity and stubborn intransigence is a consistently-held and consistently-pursued principle, the principle of life over against our current worldwide culture of death.

In many respects, John Paul II has been a Christian countercultural figure, standing against the warped values of a dying world, proclaiming what the Bible calls "a still more excellent way," the path of following Jesus Christ.

For his constant loyalty to life's sanctity in the midst of bloody, violent times, John Paul II deserves the appreciation and applause of all the world.

Tonight, before this Protestant goes to bed, I'll say a little prayer of thanksgiving to God for the pope from Poland who has driven us all a little crazy and who has given us all important things to think about, to pray about, to act upon.