Oh, lord.
Well, it's wonderful the french (lower case intended) still retain the ability to look down their noses. In the case of many of them, that is a looong way to look.
The concept of appreciating a persons accomplishments is not negated by philosophical disagreements, seems to be beyond the french (lower case intended) press.
I guess their looong noses are still out of joint because their oil contracts, nuclear power plant contracts, and arms sale contracts with Saddam Hussein will never come to fruition.
Maybe the US should take a hint and pull out of NATO and the UN. Wouldn't that put their noses out of joint. .... Mon Dieu! No one to pay for their slimy little games!
The Pope in his very job description is an advocate for peace and not war.
His position on the war on terror could only ever be peaceful advocacy.
I supported the Iraq Liberation War but I'm not a Christian leader so there is no conflict for me similarly he opposed it because he was a man of peace so there would have been no conflict in his stance for him.
Journalists can twist and turn like a windsock on an issue (and a few do) however advocacy is not in their job description but they do it.
In the war on terror and this period of instability the Pope did an excellent job as a leader in Peace as a voice that unifed reason.
It's not ironic, world leaders are coming to respect the end of a great life in service for people by a man of God. Perhaps the closet journalist troskyites should open their closet doors and tell us who they really are.
Remember that these journos are the same ones who referred to Bush as "simple". I guess in an atmosphere devoid of intellectual diversity, it's hard to fathom that one could respect another despite disagreements.
I guess honor is a confusing concept for the media.
How about "Former US President Bill Clinton knelt before the body of Pope John Paul II early today, paying homage in Saint Peter's Basilica to one of the leading critics of extramarital sex"?
Dubious, nice!
How about "The leaders of the United States, at the forefront of space exploration, paying homage to one of the leading critics of heliocentrism".
"Former President Bill Clinton wonders whether it hurts when lightning strikes you dead."
When our slimy Canadian Prime Minister arrives later today, he'll have the same question in mind I'm sure. (In fact, he'll have it more in mind as he claims to be a Catholic while supporting none of the Catholic church's tenents nor the Ten Commandments.)
Ian, "paying homage to one of the leading critics of heliocentrism" shows you know nothing about this Pope. Galileo is ancient history that has nothing to do with this Pope who was a leader in encouraging scientific knowledge without fear. What folks hate about this Pope and indeed about Church teaching is that it calls us all to become better people. We are all called to try and overcome the weaknesses we all have through prayer that by the power of the grace of God and His love for us by name, we can become more holy. One must ask why some are so bitter toward those who have provided truth that we may see. Of course the answer is that we all get uncomfortable when the light of truth is shined brightly toward our own weaknesses.
Even in the days of Galileo, the Church exacted punishment not for his views, which their own scientists concurred with, but with his bypassing the church to get the knowledge out. The Church of Rome is actually among the most rational of Western churches. However, it is also among the most authoritarian (meaning within the Church itself). But people need to acknowledge that the Church has come a very long way under the leadership of JP2, and that it would be better to talk about the future of the Church than to play Tuesday Morning Quarterback.
But then, I guess it's easier to criticize than to do.
Hey, is that Condi Rice off to Bill's left?
I see Mugabe showed up in Rome today and wants to attend the funeral. I hope Italy's intelligence forces arrange a special private funeral for that sh*#bag to attend; His own!!!
DubiousD! Dude, hilarious! Well done.
But I heard someone point out today how lovely it would look if the head of the largest christian (and only truly centralized, in other words the only real authority figure) religion jumped up and down clicking his heels and said "Hell yeah! Let's get those muslim extremists!" That would do wonders for the "this is a war on terrorism, not Islam" line.
"Galileo is ancient history that has nothing to do with this Pope who was a leader in encouraging scientific knowledge without fear"
On the contrary, JP2 issued a formal apology on behalf of the Church to Galileo.
"Of course the answer is that we all get uncomfortable when the light of truth is shined brightly toward our own weaknesses"
But still, it moves 
The POPES funeral will be bigger then that of the prince of monacos after all the POPE was a man of god the prince was just another little imensness punzness
The Old European policy on issues concerning the United States have always centered on looking down on us. Before World War I Old Europe looked down on us from above, and they have since looked down on us from below. Its not particuarly shocking or irksome to me anymore, it's instead simply child like. What does irk me, however, is that AFP could use such a somber thing as the passing of one of the greatest men in the history of the modern world, Pope John Paul II, into a took for bitter politicking. It is unsurprisingly immature behavior from Europe.
Don’t know much about his support for heliocentrism Ian other than it would take some obtuseness to claim that the sun went around the earth so agreeing it doesn’t, is not a huge step forward.
He was happy to go along with evolution as long as it was remembered that the critical teaching of the Church is that God infuses souls into man—regardless of what process he might have used to create our physical bodies. Science, the Pope insisted, can never identify for us “the moment of the transition into the spiritual”—that is a matter exclusively with the magesterium of religion. Interestingly the infusion of soul into body is a different process for men than women, for some reason male foetus’s get their soul in 40 days, for female it is 90 days, or was.
But was a fan it seems of the Big bang, “ it would seem that present-day science, with one sweep back across the centuries, has succeeded in bearing witness to the august instant of the primordial Fiat Lux [Let there be Light], when along with matter, there burst forth from nothing a sea of light and radiation, and the elements split and churned and formed into millions of galaxies." Thus proving it was God’s doing.
“Thus, with that concreteness which is characteristic of physical proofs, [science] has confirmed the contingency of the universe and also the well-founded deduction as to the epoch when the world came forth from the hands of the Creator. Hence, creation took place. We say: therefore, there is a Creator. Therefore, God exists!”
Problems arose however when considering “the moment of creation.” That, at least, is what Pope John Paul told Stephen Hawking and other physicists during an audience that followed a papal scientific conference on cosmology. Told them they should not inquire into the Big Bang itself because that was “the work of God. Stephen reported in “His Brief History of Time” that he was glad then “that he did no know the subject of the talk I had just given at the conference—the possibility that space-time was finite but had no boundary, which means that it had no beginning, no moment of Creation.”
Encouraging scientific knowledge, when it suited his creed.
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