Photo ~ Pope Jon Paul II gives his blessing to Father Marcial Maciel Degollado, who faced numerous allegations of sexual abuse

The Beatification of John Paul II
Another Extension of the Great Façade?
POSTED:5/9/11

So the deed is done. John Paul II has been beatified. This despite a pontificate whose course was marked by an accelerating collapse of faith and discipline in the Church, one appalling novelty after another—including the altar girls John Paul broke with all tradition to approve—the emergence of wave after wave of sexual scandal in a Church turned upside down and inside out by plainly disastrous “reforms” the late Pope never ceased to praise, and finally a state of affairs John Paul himself lamented as “silent apostasy.”

As Cardinal Amato declared at a conference called to explain this remarkable approach: “Pope John Paul II is being beatified not because of his impact on history or on the Catholic Church [emphasis mine, here and elsewhere], but because of the way he lived the Christian virtues of faith, hope and love... ” (Cindy Wooten, “John Paul II being beatified for holiness, not his papacy, speakers say,” Catholic News Service, 1 April 2011).

A Pope beatified without regard to his effect on the Catholic Church! Beatified for his holiness, not for his papacy—as if the former were in no way to be sought in the fruits of the latter.

What can one say?

In considering the beatification of John Paul II we must never lose sight of what the Church teaches about beatifications: that they are permissions, not commands, to venerate, and thus are not infallible acts of the Magisterium. As the Catholic Encyclopedia explains, canonization involves “a precept, and is universal in the sense that it binds the whole Church,” whereas beatification only “permits such worship...”

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