In the eyes of the Polish bishops, John Paul II is a precursor in the fight against pedophilia in the Roman Catholic Church, the author of a revolutionary change in the approach to the abuse of minors by the clergy, a shepherd who bravely faced crisis, a man of his time, who fought hard against the atheistic policy of the Polish People’s Republic. And at the same time a victim of the attacks on the Church and its pontificate, the 1968 revolution in the West and the ideologies rooted in it which promote hedonism, relativism and moral nihilism, which proclaim that there is no an objective truth, good and evil, and people are allowed to do anything. Meanwhile in reality pontificate of John Paul II was unique in the history of the Church, of the world, of culture and of man. The current media attacks are a deliberate attempt to destroy its meaning and the authority of the Polish pope himself. This attempt is part of the fight against Christianity, which defends the biblical vision of man. This is the image of Wojtyła presented on November 18 by the position of the Council of the Permanent Conference of the Polish Episcopate, which includes, among others, Archbishops of Gądecki, Jedraszewski, a Pole, the Primate of Poland and a map. Nycz.

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Disenchantment with the pontificate

The documentary feels defensive and interventionist. It is an expression of concern at the critical revision of the pope’s image and an attempt to inhibit public debate on this subject. It is a question of providing arguments to the defenders of the pontificate, its monumental vision. And identify those responsible in order to consolidate this vision. This attempt, however, is doomed to failure, as disenchantment with the pontificate has become a fact, and the growing number of independent investigative reporting – not only on TVN, but also in independent Catholic media, led by “Więź” – created a critical mass. The institutional church does not provide convincing answers to the questions posed there. On the other hand, it is increasingly clear that John Paul II acted – or did not act despite the alarms – within a system focused primarily on protecting people’s influence and interests. of the Church, and not of their victims, in especially victims of pedophilia and sexual predation.

It is true that under the pontificate of JPII there were changes in ecclesiastical law, paving the way for an effective fight against this scourge in the Church. But the bottom line is that these changes did not work. Both during the pontificate of Wojtyła and of his successors – Benedict XVI and Francis. In the world media, including Catholic media independent of ecclesiastical authority, it has been demonstrated and continues to be demonstrated that there are changes In fact death, and this results from the essence of the system.

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The Church Must Stand in the Truth

We recently had another example: we The French episcopate revealedthat up to eleven bishops were involved in secular or Vatican investigations. We have already read shocking independent reports of pedophile crises in Germany and Ireland, and we continue to learn of more such cases in the American Church. The scale of the crisis is broader than the position of the Permanent Council of the Polish Episcopate suggests. It cannot be attributed to the “1968 revolution”, because it also affects the churches of countries where there was no revolution. This is why we speak of a systemic crisis resulting from practices, traditions, habits against which instructions and canons are powerless. What the document calls the Church’s “shutdown mentality” – public opinion speaks of the subculture of omerta – is one of the most important reasons for this impotence.

One can agree with the document that presentism – the projection of our current knowledge of the pedophile and systemic crisis in the Church – onto the pontificate of John Paul II, which ended in 2005, is a problem methodological or analytical. However, we cannot agree to look for the culprits in “ideologies”, because we have to start from causes internal to the Church itself. In part, the picture of the situation sketched in the document resembles the political message of the ultra-Catholic right. All these attacks, conspiracies against Christianity – this is a scratched record of the conservative anti-modernist revolt. This sounds good to far-right ears from the Urals to the Tiber and the Potomac, but it will not cure the pain and suffering of the victims or the anxiety of the Catholic masses about the future of the Church. You must stay in the truth.

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