A Mixed Legacy

President George Bush, after attending the Pope's funeral, made a point of publicly disagreeing with former President Clinton's view that the Pope left a mixed legacy.

Clinton, on the flight to Rome earlier this week, had said that John Paul "may have had a mixed legacy," but he called him a man with a great feel for human dignity.

While speaking to reporters after the funeral, Bush said, "I think John Paul II will have a clear legacy of peace, compassion and a strong legacy of setting a clear moral tone."

In my opinion, these statements illustrated how differently these men view the world. Bush is a black and white thinker, where Clinton is more able to see shades of gray. To Bush, the Pope had to have been all good, in order to be viewed as a great, important man. To Clinton, the Pope was a great man, despite being fallible and making mistakes.

While I respected the Pope as a true man of peace in a world that has seen precious little of it in recent decades, I was still able to see where he fell short.

Though large parts of the world are heavily burdened with rampant hunger and crushing poverty, the Pope would not change the Church's long-standing opposition to birth control and abortion. To me, this indicated that he saw the issue of curbing sexuality as more important than ending poverty and hunger. I never could understand the Pope's myopia with this issue.

Though a man concerned with the dignity of humanity, he would not grant that same dignity to homosexuals, who are every bit as human as anyone else.

Though concerned with the welfare of children the world over, he never responded adequately to the widespread problem of pedophile priests. He would never consider the abolition of the celibacy requirement for priests and nuns, which would have no doubt mitigated this problem.

Though women have always been the backbone of Christianity, and particularly the Catholic Church, he never considered them worthy enough to serve the Church as priests.

In a Church with a declining number of new priests, along with the ban on female and homosexual priests, he would not allow married clergy, which was essentially cutting off his nose to spite his face.

But, in the end, Bill Clinton pretty much summed up my feelings about the Pope:

"There will be debates about him. But on balance, he was a man of God, he was a consistent person, he did what he thought was right," Clinton said. "That's about all you can ask of anybody."

Even if I don't agree with a good bit of what he thought was right, I still respect him for his integrity.