...doing the ironing, I watched the second half of the powerful and moving film "Karol:A man who became Pope". I've watched this film before, and only put it on the DVD today because, well, it was a cold dark January day and I had a great stack of ironing to do and needed some inspiration. (And yes, you CAN watch a film while doing the ironing - in my case it involves positioning the ironing-board across an open doorway in in the one place where I can both see the DVD screen and plug in the iron. Multi-tasking).
The film sent me hurrying to get more reading-material on John Paul II: the Weigel biography is of course excellent and I am renewing my aquaintance with it this evening. There is also Garry O'Connor's "Universal Father", and any number of short biographies to say nothing of the late H.Father's own works. But I had forgotten that there were various books attacking him published in his last few years, all announcing that he was old, cantankerous, useless, etc and looking forward to his replacement with some one who would, oh, announce that the Christian teaching on sexual morality was about to be altered to fit in with the agenda of Planned Parenthood and the Lesbian Parenting Network and so on...how stupid that all looks now.
You can get the "Karol" film from St Anthony Communications and I do hugely recommend it, especially now that Pope John Paul is on the way to beatification...it would be excellent to show to a Catholic youth group (mid-teens and upwards - there's some grim wartime stuff unsuitable for younger children). Get a good-sized TV screen, and some big comfortable chairs and/or sofa cushions, and settle in for the evening. Bring tissues. And be prepared to emerge inspired and with a conviction that we are not meant to waste one moment of our lives but to do something large with them.
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Joanna, I would say that the late JPII did a lot of good on the sruggle for human rights and dignity especially in the former communist bloc and he was consistent in his theology. Unfortunately he closed his ears about the clerical sex abuse scandals believing that the Roman Catholic Church was perfect and now Benedict is taking the first real action to deal with it. Don't assume that JPII was perfect.
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