www.byzcath.org Forums Faith & Christian Life Faith & Theology Sainthood for the Pope?

Originally posted by Turpius:
I heard there were shouts for instant canonization during the Pope's funeral. However, I have been told that the only person that can "short-cut" the procedure is another pope, Correct?

Originally posted by djs:
As to the "God-hating" news media: it's hard to remember an occasion when "the media" exhibited disrespect for this Pope - let alone God-hatred. Maybe another miracle will be the dropping of such melodramatic rhetoric.

Originally posted by alice:
Dear Incognitus,

...and the miracle of a televised Mass on every channel imaginable, in every country imaginable, and the explanation and discussion in a positive light of Christian doctrine by the secular, God and Church hating media, was not a miracle?!?!?!

(I know, I know, it won't cut it with the 'cause for sainthood' fellows, but if one thinks about it, it was a true 'modern' miracle!)

Fondly,
In Christ our Lord,
Alice

Maybe another miracle will be the dropping of such melodramatic rhetoric.

I think almost everyone would agree that the story of Terri Schiavo is a tragedy. What I don't get, then, is why it�s being told as a melodrama.

The key difference here is that, while a tragedy doesn't need one, a melodrama absolutely insists on a villain; the more villainous the better. And this story, if told a certain way, has a villain straight out of Central Casting: a murderous, cold-hearted, avaricious lecher, a master criminal who will never rest until all evidence of his fiendish crimes is destroyed.

While we're at it, we can throw in a few more stock villains -- the crooked judge and the devil's advocate -� to make the story more emotionally charged.

Meanwhile, those who support the objectively grave evil of preventing Terri Schiavo from receiving ordinary care tell a melodramatic tale with hypocritical politicians and lunatic anti-abortionists as the villains.

Now, it may be that some of those involved in this story are villains. I don't know enough to say for sure, and I don't think the vast majority of those who tell each other this story as a melodrama know enough, either. Nor will it do to say, "Just look at the facts;" it's not the facts, but the look that determines who the villain is.

If the role of villain is the key difference in telling a story as tragedy or melodrama, the key difference in hearing it is emotional response. A melodrama stirs up desire for heroic action, action the audience itself joins in, if only through cheers and hisses. We expect, perhaps even demand, a happy ending in which the heroine is rescued from the villain's clutches.

Seeing a tragedy, by contrast, is a much less active experience. The audience may suffer along with the protagonist, but there's no real hope for anything but defeat. You may be moved to fight against injustice, but how do you fight against bad luck?

It's easy to see why someone who wants people to take action when they hear his story would tell a melodrama, and I think we can accept that most people who present this story with villains do so in good faith. There are risks to this, however, that I'm not sure everyone who�s telling the melodrama appreciates.

For one thing, it puts the focus of a critical audience -� one willing to listen to what is said, but not prepared to accept everything that is said on the authority of the storyteller -� on secondary matters: Is this person a villain? How should I decide this? What if he isn't a villain? And what if he is? If the problem is a crooked judge, say, then there's no need to wonder whether the laws aren't rotten as well, and what to do about the former is a much different question than what to do about the latter.

Another risk is that it demands a large emotional response from the audience. If the audience is not prepared to make that response, the story has failed. And even if it is, will it be prepared when the next such story is told? Will it even listen the next time, particularly if this story does not have a happy ending?

Perhaps the biggest risk, though, is that looking at this case as a melodrama makes it difficult if not impossible to look at it as a tragedy. The fact that preventing a patient from receiving ordinary care is objectively immoral and always wrong gets lost in all the other facts and allegations. The impression may be that objective immorality by itself isn't enough to make an action wrong, if indeed a case for the objective immorality can get made without wandering into charges of villainy. Throwing in yet another argument when the ones you've already made don't convince your audience is an understandable impulse, but the result may be that your audience will never understand your first and most fundamental argument.

That is why John Paul relentlessly preached genuine tolerance: not the tolerance of indifference, as if differences over the good didn't matter, but the real tolerance of differences engaged, explored, and debated within the bond of a profound respect for the humanity of the other. Many were puzzled that this Pope, so vigorous in defending the truths of Catholic faith, could become, over a quarter-century, the world's premier icon of religious freedom and inter-religious civility. But here, too, John Paul II was teaching a crucial lesson about the future of freedom: Universal empathy comes through, not around, particular convictions. There is no Rawlsian veil of ignorance behind which the world can withdraw, to subsequently emerge with decency in its pocket.

I think that the bloodless collapse of the Communist governments in Eastern Europe - a collapse ignited by this Pope - that was miraculous