John Paul II's sainthood has now been pushed back to October, but it's still going to happen, apparently. It seems fitting to discuss the impending Sainthood of the first Polish Pope in the background of the latest allegations against his favorite order, The Legionaires of Christ and their founderMaciel. The photo shows him with a panama hat and civilian clothes. I know that traditionally Mexico's anti-clerical government wouldn't allow priests to wear clerical attire in public, but priests who appear in public out of uniform always raise our suspicions. (You get the impression that they are actors who've exited the stage and have taken off the persona with their makeup.)
There has been some attempt in the PR area to excuse the late Pope's apparent incapacity to deal effectively with the tidal wave of child abuse which happened on his watch, by pointing at his life under Communist governments. It's true that Communists did then and still do persecute Catholic leaders and the Church as a whole on this basis, but we'd like to think that JPII could have been more proactive in dealing with these monsters, even if they are just one small part of the degeneracy of our civilization at large. See, many of us have a strong sensation that our late Pope didn't do all he could to fight the spirit of the age, and succumbed to it more than he fought it.
Ultimately, the Maciel scandal will no-doubt hang heavily on the impending canonization of this long-lived Pope. We'd like to think that the Church will do whatever is true, whatever public opinion happens to be.
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