So I’m a feminist. And I’m not a Catholic. In fact. I spent the last decade being really pissed off at the pope. And yet, and yet, and yet, I was somehow incredibly moved by his passing.
I, along with millions of Americans, sat crying in front of the television screen watching millions of Italians and Poles and people from all over the world really stand in line for up to fifteen hours to spend about ten seconds in the Basilica paying their respects.

No less than three U. S. Presidents appeared at the funeral. Bill Clinton, Bush Sr., Bush Jr., Laura, and Condee made up the Presidential delegation of five. Countless Senators, including Durbin, Kerry, and Kennedy, knelt in Rome. And somehow, the spectacle of it all, no that’s not right, but something, something was able to make tears spring into my eyes. And I’m a realist.

No, let’s be honest: I’m a cynic.

So, of course, pop culture critic that I am, I had to ask myself why. Why was I so moved by the passing of a man with whom I almost never agreed? How could I shed a tear for a man who forbade contraception as AIDS ravaged Africa? How could I shed a tear for a man who would not allow women to have a position of power in his organization? How could I shed a tear for a man so adamantly pro life when I am so adamantly pro choice? How could I shed a tear for a man who never adequately dealt with the priest molestation problem in the States?

The easy answer is that he was progressive politically. He helped end communism and practically freed his native Poland. It’s also historically fascinating, evidenced by Jeff Greenfield’s historical review of the papacy on CNN. While I am interested in these things about John Paul II, they don’t entirely explain the sharp tug of my heartstrings in his direction. And then it came to me.

I don’t admire John Paul, like John Paul, maybe even (I am beginning to suspect) love John Paul despite my many grievances against him. I feel for John Paul, in some sense, because of my grievances against him. He was a man of honor, faith, and truth. Even if I disagreed with him, even if I went so far as to hate what he said, I knew, understood, felt that he was saying what he believed, truly believed.

Having recently experienced the U. S. Presidential election in which candidates flip-flopped to gain more votes, I am amazed by a man who said what he meant, meant what he said, and stood by it. I may think he was wrong, but I know that he believed, just as strongly, that he was right. He acted from the heart, and he acted on a belief system that he revered with all his might.

I think this is the secret of Pope John Paul the II’s pop-star-like worldwide popularity. If I am Muslim, if I am Jewish, if I am feminist, if I am Buddhist, if, in the end, I fail to believe in anything the pope believed, even God, I know this: This pope acted from pure motive. He said what he thought and stood by his convictions, no matter how many people disagreed with him. I admire that sturdy conviction, in a world in which Yeats reminded us that “the best lack all,” and I aspire for that confidence in my own life.

In “She Walks in Beauty,” Byron once wrote, “A mind at peace with all below,/A heart whose love is innocent.” I remember scoffing at those lines as a graduate student, already hardened to the world’s cruel ways. Now, as I read those lines, I imagine they describe a pope, this pope, sitting in heaven at the right hand of God. Mock me if you will. Not too long ago, I would have been right there with you, but perhaps therein lies the magic of this pope. He had the power to transform even a realist – no, let’s be honest, a cynic – into a Byron reading sap.

Correction: a Byron believing sap.

Ah me.

April 2005