[MLUG - DISCUSSION] The Pope

[Mike Miller <EMAIL:PROTECTED>]

Only two other Popes were Pope for longer than John Paul II:

   1. St. Peter (32-67)
256. Blessed Pius IX (1846-78)

That's the first Pope (Peter and his years 32-67 A.D.) and the 256th Pope. 
A complete list is here:

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/12272b.htm

So John Paul II had a good long run and I'm not crying over his death. 
On the other hand, he might have been the best Pope ever, from my 
perspective.  He said that it was OK to study evolution and he cleared 
Galileo of all charges (only 350 years later, but better late than never). 
He also did some good work toward ending communist control of Eastern 
Europe.

Neither did I shed any tears over the demise of Stephen Jay Gould a couple 
of years ago, but Gould did some good work promoting evolution sciences. 
Here is something Gould wrote about John Paul II and Catholic doctrine:

http://www.stephenjaygould.org/library/gould_noma.html

Gould had been invited to the Vatican in 1984 to meet with Catholic 
officials about "nuclear winter" -- a very popular topic back then -- and 
they also had some questions about evolution.

In 1998, JP II came out with his monster philosophical treatise "Fides et 
Ratio" (usually translated as "faith and reason") which attempts to 
clarify Catholic doctrine with regard to the relation of science and 
religion:

http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/encyclicals/documents/hf_jp-ii_enc_15101998_fides-et-ratio_en.html

Anyway, I am not a Catholic (despite my mother's best efforts), but I 
think the Catholics have made good progress in the past century, and I 
think John Paul II made important contributions in that regard.

If only the U.S. Christian Right (fundamentalists) would see the merit in 
the Catholic's approach to science.  Literalism is a dark black hole from 
which no light emerges.  (By "literalism" I mean the doctrine that 
everything written in the Bible is literally true and no passages need to 
be interpretted as metaphor.)

Mike

-- 
Michael B. Miller, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Division of Epidemiology and Community Health
and Institute of Human Genetics
University of Minnesota
http://taxa.epi.umn.edu/~mbmiller/
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