Doug Marlette's view of John Paul II
I could do without the garish spectacle of vendors selling Pope paraphernalia -- blessed rosary beads and scapulas in Central Park ("Holy watah! Gitcher holy watah heah!"); I mean, what is this -- Pope-ahontas? And I wish the guy would lighten up on birth control. But I'll take the Pope's riffs on sex any day over screenwriter Joe Esterzhas' cynical hype of Showgirls as "a deeply spiritual morality tale," or Calvin Klein characterizing his pedophilic ads as a "message about the spirit, independence and inner worth of today's young people." Please. And in a country in which male athletes drop-kick women as often as they do a football, where rappers routinely refer to women as "bitches" and Bob Packwood blames it all on alcohol, they could all stand a dose of the Pope's devotion to the Blessed Virgin. Years ago I spent one unforgettable summer day in the North Carolina mountains with novelist Walker Percy. Percy used to send me occasional cartoon ideas, but this was our first and only meeting. We talked about everything that day, as I pummeled him with questions about his books (like The Moviegoer), life, literature, existentialism and his Catholic faith. How had he, a doctor, a scientist, an intellectual, come to convert to Catholicism at the age I was then -- 29? After patiently enduring my bone-drill interrogation through lunch and a stroll down to the lake and back onto his deck where we sat sipping iced tea into the late golden August afternoon, he looked at me, sensing my frustration with some of his answers, and said, "It's not something you figure out." "What?" I asked. "Faith." He answered. "You're trying to figure it out. It's not something you figure out." "It's not?" I said. "No, it's not." "Oh," I said. There was a pause as he let it sink in. Then he added, "It's a gift."
Better than most
Sure, he seems like an anachronism, like a voice from another country, because he is: His faith is 2,000 years old. And he knows what this century teaches you, from Auschwitz to the Gulag: that if you give it an inch, it will take a mile. His stubbornness is both maddening and comforting.
