So we come to the end of a special week. All this week, we've been reading about what a good man Karol Wojtyla was. A few brave people spoke out and said he wasn't all he was cracked up to be, especially by the Jews who have been raving on about how wonderful he was for the Jews and Israel, but rather than get into this argument (especially since I'm tending to swing more to the former side), let's stop for a few minutes to consider another line.
Stories have been trotted out all week about how some incident many years ago goes to prove what a good man he was. For example, a young girl who survived the horrors of a Nazi death camp was spotted huddled near a train station, starving and sick, and this priest went up to her and gently got her name and home town (his own, of course) and carefully helped her with a meal and a lift into a cattle car heading for that destination. A touching story, and I have no doubt true in basic fact if not in every detail.
But can I ask a question. Why is such a story remarkable - so remarkable that it gets retold 60 years later. Unhappily, I know the answer. It is because such an incidence of basic humanity was very rare. The Pope's fellow Christians were rarely "menchedik" enough to do such a fundamental right deed. So he, who was a mench, stands out, just one in many millions, for having done the right thing. How sad for the rest of the world. If I were in his co-religionists place, I wouldn't rush to tell such stories about Karol, because in using the tale to tell what a good man he was, you're admitting that the rest of the Church falls a long way short of what anyone would regard as decent and honourable.
May he rest in peace, but if his life is going to be an example, let it not be used to tell us how much the Church has done to extend the hand of friendship to the Jewish people, but rather how much is has got to make up for before it can expect a handshake in return.
