by PAUL COLLITS – IT IS probably wise to wait until public figures are long dead before conferring greatness on them.
Doing it “in real time” is asking for trouble. Talk of the “right side of history” amidst contentious debates suggests complete ignorance and/or ideological blindness.
- Does Pope Leo want to be forever seen to be friendly with the lying corrupt class?
- Climate politics is the biggest ever global scam – yet Leo has blessed a block of ice.
- God forgive him.
Early signs matter, of course. Contenders for eventual accolades can be ruled out, on the spot, by statements and actions that bespeak ignorance, spinelessness or moral turpitude.
I doubt that, in future centuries, Pope Leo XIV will be considered great when one of his early acts was to publicly bless a block of ice in order to help address climate change.
GRIFT
Clearly, the Pope hasn’t read Peta Credlin in The Australian newspaper on the global climate grift scheme that involves governments, stolen taxpayer funds, private firms’ malfeasance, multiple lies about the science of climate change, the laundering of money, NGOs parading as charities funnelling money to those who would benefit financially from the policies for which they lobby. And so on.
Climate politics is the biggest ever global scam. I hope Pope Leo doesn’t want to be seen forever to have been a friend of the lying corrupt.
Even those generally agreed to have been great often blundered or had dark spots.
The classic example is Winston Churchill. And I am not referring to Gallipoli or Indian racism.
This was brought to mind this week by the excellent David Starkey, who was discussing the disasters of post-World War II welfare in Britain.
And that when Winston Churchill returned to government in 1951, he did nothing to dial it back. That was the time to kill socialism in Britain. And the great man did zip. It is a salutary reminder.
Speaking of popes, the much loved John Paul II was early christened John Paul the Great.
But I do know that John Paul once kissed the Koran. The late George Cardinal Pell was once asked (at Campion College) what he thought of that act. He said, crisply, “I wouldn’t have done it”. Indeed.
Great men do dumb things. But, other than the “big three” (Christ, His mother Mary and John the Baptist), we are all fallen humans subject to the crush of original sin and occasional bouts of stupidity and ego.
Verdicts of greatness will, and should, always be contingent.
What are the synonyms of great in reference to the public square? Transformative? Consequential? Heroic?
The Catholic Church has a fairly straightforward path towards sainthood. It starts with heroic virtue. There isn’t a similarly clear path for deciding secular greatness. And in today’s hopelessly divided, ideological age, there isn’t likely to be one any time soon.
Just as one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter, one man’s great leader will be another’s charlatan. Nelson Mandela, anyone?
And many of us are guilty of bandying the “great” tag around loosely. I know I am.PC
“Other than the “Big Three” (Christ, His mother Mary and John the Baptist), we are all fallen humans […]”.
Wrong: only Jesus Christ was without sin.
You need to brush up on your theology (Paul’s epistle to the Romans is the place that you should start). Of course, to lay hold of God’s truth as revealed in the inerrant scriptures, you will of necessity be forced to first jettison the damnable heresies that are purveyed by the execrable abomination that is catholicism.
Paul, I doubt God cares about the Pope. With a few exceptions in my memory they are revealed as a human construct. Replete with its frailties. The climate change frailty is more recent. Consorting with Nazism another. As a Catholic I do not look to the Papacy or accept dogma it produces. My guide is the Ten Commandments we pirated from Judaism.