Vatican: Cardinal Desmond Connell has paid tribute to Pope John Paul II. The Cardinal, who is in Rome for the the Pope's silver jubilee celebrations, said we should give thanks to God for the gift of a great pontificate.
"We offer our fervent prayer for the Holy Father's welfare," said the Cardinal. "We recall the encyclicals, apostolic letters and exhortations, the homilies and addresses which make up the astounding collection of the writings of Pope John Paul II. This is a vast treasure that he will bequeath to the Church and which will be assimilated gradually in the years to come."
Cardinal Connell said the Pope reminded him especially of St Bernard, "a contemplative who travelled ceaselessly in the cause of peace and who dominated the troubled world of his time."
He added: "Like St Bernard he has dominated the age in which he lives. I need only recall his influence on the fall of the Marxist European empire and his moral influence as the most trusted leader of our time."
Describing Veritatis Splendor, (The Splendor of Truth) as the Pope's greatest encyclical letter, he noted it dealt with the fundamental relation between the human spirit and truth. "It is always possible to do what one knows to be wrong. This is to sin; one's acceptance of the truth that it is wrong leaves open a way to conversion."
"It is different when one decides on one's own authority to arbitrate between right and wrong, to construct one's own version of truth . . . then one sickens through rejecting the objective call of truth," he said.
This "radical option" of deciding the truth for oneself lay "at the origin of a moral theology expressed in the kind of dissent one hears commended for its compassion. It is serious enough to block one's own path to conversion, but to teach others to go and do likewise is to lead them towards indifference to truth and conversion," he said.