AFP has a world-wide roundup of press coverage of the dying Pope John Paul II. Some of the coverage focuses on the Pope’s importance, especially during the 1980’s, as an international political figure who played an important role in the defeat of Communism. I’m a little surprised, however, at how much more emphasis even the most secular newspapers are giving to the Pope’s status as a beloved spiritual leader, who advanced an uncompromisingly Biblical version of Christianity that was at odds, not just with socialism, but with much of modern life.
Much coverage, too, has focused on the Pope’s attitude toward his own declining health and impending death, and his apparent effort to teach the lesson that suffering is a necessary, and not entirely negative, part of life.
The back-to-back dramas of Terry Schiavo’s and the Pope’s final days have focused public attention on death in a way that hasn’t happened in a long time. What effects this may have, if any, I don’t know. But I wonder whether, in this country anyway, the aging of our population, and especially the baby boom generation, will put death, and issues associated with dying, on the public agenda in a way that they haven’t been before.
-
-
Most Read on Power Line
Donate to PL
-
Our Favorites
- American Greatness
- American Mind
- American Story
- American Thinker
- Aspen beat
- Babylon Bee
- Belmont Club
- Churchill Project
- Claremont Institute
- Daily Torch
- Federalist
- Gatestone Institute
- Hollywood in Toto
- Hoover Institution
- Hot Air
- Hugh Hewitt
- InstaPundit
- Jewish World Review
- Law & Liberty
- Legal Insurrection
- Liberty Daily
- Lileks
- Lucianne
- Michael Ramirez Cartoons
- Michelle Malkin
- Pipeline
- RealClearPolitics
- Ricochet
- Steyn Online
- Tim Blair
Media
Subscribe to Power Line by Email
Temporarily disabled
Notice: All comments are subject to moderation. Our comments are intended to be a forum for civil discourse bearing on the subject under discussion. Commenters who stray beyond the bounds of civility or employ what we deem gratuitous vulgarity in a comment — including, but not limited to, “s***,” “f***,” “a*******,” or one of their many variants — will be banned without further notice in the sole discretion of the site moderator.