Where were you on the day John Paul II died? I won’t soon forget, for I was caught in a looking-glass world of improbable encounters and reactions. A friendly neighbor dropped by to deliver his boy for a play date with our son Andy. “Did you hear the pope is dying?” (Yes, I did.) “Can’t see why such a fuss is being made about him.” (I can.
It’s easy to find weird epitaphs in old graveyards, in books of quotations or via the Internet. Samples that come up on a quick Internet search—I don’t claim they are actual epitaphs—include: “Here lies Johnny Yeast / Pardon me for not rising.” And “Sir John Strange / Here Lies an Honest Lawyer / And that is Strange.” And “Harry Edsel Smith: / Looked up the elevator shaft to see if / The car was on the way down. It was.”
Do protestants need the papacy? Given the recent fascination with the pontificate of John Paul II and with the election of Benedict XVI, it would seem that the papacy is on the Protestant horizon in a way that would have been unthinkable even a generation ago. This may be the result of savvy marketing, the omnipresence of CNN, the celebrity status of John Paul II or a penchant for the exotic. But I think something more is going on. It is the papacy itself that fascinates us.