As people are now talking in light of the McCarrick report about the precipitous, ill-advised canonization process that gave us St. John Paul II, I want to share three postings I made on my Bilgrimage blog over a course of several years about why I opposed this canonization. /1

Posting 1, 8 December 2009: "The Canonization of John Paul II: I Dissent" /2

http://bilgrimage.blogspot.com/2009/12/canonization-of-john-paul-ii-i-dissent.html

Posting 2, 9 December 2009: "More Reflections on John Paul II's Canonization: The Cult of Personality" /3

http://bilgrimage.blogspot.com/2009/12/more-reflections-on-john-paul-iis.html

Posting 3, "The Canonization of Pope John Paul II: My Continued Dissent (and the Loud, Clear Message to Me as a Gay Catholic)" /4

https://bilgrimage.blogspot.com/2014/04/the-canonization-of-pope-john-paul-ii.html

As the third posting concludes, "The term 'Catholic' continues to be defined over and against me as a gay human being both by my church's pastors and by those who defend these pastors in the Catholic academy and the Catholic media." /5

"And so Sunday will be a day of mourning for me — as I suspect it will be for many Catholic women, many survivors of childhood clerical abuse, and the many Catholic theologians whose vocations were ruthlessly blocked by Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI." /6

Footnote: I absolutely do not understand the objections of some folks I'm reading on Twitter now to discussing the inadvisable hasty canonization of JPII in light of the McCarrick report. I've read some commentators saying that this diverts attention from survivors. /7

It doesn't do that in the least. It's about setting right what"s at the heart of the callous response of the institution to survivors for some years now. The objection to St. John Paul II's canonization has EVERYTHING IN THE WORLD to do with how he dealt with survivors. /8

What I hear these objectors saying is that they don't want their cult of St. John Paul II tampered with as they call for the church to listen to survivors witness to the rest of us about the atrocities visited on them.

You can't do that w'out confronting JPII's role. /9