Is John Paul II irrelevant?
It may be my personal bias: I live in Europe and I am of Polish origin (although definitely not a Catholic as my name shows). Over here, John Paul, his life and his legacy, is REALLY big news. Yet, on my favorite blog, nothing… This reminds me of the derisive question by Joseph Stalin: “Pope? How many division he has?” We know the answer now: many, many more than the sinister “Oncle Joe”. It is the Polish pope, who decisively contributed to the fall of the Soviet Union and its empire.
Shall we then ask a question: “Pope? How many terabytes?” or “What is his Google ranking”? Interestingly, “Vatican” is No 10 on today’s Yahoo! Buzz Index. More seriously, how relevant is the Pope to our universe of modern technology, networked universe and entrepreneurship?
I think that he is highly relevant. For one thing, we may not have noticed him but he definitely noticed us. He actually wrote a message in 1999, entitled “Mass Media: Friendly Companion,” in which he said: “With the recent explosion of information technology, the possibility for communication between individuals and groups in every part of the world has never been greater. Yet, paradoxically, the very forces which can lead to better communication can also lead to increasing self-centeredness and alienation. We find ourselves therefore in a time of both threat and promise “.
He was not only an attentive observer of the new technology. He was also a very skilled practitioner. No, I did not receive any e-mail from him but as a matter of fact, he was sending a daily text—message prayer to the faithful on their cell phones. Vatican web site was set up in late 1995 and in 2004 was receiving over two million hits a day. And in terms of media image management and event staging, no rock star let alone a politician comes even close to the man from Krakow.
But beyond his attention and his use of modern technology, John Paul touches us a deeper and more lasting way. He challenges us to reconsider the role of religion in the modern society and economy. Last November, most of my American friends were mourning the result of US elections as the advent of new “Dark Ages” and decrying the pernicious influence of religion on the US politics. For them, as for many ‘enlightened’ Europeans, as people grow richer and more educated, they leave religion behind. And yet, as Central Europe vividly demonstrated, religion can be an incredibly powerful force for positive change. Closer to us, in Iraq, the ultimate hope for democracy lies with Sistani and his vision of Islam. As technology overwhelms us, we ask questions about the new ethics, new morals, new spirituality. Ultimately those are religious questions we cannot run away from.