The Pope as Ronald Reagan

Following Pope John Paul II's recent trip to the new world, I'm beginning to think that Sinead O'Connor got a bum rap.

At first blush, as a Catholic, I found disturbing the singer's recent performance on Saturday Night Live, where she ripped to shreds an 8" by 10" color photo of the pontiff, while shouting "fight the real enemy". Initially, I equated this act with the disruption of the mass at New York's St. Patrick Cathedral by gay rights activists.

The latter incident continues to rub because the sacred liturgy of any religion is an inappropriate venue for political protest. But the Holy Father, after all, is Karol Wojtyla, a person, who like other people. must answer for his actions.

The Pope has just completed a trip to the Dominican Republic to celebrate the arrival of Christianity 500 years ago with the arrival of Christopher Columbus. As the chief evangelist of Christ's gospel on earth, the visit was indisputably inappropriate, whatever one thinks of the fifteenth century explorer.

But during the visit, the best the Pope could come up with by way of denouncing the brutality, slavery and genocide initiated by Columbus--in many cases, in the name, and with the justification of the Church--was that the Vatican tried to restrain the troops' excesses.

Later, the Pope met with and expressed support for a group of conservative bishops from Haiti--a cabal appointed by the church and long implicated in the suffering of the Haitian people.

With no mention whatsoever of the first democratically elected president, Jean Bertrand Aristide, John Paul II called for a halt to sanctions against the military regime that ousted him, as well as "an end to sterile divisions...and a church united around its bishops".

After that meeting, the Pope did receive privately, Bishop Willy Romelus, an Aristide supporter whom the military arrested several times since the coup, but the Vatican made on statement in his support.

All this should come as no surprise to the Pope who launched his tenure with attacks on the so-called "liberation theology," practiced by many of his clergy in Latin America. But John Paul II has also used his office to rein in American and other western bishops for theological deviations.

A proper analogy for what this Pope has become to Christianity is what Ronald Reagan was to American politics: A man who masks ideas and policies deeply hurtful to the least among us with an enormously attractive facade.

Even if loyal Catholics assume the Pope's infallibility in matters of faith, when he ventures, as he has, in social, historical and political matters, he is, after all, still a person.

Kenneth R. Walker, an independent television producer and columnist, is a Fellow at the Institute of Politics.