The hypocrisy of our rulers and their lackeys is truly staggering. It is not so much a "culture of life" than a cult of the dead.
Yet this is not the only repulsive sight we get subjected to when some famous people dies. We also get the apparently mandatory "great man who changed the world" bollocks as well. When that evil scumbag Reagan died, the press when cock-a-hoop presenting him as the man who ended communism. Well, he has been evicted from that post. Now Pope John Paul the second appears to be the man responsible, with Bush proclaiming that he had "launched a democratic revolution that swept Eastern Europe and changed the course of history" (although not to Jonathan Steele in the Guardian, who credits Gorbachev for it).
This is to be expected in a hierarchical system. The few rule the many and, consequently, the latter are ignored in favour of the former. The fact is that Stalinism was ended in Eastern Europe when the people subject to it took to the streets en mass and brought it down. To assign the glory of that event to anyone other than those brave people is insulting and deeply elitist.
As for the Pope, he has been inflicted with that current epithet of choice, a defender of freedom. For the right, any insane or downright evil idea or action can be made palatable by saying "liberty", "freedom" or "democracy" enough times. Bush is the new master of this approach, hoping that by saying those magic words no one will look at the reality of his ideas or actions. We can only hope the truly grand idea of freedom will not be forever soiled and can survive Bush's embrace.
The idea of the Pope as a defender of freedom does have its problems. In his own domain, the Catholic Church, his time was marked by authoritarianism. The securing of the Papal hierarchy was the focus rather than freedom. His attack on "liberation theology" was an example of this: he would not tolerate priests defying and challenging the church's hierarchical structure. He had little patience for how its practitioners actually applied their "option for the poor" and challenged the system rather than, as he did, simply criticise and bemoan the worse aspects of capitalism (his attacks on inequality strangely never extended to the wealth or power of the Church). Needless to say, if you were a woman then the freedom to control your own body and reproduction was never an option for John Paul. Neither were gays granted much liberty either. The impact of his anti-abortion and contraception views on the most impoverished countries and peoples of the world are also hardly liberty enhancing.
Even his influence on Poland suggests that he continued tyranny rather than ended it. While the Pope supported the strikers in Gdansk and the Solidarity union they founded, when martial law was proclaimed he rejected calls for mass protest, direct action and factory occupations in favour of patience. When Stalinism was finally ended, it was by the defiance on the streets which the Pope had rejected years before. This, perhaps, is unsurprising as the Catholic Church has always bolstered any regime (no matter how barbaric) which allowed it to corrupt the minds of children and adults. Moreover, it has systematically opposed any attempt by humanity to free itself. As the Bible says, our current rulers are selected by God and rebellion is a sin so you had better do what the spiritual and temporal rulers decree.
Looking at the institution autocratically ruled by this "champion of human freedom" (to again quote Bush), the similarities with Stalinism are clear. John Paul II was a firm defender of centralising power in the hands of the Vatican and local dioceses were stripped of the liberties they had been given by some of his immediate predecessors. Liberal tendencies were swamped and finally crushed by a tide of organisational and social conservativism. It really was a case of the Pope's way or the highway -- as with any boss.
Let's hope that those subject to the rule of the authoritarian ideology which the Pope symbolised will, like their brothers and sisters in Eastern Europe, rise up and end it once and for all. From the millions who went to gaze on the Pope's dead body suggests, this may take some time -- sadly, they weren't there to check he was dead!