"There But For the Goad of Grace Grow I"

A Catholic basher and Pope-hater changes his mind by opening it. "Gagdad Bob" on how he changed his mind about John Paul II.

John Paul is another one of those people -- like Reagan and Thatcher -- to whom I didn't pay sufficient attention while they were alive, mainly because of my stifling moonbattery, but also because, sad to say, Catholicism was completely off my muleheaded braydar anyway. I might add that I had even been laboring under lingering delusions about Catholicism until reading this very book, persistent moron which below.

I am now resigned to the fact that it will take the rest of my life to eradicate the secular indoctrination I assimilated through osmosis just by virtue of living in this time and place, but greatly exacerbated by my passage through the upper reaches -- or darkest depths -- of academia. 

And:

One of the major things I learned... is that I am actually -- surprise! -- a Vatican II guy. Prior to reading the book, I was an anti-Vatican II guy, oddly enough, because I knew literally nothing about it

Yes, I find all of Catholicism is like that. Awful until you actually contend with it.

And Part II.

Curtsy: Brutally Honest (who, with his wife, returned to the Church recently, btw. Yay!)