{"id":3918,"date":"2008-04-12T14:56:40","date_gmt":"2008-04-12T14:56:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/?p=3918"},"modified":"2025-09-29T03:48:40","modified_gmt":"2025-09-29T03:48:40","slug":"noce-commentary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/?p=3918","title":{"rendered":"Nice commentary about the pending visit of Pope Benedict"},"content":{"rendered":"

Paggy Noonan is a big fan of John Paul II – in fact she wrote a pretty good book about him – Tom Faranda’s Folly: Latest read – "John Paul the Great"<\/a> .<\/p>\n

Here’s a very thoughtful comparison fo JP II and B XVI based on her recent short trip to Rome<\/p>\n

Declarations – WSJ.com<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

\n

Oh, you miss that old man when you are here! You feel the presence of his absence. The souvenir shops know. They sell framed pictures and ceramic plates of the pope: John Paul. Is there no Benedict? There is. A photo of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger being embraced by . . . John Paul. It’s now on my desk in New York. They have their hands on each other’s shoulders and look in each other’s eyes. A joyful image. They loved each other and were comrades.<\/p>\n

When I was writing a book about John Paul, I’d ask those who’d met him or saw him go by: What did you think, or say? And they’d be startled and say, "I don’t know, I was crying."<\/p>\n

John Paul made you burst into tears. Benedict makes you think. It is more pleasurable to weep, but at the moment, perhaps it is more important to think.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Paggy Noonan is a big fan of John Paul II – in fact she wrote a pretty good book about him – Tom Faranda’s Folly: Latest read – "John Paul the Great" . Here’s a very thoughtful comparison fo JP II and B XVI based on her recent short trip to Rome Declarations – WSJ.com […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3918","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3918","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3918"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3918\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9297,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3918\/revisions\/9297"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3918"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3918"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3918"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}