VATICAN CITY — In death, John Paul II has united millions of Catholics in an outpouring of grief, but in life, the pope was often a polarizing figure.
As the late pontiff is eulogized for his profound personal piety and globe-spanning charisma, voices of dissent serve as reminder that the church today is sharply divided and uncertain about its future.
"The credibility of the Catholic Church has been left in a true crisis," said Hans Kueng, a Swiss-born liberal theologian who was one in a long line disciplined by John Paul, and for whom the end of this 26-year papacy represents potential liberation.
Critics say the pope stifled internal democracy and resisted the forces of modern change that many of his followers desired. He cleaved strictly to conservative theological doctrine and ruled the church with a firm hand, centralizing power at the Vatican and stripping much autonomy from local dioceses.
One result, say the critics: The number of practicing Catholics has declined in many parts of the world, including traditionally Roman Catholic countries such as Spain and Italy, where his stance on so-called lifestyle issues, including unyielding bans on abortion and birth control, alienated many people.
As far as John Paul was concerned, he was enforcing God's absolute truths and providing moral clarity to his church and its flock.
"We see a mixed bag," American nun Maureen Fiedler said in a telephone interview from Maryland, where she leads an interfaith discussion program and works for the Quixote Center, which promotes church reform. She praised John Paul's opposition to the death penalty and his concern for the poor. But, she said, "his failure to apply the norms of peace and social justice within the church is what troubles us."
John Paul was reared, spiritually and philosophically, in the conservative Polish Catholic Church, an institution under siege from Nazism and, later, four decades of communism.
The change promulgated by the Second Vatican Council in the mid-1960s never found their full expression in the underground Polish church.
Many Catholics around the world thought the changes brought by the Second Vatican Council were the harbinger of reform and an advent, however tentative, of more democratic thought. "Vatican II," as it became known, decreed that Mass could be said in languages other than Latin and that the priest could face the congregation, reversing a thousand-year-old practice. It also sought to improve relations with other religions, especially other Christian denominations.
