Spiritual Rock Star 
Terry Eagleton
- The Pope in Winter: The Dark Face of John Paul II’s Papacy by John Cornwell Buy this book
There’s a sexist joke, popular among theologians, in which God, a woman, is in the act of creating the world: ‘And darkness was upon the face of the deep. And God said “Let there be light”; and there was light. And God said “Er – could I just see the darkness again?”’ If this is not Pope John Paul II’s kind of God, it’s as much because of the hesitancy as the gender. If he were ever in two minds on a subject, both of them would be infallible. Not for nothing was the priest who taught him theology in Rome known as ‘The Rigid’. As a Polish bishop newly arrived in the city to take part in Pope John XXIII’s Second Vatican Council, he was appalled by the sight of his fellow bishops quarrelling, lobbying and criticising. This was not the custom of the traditionalist Polish hierarchy, assured in their monopoly of absolute truth.
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Terry Eagleton is, among other things, professor of cultural theory at the National University of Ireland, Galway. His latest book is Reason, Faith and Revolution: Reflections on the God Debate.
Other articles by this contributor:
In the Gaudy Supermarket · Gayatri Spivak
Pork Chops and Pineapples · The Realism of Erich Auerbach
Unhoused · anonymity
Nudge-Winking · T.S. Eliot’s Politics
Newsreel History · Modern Times, Modern Places by Peter Conrad
The Estate Agent · Terry Eagleton spears Stanley Fish
A Spot of Firm Government · Claude Rawson
Reach-Me-Down Romantic · For and Against Orwell
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