Blessed John Paul II saved the Catholic Church from going the way of the Anglican Communion

From The London Telegraph-

I’ve been asking myself what future secular historians and sociologists of religion will make of Blessed John Paul II’s long stewardship of the Catholic Church. Let us set aside for the moment his magnificent assault on the foundations of Communism; also, the arguments over the sex abuse crisis.

Volumes have already been written on these subjects. Moreover, secular scholars are unlikely to dwell on the heroic sanctity of the man, which led Pope Benedict XVI to beatify him in a ceremony attended by 1.5 million people. But what they may well say – irrespective of their point of view – is that John Paul II preserved the unity of the Catholic Church at a moment when it seemed likely to fracture.

I was a schoolboy during the last years of Paul VI; what I remember from the time was a sense that the boundaries of Catholicism were being stretched until they seemed likely to snap. The Catholic Church in the 1970s had something of the flavour of the Anglican Communion today. The question of women priests did not tip the Church into schism, but it was a distinct possibility. The Dutch Church had effectively declared UDI from the Vatican; beneath the near-impenetrable jargon of American and European theologians lay fundamental assaults on Catholic belief in the Real Presence, the sacramental priesthood and many other doctrines.

More here-

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/damianthompson/100086109/blessed-john-paul-ii-saved-the-catholic-church-from-going-the-way-of-the-anglican-communion/