Matthew Yglesias writes a piece that, at first glance, looks like a tough, hard-minded shot at Pope John Paul II and the Catholic Church, but winds up falling pretty short:

The whole Pope situation is a case study in American weirdness about religion. Here's a major -- and majorly controversial -- figure. Nevertheless, everyone even remotely connected to the mainstream feels the need to treat him with kid gloves. Abroad, major papers in Ireland (via Maria Farrell) and the U.K. are happy to offer truly biting criticism.

Far from being "biting," the criticism he highlights is a) a bit of a reach b) old news and hardly edgy and c) an example of anti-Catholic bigotry.

From the snippet to which to which Yglesias refers in the Ireland Times, the writer compares Pope John Paul II to Stalin. That sounds pretty serious, until you realize that Stalin had a brutal army and killed millions of people, and Pope John Paul II had Swiss guards and killed nobody.

Yglesias also links to this Guardian piece by Terry Eagleton, which accuses Pope John Paul II of having "blood on his hands." Why? Well, Eagleton makes the reader wade through three-quarters of his rant before he gets to his point: the pope preached against the use of condoms. (The pope would not alter Church teaching, which holds that Catholics must practice abstinence outside of marriage, fidelity during marriage and adopt prayerful lives.)

In his post, Yglesias suggests that not comparing Pope John Paul II to a genocidal Communist dictator is tantamount to treating him with "kid gloves."

Writes Yglesias:

I don't think the Catholic Church is a very admirable institution, nor do I believe John Paul II was, on balance, much of an admirable person, though he was certainly less-bad than many of his predecessors. But, clearly, I'm in the minority.

The point he and others seem to be making is simply that Pope John Paul II did not stray from church teaching on the sacredness of marriage and procreation, nor was the pope convinced to change his mind by people who took opposing views. And because of that, they suggest, the pope wasn't a good man.

It's an opinion to which they're entitled. But it just plain ignores the fact that Catholic leaders rely on faith, not force, not focus groups, and, at the time of his death, the pope led a world community of 1.1 billion faithful. Pope John Paul II relied on faith, not force, not focus groups, to preach the importance of standing up for freedom to the oppressed masses behind the Iron Curtain.

Those facts and numbers may not win the admiration of Yglesias and those who are like-minded. But it makes one wonder what they do admire.