"Faced with many problems and disappointments, many people will try to escape from their responsibility. Escape in selfishness, escape in sexual pleasure, escape in drugs, escape in violence. . . . But today I propose to you the option of love, which is the opposite of escape. . . . Real love is demanding."

Source: Pope John Paul II, Lccture, Boston, Mass., 2 October 1979.

Limited Influence.

In spite of the pope's charm and the hopes of Catholic conservatives, there is little evidence that John Paul II's visit changed the behavior or ideas of laymen about private sexual behavior or even the possibility of women priests. The Second Vatican Council had unleashed the independent thinking of an increasingly well educated laity in America, who were fully adapted to the culture of the late twentieth century. They loved John Paul II the man but rejected the parts of his...