sad, very sad right now

The commentary on numerous professional and private individual blogs about the pope’s abdication is either insipid or it depresses me  because of  the subtle attacks on the sick and the elderly.   Damian Thompson, who strikes me as a squirmy little wormtounge, says that JPII stayed too long and was “mentally enfeebled” and multiple people seem to think it’s good that Benedict will be doing his suffering and dying in private. So the sick and the old should just die already and not offend us by their distressing presence? What the hell?

I’ve read several pieces that indicate that the Church was kept on hold by John Paul II’s dying process from 2001-2005. Really? So nobody went to Mass or got baptized, married, confirmed in those years because we were all waiting impatiently for JPII to die? I don’t recall that.