Jonah Goldberg on NRO takes issue with interpreting the pope according to left-right categories. Here’s the last paragraph:

“Some of John Paul the Great’s detractors saw his ‘social conservatism’ as a contradiction to his criticism of capitalism run amok, or regarded his opposition to the death penalty as at odds with his opposition to abortion. John Paul confounded so many because his views on these and other issues were unswervingly consistent with a vision of the world bound not by the ideological categories of the moment but by the standards of eternity. My guess is his vision will be debated long after words like right and left have melted away like the snows of Canossa.”