Pope John Paul II's Greatest Achievement Might Lie Ahead
Pope John Paul II has left us a lesson about what defined his papacy and what every believer in Christ should reflect: an absolute confidence that God is involved in everything that is for the welfare of both individuals and nations. He went beyond that, and insisted he and all who strive for the true good feel an embrace of God that strengthens them and blesses such an effort in an individual and personal way.
Those two certainties made the Polish Pope both traditionalist and personalist, both Thomist and phenomenologist. It united for him both the past and what each of us knows as the present moment. It is why the Pope will be considered great, leaving civilization a significant and undying legacy. Those twin confidences made present the timelessness of God's Providence and unites it to the timeliness of our experiencing a divine impetus. It is a philosophic way of understanding Christ's magnificent proclamation: "I have overcome the world. "
Pope John Paul II believed absolutely that victory was obtained by the cross, as Christ Himself revealed. He touched on that in moving words at Auschwitz in a homily concerning St. Maximilian Kolbe, for whom the Pope had great regard. This fellow Pole, also a writer and philosopher, as all know, gave his life in place of another man, husband and father, condemned to starvation.
Rocco Buttiglione quotes the Pope's words in Karol Wojtyla, The Thought of the Man Who Became Pope:
"This is the victory which has defeated the world: our faith (1 John 5:4). These words of the Letter of St. John come to mind and penetrate my heart when I find myself in this place where a singular victory for the faith was accomplished. (See different translation below.) For the faith which made known the love of God and of neighbor, the unique love, the supreme love `which is ready to give his life for his friends' (John 15:13; 10:11). A victory, therefore, for love which faith has enlivened unto the extreme limit of the ultimate and definitive witness.... The victory by way of faith and love, that man [Kolbe] has carried back in this place which was constructed for the negation of the faith — of the faith in God and of the faith in man — and to trample under foot radically not only love, but all signs of human dignity, of humanity" (Buttiglione's book was published in 1997 by Wm. Eerdmans, Grand Rapids, Mich.).
The biographer gives one phrase a more exact translation from the Polish that is philosophically important regarding this victory revealed in Fr. Kolbe's grand act. Namely, what was accomplished "is a particular victory of man through faith" (rather than, as given above, "a singular victory for the faith"). Faith, Buttiglione explains, enabled this loving member of our race to arrive "at the full possession of his own humanity." Despite all the indignities visited upon the saint by worldly power, Fr. Kolbe by cherishing a great gift of God's mercy — the truth — believed by faith in the human dignity it confers beyond the reach of any wishing to deny it to him. And so did the example of Pope John Paul II. Following in his own way the example of St. Maximilian, he taught us the same heroism.
Buttiglione summarized the significance of all this in this observation:
"... The conflict which marks contemporary history is a conflict for or against the Christian image of the human. Various forms of totalitarianisms have sought to construct a city of man without God, in which (despite their occasional humanistic claims) man is inexorably reduced to being merely an instrument of power.
"In the face of this fundamental conflict, all other struggles are, in a sense, secondary. Our intent is ... to argue that such conflicts can be resolved in equitable, just, and human conclusions only if they are oriented by a Christian vision of man; otherwise they end up by provoking an increase of injustice and ultimately the self-destruction of humanity."
Pope John Paul II's greatness was that he preached this reality, but more so exemplified it in attaching his faith firmly to every trial and the many sufferings that came his way. He saw them all as part of the vocational call made to him by God. He as a delegate to the Second Vatican Council applied such Christian vision to the Church's laity in commenting on the unity implied in the council's discussion of the Church as the People of God:
"... The apostolate is something which springs immediately and subjectively from the faith and love in the soul of the believer in Christ. In the notion of the apostolate, even when it is used for the laity, is included the Christian's consciousness of the personal vocation, which surely differs from the mere passive possession of the faith. For this reason, in the apostolate of the laity there is a certain actualization of the faith united with the responsibility for the supernatural good divinely conferred in the Church to any human person" (quoted by Buttiglione from Acta Synodalia Sacrosancti Concilii, n. 2).
The Pope's own consciousness of vocation in and for the Church led to an activity of word and deed, leading to his great accomplishments now being widely acclaimed — the power of a solidarity including a common Catholic faith that helped resurrect Polish sovereignty; the resistance within Italy to a raging Communist ambition to dominate that nation; and a renewed sense of vocation, both religious and lay, among young Catholics. The Pope's crediting divine intervention centered at Fatima with saving his life from an assassin's bullet, surely freshened and strengthened many Catholics' faith in Providence. His amalgamation in his own life of faith and its experience must have given many a great appreciation that Man is not some accident on a planet that was simply accidentally suited for his natural existence. Pope John Paul II often stressed the purposefulness and spiritual significance of human existence, often in teaching of the sacred nature of human life.
In America, he told young people:
"The word of Jesus and His truth and His promises of fulfillment and life are the Church's response to the culture of death, to the onslaughts of doubt and to the cancer of despair" (New Orleans youth rally, Super Dome, September 12, 1987).
And to social service agencies:
"The aim of Christian solidarity and service is to defend and promote, in the name of Jesus Christ, the dignity and fundamental human rights of every person.... [The Church] is particularly drawn with natural affection toward these children who, through human wickedness, will never be brought forth from the womb to the light of day" (San Antonio municipal auditorium, September 13, 1987).
And to the various communication media:
"You must ask yourselves if what you ,communicate is consistent with the full measure of human dignity. How do the weakest and the most defenseless in society appear in your words and images.... Whom do you depict as having — or not having — human worth?... Errors in judgment, mistakes in evaluating the propriety and justice of what is transmitted, and wrong criteria in art can offend and wound consciences and human dignity. They can encroach on sacred fundamental rights" (Registry Hotel, Los Angeles, September 15, 1987).
In his farewell to America at Detroit's Airport September 19, 1987, Pope John Paul II warned his host country, "All the great causes that are yours today will have meaning only to the extent that you guarantee the right to life and protect the human person."
He added that regarding the poor and refugees, the social fabric of the nation, the true advancement of women, rights of minorities, questions of disarmament and legitimate defense — "all this will succeed only if respect for life and its protection by law is granted to every human being from conception until natural death."
History will judge if America goes on to meet the challenge left it by the great Pontiff or fails it. Regardless, the greatness of the Pope in the making of it will not be diminished in either case, for it must be admitted no other voice was as relentlessly prophetic and as uncompromising as to the absolute right to life of the innocent as was this son given the Church by Catholic Poland.
Even from the brief and very summary presentation here of the teachings and opinions of Pope John Paul II, it can be recognized that they offer not only the best means of democracy's success in a moral, ethical way, but the only means. Democracy, after all, depends on individual citizens for its character regarding human conduct, human integrity in exercise of choices, human nobility in aspirations and social demands. The political structures of democracies come about by power established at the base by votes, or on intermediate levels by populist power arrangements. In other words, democracy perforce by its nature mirrors to a great degree its constituencies.
Buttiglione, in further discussing the thought of John Paul II, refers to this reality:
"The Catholic acceptance of democracy becomes more convinced and open-armed, and this also, of course, implies the more precise delimitation of the positive side of democracy, which is chosen over against the negative and relativist meaning of democracy. To be sure, the right of being guided politically, in a participatory way, does not originate at all from an uncertainty about truth, and therefore from a leveling of all opinions as if they shared equal value. It originates, rather, from a specific dignity of the human person, who, to perceive the common action as his own and to grow through it, needs to be guided by an authority which gives reasons for its actions and which solicits the assent of those subordinated to itself."
In providing a call to find ultimately the authority which alone can guide democracies to success in serving the common good and fulfilling the nature and purposes of all true societies, no greater voice was heard in this time than that of John Paul II. Thus, his greatest achievement, and the greatest result of his vocation, may lie yet ahead. It could be how well a world of harmonious democratic states and societies serves the dignity of human citizens will depend on the papal voice still echoing from the inspiration Pope John Paul II received from his faith and the Lord of all mankind.
Will future generations care to listen even more heedingly than did those who heard that voice at the time it first spoke? We should pray so as we give our thanks to God for this remarkable leader. His fulfillment of the Christian duty of witnessing to the world the message of the Divine Shepherd of all mankind surely has earned for him the title of "saint," which may well be bestowed soon, perhaps before the present quarter-century ends.
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(The quotations from the Pope on his 1987 visit to America are taken from John Paul II in America, St. Paul Books & Media, 50 St. Paul Ave., Boston MA 02130.)
© The Wanderer
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