The Priceless Legacy of the Polish Pope
The priceless legacy of the 'Polish Pope'
April 17, 2005
By John J. Carroll, S.J.
Inquirer News Service
SPEAKING to the crowd gathered in St. Peter's Square to greet the new pope, on Oct. 16, 1978, John Paul II said that if Divine Providence had willed that a Pole be elected to the Chair of Peter at that point in history, it seemed to mean that the Polish Church had something to contribute to the Church as a whole.
Reflecting on those words, I recalled conversations with a Polish priest-student in Rome who, before coming for studies, had been secretary to the "other" cardinal in Poland, Karol Wojtyla, the future John Paul II. He was the "other cardinal" because he was overshadowed by his senior, the formidable Stefan Cardinal Wyszynski, who had suffered imprisonment under the communist regime and was seen as a hero by the Polish people for his uncompromising defense of the Church and opposition to the communist state.
The Polish student told me that, in his country, the individual bishops had no more autonomy relative to Cardinal Wyszynski than had the communist commissars relative to the Communist Party leadership. Two disciplined monoliths, the communist state and the Catholic Church, confronted each other, and neither had room for internal dissent. Cardinal Wojtyla sometimes disagreed with the policies of Wyszynski but always deferred to the latter, never allowing their disagreements to become public and resisting every effort on the part of the state to create divisions between them.
This image of loyalty to a superior was reinforced by a photograph showing the future John Paul II kneeling beside the papal chair on which his predecessor, John Paul I, was seated, and embracing the latter in a mighty bear-hug as he pledged his fidelity.
This suggests to me that when Karol Wojtyla found himself seated in that same papal chair less than two months later, it was with a sense that he had paid his dues in terms of loyalty to superiors, and that he now had the right to expect the same loyalty from others.
In the ensuing months, as I read the new pope's Sunday homilies and more formal addresses, it struck me that he saw Christianity as threatened by two powerful enemies. One of these-militant atheism-he had known at first hand. The other was more subtle but, perhaps, even more dangerous-militant secularism, the notion that one can live a good and productive life, can develop one's talents and serve one's neighbor without any reference to God; or indeed that concern with the things of God can be an obstacle to full commitment to the human and earthly task.
If the first of these two enemies had its fortresses in Eastern Europe, in China and in Cuba, the second had its bases in Western Europe and North America, from which it was spreading like a contagion to Latin America and the developing world.
The strategy which John Paul II developed to confront these double threats owed much, I suspect, to his Polish experience, and not only to the experience of discipline and loyalty to the institution. He had been trained as an intellectual, had taught philosophy, written philosophical works, and had been a member of a group of Catholic philosophers who used the writings of the young Karl Marx, particularly his respect for human freedom, to criticize the Polish Communist Party. A powerful, creative thinker, he was able to throw new light on Catholic social teaching, centering it more solidly on the dignity of the human person and bringing it to bear on issues such as the rights of labor and the Cold War. He was a master in the use of the media, and knew well how to appeal over the heads of society's "leaders" to the ordinary people, the youth in particular.
Meeting him face to face, one had the feeling that John Paul's eyes were boring into one, calling out the best in him or her in terms of faith, courage, commitment, love. He was not afraid to make heroic demands on the individual. In his philosophical writings, he emphasized human freedom, holding that by one's free acts in response to the call of truth, the human being in a sense creates oneself as a person. He had little sympathy for ideas that would diminish human freedom and pass responsibility for one's actions to psychological conditioning, social forces, or "sinful structures."
Similarly, he called for discipline in the Church as it confronts the challenges of today, and had little sympathy for dissent, or, perhaps, even for dialogue, within the Church. Historians will debate whether this element of his strategy was well chosen or reflected too much his Polish experience. It would seem that the discipline demanded and the centralization of decision-making during his pontificate run counter to the collegiality of the bishops emphasized in Vatican II, whereby they are to share in the governing of the Church, and to the role of the laity as emphasized in the same council. Many feel that his strategy has led to polarization rather than unity in the Church.
Perhaps, the conclave which will elect the successor to John Paul II, or his successor, might reflect on the three "social virtues" discussed by the same Karol Wojtyla in his philosophical work "The Acting Person." They are, first of all, solidarity by which one affirms his or her belonging to a society. Second is opposition when one is excluded from full participation in the society to which he or she belongs, as were Catholics in Poland under the communists; in such circumstances, opposition was an affirmation of belonging more than retreating into a ghetto or emigrating abroad. Third is dialogue, whereby such problems are worked out and the common good is more adequately attained.
April 17, 2005
By John J. Carroll, S.J.
Inquirer News Service
SPEAKING to the crowd gathered in St. Peter's Square to greet the new pope, on Oct. 16, 1978, John Paul II said that if Divine Providence had willed that a Pole be elected to the Chair of Peter at that point in history, it seemed to mean that the Polish Church had something to contribute to the Church as a whole.
Reflecting on those words, I recalled conversations with a Polish priest-student in Rome who, before coming for studies, had been secretary to the "other" cardinal in Poland, Karol Wojtyla, the future John Paul II. He was the "other cardinal" because he was overshadowed by his senior, the formidable Stefan Cardinal Wyszynski, who had suffered imprisonment under the communist regime and was seen as a hero by the Polish people for his uncompromising defense of the Church and opposition to the communist state.
The Polish student told me that, in his country, the individual bishops had no more autonomy relative to Cardinal Wyszynski than had the communist commissars relative to the Communist Party leadership. Two disciplined monoliths, the communist state and the Catholic Church, confronted each other, and neither had room for internal dissent. Cardinal Wojtyla sometimes disagreed with the policies of Wyszynski but always deferred to the latter, never allowing their disagreements to become public and resisting every effort on the part of the state to create divisions between them.
This image of loyalty to a superior was reinforced by a photograph showing the future John Paul II kneeling beside the papal chair on which his predecessor, John Paul I, was seated, and embracing the latter in a mighty bear-hug as he pledged his fidelity.
This suggests to me that when Karol Wojtyla found himself seated in that same papal chair less than two months later, it was with a sense that he had paid his dues in terms of loyalty to superiors, and that he now had the right to expect the same loyalty from others.
In the ensuing months, as I read the new pope's Sunday homilies and more formal addresses, it struck me that he saw Christianity as threatened by two powerful enemies. One of these-militant atheism-he had known at first hand. The other was more subtle but, perhaps, even more dangerous-militant secularism, the notion that one can live a good and productive life, can develop one's talents and serve one's neighbor without any reference to God; or indeed that concern with the things of God can be an obstacle to full commitment to the human and earthly task.
If the first of these two enemies had its fortresses in Eastern Europe, in China and in Cuba, the second had its bases in Western Europe and North America, from which it was spreading like a contagion to Latin America and the developing world.
The strategy which John Paul II developed to confront these double threats owed much, I suspect, to his Polish experience, and not only to the experience of discipline and loyalty to the institution. He had been trained as an intellectual, had taught philosophy, written philosophical works, and had been a member of a group of Catholic philosophers who used the writings of the young Karl Marx, particularly his respect for human freedom, to criticize the Polish Communist Party. A powerful, creative thinker, he was able to throw new light on Catholic social teaching, centering it more solidly on the dignity of the human person and bringing it to bear on issues such as the rights of labor and the Cold War. He was a master in the use of the media, and knew well how to appeal over the heads of society's "leaders" to the ordinary people, the youth in particular.
Meeting him face to face, one had the feeling that John Paul's eyes were boring into one, calling out the best in him or her in terms of faith, courage, commitment, love. He was not afraid to make heroic demands on the individual. In his philosophical writings, he emphasized human freedom, holding that by one's free acts in response to the call of truth, the human being in a sense creates oneself as a person. He had little sympathy for ideas that would diminish human freedom and pass responsibility for one's actions to psychological conditioning, social forces, or "sinful structures."
Similarly, he called for discipline in the Church as it confronts the challenges of today, and had little sympathy for dissent, or, perhaps, even for dialogue, within the Church. Historians will debate whether this element of his strategy was well chosen or reflected too much his Polish experience. It would seem that the discipline demanded and the centralization of decision-making during his pontificate run counter to the collegiality of the bishops emphasized in Vatican II, whereby they are to share in the governing of the Church, and to the role of the laity as emphasized in the same council. Many feel that his strategy has led to polarization rather than unity in the Church.
Perhaps, the conclave which will elect the successor to John Paul II, or his successor, might reflect on the three "social virtues" discussed by the same Karol Wojtyla in his philosophical work "The Acting Person." They are, first of all, solidarity by which one affirms his or her belonging to a society. Second is opposition when one is excluded from full participation in the society to which he or she belongs, as were Catholics in Poland under the communists; in such circumstances, opposition was an affirmation of belonging more than retreating into a ghetto or emigrating abroad. Third is dialogue, whereby such problems are worked out and the common good is more adequately attained.
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