John Paul II; Independent obit
Hyfler/Rosner
those things.
The Independent (London)
April 2, 2005, Saturday
BYLINE: LESZEK KOLAKOWSKI
POET, PLAYWRIGHT, actor, theologian, philosopher, sportsman,
and the bishop of Rome. It may be safely said that no one,
since the dawn of history, has spoken directly to so many
people as did John Paul II.
No pope could be remotely compared to him in terms of the
number and the frequency of his travels to all corners of
the planet or in the way in which this great communicator
employed modern media to convey to mankind his message of
peace and love and moral discipline; and not many made their
presence felt so powerfully as he did in the rapidly
changing and turbulent world of the last two decades of the
second millennium. One is even tempted to say that none
understood his time more intimately; even though many would
deny this, to the extent that they identify the
understanding of one's own time with the automatic surrender
to the existing trends and fashions in order to placate
potential critics.
John Paul II's predecessor, Albino Luciani, took up the name
Giovanni Paolo - obviously to show his will to continue the
joint spiritual legacy of the two previous popes: John XXIII
and Paul VI. The former, the initiator of the Second Vatican
Council, had the reputation of a bold reformer who wanted to
confront the formidable challenge of modernity, of the new
"planetary" civilisation, to open the windows of the Church
and to stress its solidarity with the poor and disinherited;
he was genuinely loved by the Italian people and the entire
Catholic world. The latter, somewhat rigid and probably not
free from discomfort amidst the insecurity and struggles of
the noisy and brutal 20th century, tended rather to
emphasise his faithfulness to the tradition.
After Pope John Paul I's pathetically short tenure - barely
a month, one of the shortest in the history of papacy - the
new pope, by choosing the same name, clearly displayed the
same will: vetera novis augere. Neither his admirers nor his
critics or detractors can deny that John Paul II's
pontificate, apart from being the longest in the 20th
century, carrying over into the 21st and the third
millennium, was one of the most significant periods in the
history of the modern Catholic Church, not because it
brought any radical changes to its structure or teaching but
because it reasserted so powerfully the Church's presence in
our civilisation.
Karol Jozef Wojtyla was born in 1920 in Wadowice, a small
town in the Krakw region of Poland, into the modest family
of a retired soldier. His surname has a plebeian sound in
Polish. Losing his mother in early boyhood, he attended
primary and high school in his native town and, after
graduating, moved to Krakw. In 1938 he began to study Polish
philology at Jagiellonian University, the oldest Polish
centre of learning, established in the 14th century. Apart
from being an enthusiastic sportsman, he proved to be a
gifted actor in amateur theatre and a talented poet as well.
The allied armies of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union
invaded Poland in September 1939, and the genocidal horror
started for all denizens of that country. The Germans closed
all the universities and high schools in Poland. Soon,
however, a fairly large network of clandestine teaching at
both levels was set up in the cities. The young student
whose life was brutally disrupted by war and German
occupation made his living in 1940-41 as a manual worker in
a quarry and then in a chemical factory in the Krakw region;
an experience he was not to forget and which he was proud
of.
Not much is known about Karol Wojtyla's participation in the
Polish conspiratorial resistance movement during the Second
World War apart from the very fact that he was active in the
struggle; the Jewish Anti-Defamation League confirmed his
part in saving Jews condemned to slaughter by the invaders.
He led as well, during the first years of war, a clandestine
theatrical group and played a number of roles in various -
mainly Polish plays; and he continued his literary work.
In 1942, a crucial change occurred in Wojtyla's life: he
recognised his calling to the priesthood. He registered with
a seminary and with the Faculty of Theology at the
Jagiellonian University - both of them underground - and
continued his studies after the war when the university was
brought back to full life in Communist Poland. In 1946 he
completed his undergraduate studies of theology and, in
November, was ordained priest. His mentor, Cardinal Adam
Sapieha, sent him for further studies to the famous
Angelicum, a pontifical university in Rome, where he spent
two years (Reginald Garrigou- Lagrange, a prominent Thomist,
was his main teacher there). In November 1948 Wojtyla
received his degree with a Latin thesis on St John of the
Cross, one of the greatest mystics of Christianity and a
Doctor of the Church (Quaestio de fide apud S Johannem a
Cruce). Afterwards he worked for some weeks in France and
Belgium, studying the missionary work of priests among the
poor and largely de-Christianised working-class population.
After returning to Poland, Wojtyla worked in 1949-51 as a
parish priest in a village near Krakw and continued
philosophical and theological studies at the university.
From 1952 he lectured in moral theology in various
seminaries in southern Poland and, from 1954, at KUL, the
Catholic University of Lublin, the only non-state
institution of higher learning in any Communist country. He
was appointed full professor there in 1968 and held this
post until his election to the papal throne.
Wojtyla never ceased his pastoral work during these years of
academic and scholarly activity. In July 1958 he was
appointed Auxiliary Bishop of Krakw and later, on 3 December
1963, the archbishop of the see. He was very active in the
Second Vatican Council (1962-65) and the extent of his
contribution to its work will no doubt be the subject of
further historical studies. He certainly contributed greatly
to the assimilation by the Church of the modern idea of
religious freedom and human rights and to the decisions of
the council concerning the increased role of laity both in
the liturgy and in the apostolic mission of the Church. In
1967, Pope Paul VI nominated him a cardinal.
During the post-war years the Church in Poland lived under
the oppressive power of Communist authorities which tried to
restrict and to stifle its activities in the vain hope that,
eventually, by pressure and propaganda, they would destroy
the "religious superstitions". (It is fair to add that, by
comparison with other Communist states, the persecutions
were less intense and less brutal.) As a result Poland
emerged from Communism as one of the most Catholic countries
in the world. Even though after 1956 the repression of the
Church and the unsuccessful attempts to split it from within
were significantly reduced, various forms of pressure,
hostile propaganda and all sorts of chicaneries were
employed to limit and to weaken the Christian life in a
country in which for centuries there has been a strong bond
of religious identity with national sentiments.
Polish religious life in the late 1950s, 1960s and 1970s was
dominated by the towering figure of the primate of Poland,
Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski, released from three years' long
internment in 1956. A man of the old school, traditional
Thomist, calm fighter, ready to compromise when needed but
knowing when the "non possumus" had to be said, he enjoyed
in the country an authority that no efforts of the Communist
Party could dent. At a certain moment the party even played
with a foolish idea that they would help promote Bishop
Wojtyla in order to oppose him to the primate. In vain.
Wojtyla was a churchman of a somewhat different mentality,
more sensitive to new phenomena in culture and better
acquainted with 20th-century philosophy and literature, a
man who understood perfectly the Communist doctrine and
system but not a man who could ever be tamed by the
Communists. He turned out to be skilful and hard negotiator
on all occasions when the cause of religion and of the
Church was at stake and he did a lot, both as Archbishop of
Krakw and as Pope, to assert the rights of the Church in
Poland. Formal legal status was granted to the Church in
Poland only in 1989, and in July of that year diplomatic
relations between the Vatican and Polish government were
re-established after a break of 43 years, and only a couple
of months before the first non-Communist government since
1945 was formed.
By the time of the last conclave to elect a pope, Cardinal
Wojtyla was an internationally known figure. He had been a
member of various ecclesiastical congregations, had played a
prominent role in the Second Vatican Council and travelled
widely to all continents in pastoral missions or to attend
Catholic congresses. As a writer and a philosopher he was
known mainly in Poland, as most of his works were not yet
available in other languages.
He was, among other things, a "professional" academic
philosopher and had published a number of philosophical
works, most of them on the theory of ethics, its
metaphysical foundation, its epistemological status and its
meaning in human life. While he was a Thomist, his
philosophical language is modern, and not scholastic; it was
shaped to a large extent by his immersion in
phenomenological and existential tradition. The German
philosopher Max Scheler, to whom he devoted three
philosophical studies, was perhaps the most important -
though mainly negative - reference point in Wojtyla's
ethical work.
He was in agreement with Scheler's anti-Kantian approach and
with his criticism of both utilitarianism and formalism in
ethics; he shared, of course, his belief that each human
person has a separate ontological status; but he criticised
Scheler's idealism, his separation of values from the being
and his stress on the emotional rather than the intellectual
side of acts whereby we acquire an ethical knowledge. He
himself naturally considered the revelation and the
tradition as basic sources of normative ethics and he
dismissed Scheler's claim that a nonrelativist ethics might
be based on a direct intuition of values alone.
Wojtyla's works on those issues were of fundamental
significance in assimilating into Christian doctrine the
problems and the challenges of 20th-century secular ethics.
The topics which Wojtyla's academic works address are always
related to real worries and issues of daily life: love,
respect for human dignity, responsibility, various forms of
human communion - in family, in national community, in the
Church; primacy of moral considerations over all other
aspects of social affairs, primacy of man over things. The
meaning of all those problems is, of course, intelligible
within mankind's relationship with God. And all those issues
are central in his sermons, later in the papal pastoral
letters, as well as in his poems and plays. He published
three collections of poems between 1950 and 1958 and a
drama, In Front of a Jeweller's Shop (1960).
Cardinal Wojtyla was elected the vicar of Christ by the
conclave on 16 October 1978, the first non-Italian pope
since 1523, the first of Polish (or Slav) origin, the first
with direct acquaintance with Communism and the first in the
20th century who had never worked in the Curia or in the
Vatican diplomacy. According to the leaks - not officially
confirmed - from the Vatican, the proposal had been made in
conclave to elect Cardinal Wyszynski; he declined, however,
and suggested Cardinal Wojtyla instead.
For the Poles this was probably the day of greatest joy in
their post- war life. In Italy and elsewhere, in the
Catholic community, the election was greeted warmly but to
most people, apart from those who had participated in the
Vatican Council or followed closely its debates, specific
characteristics of the new pontificate - in face of many
disagree ments within the Church - were not yet predictable.
Inevitably, disagreements soon emerged and the Pope was
heavily attacked from various sides for not being
"progressive" enough in political matters or not traditional
enough in the matters of "ecumenism" to the taste of
critics.
John Paul II made no new dogmatic statements, to be sure,
and his pronouncements in matters of morals, faith, politics
and ecclesiastical law did not depart from, or were
perfectly compatible with, his predecessors' teaching, apart
from the distribution of emphasis - which was significant in
cultural, though not dogmatic, terms.
The Catholic Church has always believed, of course, that the
graces of redemption were extended to the entire human race
without distinction. But this point of dogma was not
sufficient to define in any detail the formidable task the
Church faced when operating in such a diversity of
civilisations, amid such a variety of social and cultural
conditions, so many conflicts and so much hatred. John Paul
II adopted without restrictions the idea of human rights
while stressing its genuinely Christian origin and meaning
(the expression itself, having been historically so strongly
connected with the French Revolution, had not previously
been much employed in the Church). This is clear from his
first encyclical, Redemptor Hominis (1979), and many
sermons.
Following his predecessor Paul VI (in the encyclical
Populorum Progressio, 1967), he stressed the preferential
solidarity of the Church with the poor and oppressed. On
some important occasions he directly encouraged the poor and
exploited to fight for their rights. He stressed as well
equitable distribution, considering that the earth had been
created for the good of all its human denizens. He asserted
the right of workers to organise themselves in unions and to
defend their just interests, in the encyclical Laborem
Exercens (1981). He attacked, on moral grounds, "Marxist
collectivism", which aims at destroying human personality
and converting people into inert tools of the state. But he
attacked, on moral grounds as well, the Western
"consumerist" societies with their moral ills, their spirit
of indifference, lack of compassion and the domination of
greed. In the encyclical Sollicitudo Rei Socialis (1987) he
even seemed - as a number of critics objected - to blame
equally both kinds of regimes for the present ailments of
mankind, the misery of the Third World and the danger of
war.
Not unlike his predecessors, he never believed that the free
market is an exclusive and sufficient response to the
material, let alone cultural and moral - needs of man. He
was even ready to admit, during his visit to the Baltic
countries and in an interview given to La Stampa in November
1993, that socialism, with its concern for community, had a
kernel of truth, even though this truth in the practice of
"real socialism" degenerated into oppressive
totalitarianism.
The thrust of John Paul II's message may perhaps be summed
up in a few very simple words: the oblivion of God is
ultimately the source of the present cultural crisis and of
the miseries which all parts of the globe, though in
different ways, suffer. People killed God - in their heart,
of course - in the hope of the liberation from His tyranny;
as a result they brought upon themselves all kinds of
tyranny - either physically oppressive or morally
debilitating - leaving them in a void. The most important,
crucial problems of mankind and its worries simply cannot be
solved by technical means; there is no technology to replace
love, personal responsibility, compassion, or to heal hatred
and the widespread feeling of the meaninglessness of life.
While promoting the idea of human rights and social justice,
the Pope was not willing to accept those trends among
priests and lay Christians, especially in Latin America,
which tried to absorb within Christianity the Marxist
doctrine of class struggle as the foundation of hope for
social progress, let alone for a perfect world, as well as
the use of revolutionary violence as a means. Extreme
versions of the "theology of liberation" risked transforming
the Church, or its parts, into a leftist political party,
thus robbing it of its independence and its mission; some
even equated "salvation" with "liberation" in the Communist
sense. Those trends were severely criticised under John Paul
II's pontificate, even though the ultimate measures, i.e.
excommunication, were not taken. The revision of the Lateran
treaty with the Italian state in 1984 seemed to provide the
proof of the Pope's readiness to accept the principle of the
separation of the Church from the state.
The other contentious problem was sexual morality. On this
point, too, the Pope did not teach anything else than his
predecessors, Paul VI (in Humanae Vitae, 1968) among others.
What enraged the critics especially was his frequent
insistence on the immorality of artificial - mechanical or
chemical - birth control. The Pope knew, of course, that on
this point one could not expect obedience even from pious
and loyal Catholics; it is not likely that his sermons had a
significant impact on demographic trends in the world.
Apparently the reason for his rigorously traditional
preaching was his belief that the meaning of sexuality
cannot be defined in terms of pleasure alone, as this would
practically amount to abolishing all restrictions in sexual
behaviour: if the principle of pleasure reigns supreme,
anything goes.
He refused as well - to the indignation of critics - to
abolish the celibacy of priests; to be sure, celibacy was
not considered a rule de jure divino (in fact Catholics of
some non-Latin rites did not follow it), but the Pope
stressed the traditional law because the priesthood, in his
view, meant a total sacrifice to God, including the
renouncement of family and sexual satisfaction. Nor was he
ready to yield to the demand, frequently made, to open the
priesthood to women, and thus to reverse the rule
established in St Paul's Epistles ("Let your women keep
silence in the churches").
The strong condemnation of abortion (liberal legislation in
this matter he called "civilisation of death") was, of
course, in conformity with the Catholic tradition which had
assumed that the embryo is a human being from the very
moment of conception; this brought numerous attacks on the
Pope by non- religious thinkers and journalists, but not
within the Church.
The very important encyclical Veritatis Splendor (signed on
6 August 1993) castigates those theologians and priests who
make concessions to the spirit of modern moral relativism;
it stresses the immutable validity of all God-given
commandments and the inseparable link between freedom and
the loyalty to truth. As copious quotations from the New
Testament testify, good and evil in human behaviour are
defined as such regardless of circumstances and all the
changes that have occurred recently in the world do not make
the Gospels obsolete. Belief in God is incompatible with the
idea that "values" and moral norms are at the mercy of
decisions, made on every occasion by an individual who
supposedly asserts thereby his freedom.
We abuse our divinely given freedom if we employ it as a
pretext for denying moral duties which are there - not by
virtue of our decisions or whims but by having been revealed
to us by the eternal wisdom. We are not sovereign masters in
matters concerning good and evil.
Another contentious question was the very constitution of
the Church and the way in which papal authority was
enforced. The Church has never pretended to be a democratic
body in which dogmatic and constitutional matters are
decided by the vote of its members or, as many professors of
theology would like, by professors of theology. Its
constitution has been monarchical and hierarchical. Numerous
critics attacked the appointment by the Pope of conservative
bishops (this meant above all those who followed the
tradition in the matters of sexual morality) without
consulting the local churches.
It is noteworthy that no pope was so vehemently attacked for
his alleged lack of "progressiveness" as the one who did
more than anybody else to open Christianity to people of all
races and civilisations, to promote ecumenical spirit and to
make friendly contacts with non-Catholic Christian bodies,
to stress the continuity from Judaism to Christianity (many
times he spoke of Jews as "elder brothers" and condemned
anti-Semitism unambiguously), to adopt without restrictions
the idea of human rights and of religious freedom for all,
to pay so much attention to the calamities of the Third
World and to the duties of rich countries to help it, and to
denounce so strongly all forms of tyranny. He was the first
pope ever to pray in a synagogue and in a Lutheran temple.
John Paul II made innumerable journeys to all continents -
from Papua New Guinea to Britain, from Poland to Nigeria,
from Mexico to Thailand. His last foreign visits were to
Slovakia, in September 2003, and Switzerland, in June 2004;
and last August he made a pilgrimage to Lourdes. It is
widely assumed that his first visit to Poland in June 1979
contributed very strongly to the subsequent events which
resulted in the emergence of the mass non-violent democratic
movement, embodied in Solidarity, and in the gradual
dismantling of Communist totalitarian institutions: not that
the Pope made direct political appeals but because, thanks
to his presence, millions of Poles could count themselves on
the streets, so to say, gain the feeling of strength and
reassert both their religious and their national identity
with the blessing of the highest moral authority.
Wojtyla was a Polish patriot and frequently displayed his
special attachment to his native land. He spoke fluently in
many languages, all of them with a recognisable Polish
accent; and he acknowledged that the texts he personally
composed were written in Polish. Some critics blamed him
even for the "Polonisation" of the Church (the reason was
perhaps his emphasis, conforming to the Polish tradition, on
the cult of the Virgin Mary).
The Pope's trip to Russia, tentatively planned for 1987,
fizzled out; Soviet leaders apparently feared his presence -
keeping in mind the results of his pilgrimage to Poland; on
the other hand he could not conceivably visit Russia without
making contacts with the Ukrainian Uniate Church which was
then illegal. The collapse of the Soviet empire and the end
of Communism in Russia did not make the prospects of such a
journey better, though. The Russian Orthodox Church lives in
dread of Catholic missionary activity and it would expect a
significant reinforcement of the Roman Church as a result of
such a visit.
Being not only the head of the Church but the head of the
Vatican State as well, the Pope had, during his voyages, to
speak to various leaders of dictatorial countries: Chile's
Pinochet, Cuba's Castro, Poland's Jaruzelski, among others.
This scandalised many people, who felt that the Pope was
thereby legitimising despotic regimes. But he said nothing
to endorse these regimes. He conveyed his message of love,
and hope, and faith, to all dwellers of all countries and he
believed, it seems, that personal contacts with some
unsavoury figures are never totally in vain.
The visit to Communist Cuba in 1998 was certainly risky to
its dictator Fidel Castro and perhaps to the Pope himself.
It did not, so far, bring the end to the tyrannical regime
but it apparently made the religious life in the country
easier. And the Pope left Cuba convinced that the heart of
the dictator had not been untouched by this encounter.
Although the terms of the clash between "progressism" and
"integrism" in the Catholic world changed considerably
during his pontificate, the Pope was criticised from both
sides. The conflict with the "progressists" resulted in
reprimands, warnings or the occasional withdrawal of the
official title of a Catholic theologian (as in the case of
Professor Hans Kung). The most famous case of conflict with
the traditionalists was that of Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre
to whom the entire Vatican Council and the subsequent
changes in the Church were the work of Satan; after years of
warning and of reconciliation attempts by the church
authorities, the rebel was excommunicated in 1988 when he
started illicitly to ordain his own bishops.
What other pope was likely to be met by one million young
people on the Champs de Mars in Paris - a traditional
capital of godlessness since the 17th century?
Under no previous pope were so many men and women beatified
(over 1,300) and canonised (almost 500), some of them
nominatim, Fr Maximilian Kolbe, Padre Pio, Edith Stein,
Mother Teresa of Calcutta, some collectively, victims of
murderous persecutions.
The very long Catechism of the Catholic Church (the first
for four centuries), published at the end of 1992 after six
years of preparation under pontifical supervision, is
striking for its ecumenical spirit, absence of condemnation
and a clear admission that the perspective of salvation is
open to all men, irrespective of their religion. It clearly
departs from the Augustinian legacy in matters concerning
predestination and grace. It codifies the traditional
teaching of the Church and enriches it by many additions,
explanations and new ideas elaborated during and after the
Second Vatican Council.
In the important and interesting encyclical Faith and Reason
(signed 14 September 1998) the Pope returns to his
philosophical worries. That faith and reason cannot
contradict each other is to him obvious, conformably to the
Thomist tradition. He deplores the "post-modernist"
dismissal of the classic truth-concept as well as of
traditional metaphysical problems. He repeatedly stresses
his respect for science and its autonomy but the claims of
philosophy to "self-sufficiency" which implicitly rejects
the help of revelation is to him, not surprisingly, an
aberration of the modern age.
On 13 May 1981 in St Peter's Square an attempt was made on
the Pope's life by Mehmet Ali Agca, a Turk who had escaped
from prison in his country. The Pope, gravely wounded by
gunshots, was twice at the edge of death but he recovered
after several months in hospital. The background of the
assassination attempt has never been satisfactorily
explained. There was strong circumstantial evidence of the
involvement of the Bulgarian secret service (and thus,
inevitably, of the KGB) but the Italian court did not admit
this as sufficient proof (the rumours about a cover-up could
not be verified). The would-be killer was sentenced to life;
later, the Pope visited him in an Italian prison.
Those who tried to follow the Pope's activities were
flabbergasted by the almost superhuman energy of this man,
who for two decades had been fighting against the frailty of
his body. Apart from almost a hundred of his apostolic
voyages, most of them to more than one country (and not to
mention his many other travels), and apart from the everyday
duties of a priest and a bishop, he was active in very many
ways - writing books, encyclicals and pastoral letters,
addressing international assemblies and ecclesiastical
bodies, reacting to all major world conflicts, wars and
terrorism. Every physician could see, even though there was
no official confirmation, that the pontiff suffered from
Parkinson's disease, apart from other ailments. One had the
impression that his energy rose during his visits to his
native land, especially to the Tatra region: mountaineers
were, of course, particularly proud of him ("Look, here is
our boy, and how far did he go!").
His unshaken faith was, no doubt, the main source of his
endurance; he believed that God does not impose on us duties
beyond our strength. Karol Wojtyla's trust in God was
infinite; while his work might have seemed superhuman to
many, he could certainly have said, like Jesus, "For my yoke
is easy, and my burden is light."
John Paul II was an enormously learned intellectual, a great
teacher, a man of intrepid faith and of immense compassion;
if his anger flared up, it was when he denounced the
indifference of the privileged when faced with human poverty
and misfortunes. He spoke to everybody, freely and without
any discomfort (one more reason for his critics'
irritation).
While he adapted, of course, the language of his preaching
to the audience, his message was always "urbi et orbi" and,
through specific questions, it always touched upon universal
issues: good and evil, God and man, life and salvation.
Karol Jozef Wojtyla, priest: born Wadowice, Poland 18 May
1920; ordained priest 1946; Professor of Moral Theology,
Universities of Lublin and Krakw 1954-58; Titular Bishop of
Ombi and Auxiliary Bishop of Krakw 1958-63, Vicar Capitular
1962; Archbishop and Metropolitan of Krakw 1964-78; named a
cardinal 1967; elected Pope 1978, taking the name John Paul
II; died Rome 1 April 2005.
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