John Paul the Great
April 10, 2005 | 12:00am
In the run-up last week to the Friday funeral of the late Pope, I came across a news story about a growing popular initiative to honor him as John Paul "the Great".
This honorific has been given to only two popes before, Leo I and Gregory I, both of whom reigned over a millennium and a half ago. This would certainly elevate John Paul II, among the hundreds of pontiffs who succeeded St. Peter, to a status arguably even brighter than the original Keeper of the Keys to the Kingdom.
For comments and suggestions e-mail monswordsworth@yahoo.com. Now it is not unusual for popes to eventually enter the company of the blessed and even the sainted. In fact, those who do not, represent the sad exceptions. This predominance of saints is to be expected from pontiffs, for reasons cynics say have as much to do with the politics of the Church, as with the presumed sanctity of the men who have headed it.
Beatification or sanctification is an evaluation of a life, post-mortem. The Church requires at least three years to elapse from a candidate’s death (although the current pope can grant exceptions) before he or she can begin to be so evaluated, on the basis of intercession in certifiable miracles .
However, for John Paul to be called "the Great" is for him to be judged purely on the basis of his achievements in this life, not the one after. It encompasses the all-sided impact of his life – as a priest and as a man, as intellectual and evangelist, as the leader of the Church and a leader of the world, as protector of the Church’s magisterium and sponsor of its secular influence, as a shepherd of his flock and an inspiration to those outside it.
For comments and suggestions e-mail monswordsworth@yahoo.com. By all these measures, John Paul II truly was a great Pope. His choice of papal name was not only a tribute to his short-lived predecessor, but turned out to be a prophetic foreshadowing of the often-mystical dualities that animated his personality and his papacy.
As a namesake of the much-beloved John XXIII, John Paul extended the ecumenism begun at the Second Vatican Council in the early Sixties and began reaching out in startling new directions. He was the first pope to visit a mosque, the first one in modern times to enter a synagogue, and tirelessly continued to improve bridges to the Protestant denominations and the Orthodox Christian churches.
At the same time, as a namesake of the much-respected Paul VI, John Paul continued and consolidated papal conservatorship of Church doctrine, tradition, and authority. On key issues of faith and personal morality, he stood his ground unflinchingly against the blandishments of an indulgent, self-obsessed modernist worldview.
Secular observers were often baffled by such behavior. Obviously they were not familiar with Christ’s admonition to His Church: To be in the world but not of it.
As a leader of the world, John Paul will always be remembered for the critical role he played in bringing about the downfall of the communist states in the regions of his birth, central and eastern Europe.
Whether or not he deliberately conspired on this mission with his ideological ally, President Reagan, is interesting speculation. Be that as it may, his experiences growing up in Poland first under Nazi, then Soviet, hegemony clearly disposed him towards an uncompromising stance against the "evil empire."
People today forget that being a communist used to be an excommunicable offense. At the same time, with as much energy as he rooted out the Marxist "liberation theologians" among his flock, John Paul also went after what he regarded as the excesses of the West: Its self-centered individualism, its materialism and disregard for the poor, and particularly its "culture of death" on issues like war, abortion, and the death penalty.
What unified the positions he took against both the East and the West? Christ’s very simple teaching: As ye have done unto the least of your brethren, so have ye done unto Me.
Many American Catholics believe that the primary mission of the Church today is to humanize, democratize, and modernize. To them, John Paul, despite his evident goodness of heart, was an often appalling example of autocratic, theocratic patriarchy. And so they continue to beat their breasts, even as their churches continue to empty out.
Luckily for the rest of us, Americans are very much the minority in the Church. In the booming vastnesses of Asia and Latin America and Africa, a swelling flock in their hundreds of millions serve to confirm, by their unbounded growth and enthusiasm, the universal appeal of the Church’s age-old message of faith and hope.
To them, John Paul was a beacon of constancy and consistency. And he reciprocated their passion by tirelessly visiting, it seemed, every little corner of the globe, becoming the most traveled pope as well as (after St. Peter and Pope Piux IX) the longest-serving one.
When the Pope, on one of his visits to the United States, decided to celebrate Mass at Giant Stadium in New Jersey, sometime in the early Nineties, my wife and I were lucky enough to win a raffle to join the parish delegation to the event.
I remember it was raining as we took the bus up the turnpike to the huge football arena in the Meadowlands. We filed slowly into the stadium in a line that seemed to stretch for hours. When we finally took our seats, I was struck by how many and how noisy the crowd was – filling every seat up to the rafters, singing and laughing and praying, a joyful, colorful sea of faces from all races, ages, and walks of life.
When the Pope entered the arena, he was such a tiny figure way down below, dressed all in white. At the sight of him, the crowd leaped to its feet and the noise became thunderous. They quieted down whenever he raised his hands, then broke out again in laughter and applause as he started calling out every one of the dioceses by name.
People did the wave, singing groups took their turn on stage, Mass was celebrated with dozens of priests in half a dozen languages. It was a profoundly moving experience for us, a sharing of intimacy both with that solitary figure in white as well as with the entire crowd around us. It is the memory I choose to keep of John Paul II, for which I will always be grateful.
Readers can write author at gbolivar1952@yahoo.com.
This honorific has been given to only two popes before, Leo I and Gregory I, both of whom reigned over a millennium and a half ago. This would certainly elevate John Paul II, among the hundreds of pontiffs who succeeded St. Peter, to a status arguably even brighter than the original Keeper of the Keys to the Kingdom.
Beatification or sanctification is an evaluation of a life, post-mortem. The Church requires at least three years to elapse from a candidate’s death (although the current pope can grant exceptions) before he or she can begin to be so evaluated, on the basis of intercession in certifiable miracles .
However, for John Paul to be called "the Great" is for him to be judged purely on the basis of his achievements in this life, not the one after. It encompasses the all-sided impact of his life – as a priest and as a man, as intellectual and evangelist, as the leader of the Church and a leader of the world, as protector of the Church’s magisterium and sponsor of its secular influence, as a shepherd of his flock and an inspiration to those outside it.
As a namesake of the much-beloved John XXIII, John Paul extended the ecumenism begun at the Second Vatican Council in the early Sixties and began reaching out in startling new directions. He was the first pope to visit a mosque, the first one in modern times to enter a synagogue, and tirelessly continued to improve bridges to the Protestant denominations and the Orthodox Christian churches.
At the same time, as a namesake of the much-respected Paul VI, John Paul continued and consolidated papal conservatorship of Church doctrine, tradition, and authority. On key issues of faith and personal morality, he stood his ground unflinchingly against the blandishments of an indulgent, self-obsessed modernist worldview.
Secular observers were often baffled by such behavior. Obviously they were not familiar with Christ’s admonition to His Church: To be in the world but not of it.
Whether or not he deliberately conspired on this mission with his ideological ally, President Reagan, is interesting speculation. Be that as it may, his experiences growing up in Poland first under Nazi, then Soviet, hegemony clearly disposed him towards an uncompromising stance against the "evil empire."
People today forget that being a communist used to be an excommunicable offense. At the same time, with as much energy as he rooted out the Marxist "liberation theologians" among his flock, John Paul also went after what he regarded as the excesses of the West: Its self-centered individualism, its materialism and disregard for the poor, and particularly its "culture of death" on issues like war, abortion, and the death penalty.
What unified the positions he took against both the East and the West? Christ’s very simple teaching: As ye have done unto the least of your brethren, so have ye done unto Me.
Luckily for the rest of us, Americans are very much the minority in the Church. In the booming vastnesses of Asia and Latin America and Africa, a swelling flock in their hundreds of millions serve to confirm, by their unbounded growth and enthusiasm, the universal appeal of the Church’s age-old message of faith and hope.
To them, John Paul was a beacon of constancy and consistency. And he reciprocated their passion by tirelessly visiting, it seemed, every little corner of the globe, becoming the most traveled pope as well as (after St. Peter and Pope Piux IX) the longest-serving one.
I remember it was raining as we took the bus up the turnpike to the huge football arena in the Meadowlands. We filed slowly into the stadium in a line that seemed to stretch for hours. When we finally took our seats, I was struck by how many and how noisy the crowd was – filling every seat up to the rafters, singing and laughing and praying, a joyful, colorful sea of faces from all races, ages, and walks of life.
When the Pope entered the arena, he was such a tiny figure way down below, dressed all in white. At the sight of him, the crowd leaped to its feet and the noise became thunderous. They quieted down whenever he raised his hands, then broke out again in laughter and applause as he started calling out every one of the dioceses by name.
People did the wave, singing groups took their turn on stage, Mass was celebrated with dozens of priests in half a dozen languages. It was a profoundly moving experience for us, a sharing of intimacy both with that solitary figure in white as well as with the entire crowd around us. It is the memory I choose to keep of John Paul II, for which I will always be grateful.
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