Washington Post
April 2, 2005
A Modern Man Who Changed the Papacy
By Hanna Rosin
Washington Post Staff Writer
So much was expected of Karol Wojtyla when he became pope in 1978.
Here was a pontiff plucked not from the Vatican's perfumed inner
chambers, but a man of the world. He was not Italian; he skied, he
kayaked, he acted in dramas. His fellow clerics compared him to John
Wayne.
His faith, too, seemed tested. He had lost his mother early, lived in
the shadow of Auschwitz, performed forced labor in a limestone quarry.
"Do Not Be Afraid" was his motto at his inauguration, and one sensed
that after living through Poland's brutal mid-century, he no longer
was.
So even before his first papal pronouncement, he was granted a place
in history as the Roman Catholic Church's first modern pope, charged
with leading the centuries-old institution into the next millennium --
the "new springtime of Christianity," as he called it.
And 26 years later, it's by that yardstick that Pope John Paul II's
legacy will be judged, both in the church he transformed and in the
world he tried so hard to influence.
For those who expected more from the modernization -- American priests
ordained in the 1960s, say, Catholic women who wanted to be priests or
Latin American leaders who wanted a partner in revolution -- the pope
not only betrayed his promise but locked the church in place for years
to come.
"I'm of the generation of priests who were euphoric about the idea
that the church could change," said the Rev. Andrew Greeley, an author
and columnist. "And while I recognize all his great talents, I think
he pulled the plug on it, and that greatly dismays me."
But to his many admirers, John Paul succeeded brilliantly. Armed only
with the Gospel, using a title that could have easily faded into
irrelevance in a secular age, he made himself a world leader on the
order of Franklin D. Roosevelt or Winston Churchill.
"Not the man of the Catholic 20th century," his biographer George
Weigel has said, "but the man of the century, period."
Less than a year into his tenure, he made clear what feats a modern
pope -- especially a former actor -- could pull off on history's
stage. June 1979, Victory Square, Warsaw, standing in front of a
36-foot-high wooden cross. "Do not be defeated," he told the gathered
masses, and they shouted back: "We want God! We want God!"
For years after, Cold War historians debated how much that nine-day
visit helped destabilize the country's Communist government or lent
moral force to the Solidarity movement that eventually toppled it.
But even those who give him less credit acknowledge that whatever got
stirred in Poland those days, the papacy itself was forever changed.
Popes have always been diplomats, negotiating with local powers to
protect the church's interests. But here was a pope who defined the
church's interest in the broadest way possible -- as the liberation of
the human spirit, for Catholics and non-Catholics alike. Here was a
pope who saw his role as a prophet for a troubled world, who derived
his authority not from the institution but from a transcendent source.
"There is no more clear voice in the world for social justice in our
time," said Mary Anne Glendon, one of a generation of philosophers,
and not just Catholic thinkers, who credit him as their muse.
"Whenever I get discouraged about the state of the world, I turn to
his work to get galvanized."
For the rest of his 84 years he pursued the prophet's calling, taking
his portable altar to every forgotten corner, making more pilgrimages
in a typical year than any pope before him had made in his entire
tenure. The trips produced unforgettable moments: the pope kissing a
concrete floor at the Auschwitz death camp; stirring teenagers at
Madison Square Garden into rock-concert frenzy; touring a synagogue in
Rome; visiting his would-be assassin, Mehmet Ali Agca, in prison to
grant him forgiveness.
If a repressive government didn't want him to visit, he pleaded in
letters and phone calls until it relented, such as in Chile, Indonesia
and states of the former Soviet Union. When he arrived, he would
repeat the performance at Victory Square, if on a smaller scale.
Recall January 1998 in Havana as the crowds shouted "Libertad!
Libertad!" during John Paul's visit. Observers noted that a pained
Fidel Castro looked as if he wanted to go to confession.
At each stop the crowds responded to his particular charisma, the
showmanship of a former actor deepened by the serenity of a man who
prays six hours a day. One minute on stage he was stealing rock star
Bono's sunglasses; the next he was extolling the ministry of Jesus. He
had a gift for using mass communication to criticize the affluent
cultures that invented it. Teenage girls screamed at the sight of him.
He made holiness buzz.
But over the years, it became less clear if his popularity translated
into moral authority. Communism in Poland was an easy, familiar target
and his victory was clean. But later in his pontificate, John Paul
began to focus on more difficult targets such as capitalism. And here,
the will of the people was not always on his side.
In his prodigious writings, he used church theology to fashion an
alternative to modern materialism, to try to teach Catholics how to
live in a world with fading respect for authority and human dignity,
and amid scores of new-fangled temptations. He tried to find a way "to
engage with the world without becoming of the world," explained
Monsignor Lorenzo Albacete, a theologian and New York writer.
To accomplish that, he reoriented the theology of the church in
fundamental ways. His writings emphasized the role of Jesus not just
in revealing the mystery of the divine but also the mystery of the
man. The result was to elevate the dignity of the human being, said
David L. Schindler of the John Paul II Institute for Studies on
Marriage and Family at Catholic University.
Simplified radically, his theology was this: Without fixed moral
principles, people can fall into the trap of treating one another like
objects of commerce or pleasure or vengeance. The proof was in nearly
all realms of human activity. In "The Gospel of Life," his famous 1995
indictment of modernity, he cited the Second Vatican Council in
listing murder, genocide, abortion, euthanasia, slavery, prostitution
and disgraceful working conditions.
The task was his most ambitious, because it meant beating back not
just one government or movement but the whole course of the modern
world. The strain of his struggle showed. The pope meant his message
to fill people with hope. Yet often his tone turned dark and brooding.
"In addition to the ancient scourges of poverty, hunger, endemic
diseases, violence and war, new threats are emerging on an alarmingly
vast scale," he wrote in an encyclical that read more like a Human
Rights Watch report than a spiritual message.
The future looked even bleaker to him: "With the new prospects opened
up by scientific and technological progress," he continued, "there
arise new forms of attacks on the dignity of the human being."
He took this message with him back to Poland in 1995. This time he was
in a new landscape of fast-food restaurants and red-light districts.
The audience at Victory Square was distracted, and some reporters
swore they heard boos. At one point the pope had to shake his fist
like a grade-school teacher to get the crowd to listen.
"When people were free, it turned out they didn't go to church," said
Albacete, the New York theologian. "They went to the nearest
McDonald's."
Internally, similar battles were being played out over church
discipline. In 1994, after the Anglican church became one of the last
in the Protestant world to allow the ordination of women, the pope
published an apostolic letter reiterating the historical and
theological centrality of an all-male priesthood. As usual, he
believed in communicating and explaining and debating his decision in
passionate detail, but the answer was the same: There would be no
budging.
Another challenge came in Latin America in the mid-1980s with the rise
of liberation theology. The pope considered this movement a misguided
Marxist revival and did not try to hide his impatience. On tours
through Nicaragua and El Salvador, he lost his temper with crowds,
yelling "Silencio!" He shut down seminaries and disciplined priests he
saw as replaying the worst era of Poland in the Americas.
In John Paul's struggle against the course of modernity, the United
States held a special distinction. On the surface, it seemed the one
place where the pope's vision had a chance -- the only country that
had thoroughly modernized but where 95 percent of citizens still
believed in God.
Some American Catholic intellectuals, mostly neoconservatives such as
Weigel, implied he was the "American pope," indirectly blessing the
American experience of liberalism. Others such as Schindler countered
that there was too much that infuriated John Paul about the American
experiment for him to be wholly embracing.
America, after all, was the mothership of the material goods flooding
and corrupting his beloved Europe and the rest of the world. America's
brand of spirituality was home-brewed, indifferent to institutions
like the church. And Americans continued to support the practice that
shocked him the most: the death penalty.
In the pews here, he faced a laity star-struck but not especially
loyal. Very few Catholic Americans agree with the pope's teaching that
even sex within marriage should have procreation in mind. His
inflexibility on this question, coupled with his unwillingness to
deliver a strong rebuke of the bishops involved in the sex abuse
scandal, meant "the credibility of the church on sexual matters was
diminished or destroyed," said the Rev. Richard P. McBrien, a
theologian at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana.
Each time an encyclical was anticipated, many Catholics, especially in
the United States, waited for a shift in policy. And each time they
were disappointed, as the pope reinforced church orthodoxy on the role
of women, sexual ethics, homosexuality. The pope enforced his rulings
by appointing a huge percentage of the bishops and cardinals now
serving worldwide, more than 90 percent in the United States alone,
men who would be faithful to his vision.
To the Catholics who felt betrayed by how little he changed the
church, his popularity was a kind of trick, the thing that most
reminded them of the gap between what he appeared to be and what he
was. "Because of his travels and television, he may have more prestige
than any pope in history," said McBrien. "But he has very little
influence on the lives of Catholic lay people. They see him and cheer
for him. But there's not much substance" in his effect on them.
Ultimately, he was hard to categorize in the American context. The
terms liberal and conservative "just don't apply to him," said
Glendon, the philosopher. He opposed abortion and the death penalty;
he was equally passionate about the role of the male priesthood as he
was about workers' rights. Conservatives accepted his teachings on
morality but played down his emphasis on social justice and the limits
of the free market. Liberals did the opposite. "But you can't pick and
choose," Glendon said.
The final years of his papacy were often defined by his physical
limitations. Rumors would circulate that he was canceling a trip; he
almost always showed up, but was barely able to move, his every
clearly enunciated word a grand triumph. "A soul leading a body," his
spokesman, Joaquin Navarro-Valls, often said during this period, and
the sentiment could be read as either excruciating or inspiring.
In the end, though, he could not win over everyone, and his tenure
ended for him with many disappointments. He left his beloved Europe
cold to his charms, more secular than ever. He left America more
adoring than faithful. His evangelization of the Third World had only
limited effect. But maybe he found spiritual fulfillment in his
disappointments. The example of Jesus teaches nobility in suffering,
so perhaps the pope's leadership can ultimately be measured not only
by its accomplishments but also by its scars.
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