Carrying John Paul II's Message

In the past few days, many mindless commentators have used the word “contradiction” to describe Pope John Paul II. Unless by contradiction they mean “in conflict with prevailing societal and political values,” those who would call John Paul II contradictory fail to understand the value of his life, words, and deeds. This Pope, far from contradictory, should be remembered as one of the great leaders of our times for his consistent and humble search for Truth in this world.

There was a time when I agreed with the contradiction verdict. Many of the Pope’s teachings seemed unbalanced. I believed he was bad for the Church because his values went against my own. He seemed a backwards man, caught in a time long since passed and trying to enforce a morality on a world no longer willing to accept it. I criticized his seemingly naïve unawareness that his opposition to birth control could spread pain in a world with dangerous diseases and unwanted children. His stance against abortion seemed to offend human rights. I viewed his refusal to consider female priests as sexism, thinly veiled by Scripture and Church traditions. I thought his refusal to welcome homosexuals into the sacrament of marriage was an ignorant attempt to foist morality of centuries long past on a world that had discovered new and better terms of equality and justice.

And thus I struggled to reconcile those “outdated” ideas with the Pope’s more progressive leanings. After all, this Pope traveled to more than 120 countries, by far the most of any Pontiff. This was the Pope who shifted the center of gravity of the Catholic Church away from tradition, Europe, and Italy and into the developing world, elevating hundreds of new cardinals and welcoming hundreds of millions of new Catholics in Africa, Asia, and South America. This Pope stood up against communism in his native Poland and issued apologies for the Church’s actions during the Inquisition and inactions during the Holocaust. This was the Pope who authored progressive Encyclicals on labor and justice, fought AIDS, and opposed the Iraq War. This Pope led ecumenical Christian efforts around the world and was the first Pontiff to set foot in a synagogue and mosque.

Contradictory? No. All these diverse positions represent this Pope’s love of real freedom and human dignity. Willing to take a stand on almost any issue put before him, John Paul II constantly reminded us of the hope that is our Christian religion, the hope that the goodness we attempt to live may lead us in the direction of Truth, that the countercultural ends we serve may be what is the best and the good. Reminding us, as Saint Paul did, that Christians are to be in this world but not of it, this Pope challenged us to be uncomfortable with our world and to humbly seek Truth itself—not merely what was politically or socially popular.

In a world where prevailing morality says that “if it’s good for me, it’s good,” this Pope asked us to consider higher standards of right and wrong. At a time when nothing is profane, this Pope reminded us of the sacred. For a people who believe that reason and science hold all the answers, this Pope showed us that the most important questions are without definite answers.

Considered in this light, we may see the Pope as a passionate defender of human dignity—God given dignity, not “self-created” dignity—against anyone who would usurp it. In this view, God gives life; the abortion and war we create take it away. God gives us love among each other and within the family; we respond with divorce, birth control, and new conceptions of that family relationship. God gives us freedom; Soviet communism and the moral laissez-faire attitudes of modern democracy steal that freedom away.

This is language that does not resonate with me, or with most of us. It seems obsolete. We have our own “values” and we want the “freedom” to choose them and we want to extend that “freedom” so that others can choose their own values and decide what is right for them.

John Paul II rejected this worldly thinking. This Pope made Catholicism alive and real and challenged us to make radical choices for faith. He sought to remind us that she who would make a real choice, a difficult choice, must be prepared for the world to reject or punish her for what she believes. Without this risk, a choice is insignificant. Against our own mindless choices of paper or plastic, Chevy or Ford, this Pope pointed us in the direction of those choices that make us fully human.

I doubt that this Pope’s legacy will be understood by many of us, and I fear our capacity to understand it is evaporating. I hope to see women priests and same-sex marriage, and I believe Christ would as well, and it is only a matter of time before the Church accedes (or succumbs) to our democratic vision of the world and accepts these and other changes. But I predict this with sadness as well as hope, for it means losing something good along the way.

The scholar Giancarlo Zizola was wrong when he said the Pope “saved the values of the West from the West itself.” Instead we will continue to change our ideas of nature and God and create our own values. In the process, I hope we will not forget what John Paul II tried to remind us: seeking God, and the Truth, is always good. It is never easy.

Christopher J. Catizone ’06, a Crimson editorial editor, is a government concentrator in Dunster House.