Karol Josef Wojtyla, 1920-2005
I've been wrestling for three days with how to write about the Pope's
death, and although I wanted to write a long obituary/commentary, I
decided that just about everything that needed to said has been said,
so I will show some restraint. (I know; I'm showing restraint; alert the media.) My feelings are
complex. Considering I've spend the past few months waiting for
him to die, I was surprised at the depth of loss I felt when he finally
did. I think that like a lot of people, I managed to shift all
of my ambivance about his policies to the institution: "Love the Pope,
not so sure about the Church" seems to be a pretty common feeling among
American Catholics, especially liberal Catholics. For most
people, I think, he was hard not to love, the earnest traveller, the
Dreamer of Poland, as scottso
called him in a wonderfully eloquent post, who outlasted the Nazis and
the Communists and came home triumphant. He spoke not only of the
right to life, but the right to dignity, and preached peace to
everyone, even the man who shot him. But of course, he also
quashed hopes for further acceptance for homosexual Catholics, stood
foursquare against expanding the role of women in the Church, and
refused to budge on birth control, even in the face of the Third World
AIDS epidemic. It's a mixed legacy, but not a bad one.
Many people, I think, asked more of him than he or the instution could give. The Church doesn't do upheavals; she likes her changes gradual, when she likes them at all. Two thousand years of history will do that. But Vatican II was still only 40 years ago-the blink of an eye for the Church. She needed time to digest the changes, and John Paul II gave her that time. His papacy is being referred to as a "transformational" papacy, but to me it was more a consolidational papacy. He made institutional changes, but doctrine remains mostly as John Paul found it-the real changes to the Church were demographic, and the Pope merely accelerated those trends, he didn't create them. And now, at the end of his quarter century, you have a Church that understands the changes that Vatican II brought and has a better idea of the challenges that she faces than she did in 1978. I rather doubt the next Pope will leap in with both feet like the Blessed John XXIII and call for Vatican III, but I do think that, intentionally or not, John Paul made the Church ready for her next great changes.
I'll close with a couple of thoughts. The first is from the Pope, a sentiment that is to me beautiful in its simplicity and emblematic of what a Christian should be: "Do not abandon yourselves to despair. We are the Easter people, and Hallelujah is our song." We tend to forget, in the face of the Pat Robertons and Jerry Falwells, that Christianity is a religion of hope. The Dreamer of Poland never did.
The second is my own, a slight tweak of a remark made in a comment to silverselene. Some are already pushing to call him John Paul the Great. Well, I'm a history student, and leery of handing out Greats when there have only been three in the Church's history. And as I said, his record is mixed, and tainted by the pedophilia scandal of his last years. So I can't say for certain that he was a great pope, but I never doubt that he was a great man. Requiescat en pace, Iohannes Paulus.
Many people, I think, asked more of him than he or the instution could give. The Church doesn't do upheavals; she likes her changes gradual, when she likes them at all. Two thousand years of history will do that. But Vatican II was still only 40 years ago-the blink of an eye for the Church. She needed time to digest the changes, and John Paul II gave her that time. His papacy is being referred to as a "transformational" papacy, but to me it was more a consolidational papacy. He made institutional changes, but doctrine remains mostly as John Paul found it-the real changes to the Church were demographic, and the Pope merely accelerated those trends, he didn't create them. And now, at the end of his quarter century, you have a Church that understands the changes that Vatican II brought and has a better idea of the challenges that she faces than she did in 1978. I rather doubt the next Pope will leap in with both feet like the Blessed John XXIII and call for Vatican III, but I do think that, intentionally or not, John Paul made the Church ready for her next great changes.
I'll close with a couple of thoughts. The first is from the Pope, a sentiment that is to me beautiful in its simplicity and emblematic of what a Christian should be: "Do not abandon yourselves to despair. We are the Easter people, and Hallelujah is our song." We tend to forget, in the face of the Pat Robertons and Jerry Falwells, that Christianity is a religion of hope. The Dreamer of Poland never did.
The second is my own, a slight tweak of a remark made in a comment to silverselene. Some are already pushing to call him John Paul the Great. Well, I'm a history student, and leery of handing out Greats when there have only been three in the Church's history. And as I said, his record is mixed, and tainted by the pedophilia scandal of his last years. So I can't say for certain that he was a great pope, but I never doubt that he was a great man. Requiescat en pace, Iohannes Paulus.