Fr. Richard John Neuhaus: John Paul the Great

The New York Post

April 4, 2005 -- In the nearly two millennia of the Church's history, only two popes are known as "The Great": Leo the Great and Gregory the Great, in the fifth and sixth centuries respectively. I fully expect that in the not distant future John Paul II will regularly be referred to as John Paul the Great.

That is not a controversial suggestion, although there is considerable controversy over the reasons why he is generally recognized as one of the greatest of the 264 successors to the apostle Peter — to whom Jesus said, speaking of his faith and his person, "You are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Church."

Political historians will undoubtedly focus on John Paul's role in bringing down what it is no longer controversial to call the "evil empire" of Soviet communism. Having lived for years under Nazism and for many more years under communism, Karol Wojtyla, who would later become John Paul II, had no illusions about totalitarian tyranny.

He was among the few who was not taken in by the belief that the best we could hope for is "coexistence" between freedom and tyranny. That conviction was informed by his understanding of human dignity and the way in which we human beings are, so to speak, hard-wired for freedom and responsibility, both of which communism denied.

The mass murderer Joseph Stalin infamously said, when asked how the pope would respond to a proposed move, "How many divisions does the Pope have?" John Paul answered that question. Not with the kind of divisions Stalin had in mind, but the spiritual power of millions of people, first in Poland and then throughout the Soviet empire, who would respond to his forceful challenge that they stand up and "live in the truth."

In his very first sermon after becoming pope, John Paul chose the theme, "Be not afraid." That was the greeting of the resurrected Jesus to his frightened disciples, and those words were repeated like a triphammer throughout the more than 26 years of John Paul's extraordinary pontificate.

He was telling people behind the Iron Curtain to be not afraid, but, in a deeper sense, he was telling all of humanity to be not afraid.

If any phrase encapsulates the message that John Paul declared to the world, it is probably "prophetic humanism." There is nothing more humanistic than the Catholic Christianity that he proclaimed and lived. The message centers in the astounding truth that God became a human being in Jesus Christ. You cannot get more humanistic than that.

It is impossible to understand John Paul without understanding that his entire thought and being was grounded in the incarnation, the teaching, the suffering, death, resurrection and promised return of Jesus Christ. He was, through and through, an intellectual and philosopher. The school of philosophy to which he belonged, and to which he made many contributions through scholarly articles and books, goes by the perhaps obscure names of "phenomenology" and "personalism," but always his thought was Christo-centric, centered in the revelation of God in Christ.

His humanism was thus very different from the kind of vacuously optimistic view often called humanism — for John Paul was not an optimist, and optimism is not a Christian virtue. Optimism, one might say, is simply a matter of optics, of seeing what you want to see and not seeing what you don't want to see. John Paul was, rather, a man of hope — which is a Christian virtue.

The authoritative book on John Paul and his pontificate, George Weigel's "Witness to Hope," gets it exactly right: In the experience of Nazism and communism, as well as his wide-ranging pastoral work, Karol Wojtyla had looked into the heart of darkness — and at the heart of darkness discovered reason for an indomitable hope.

He lived on the far side of the greatest catastrophe in human history, the death of the Son of God, and knew that evil did not have the last word. This is the key to the vibrant confidence with which he lived and the trusting serenity in which he died.

This was the confidence that so electrified millions of young people, most dramatically in the World Youth Day rallies that were one of the many innovations of his pontificate. In many different ways and places — in Paris, Rome, Manila, Denver and most recently in Toronto — he was telling young people, "Settle for nothing less than moral and spiritual greatness."
He wished to be present at the World Youth Day scheduled for Cologne, Germany, this August. That was not to be. Along with many other things that were not to be.

A peaceful and just peace in the Middle East, for instance. It has become almost a cliche to say that he did more for Jewish-Christian relations than any pope in history. His efforts were anchored in a deep spiritual and theological understanding of the Jewish people as "elder brothers" in God's unfolding covenant with Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Jesus.

Also not to be: The reconciliation of Christians of the East and West. At least not for now. His dearest hope was that the Church would once again, as he put it, "breathe with both lungs," the East and the West. Sadly, the Orthodox sister churches of the East, and especially the Russian Orthodox Church, were not responsive to his many conciliatory initiatives. But in his 1995 encyclical, Ut Unum Sint ("That they may all be one"), John Paul declared the Catholic Church's "irrevocable" commitment to Christian unity, and laid the groundwork for what one day, please God, will be.

One might mention other unfinished tasks in advancing "the culture of life" in free and just societies that recognize that human dignity and rights do not depend upon a human being's capacity to assert dignity and rights — whether at the entrance gates or at the exit gates of life or at any point along the way.

The vision of prophetic humanism advanced and exemplified by this pope will not be fully realized until the promised coming of the Kingdom of God. He powerfully taught that all of us have been recruited to seeking that fulfillment.

Soon there will be another pope, the 265th successor to Peter. He and popes after him will need the prayers of all humanity in boldly carrying forward the mission of John Paul the Great.

Fr. Richard John Neuhaus is editor in chief of First Things, the monthly magazine of religion, culture and public life.