Pope John Paul II leaves a mixed legacy for his flock. Conservatives in the Catholic Church hail him as a defender of the faith, while progressives criticise his `restorationist papacy' that has taken the Church back to pre-Second Vatican Council days.
Paradox, in the best sense, is objectivity.- Henri Cardinal de Lubac, S.J.PARADOXES constitute the core of the Christian faith - Trinity (one God, in three persons, all divine), incarnation (Jesus, fully man and fully God, born of a virgin). Perhaps it is only natural that the papacy of John Paul II, who sought to lead the Church into the third millennium by returning to its "sources" in Catholic tradition and Scripture, should be defined by a series of striking contradictions, or if you will, paradoxes. He tried to move the Church forward by taking it backward.
John Paul II, who taught ethics at the Catholic University of Lublin in Poland and was a champion of academic freedom in this country when it was under communist rule, presided over the third most infamous witch-hunt of Catholic theologians in the 20th century. The other two followed the encyclicals Pascendi Dominici Gregis (1907) and Humani Generis (1950), issued by Popes Pius X and Pius XII respectively. In contrast to the earlier crackdowns, which were rolled back after theologians "guilty" of specific deviations from orthodoxy were "disciplined", theologians this time had to work under constant fear of scrutiny and harassment throughout the almost three-decade-long papacy of John Paul II. The many victims - the publicised cases alone probably make it one of the worst official repressions ever of theologians in Church history - were invariably the most brilliant minds at the service of the Church.
Even as the Pope's health was fast deteriorating and he was moving in and out of hospital in February, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) condemned the book Jesus Symbol of God by the American Jesuit Fr. Roger Haight. The CDF, the Vatican's doctrinal watchdog and the modern avatar of the Universal Inquisition, said the book had "grave doctrinal errors" and barred Haight from teaching Catholic theology. The "notification", approved by John Paul II, came at the end of an investigation that lasted four years.
Under John Paul II, the earliest victims of the CDF included the French Dominican Fr. Jacques Pohier and the influential Swiss theologian Fr. Hans Kng, whose licences to teach Catholic theology were withdrawn in 1979. Pohier, who quit his order in 1984, was hauled up for his views on the resurrection. Kng was teaching at the University of Tbingen in Germany when the Vatican denounced his writings on papal infallibility and his "contempt for the magisterium of the Church" (Frontline, January 2 and December 31, 2004).
The repression became more systematic and the investigation procedures more secretive and undemocratic when the German Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger took over as the prefect of the CDF from the Croatian Franjo Cardinal {Scaron}eper in 1981. Almost every disagreement with official theology was interpreted as "dissidence". Himself a gifted theologian and a prolific writer, Ratzinger belonged to the school of formerly liberal Catholic theologians who held that the reforms of the Second Vatican Council (1962-65) had brought the Church to "imminent apostasy". Ratzinger was a peritus (theological expert) to the German bishops at the Council and was closely aligned with its liberal majority.
However, the future John Paul II, participating in the Council as Archbishop Karol Wojtyla of Krakow in Poland, had no such pretensions. Wotyla was one of the 251 bishops who voted against the final draft of Gaudium et Spes, the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World. The document, which captured the essence of the conciliar objective to reform, renew and modernise the Church, was passed with 2,331 voting in its favour. Years later, John Paul II would repeatedly refer to Gaudium et Spes in his speeches and encyclicals to emphasise his pontificate's loyalty to the conciliar legacy.
JOHN PAUL II and Ratzinger had much in common. Both shared an instinctive distrust of left-leaning thought and movements, especially within the Church. While John Paul II's roots lay in the conservative and authoritarian traditions of Polish Catholicism, Ratzinger's experience with left-wing student protesters, who disrupted his lectures at the University of Tbingen in the late 1960s, had a "permanent shock effect" (according to Kng) on him. These personal positions were to have disastrous implications for the Church.
At the receiving end were the huge and vibrant Latin American Church and its novel pastoral practices inspired by liberation theology. This innovative branch of theology, firmly embedded in the best traditions of Catholic social teaching and the Gospel message, stressed that the Church should align with the poor and work for their "liberation" not only from sin, but also from oppressive and exploitative socio-political conditions. That a rough ride lay ahead was evident soon after John Paul II took over. His first visit outside Italy was to Mexico, in 1979, to attend the Conference of Latin American Bishops (CELAM). At Puebla in Mexico, he told the assembled bishops: "[T]he idea of Christ as a political figure, a revolutionary, as the subversive man from Nazareth, does not tally with the Church's catechesis" (quoted in "Liberation Theology and the Roman Catholic Church" by Peter Hebblethwaite; The Cambridge Companion to Liberation Theology, edited by Christopher Rowland; Cambridge University Press, 1999; page 182).
Yet, as Hebblethwaite notes, it is difficult to categorise the Pope's approach as a no-holds-barred attack on liberation theology. It is more nuanced. Hebblethwaite says the speech proposed "an alternative form of the theology of liberation. ... First, liberation theology, as developed in Latin America is critically scrutinised and found gravely wanting. But at the same time, second, the concern for social justice expressed by liberation theology is validated and confirmed" (ibid., page 183, emphasis as in the original). The Pope's main concern was its alleged Marxist moorings. As Kng said: "Because of his Polish experiences he saw too much Marxism in liberation theology... ."
The dialectical approach observed by Hebblethwaite is evident in the CDF's 1984 document on the subject, "Instruction on Certain Aspects of the `Theology of Liberation'". It said that liberation theologians made a "disastrous confusion between the poor of the Scripture and the proletariat of Marx.... In this way they transform the rights of the poor into a class fight within the ideological perspective of the class struggle. For them the `Church of the Poor' signifies the church of the class which has become aware of the requirements of the revolutionary struggle as a step towards liberation and which celebrates this liberation in the liturgy" (IX, 10).
In contrast, the opening sections of the document were uncompromising in their criticism of exploitation and oppression: "More than ever, the Church intends to condemn abuses, injustices and attacks against freedom, wherever they occur and whoever commits them. She intends to struggle, by her own means, for the defence and advancement of the rights of humankind, especially of the poor... . Humankind will no longer passively submit to crushing poverty with its effects of death, disease and decline. It resents this misery as intolerable violation of its native dignity... . The scandal of shocking inequality between the rich and the poor... is no longer tolerated... " (Introduction; I, 4 and 6). Hebblethwaite claims it is "one of the most radical documents ever to emanate from the Vatican. ... In its anxiety to refute liberation theologies... it is obliged to borrow their clothes" (The Cambridge Companion to Liberation Theology, page 187).
Meanwhile, the Vatican was orchestrating a coup in Latin America. Progressive Brazilian prelates such as Dom Helder Camara of Olinda e Recife and Paulo Evaristo Cardinal Arns of So Paolo found it increasingly difficult to work under a papacy hostile to their kind of pastoral care and understanding of the Church as a "community". Decades of assiduous work done to empower the poor in Olinda e Recife came to halt when, on Dom Helder Camara's retirement at the mandatory age of 75 in 1985, the Vatican appointed an arch-conservative to run the diocese. Dom Jose Cardoso Sobrinho, the new Archbishop, re-established the influence of the landowners, whom Dom Helder Camara had fought for years. Radical priests were "disciplined" and the local Catholic Justice and Peace Commission was disbanded in 1989.
Cardinal Arns, a vocal opponent of the military junta that ran the country and a supporter of workers' rights, was taken by surprise when Rome split up into five parts his sprawling archdiocese. He was put in charge of the metropolitan areas; the rest of the archdiocese, where the majority of the poor and the working class lived, was divided among four conservative auxiliary bishops. Similar tactics were employed across the continent to undermine the influence of liberation theology. It made a mockery of the cardinal conciliar principle of "collegiality". Based on the idea that the "Church" is basically a community of "churches", this principle stressed the sovereignty and integrity of the "churches" and the necessity of their being in communion with one other. In short, it was meant to act as a check on excessive centralisation of powers in Rome.
Liberation theologians, too, were not spared. On a visit to Nicaragua in 1983, John Paul II publicly rebuked Fr. Ernesto Cardenal for joining the Sandinista government as Minister of Culture. Cardenal ignored the Pope's order to quit the government and was defrocked. (The government had four other priest-members, including Maryknoll Fr. Miguel D'Escoto, who was the Foreign Minister.) A meeting of Peruvian bishops was convened in Rome in 1984 to condemn the work of the Dominican Fr. Gustavo Gutierrez, often referred to as the "father of liberation theology". The bishops refused. The CDF's 1988 investigation of Gutierrez produced no result.
The Brazilian Franciscan Fr. Leonardo Boff was less fortunate. In 1984, Boff was summoned to Rome by the CDF to participate in what Ratzinger called a "colloquium". He was to be investigated for his work Church - Charism and Power: Essays in Militant Ecclesiology. Boff was backed by his religious order and two Brazilian prelates, Cardinal Arns and Aloisio Cardinal Lorscheider, attended his interrogation by Ratzinger. When the CDF's limousine came to pick him up from the Franciscan headquarters for the meeting on the morning of September 7, Boff quipped: "Too bad I'm not just plain under arrest! Then this could go down as a `first' in the modern history of the Congregation" (Liberation Theology: From Dialogue to Confrontation by Leonardo Boff and Clodovis Boff; Harper & Row, 1986; page 84). Boff was silenced for a year in 1985. When the CDF cracked the whip again in 1991, he quit priesthood and "promoted himself to the status of laity".
The results of all these actions were clear by the early 1990s: the majority of prelates were more loyal to Rome than to the laity and, most important, the Church began to lose its followers to fundamentalist neo-Pentecostal Churches.
THE 1980s were a period of ferment in another part of the world too, the Pope's native Poland. Lech Walesa's Solidarity was leading a popular movement against the communist government. An overwhelmingly Catholic country backed Solidarity, which forged a united front with Poland's Church hierarchy and its vast and intricate web of parishes. As the conflict between the regime and Solidarity intensified with the promulgation of martial law in 1981, the Pope accelerated his support for the Opposition group.
Papal biographer John Cornwell says that "there are indications that John Paul gave Lech Walesa's movement $50 million; the sum was probably donated through the services of the Vatican Bank... " (The Pontiff in Winter: Triumph and Conflict in the Reign of John Paul II; Doubleday, 2004; page 102). The Polish primate, Jozef Cardinal Glemp, disagreed with the Pope's view that communism's fall was imminent and counselled a more cautious approach. His moves anguished Agostino Cardinal Casaroli, the then Vatican Secretary of State: "What does he want? Does he want bloodshed? Does he want war?" (ibid., page 104). But nothing or nobody could shake his resolve to combat communism.
The anti-communist crusade got a fillip with the murder of Fr. Jerzy Popieluzsko by security forces in 1984. The Polish people and the Church hailed him as a martyr. An outspoken anti-communist close to Solidarity, he had used his sermons to criticise the Polish regime and exhorted people to rise in rebellion. He had joined the workers in sit-ins against the government. The Pope, who once reminded Latin American priests that their primary duty as pastors was to be "teachers of the truth, not a human and rational truth, but the truth that comes from God", was not irate. Instead, he personally encouraged him by sending him a crucifix. On his third visit to Poland in 1987, the Pope knelt and prayed before Fr. Popieluzsko's grave in suburban Warsaw and placed on it a wreath of yellow and white flowers - the Vatican colours.
Back in 1980, the Vatican's response was lukewarm to the assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero of El Salvador by United States-trained and armed government troops. A statement described Romero as "zealous", a faint word of praise at best. Romero was a champion of the country's poor and had denounced the atrocities committed by the military regime. On March 23, a day before he was killed, he appealed to the Army in his homily: "In the name of God then, in the name of this suffering people I ask you, I beg you, I command you in the name of God: stop the repression." In 1983, when John Paul II went to El Salvador, he made a token visit to Romero's tomb, which had by then become a major pilgrimage centre for Latin Americans. He sympathised with the people's suffering and called for an end to the civil war, but not a word about Romero's martyrdom. During his last, 10-hour-long visit to El Salvador in 1996, John Paul II visited the tomb again, a last-minute adjustment to his busy schedule, and made a passing reference to Romero in a speech.
THE 1995 encyclical Ut unum sint reaffirmed the Catholic Church's unequivocal commitment to bring together the "separated brethren" of Christianity scattered across various Churches. It was the most coherent and sincere statement on ecumenism since the Second Vatican Council's decree Unitatis Redintegratio, which formally endorsed ecumenism's relevance for the first time in Church history. It elaborated upon the theological vision that underlay the pontificate's consistent efforts since 1978, when John Paul II became the head of the Church, to reach out to the various Protestant and Orthodox Churches. They culminated in the 1999 "Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification" by the Lutheran World Federation and the Catholic Church, a momentous event in more than four centuries of ecclesiastical history. It spoke about agreement on the contentious issue at the heart of the Reformation - Justification (the transformation of a person from a state of sin to that of righteousness, which can be realised by God alone). "The understanding of the doctrine of justification set forth in this Declaration shows that a consensus in basic truths of the doctrine of justification exists between Lutherans and Catholics" (#40).
John Paul II's attempts to mend fences with the Eastern Orthodox were less successful. It was his dream to see Christianity "breathe with both lungs", meaning his desire to end the Great Eastern Schism which began in the 11th century. But the Orthodox, especially the Russian Orthodox, were suspicious. They felt the Pope's primary intention was proselytisation in areas hitherto inaccessible to the Catholic Church for various historical reasons. So much so that they even refused to invite the first Slavic Pope to Russia. John Paul II died without having fulfilled his long-cherished dream to visit Russia.
In August 2004, the German Walter Cardinal Kasper, president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, travelled to Moscow to return an icon of the Mother of God of Kazan, revered by the Russian Orthodox Church. It was the Pope's last goodwill gesture to the Russian Orthodox. But relations remained cold. On learning of the Pope's death, Patriarch Alexy II of Moscow, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, put out a terse statement: "Pope John Paul personally, and his works and ideas, have had a strong impact on the world." Not a word on ecumenism.
Relations with other religions, especially the Jewish religion, reached a new plane under John Paul II. In keeping with the essence of the Second Vatican Council's declaration on non-Christian religions, Nostra Aetate, which stressed the Church's "spiritual ties" with the Jews and absolved them of the charge of "Deicide", he apologised for the Church's past errors in 2000: "We are deeply saddened by the behaviour of those who in the course of history have caused these children of Yours [the Jews] to suffer, and asking Your forgiveness we wish to commit ourselves to genuine brotherhood with the people of the Covenant."
The Commission of the Holy See for Religious Relations with the Jews issued a document in 1998, "We Remember: A Reflection on the Shoah". (Shoah is the Hebrew word for the Holocaust.) In the words of the then commission president, Edward Cardinal Cassidy, it meditated on "the catastrophe which befell the Jewish people, on its causes, and on the moral imperative to ensure that never again such a tragedy will happen". It is another story that the text's idiosyncratic re-interpretation of history, especially its attempt to make a dubious distinction between "anti-Judaism" and "anti-Semitism", became highly controversial.
Inspired by Nostra Aetate, which said that the Catholic Church, despite differences, believed that all religions "often reflect a ray of that truth which enlightens all men", John Paul II convened inter-religious meetings to pray for world peace in Assisi in Italy in 1986, 1993 and 2002. But the religious leaders who assembled did not pray "together", but prayed "at the same time" as, conservatives in the Curia contended, the former description posed theological problems.
Whatever little was achieved on the front of relations with other Churches and religions suffered a setback with the 2000 CDF document Dominus Iesus. Signed by Ratzinger, it asserted the "unicity and salvific universality of Jesus Christ and the Church". Shorn of jargon, the message was simple: Extra ecclesiam nulla salus (Outside the Church no salvation) and Jesus is the only way to salvation.
In dispute is not the Church's right to say so, but the tone of the document, which suggests a sense of moral and religious superiority. Dominus Iesus noted: "If it is true that the followers of other religions can receive divine grace, it is also certain that objectively speaking they are in a gravely deficient situation in comparison with those who, in the Church, have the fullness of the means of salvation" (emphasis as in the original). Missing was the culture of dialogue and respect for other religions embodied in Nostra Aetate and Dignitatis Humanae (the conciliar declaration on religious liberty).
Dominus Iesus was also aimed at Catholic theologians who worked in the cutting-edge of the theology of religions. The CDF pulled up the Belgian Jesuit Fr. Jacques Dupuis for his book Toward a Christian Theology of Religious Pluralism. Dupuis, who taught for 25 years in various Jesuit seminaries in India, was teaching at the prestigious Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome when the CDF decided to investigate his work. The Society of Jesus lent him vital support. Its Superior-General, Fr. Peter-Hans Kolvenbach, said the book "dares to venture into a dogmatically fundamental area for the future of the inter-religious dialogue".
In 2001, the CDF found that the book had "notable ambiguities and difficulties on important doctrinal points, which could lead a reader to erroneous or harmful opinions". He allegedly failed to affirm the unique and necessary role of Jesus Christ and his Church in the work of salvation, the central message of Dominus Iesus. Dupuis was asked to publish the CDF's "notification" along with every future edition of his work. The humble Jesuit priest never fully recovered from the "very great suffering" he had to endure during the investigation and died in December 2004.
THE Pope was "always a man with a divided heart", Paulo Evaristo Cardinal Arns told a Brazilian Portuguese daily in early February (quoted in National Catholic Reporter, March 4, 2005). That and the resultant paradoxical positions, perhaps, could help in evaluating one of the most controversial and longest pontificates ever in Church history.
The legacy, as always in such cases, is mixed. Conservatives have hailed Pope John Paul II as a Fidei Defensor (defender of the faith) and are calling for an early canonisation. Progressives have criticised him for leading a "restorationist papacy" that has taken the Church back to pre-Second Vatican Council days. There is an element of truth in both views.
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