Pope John Paul II and the New Catholic Way to Peace

Pope John Paul II

The New Catholic Way to Peace

Karol Wojtyla was born in 1920,two years after WWI ended.

• Poland had become independent for the first time since 1795.

• But the new Soviet government in Russian tried to invade that summer.

• Poland’s independence was saved by a battle that Polish Catholics call “the miracle on the Vistula”.

He grew up in a small town, Wadowice, near Krakow

• Wadowice was a medieval town, founded in 1325.

• It had a tradition of literary and theatrical activity.

• There was a sizable Jewish community in the town.

His mother died

when he was 9

• This event would mark the rest of his life.

• When he was 12 his older brother died.

• For the rest of his adolescence he would live very close to his father, who was a retired military officer.

He became an actor, poet and playwright

• His talent as an actor and writer was recognized early, and he had frequent roles in high school and college.

• He completed his first book of poems when he was 19.

• He and his father moved to Krakow so he could attend the university there when he was 18.

When he was 19 the Nazis invaded Poland

• For the next six years he would live as a manual laborer.

• He would also risk his life to participate in underground theatre companies.

• He continued to write

• His father died 2 years later, leaving him without any family.

During the Nazi years he becomes a priest

• After his father’s death he entered the underground seminary in Krakow, risking his life.

• When he is 26, a year after the war ended, he was ordained.

• He immediately leaves for graduate study in Rome

The Nazi occupation was followed by the Soviet occupation

• When Fr. Wojtyla returned to Poland two years later it was behind the Iron Curtain.

• He became a university chaplain, and continued to write poetry and plays.

• The goal of the Polish Church at that point was to continue to exist.

He formed personal ties with his students

• They called him “uncle” and went on camping trips with him because the communists prohibited retreats led by a priest.

• This group stayed intact, and supported Fr. Wojtyla throughout his ministry.

He spent his 30s teaching philosophy

• As a philosopher he challenged the basic intellectual assumptions of Marxism.

• The major result of this is a book entitled The Acting Person.

• He also wrote a book on sexual morality, Love and Responsibility.

At age 38 he was made a bishop

• He was a compromise candidate, approved by the communists because they thought he was politically safe.

• The next year he began celebrating midnight mass in an open field in Nowa Huta.

• Rather than confronting the communists directly he did things that left them helpless.

Vatican II began when he was 42

• He was one of the youngest bishops at the council

• He supported the Declaration on Religious Liberty, joining the U.S. bishops.

• He was a major contributor to Gaudium et Spes (The Church in the Modern World.)

The Church in the Modern World

“One of the gravest errors of our time is the dichotomy between the faith which many

profess and their day to day conduct.”Para. 43

“All these factorsforce us to undertake

a completely fresh appraisal of war.”Para. 80

At 43 he becomes Archbishop of Krakow

• During the Cold War the Catholic Church in Poland was the de facto opposition party.

• When Abp. Wojtyla became one of Poland’s two cardinals at age 47 he also became a de facto political leader.

He used his power as Archbishopto support Solidarity

• Solidarity—and Cardinal Wojtyla’s role in it, both before and after he became Pope—is the single most important event in Catholic peace building in the 20th century.

• Unfortunately this story has yet to be told in a single book in English.

John Paul on Solidarnosc

“It was the throngs of working peoplewho foreswore the ideology

which presumed to speak in their name.On the basis of hard, lived experience…

it was they who… rediscoveredthe content and principles ofthe Church’s social doctrine.”

Centessimus AnnusPara. 23

His election as Pope in 1978was a turning point in world history

• For the Catholic Church to elect a Polish pope was a direct challenge to the Soviet dictatorship.

• It in effect threw the entire weight of the international Church behind the non-violent effort to end the Soviet occupation of Poland which Cardinal Wojtyla had been leading.

The Soviets responded with an assassination attempt

• The assassination attempt on John Paul in 1981, 3 years after he was made Pope, has never been explained. All evidence points to the Soviets.

• His almost miraculous recovery has had a major impact on world events.

• John Paul himself credits Our Lady of Fatima.

John Paul publicly forgave his assassin

• 18 months after the assassination attempt John Paul went to the prison where the killer was held and publicly forgave him.

• Had he wished to the pope could have turned public opinion against the Soviets.

The 1986 Assisi Day of Prayer

• When John Paul invited leaders of all the world religions to come to Assisi and together pray for peace it was a major innovation.

• At the conclusion of this event there was a near miracle, witnessed only by the press corps.

In 1989 the Soviet Empire collapsed

• The nonviolent end to the Cold War is one of the major events of 20th century history. It may be the most significant.

• Mikhail Gorbachev, then the leader of the Soviet government, has said several times that it would not have happened without Pope John Paul’s leadership.

John Paul on the Fall of Communism

“The fact [is] that the fall of this…empire was accomplished almost everywhere

by means of peaceful protest,using only the weapons of truth and justice.”

“While Marxism held that only by exacerbating social conflicts was it possible to resolve them

through violent confrontation, the protests which led to the collapse of Marxism

tenaciously insisted on tryingevery avenue of negotiation, dialogue,

and witness to the truth,appealing to the conscience of the adversary

and seeking to reawaken in hima sense of shared human dignity.”

“It seemed that the European orderresulting from the Second World War

and sanctioned by the Yalta Agreementscould only be overturned by another war.

Instead it has been overcome by the non-violent commitment of people

who while always refusing to yield to the force of power

succeeded time after timein finding effective ways of bearing witness

to the truth.”

“This disarmed the adversary,since violence always needs to justify itself

through deceit,and to appear, however falsely,

to be defending a right or responding to a threat posed by others.”

Centessimus Annus1991

Para. 23

The Great Disappointment

• After the fall of communism John Paul experienced a profound letdown.

• He had expected the Polish people to establish a new specifically Catholic government.

• On his 1991 visit he gave strong expression to his sense of betrayal.

“We could destroy the old

system, but couldn’t

build a new one.

—Lech Walesa1999

The Civilization of Love

• Rather than criticizing Eastern Europe for imitating the liberal democracies John Paul decided to offer a new, positive vision.

• This was the vision of a “Civilization of Love” which he saw as the Church’s goal for the new millennium.

• It was first spelled out in the 1994 Letter to Families.

A global society “founded on the universal values of peace, solidarity, justice and liberty,

which find their full attainmentin Christ…

in which every human can depend on brotherhood

and in which each person will benear to the brother or sister.”

John Paul’s Response to 9.11

• Qualified support for an invasion of Afghanistan

• Assisi 2002

• Laghi mission to Washington

• Rejecting preemptive wars

• Protecting Catholics in Iraq and Pakistan

“Some people in Europe

would like to present the pope as a pacifist,

and some people in America

would like to see him as someone who

wants to see the application

of justice by any means.

Both are wrong.”

Vatican Press OfficerSeptember, 2001

The end to an historic papacy

• By any measure—length, influence, innovations, or impact on world affairs—John Paul’s papacy was historic.

• He has irrevocably committed the Catholic Church to an entirely new approach to war and peace.

• It is up to the laity to translate this vision of the future into political reality.

“Never doubt thata small group of thoughtful,

committed citizenscan change the world;

indeed, it’s the only thingthat ever does.”

Margaret Mead

CivilizationOfLove.net