Witness to Hope

by George Weigel

  The Countercultural Pope

  John Paul’s encyclical on Christian mission was of considerable interest in Third World mission territories, but in the developed world Redemptoris Missio received far less attention than Centesimus Annus, which was published four months later.31 By conventional journalistic standards, Centesimus Annus was much more newsworthy, given its analysis of the collapse of communism, its detailed examination of the free economy, and its early warning signals about the new threats to democracy. Yet a case can be made that Redemptoris Missio is the most consequential of John Paul’s encyclicals for both the Church and the world.

  Redemptoris Missio is part of John Paul II’s attempt to make the Second Vatican Council irreversible in the life of the Church. If the Council’s primary aim was to renew the Church for service to the world, Redemptoris Missio is a deeply conciliar meditation on the greatest service the Church can provide the world: to tell the world its true story, the story of creation and fall, redemption, salvation, and sanctification. In Redemptoris Missio, the New Testament Church meets the Church of the third millennium—for which Vatican II, the Pope insists, was a providential preparation.

  Redemptoris Missio also proposed a fresh response to certain misunderstandings. To those who insist that Christian evangelization threatens civil peace and understanding among world religions, John Paul replies that a Church which “imposes nothing” and which “honors the sanctuary of conscience” is a Church in service to all. To those Christians who believe the Church has “out-grown” evangelism and should concentrate its efforts on social change, the Pope replies that the Church ceases to be the Church when the Church ceases to preach Jesus Christ. To secularists convinced that a maturing humanity will outgrow the “need” for religion, John Paul replies that, at the end of the second millennium, “God is preparing a great springtime for Christianity, and we can already see its first signs.”32 To those offended by the very idea that some religions are true and others false, John Paul replies that the Church honors whatever truths are to be found in world religions and cultures. All truths in this world point toward the one great truth about the world, revealed by God in Jesus Christ—the world has come from God and, through the sacrifice of Christ, is destined to be consummated in God, who wills the salvation of all humanity.

  Redemptoris Missio is countercultural in several other ways. John Paul insists that pluralism is more than plurality, the sheer sociological fact of religious differences. Genuine pluralism, he suggests, is plurality transformed into an orderly, truth-seeking conversation among people of divergent religious beliefs. By the same token, Redemptoris Missio implies that tolerance is not a matter of avoiding differences but of engaging differences respectfully, in the conviction, as one commentator put it, “that our deepest differences make all the difference, in this world and the next.”33 To those who fear that any such encounter between world religions will automatically lead to fanaticism and even religious war, John Paul replies that Christian evangelism is essential to civil society and to peace, because the civil society capable of sustaining genuine tolerance must be built upon a profound respect for the inalienable rights of human persons. Those who believe it to be the will of God that they respect the convictions of neighbors who have different convictions about God’s will are more likely to respect human rights, defend religious freedom, and protect the “sanctuary of conscience” in a free and civil society.34

  Redemptoris Missio and Centesimus Annus are not two dramatically different encyclicals, one meditating on an “internal” Church matter (Christian mission) and the other dealing with “the world.” Both encyclicals envision a Catholicism that proposes truths, but imposes nothing. Redemptoris Missio reminds the Church what that proposal is, and why making it is imperative. Centesimus Annus spells out the public dimensions of the proposal, while reminding the Church that its fundamental public task is the formation of consciences, not political scheming or economic planning. Both encyclicals, together, define a Catholicism for the third millennium that is evangelically assertive and in service to the good of the whole human race. The two, John Paul insists, go together. And that is a teaching with great significance for the world beyond the boundaries of the Catholic Church. Because how Christians conceive their mission “to the world” will have much to do with how almost 2 billion human beings think about the shaping of a new century and a new millennium.

  ECUMENICAL FRACTURE

  The Holy See’s first attempt to seize the opportunity presented by the Soviet government’s new attitude toward religious freedom was poorly managed, putting John Paul’s great hope for an ecumenical rapprochement with Orthodoxy in jeopardy and further complicating Rome’s relations with the Greek Catholic Church in Ukraine.

  As 1990 gave way to 1991, the situation was, admittedly, complex in the extreme. Seventy years of state atheism, periods of intense religious persecution, and massive population transfers before, during, and after World War II had dramatically changed the Catholic “topography” of the Soviet Union. The Gorbachev initiative on religious freedom, and the Soviet government’s insistence that pastoral care for Catholics in the various Soviet “republics” not be guided by bishops in other countries (such as Poland), had made it possible to begin to regularize Catholic life in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, where John Paul had reorganized both the Latin and Greek Catholic dioceses. At the same time, the new Vatican ambassador to the Soviet Union, Archbishop Francesco Colasuonno, had discovered a “surprising vitality” in Catholic life in Russia and Kazakhstan, where Latin-rite Catholic communities of German, Polish, Lithuanian, and Ukrainian origin had recently received legal recognition from their local governments, under the new Soviet law on religious freedom that President Gorbachev had promulgated on October 1, 1990. Something had to be done to regularize the situation of these newly recognized communities, and to provide bishops for them and the more than 1.5 million Latin-rite Catholics in the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic.35

  Responsibility for sorting all this out fell to the Holy See’s Secretariat of State, which was in direct consultation, through Archbishop Colasuonno, with the Soviet government. The eventual solution involved the establishment of a metropolitan archdiocese of Minsk-Mohilev in the Byelorussian SSR with suffragan dioceses in Pinsk and Grodno.36 At the same time, pastoral care for Catholics in Russia, Siberia, and Kazakhstan was regularized, not by creating full-fledged dioceses, but by establishing three “apostolic administrations,” which the revised Code of Canon Law defined as “a certain portion of the people of God which is not erected into a diocese…due to particular and very serious reasons….”37 The “very serious reason” in this case was the extremesensitivity of the Russian Orthodox Patriarchate of Moscow to anything that seemed to imply establishing a normal Catholic hierarchy and structure on the historic territory of Russian Orthodoxy. The apostolic administrations were to be located in Moscow, Novosibirsk, and Karaganda, with a bishop capable of serving the sacramental needs of Catholics in those areas appointed as “apostolic administrator” for each.38

  As the Church’s universal pastor, intimately familiar with the suffering of Christians throughout the Soviet Union, John Paul was fully committed to providing adequate pastoral care for the Catholics in Russia, Siberia, and Kazakhstan. He was also determined to make every effort to heal the ecumenical breach of the eleventh century between Rome and Orthodoxy—and that required taking account of the concerns and fears of Orthodoxy’s largest Church, in Russia.39 The Vatican’s hope was that the establishment of apostolic administrations rather than dioceses in historically Orthodox territories with significant Catholic populations would meet the pastoral needs of the Catholics and the sensitivities of the Patriarchate of Moscow.

  Precisely the opposite happened, as far as the Patriarchate was concerned.

  That the Russian Orthodox leadership was not consulted in advance about the creation of three apostolic administrations in European Russia, Siberia, and Kazakhstan was
understandable. The Holy See had spent much of the twentieth century disentangling the Church from the necessity of “clearing” such arrangements, and the appointments of bishops, with political and other authorities. Given that history, there was real reluctance to backtrack by seeking the de facto approval of another Christian communion for regularizing Catholic life and providing normal pastoral care for Catholics. Perhaps an exception ought to have been made in this instance—not by letting the Patriarchate of Moscow vet the appointment of bishops as apostolic administrators, but by informing Russian Orthodoxy’s leaders of the Holy See’s concerns and its ecumenical reasoning in considering the possibility of creating apostolic administrations rather than canonically erected dioceses. Given the Patriarchate’s historic entanglement with the Soviet government, though, this could have seemed a step backward toward seeking governmental approval for normal Catholic life. In any event, there was no prior consultation about the idea of apostolic administrations.

  To make matters worse, Metropolitan Kyril of Smolensk, head of the Moscow Patriarchate’s department of “external affairs” (which included ecumenical relations), had come to Rome at the invitation of Cardinal Edward Cassidy, President of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, after the two had met in Australia during the February 1991 general assembly of the World Council of Churches. In late March 1991, Kyril was warmly welcomed in Rome by Pope John Paul II, by Cardinal Angelo Sodano, the Secretary of State, and by other officials of the Holy See. He went back to the Soviet Union enthusiastic about his Roman reception but completely in the dark about the impending establishment of the apostolic administrations. Nothing had been said to him.

  In the weeks between Kyril’s visit and the April 13 announcement of the new apostolic administrations, John Paul II had urged the Secretariat of State and Cardinal Sodano to, as one participant in the discussion recalled, “make sure that the Patriarchate is informed well ahead, before these appointments are announced.” The Pope was clearly concerned that everything possible be done to put the creation of apostolic administrations in the best possible light for the Moscow Patriarchate—these necessary provisions for the pastoral care of Catholics in fact demonstrated Catholicism’s ecumenical commitment. Unfortunately, John Paul’s order to inform the Patriarchate “well ahead” of time was not carried out.

  Archbishop Colasuonno, the nuncio in Moscow, told Cardinal Cassidy later that he had tried to meet with Russian Orthodox Patriarch Aleksy ten days before the April 13 announcement but was not given an appointment. Evidently, neither Colasuonno nor his Roman superiors regarded the issue as urgent enough to keep pressing until Patriarch Aleksy agreed to receive the nuncio. Nor did the Secretariat of State seem to believe that the announcement should be delayed until after the Patriarch had been informed, despite the Pope’s clear concern that Aleksy not be caught by surprise. The Secretary of State, who had been present when the Pope made plain his wish that Aleksy be informed “well ahead” of the announcement of the apostolic administrations and the bishops, did not ensure that his subordinates heeded the Pope’s urgent desire to avoid what Aleksy and his associates might regard as a confrontational fait accompli.40

  The Moscow Patriarchate reacted with fury to the April 13 announcement of the three apostolic administrations and the appointment of bishops to lead them—a reaction intensified by widespread and erroneous reports that the Pope had created new Catholic “dioceses” in Russia and Kazakhstan.41 He hadn’t. But given the fact that the Patriarchate had been caught completely by surprise, precise canonical distinctions were of little consequence. Metropolitan Kyril, responsible for Russian Orthodoxy’s ecumenical relations with Rome, was particularly embarrassed and angered. He had come back from Rome in March praising the reception he had received in the Holy See. Now he felt betrayed.

  That anti-Roman elements in the Patriarchate of Moscow quickly seized this opportunity to magnify their campaign against any rapprochement with what they termed the “first Rome” need not be doubted. Moreover, it seems that no one in the higher leadership of Russian Orthodoxy—the “third Rome,” as it understood itself—shared John Paul II’s intense sense of ecumenical urgency. There is little or no evidence that any Orthodox leader tried to contain the damage done by the announcement of the apostolic administrations before Patriarch Aleksy had been notified. One can also understand the sense of urgency that seems to have motivated the Secretariat of State. In the first quarter of 1991, no one knew how long the thaw in the USSR would last. For the first time in seventy years, the government wasn’t interfering in anything the Catholic Church was doing. Traveling Russian Orthodox officials were still required to report back to the government’s Council on Religious Affairs, so any discussion of the changes with Metropolitan Kyril during his Roman visit would inevitably have involved the Soviet government at secondhand. Therefore, why not get Catholic structures in place while the situation was fluid, in case it would later freeze up again?42

  Yet the considered judgment must be that the creation of apostolic administrations in Russia and Kazakhstan was poorly handled by the Holy See’s diplomats. There may well have been a storm of criticism from the Patriarchate of Moscow no matter how or when the announcement was made, but the Secretariat of State’s failure to carry out the Pope’s instruction about informing the patriarch made an even more vitriolic reaction possible. This, in turn, deflected attention from the Patriarchate’s false charge that the new apostolic administrations were instruments for “proselytizing” Russian Orthodox. The entire affair put severe strains on Roman Catholic–Russian Orthodox ecumenical relations for the next two years, strengthened the position of the Patriarchate of Moscow in the ongoing negotiations over the Ukrainian situation, confirmed the ancient suspicions of both regime-friendly and traditionally anti-Roman Russian Orthodox, and vastly complicated the worldwide Roman Catholic dialogue with the Orthodox Churches. It also gave the Patriarchate of Moscow an excuse for refusing to participate in the special European Synod John Paul had called for the fall of 1991, which he envisioned as a major step toward realizing his vision of a Europe breathing again with two lungs.43

  TENSIONS IN POLAND

  Two months after this controversy erupted, John Paul returned to Poland for the first time since communism’s collapse. The nine-day visit in June 1991 took him to Koszalin, Rzeszów, Przemyśl, Lubaczów, Kielce, Radom, Łomza, Białystok, Olsztyn, Włocławek, Płock, and Warsaw. The crowds were large, but the pilgrimage was generally regarded as the least successful of the Pope’s visits to his native land.

  There seemed to be a disconnection between the people’s expectations and the Pope’s intentions. Poles expected John Paul to share their sense of liberation, but the Pope’s addresses tended to focus on the pitfalls of a freedom detached from moral norms. Although the theme chosen for the visit—the Ten Commandments as the moral basis of a civil society capable of sustaining democracy—touched issues John Paul had begun to develop in Centesimus Annus, the encyclical and its celebration of the free society was barely referred to during the pilgrimage. As a result, what should have been heard as a papal proposal for living freedom nobly was often perceived as scolding and nay-saying. Poles wanted to celebrate their new freedom with the man to whom they attributed a major role in their liberation. The prescient Pope, already focused on the difficulties ahead, was somewhat out of sync with the popular mood.44

  The Polish Church was trying to find its own voice in the new situation and having difficulty doing so. With the forty-two-year state of emergency over, the Church’s hierarchy had had to change, virtually overnight, from being guardians of a fortress to agents of dialogue and evangelization. A Church forged in resistance had to take up the task of democratic culture-formation, in circumstances in which the moral issues were no longer so neatly divided between “us” and “them.” Few Polish bishops and priests had grasped John Paul’s concept of a Church in which the clergy were primarily focused on the formation of consciences and public moral cul
ture, leaving the practical application of Catholic social doctrine to an educated Catholic laity. A Church that had sustained itself through decades of crisis by demanding unity-through-uniformity suddenly found itself exploring the boundaries of unity within legitimate diversity—within the Church itself, and in different proposals for how the Church should address social and political issues. Three days after the visit concluded, John Paul’s successor, Cardinal Macharski, put it well when he said that the Church, no longer the defensor civitatis, the “defender of the city,” had to learn how to be the defensor hominis, the “defender of the human person” in the previously unknown circumstances of a democracy.45

  It was not as if the problems the Pope foresaw didn’t exist. In the newly feisty Polish media and among secular intellectuals, one frequently encountered the idea that democracy meant a suspension of debate over public moral norms—or, as one writer put it, democratic Poland should be “a state with a neutral Weltanschauung [worldview].” This was widely perceived by critical churchmen as one of the first and most noxious imports from the West.46 That idea, in turn, had fueled a raging national debate over abortion, in which neither the official Church nor its opponents had acquitted themselves very well. A permissive abortion law had been promulgated by the Gomułka regime in the mid-1950s as part of its assault on Catholic morality; it was as certain as anything that the Polish Church would press hard for laws protective of the unborn in post-communist Poland. Unlike John Paul, however, the Polish bishops did not frame the abortion issue as a question of the public moral foundations of democracy. Church leaders, by and large, simply instructed their people that abortion was an abomination to be rejected on the authority of the Church. Catholic voices, like Tygodnik Powszechny, that might have been expected to explain John Paul’s teaching—that a freestanding “right” to abortion on demand was incompatible with a democratic society based on the protection of basic human rights and the rule of law—were muted or ineffective. The independent Polish press and Polish secularists, both of whom saw the abortion issue as a matter of personal liberty, raised the specter of an ecclesiastical “black tyranny” replacing the recently jettisoned “red tyranny” of communism. Neither the official Church nor its opponents nor the Solidarity-led government seemed capable of arguing the abortion issue as an inherently public question. Everyone involved debated it as an issue of individual autonomy.