Witness to Hope

by George Weigel

  John Paul II has most certainly not micromanaged the Roman Curia. He was elected as an outsider to the world of the Church’s central bureaucracy. He has conducted his papal office as an outsider to this world and its assumptions about “the way we do things here.” And he will die as an outsider to the papal model favored by many curial veterans. This deliberate decision to govern as an outsider will strike many as a great gift to the Church and the world. The Pope’s relative lack of attention to managing his bureaucracy—at least as measured by the practice of his predecessor, Paul VI—has created the time and space in which to conduct an evangelical papacy of great intellectual creativity and public impact. The price that has been paid for this achievement is that John Paul will leave behind him a central administrative apparatus in which a minority of the personnel have internalized the dynamic teaching of his pontificate and its authoritative interpretation of Vatican II. That among the minority are some of the key leaders of the Curia is also true. The fact remains, though, that John Paul II has not invested significant, sustained energy in ensuring that his vision of an evangelically assertive, culture-forming Church of disciples is understood and shared throughout the various levels of the Roman bureaucracy.

  On the other hand, the restorationist critics must, or should, concede that no one man can do everything, and that John Paul’s choice to conduct a dramatically different kind of papacy was intentional and serious, rather than a reflection of personal weakness. The restorationist critique, like the conventional critique, also has to contend with certain facts that have been established by this pontificate. Primary among them are the unavoidable reference points that John Paul II has put in place for twenty-first-century Catholicism.

  Redemptor Hominis has committed the Church to the steady development of a Christian humanism for the third millennium. Redemptoris Missio has made it clear that the Church of the future, living its evangelical mission in the world, will be a Church that proposes rather than imposes. The Catechism of the Catholic Church has specified in detail what the content of that proposal is. Veritatis Splendor has set the framework for the authentic development of Catholic moral theology and its address to the human quest for freedom. Centesimus Annus (amplified by Veritatis Splendor and Evangelium Vitae) provides a model of the free, prosperous, and virtuous society that is far more carefully thought through than many other visions of public life. Ut Unum Sint has made Vatican II’s commitment to ecumenism irreversible. Christifideles Laici and the theology of the priesthood in Pastores Dabo Vobis make it far more likely that the Church of the future will come to grips with the twin dangers of a clericalized laity and a laicized ordained ministry. Mulieris Dignitatem and the Letter to Women have set the course for the Church’s engagement with the women’s movement of the twenty-first century. The Pope’s theology of the body has offered the first compelling papal response to the sexual revolution. These reference points will remain in place long after the pontificate of John Paul II. They cannot be avoided. They are, now, part of the living tradition of Catholicism.

  The restorationist critics argue that John Paul’s episcopal appointments have been, in general, weak. No doubt there have been mistakes made in the appointment of bishops, as there are in any pontificate. Given the available personnel, however, there are limits to what a Pope can do in this regard. An overall judgment on this crucial aspect of the pontificate must take account of bold, unconventional appointments that would have been unlikely under a more bureaucratically minded and “kingly” Pope: Carlo Maria Martini in Milan, Jean-Marie Lustiger in Paris, John O’Connor in New York, Giacomo Biffi in Bologna, Francis George in Chicago, Józef Życiński in Lublin, Norberto Rivera Carrera in Mexico City, and Miloslav Vlk in Prague are eight of the more prominent examples. Such nominations, it should also be said, would have been virtually impossible under the more “democratic” model of choosing bishops favored by proponents of the conventional critique of John Paul II.

  Karol Wojtyła’s personal experience of the Polish Episcopal Conference may have given him a certain romantic view of these institutions—an instance where the conventional critique of the Pope’s Polishness (shared, in this case, by restorationists) has some merit. Even here, though, the facts do not coincide with the alleged “authoritarian” and “centralizing” trends the conventional critique deplores and the restorationists would welcome. John Paul II has rarely intervened in the work of national bishops’ conferences—and then only when a conference has shown itself incapable of rectifying a situation on its own. In doing so, the Pope has made clear that he is exercising the traditional papal sollicitudo omnium ecclesiarum [the care for all the Churches], not acting as a chief executive officer disciplining refractory or unproductive branch managers.

  Similarly, the Pope’s commitment to the Synod of Bishops as an authentic expression of Vatican II has led him to sanction what some would regard as a less-than-satisfactory Synod process and to invest thousands of hours of his own time in listening to Synod interventions that have not been of uniformly high quality. The critics must recognize that the Pope himself is aware of these defects and is convinced, as he once put it, that “what happens to and among the bishops during the Synod can be more important” than the immediate, concrete results.12 This is not to suggest that the process couldn’t be improved, but it does indicate a deliberate strategy on the Pope’s part, not a diffident acquiescence to the status quo.13

  As for the charge that John Paul has failed to reform any major religious order—a charge embodied in what restorationists perceive as the sadly failed Jesuit intervention of 1981–1983—this, too, can be understood as part of a conscious strategy. One can question the wisdom of the strategy, but John Paul has chosen to nurture what is healthy and growing among religious orders, even if that will take decades and centuries to flourish, rather than to divide the Church further by intervening massively in the internal affairs of religious communities. The Pope’s personal influence in attracting men and women to existing religious orders will also have its effects in older religious communities over time, as will his vigorous support of new movements, communities, and orders, in which he recognizes the work of the same spirit (and Spirit) that gave birth to religious orders in the past.

  Reforming the liturgy has not been a priority for John Paul II because, as the Pope himself reports, his own experience of the post–Vatican II liturgical renewal has been very positive, both in Poland and in Rome.14 One may also assume that the relative lack of attention to this question also reflects the fact that the Church’s bishops have not pressed this on the Pope as a major concern.15 The numerous movements aimed at “reforming the reform” of the liturgy that have been launched in recent years suggest, however, that this may well be an issue for the next pontificate.

  A Crucial Theological Point

  The Pope’s method of governance was once described in these terms by a close collaborator: “He has a very deep respect of persons. He is patient, waiting with some situations until the moment comes when nobody feels offended. People mistake his respect for persons as weakness. It isn’t. He also respects competence. When he gives a responsibility to an office, a congregation, or an individual, he lets them do it. This doesn’t mean he is weak. He trusts his collaborators, and he is not a worrier. He is neither afraid of making a decision nor does he force a decision if the situation is not mature.”16 That trust in collaborators can, as we have seen, result in the Pope’s plans being frustrated at times. Still, even his critics concede that if a “good manager” is someone who sets priorities and, all in all, gets them accomplished, John Paul II has been a good manager.17

  In a 1994 letter to a Polish priest, John Paul mused that more than a few Polish churchmen disapproved of the social doctrine in Centesimus Annus and concluded with a papal shrug: “But what can we do?”18 What can a Pope do—if, that is, the Pope is committed to dialogue, to proposing rather than imposing? What he can do, of course, is what John Paul has done: keep proposing, keep making
arguments, keep the seminar going until, as Cardinal Jozef Tomko put it, the situation “matures.” That has been Karol Wojtyła’s method of leadership throughout his life. In judging it, the reader should recognize that it is based on a profound theological conviction.

  The Italian philosopher Rocco Buttiglione once put that conviction in these terms: “For John Paul, the ideal is the martyr, the witness, a life coinciding with the truth. That is how he understands his pontifical service. That is what he wrote in the poem ‘Stanisław’: ‘The word did not convert, blood will convert.’ He always prefers to be offended than to offend. [On the other hand] no offense could bring him to accept as true what he considers to be false….The center of it all,” Buttiglione concluded, “is the idea of the person: the rights of truth and the rights of the person must be reconciled. These rights can enter into an opposition: the person can make the decision to struggle against truth. Then what can we do? Can we impose truth by force? The way of Jesus Christ was to give witness to truth, not through the blood of the offenders or the sinners, but through his own.”19

  That conviction is the foundation of John Paul II’s method of leadership through witness and persuasion.

  DIFFICULTIES AND IMPOSSIBILITIES

  Beyond the conventional and restorationist critiques, there have been things on which history has not been willing to yield, even to so relentless a proposer as Pope John Paul II.

  John Paul’s major investment in ecumenism has yielded rather modest concrete accomplishments. The willingness of some World Council of Church leaders to abandon the classic ecumenical quest for unity-through-doctrinal-agreement and the broader trend this represents in the WCC’s Protestant members has made advances in healing the western Christian fracture of the sixteenth century more difficult. So have the Anglican Communion’s internal disagreements over how, or even whether, Anglican Churches are apostolically constituted—the crucial issue in the Anglican decision to admit women to the ordained ministry. The difficulties in concluding the Lutheran–Roman Catholic dialogue on justification suggest that even the most theologically sophisticated ecumenical conversation faces major obstacles in dealing with the accumulated heritage of a half-millennium of division.

  Few Orthodox leaders have responded generously or imaginatively to John Paul’s great hope, to heal the breach of the second millennium between Rome and the Christian East before the beginning of the third millennium. Here, John Paul II’s prophetic sense of urgency may have run ahead of historic possibilities. Ancient Orthodox animosities over the “Uniates,” Orthodox suspicion of change, Orthodoxy’s historic entanglements with state power, and Orthodoxy’s difficulties in coming to grips with its performance under communism have combined to make the Catholic-Orthodox dialogue far more complex in the 1990s, pushing ecclesial reunion “around the altar of concelebration” (as the Pope once put it) into a seemingly distant future. This may well rank as the single greatest disappointment of John Paul’s pontificate. But the Pope may also have laid the foundation for a reconciliation he would not live to see.

  At the same time, one should note that the fifth century Christological controversies that divided Roman Catholicism from the small Oriental Orthodox Churches have all been resolved, explicitly or implicitly, during John Paul’s pontificate. Of considerable consequence for the future, John Paul’s vigorous defense of the right-to-life and his vibrant public witness to Christian truth have helped strengthen the Church’s dialogue with evangelical Protestants, the rapidly growing sector of world Protestantism in Latin America, eastern Europe, Africa, and Asia. One veteran of Catholic ecumenism described the 1996 visit to the Pope by Dr. Nilson Fanini, President of the World Baptist Fellowship, as evidence of “unbelievable” change on this front.20 The independent American theological initiative, “Evangelicals and Catholics Together,” has developed a joint statement of commitment to public moral renewal and a joint statement of belief about the meaning of salvation, both of which would have been difficult to imagine without the ecumenical witness of John Paul II.21

  John Paul’s hopes for the future of interreligious dialogue have also run up against considerable historical barriers.

  The Pope’s reconfiguration of Catholic relations with Judaism is a solid accomplishment. His 1986 visit to the Synagogue of Rome and the 1992 Fundamental Agreement between the Holy See and the State of Israel are historic landmarks in Catholic-Jewish relations. Because of these advances, which build on the achievement of Vatican II, Catholics and Jews are now primed to reopen the theological conversation as they have not done since about A.D. 70. The question remains whether there is sufficient interest in such a conversation among practicing, religiously committed Jews. The controversy that broke out, once again, during the October 1998 canonization of Edith Stein suggested that a positive answer to that question could not be taken for granted.

  The Pope’s 1985 meeting with Muslim youth at Casablanca was a major event in thirteen centuries of Catholic-Islamic relations. As John Paul suggested on that occasion, Catholics and Muslims can make common cause on certain moral issues. Real progress in the international Catholic-Muslim dialogue hits a barrier of large proportions, however, with the issue of religious freedom, which for John Paul II has always been the crucial issue in the Church’s relations with civil authority. At the beginning of the third millennium, there were 2 billion Christians and 1 billion Muslims in the world, with Catholicism and Islam both claiming about a billion adherents. With evangelical Protestantism, Catholicism and Islam are the most assertive, culture-forming religious communities in the world. Whether the dialogue that John Paul has tried to foster can help Islam develop a Qu’ran-based theory of religious freedom is a large question with immense implications for the twenty-first century. In the short term, attempts to move toward such a dialogue have been seriously impeded by Islamic persecution of Christians in Africa, the Middle East, southwest Asia, and southeast Asia.

  John Paul encountered a host of difficulties in his efforts to open a line of dialogue with the rulers of the People’s Republic of China. Public requests and private initiatives alike were ignored or rebuffed for years. Religious leaders attract followers in Asia when those leaders are witnesses, according to Philippine Archbishop Oscar Cruz, and the Pope’s witness in and to Asia has created new openings for the Church in the area of Christianity’s great missionary failure.22 Perhaps that is one reason that the leaders of the PRC were reluctant for so long to deal with John Paul II—they know that a vibrant Church and totalitarian politics cannot coexist indefinitely. However their reasoning may run, fifteen years of rebuffs to the Pope’s request for a new dialogue must rank as one of the serious frustrations of the pontificate.

  As for democracies old and new, it remains an open question how seriously John Paul’s vision of the free, virtuous, and prosperous society has been engaged in Europe or in the Americas. In that sense, it is difficult to make the case that the Pope has made as measurable an impact on the world-after-communism as he did on the world he faced in October 1978. Still, the intellectual framework of a Catholic approach to the social, economic, and political life of free societies has been put into place. As the cultural contradictions of late modernity mount, particularly under the impact of the revolution in biotechnology, a proposal for how to live freedom-for-excellence in public life will be available—if the people of the Catholic Church and their religious leaders internalize it, and have the faith to act on it.

  The pontificate’s success in strengthening the Church’s diplomatic position around the world has not been matched by a parallel development in the Holy See’s approach to international institutions and its address to international issues and crises after the collapse of communism. A Church that has vigorously challenged the corruptions of national governments has tended to take a mild public stance toward the corruptions and incapacities of the United Nations and its affiliated agencies—except when the UN system engages in an assault on human rights, as at the Cairo World Population Confe
rence. Papal and Holy See human rights rhetoric continues to reinforce the UN-sanctioned pattern of describing virtually every desirable human good as a “human right,” a practice that some Catholic thinkers say confuses the core rights essential to human dignity. John Paul’s papacy has not clarified the moral criteria for the legitimate use of armed force in the defense of those basic rights, nor have the Pope or the Holy See helped develop a morally and politically defensible approach to “humanitarian intervention,” despite describing such interventions as imperative in certain circumstances. The foundation for a development of the Catholic Church’s thinking about the international public life of the twenty-first century has been laid by the “post-Constantinian” pontificate of John Paul II, but others will have to build a sturdy structure of moral and political analysis on that foundation.

  THE SUCCESSION

  Speculation about John Paul II’s successor intensified from 1994 on. Such speculation is natural, although it usually tells one more about the speculator than about the future. The Pope himself set the formal framework for electing his successor in the 1996 apostolic constitution, Universi Dominici Gregis. Beyond that framework, and without engaging in idle surmises about individual candidates, certain realities bearing on the next papal succession were reasonably clear at John Paul’s twentieth anniversary, even as it seemed ever more likely that the Pope would lead the Church through the Great Jubilee of 2000 and fulfill what he believes to be the mission given him in 1978.