This was the meaning of the Pacts of Polishness, and more specifically of the vow of “national servitude to Mary” that Wyszynski organized in the sixties. This was reality for Poles, for Wyszynski, for Wojtyla—political reality, geopolitical reality.
And no wonder! Resourceless, held prisoner by the most organized totalitarian power the world has ever known, cast off and unaided by the only other political powers—in the West—that could have helped her, Poland had successfully confronted that Soviet power: confronted it, struggled with it and finally defeated it, becoming, as Adam Michnik said, the laboratory for the other Soviet satellite nations, none of which had been able to deal with Leninist Marxism except in total submission. The Polish mind, in fact, has had two major coordinates for a very long time: the national power of Russia and the geopolitical power Poles ascribe to Mary. For Poles, the fate and fortune of the world depended on which of these two powers prevailed.
Coming to the papacy, Wojtyla brought that peculiarly Polish orientation. As Pope, he found himself the recipient and consignee of the message of Fatima, which again—but with very specific details—was couched in terms that reproduced the double orientation. Commenting on the Davos mentality, the mentality of the Transnationalists and Internationalists as reflected at that congress of February 1990, John Paul said ironically, “At last, the powers of the West have oriented their minds and energies toward the East—if only now they acknowledged the role of Mary!” Mikhail Gorbachev had ensured that new orientation of Western minds by his geopolitical moves. The plans for the new world order of Western Europe and the United States depended on the evolution within the Soviet orbit.
But the essence and the important details of the Fatima message displayed that same orientation: World peace or world catastrophe was described in terms of Mary and of Russia. The reform or the mortal deficiency of the Roman Catholic institutional organization was also described by the Fatima message in terms of Mary and of Russia. In fact, the message emphasized, successful reform of that institutional organization as well as world peace depended absolutely on the Marian factor.
To John Paul’s mind, this was tantamount to saying that reform of his Roman Catholic institution was impossible outside the Fatima framework of events—as was world peace.
Hence his lament for Europe: Europe in its classical extent, “from the Atlantic to the Urals.” Quite clearly, in the minds of its most ardent exponents at Davos, the Europe of their dreams and projections is not a “Europe of the Faith.” Their new Europe is summed up as the “greater economic space of Europe.” Helmut Kohl at Davos defined its scope and purpose: to achieve what he called the Jeffersonian goal. But no one would ascribe to Thomas Jefferson and his early-American compatriots the interpretation Kohl and his fellow Europeanizers put on those fundamental words “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” Nor would those Europeanizers choose the Jeffersonian interpretation. For they have their own interpretation, and it has no tincture of Christianity in it, not even a breath of the vague deism and skeletal Christianity professed by the Virginia gentleman.
On the lips of moderns such as the builders of Europe, the pursuit of life is the pursuit of a greater GNP and all the goods it can purchase, liberty is the freedom to do what one wishes, happiness is a condition of living protected against poverty, in a clean environment, with adequate medical coverage and access to the labor-saving and pleasure-making products of an ever more sophisticated technology. In principle, Leninist Marxism promises all those things and much more. In practice, democratic capitalism delivers them to hundreds of thousands more people than Leninist Marxism ever did. In this, Leninist Marxism failed utterly.
Within some months, the populations of the Eastern European satellites voted with their feet in favor of those goals of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. No more and no less. To join in the development already far advanced in the Western half of Europe and in the United States. While Americans, even in the late twentieth century, are still trying to make up their minds as to whether “a nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure,” their contemporary Transnationalists and Internationalists have decided that the greatest sociopolitical venture ever devised by man—the new world order—can indeed long endure.
John Paul’s summary judgment about the Grand Design of Transnationalists and Internationalists is perforce negative. The design cannot succeed, according to him, but must and will end in catastrophe. He has two main reasons for this judgment.
The design is built on the presumption that we ourselves are the authors of our destiny. Man is exalted. The God-Man is repudiated; and with him, the idea of man’s fallenness is rejected. Evil is a matter of malfunctioning structures, not in any real way a basic inclination of man. Behind the godless and un-Christian design of Transnationalist and Internationalist there stands man as a Nietzschean figure, a Superman. If it were so, in the age of Superman there would no longer be any reason to believe in Christian morality, individual liberty, and equality before the law. Attachment to civil rights, to the dignity and welfare and political worth of the individual, would become illusory and pointless.
Superman replaces the God-Man, Jesus Christ, Superman as man-god. Culture loses its very heart, which is religion, with its worship of the divine and its observance of God’s laws against human-originated evil. Thereby politics as a function of culture loses its equilibrium because it has lost the source of its human decency. G. K. Chesterton was correct when he asserted that when man ceases to believe in God, most likely man will believe in nothing.
John Paul’s second reason—the more cogent one for him, personally—is drawn from the Fatima message. That message predicts that a catastrophic change will shortly shatter any plans or designs that men may have established. This is the era of the Fatima “or.” Men have abandoned religion. God does not intend to let human affairs go on for a long time in that fashion, because this is his world—he created it for his glory, he made it possible for all men to attain the Heaven of his glory, by sending his only son, Jesus Christ, to expiate the punishment due men for their sins.
This is why John Paul is waiting. God must first intervene, before John Paul’s major ministry to all men can start.
In Papa Wojtyla’s outlook, therefore, the Grand Design of which he is the nominated Servant is the design of divine providence to recall men to the values that derive only from belief, from religion and from divine revelation. His is an unpleasant message and, for the moment, a thankless job. He has to warn his contemporaries of his conviction that human catastrophe on a world scale—according to his information—is impending.
He has to admit that he, like everybody else, is in the dark as to when it will occur, although he does know some of the horrific details of that worldwide catastrophe. He knows also that it will not come without prior warning, but that only those already renewed in heart—and that would probably be a minority—will recognize it for what it is and make preparations for the tribulations that will follow.
He also knows that these will start unexpectedly and be accompanied by overall confusion of minds and darkening of human understanding, and will result in the shattering of any plans for a “greater European space” and the mega-market plans for “greater Europe” and the “Pacific Rim.” It will be the death and entombment of Leninist Marxism and the effective liquidation of the long-centuries-long-war that the forces of this civilized world have waged against the Church Christ founded and the religious belief of that Church. The battle between the Gospel and the anti-Gospel will be over. The other two major contenders in the millennium endgame will be eliminated.
From all the indications he has, John Paul expects the beginning of this Fatima event to start where the millennium endgame started: in the area of Central and Eastern Europe. This aspect of Papa Wojtyla’s mind is steeped in a rich symbolism that has escaped many observers: The advent of a Slavic Pope holding the Petrine Keys of authority. The fated role of Poland, Mary’s dedicated domain and Ro
manist in its vitals, as the point man in the shattering of the Iron Curtain. The emergence of Mikhail Gorbachev from the murderous Gulag of the Leninist-Marxist Party-State—even the apparently coincidental presence of that birthmark on the Soviet president’s forehead, so reminiscent of the Mark of the fratricidal Cain.
All that comes by way of suffering, of hardship, of severe dislocation and destruction in the affairs of men will be but preparation for the plan of divine providence: preparation and the negative side of the Grand Design. About that Grand Design in its positive lines, John Paul knows only that his function will be as its Servant; that his years of preparation as one of the world’s leaders, as a voice and a figure that have received international recognition, will culminate in the apostolic ministrations he must perform in a very different world from the world of the millennium endgame, and among nations that no longer rely on themselves to build on earth a City of Man.
Coda:
The Protocol
of Salvation
34
The Judas Complex
Judas Iscariot will be eternally known as the man who betrayed Jesus Christ to his enemies. In at least twenty languages, his name is a synonym for “traitor.” To think of Judas, or to mention his name, is to evoke the image of the whole-cloth traitor. The traitor prototype. Yet there is no good reason for supposing that when he was originally called by Jesus to be one of his own special intimates—one of the foundational Apostles—Judas was already up to treachery; that he was any less enthusiastically devoted to Jesus, any less worthy of that call, or any less determined to follow Jesus to the end than the eleven others chosen by Jesus at the same time he chose Judas. Nor can we suppose that Jesus withheld from Judas any of the special divine graces he conferred on the others.
Similarly today, when obviously there has been gross betrayal of the Roman Catholic Church on an alarmingly wide scale by bishops, prelates and priests of the Church, there is no good reason for supposing that any particular bishops, prelates, officials or priests guilty of that betrayal started off with any less good intentions or less devotion to the Church than those who have not betrayed their calling. Neither can we suppose that those now engaged in betrayal have been denied the divine graces that are summarily necessary for the worthy discharge of ecclesiastical and ecclesial duties.
Judas must have shared completely in the charism of an Apostle, a chief pastor, thus prefiguring—as did all Twelve Apostles—what we call today the bishops of the Church. Living with Jesus day and night, traveling with him, hearing his words and seeing his actions, collaborating with him in his work, sent out by him with a mandate to preach the kingdom of God, to cure the sick, to exorcise demons, to exercise his authority, to rely on spiritual weapons and supernatural means, Judas cannot have started off as more worldly, more cowardly, less enlightened than the other members of that special group.
Yet Judas, and Judas only, out of that select group schooled by Jesus himself, shattered the group’s unity. He alone did betray Jesus. He alone set himself up as antihero among those twelve men and the few hundred other disciples and followers who, with Jesus, were living participants in the tense drama of salvation in which Jesus as hero played out God’s eternal plan from his birth to the climax in crucifixion—for which Judas was directly responsible—and resurrection, which, in the end, Judas decided not to accept and share. But Judas was no “breakaway.” He did not intend to shatter the unity of the group, or to ruin Jesus and the Twelve. Judas was something classical: the antihero who insisted on implementing his own plan for Jesus and the others (in which, of course, he would play a major and self-fulfilling part). He could, he thought, reconcile Jesus and his enemies. He could, by decent compromise, ensure Jesus’ success in the world by compacting with the world’s leaders.
The same remarks, with due regard to Church development, can be applied to bishops and prelates and their assistant officials in the Church today: They are called to live intimately with Jesus through the fullness of the priesthood that is theirs by their episcopal consecration, to exercise his spiritual authority; and, relying on the power and grace of his Spirit, to be pastors of souls, curing, exorcising, preaching, reconciling; to follow the plan of salvation that Jesus clearly indicated when he established Peter as head of his Church and as his personal representative in the “one, true fold” in which the actual salvation of individual souls can be effectively secured.
But, in a way eerily reminiscent of the error Judas committed, some bishops and prelates and their assistant officials have set themselves up as anti-Church within the Church. They do not want to leave the Church. They are not intending “breakaways.” They do not intend to shatter the unity of the Church. They do not intend to obliterate the Church, but just to make it over to their own plan; it is, by now, trivial in their minds that their plan is irreconcilable with God’s plan as revealed through the present-day successor of Peter and his teaching authority. For after the manner of Judas’ own spiritual myopia, they no longer believe in the Catholic doctrine of the papal magisterium, no more than the Traitor believed any longer that Jesus was divine. They are convinced that they can reconcile that Church and its enemies by “decent compromise,” that they really understand what is going on, and that they can ensure the success of Christ’s Church by compacting with this world’s leaders. But in their devoted creation of the anti-Church within the Church—from the Vatican chancery down to the level of parish life—they have successfully shattered the unity of the Church, done away, in fact, with the once flourishing union of bishops with the Roman Pontiff, and gravely debilitated the entire Roman Catholic institutional organization.
The enormity of this error and its almost boring and repetitive similarity with the error of Judas—in other words, the Judas syndrome of modern Churchmen—becomes very apparent when you examine the Traitor’s behavior. Judas did finally betray Jesus. But it is important to note the “good” intentions with which he started down the crooked road that ended in the Field of Blood, where he died suffocated by the noose around his neck and cruelly killed by the evisceration of his belly.
The personal outline of Judas in the pages of the New Testament is dim on all points—except for his awful treachery of the beloved Lord. Understandably, the writers would not, could not, remark anything good or even interesting about Judas, except his treachery. In the light of Jesus’ resurrection and the subsequent descent of the Holy Spirit on the remaining Apostles, all that mattered in the eyes of the New Testament writers was that gross treachery, and all they could express for the Traitor was utter contempt and abhorrence. There is perhaps no parallel in the New Testament record to that total and merciless condemnation of Judas. “He got the same offer from Jesus as we all did”: Peter must have spat out those syllables with a grating harshness when addressing all Jesus’ followers in the Upper Room at Pentecost. “He was one of us. Yet he guided the mob who laid hands on Jesus. And now he has got what he asked for—a field spattered with his own entrails, and his own special torment in Hellfire.” There is no hint of forgiveness, no trace even of regret. Perhaps this was because Judas had committed the one sin Jesus said was unpardonable, the sin against the Holy Spirit.
This total rejection of Judas has inclined Christians to see him in a bad light from the beginning of his association with Jesus, as a kind of infiltrator admitted by Jesus to the intimacy of his special people, because, so to speak, somebody had to betray the Lord. But in all logic, this cannot have been the true story of Judas. From a divine and a human point of view, Judas must have appeared initially as one of the more promising candidates for leadership in Christ’s future Church. Judas was the only public official of Jesus’ group, in a manner of speaking. He was more trusted than the others; to him Jesus confided the keeping and the management of whatever funds were collected by the group for “out-of-pocket” expenses and, therefore, any and all “business” dealings during their travels.
The facts of life were that a group of hale and hearty you
ng men in their prime, who were not regularly employed gainfully and who were continually on the move, had to have a common “purse” for food, for lodging, for road tolls, for taxation, for incidentals: clothes, charitable contributions, support of their families, repair and maintenance of their fishing equipment. Most of them were fishermen, who retained their equipment right through their association with Jesus until well after the Resurrection.
There is no exaggeration in describing Judas as the only official among the group. In the eyes of the other Apostles also, Judas was considered to hold high office. For they may have appeared as a ragtag group to some of their contemporaries, but we today know that they were destined to found an organization that would absorb the whole known world and create a new thousand-year civilization.
We cannot reasonably doubt that Judas started off with great enthusiasm and devotion to Jesus, and with full trust and confidence in Jesus’ ultimate success. We know that, for the other companions, until well after the Resurrection, success meant a political restoration of the Kingdom of Israel, with the Apostles occupying twelve thrones of jurisdiction and judgment. Judas cannot have thought differently or hoped for less. He and they even squabbled about which of them would be the greatest in authority. Two of them had their mothers buttonhole Jesus and try to secure them two prime positions around the kingly throne they figured Jesus would occupy when he ruled Israel and the world. For of course, Jesus would eventually be King.
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