Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher and Karol Wojtyla are three names that historians of the 20th Century will inevitably link. Among them they accomplished the amazing feat of turning the trajectory of Western civilization. It is not certain that the next century will be one of free men, free markets and spiritual rebirth; it is certain that all of those were dim prospects before the Great Triumvirate began their work.
Of the three, Fr. Wojtyla, Pope John Paul II, Patriarch of Rome, undertook the greatest task. Though President Reagan and Lady Thatcher promoted causes congruent with Christianity, their activity was primarily secular. John Paul struggled in the realm of faith, against the tides of modernism that seemed destined, just a quarter century ago, to sweep away the traditions of the Roman Catholic Church and leave behind bare, ruined choirs, among which a minimalist religiosity would play the tune for a this-worldly socialist libretto.
It isn’t for a non-Roman to pass judgement on the internal state of the See of Rome and its dependencies, but no great discernment is required to recognize that the Second Vatican Council, in the course of making vital pastoral reforms, moved so swiftly that it gave the impression that essential doctrines were as malleable as external customs. The upshot was a time of troubles, during which it certainly appeared that the Roman Church would soon be as modernist, save for vestigial cassocks, statues and incense, as the most “advanced” branches of Protestantism. My traditionalist Roman Catholic friends in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s had the air of soldiers in a beaten army, who hoped to endure as prisoners of war. They nicknamed the Pope “Paul the Sad”, a fitting sobriquet for the shepherd of a bewildered flock.
John Paul II stood steadfastly against that zeitgeist. If he did not succeed in dispelling it from every crevice of the ecclesia, he did reverse the balance of forces. Today it is the modernists who are demoralized and defensive; the stridency of their denunciations of the Pontiff’s “reactionary” tendencies is sign enough of that. The progressive periti and their the dreary secular mentalité look quainter by the year.
In the eyes of Orthodox Christians, John Paul is a particularly significant figure. Had the Roman Church remained on its previous course, Orthodoxy would have been left as the last major traditionalist bastion in a sea of semi-Christianity. We have been promised that the gates of Hell shall never prevail; still, it is a relief not to be alone and abandoned. While the current state of affairs in Christendom is not as good as the unblemished communion for which we all pray, it is far more satisfactory than what might have been. It is one thing to debate with Roman theologians about the filioque, another to confront periti who harbor doubts about the Trinity.
Throughout his reign, John Paul labored for improved relations, and eventual unity, between his jurisdiction and the Orthodox Church. He did not, needless to say, throw over a thousand years of Latin theology in an instant, but he identified what is essential to reunion between East and West. As he said in his Easter address to the Archbishop of Athens four years ago:
I wish first of all to express to you the affection and regard of the Church of Rome. Together we share the apostolic faith in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior; we have in common the apostolic heritage and the sacramental bond of Baptism; and therefore we are all members of God’s family, called to serve the one Lord and to proclaim his Gospel to the world. The Second Vatican Council called on Catholics to regard the members of the other Churches “as brothers and sisters in the Lord” (Unitatis Redintegratio, 3), and this supernatural bond of brotherhood between the Church of Rome and the Church of Greece is strong andabiding. . . .
At this meeting, I also wish to assure Your Beatitude that the Church of Rome looks with unaffected admiration to the Orthodox Church of Greece for the way in which she has preserved her heritage of faith and Christian life. The name of Greece resounds wherever the Gospel is preached. The names of her cities are known to Christians everywhere from the reading of the Acts of the Apostles and the Letters of Saint Paul. From the Apostolic era until now, the Orthodox Church of Greece has been a rich source from which the Church of the West too has drawn for her liturgy, spirituality and jurisprudence (cf. Unitatis Redintegratio, 14). A patrimony of the whole Church are the Fathers, privileged interpreters of the apostolic tradition, and the Councils, whose teachings are a binding element of all Christian faith. The universal Church can never forget what Greek Christianity has given her, nor cease to give thanks for the enduring influence of the Greek tradition.
The Second Vatican Council stressed to Catholics the Orthodox love of the liturgy, through which the faithful “enter into communion with the Most Holy Trinity and become sharers in the divine nature” (Unitatis Redintegratio,15). In offering liturgical worship pleasing to God through the centuries, in preaching the Gospel even in dark and difficult times, in presenting an unfailing didaskalia, inspired by the Scriptures and the great Tradition of the Church, the Orthodox Church of Greece has brought forth a host of saints who intercede for all God’s People before the Throne of Grace. In the saints we see the ecumenism of holiness which, with God’s help, will eventually draw us into full communion, which is neither absorption nor fusion but a meeting in truth and love (cf. Slavorum Apostoli, 27).
I have little doubt that, within the lifetime of most men now living, Karol Wojtyla will be officially recognized as a saint by the Roman Catholic Church. In the eyes of God, I am confident, he is one already. May his memory be eternal!
Update (4/5/05): The Daily Telegraph reports that L’Osservatore Romano writers and other Roman Catholic spokesmen have begun referring to the late Pope as “John Paul the Great”, putting him in a category with only two of his predecessors, Leo the Great (440-461) and Gregory the Great (590-604).
There hasn’t been a generally recognized “Great”, religious or secular, since Frederick II of Prussia. It isn’t an appellation that seems suitable to extraordinary democratic leaders like George Washington, William Pitt fils, Abraham Lincoln, Winston Churchill, Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. The Papacy, though, is a less modern institution, and we really shouldn’t give future historians the impression that “Great”-ness ended with a bellicose German.
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