In what sense was the Papacy of John Paul II a success? Leaving aside his personal qualities, did he have the kind of impact that justifies calling him “John Paul the Great”?
Those who wish to answer “no” have one prima facie powerful argument. John Derbyshire, who is no Hitchens-like contemner of the Pontiff (“John Paul II shone like a lighthouse through the fog of fear, doubt, and defeatism that had shrouded the West and its values through the 1970s”), nonetheless avers,
It is therefore sad to reflect that the quarter century of his papacy was a terrible disaster for the Roman Catholic Church. Regular attendance at Mass all over the traditionally Catholic world dropped like a stone all through John Paul II’s papacy. Everywhere in the great Catholic bastions of southern Europe — Austria, Italy, Spain, Portugal — the story is the same. In France, “eldest daughter of the Church,” the only argument is whether regular Mass attendance today is just above, or just below, ten percent. In Ireland — Ireland! — the numbers declined steadily from the 90 percent of 1973 to 60 percent in 1996, since when they have fallen off a cliff, to 48 percent in 2001 and heading south. A hundred years ago the U.S. Church imported priests from Ireland; now Ireland imports them from Nigeria.
This loss of ecclesiastical market share, at least in Europe and America, is undeniable. Mr. Derbyshire thinks, not unreasonably, that it is explained by –
the irresistible appeal of secular hedonism to healthy, busy, well-educated populations. We live, as never before in human history, in a garden of delights, with something new to distract and delight us every day. None of that is enough to turn the heads of those who are truly, constitutionally devout; but not many human beings are, nor ever have been, that committed to their faith. And so the flock wanders away to the rides, the prize booths, and the freak shows.
As a description of the present psychological state of First World denizens, that scenario is rather rose-tinged, but it does reflect the hopes that the 20th Century intelligentsia placed in mankind’s ability to fashion a happy destiny without God. The intelligentsia’s new faith trickled down to the man in the street, who readily took up the pleasing notion that “Let your conscience be your guide” means “If it feels good, do it”.
John Paul did not create intellectual tides that started flowing before his birth and rose toward their crest while he was still a little known cleric in Poland. He did have to bear their onrush when he became the head of an institution traditionally devoted to the opposite principles: to eternity rather than the moment, to moral absolutes rather than relativism, to the culture of life rather than the quest for pleasure. He could have responded in the way that many modernist Christians urged him to: by “updating” the ideas of the Church to conform to those of the anti-Church. Had he chosen that course, more than ten percent of Frenchmen might go to Mass regularly today. The question is, what would the Mass mean to them?
Our Lord told us what he thinks of those who profess His name but disregard his commandments. A congregation of Laodicaeans, however numerous, is, in Christian terms, a failure, and that is the best that ecclesiastical progressives hope for. By contrast, a Church greatly reduced in numbers can be a success, provided that it does not allow itself to contract to an obscurantist, isolationist remnant. The present age is not the first ebb in the history of the Faith, and let us recall that the whole enterprise began with a dozen commonplace Galileans, one of whom was a traitor.
In the past quarter century, Christianity has lost numbers, but it has, if my perceptions are accurate, grown stronger in faith and intellect, to a large extent on account of the efforts and inspiration of John Paul II. Traditional Christians are no longer afraid of historical and scientific inquiry; as knowledge has grown, it has become, as we should have known all along it would be, the ally of faith. As the Orthodox Bishop of Vienna said last week, John Paul was “able to develop a universal humanism based on spiritual values as opposed to the atheist version of humanism”. Thus he “contributed enormously to the rediscovery of faith by many of those who lost it because of liberalism and relativism prevailing in democratic Western societies”.
Humanity is learning that there is nothing permanently satisfying in “the rides, the prize booths, and the freak shows”. The secular “garden of delights, with something new to distract and delight us every day” is filled with confused, frightened, discontented wanderers. If John Paul succeeded in planting a mustard seed therein, “the smallest of all seeds, but when it has grown it is the biggest shrub of all and becomes a tree so that the birds of the air come and shelter in its branches”, then he will indeed be “the Great”.
Comments