The New Republic provides a number of essays, collected under the title "After Pope John Paul II." E.J. Dionne writes, in "Papal Paradox," that:
"A sign of contradiction" was a favorite John Paul phrase, and it might be said to define his papacy. In his effect on Roman Catholicism's relationship to the world, his achievement will be judged as liberal. But his impact on the Church he leads has to be seen as conservative. These terms are vexed, and John Paul himself would probably reject them--he'd insist on his own consistency in opposing both the Marxist and capitalist forms of materialism, in arguing that the spiritual is always primary, and in asserting that the Church's central obligation is to doctrinal clarity. But the Pope's version of consistency does not necessarily match that of the world that is judging him. That's the paradox at the heart of his papacy.
He adds:
Centesimus has to rank as one of the most successful papal documents in history. Rather than present a single line that Catholics should pursue in the area of politics and economics, it set the terms of debate among people of goodwill. John Paul ruled out dictatorships and highly centralized command economies. He also opposed capitalism without social safety nets and safeguards. But he left open a broad area for debate and experimentation. The Pope's approach was principled but not ideological. He was certainly egalitarian, but he did not demand absolute equality. He was open to the advantages of markets and to the positive uses of government. You could be on the right, as long as you acknowledged the imperative of lifting up the poor. You could be on the left, as long as you acknowledged the limits of the state and the right of individuals to personal initiative.
Michael Sean Winters writes, in "History Test":
Th[e] core theological belief that philosophic anthropology must be based on the person of Christ has appeared in all of John Paul's public writings. His tireless insistence on the dignity of every human person is rooted here, in the belief that, because Christ became a man, every man must be loved like Christ.
It is difficult to overstate the theological importance of the grace-versus-nature debate--an argument akin to that between the Federalists and the anti-Federalists on the creation of a powerful central government. That is to say, depending on how you resolve this one issue, every other theological issue is affected, altered, colored, changed. . . .
In a society debating how best to shirk governmental commitments made to the elderly while movie executives are paid upward of $100 million in severance, surely John Paul's humanism gets high marks for simple consistency.
That humanism, which once underpinned and shaped the Enlightenment values of Western societies, seems so utterly absent from the spread-eagle capitalism of the West today, in which the market is the sole vehicle for assigning worth and resources. If the good of concrete human persons is not the criterion for social, political, and economic life; if the value of subjective freedom is so predominant as to trump all other values; if the moral life of the human person is consistently evaluated in utilitarian terms, is humanism still even possible? John Paul's consistent solidarity with the poor could not stand in sharper contrast to the predominant cultural ethos of the West.
Andrew Sullivan understands John Paul II primarily as an "actor," and laments:
I'm a Catholic now withdrawn from Communion whose entire adult life has been in Wojtyla's shadow. And, as a homosexual, I watched as the Church refused to grapple with even basic questions and ran, terrified, from its own deep psychosexual dysfunction. "Be not afraid," this Pope counseled us. But he was deeply afraid of the complicated truth about human sexuality and the dark truth about his own Church's crimes. This was a Pope who, above all, knew how to look away. How else do you warmly embrace Yasir Arafat and Tariq Aziz without moral judgment? But people--faithful people--noticed where he couldn't look. And they grieved, even as, in the aftermath of this brittle, showboating papacy, they now hope.
"Brittle, showboating papacy." Whatever. Noam Scheiber also misses the boat, I think. He contends that the Pope was "an intellectual who was hostile to intellectual debate."
Finally, in "Central America," my friend and colleague John (not "James") McGreevy suggest that:
The next Pope and the next generation of American Catholic leaders will be to manage the transition from a Catholic culture to a Catholic creed. Until the 1960s, the faith inherited by American Catholics came from an extraordinarily dense network of Catholic families, schools, parishes, and Catholic associations. This Catholic faith was not an assent to an abstract set of propositions. Instead, it was the result of a shared culture--one that allowed Catholics to recognize that they had been speaking "Catholic" all their lives.
McGreevy states that, for the Church in America to succeed in its evangelizing goals, it will have to "reconcile itself to certain aspects of American culture."
Managing two problems that prevent this sort of reconciliation is crucial. The first is the intertwined knot of gender and ministry. Few women within the institutional Church structure hold decision-making power, and women working in parishes--increasingly important figures in a Church with a rapidly declining number of priests--struggle to obtain the opportunity to perform even basic ministerial tasks. This situation runs against one of the most powerful currents in modern history: the expansion of vocational opportunities for women. The real question is not the high-profile issue of women's ordination, but whether the next Pope will have the courage, unlike John Paul II, to sever some of the links between an ordained male clergy and ecclesiastical power. . . .
The stakes in all this are considerable. Given the moral dilemmas posed by contemporary bioethics, social welfare policy, and military strategy, Catholics might offer a distinctive alternative to the values of the market, an alternative that should be present in the public life of the world's only superpower.
Rick
I thought I'd offer some personal reflections on Pope John Paul the Great. I have three points.
First, I've always been struck by Pope John Paul's evident holiness. This was most clearly expressed by his ability to pray deeply, even in the midst of thousands of people. The Pope certainly had a rich interior life. For the Pope, this seemed to be most fostered by the Rosary and by prayer before the Blessed Sacrament. (See his letter on the Rosary and his last, very moving encyclical on the Eucharist.) Importantly, this prayer was not simply a matter of personal piety. His prayer seemed devoted to forming an intimate relationship with Jesus Christ, who in the words of Gaudium et Spes that the Pope quoted many times, fully reveals man to himself. This prayer life, then, had its fruit in the Pope's following of Christ, particularly in following Christ on the Cross.
Second, I have always been grateful for the Pope's exercise of his teaching function. I attended Catholic schools in the wake of the Council, and there was a lot of confusion about what the Church taught. Perhaps most distressing was that, at least in my experience, the task of forming Catholics in the faith seemed to have been abandoned. The Pope's writings seemed to be devoted to the task of re-presenting to the modern world the entire body of Church teaching. This is perhaps best evidenced by the Catechism. But this is also evident in his encyclicals and other major teaching documents, which systematically articulate the full body of the Church's teaching. I am thinking of the great Trinitarian encyclicals, the 3 encyclicals on the Church's social teaching, the encyclicals on moral theology and the Gospel of Life, the encyclical on Mary and on the Church's missionary role, and the great encyclical on Faith and Reason. Other documents, too, were truly inspiring, and instructive to me and others who had been shortchanged in the Catholic education that was provided to us. Consider the exhortations on the role of the laity, on the family, and on reconciliation and penance. His letters on the family and on the meaning of suffering (a document that he lived out in his last years), and his talks on the theology of the body could not have been more timely. This body of work is astounding and I think it will take us many years to fully appreciate it.
Third, the Pope was very influential to the people who worked on founding Ave Maria School of Law. We were greatly influenced by Ex Corde Ecclesiae, and by three encyclicals--Veritatis Splendor, Evangelium Vitae, and Fides et Ratio. In fact, we took our motto from that last encyclical. All of these documents emphasized the importance of Truth. In order to fully understand human nature and freedom one had to emphasize truth. And, the Pope emphasized, truth was not simply a set of abstract doctrinal propositions. First and foremost, the Truth is a person--Jesus Christ, who is the way, the truth, and the life.
There is, then, a clear link between my first point--the Pope's rich interior life centered on Jesus--and my third point--the need to center our intellectual pursuits on Christ and the Truth He proclaimed.
Richard
Rob Driscoll writes:
"Thank you for posting that article by Thomas Cahill today.
I found it interesting that in the same breadth he poured words of praise upon the modernizing tendencies of the Church “after the regressive policies of Pius IX,” and then laments the pews on Sundays which are “now sparsely populated with gray heads.” Does it not seem odd that as “modernizing” tendencies have taken hold and attacks on traditional Church moral doctrine (such as abortion, birth control, etc) have become more accepted, that attendance at Mass has declined? Even homosexuality can be right even though the Bible says explicitly otherwise, why pay attention to the rest of the Bible? Why attend Mass? Why learn the Church’s teachings? Modernity, and Post-Modernity is akin to Relativism. If modernity attacks the very basis of the Church; that is, the existence of timeless principles, then its no wonder people cease to attend Mass.
Cahill seems to want it both ways. He likes modernization, but does not like the fact that people no longer are as faithful as they once were. Yet he ignores that Catholics, in America at least, were remarkably devout even in the Dark Ages Cahill describes: that is, before the 1960’s. Isn’t it odd to say it is a mere coincidence that as the Church liberalized, the Church also lost influence among the faithful?
One other point: while he rightly praises John Paul II for bringing down communism, he also criticizes him for insisting that the clergy not have a hint of Marxism in it. It seems that Cahill has the old romantic notion of Marxism that the blood of millions of Russians, Chinese, Cambodians, etc. has not washed from his imagination."
Wednesday, April 6, 2005
And, now for something completely different. In an op-ed today, Thomas Cahill, author of "How the Irish Saved Civilization," "Pope John XXIII" and, most recently, "Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea: Why the Greeks Matter," writes:
"John Paul II ... will surely be remembered as one of the few great political figures of our age, a man of physical and moral courage more responsible than any other for bringing down the oppressive, antihuman Communism of Eastern Europe. But he was not a great religious figure. How could he be? He may, in time to come, be credited with destroying his church."
For the full article, click here.
I'm cross-posting this from my personal blog, since this group surely could use a patron.
My friend, radio talk show host, blogger, and Protestant (!) Hugh Hewitt has some ideas on a patron saint for bloggers:
There is, as of yet, no patron saint of blogging. The obvious choice is this man [Ed: i.e., Augustine], but I like this saint as well [Ed: Hugh]. The guide to saints by name is here.
Sorry, Hugh, but the obvious choice is St. John the Apostle who is the only saint whose patronage includes all of the following, among other things: authors; booksellers; compositors; editors; lithographers; printers; publishers; typesetters; writers. Surely bloggers would make a nice fit for that list.
Of course, I suppose you also could make a case for St. Isidore of Seville, whose patronage includes, among other things: computer technicians; computer users; computers; the Internet.
But then there is St. Expeditus (a.k.a., Expedite or Elpidius), whom the Catholic Forum opines is: "Possibly legendary." His official patronage covers only the following: against procrastination, expeditious solutions, merchants, navigators, prompt solutions. Wired magazine, however, reports that "geeks, hackers, repentant slackers, folks who run e-commerce sites and those who rely on brains and sheer luck to survive have all claimed the saint as their own."
