M.J. Akbar, editor of the Asian Age, an Indian, and a Muslim, recently wrote about John Paul II's legacy.
The Vicar
M.J.Akbar
For the full essay, click
here.
Karol Jozef Wojtyla … became convinced of his destiny not when he became Pope on 16 October 1978 after the sudden death of John Paul I, but after an assassin’s bullet failed to kill him on 13 May 1981.
The strange story goes back to another 13 May, during the First World War. On 13 May 1917, the Virgin Mary … appeared in a vision to three peasant children in a Portuguese village called Fatimah, and told them three things about the future. … The third revelation was considered so volatile that it was kept secret in the archives of the Vatican
. There would be an attempt on the life of a Pope by an atheist, after which the atheist empire would be brought down. …
On 13 May 1981, a Turk called Mehmet Ali Agca, in the pay of the Soviet bloc, fired twice at the Pope in Rome
. A bullet lodged in his body, but he survived. Later, the Pope visited Agca in his prison to forgive him, and heard Agca say, in astonishment, "How is it that I did not kill you?" Pope John Paul II offered the bullet extracted from his body at the shrine of Virgin Mary in Fatimah. He knew who had saved him. He also knew that it was his destiny to make the revelation come true. He had in fact started such a mission much before 1981.
When Karol Wojtyla became Pope, Yuri Andropov, the celebrated chief of the KGB and later head of the Soviet Union
, apparently warned the Politburo that there would be trouble ahead. They did not have to wait long. Within a year of his election he visited Poland
, then still a member of the Communist bloc, and told a million-strong crowd, "You are men. You have dignity. Don’t crawl on your bellies." Now that much more than a decade has passed since the collapse of the Soviet Union
, and we have the virtue of hindsight, those three sentences sound very much like the beginning of the end. …
He was a believer in the classic mould, without private doubt or cynicism. His crusades were against atheism, rather than another faith. He made no secret of his antipathy to Godless communism…
Faith is such a rarity now even among the faithful…
Personally speaking, and without meaning to hurt any sentiment, Pope John Paul’s contribution to the edifice of the international Church that was his parish is less important than his contribution to the idea of faith. The battle between faiths has been superseded by the battle for faith against the spreading triumph of rationalism. … Faith believes that there are limits to man’s knowledge: he can, for instance, understand how he is born, but not why. He must leave the why to God. As the verse from the Quran that is recited during a funeral ("Inna li-llahi wa inna ilay-hi raji’un") puts it, we belong to God, and we return to God. In an age that raises intellect to the power of prophecy and science to the status of a religion, John Paul believed in a faith that could move mountains. He did move one whole range of mountains, when he took on the Soviet empire. He was never ashamed of the tears shed in prayer. A sufi would have understood this. You do not have to agree with Pope John Paul in order to respect him.
For a believer the strange tale of the prophecy of the Holy Mother in the village
of
Fatimah
would not have been strange at all. His sense of history would be deeply imbued with the doctrine of predetermination, the belief that nothing happens except by God’s will. Does that make him "backward" and "pre-modern", a dinosaur from some "pre-enlightenment" age? There are doubtless people who think so. Strangely, the one quality that unbelief does not possess is humility. It needs must condemn the other to contempt. Three centuries ago the Church sent the heretic to the stake; today, the heretic sends the believer into the bear’s pit of ridicule. The behaviour of reason has not been as reasonable as you might expect.
Pope John Paul II believed in miracles. He lived beyond the age of reason.
Tuesday, April 5, 2005
In this week's TIME, in the concluding Essay--this week by James Carroll--we find the following view:
This may be what you think: John Paul II was the conservative Pope.
His pontificate was marked by a resurgent Roman Catholic
traditionalism, setting the church against liberalizing forces of all
kinds. John Paul II is remembered above all for shoring up structures
of the past.
This is wrong. John Paul II boldly presided over the maturing of
political and theological revolutions in Catholicism. Perhaps despite
himself, he was a Pope of change, accomplishing two radical
shifts—one in the church's attitude toward war and the other in its
relationship to the Jewish people. Taken together, those represent
the most significant change in church history, and they lay the
groundwork for future changes that could well go beyond what this
Pope foresaw or even wanted. In each case, John Paul II brought to
completion a movement that was begun by his predecessors John XXIII
and Paul VI, the Popes of the Second Vatican Council.
In the concluding paragraph of the essay, Carroll writes:
At the millennium, John Paul II expressed sorrow for the two historic
crimes of Christianity—the use of coercion in defense of the truth
and the tradition of contempt for the Jewish people. But this Pope
did more than say he was sorry. He put in place new structures of
belief and practice, affirming peace and advancing tolerance,
changing the Roman Catholic Church forever.
To read the whole essay--titled The Pope's True Revolution--click here.
Here, thanks to friend-of-MOJ Paolo Carozza, is a statement by Communion & Liberation, USA, on the Schiavo case:
After 14 days of starvation and dehydration, the State of Florida
was finally successful in its quest to kill Terri Schiavo. The course of events leading up to her death has alarmed many Americans, including us.
Much could be said regarding Terri’s plight and what it reveals about our society; we will limit ourselves to the issues that seem most pressing to us.
Firstly, if we understand human reason to be the only measure of reality, then even the meaning and value of human life are subject to those partial measures reason uses to calculate (in this case the measure was “quality”).
Secondly, this understanding places every person’s life beneath the dominion of the state, which becomes reason’s greatest tool of power.
Thirdly, in setting itself up as arbiter of the value of human life, reason betrays itself, for all of reality—and particularly life!—points reason to a Mystery beyond its capability to grasp or circumscribe.
Fourthly, this betrayal incarnates itself in human experience as the loss of freedom. The State of Florida
impeded its citizens from freely accepting the burden of Terri’s life, health and welfare. In other words, the State of Florida
blocked every possibility of the free exercise of charity.
This last observation does not completely surprise us—for how can reason measure love?—but it makes us begin to worry about what living in a “free” country is coming to mean.
Communion and Liberation
,
USA
Rick
During the coming days and weeks, Mirror of Justice will be hosting an "online symposium" dealing with the jurisprudential legacy of Pope John Paul II. We have invited dozens of prominent scholars to contribute short reflections on this topic. And, of course, our regular MOJ bloggers will be posting contributions of their own. Stay tuned . . .
Rick
Yesterday, as I drove from Norman through Oklahoma City to Edmond (about 30 miles), I was awestruck by the dozens of flags at half staff. If it is possible to be both humbled and proud at the same moment and for the same reason, I was as I gazed at those flags lowered at government buildings in a secular state and car dealerships and banks in a state overwhelmingly populated by Protestants, all in honor of John Paul the Great.
[Thought that MOJ readers would be interested in this piece, the first part of which is excerpted below. For the entire piece, click here. From Books and Culture: A Christian Review.]
The Scandal of the Evangelical Conscience
Why don't Christians live what they preach?
By Ronald J. Sider
Once upon a time there was a great religion
that over the centuries had spread all over the world. But in those
lands where it had existed for the longest time, its adherents slowly
grew complacent, lukewarm, and skeptical. Indeed, many of the leaders
of its oldest groups even publicly rejected some of the religion's most
basic beliefs.
In response, a renewal movement emerged,
passionately championing the historic claims of the old religion and
eagerly inviting unbelievers everywhere to embrace the ancient faith.
Rejecting the skepticism of leaders who no longer believed in a God who
works miracles, members of the renewal movement vigorously argued that
their God not only had performed miraculous deeds in the past but still
miraculously transforms all who believe. Indeed, a radical, miraculous
"new birth" that began a lifetime of sweeping moral renewal and
transformation was at the center of their preaching. Over time, the
renewal movement flourished to the point of becoming one of the most
influential wings of the whole religion.
Not surprisingly, the movement's numbers translated
into political influence. And the renewal movement was so confident of
its beliefs and claims that it persuaded the nation's top political
leader to have the government work more closely with religious social
service organizations to solve the nation's horrendous social problems.
Members of the renewal movement knew that miraculous moral
transformation of character frequently happened when broken persons
embraced the great religion. They also lobbied politicians to
strengthen the traditional definition of marriage because their ancient
texts taught that a lifelong covenant between a man and a woman was at
the center of the Creator's design for the family.
Then the pollsters started conducting scientific
polls of the general population. In spite of the renewal movement's
proud claims to miraculous transformation, the polls showed that
members of the movement divorced their spouses just as often as their
secular neighbors. They beat their wives as often as their neighbors.
They were almost as materialistic and even more racist than their pagan
friends. The hard-core skeptics smiled in cynical amusement at this
blatant hypocrisy. The general population was puzzled and disgusted.
Many of the renewal movement's leaders simply stepped up the tempo of
their now enormously successful, highly sophisticated promotional
programs. Others wept.
This, alas, is roughly the situation of Western or at least American evangelicalism today.
[Again, for the entire piece, click here.]
Monday, April 4, 2005
During the past quarter-century, powerful, thoughtful, and eloquent dissertations – by such as Richard John Neuhuas, Stephen Carter, and the Mirror of Justice’s own Michael John Perry – have affirmed the proper place and essential role of religious voices in the public square. They thereby enriched intellectual discourse on subjects of public moment. Over that same quarter-century, Pope John Paul II has been the model case example for the religious witness in public life, leaving a broad and meaningful legacy of social action with his catalytic role in bringing about the fall of communism, his fundamental and radical reminder of the innate dignity of each human person, his simultaneously reproachful and hopeful call to western societies to abandon the Culture of Death and build a Culture of Life, his heart for the poor and disenfranchised, and his words of peace in a troubled world.
Still, more work obviously remains to be done, as secularist societies and institutions continue to be uncomfortable with and insistent upon diminishing the religious element in public life. After the death of John Paul II, United Nations General Secretary Kofi Annan said: “Quite apart from his role as spiritual guide to more than a billion men, women and children, he was a tireless advocate of peace, a true pioneer in interfaith dialogue and a strong force for critical self-evaluation by the church itself.” No, that’s exactly backwards. Pope John Paul II engaged the world, and provoked the world in turn to engage with the Church and its teachings, not “quite apart from his role as spiritual guide,” but quite precisely because of it. John Paul II, the vicar of Christ and heir to Peter in the apostolic succession, and John Paul II, the social and political activist, were always and inextricably one and the same.
Greg Sisk
