Scap's Reflections on John Paul the Great

As I walked to psychology class in the fall of my freshmen year in college, one of my classmates approached and asked if I had heard about the death of the Pope.  I wondered where this person had been during the past month or so as I patiently explained that it had been over a month since the new Pope, John Paul I, had been elected.  My classmate, of course, was correct…

In CCD my senior year of high school (just months before JPII’s election), we were exploring the topic of Jesus the political revolutionary, as we contrasted his approach to revolution with the approach taken by the Zealots.  My freshmen year of college, I took two courses for credit at our

Catholic

Newman

Center

.  The first course was on morality and one of our texts (the primary text, I believe), which I just pulled off my shelf, is titled “The Morals Game” and is a text devoted to “values clarification.”   The preface to this book put out by Paulist Press says that “abortion and euthanasia, quality of life v. quantity of life [notice no discussion of sanctity of life]” … “are the issues that make the headlines, because it is by these decisions that people stand or fall and games are won or lost … - there are no easy rulebook answers.”  The author says that his “book is not intended to push any particular game” but rather “to enter the spirit of various moral games as sympathetically and even enthusiastically as possible,” helping the student “clarify” his values as he “considers representative alternative positions.”  The other class dealt with human sexuality from a supposedly Christian perspective (and in fairness it might have done this) but the only thing I remember from the class is the explicit video of a naked woman as we learned the mechanics of female stimulation. 

With these sorts of experience providing the foundation for my Catholic intellectual life, John Paul II remained a distant figure in those early years of his pontificate.  (It would be more than two decades, for instance, before I became acquainted with his early Wednesday Catechesis, which we now know as “The Theology of the Body”).  Coming from a strong Democratic Catholic household, I had a more developed sense of social justice rooted in Catholic faith.  And, my parents and pastors also provided the seeds for a good prayer life.  These aspects of JPII’s ministry were, therefore, more readily accessible to me.  But, I didn’t yet have any sense of how they all tied together.  They were branches in search of fertile soil and thirsty for cool water.

During the 80’s, I was in a rush, finishing college in three years, law school, a clerkship, and the big firm life.  Married in ’81, with children arriving in ’82, ’84, ’86, & ’88, I didn’t have (or didn’t take) much time to immerse myself in the writings and teaching of our Pope, although I did make it to a papal mass in

San Antonio

in 1987.

Three events in the early 1990’s drew me closer and closer to the man history will know as John Paul the Great.  First, my wife’s deepening prayer life and my feeble attempts to follow.  In other words, I started taking the call to growth in holiness seriously.  Second, UC Berkeley law professor, Phillip Johnson, taught me the importance of uncovering the philosophical assumptions underpinning any school of thought or line of reasoning.  In other words, I started to see the need to pull all the strands of life together into a coherent whole.  And, third, we moved to

Oklahoma

where most of my friends were wonderful evangelical Protestants who often asked me questions like “why do you worship Mary?” (the quick answer is that we don’t)  In other words, I had to learn my Catholic faith.

All of this led me to John Paul II, and what a rich experience it has been.  From a professional level (regarding the development of Catholic Legal Theory), he has provided me with more than enough material to work with in a career, and more importantly, he is indirectly responsible (I believe) for the expanding community of Catholic legal scholars.  At this precarious point in the development of western civilization, he has provided us with the foundation for society’s renewal, rooted in the dignity of the human person and the person’s vocation as revealed in the mystery of Trinitarian Love (Self-Donation) as witnessed in the person and life of Jesus Christ.

While I am immensely thankful for the intellectual roots planted in my mind by Pope John Paul II, I am most grateful for his example of holiness, his deep and abiding love for God and neighbor, his committed prayer life, his undying sense of hope, his ability and willingness to dialogue with anyone, and his ability to teach absolute truth yet fully love those who had yet to respond to that truth.  One of my favorite John Paul II stories, as told in George Weigel’s biography, “Witness to Hope,” is of the time Bishop Wojtyla called in a priest from an outlying parish for the purposes of reprimanding the young priest.  After the chewing-out, the future JPII asked the priest to come pray with him before the Blessed Sacrament.  After a long, long time (an hour or so) in which the priest was looking at his watch and contemplating the train he had to catch, Wojtyla got up and asked the young priest to hear his (Wojtyla’s) confession.  To me, this one story says it all. 

I was blessed to see him one last time as he waved from his window during Mass on Palm Sunday, less than two weeks before he died.  My head knows it will come in time, but my heart crys “Santo Subito.”  Thank you John Paul for teaching me to "be not afraid."