The Church, Civil Society, and the "Defeat[ of] Communism"

As Anne Applebaum (author of the amazing book, "Gulag:  A History") writes, in today's Washington Post, it is common (and, in my view, accurate) to say that Pope John Paul II is partly, if not largely, responsible for the defeat of communism in the West and of Soviet hegemony in Europe.  Applebaum correctly emphasizes, though, the need to appreciate precisely how the Pope helped bring about this result:

In essence, the pope made two contributions to the defeat of totalitarian communism, a system in which the state claimed ownership of all or most physical property -- factories, farms, houses -- and also held a monopoly on intellectual life. No one was allowed to own a private business, in other words, and no one was allowed to express belief in any philosophy besides Marxism. The church, first in Poland and then elsewhere, broke these two monopolies, offering people a safe place to meet and intellectually offering them an alternative way of thinking about the world. . . .

[I]n helping to create what we now call "civil society," [priests in communist Poland] were following the example of the pope who, as a young man in Nazi-occupied Poland, secretly studied for the priesthood and also founded an underground theater.

Odd though it sounds, the Polish church's "alternative thinking" wasn't an entirely religious phenomenon either. Marxism, as it was practiced in Eastern Europe, was a cult of progress. We are destroying the past in order to build the future, the communist leaders explained: We are razing the buildings, eradicating the traditions and collectivizing the land to make a new kind of society and to shape a new kind of citizen. But when the pope came to Poland, he talked not just of God but also of history. During his trips, he commemorated the 1,000th anniversary of the death of Saint Adalbert, the 600th anniversary of Poland's oldest university or the 40th anniversary of the Warsaw ghetto uprising. I once heard him speak at length on the life of Sister Kinga, a 13th-century nun. This was deliberate. "Fidelity to roots does not mean a mechanical copying of the patterns of the past," he said in one of his Polish speeches: "Fidelity to roots is always creative, ready to descend into the depths, open to new challenges."

I think Applebaum's suggestions here are deeply important, and deserve exploration and exposition.  Sometimes, I hear people talk about the Pope's liberating work in terms of secret meetings, back-door diplomatic moves, etc.  There was, I gather, some of that.  But it was the Pope's arguments -- about history, culture, freedom, the state, and the person -- that were most influential, along with his efforts to create the civic space within which the Polish people could learn, talk, and debate.  The state, before the fall of communism, purported to be, and to supplant, civil society and culture.  The Pope said no, and provided an alternative.

Rick