Mirror of Justice

A blog dedicated to the development of Catholic legal theory.
Affiliated with the Program on Church, State & Society at Notre Dame Law School.

Thursday, April 7, 2005

Pope John Paul the Great: Personal Reflections

By Richard Myers

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

Text of the Pope's Last Will and Testament

By Michael Perry

Click here.

A Reader's Analysis of Cahill

By Michael Scaperlanda

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

An Angry Thomas Cahill on John Paul II

By Michael Scaperlanda

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.

Patron Saint of Blogging

By Steve Bainbridge

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."

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

By Rick Garnett

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

John Paul II and Evangelical Christianity

By Thomas Berg

Thanks to Mark, Rick, and all the other MOJers for welcoming me onto the blog, especially as a "separated brother."  I am mostly interested in reading others' thoughts about Pope John Paul II, but let me offer one modest contribution on an issue of particular interest to me, as a Protestant who studies how cultural shifts have affected law and public life.  One of the most important changes in American Christianity in the past generation has been the growing cooperation and respect between Catholics and evangelical Protestants.  Evangelicals were once the group most suspicious of Catholics -- most suspicious, for example, of Al Smith and John Kennedy as presidential nominees.  But now they more and more read books by Catholic writers, cooperate with Catholics on moral-political issues, and regard at least many of their Catholic brethren as authentic, not just nominal, Christians -- that is, as believers with a "personal relationship with God."  The increased openness goes the other way too, from Catholics to evangelicals.  (I wish that the interest of evangelicals would extend more to aspects of Catholic social thought that challenge some modern "conservative" positions on economics, but that's another subject....)

My main point is to suggest the powerful role that John Paul II played in these changes.  Evangelicals developed a considerable respect for him that did much to increase their respect for the Church and for Catholic life in general.  (Think of the flags at half staff that Michael S. reports throughout Protestant Oklahoma.)  One obvious factor was the Pope's leadership on social and moral issues important to evangelicals:  how he spoke against communism and put opposition to abortion and euthanasia in the framework of the Culture of Life.  Evangelicals, with their emphasis on "scripture alone," have a real need for intellectual frameworks like this that emerge from the Church's tradition of moral reasoning.

But a second factor in the Pope's appeal, I think, is that he reflected some fundamentally "evangelical" qualities, the parts of the Christian faith that evangelicals treat as central.  One Mennonite writer, for example, described the appeal of the Pope's "personal witness":  "John Paul showed us it was possible to be committed to the sacraments and the institutional church, and the same time to be committed to personal conversion and the Scriptures in the way that evangelical Christians have always been."  During the Pope's final hours last  weekend, I was in Chicago for family reasons and had occasion to talk with many evangelical friends of my parents and family.  Several of them emphasized that they could tell from the Pope's life and statements that he had a deep "personal relationship with God" in Christ.  I imagine that evangelicals are saying this far more of John Paul II than of any other Catholic figure in modern times.

It was, of course, a wildly inaccurate stereotype for evangelicals to suggest that Catholics as a rule didn't have a personal relationship with God (as it is also an inaccurate stereotype to say that evangelicals never do any hard thinking about Christian faith but merely read the Bible mechanistically).  There is obviously a rich Catholic history of personal conversion and personal spirituality.  Nevertheless, Catholicism and evangelicalism each have their distinctive strengths and their distinctive risks; and an institutional, sacramental church runs the risk of overlooking the personal aspects of Christian faith.  John Paul II both proclaimed and exemplified a vibrant personal faith.  He both called Catholic laypeople to personal faith and dispelled the stereotype that Catholics did not have such faith.  I believe that this, as well as his stands on moral and social issues, attracted evangelical Protestants to him.

As I remember, George Weigel's biography also refers to John Paul II as an "evangelical" Pope because of the way he proclaimed the Christian gospel in all corners of life -- taking it physically to all parts of the world in his travels, and applying it to so many areas of life in his writings.  The news reports this weekend mentioned the Pope's statement that he had wanted to follow the model of St. Paul as well as St. Peter -- that is, to act as a missionary to the world as well as a shepherd to the flock.  He surely did.

Evangelicals and John Paul II

By Rob Vischer

Timothy George, dean of Beeson Divinity School, offers an interesting perspective on Pope John Paul II's legacy in evangelical circles, asserting that "the Pope gave evangelicals the moral impetus we didn't have."

Rob

John Paul II's Legacy: M.J. Akbar's View

By Michael Scaperlanda

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

"The Pope's True Revolution": One View

By Michael Perry

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.

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