Even the secular world against which he stood so defiantly recognized his greatness. But what was it that was so special about John Paul II, the supreme pontiff of the Roman Catholic Church? What set him apart and above all the secular leaders of his time?
At 84, he was old, stooped, suffered from Parkinson's and slurred his speech. He was decried by our media and cultural elites as a moral reactionary who had failed to bring his church into the 21st century.
Yet, even as the editorial writers fulminated and the dissident clergy fumed, the Holy Father drew the young in the tens of millions. The great politicians of his time came and went, most of them long forgotten, save Ronald Reagan, who was very much like this pope in his humor, serenity and core convictions. And yet, this pope endured into his ninth decade as the most revered and beloved figure on earth. The world's reaction to his death testifies to it.
But wherein did his greatness lie?
What set John Paul II apart from the other leaders of his time was his goodness, his holiness, his sanctity, his moral courage in defending the truths of the church and his uncompromising refusal to alter moral truth to accommodate the spirit of an immoral age. His charisma, like that of Mother Teresa, came of the fact that he was a Man of God, not a man of this world. He became popular by testifying to the unpopular truths of Jesus Christ.
What those most disappointed with John Paul's failure to conform church teaching to trendy views on contraception, abortion, stem cell research and homosexuality fail to understand is that it was because the pope defied the spirit of the age that he was great. He believed in moral absolutes in a world of moral relativism. He was a beacon of light in a darkening age, a beacon of truth in a moral wilderness.
He died in the 40th year following the close of Vatican II, the church council called by a predecessor, John XXIII. And by the time John Paul II died, all the fashionable and trendy clerics of that time, from Hans Kung to the "Are-You-Running-With-Me-Jesus?" clergy were gone and forgotten
"How many divisions does the Pope have?" Stalin cynically asked. But it was this Polish pope with no army who would inspire Solidarity to stand up to Stalin's empire and help bring it down peacefully in 1989.
"We're more popular than Jesus now!" John Lennon exclaimed back then. Where are the Beatles now? "Is God Dead?" Time famously asked in the 1960s. Now people ask, "Is AOLTimeWarner dead?"
But if John Paul II achieved greatness as a man, a leader, a pope, the same cannot be said of the church he led.
Here in America, there has been a dramatic contraction in the numbers of nuns, priests, churches and parish schools since Vatican II. The church in America has been horribly scarred by the ugliest scandal in its history, the abuse of thousands of altar boys and Catholic children by pedophile and homosexual priests, who crept into the seminaries and were not purged when their predations were discovered. Continued... |