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25th Anniversary of election of Pope John Paul IISt Mary's Cathedral By + George Pell These words from St Matthew’s gospel, spoken by Christ just after Peter’s confession of faith in Jesus as the Son of the Living God, are written around the dome of St Peter’s Cathedral in Rome and are one of the classical biblical texts about Peter’s leadership and the Papal line of successors, the oldest surviving institution in human history. Today we celebrate the election 25 years ago of Karol Wojtyla, Archbishop of Krakow as the 264th successor of St Peter, Pope, Bishop of Rome, Vicar of Christ, leader of the Catholic Church. Today we rejoice at the blessings God has brought to the Church and world through our Pope. The Lord has consoled his people and through this Pope the Lord has bared his holy arm in the sight of all nations. Karol Jozef Wojtyla, Lolek to his friends, was born in 1920, the son of a professional soldier, also Karol, who first served with the Austro-Hungarian Army and then as a Captain with the Polish Army after Poland's national reemergence in 1918. A gentleman of the old school, multi-lingual and respected for his integrity, he was the most important influence on the young Lolek, whose mother died when he was nine. Karol junior attended the local elementary school at Wadowice, and was goalie in a soccer team largely made up of Jewish boys. When he was twelve years of age, his only brother Edmund, a medical doctor, died after catching scarlet fever from a patient. He never attended a minor seminary, a secondary school reserved for boys aiming at priesthood, but received a sound classical education, taking both Latin and Greek at the local state high school. Professor Jerzy Zubrzycki, an exact Polish contemporary, has written that their final 1938 matriculation exam was demanding, focused on the study of ancient Western civilization, especially Aristotle and Greek tragedy. They were told that the vital question for them, as in the past, was how to define a good human life. They were soon to be confronted with violently opposed definitions. Karol was the outstanding student in his last year, chosen to give the address to the visiting Archbishop of Krakow, Cardinal Adam Sapieha. When informed that this impressive young man was going to study Polish literature, in which he was already saturated, at the Jagiellonian University, he replied, "a pity". On 1St September, 1939, the Nazis invaded Poland and seventeen days later the Russians struck from the East. Six million Poles died during the Second World War and the Poles suffered a double defeat; first from the Nazis, then from the Communists. Under Hans Frank, Nazi rule in Poland was a nightmare. The Poles had no rights, their culture was to be destroyed, secondary schools and universities were closed to them, leaders in every walk of life were to be imprisoned, often killed, while Nordic looking Poles were to be assimilated, the others allowed to die out. Chopin's music was forbidden. For years Wojtyla's friends had told him he would become a priest, an idea he strongly resisted. It was only in the autumn of 1942, three years into the War and eighteen months after the death of his father, that he offered himself and joined the underground seminary of Cardinal Sapieha. There were frequent Gestapo raids and some of these seminarians were jailed or executed. In April 1944 Jerzy Zachuta, also a secret seminarian, who served the Cardinal's daily Mass with Wojtyla, was arrested and executed. He began to study philosophy. Earlier he had joined the Rhapsodic Theatre which gave 21 illegal performances during World War II. It was a small part of a broader movement of hidden cultural resistance card UNIA (union), which espoused Christian moral principles and Catholic social doctrine. It also covered a military section of 20,000 members (there were some sharp exchanges between the Theatre group and the partisans on the best way forward) and a council to help the Jews, which, among other activities, prepared 50,000 false passports for them. What this young intellectual, as an illegal part-time student and then seminarian, attempted with his friends in this tiny circle, he was to develop in the much wider world of Communist Poland as an archbishop and then throughout the world as Pope. George Weigel is the American author of the best biography of the Pope, Witness to Hope. His claim is that John Paul came to realize that history is driven by ideas, ideals and the moral commitment of people to their versions of culture, which are always more powerful in the long run than politics or economics or armies. John Paul also believed that at the heart of every enduring culture is an acknowledgement of the Transcendent, preferably the worship of the one true God and his only Son, Jesus Christ. This was not an enthusiasm for abstract, impersonal forces. He was always a disciple of Jesus Christ, Catholic and Polish, as he attempted to explain and relate eternal truths to the tragedy and muddle of twentieth century life. He began to teach regularly, in season and out of season; that there are truths about the human situation, which can be known; in them is found human flourishing. His 1979 visit to Poland is the most spectacular example of the changes he wrought in human hearts. The truths he preached gave hope to millions in "the evil empire" and the mute acceptance of Communist lies and violence became no longer possible. As his friend and ally, the priest sociologist and chaplain to Solidarity, Professor Jozef Tischner, explained, the 1979 pilgrimage convinced the Polish people to "stop lying" about the world they inhabited and the Solidarity movement grew like "a huge forest planted by awakened consciences". Most Western commentators missed the significance of this Polish visit at the time, but Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, the Russian writer who exposed the Gulags for what they were, and Yuri Andropov, then head of the K.G.B. under Brezhnev, made no such mistake. They knew the likely consequences of the waves the Pope was creating. In 1981 there was the attempted assassination by Mehmet Ali Agca and in February 1984 the Pope sent Dr. Jerome Lejeune, the French geneticist who had lunched with him before Agca's failed attempt, to represent him at Andropov's funeral in Moscow. John Paul II repeated and developed his central theses in every type of teaching from short homilies to solemn encyclicals, as he explained the scandal of the Cross and how the Church must be a sign of contradiction, while emphasizing the power of reason to know the liberating effects of truth. Some of the Holy Father's teachings were predictable and uncompromising, especially his consistent opposition to artificial contraception. Perhaps this will come to be seen in a new light once the implications of negative population growth sink in. Some of John Paul II's encyclicals especially on morality were highly controversial far outside Catholic circles, particularly Veritatis Splendor (1993). The powerful affirmation of moral truth provoked every leader-writer in the Western world into print, with newspapers such as Le Monde, the London Times and the New York Times discussing it at length. Less controversial but just as politically incorrect was Evangelium Vitae (1995), which vigorously reaffirmed the value and inviolability of every human life, solemnly condemned abortion and euthanasia, and declared the death penalty permissible only when it would not otherwise be possible for society to defend itself, effectively ruling it out as an option in Western nations. The great body of John Paul II's teaching in faith and morals and on social questions forms a powerful and coherent whole, drawing on the dynamic of tradition and development that has made the Catholic church one of the most robust and longest surviving institutions in the world. There is no easy courting of popularity and no shirking of challenges, but despite this - or indeed because of it - it will continue to have an important effect on public thinking and discourse well into the twenty-first century. For at the centre of his work is the question of the meaning of human life, and in particular, of suffering. A principal point of difference between secular humanists and Christians is the value accorded life and suffering. The radical secularist view that suffering is meaningless, that a life of suffering is without value, is no longer enough for people. We know there is more to the story than this, and John Paul ll has addressed this intellectually and through the public performance of his duties at such personal cost. The Pope has seen his task as proclaiming Jesus Christ and His message to all who are prepared to listen. To do this, he has shown time and again, that he is happy to suffer for us, to do what he can to make up all that still has to be undergone by Christ for the sake of His Body the Church. This is why, today, he struggles wearily on, helped only by Christ’s power driving him irresistibly. We thank God for his presence and witness, his teaching and courage and pray, yet again, as we did as children, that the Lord preserve him and give him life and deliver him not into the hands of his enemies. |
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