TITLE:             The Legacy of John Paul II
A Ministry of Presence

                        October 2004 - October 2005

AUTHOR:       Fr Francis Cardinal George, O.M.I.

SOURCE:        Liguorian Magazine May-June 2005
www.liguorian.org

None of those present when Pope John Paul II began the Mass of Installation in St. Peter's Square on October 22, 1978, will ever forget the rapt attention of the crowd. In contrast to the style of past Vatican liturgies, this was a celebration by a pastor -- one who knew his people and how to relate to them. The impression deepened with the homily. This was indeed a new voice, the voice of one who knew the modern experience, the voice of a man of our time who dared to urge, as he would continue to do year after year, in one country after another: "Do not be afraid! Open wide the doors to Christ!"

As he spoke, we began to suspect that this was going to be a different pontificate, possibly one of extraordinary import for the Church an the world. We were sure of it when, at the end of the Mass and to the evident shock of the security force, the new pope left the altar and walked straight down to greet and speak with the crowd. For the first time we had encountered the pope of presence.

One of the great mysteries of the Old Testament is God's presence in the midst of God's people. Priest, bishop, and pope make visible the living, salvific presence of Christ in the organized community of each parish, of each diocese, and of the universal Church. All have a ministry of presence. In a difficult time for the Church and the world, it was an overflowing gift from God that for twenty-six years Pope John Paul II carried out this ministry in a way that touched people beyond words. As a British actress on holiday in Rome described her experience, "I'm not a Catholic, but Rome almost made me want to convert. I went to see the Pope give an audience, and I burst into tears because I found it so moving."

The most dramatic manifestation of the power of John Paul II's papal presence, however, came in his contact with young people. The youth of today were one with him. In reply to a reporter who questioned her, a young woman in her early twenties said, "You don't understand. He is as young as us inside, younger perhaps." One U.S. commentator said, "Young people are drawn to him because he is a spiritual icon. He embodies what they want and don't find in their own lives and in the culture they've been brought up in." And at one of the World Youth Days, one eighteen-year-old girl said, "The Pope is the only strong person kids can look up to."

EXAMINING JOHN PAUL II'S earlier life in Poland can help us understand how he developed the qualities that accounted for the intensity of his ministry of presence. From the first years of his priesthood, Father Wojtyla was in close conversation with a wide range of laypeople who knew him by the affectionate nickname "Wujek," or "Uncle." This was all rather different from the usual pattern of relations between clergy and laity in Poland.

As priest and bishop, Wojtyla was available to his people, praying with them, thinking with them, helping them to understand the Faith. "We were an experimental field for his ideas," one of them said. These were people with whom he discussed difficult issues of sexual ethics and marital problems. He counseled them in their courtships, blessed their marriages, baptized their children and watched them grow. As he said in his book Crossing the Threshold of Hope, they taught him "to love human love." In this milieu he learned how to be pope. These friendships shaped his attitude and focused his understanding of Catholic moral teaching.

When he became pope, he consciously set out to be with the people—in his Diocese of Rome, where he visited most of the parishes; in the more than 130 countries of the world that he visited, a number of them more than once; and by receiving in audience an incredible number and range of people, from world leaders to those who claim no great standing. Because John Paul II was in our country, perhaps in our own city, because he appeared so often on our television screens and in our newspapers, so many people, including many non-Catholics, thought of him as "our pope."

MANY CONSIDERED John Paul II the world leader of the ecumenical movement. By keeping the unity of all Christians as his goal, he was able to preserve the movement's focus without in any way diminishing the unique identity and role of the Catholic Church. This would have been impossible without the continuous contact John Paul II maintained with other Christian leaders and his patient, reconciling presence to them. Even though not yet fully one in faith with the Catholic Church, many Christians recognize that the ministry of this Pope was a major factor in enabling a Christian voice to be heard in the world and in upholding all institutions of Christian faith at a time when faith was under great pressure.

John Paul II demonstrated that it is possible to value all that is good and holy in other faiths and to cooperate with their adherents in upholding principles of morality and social well-being. He did this without in any way ceasing to insist that salvation comes uniquely through Jesus Christ and that the Church is the ordinary necessary means of salvation.

John Paul II's voice was at once firm and truthful, compassionate and merciful, in a way that caught the attention of average people of goodwill. Even though they sometimes disagreed with him, many people—including those in high places—regarded him as a moral compass in a time of rapid change and confusion. When presenting his wife to the Pope, the Russian statesman Mikhail Gorbachev said, "Raissa, I should like to introduce His Holiness, who is the highest moral authority in the world." Perhaps that is the most precise encapsulation of his impact.

JOHN PAUL II WAS, by temperament and by training, a philosopher who thought deeply about the questions of life and humanity. This way of thinking had its roots in his youth in Poland. His experiences there during World War II under the Nazi occupation allowed him to see in a dreadful and unforgettable way what happened when a systematic skepticism about truth came to dominate a culture. He learned that if humanity was to survive and flourish, individuals had to seek out the truth, commit to it, and allow it to form them completely and to enfold all of life.

As a student and academic, he studied phenomenology—the theory of the innate significance of every human experience. This led him to what he called "the affirmation of the person as a person" and to an intellectual and pastoral approach that enabled him to speak to people in today's world in their own language about the questions that perplexed their souls.

Later, as a very young bishop preparing for the Second Vatican Council, he submitted to those organizing the council an essay on the crisis of twentieth-century humanity, with its separation of freedom and truth and the horrible outcome this led to in Communism and Fascism. His contribution to several Vatican II documents, especially to the "Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World" and the "Declaration on Religious Liberty," stressed how important it was for the Church to take the modern quest for freedom seriously while demonstrating that, in its deepest roots, it was to be a search for goodness and truth—not just any truth but the truth that is God's self-revelation in Jesus Christ. Not by chance, John Paul II's first encyclical, promulgated in 1979, began, "The Redeemer of man, Jesus Christ, is the center of the universe and of history." That encyclical, he explained, was "to be a hymn of joy for the fact that man has been redeemed through Christ—redeemed in spirit and in body." For John Paul II, this fact dictated what every human being should do; it also dictated what the pope should do.

It was because of his belief in the dignity of the human person that John Paul II was able to speak to the world so directly and with the ring of truth. Secularists and some dissidents in the Church have suggested that there was a tension between his clear teaching of the demands of the gospel and his compassion, but they were attempting to force the logic of their ideology upon him. John Paul II was never apologetic or hesitant about the Church's role or claims. He wrote of its duty to profess and proclaim the whole of the truth transmitted by Christ, not qualifying this in the slightest way. How can the Church be in the world if not with a clear identity? Who should delineate that identity if not the one who carries on Peter's role in the Church?  ¶

It would be difficult to emphasize strongly enough how important it was for the Church that what John Paul II did and said was consistent and not at all contradictory. It was coherent, interesting, troubling, and hard to ignore. The result, in the words of Cardinal Ratzinger, was that it is possible for people to believe that "the house of God is solid and that we can live in this house."

It is precisely because this was so effective for the mission of the Church that John Paul II's words are so fiercely resisted by relativists, secularists, capitalists, sexual liberationists, and all those who are afraid that a truly united Church will be effective in converting the world. The Pope mirrored, not only in his teaching but in himself, a Church in love with humanity. He showed that true freedom lay in living the truth and true compassion lay in making it known, as his office obliged him to do. As keeper of the keys, he had to remind Catholics what following Christ demanded of them and convince all peoples that for them too, Christ was meant to be an open book of life.    •  ¶

Francis Cardinal George, O.M.I., Archbishop of Chicago, Illinois.