During the year after the death of our beloved Holy Father, Karol Jozef Wojtyla, John Paul II, many things have been written about his legacy to the Church as well as to the world at large. Indeed, much discussion of this legacy already took place both before his death and, almost without ceasing, continued after his dying on Saturday evening, April 2, 2005.
Putting the Culture to the Test
John Paul II also provided a profound interpretation of the spiritual, moral, and intellectual dynamics of modern, Western, secularist culture. In this culture there co-exist both authentic developments of the truths of the Christian faith (for example, the dignity of the human person, the right of religious freedom being the foundation of a free society) and also a closing off to, indeed even refusal of, those truths, sliding into anti-Christian worldviews (for example, religious and moral relativism) and ways of life, most notably the antithesis between the “culture of life” and the “culture of death.”
The Holy Father has left us the basic theological and philosophical framework in which to discern between the authentic and inauthentic, the true and false, good and evil in our culture, and thus to accomplish the task that the Apostle Paul gave us: “Test everything — hold on to what is good and avoid every form of evil” (1 Thes 5:21-22). It is against this background that he called for a new evangelization of culture, renewing our commitment and fellowship with Jesus Christ, under his lordship in the whole spectrum of life.
His commitment to authentic ecumenism is also a fundamental element of his legacy to the Church. Christ calls all His disciples to unity (Jn 17:20-23). Of course, as John Paul II correctly writes, “Love for the truth is the deepest dimension of any authentic quest for full communion between Christians” (Encyclical Letter, Ut Unum Sint, May 25, 1995, no. 36). In other words, he adds, “The unity willed by God can be attained only by the adherence of all to the content of revealed faith in its entirety. In matters of faith, compromise is in contradiction with God who is Truth. In the Body of Christ, 'the way, and the truth, and the life' (Jn 14:6), who would consider legitimate a reconciliation brought about at the expense of the truth” (no. 18)?
In the Gospel of John, we read that Jesus Himself prayed to His Father, at the hour of His Passion, “that all of them may be one” (17:21). The Church, which is Christ's body, is not a collection of individuals, and hence the unity of Christ's disciples is not a mere gathering of people. Furthermore, it is not quite right to think of the Church's unity as simply a goal to which we aspire. Rather, the Church's unity is a present reality; indeed, Christ’s gift to the Church.
According to John Paul II, thus the Church's unity is at the very heart of the proclamation of the Gospel, not only in the sense that it belongs to the very essence of Christ's body, and Christ cannot be divided (1 Cor 1:13), but also because disunity is a grave obstacle for proclaiming the Gospel credibly and authentically. The world will not believe that God Himself is an eternal fellowship of love, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and that He has chosen us to share by grace in that fellowship, unless it sees some manifestation in Christians of that fellowship. The world will not believe that God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life (Jn 3:16), unless it sees in Christians some evidence of God's love rather than division. It will not believe that Jesus' claims are true, that the Christian faith is true, unless it sees visible unity-in-truth among Christians.
Recovering Evangelical Roots
The rich and varied character of his thought makes it impossible for me here to do it justice. Nevertheless, there are several features of his great papacy that I would highlight as essential to his lasting legacy and without which we would not understand his Catholic worldview.
John Paul II revitalized the papacy by recovering its evangelical roots. This is the thesis of papal biographer George Weigel, and I think it’s right on. It means that he recovered the biblical teaching that the Church, and by implication the papacy, has a missionary nature, the great commission to preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and this has revitalized the evangelical dynamism of the Church. “Being essentially ‘missionary,’” says John Paul, “does not mean merely that the Church has a universal mission to all humanity, but that, in her constitutive reality, in her soul…she possesses a dynamism that concretely unfolds in preaching the Gospel, in spreading the faith and in the invitation to conversion proclaimed ‘to the very ends of the earth’” (Missionary Catechesis of John Paul II). Hence the evangelical style of John Paul II — an evangelist, surely the greatest evangelist of the twentieth century, a pastor, and a witness to, and defender of, the truth of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, namely, “The truth is that only in the mystery of the Incarnate Word does the mystery of man take on light” (Vatican II, Gaudium et Spes, no. 22).
In this connection, I cannot fail to mention John Paul’s rejection of religious relativism, namely, the notion that “Christianity…is merely one form among many of the generic human reality called ‘religion,’” and its corollaries that all religions are equally true hence in some way equally vehicles of salvation. Says the late Holy Father, “This is not the message of the Second Vatican Council, which boldly proclaimed the centrality for human history of Jesus Christ and the essential mission of the Church to preach the Gospel to all nations: for ‘there is no other name under heaven given to man by which he must be saved’ (Acts 4:12).” “The Church is sent to the world with a proposal,” he adds, “and the evangelical proposal we make is that the world can understand its history and its aspirations most adequately, most truthfully, through the Gospel. If this is the truth we proclaim, then the Church is never marginal, even when she seems weak in the eyes of the world.”
John Paul II has provided an authoritative and authentic interpretation of the teachings of the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965). In the wake of the Council, there seemed to be a mentality afoot that everything was up for grabs, that the Church’s historic teachings about Christ, salvation, God, the teaching authority of the Church, particularly the papacy, the priesthood, and sexual morality, had radically changed. As the former Joseph Ratzinger, now Benedict XVI, wrote in his own memoirs about this time, “The impression grew steadily that nothing was now stable in the Church, that everything was open to revision. More and more the Council appeared to be like a great Church parliament that could change everything and reshape everything according to its own desires.” Most recently, Benedict has called this mentality a “hermeneutics of discontinuity and rupture,” namely, a way of reading and understanding the documents of Vatican II that leads to a “fracture between the pre-Council and post-Council Church.” In bold contrast to this “hermeneutics of discontinuity,” there is the “hermeneutics of continuity and renewal” of John Paul II (and now of his successor, Benedict XVI), which was well expressed by John XXIII in his opening address of the Second Vatican Council in saying that this Council “wishes to transmit the doctrine, pure and integral, without any attenuation or distortion, which throughout twenty centuries, notwithstanding difficulties and contrasts, has become the common patrimony of all.” “Our duty is,” John added, “not only to guard this precious treasure, as if we were concerned only with antiquity, but to dedicate ourselves with an earnest will and without fear to that work which our era demands of us, pursuing thus the path which the Church has followed for twenty centuries…. The deposit of faith is one thing, namely the truths contained in our venerable teaching, but the manner in which they are formulated is another, always keeping the same meaning and same understanding.”
Without exaggeration, one may say that John Paul II epitomized this “hermeneutics of continuity and renewal,” and this understanding and interpretation was expressed in the prolific and substantial body of writings that he left the Church, indeed the world — for example, books presenting the rich texture of his Catholic worldview including Love and Responsibility, Crossing the Threshold of Hope and, most recently, Memory and Identity; great encyclicals including the Splendor of Truth, the Gospel of Life, Faith and Reason, and the Mission of the Redeemer; several apostolic exhortations including the empowering work, The Vocation and Mission of the Lay Faithful in the Church and in the World; the Apostolic Letter, “The Christian Meaning of Human Suffering,” which world-renowned Calvinist philosopher Alvin Plantinga rightly called a “profound meditation,” a “seminal work” on the “meaning of suffering from a Christian perspective”; and, last but not least, the Catechism of the Catholic Church — all with the aim of giving direction, restoring clarity about the Church’s historic teaching, and sorting out the critical issue of true and false renewal in the post-conciliar Church.
The Future in Christ
John Paul II’s commitment to the youth of the world is certainly one of the most visible and, indeed, powerful signs of his papacy. In overwhelming numbers they responded positively to his message: “Christ alone is the cornerstone on which it is possible solidly to build one's existence. Only Christ — known, contemplated and loved — is the faithful friend who never lets us down, who becomes our traveling companion, and whose words warm our hearts” (cf. Lk 24:13-35). These words, spoken by John Paul II to an estimated six-hundred-thousand young people in Toronto, July 27, 2003 at the seventeenth, and, sadly, his last World Youth Day, reflect the Holy Father’s consistent message to young people since 1985. It is the heart of the Gospel. “Without Jesus Christ, who is the revelation of God, the ultimate question of human existence has no answer.” Thus, this evangelical Catholic Pope proclaims to these young people the very truth that Jesus gave to His Apostles, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (Jn 14:6).
His commitment to a society of peace, justice and freedom is also essential to his legacy. How does he define peace? According to the biblical view, peace is man dwelling in harmony with all his relationships: with God, firstly, and then with oneself, with one's fellow man, and with nature.
What is essential for peace, in particular for dwelling in harmony with one's fellow man? John Paul singles out four requirements for realizing peace: truth, justice, love, and freedom. “The order which prevails in society is by nature moral. Grounded as it is in truth, it must function according to the norms of justice, it should be inspired and perfected by mutual love, and finally it should be brought to an ever more refined and human balance in freedom.”
In the first place, peace is intertwined with truth. Most important, the truth about God matters. Peace is grounded and anchored in God's own reality and truthfulness. God is the first truth and the highest good of man, of individuals, and of society. The truth about human nature also matters — man is created with value and inviolable dignity and inalienable human rights. Peace is also intertwined with justice because peace is a moral community. Right relationships with others involve each person enjoying his rights.
Yet a moral community is more than man enjoying his rights. It is also a community where persons have corresponding duties, obligations to other persons. Peace is absent when we do not carry out our responsibilities to others.
Peace is also intertwined with love. Says John Paul II, “Love will build peace if people feel the needs of others as their own and share what they have with others, especially the values of mind and spirit which they possess.” The Bible calls us to love our neighbor as we love ourselves (Mt 22:37-40). Indeed, Jesus Himself teaches, “As you did it to one of the least of these My brethren, you did it to Me” (Mt 25:40). Again, Jesus says, “Love one another. As I have loved you, so you also should love one another” (Jn 13:34). In sum, “Respect for the human person proceeds by way of respect for the principle that 'everyone should look upon his neighbor (without any exception) as “another self,” above all bearing in mind his life and the means necessary for living it with dignity.'” The only way to establish a truly fraternal society is through the “charity that finds in every man a 'neighbor,' a brother” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 1930).
Lastly, peace is intertwined with freedom. Says John Paul, “Freedom will build peace and make it thrive if, in the choice of the means to that end, people act according to [right] reason and assume responsibility for their own actions.” Man abuses his freedom when he fails to respond to the moral law, and he becomes self-centered, breaking neighborly bonds, and rebelling against God's truth (Catechism, no. 1741). Freedom then only attains its proper ends when “directed toward God, the sovereign Good” (no. 1744).
The unifying principle for every element of John Paul II’s lasting legacy is his conviction that, as he often put it, Jesus Christ is the answer to the question that is every human life. This is the heart of the Gospel, and he tirelessly and boldly proclaimed it throughout his life. “Our age needs to hear the revealed truth about God, about man, and about the human condition. The moment is right for kerygma. The pastoral challenge…is to proclaim with renewed vigor ‘Jesus Christ, the one Savior of the world, yesterday, today and forever’ (cf. Hebrews 13:8)…. The challenge is enormous, but the time is right. For other culture-forming forces are exhausted, implausible, or lacking in intellectual resources adequate to satisfy the human yearning for genuine liberation — even if those forces still manage to exercise a powerful attraction, especially through the media. The great achievement of the [Second Vatican] Council is to have positioned the Church to engage modernity with the truth about the human condition, given to us in Jesus Christ who is the answer to the question that is every human life.”
© Copyright 2006 Catholic Exchange
Eduardo J. Echeverria is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at Sacred Heart Major Seminary.
