The Seventh Tool: The Work and Writings of Pope St. John Paul the Great
This remarkable pope wrestled with the greatest forces of the 20th century and his legacy of fatherhood lives on.
The very existence of Christianity demonstrates that the life of one man—Christ—can change the world, and this continues in the lives of His saints. Few people in living memory exemplify this more than Karol Wojtyła, later John Paul II, survivor of two World War II tyrannies and instrument of the liberation of Poland. He is almost a singularity, like Joan of Arc.
His reflections on the meaning of married love, penned while he was archbishop of Krakow, culminated in the great work of his papacy, the Theology of the Body, which has been called a “theological time bomb” whose effects will be felt even more in future years. But the man also wrote on a number of issues, including economics, the role of women, the role of the family, priestly vocations, and the preeminence of truth. He represents the flowering of the new theology, personalism, which came to bloom in the years around Vatican II, and his solid Thomism connects it with the tradition of the Church. Additionally, his many, many papal teachings and exhortations speak to so many areas of modern life that it would be difficult to find a topic that John Paul II did not cover. That alone makes him a treasure trove for culture recovery. And during his years as the world’s spiritual father, he pointed out and popularized several tools which I’ve already covered. But he also inspired me to begin culture recovery by calling for the building of a culture of life. So much of his teaching gives us the foundation of what this culture might look like.
Wojtyła had a difficult life, to say the least, his growing-up years punctuated by periodic devastating explosions of loss: by the time he reached adulthood, he had lost his entire nuclear family—sister, mother, brother, and father. This made him value the family even as he became more grateful for his friends, both Catholic, Christian, and Jewish. As a priest and pope, he was later to spend his vacations with a circle of Polish Catholic families. I was once privileged to be at a luncheon with some of them, and they gave us fascinating glimpses into this incredibly gifted and loving man.
His young adulthood was lived under the Nazis and the Communists, and although he was tempted by an acting career—people frequently remarked on his good looks and talent—he ultimately joined the seminary and became a priest, professor, and bishop. During this time he wrote poetry and plays, and his pastoral conversations with young couples led to his reflections on married love, which began in his book Love and Responsibility and culminated in his papal Theology of the Body. Fun fact: I remember overhearing that one of his inspirations for TOTB, as it’s affectionately known, was reading C.S. Lewis’s That Hideous Strength, which happens to be my favorite novel.
Wojtyla was devout but never ponderous. He had an ardent love for Christ from childhood but his relationship with Mary was jump-started when as an adult he was led to make a Total Consecration to her, and it transformed his life.
“The reading of this book (True Devotion to Mary) was a decisive turning-point in my life. I say ‘turning-point,’ but in fact it was a long inner journey. . . This “perfect devotion” is indispensable to anyone who means to give himself without reserve to Christ and to the work of redemption.”
It was his taking the motto Totus Tuus Maria as his papal motto that first made me aware of this devotion, incidentally. I remember how the press incorrectly reported “Totus Tuus” (I am all Yours) as referring to his relationship to Christ, and their puzzlement when it was later corrected. (Yes, there was a time when Total Consecration was a very niche devotion only known by a handful of Catholics.)
Wojtyla loved the outdoors, which provided relief from his duties and also privacy from government surveillance. (He would frequently invite important guests on hiking trips in order to have conversations away from the listening devices he knew all church buildings in Communist Poland were bugged with.) As with many people who choose to spend much time outside, he became concerned about the exploitation and destruction of the environment. He was later to write extensively as Pope on the threats to nature caused by the disorders of men. Even his first encyclical Redemptor Hominis (The Redeemer of Man) brings this up:
We seem to be increasingly aware of the fact that the exploitation of the earth, the planet on which we are living, demands rational and honest planning. At the same time, exploitation of the earth not only for industrial but also for military purposes and the uncontrolled development of technology outside the framework of a long-range authentically humanistic plan often bring with them a threat to man's natural environment, alienate him in his relations with nature and remove him from nature. Man often seems to see no other meaning in his natural environment than what serves for immediate use and consumption. Yet it was the Creator's will that man should communicate with nature as an intelligent and noble "master" and "guardian", and not as a heedless "exploiter" and "destroyer".
There was a time when concern for the environment was not political, nor was it the sign of a hatred for humanity which it has become today. As a profoundly pro-life pope, John Paul connected reverence for God’s work in creation with God’s work in creating humanity to steward it. Both are necessary and proceed from reverence and worship of God. Catholics must care about both.
In the world of the Catholic internet which grew up largely after he had passed into eternity, Wojtyla has come under attack in recent years. Every earthly father falls short of God the Father, and his failures are serious. It is alleged he was not kind to the traditionalist movement—no one was, at the time—and that he did little to curb the priest scandal. I believe it is difficult to do everything correctly, even if you are a saint, and promulgating global administrative decisions is probably the worst sort of nightmare. Mistakes were made, as they say.
I remember how when he was alive, John Paul II was constantly attacked by both liberals and traditionalists who mocked those of us who said he was great for canonizing dozens of new saints, visiting hundreds of countries and writing dozens of encyclicals. The liberals hated him and the Jesuits organized a hysterical tantrum against his attempt to reform them. And the traditionalist media were not particularly kind to him either.
Yet John Paul was in some sense responding to the needs of the Church as he found it: we now know the Vatican bureaucracy was being compromised by what could be a coordinated infiltration by the enemies of the Church internally, but John Paul was called in particular to fight the enemies attacking the Church from the outside, namely Nazis and Communists. That this made him blind to the treason of fellow Catholic clergy has been well said by others. The close friends of the Pope at the luncheon spoke of him as a man who was most comfortable working side-by-side with others instead of hierarchically, and tended to trust people, tragically. When you trust people, you can be lied to. And witnesses say former Cardinal McCarrick was an inveterate and convincing liar, as was Fr. Marcel Maciel, the disgraced founder of the Legionaries of Christ, both predators and corrupters of others. Ironically, his acquaintance with the Communist tactic of accusing any clergy they wanted to destroy of sexual impropriety might have blinded him to the warnings.
And yet there was so much that John Paul II did do so very well. Once he became aware of the obfuscations and possible infiltration of the Vatican, he took to the road to speak to people directly, in thousands of public appearances including World Youth Days, one of which amassed the largest crowd in human history and another which practically began Catholic youth ministry in America. He promoted popular devotions such as the Rosary (adding the Luminous Mysteries), rehabilitated St. Faustina’s writings and approved her devotion of the Divine Mercy Chaplet, made St. Therese of Lisieux a Doctor of the Church, and after his near-assassination, promoted the message of Fatima.
Did I mention he also called the Catechesis of the Good Shepherd “the most beautiful homily he had ever seen?” And he not only canonized St. Josemaria Escriva but he created a category of personal prelature for his apostolate to accommodate it in Church law. He also gave encouragement to many lay movements including the charismatic renewal. John Paul II understood that he had to reach ordinary people, and he did so profoundly, sparking the conversions and reversions among the most jaded secular youth. God does not need celebrities, but He can certainly use celebrity, and He does so, shamelessly.
Lastly, as priest, bishop, and pope, John Paul strove for an authentic interpretation of Vatican II, calling the Church to return to its roots in the Gospel message and face modernity not with cringing compliance or conformity but with serene confidence that Christ is offering what the world lacks and needs:
“There is no evil to be faced that Christ does not face with us. There is no enemy that Christ has not already conquered. There is no cross to bear that Christ has not already borne for us, and does not now bear with us.”
He used his health and vigor to keep a very busy schedule and as a people-lover, never ate a meal alone but stacked his schedule with lunch and dinner meetings to connect with old friends, discuss theology, and build ties with guests from around the world. A language lover, he found it easy to learn new languages and mastered anywhere from six to eleven (accounts vary). One year he sent out Christmas greetings in sixty-two languages!
Despite all this, he managed to pray about three hours a day. He limited himself to six and a half hours of sleep, took cold showers, and kept his private rooms in the Vatican II incredibly ascetic. His Polish friends told us how on papal vacations he would stun them by reading three books at once: to streamline his research on a topic, he would walk around the terrace reading one book while paging through another left open on the table, while having a third book read aloud to him at the same time. He seemed to have no difficulty absorbing the contents of all three.
But old age and infirmity eventually came to John Paul. Fr. Chris Pollard once reminded his congregation that our goal as Catholics should not be to have a good-looking corpse. While health is important, it should serve the goal of serving Christ. John Paul II certainly exemplified this as he wore himself out in public in the service of God, ushering in the new Millennium while racked with pain. At the end he had to sacrifice even the gift of speech as the paralysis of Parkinson’s overcame him. His last words were the whispered, “Let me go to the house of the Father,” which might have made an oblique reference to one of his own plays. His last testament reads:
“Watch, therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming" (Mt 24: 42) - these words remind me of the last call that will come at whatever time the Lord desires. I want to follow Him and I want all that is part of my earthly life to prepare me for this moment. I do not know when it will come but I place this moment, like all other things, in the hands of the Mother of my Master: Totus Tuus. In these same motherly hands I leave everything and Everyone with whom my life and my vocation have brought me into contact. In these Hands I above all leave the Church, and also my Nation and all humankind. I thank everyone. I ask forgiveness of everyone. I also ask for prayers, so that God's Mercy may prove greater than my own weakness and unworthiness.
It is no wonder that the Vatican funeral services were interrupted by cries of Santo subito! (Canonization now!)
What did we do to deserve this papacy, this gift from God? We can look at his shortcomings, or we can respond in gratitude. And there is much to unpack in what he said and did as I write these journals.
But I would be remiss if I did not mention one more tool he gave us.
Through John Paul II, the Lord gave the Church the gift of nonviolent revolution. What happened with the Solidarity movement in Poland was historic and unprecedented. After his election as Pope, John Paul II was determined to revisit his Iron-Curtained homeland. When he was finally allowed to do so, he managed to outwit the propaganda and planned technological outages and preached an impassioned sermon in Warsaw’s Victory Square: as related by Fr. Jim Chern:
The Pope asked the crowds in his first address in his homeland, why was a Polish man elected Pope? Noting the long history of suffering the Polish people had endured and were continuing to experience, not the least of which was the last 30 years of this atheistic regime trying to rewire their hearts and minds to let go of their faith. So when John Paul explained that he believed he was elected Pope as a representative of the people to testify to the Cross and Resurrection of Jesus, and then asked if the people accepted their role and responsibilities as well, there wasn’t polite applause or shouts of support. The crowd spontaneously thundered back in response “WE WANT GOD… WE WANT GOD.” John Paul continued – What was the greatest of the works of God? Man. Who redeemed man? Christ. Therefore, he declared, “Christ cannot be kept out of the history of man in any part of the globe, at any longitude or latitude. . . . The exclusion of Christ from the history of man is an act against man! Without Christ, it is impossible to understand our history.” And once again, the crowd responded WE WANT GOD.
Nine days later, the papal visit ended, but the Solidarity Revolution was underway.
Never before in the history of the world has a people been set free from a hostile tyranny with only a handful of people being killed. That gift was given to John Paul II, presumably by the Lady he had completely consecrated himself to.
In the apparition of the Miraculous Medal, Catherine Laboure asked Our Lady the meaning of the rays of light from her fingers which did not strike the earth but which went off into the darkness of space. Our Lady replied, “Those are the graces that no one has yet asked for.”
What other gifts is God willing to give us which no one has yet asked for? Karol Wojtyla, by consecrating himself totally to Our Lady, received one of those unasked-for gifts. And what a gift it was! His life should give us gratitude and also boldness in asking for those graces which God is so eager to give us to build a culture of life.
Pope St. John Paul the Great, pray for us!
What an extraordinary, thorough reflection! Beautiful throughout. I love the drawings and photos too. Pope John Paul II seems to me the epitome of your intentions for nursing our culture. And his papacy was immediately followed with another extraordinary teacher and thinker in Benedict XVI. We are privileged - graced! - to have lived in an era of such Catholic leadership.
Thank you for this, Regina. I have thoughts to add, but don't want to mess up this nearly perfect post with lesser considerations. ¡Gracias señora!