Perhaps one of the most significant and memorable features of John Paul II’s papacy was his battle against 'godless' communism. It is likely that he will be known forever as the pope who helped bring about the fall of communism. Much of John Paul's life as a cleric was lived under communist rule in Poland and all the time he rose through the ranks of the Catholic hierarchy, he refused to compromise or accommodate demands made by the communist government.
As archbishop of Krakow and later cardinal, Karol Wojtyla had to engage in a very delicate balancing act. His opposition to communism and government repressions were undeniable, but he also couldn’t come right out and engage in anti-government activity. He chose a bit more subtle path: encouraging and promoting greater loyalty to the Catholic Church as an alternative to the government itself. He promoted the ideals of freedom and liberty without directly attacking government crackdowns. When the government sought compromise with him, he pushed even harder.
After he was elected pope, one of this first things John Paul II did was end his predecessors’ accommodationist attitudes towards communism and communist nations. John Cornwell writes in Pontiff in Winter:
- “He would ask no favors; he would insist on freedom of religion, the full catalogue of human rights; there would be no accommodation. ...In his first encyclical to the world, “Redemptor Hominis (The Redeemer of Man), published on March 4, 1979, John Paul made a thundering appeal for universal human rights. ...“These rights,” he wrote,” are rightly reckoned to include the right to religious freedom together with the right to freedom of conscience.””
Pope John Paul’s strong opposition to communism and fierce defense of religious freedom within society clearly have a lot to do with his life under communist rule. Ironically, the same can be said for his equally fierce opposition to liberty of conscience within the church itself. In communist Poland, he learned that strict internal unity was a necessary condition for successfully combatting the external oppression by the government.
John Paul was aghast at the back-biting and political infighting he experienced at the Second Vatican Council and resolved himself not to allow such to continue under his own reign. He was convinced that a church which allowed such behavior could not meet the challenges of posed by communism, secularism, Islam, or anything else and resolved himself not to allow it to continue under his own reign. This is why external demands for religious liberty were just as often joined with internal demands for conformity on exactly the same matters.
Pope John Paul’s attitudes towards both communism and diversity within the church were put to the test by the development of liberation theology in Latin-America. Originated by Gustavo Gutiérrez, liberation theology employs Marx’s critiques of ideology, class, and capitalism as part of a theological analysis of how Christianity should be used to make people’s lives better here and now rather than simply offer them hope of rewards in heaven.
Gutiérrez’s ideas may owe as much to traditional Catholic social teaching as they do to Marx, but they had trouble finding much favor among the Catholic hierarchy in the Vatican. Catholicism today is very concerned with the persistence of poverty in a world of plenty, but it does not share Gutiérrez’s characterization of theology as a means for helping the poor rather than for explaining the dogma of the church.
Pope John Paul II in particular expressed strong opposition to “political priests” who become more involved with achieving social justice than ministering to their flocks — a curious criticism, given how much support he provided the political dissidents in Poland while the communists still ruled. John Paul, however, was not a priest who actively engaged in politics. His opposition to communism took the form of looking inward toward the church and strengthening the religious ties the bound the faithful together.
For John Paul, social and political transformation began through internal transformation; for liberation theologians like Gutiérrez, social and political revolution must come first and they in turn lead to internal transformation. Over time, though, the pope’s position softened somewhat, possibly because of the implosion of the Soviet Union and the disappearance of the communist threat. Today John Paul II is more likely to criticize capitalism than Marxism.
