Mystic Politician

Oh John Paul, it took me so, so long to see you, for who you really were. Such are the clouds of malice and confusion, which surround you …

You who rose very early every morning – not with ease, but rather with iron determination – and worked the whole day long, till late at night. You who began these days with prayer, mass and mystic adoration of the Blessed Sacrament and unfolded your life’s work from communion with His Sacred Heart.

You who filled every hour, every day with meaningful work, so that scarcely a minute was wasted and at the end of 26 years, your pontificate spoke to so, so many things.

Spoke to so many things, that is, that are now so rarely heard. You who are often seen as little else, but ‘pro-life, anti-communist’. How many will be able to credit the fact that Mikhail Gorbachev called you ‘one of the brightest thinkers of the left’ adding that ‘Without the Polish Pope, the mighty changes in Eastern Europe would have been inconceivable’?

How many will have heard your call that human labour has dignity in and of itself, and must NOT be treated as simply a **means to an end**, a commodity to be bought and sold, a cog in the capitalist machinery that grinds down Soul.

How many will have heard your call then, for strong labour unions, or what you said in Havana’s Plaza of the Revolution of ‘capitalist neo-liberalism’ which: ‘subordinates the human person to blind market forces and conditions the development of peoples on those forces. From its centres of power, such neo-liberalism often places unbearable burdens upon less favoured countries.’ And which ‘centres of power’ were you directly challenging?

Oh John Paul, in my little library is a cartoon introduction to postmodernism, written by an obviously otherwise learned man. This cartoon introduction shows images of you cavorting with Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan. As though you belonged to their revolution. When in truth, you abhorred what they stood for …

Oh John Paul, how many realise that on the issue of religious tolerance, you are the most radical Pope in two millennia of the papacy? That you are the first to visit a synagogue, the first to visit a mosque and kiss a copy of the Koran?

And then there is your gathering at Assisi for world prayer, bringing together, as Kwitny puts it: ‘Rabbis, mullahs, Sikhs, African animists, Buddhists (including the Dalai Lama) Protestant Evangelicals, Shintoists.’

And according to numerous reports, you undertook this action in the face of unusually stiff resistance, from more conservative members of the Vatican. Yes John L. Allen is absolutely right in saying:

‘The 1986 Interreligious Assembly was a breathtaking gesture from the Roman Catholic Church, given that earlier in the century the church had branded many of these faiths as ‘pagan’ or ‘heretic’. John Paul’s decision to pray … with this mixed crowd was equally dizzying, considering that Catholics were not permitted to as much as say the Lord’s Prayer with other Christians until after Vatican II.’

How many realise that you John Paul, as the Polish bishop Karol Wotyla, were a force for freedom at Vatican II, and that you worked considerably on what is arguably its most progressive document Gaudium et Spes – a document you never ceased to champion, after you became our Holy Father?

How many realise that in these things I briefly mention, I have hardly said anything at all of what you did? For I have not even mentioned your accomplishments in debt relief, your defense of human rights, your campaigns against war, nor your insights in epistemology, ecclesiology, Christology, Mariology and more. And more. How much more these 26 years of intense dedication to every waking hour have engendered …

Yes, John Paul, I am not ashamed to venerate you and offer you gratitude from the recesses of my heart. At the same time, I know your hagiographers disserve you. I know that you saw the darkness of your own heart, and saw the darkness of all hearts, believing only in the pure, undefiled hearts of Our Lord and of Our Lady. To paint you without limitation or shadow – the dark shadow each of us casts – does not serve you.

But you were also vilified more than any Pope in history and do not deserve the stones cast at you. And I will not join with those who cast them. Doubtless, history will prove that, as with us all, there are things you did not always see clearly. I only pray we will remember – and remember swiftly – **all** you tried to say and do …