Posted on: Saturday, April 9, 2005

EXPRESSIONS OF FAITH

By the Rev. Hal Weidner

Pope John Paul II, Karol Wojtyla, has finished a remarkably long and dangerous journey. The genocide of the Nazis fell not only on the young man's Jewish friends but on Poles in general, students and intellectuals like himself in particular. He survived that as a worker, poet, actor and underground seminarian.

He was not a bookworm, but passionate about learning. He held doctorates in philosophy and theology (on the mysticism of John of the Cross when few were reading him). Today we would say that he was right- and left-brain at full throttle. Not only a unifier within himself, he became a bridge builder between Eastern Europe and its churches, Catholic and Orthodox; a bridge between the horrors of Nazism and Stalinism, through the collapse of both; a critic also of consumerism and secularism and an advocate of the poor. He was no more conservative than his predecessors and certainly more progressive on war, the death penalty, and economics of selfishness.

He was a listener. He knew his authority rested on being responsive to real issues. His lunch and evening suppers, his summer two-week lunch seminars with experts (he hardly said a word), his wide reading and time spent writing were, along with the depths of silent prayer, his sources of wisdom.

He said to the bishops: "Consultation and shared responsibility should not be misunderstood as a concession to a secular democratic model of governance, but as an intrinsic requirement of the exercise of Episcopal authority and a necessary means of strengthening that authority."

His dialogue with Jews and Muslims will remain a model for his successor. His profound interest in inter-religious dialogue, an honest dialogue about differences and common ground, will also remain a challenge. The worship he led in a universal church, whether in Rome or in the field, accepted diverse cultures and expressions even with the Mass. The spread of the church in Africa is one remarkable fruit of this inclusiveness.

Wall Street opened its market without a moment of silence for the pope. He was their pastor, too, nevertheless. He would have said that the bell ringing that opens the trading floor was a bell tolling that no one is an island and that the poor at our gates are really our brothers and sisters who should not be dispossessed by a world already too rich to be happy.

Any changes after his death? The most likely will be some decentralization untangling local bishops and local conferences of bishops from a Roman authority that does not always see or understand local conditions the way their own pastors do.

Some of the cardinals are already expressing the hope that the pope as evangeliser will continue with a new man. Pope John Paul II believed that the church's essence is to be a people sent everywhere. He went everywhere and was known worldwide. People were ready to be loved by him. I think people are ready to be loved and visited by the next pope.

The Rev. Hal Weidner is pastor at Holy Trinity Church and head of the Oratorian religious order here.