The Life and Legacy of Pope John Paul II (7 page)

The “Preamble” to the
Charter
acknowledges the breach of trust involved in past failures.
The
Charter
commits the dioceses to working with victims for healing and reconciliation through social services and counseling, and to involve laity to a greater degree in the pertinent processes. It expresses a zero tolerance for abuse and abusers, stating that if a priest is found to be an abuser in even one instance “
the offending priest or deacon is to be permanently removed from ministry and, if warranted, dismissed from the clerical state.”
It also made provisions for transparency and accountability.

Victims, their families and supporters, and dismayed Church members wanted to hear Pope John Paul speak to them directly and unambiguously, but he failed to do so. The problem still has not been thoroughly addressed on a global scale. Many in the United States would consider John Paul’s handling of the crisis to be the single biggest failure of his pontificate.

The most recent statements by the Church on the subject of clerical abuse of minors, including the instructions to bishops dating to 1962 (
Crimen Sollicitationis
), can be found at the Vatican website: http://www.vatican.va/resources/index_en.htm.

Interreligious Dialogue

John Paul was a student of culture, and he had deep respect for the diversity of world culture, including its religious components. He repeatedly taught that the diversity of peoples must be respected for peace to progress. He was firmly committed to religious freedom for all people and to freedom from coercion of conscience. Freedom from coercion meant that the forceful conversions of the past were unacceptable. Based on Vatican II and his own belief in the shared dignity of human beings as creatures of a universal God, the pope continually promoted interreligious dialogue and respect for non-Christian religions.

Following the teachings of Vatican II, he believed there are elements in all religions that advance the good in humans and in society. Addressing Portuguese Christian, Jewish, and Muslim leaders in 1982, he affirmed “the undeniable treasures of every religion's spirituality.” The March 2000 Day of Pardon Mass included a confession of “enmity towards members of other religions” and prayed for repentance among Christians.

Pope John Paul was convinced that prayer could bring together the believers of diverse faiths, an idea that inspired the 1986 World Day of Prayer for Peace in Assisi, Italy. That unprecedented gathering drew together 160 religious leaders representing many distinct groups, including Jews, Buddhists, Shintoists, Muslims, Zoroastrians, Hindus, Unitarians, and traditional African and Native American religions, in addition to many Christians of different denominations. Together, they prayed for world peace.

Still, he observed, part of truth is recognizing where differences exist, while respecting the boundaries that divide us.

Christian Ecumenism

John Paul wholeheartedly sought reunification of the Christian world. The second millennium of Christianity had been a period of schism in the Church, and with the third millennium of Christianity approaching, he felt the time was right for reconciliation. He especially hoped for rapprochement with the Orthodox Church.

In his 1995 Encyclical
Ut Unum Sint
(That They May Be One), the pope urged putting aside prejudices so that with prayer and “mutual forgiveness and reconciliation,” it might be possible to examine and overcome the divisions of the past. His eye was on nothing less than “full communion among Christ’s disciples.” Nevertheless, “In matters of faith, compromise is in contradiction with God who is Truth (John 14:6) who could consider legitimate a reconciliation brought about at the expense of the truth?” There was obviously only so far he could—or would—go. Still, as a student of culture, he knew well that truth could be expressed in different forms. He encouraged joint prayer among Christians, even when not in full communion, as a way of bringing about Christian unity.

The Anglican Communion

The Anglican Communion today consists of approximately 85 million people in 165 countries. While Anglican/Episcopalian churches maintain full communion, each national or regional church is autonomous.

In 1980 John Paul II issued the so-called Pastoral Provision, which allowed former Episcopal priests to enter into full communion with the Catholic Church and to become Catholic priests. It made possible the ordination of married priests under those limited circumstances. It also allowed the acceptance of former Episcopal parishes into the Catholic Church and allowed the retention of certain Anglican liturgical elements within those parishes. According to the Pastoral Provision website (http://www.pastoralprovision.org/), from 1983 to the present more than one hundred men have been ordained as priests and three such parishes were established under the Pastoral Provision. (In 2012, Pope Benedict XVI established the Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter for groups of Anglicans in the United States seeking to enter into full communion with the Catholic Church. The Pastoral Provision remains the path for priestly ordination, however.)

In 1982, John Paul became the first reigning pope to visit the United Kingdom, where he preached in Canterbury Cathedral and met with the Archbishop of Canterbury and Queen Elizabeth, who is the Supreme Governor of the Church of England, with the authority to appoint bishops, archbishops, and deans of cathedrals. He was ultimately disappointed by the Church of England's decision to admit women to the priesthood, which he saw as an obstacle to unity. In 2003, he spoke obliquely about the appointment of a gay Episcopal bishop in the U.S. and the blessing of same-gender marriages in Canada, telling the Archbishop of Canterbury that it was necessary to protect the faith from “misguided interpretations.” On the positive side, joint commissions were able to reach agreement on several doctrinal points, and the pope expressed commitment to pursuing the course despite difficulties.

John Paul II and Eastern Orthodoxy

Today, there are an estimated 225–300 million members of Eastern Orthodox Churches. Important steps toward reconciliation with the Orthodox Churches had already taken place under John XXIII and Paul VI. John Paul viewed the Eastern Churches and the Western Church as the two lungs of a single entity. He believed that with faith, prayer, study, and goodwill, the answers to difficult issues would emerge. He wanted to establish full communion between the two, or as he later put it, “full unity in legitimate diversity” (
Ut Unum Sint,
“On Commitment to Ecumenism,” 1995). As in the case of gender-specific roles, he described legitimate differences among the Western and various Eastern Churches as cases of “complementarity.”

Consequently, his own follow-up to the earlier papal efforts was almost immediate. In November 1979, he visited the Ecumenical Patriarch Dimitrios I of the See of Constantinople and laid the groundwork for future theological discussions. A
Joint International Commission for the Theological Dialogue between the Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church
was established to work towards full communion, the goal of which was common celebration of the Eucharist.

Patriarch Dimitrios paid a return visit to Rome, but not until 1987. This delay would seem to indicate that the patriarch did not place as high a premium on reunification as the pope. Apparent foot-dragging notwithstanding, delegations from both Sees routinely visited each other for their respective celebrations.

One outcome of those discussions was recognition of the Eastern Catholic Church’s right to its own organization and apostolate. This was meant to smooth relations between Eastern Catholics (already in full communion with the Catholic Church) and Orthodox living in the same territories. The pope claimed a lessening of tensions as a result.

John Paul was able to further relations with a number of other leaders of Eastern Churches, including Pope Shenouda III of the Coptic Orthodox Church; the Syrian Patriarch of Antioch, Mor Ignatius Zakka I; and the Venerable Patriarch of the Ethiopian Church, Abuna Paulos. He was also able to sign a common Christological declaration with the Assyrian Patriarch of the East, Mar Dinkha IV.

In May 1999, he visited Romania on the invitation of Patriarch Teoctist Arapasu of the Romanian Orthodox Church, the first time a pope had visited a predominantly Eastern Orthodox country since the so-called Great Schism in 1054. He followed this up with a visit in June 2001 to the Ukraine, where he spoke to leaders of the All-Ukrainian Council of Churches and Religious Organizations.

To his disappointment, the Russian Orthodox Church continued to be resistant to Vatican overtures, and he was never able to visit either Russia or Belorus. At the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, where each Church has staked out its inch of turf and hostilities are open and raw, the aged Greek Patriarch of Jerusalem, Diodorus, personally kept the pope from using the main entrance.

Nevertheless, John Paul was willing to endure personal humiliation for the sake of his goal. In 2001, he visited Greece, becoming the first pope to visit in nearly 1300 years. Archbishop Christodoulos, the leader of the Greek Orthodox Church, had been pressured by his government into receiving the pope, and he wasn’t happy about it. The Archbishop observed that many of his faithful were opposed to the pope being there, and he presented John Paul with a list of “thirteen offences” made by the Catholic Church against the Orthodox Church since the Great Schism, including the horrible sack of Christian Constantinople by the Crusaders in 1204. The Archbishop then pointed out that no apology had ever been made for any of these offences. John Paul then asked for pardon. The delighted Archbishop clapped his hands. (Actually, he had been told before the trip that the pope planned to apologize.) Thereafter, the two issued a joint statement that included a condemnation of violence in the name of religion, and they prayed the Lord’s Prayer together in private, breaking an Orthodox prohibition on praying with Catholics.

Meeting with such far-flung figures gave the pope a joy somewhat analogous to the biblical ingathering of the exiles.

John Paul II and Buddhism

In 1984, the pope conducted Mass in Bangkok, Thailand, where he praised “the fruits of the ‘peaceable’ and ‘gentle’ wisdom” of Thai Buddhism and the “spiritual quality” of the Thai people. Similarly, during a visit to Sri Lanka in 1995, the pope spoke of his high regard for Buddhists and the virtues of Buddhism, and he affirmed his desire for interreligious dialogue and cooperation.

John Paul he met with the fourteenth Dalai Lama eight times. Since both religious leaders came from Communist-repressed societies, it was to be expected they would have much to discuss. Nevertheless, the Vatican tended to downplay such meetings because of its desire to improve relations with China, a fact the Dalai Lama understood and acknowledged. While most Catholics considered these meetings emblematic of the pope’s expansive heart, rejectionist Catholics who deny Vatican II saw it simply as more cavorting by the “anti-pope” with pagans and idolaters.

Even so, in his 1994 book,
Crossing the Threshold of Hope,
he counseled the faithful against incorporating seemingly innocuous Buddhist elements into their personal practices, and he emphasized the differences between Catholicism and Buddhism. As described by John Paul, Christianity and Buddhism are opposing systems of belief. Both revolve around soteriology, but the salvation expressed in Buddhism is a “negative soteriology” seeking detachment from an evil world that causes only sorrow. In addition, the detachment achieved in Buddhism does not have the goal of bringing one closer to God. Thus, Buddhism’s focus is quite different and incompatible with Catholicism. He described Buddhism as being “in large measure an ‘atheistic’ system,” a characterization which some Buddhists found offensive. To soothe those offended, the pope later emphasized again his respect for Buddhism.

John Paul II and Islam

Many Muslims appreciated the overtures John Paul made to improve Catholic–Muslim dialogue. He was the first pope to visit an officially Islamic country at the invitation of its religious leader. This occurred in August 1985, when he visited Morocco at the behest of King Hassan II. During that visit, he enjoyed a visit with thousands of Muslim young people in Casablanca Stadium, emphasizing: “we believe in the same God, the one God, the living God.” In May 2001 he became the first pope in history to enter a mosque, the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus, Syria, which had formerly been a Byzantine church. At the mosque, he said that Christians and Muslims had often offended one another and needed to offer each other forgiveness, a theme he repeated elsewhere as well.

In 1974, Pope Paul VI had created the Commission for Religious Relations with Muslims as a section within the Pontifical Council for non-Christians, which he had also established. In 1998, during the pontificate of John Paul, a Joint Committee was established between the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue and the Permanent Committee of al-Ahzar for Dialogue with Monotheistic Religions. The Islamic University of al-Azhar in Cairo is the highest religious institution in Egypt. The joint committee met at least once a year for a number of years, alternating between Cairo and in Rome. In 2000, the pope had a cordial meeting in Egypt with Sheikh Mohammed Sayyed Tantawi, the well-respected Grand Imam of al-Azhar whose later denunciations of violence against Christians in Egypt were much appreciated by Christians. (Sheikh Tantawi died in 2010, and relations with the Vatican were suspended by his successor. Many other initiatives with the Muslim world, however, took place both before and after that date.) The annual papal message for World Peace Day, established by Pope Paul VI in 1968, continued to be regularly translated into Arabic, and John Paul continued the tradition begun by Paul VI of addressing an annual message of goodwill to all Muslims for the end of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan.