A TRULY CHRISTIAN MAN
by Forrest Church
April 3, 2005
"Wojtyla. Wojtya. Wojjtya." Last evening, at 9:37 Vatican time, to certify that the pope was truly dead, three times Edwardo Cardinal Marinez of Spain, the Camerlengo (or papal house steward), repeated John Paul II's baptismal name and struck him on the forehead with a small silver hammer. The Camerlengo sliped the ring of the fisherman—St. Peter's ring—off the pope's finger, and crushed it with the same small hammer. After crushing the ring, he then struck and broke the papal seal. With these symbolic gestures, the papacy was passed back to the living. Having achieved the fullness of age and the end of his earthly journey, Karol Josef Wojtyla was set free unto the realm of eternal rest.
"Wojtyla. Wojtyla. Wojtyla." He was born in 1920 in the town of Wadowice (near Krakow) into the family of a tailor who had served in the Habsburg army. He lost his mother when he was nine and his brother when he was 12, and was raised by his father in a one-room apartment. His boyhood passions being poetry and music, theater and faith, he would die at St. Peters in his 85th year, the pageant of his life finally ended, a prince of the church, a soldier of faith, and a child of God.
What a week we have had, rich with poignancy and rife with passion, so many conflicting emotions, so much conflicting testimony about life and death and dignity. I really can't remember one quite like it—to be hit almost hourly with breaking medical, political, ethical and theological news from two so very different fronts: the deathwatch in America for an unwitting everywoman, Terri Schaivo; and, the deathwatch throughout the world for a gentle, yet iron-willed pontiff, humble yet conscious to the very end of his role as the most influential spiritual leader of our time.
It was one of those weeks when we almost couldn't help but sit up and pay attention. On the TV screen, in the papers, and over the radio not only have we been peppered with the latest bulletins about Terri Schaivo or Pope John Paul II, but also—pregnant in the pauses and written between almost every line—we have received a raft of subliminal messages. So much decoding to do! About the meaning of our own lives and the values we bring (or fail to bring) to life. About the wisdom we draw from momentos of mortality. Not to mention the divisions that rend our riven world. Or the universal hopes and dreams that make us all one people.
Looked at glancingly, one might conclude—and many pundits have, I'm afraid—that these two stories are actually one story, a Christian parable of sacrifice and valor. It's the perfect story for Fox News, acutally: the champions of life arrayed against the dark forces of a soulless liberal world. And, of course, the perfect story for preachers. With Easter for a backdrop, this one-size-fits-all blurring of headlines aligns Jesus and Terri and John Paul together on the side of the angels. They each sacrifice themselves—or are offered up by God—to save fallen humanity from its many sins.
Remember, God is all-knowing and all-powerful, so nothing—in this particular school of interpretation—happens by accident. Read correctly, all history is salvation history. Everything that happens is willed by God for a (sometimes hidden) purpose. And the true meaning of everything that happens is revealed to anyone who can interpret the signs. That's the kind of thinking we're dealing with here. To interpret the signs, just open the Bible. Align chapter and verse from the Bible to the episodic pages of salvation history as it unfolds and you will discover God's purpose. Here is last week's message. Just as Jesus did before them, Terri and the Pope lived and died to save us: from our sins; from our selfishness; and from the culture of death that prevails throughout a fallen world.
The behavior of Congressman Tom Delay offers a good case in point. Ten days ago, he said to a group of supporters that God sent us Terri Schaivo for a purpose. God's purpose, it turns out, was to distract America's attention from the ethics charges that liberals were directing against Congressman Delay himself. In the past, when I've heard that sort of argument, I've ignored it as being unworthy of a response. We can't afford to do that any longer. Why? Because polls suggest that as many as half the people in this country are susceptible to this kind of reductionistic theological thinking. Liberal religious leaders simply have to speak up. In the name of religious decency we do, in the name of a God who, to be credible, must be engaged in something decisively more important than Congressman Delay's political fortunes.
The vigil for Terri Schaivo was really not for her as a person. I'm sure it felt that way to many of those who were deeply upset by her plight, but its basic motivation was political, not personal. The vigil for Terri Schaivo was perfomed on behalf of a cause. Her memory—itself apparently lost 15 years ago—was invoked less for her as a person, than for the sake of an opportunistic hard-right religious agenda. It was the invasion of the body snatchers. One couldn't help but be affected by her plight—or what appeared to be her plight, from carefully selected pictures—but our affections were abused. Our emotions were manipulated. Our hearts were taken hostage.
In marked contrast, the vigil for Pope John Paul II was honestly and legitimately affecting. Watching and reading the coverage, I have been deeply moved, especially over the past three days. To John Paul II, and in his memory, I give my heart freely. Not (obviously) as a member of his religious communion or as one who subscribes to the central tenets of his theology or moral agenda, but as one human being to another, I give to him my heart. This man's dying touches me deeply. The reminders of his remarkable life recall me to the plenitude of my own and our shared humanity.
Even as the Terry Randalls and Tom Delays of this world make me weep for our sins in a different way than they intend we should, Pope John Paul II, for me at least, invokes the better angels of our nature. He models the Christian spirit of compassion and forgiveness, of justice and equity. In one news clip, President Bush is recorded aptly applauding the pope for "championing the weak, the poor, the hungry, and the outcast." I thought to myself when I heard this, the president might be well advised to take his own commendation of such an agenda more deeply to heart. More importantly, however, since it falls within the compass of our direct responsibility, we ourselves should take this pope's commitment to justice and mercy more deeply to heart. "Forget about the president," I chastised myself at one particularly uncharitable moment. "Think about your own failings. And you're even supposed to be a liberal."
Pope John Paul II presented a searing critique of the valueless nature of secular materialism and capitalism. In the language of the heart, he challenged all nations and all people to embrace ideals of mercy and justice not alone to save the world, but first to save us from ourselves, to free us from our web of self-absorption and our casual disregard for others' pain and need. "The greatest commandment is to love the Lord our God with all your heart, and the second is like unto it, to love your neighbors as yourself," Jesus taught us. For Pope John Paul II, these words, together with the ringing refrain, "Be not afraid" beat at the heart of a lifelong hope-inspiring, other-regarding ministry of service. Yes, President Bush should pay closer attention, but I should too. So should we all.
Don't get me wrong. Fifteen hours of sentimental television coverage haven't beguiled me into signing my name on the pope's doctrinal dotted line. The liberal religious beliefs I cherish could not be further removed from the theological tenets imposed by the Catholic teaching authority. Nor does my democratic temperament, well suited to congregational religious polity, in any way conform to the hierarchical constructs of the Roman Catholic Church.
Theology and polity aside, I so vigorously disagree with the Catholic position on several ethical tenets that if I were a Catholic, I would be a very uncomfortable one. As I said in my Easter sermon last week, though anti-abortion, I strongly believe in a woman's right to choose. I consider liberal sex education and expanded access to better and safer contraception to be critical to a truly pro-life position, one that goes beyond the narrow strictures of a pro-birth theology to enter the more complex moral matrix of a just, equitable, and compassionate society. And in contrast with the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church against all forms of euthanasia, the broader-gauged and more therefore more encompassing pro-life position I profess accommodates a degree of personal choice here as well. When life's ongoing quality has been diminished or destroyed ,death with dignity represents a higher moral ideal than death as an enemy to be resisted at any and every cost.
And yet, as a citizen of the world and a person of faith, I found my soul transported yesterday to St. Peter's Square, to commemorate the death and celebrate the life of Pope John Paul II. My heart joined the hearts of Catholics everywhere. It overflowed with gratitude for John Paul II's sincere and faithful witness to the spirit of holiness and for his service to the church universal.
Not only has he kissed the ground in more than 120 countries, reaching out to his capacious flock, but, drawing from the depth of a felt recognition of our shared humanity, he has done something significant for everyone of us. He has dared to abandon long defended barricades dividing his faithful from those, like ourselves, who are faithful to other oracles than the apostolic creeds.
Perhaps the greatest legacy of John Paul II's papacy is his encouragement of dialogue and mutual forbearance between disparate peoples and faiths. He was the first Pope ever to visit a synagogue, call the Jews Christians' older brothers, asked forgiveness for the extent to which the Catholic Church abetted the Holocaust. Visiting Aushwitz, he called it "the Golgotha of the modern world."
He also contributed directly to the liberation of his homeland from Communism. Returning to express his opposition to martial law in Poland in 1983, he said, "[I kiss the soil] as if I placed a kiss of the hands of a mother. . . I consider it my duty to be with my compatriots in this sublime and difficult moment."
In his economic encyclicals, he criticized the inadequacies and propensities for injustice present in the capitalist system as well, never excluding the poor and powerless from his social vision.
And throughout his papacy, John Paul II engaged in a vigorous, reverent, and fearless campaign for peace. Here his words chasten the leaders of a war-torn world, including the leaders of our own country. "Pervading nationalism imposes its dominion on man today in many different forms and with an aggressiveness that spares no one," he said. "Humanity should question itself, once more, about the absurd and always unfair phenomenon of war, on whose stage of death and pain only remain standing the negotiating table that could and should have prevented it."
Finally, for each one of us Pope John Paul II modeled the power of forgiveness. Do you remember his visit to Mehmet Ali Agca, the man who wounded him severely in an assassination attempt in 1981? "What we talked about will have to remain a secret between him and me," the pope reported then, adding, to an astonished world, these remarkable words, "I spoke to him as a brother whom I have pardoned and who has my complete trust."
More than 100 men have tried to fill St. Peter's shoes as Bishop of Rome and Supreme Pontiff of the Roman Catholic Church. History records that many of these men have been scoundrels: rapacious, wanton in their piety, at times tyrannical, at others arbitrary in their stewardship. Given his own record of stewardship, we may consider ourselves blessed that Karol Wojtyla, Pope John Paul II, was elevated to the Holy See in 1978 to serve his people and their neighbors throughout the world so faithfully and for so very long. In fact, to the very end. These past few days, in death as in life, he modeled grace and forbearance, dignity and other-regarding affection. No matter how true or false his theology may prove to have been when he meets his Maker, in the book of his life Pope John Paul II inscribed eloquent passages of faithfulness in devotion to the universal good.
And so we to can say, "Wojtyla. Wojtyla. Wojtyla. May you go in peace. And, in your leaving, may you inspire among all believers in God and seekers of the good some small measure of the justice and mercy you sought to engender during your remarkable journey from that one-room apartment near Krakow to the not-often-so-redemptive grandeur of the Papal apartments from which you took your leave.
Amen. I love you. And may God bless us all.