“AMEN.” With that single word, that simple affirmation of the faith, Karol Wojtyla closed his eyes to the things of this world. It is the hope of every Catholic that in that very same moment his soul at last beheld the vision of eternal life.
Among those he left behind, however, speculation about John Paul’s place in history has already begun. Few people in 1978 believed that a tireless insistence on the innate dignity of the human person would eventually contribute to the peaceable dissolution of the Soviet empire, the demobilization of its armies, and the discrediting of its ideology. Wojtyla believed as much, and owing to the force of that conviction his name will long be remembered among the heroes of the twentieth century.
Many Roman Catholics see another dimension to John Paul’s greatness. There is already talk of seeking his beatification, thereby putting in motion the process towards canonization and sainthood. “John Paul the Great” is increasingly heard, not least from Cardinal Soldano at the pontiff’s requiem Mass. Should the name be formally bestowed, John Paul would become the first pope in 14 centuries to receive the honorific.
Little wonder. The man seemed to defy superlatives. He was remarkably athletic, and possessed a quick wit and sharp tongue. His writings fill 150 thick volumes, and contain theological treatises that will be studied for decades. He proved himself a statesman of the first order, but never shirked from the prophetic duty of decrying evil wherever he saw it. Even his personal interactions seemed superhuman. He drew massive, adoring crowds–including the largest in human history–and yet was also capable of reaching out, embracing, and forgiving the man who had put two bullets in his side.
But when we take this broad view, when we step back so that we can get a sense of the enormity of his achievements, we lose sight of how John Paul would likely want to be remembered. It is we who want to dwell on the historic accomplishments; we are the ones fascinated by the extraordinary. We should remember, though, that the extraordinary (to invert two categories central to John Paul’s thinking) always has an ordinary side. Christians, after all, do not expect to be judged on the basis of whether or not they altered the course of history. Theirs is a humbler, yet far more exacting, scale.
John Paul defined his existence by one thing: his discipleship to Jesus of Nazareth. Accolades and honors meant little to him if they did not redound to the greater glory of God. That sense of discipleship called him to the priesthood and charged him with the care of souls. Only on these terms can we fully make sense of his legacy. He would have us evaluate him as a pastor, and remember him as a shepherd.
It was Gregory the Great who first described the bishop of Rome as the servant of the servants of God (servus servorum Dei). Popes ever since have held the title, but it fell to John Paul to show how that ideal might be approximated in the 21st century. Here as elsewhere his solution was the essence of simplicity. In an age of instant communication, he would offer no substitute for his own physical presence.
JOHN PAUL was famously eager to be among his followers. He traveled to 130 countries, visiting each of the 6 habitable continents. He traveled to assure the faithful in distant lands of their communion with the wider church, to preach the gospel and perform the sacraments. He traveled to walk among the people, to touch them, to talk with them. He traveled because that was what his ministry required. It was the living witness to his conviction that every person in every place was made in the image and likeness of the Creator, and none could ever be taken for granted.
These habits of the heart were formed while Wojtyla was a young priest. As George Weigel has observed, it is surely significant that whenever John Paul was asked about his first years in the priesthood, he talked not about the seminary or the university, but rather about camping and kayaking with his lay students. He understood that his vocation was not primarily intellectual or political. It was pastoral. That never changed, from his earliest days in the seminary to his last days as pope.
People throughout the world, Catholic and non-Catholic alike, sensed and reciprocated this warmth and affection. Nevertheless, some of John Paul’s critics have maintained that the success of his ministry papered over a much deeper failure. Charisma is a transient thing, they argue, and it cannot sustain unpopular doctrines in the long run. Father Richard McBrien, a theologian at Notre Dame, claims that John Paul had “very little influence on the lives of Catholic lay people.” Sure, they “see him and cheer for him,” but apart from that “there’s not much substance.” The excitement with which people greeted the Pope, this line of thinking goes, was matched only by the abandon with which they departed from his teachings.
This complaint usually arises in reference to John Paul’s teachings on sexual morality: celibacy, abortion, and homosexuality. But it stands to reason that the same objection applies with equal force to any number of other behaviors decried by the Pope. John Paul was, for example, deeply invested in upholding what he called the splendor of truth. Despite these efforts, there has been no appreciable decline in incidences of lying.
Yet none of his critics have argued that the persistence of lying indicates the failure of John Paul’s ministry. They recognize that some actions are simply beyond the reach of pastoral counsel; they are, to use the terms of Christian theology, constitutive of human nature in the wake of original sin. So too with lack of fidelity to John Paul’s defense of traditional Catholic teachings on human sexuality: if his advice was not widely followed (or not widely enough followed to satisfy his critics), it is in large part because the standard he set was uncompromisingly high.
John Paul saw his earthly tasks as first and foremost ministerial, and we do well to remember that this seemingly ordinary vocation was the basis out of which came his extraordinary achievements.
Christopher Levenick is the W. H. Brady doctoral fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
