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Speaking truth to the modern world
By Paul T. Stallsworth

Karol Wojtyla-who, upon election as pope, was renamed John Paul II-has led quite a dramatic life. Acquainted with suffering as a boy, Karol Wojtyla lost his parents to early death. He also suffered as his beloved Poland suffered-first under Nazi occupation, then under Communist rule. He suffered from the attack of a nearly successful assassin, and later from the accidents and ailments of advanced age, including Parkinson's disease. Through suffering and grace, Karol Wojtyla has been made into a witness to Christian hope.

In 1929, the boy's mother, Emilia Kaczoro-wska Wojtyla, died when he was but a third grader. Therefore, "Lolek," as the youngster was called, was raised by his father, a Polish soldier. Lolek's father was a "man of constant prayer." There were many nights and early mornings that young Lolek saw his father kneeling in prayer before God. Together, they often read the Bible and prayed. The man who would be pope later wrote, "We never spoke  about a vocation to the priesthood, but his example was in a way my first seminary, a kind of domestic seminary."

In the popular media, John Paul II was often depicted as an authoritarian, rules-enforcing pope. This false stereotype ignored his deep intellectual sophistication and Christian sensibility. Probing the modern world, John Paul II saw and addressed a crisis in the realm of ideas. The crisis is that the modern world-through its Nazism, Communism, materialism, utilitarianism, and hedonism-has attempted to separate man from God. Stated differently, the modern world has abandoned the truth about man: that man is from God, related to God (and to others), and destined for God. This truth is revealed most clearly in Jesus Christ, who came for the good-indeed, the salvation-of man. Throughout his papal ministry, John Paul II joyfully proposed this evangelical, Christ-centered truth to the Church and to the world. He did not seek to impose it.

John Paul II thought and lived as a servant of the truth. This pope did not play partisan politics, even though his ministry had world-historical, political consequences. Rather, he tirelessly witnessed to the truth about man, and let the political chips fall where they would. Because of his principles and steady commitment to them, John Paul II became the leading theological and moral voice in the world of our time.

The accomplishments of John Paul II are considerable. He renewed the papacy, fully implemented Vatican II and thereby reshaped Roman Catholicism, presided over the collapse of Communism, penetrated the challenges facing the modern free society, placed ecumenism at the top of the Roman Catholic agenda, initiated extraordinary dialogue with Judaism, redefined interreligious dialogue, and lived in front of the world an exemplary life of Christian discipleship. All of this was achieved on the foundation of evangelical truth. It has involved personal risk, institutional tension, and, at times, failure. But faith in God, not fear, guided John Paul II's life and ministry through it all.

Four days after Mehmet Ali Agca gunned down and nearly murdered John Paul II, the pope gave this tape-recorded message to thousands of gathered pilgrims: "I am particularly close to the two persons wounded together with me. I pray for that brother of ours who shot me, and whom I have sincerely pardoned. United with Christ, Priest and Victim, I offer my sufferings for the Church and for the world..."

In a day when The United Methodist Church could use some additional, strong, courageous leadership from our bishops, the life and ministry of John Paul II inspires hope. This man was more than an international, religious celebrity. He was a laborer and sufferer for the truth. He was and is a sign that God is faithful to the whole Church and to the world. He is, even now in death, a witness to hope.

The Rev. Paul T. Stallsworth is the pastor of St. Peter's United Methodist Church in Morehead City, North Carolina, and the editor of Lifewatch, a quarterly newsletter on United Methodism and the Gospel of Life.

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Pope embodied courage and love
By Linda Bloom

Pope John Paul II is being remembered by United Methodists as one of the great leaders of the Roman Catholic Church.

The 84-year-old pontiff, whose health had taken a serious decline over the past few weeks, died peacefully April 2 at the Vatican in Rome.

"John Paul II personified the Roman Catholic Church for more than a quarter-century," said Bishop William B. Oden, ecumenical officer for the United Methodist Council of Bishops. "He embodied its conflicts, its strengths and weaknesses and its struggles.

"Without a doubt, he will be seen as one of Catholicism's greatest popes-personable, charismatic and clear about his vision of the church," Oden added. "Still, he left a legacy of many unresolved issues, including women in the priesthood, celibacy and the call for greater lay involvement in decision making."

Bishop Peter D. Weaver, president of the Council of Bishops, expressed condolences to "our Roman Catholic sisters and brothers" on the loss of the pope. "He was a courageous witness for Christ and a compassionate brother to the poor and oppressed of this world.  We give thanks for his life and ministry among us and the new life he now has in Christ."

Weaver said he had been reminded of the courage of John Paul II during a recent visit with United Methodists in the African nation of Burundi.

"Because of the excellent relationship between United Methodists and Roman Catholics in that nation, I stayed in a Roman Catholic seminary in a fairly remote and sometimes dangerous part of that country," he explained. "A Vatican envoy had been killed not too far from there. And yet an example of the pope's courage and commitment to forgotten places is that he came to visit this seminary and gave it support and encouragement as a part of his deep concern for Africa. Such visits never made the news but were at the heart of his ministry."

The Rev. Geoffrey Wainwright has been chairman of the dialogue between the World Methodist Council and the Roman Catholic Church since 1986. He last saw the pope in November at a 300-member symposium organized by the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity.

"Pope John Paul II's contribution to ecumenism is epitomized in his encyclical letter of 1995, 'Ut Unum Sint' ('That They May Be One')," Wainwright says. "The most exciting element in that letter was his invitation to leaders of other churches and their theologians to join with him in 'a patient and fraternal dialogue' concerning how the 'ministry of universal unity' traditionally claimed and offered by the (Holy) See of Rome could be exercised in new ways in a new situation."

That topic has been a discussion point in the Methodist-Catholic dialogue since 1986, according to Wainwright, who is the Robert E. Cushman Professor of Christian Theology at United Methodist-related Duke Divinity School.

Paragraph 62 of the dialogue's Nairobi Report of 1986, "Towards a Statement on the Church," said: "It would not be inconceivable that at some future date in a restored unity, Roman Catholic and Methodist bishops might be linked in one episcopal college, and that the whole body would recognize some kind of effective leadership and primacy in the bishop of Rome."

Progress has been hindered over the past few years by the pope's declining health. "One must hope that his successor(s) will take up the cause vigorously," Wainwright said. "As John Paul insisted, unity among Christians and their churches is intrinsic to a credible witness to the gospel before the world. In this, I like to say that he has been a successor to John R. Mott, the early twentieth century American Methodist layman and pioneer of the ecumenical movement."

The fact that John Paul II was a friend to a Methodist pastor when he was the archbishop of Krakow, Poland, was confirmed last October when the international dialogue commission met in Krakow. "The story still circulates of how Archbishop Karol Woytila (as he then was) paid a hospital visit to Methodist Pastor Lucian Zaperty," Wainwright explained.

Wainwright was one of three keynote speakers at the November symposium, which marked the 40th anniversary of the Second Vatican Council's decree on ecumenism, "Unitatis Redintegratio" ("The Restoration of Unity").

"The pope presided over a special service of Vespers in St. Peter's," he recalled. "When he was wheeled in, he looked radiant; and the thought struck me from the Apostle Paul in 2 Corinthians 12:8-10:  this was 'strength perfected in weakness.'"

The Rev. George Freeman, chief executive of the World Methodist Council, had met John Paul II on two different occasions and remembered being deeply impressed by the influence the pope had on so many people.

"In January 2003, I attended the Day of Prayer for Peace in the World, sponsored by the pope," he recalled. "We rode from Rome to Assisi by train in the car adjacent to the pope's car. All along the route for the two-hour train ride were hundreds of thousands of people, old and young alike, who lined the streets, roadways and train platforms just to get a glimpse of his train as it sped by. There were thousands and thousands of signs being held by those who love him, wishing him well and thanking God for his life."

Freeman noted that while the president of the United States may be the most politically powerful man in the world, the pope had a different type of influence. "Pope John Paul II has offered leadership to the world for 26 years and represents a different power, one that transcends national identity and self-interest, which represents a kingdom that is eternal and cannot be shaken."

Linda Bloom is a United Methodist News Service news writer based in New York.

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Pope John Paul II and Evangelicals

George Weigel, a senior fellow of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, is the author of  Witness to Hope: The Biography of Pope John Paul II. He was interviewed for Christianity Today by Michael Cromartie, director of the Ethics and Public Policy Center's Evangelical Studies Project.

Overall, how did this papacy influence Protestantism, particularly evangelicalism?

I hope it demonstrated to the worlds within worlds of evangelical Protestantism that the Catholic Church is a vibrantly evangelical Church, committed to bearing witness to Christ and preaching Christ on a global basis. With the possible exception of Billy Graham, no man in the twentieth century did more to preach Christ to more people than Pope John Paul II. At his papal installation on October 22, 1978, he set the basic framework for his pontificate: "Be not afraid! Open the doors to Christ!"

This Pope was tremendously popular with Protestants and with many nonbelievers. What made him an Everyman's Pope?

His integrity, for one thing: here was a man visibly spending out his life in service to the Christian truths he preached and taught. His confidence in the Lord surely made him attractive, too. When the Pope said, as he did in so many ways, that Jesus Christ is the answer to the question that is every human life, people knew that he knew that from the inside, from his own commitment to Christ. I suspect nonbelievers found him attractive because of his passionate defense of human rights and his commitment to dialogue among people of different convictions. We should always remember, though, that he didn't understand "dialogue" as a form of political correctness; for John Paul II, dialogue meant engaging difference, respectfully, acknowledging that all truths lead to the one truth, who is God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Did the Pope moderate his views of independent Protestant sects during his papacy? He seemed very anti-independent Protestant sects at the beginning of his papacy. Did he remain that way?

The Pope understood that Latin America is the new demographic center of world Catholicism; he also understood that the vibrancy of evangelical, Pentecostal, and fundamentalist Protestantism there, and in Africa, and elsewhere, is defining the new ecumenical reality for world Christianity. Father Richard Neuhaus kept the Pope informed of developments in the "Evangelicals and Catholics Together" initiative. And when Neuhaus spoke on this at the 1997 Synod of Bishops, urging that the Americas be evangelized by "evangelicals and Catholics together," the Pope gave him a friendly wave from the dais.

At the same time, I think the vibrant Christian witness and clear moral teaching of John Paul II led many evangelicals to re-think their views of Catholicism.

The agreement between global Lutheranism and Roman Catholicism over justification by faith: Will that be one of his lasting legacies?

I hope so. One might have hoped that more would have come out of this concretely, in terms of genuine ecclesial reconciliation. But what we have learned since 1999 is that there are other issues on the table between Catholicism and the Lutheran World Federation.

This Pope was a philosopher. What should people remember from his teaching about persons and about the nature of truth?

That human beings can't live without truth: that, without truth, we die, just as we die without water or food. Human beings have a thirst for truth built into us; that thirst is best met by the Gospel of Christ, in whose holy face we see both the truth of the merciful Father and the truth about our humanity.

What business, especially that which may impact relations with Protestants, has he left unfinished?

I think it's fair to say that many, perhaps most, Protestants (and certainly most Orthodox) have felt far less a sense of ecumenical urgency than John Paul II. I hope that sense of urgency grows in the years ahead.

Used by permission of Christianity Today, © 2005.



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