The Feast of Pope Saint John Paul the Great

Today is the first anniversary of the falling asleep in the Lord of His Holiness, Pope Saint John Paul the Great. While at least one weblogista in my acquaintance has repeatedly referred to this saint as "John Paul the Over-rated", I think this speaks more to this person's flippancy than to his acumen, at least on this one issue.

When I first learned of His Eminence, Karol Cardinal Wojtyla, more than thirty years ago, I found that he was a philosopher, at a time when the most important movement in modern philosophy was phenomenology, and the most important advocate of phenomenology was Edmund Husserl. I found that the most important journal of Husserlian phenomenology, the Analecta Husserliana in 1977 devoted an entire issue of its journal to a treatise by the then Cardinal Karol Wojtyla. I knew even then that he was a great man. Everything since then has confirmed that first impression.

Under Pope John Paul's auspices, the codes of Canon Law for both Latin and Eastern Catholic Churches were reformed; priestly fraternities both for the Old and the New Mass were developed; the magisterial Catechism of the Catholic Church (the first in four hundred years) was promulgated; and most importantly, under his pen, a wealth of encyclicals, from Laborem exercens to Ut unum sint were written. Finally, under his papacy, and through an incredibly intelligent and virtuous development of nonviolent opposition, one of the most evil empires which humankind had the misfortune to experience crumbled into nonexistence.

For all of these reasons, Pope Saint John Paul deserves, together with his brother popes and saints, Leo and Gregory, the title: the Great.

While it is unfortunate that His late Holiness did not do more to combat the tendency towards heterodoxy and unholiness which have developed in the Roman Catholic Church, it is good to consider that His late Holiness had to deal with both the oldest bureaucracy in human existence, and the most incredible tendency towards rebellion and stupidity which humankind has ever experienced. In this context, one should remember the words of the German poet, Schiller: "Against stupidity, the gods themselves contend in vain." If a god could not prevail against such, how could one expect a simple saint, or even a profound pope, to do any better?

A more intelligent and a more charitable critique of His late Holiness could be found in the words: de mortuis, nil nisi bonum -- concerning the dead, say only good. I think that under the circumstances, we can and should say that not only was this pope and this saint good, but also, that he was great.