For Immediate Release: 2 April 2005

Contact: Rea Howarth 301-699-0042 (work) 301-538-4420 (cell)

A Man of Contradictions: Pope John Paul II Leaves a Mixed Legacy

Catholics Speak Out and the Quixote Center pray for the pope’s soul. We acknowledge his essential goodness and deep spirituality. We know the impact of his 26-year papacy will reverberate for years to come.

Many people loved the pope for his larger than life presence on the world’s stage. His personal piety and spirituality spoke to them at a deep level. He was a powerful witness for the humanity of all peoples, regardless of station or intellect. John Paul II was a very complicated man and he left a very mixed legacy.

Pope John Paul II was an actor who well understood the power of the bully pulpit. If he ever suffered from doubt, it never showed. He never assumed a false humility. He understood and powerfully felt that God had called him to serve every moment of his 26-year papacy. He used his power of his absolute monarchy and the age of instant communications to seize the center stage.

To his everlasting credit, John Paul II made anti-Semitism a sin in the Catholic Church. He apologized for the church’s terrible treatment of the Jews. Who can forget his visit to Jerusalem and the Wailing Wall, where he slipped a prayer between the ancient stones?

So, too, he raised a powerful voice against the wars engulfing so much of the world. He reached out to the Orthodox Churches, seeking to heal the ancient wounds opened when the church broke in two in the 12th century.

He delighted millions of indigenous peoples by celebrating with them their indigenous expressions of worship, especially dance, much to the consternation of his liturgical gatekeepers who subscribed to a rigid, Roman method of worship. He even shared the Holy Eucharist with men and women who had publicly dissented with church teachings, then turned around and signed a solemn statement that no member of another Christian denomination could sit at the holy table.

John Paul II spoke against the materialism of western societies that literally threaten the life of the planet. He advocated forcefully for human rights. Paradoxically, he denied that grown women and men should be able to control their reproductive lives without interference from the church or the state. Under his reign, millions walked away from the church or ignored its teachings. In Africa, where whole societies are being ravaged by AIDs, the conservators of sexual ethics tell people to just say “no.” Condoms are withheld or derided as “dangerous.” There is no such thing as “safe sex.” The only safe sex is no sex.

Under John Paul II, women were extolled for their “special genius.” He tried to construct a new understanding of the role of women in church and society, spoke of women’s “complementarity,” their fundamental equality, but made sure they would never receive equal treatment in the church. He waged a war against homosexual persons, and bitterly denounced a gay pride march in Rome, taking it as a personal affront—never acknowledging the role that gay men exercise in staffing the churches as priests.

John Paul II extolled democracy, but exercised an iron hand over the church. Collegiality was stripped of its meaning. Consultation was one-way. John Paul strengthened the Curia, which hated and fought Vatican II, stripping the bishops of any real authority, setting in motion a determined effort to roll back the clock and the prophetic gains envisioned at Vatican II.

Whereas bishops’ conferences had previously issued letters of compelling moral vision and exercised great influence over liturgical translations, John Paul II’s machinery subjected the bishops to galling bouts of liturgical editing by junior members of the curia with little or no linguistic experience. The revised liturgy approved by the bishops was jerked off the printing presses, and the humiliation of learned grown men was publicly displayed. Grown men, with real expertise in their fields, kissed the papal ring and saluted.

John Paul II oppressed those who disagreed with him. The man who advocated for human rights denied freedom of expression to theologians, whose job it is to explore what it means to be a lover of God in the here and now. Under his leadership, tenured faculty members lost their posts. Books were scrutinized for any hint of dissension and prophetic voices silenced.

When it became clear that John Paul II would never drop the man-made (not revealed) rule of celibacy, thousands of priests walked away from their deeply loved call to serve in vocations they loved, unable to live a lie. Thousands more refuse to join the priesthood at the price of denying their own humanity. Single-handedly, this pope presided over the decimation of the priesthood and his only response was that we should all pray for “vocations.” Because of his rigidity, the church is nearing collapse.

We expect that some of these problems will be solved and some will remain under the soon-to-be-elected next pope. Nonetheless, we, as devoted Catholics, will be remain steadfast, to raise up the voices of the people of the church, for the church is much, much more than the pope—we all are the church.