Pope St. John Paul II
Our saint today is the beloved Pope St. John Paul II. Of course, we cannot possibly summarize the life and witness of one of the most extraordinary saints of the 20th century.
In celebrating Pope St. John Paul II this year, I would like to reflect on his contribution to and implementation of the Second Vatican Council. Fr. Karol Wojtyla was ordained on November 1, 1946. He was ordained 16 years (42 years old) when the Second Vatican Council began.
He arrived at the Council as a young auxiliary bishop of Krakow, Poland. Bishop Wojtyla attended all four sessions of the Council. The Second Vatican Council was from 1962 – 1965.
Bishop Wojtyla played a major role in drafting Gaudium et Spes, which was a pastoral constitution that looked at the Church’s relationship with the modern world, human dignity, and the social order. He would later make paragraph 22 the cornerstone of his papacy – Christ fully reveals man to himself. In other words, Christ reveals what it means to be a human being. For Bishop Karol Wojtyla, there was a modern crisis of humanity, what it meant to be a human being. This question could only by answered in its fullness by looking to Jesus Christ.
Additionally, Bishop Karol Wojtyla supported and helped shape the declaration on religious freedom (Dignitatis Humanae). He championed the document because it directly challenged the Marxist claim that we have no sacred space of personal identity that the state could not intrude. Bishop Karol argued that we have religious freedom rooted in human dignity that every state must respect.
Unfortunately, the Second Vatican Council had gotten lost between two camps in the 1960s and 1970s. There were those who thought the Council was a big mistake, and those who thought its goal was to dismantle the Church’s 2,000-year tradition. The latter camp used the Council as an opportunity to experiment with the liturgy and introduce foreign teachings to the Catholic faith. Additionally, it certainly did not help that the implementation of the council collided with the massive social upheavals, secularization, and the sexual revolution of the 1960s and 1970s.
Once elected, Pope John Paul II provided the authoritative keys for interpreting and unlocking the sixteen documents of Vatican II. For John Paul II, the Council was built around a communio of disciples of Jesus Christ. He provided a Christocentric focus, anchoring the council’s teachings in the truth that Jesus Christ is the center of the universe and of history. He also emphasized that the Church is a communion of disciples of Jesus Christ in mission.
Furthermore, Pope John Paul II rejected the “hermeneutic of rupture” (the camp that viewed Vatican II as a break from the Church’s Tradition or a revolution against past Catholic doctrine). He also rejected the ultra-traditionalist rejection of the council (today’s SSPX), insisting instead that the Second Vatican Council must be read in continuity with the living Tradition of the Church.
For Pope John Paul II, the goal of Vatican II was to help launch the Church into a revitalized, missionary push to re-evangelize traditional Christian lands facing secularization, nihilism (no meaning), and relativism (no truth). It is safe to say that without Pope John Paul II’s papacy, we would still have massive confusion around the Second Vatican Council and how the Church can best evangelize in the third millennium.
Pope St. John Paul II’s extraordinary intellect, personal witness, and powerful prayers were a true blessing for the Church. The Lord blessed us with this beautiful saint who made a significant contribution to the Second Vatican Council and who provided the correct interpretive lens throughout his 26-year papacy.
~Pope St. John Paul II pray for us!