Revisiting Pope John Paul II: A Priest Par Excellence

By Canute Tangwa (Originally published on thepostwebedition.com )

Roman Catholic history is replete with the good, the bad, the ugly and the controversial: popes, priests, religious and the laity inclusive. The spotlight would be on popes, Pope John Paul II in particular, and to a lesser extent Bishops, since they are the so-called elite or princes of the Church.

 

Pope John Paul II

Unfortunately, some of our priests and bishops in Cameroon have given a very lay and parochial meaning to the term prince, if the recent classification of Cameroonian Bishops (retired and active) according to their pastoral qualities, theological knowledge, management abilities and lifestyle as relayed by the authoritative Le Messager of March 18, 2009 is anything to go by.

It is no longer a matter for conjecture and bickering that Pope John Paul II was a good pope. His Holiness had a very good press irrespective of his inflexible or rigid stance on issues such as the sanctity of the family, race, homosexuality and gay marriages, condoms, abstinence, celibacy, ordination of women, abortion, euthanasia, death penalty, unbridled materialism, communism, liberation theology and so on. He stuck to church doctrine like a leech and was unwavering and stoic like the so-called conservative popes before and after him.

In order to understand the pontiff’s appeal to friends and foes, avowed communists and hardcore capitalists, Muslims and Jews, protestants and Pentecostals, Buddhists and Hindus, atheists and animists as well as the youth in spite of his doctrinaire approach to social issues, observers have belaboured on his communication skills; his role in smashing communism in his homeland, Poland, and the resultant domino effect in the Soviet Union and the world; his courage to tell it as it is to dictators and human rights abusers; his love for travel in order to spread the Good News (he is the most travelled pope with 104 foreign trips to his credit); his promotion of inter-religious dialogue including the groundbreaking World Day of Prayer for Peace in 1986; his numerous firsts -

first pope to visit Japan and the United Kingdom, first pope to have visited a Synagogue (Rome 1986), first pope to visit the holiest site of Judaism (Western Wall in Jerusalem) and apologised to Jews for Church’s actions towards them, first pope to visit Auschwitz (1979), first pontiff to visit, pray in a mosque and kiss the Koran and so on; his good relations with the Dalai Lama; his conception of the World Youth Day in 1984 as well as numerous encyclicals on Church teaching and doctrine. These and more made Pope John Paul II an extraordinary rallying point.  Others, before, like Pope John XXIII have had such tonnes of positive backlog but Pope John Paul II is by far the most extraordinary.

In my quest for an answer to this atypical personality, I stumbled on the random thoughts of a Rabbi on John Paul II in Newsweek of April 6, 2005. Rabbi Marc Gellman, a Jew, provides a simple straightforward answer:  John Paul II was a perfect priest! According to him, John Paul II “protected a part of himself that has remained from his childhood-spontaneous, naturally pious and innocent. Into his 80s, Pope John Paul II was a natural and charismatic with children as any twenty something we hire to run our youth groups. He loved children because he loved innocence and clarity”. He loved his calling and made it look simple!

Unlike most clergymen, Pope John Paul II did not view his priestly vocation and vow of celibacy as a burden. Once more Rabbi Gellman explains, “in this priest the vow of celibacy seemed less a burden than an opportunity for greater love, enabling him to open himself up to the youth of the world, who could love in return that part of him that had never completely surrendered to the spiritual corrosions of adulthood. The sacrifice of a personal family was joyously compensated by his ability to enter millions of families with the innocent and loving power of his soul. Many priests do this with great effort and loneliness. Because he was a perfect priest, he did this as a natural and effortless expression of his overflowing love.” In a way, he exemplified Christ’s teaching that when fasting true Christians should not put on long faces.

Gellman states, “I think his excellence as a priest is the most important reason for his grand achievements”. Rabbi Gellman rattles off, “…But Karol Wojtyla did not take up his vocation to be a pope, he took up his vocation to become a priest. Most of these cascading visual and verbal tributes have focused with the longest lenses on his transformative impact on the history of the world and the history of the Roman Catholic Church. I cannot gainsay any of those encomiums. Pope John Paul II was obviously one of the greatest world leaders of the past quarter century. But, to me at least, the greatest achievement of Karol Wojtyla was that he was a perfect priest.”

When a reverend father, bishop, cardinal or pope remembers that he is first and foremost a priest, all other things, material and immaterial, will fall into shape. Emeritus Archbishop Paul Verdzekov insists on being called Father Verdzekov!

A perfect priest “teaches people not to be afraid…not to fear death…teaches hope and courage” in precept and practice. A perfect priest exudes joy and happiness. A perfect priest does not compromise, collude, plot, hate, or stoke tribal flames. A perfect priest is always above the fray: teaching and admonishing.

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