John Paul II and Freedom
John Paul II was a champion of freedom. From his early philosophical work as Professor of Ethics at the University of Lublin to his writings as pope, he made freedom a central theme. Without freedom, we cannot realize our dignity as persons. Without freedom we cannot love. His encyclical Veritatis Splendor is an extended reflection on freedom. The Apostolic Constitution Ex Corde Ecclesiae should be our starting point for any discussion of academic freedom and its exercise.
Rich as John Paul II’s writings are however, we do even better to look at what he did. The opening challenge of his papacy was, “Be not afraid!” And he was not afraid to be free.
When the Nazis seized Poland in 1939, they planned not simply to take the land and enslave the Slavs but to erase their culture from human memory. At the risk of prison and even execution, young Karol Wojtyła and his university friends clandestinely wrote and performed plays to preserve the Polish heritage and give the lie to the degrading Nazi ideology. For the sake of human dignity, Karol Wojtyła freely risked everything to write and to act.
There was precious little freedom for scholars in Communist Poland. Professors had to be circumspect. Priests were to confine their activities to church and rectory. Nonetheless, young Father Wojtyła (having instructed his students to call him “Uncle” instead of “Father”) led them on camping and canoe trips, where he talked with them about good and evil, sexuality and marriage, and the love of God.
Academics, whether Polish or French or American, write. Scholarly publishing is part of the job. For the Catholic scholar working under the oppressive Marxist ideology, the challenge was tricky, at best. How do you communicate the truth, when only the Lie may be spoken? How does one dialogue with Marxist colleagues whom the Lie has made deaf? Bishop Wojtyła had studied Aquinas and embraced his thought, but outside of ecclesiastical circles, the language of Thomism was almost unintelligible. Continental philosophy was speaking the language of experience. So Karol Wojtyła immersed himself in the study of phenomenology, a philosophical school attractive to his students and his Western colleagues, and he integrated this style of philosophizing with his Thomistic metaphysical foundations.
Then he did something truly creative—indeed daring. In a Marxist land, he turned Marx against Marx. At the heart of his principal philosophical work, Osoba i Czyn (The Acting Person) is a key insight, found also in Marx’s Theses against Feuerbach, that human thought must be engaged with sensuous reality. It is not enough for disembodied philosophical minds to contemplate the world. Praxis is integral to thinking. “Communism is for the worker,” said the Party. “True enough!” replied Wojtyła (in effect), “but let us look more closely at this worker.” And he demonstrated how this worker must be far more than a Proletarian, that he is a person whose work comes from within his own subjectivity and expresses his inherent dignity. The dignity intrinsic to human work demands that the worker be free. His Marxist colleagues were disconcerted. Professor Wojtyła had played to their strength and bested them.
Under the most brutally oppressive ideologies of the 20th Century, Karol Wojtyła used what little freedom he had to preserve a culture of life, to undermine the Official Lie, to teach the young the truth about the good, and to help them find their way through the thickets of youthful passions to authentic love.
Then the cardinals elected him pope, and as pope he finally enjoyed full freedom of thought and expression. (He was, after all, the one in charge—at least of the Church and the Vatican City-state!) There are expectations, of course, even for a pope, but these did not constrain John Paul II. In his first year in the papacy, he turned his weekly public audiences into a series of teachings on sex and love, which he called “theology of the body.” His Holiness the Supreme Pontiff was talking frankly, clearly, and very positively about married love and its physical expression in sex. The entire world could now learn what “Uncle” he taught on those canoe trips.
Duly cautioned by the seasoned diplomats in the Vatican, he challenged the Communist leaders of Poland and supported the Solidarity Labor Party. In response (according to a recent finding by an Italian commission), the Soviet leaders hired Mehmet Ali Agca to shoot him on May 13, 1981. After his recovery, John Paul II confronted political tyranny firmly and clearly, from Fidel Castro’s Cuba to Agustin Pinochet’s Chile. He embraced the poor of Africa and Latin America. He welcomed the sick. He challenged us Americans to live up to our founding ideals, especially by honoring the right to life. He was not afraid.
Eventually his wounds and his age caught up with him. A broken hip and Parkinson’s degree left this former goalie and avid skier hobbled and shaking. His once-handsome face became bloated and his speech slurred. Nonetheless, he did not retreat from his work. John Paul II traveled and taught, preached, encouraged, and embraced his flock and the world until his body could respond to his will no more.
John Paul II set us an example. In his encyclical on the relationship between faith and reason he challenged us to be bold: “The parrhesia [straightforward witness] of faith must be matched by the boldness of reason” (Fides et Ratio, §48). Later in that same document, he calls on philosophy to recover its “sapiential dimension as a search for the ultimate and overarching meaning of life” (FR §81). Note that he does not say, “I, the pope, hand you the answers ready-made.” Fides et Ratio is a challenge to us in our rightful academic freedom, a challenge to pursue true wisdom, to formulate intelligent responses to the fundamental questions of existence. He thought boldly and he wanted us to think boldly. “Open wide the doors to Christ,” he said, “Be not afraid!”
Adrian J. Reimers