Faith of Vision and Liberation vs Faith of Terror and Chaos

Post-9/11 Era Forum

The Power of Faith
By Charles Krauthammer
Monday, April 4, 2005
WASHINGTON POST
Page A21


It was Stalin who gave us the most famous formulation of that cynical (and today quite fashionable) philosophy known as "realism" -- the idea that all that ultimately matters in the relations among nations is power: "The pope? How many divisions does he have?"

Stalin could have said that only because he never met John Paul II. We have just lost the man whose life was the ultimate refutation of "realism." Within 10 years of his elevation to the papacy, John Paul II had given his answer to Stalin and to the ages: More than you have. More than you can imagine.

History will remember many of the achievements of John Paul II, particularly his zealous guarding of the church's traditional belief in the sanctity of life, not permitting it to be unmoored by the fashionable currents of thought about abortion, euthanasia and "quality of life." But above all, he will be remembered for having sparked, tended and fanned the flames of freedom in Poland and the rest of Eastern Europe, leading ultimately and astonishingly to the total collapse of the Soviet empire.

I am not much of a believer, but I find it hard not to suspect some providential hand at play when the white smoke went up at the Vatican 27 years ago and the Polish cardinal was chosen to lead the Catholic Church. Precisely at the moment that the West most desperately needed it, we were sent a champion. It is hard to remember now how dark those days were. The 15 months following the pope's elevation marked the high tide of Soviet communism and the nadir of the free world's post-Vietnam collapse.

It was a time of one defeat after another. Vietnam invaded Cambodia, consolidating Soviet hegemony over all of Indochina. The Khomeini revolution swept away America's strategic anchor in the Middle East. Nicaragua fell to the Sandinistas, the first Soviet-allied regime on the mainland of the Western Hemisphere. (As an unnoticed but ironic coda, Marxists came to power in Grenada too.) Then, finally, the Soviets invaded Afghanistan.

And yet precisely at the time of this free-world retreat and disarray, a miracle happens. The Catholic Church, breaking nearly 500 years of tradition, puts itself in the hands of an obscure non-Italian -- a Pole who, deeply understanding the East European predicament, rose to become, along with Roosevelt, Churchill and Reagan, one of the great liberators of the 20th century.

John Paul II's first great mission was to reclaim his native Eastern Europe for civilization. It began with his visit to Poland in 1979, symbolizing and embodying a spiritual humanism that was the antithesis of the soulless materialism and decay of late Marxist-Leninism. As millions gathered to hear him and worship with him, they began to feel their own power and to find the institutional structure -- the vibrant Polish church -- around which to mobilize.

And mobilize they did. It is no accident that Solidarity, the leading edge of the East European revolution, was born just a year after the pope's first visit. Deploying a brilliantly subtle diplomacy that never openly challenged the Soviet system but nurtured and justified every oppositional trend, often within the bosom of the local church, John Paul II became the pivotal figure of the people power revolutions of Eastern Europe.

While the success of these popular movements demonstrated the power of ideas and proved realism wrong, let us have no idealist illusions either: People power can succeed only against oppression that has lost confidence in itself. When Soviet communism still had enough sense of its own historical inevitability to send tanks against people in the street -- Hungary 1956, Czechoslovakia 1968 -- people power was useless.

By the 1980s, however, the Soviet sphere was both large and decadent. And a new pope brought not only hope but political cunning to the captive nations yearning to be free. He demonstrated what Europe had forgotten and Stalin never knew: the power of faith as an instrument of political mobilization.

Under the benign and deeply humane vision of this pope, the power of faith led to the liberation of half a continent. Under the barbaric and nihilistic vision of Islam's jihadists, the power of faith has produced terror and chaos. That contrast alone, which has dawned upon us unmistakably ever since Sept. 11, should be reason enough to be grateful for John Paul II. But we mourn him for more than that. We mourn him for restoring strength to the Western idea of the free human spirit at a moment of deepest doubt and despair. And for seeing us through to today's great moment of possibility for both faith and freedom.

Krauthammer's simplistic view:

If (A) leads to (B) then automatically it all = (Z)

He's a simplistic buffoon, with a agenda and is now preposterously trying to say that Catholicism = freedom. It is only because a majority of people in the West rejected the Catholic church, and government and church were seperated that we are now free to think and be and do what we want.

If the Church had it's way - or more importantly it's power and control - it would no doubt still be torturing heretics and burning women as witches and protecting child abusing priests.

That's not to say the Church doesn't do good and that there are not good people in the Catholic church because there is, always has been, and always will be, and people's faith is their own business (I wish). But ultimately the Catholic church, just like all churches and big institutions is about control and power. And power corrupts.

Under the benign and deeply humane vision of this pope, the power of faith led to the liberation of half a continent. Under the barbaric and nihilistic vision of Islam's jihadists, the power of faith has produced terror and chaos. That contrast alone, which has dawned upon us unmistakably ever since Sept. 11, should be reason enough to be grateful for John Paul II. But we mourn him for more than that. We mourn him for restoring strength to the Western idea of the free human spirit at a moment of deepest doubt and despair. And for seeing us through to today's great moment of possibility for both faith and freedom.

..

Krauthammer's a neocon, a propogandist, a crazy (according to some in Bush 1 admin) an ideologue who believes that change is best accomplished by violent intervention.

And Krauthammer has this hilarious knack or talent or whatever it might be for writing stuff that's almost always full of holes. Big holes at that.

Pope John Paul II felt "deep anguish" that he was unable to stop US President George W. Bush -- who will be among mourners at the late pontiff's funeral on Friday -- from waging war against Iraq's Saddam Hussein.

While the pope and Bush, who is set to arrive in Rome late Wednesday ahead of the funeral, may have shared common ground on the issues of abortion and euthanasia, they were worlds apart over the use of military force to topple Saddam.

The Italian people were clearly on the side of the pope, as three million of them took to the streets of Rome in 2003 in the largest of worldwide protests against the war.

It was Pope John Paul II, the first non-Italian pope since the 1500s, who will be remembered as much for his political impact as his spiritual journey precisely because his life contributed to the liberation of 100 million [Europissts].

Few know the given name of any of this pope's predecessors. But almost everyone who has ever heard of John Paul II knows that he was once a parish priest, Karol Wojtyla. And because of all that has been said and written of him, hundreds of millions of people know that his courage and steadfastness were forged in the crucible of adversity -- first under the boot of Nazi oppression and ultimately beneath the Soviet proxies who ruled Poland after World War II.

In the early 1950s, the communist regime constructed Nowa Huta, a "model city" on the outskirts of Krakow. When Archbishop Karol Wojtyla discovered that this new "worker's paradise" wouldn't have a church, he set out to change their minds. He lobbied the apparatchiks. They ignored him. He went to the Communist Party authorities. They threatened him. So he went to the people -- and began badgering the bureaucracy for a permit to construct a place of worship.

Increasingly vexed, officials vowed to restrict the annual Corpus Christi procession through Krakow to a single walk around the cathedral. The threat prompted a wonderful example of the future pope's courage and wit: "I am inclined to think that such actions do not favor the process of normalization between the church and the state."

In 1967, when the permit to build a church in Nowa Huta was finally granted, it was Archbishop Wojtyla who swung a pickaxe to break ground.

Though his message was spiritual -- not political -- the demise of the Evil Empire can be traced to his tenure as Archbishop of Krakow. Karol Wojtyla had braved threats of arrest to preach: "We are citizens of our country, the citizens of our city, but we are also a people of God, which has its own Christian sensibility. … We will continue to demand our rights. They are obvious, just as our presence here is obvious. We will demand!"

In 1979, as Pope John Paul II, he took that message back to his native Poland and inspired millions of his countrymen, who ignored government intimidation to hear and see him. His message, "Be not afraid," resonated in Gdansk, with the rise of "Solidarnosc" -- Lech Walesa's famous "Solidarity" labor union. On New Year's Day 1982, less than a month after the communists in Poland declared martial law and arrested thousands of Solidarity activists, John Paul denounced the "false peace of totalitarian regimes.

—Oliver North

April 3, 2005

WASHINGTON -- It was Stalin who gave us the most famous formulation of that cynical (and today quite fashionable) philosophy known as "realism" -- the idea that all that ultimately matters in the relations among nations is power: "The pope? How many divisions does he have?"

Stalin could only have said that because he never met John Paul II. We have just lost the man whose life was the ultimate refutation of "realism." Within 10 years of his elevation to the papacy, John Paul II had given his answer to Stalin and to the ages: More than you have. More than you can imagine.

History will remember many of the achievements of John Paul II, particularly his zealous guarding of the church's traditional belief in the sanctity of life, not permitting it to be unmoored by the fashionable currents of thought about abortion, euthanasia and "quality of life." But above all, he will be remembered for having sparked, tended and fanned the flames of freedom in Poland and the rest of Eastern Europe, leading ultimately and astonishingly to the total collapse of the Soviet empire.

I am not much of a believer, but I find it hard not to suspect some providential hand at play when the white smoke went up at the Vatican 27 years ago and the Polish cardinal was chosen to lead the Catholic Church. Precisely at the moment the West most desperately needed it, we were sent a champion. It is hard to remember now how dark those days were. The 15 months following the pope's elevation marked the high tide of Soviet communism and the nadir of the free world's post-Vietnam collapse.

It was a time of one defeat after another. Vietnam invaded Cambodia, consolidating Soviet hegemony over all of Indochina. The Khomeni revolution swept away America's strategic anchor in the Middle East. Nicaragua fell to the Sandinistas, the first Soviet-allied regime on the mainland of the Western Hemisphere. (As an unnoticed but ironic coda, Marxists came to power in Grenada too.) Then finally, the Soviets invaded Afghanistan.

And yet precisely at the time of this free-world retreat and disarray, a miracle happens. The Catholic Church, breaking nearly 500 years of tradition, puts itself in the hands of an obscure non-Italian -- a Pole who, deeply understanding the East European predicament, rose to become, along with Roosevelt, Churchill and Reagan, one of the great liberators of the 20th century.

John Paul II's first great mission was to reclaim his native Eastern Europe for civilization. It began with his visit to Poland in 1979, symbolizing and embodying a spiritual humanism that was the antithesis of the soulless materialism and decay of late Marxist-Leninism. As millions gathered to hear him and worship with him, they began to feel their own power and to find the institutional structure -- the vibrant Polish church -- around which to mobilize.

And mobilize they did. It is no accident that Solidarity, the leading edge of the East European revolution, was born just a year after the pope's first visit. Deploying a brilliantly subtle diplomacy that never openly challenged the Soviet system but nurtured and justified every oppositional trend, often within the bosom of the local church, John Paul II became the pivotal figure of the people power revolutions of Eastern Europe.

While the success of these popular movements demonstrated the power of ideas and proved realism wrong, let us have no idealist illusions either: People power can only succeed against oppression that has lost confidence in itself. When Soviet communism still had enough sense of its own historical inevitability to send tanks against people in the street -- Hungary 1956, Czechoslovakia 1968 -- people power was useless.

By the 1980s, however, the Soviet sphere was both large and decadent. And a new pope brought not only hope but political cunning to the captive nations yearning to be free. He demonstrated what Europe had forgotten and Stalin never knew: the power of faith as an instrument of political mobilization.

Under the benign and deeply humane vision of this pope, the power of faith led to the liberation of half a continent. Under the barbaric and nihilistic vision of Islam's jihadists, the power of faith has produced terror and chaos. That contrast alone, which has dawned upon us unmistakably ever since 9/11, should be reason enough to be grateful for John Paul II. But we mourn him for more than that. We mourn him for restoring strength to the Western idea of the free human spirit at a moment of deepest doubt and despair. And for seeing us through to today's great moment of possibility for both faith and freedom.

—Charles Krauthammer

I would like to understand - wasn't it this Krauthammer bloke who praised Reagan's actions in the early eighties as the explanation for the liberation of eastern Europe from communist opression ??? Or is it another right wing nutter ? Now the pope is celebrated. For once I would agree on how his actions have been determining in the process, but what remains to be highlighted is the way right-winger columnists spin facts to support their views.

An American actor who became a president and a Polish actor who became a pope are now recognized as the two world leaders most responsible for bringing down the USSR as a communist superpower and thus the demise of communism in Eastern Europe. Yes, Ronald Reagan and Pope John Paul II are those actors turned world leaders.

As we celebrate the life and long papacy of John Paul II this week of his passing, we are reminded of the many accomplishments of Karol Wojtyla, who answered the call to monastic life dedicated to God. In addition to serving as spiritual leader of the Catholic church, he was a poet, a professor, and a politician. This pope was a true renaissance man.

While the world can take delight in his talents as actor, poet, and professor, it must surely give thanks for his political abilities as well as his spiritual leadership.

Before coming to the papacy, this pope had suffered from communist domination of his native Poland for thirty years. The communist regime closed his university, Jagiellonian University in Krakow, where he was studying drama. He was forced to work in a quarry and later in a chemical factory or face deportation to Germany. Worse yet was the suppression of the Catholic church in Poland under the communist regime. After realizing his call to a religious life, he was forced to study in secret at a seminary that would not have been tolerated by the government. The large seminary had been closed.

So this pope experienced first-hand totalitarian oppression from a communist regime. But as a religious he fought spiritually and peacefully against that regime. More accurately, his kind of fighting should be defined differently: instead of fighting against tyranny, he fought for freedom.

This pope realized that the suppression of Catholicism in Poland was a violation of human rights, and he struggled tirelessly to get the rights of religious freedom restored in his native country. Instead of clamoring for more church buildings, he worked to get religion taught in the schools; instead of complaining about a closed press, he worked to get access to media without censorship. He also was adamant about human rights, about which he spoke openly and often.

How did the pope accomplish the mighty task of eliminating the blight of communism as a superpower? According to Lech Walesa, the founder of the Solidarity worker movement in Poland, “The pope started this chain of events that led to the end of communism. Before his pontificate, the world was divided into blocs. Nobody knew how to get rid of communism. ‘He simply said: Don't be afraid, change the image of this land.’ ” The pope gave the people to strength and courage to rise up. When he told them, “Be not afraid,” they became fearless. He also insisted that Poland’s history was entwined with the life of Jesus Christ. His emphasis on Christ was always highlighted in his speeches, and the courage to trust in God and Christ led the rest of the way.

But the unofficial alliance between Reagan and Pope Paul II was not an ordinary coalition. We have to remember that a pope can never condone violence or even countenance a just war of liberation. For Reagan, as a political leader, not under the same constraints as the pope, all options were on the table. During their conversations regarding toppling the communist regimes, particularly the one in Poland, the pope would always back away from confrontations that might harm people such as sanctions and war. However, upon receiving the following 1982 message from Cardinal Achille Silvestrini of the Vatican secretariat of state, regarding sanctions against Poland’s government after the arrest of thousands of the Solidarity labor movement, Reagan himself felt buoyed up and realized that the pope was, indeed, with him in his efforts to achieve freedom for Poland:

The Vatican recognizes that the U.S. is a great power with global responsibilities. The United States must operate on the political plane and the Holy See does not comment on the political positions taken by governments. It is for each government to decide its political policies. The Holy See for its part operates on the moral plane. The two planes (politics and morality) can be complementary when they have the same objective. In this case they are complementary because both the Holy See and the United States have the same objective: the restoration of liberty to Poland.

George H.W. Bush’s notes after visit to pope 1984:

I then asked him if he had any advice for us on Poland. He discussed this for some time. … The most important problem is the question of human rights. … The government cannot be changed. Therefore you must influence [Polish leader General Wojciech] Jaruzelski to “have a more human face.”

Despite the fact John Paul II did not believe the government could be changed, he always called for “human rights.” He made the distinction between the political and spiritual levels of operation, and though he could not agree to punishment of or war with a nation to bring about change, he understood that they might be necessary.

The unofficial alliance of the president and the pope could be likened to good cop-bad method of dealing with criminals: both had the same goal in mind, but they operated differently. The fact that Reagan and John Paul II had in mind the restoration of liberty to humanity made their work complementary. With the toppling of communism in Poland, the USSR quickly followed suit.

—Linda Sue Grimes

http://images.ucomics.com/comics/trall/2005/trall050407.gif

An American actor who became a president and a Polish actor who became a pope are now recognized as the two world leaders most responsible for bringing down the USSR as a communist superpower and thus the demise of communism in Eastern Europe. Yes, Ronald Reagan and Pope John Paul II are those actors turned world leaders.

While we're on the subject, do you recognize this, as said by that one time journalist turned neocon nut. Why's Krauthammer saying to everyone that the US has no credibility?

Anti-american, grrrr!!

Karol Wojtyla and Ronald Reagan were the true giants in the battle against communism.
By Larry Elder


It was a perfect political storm.

Have we forgotten about the peril of worldwide communism? Have we forgotten about the brutality and inhumanity of it? Soviet dissident Alexander Solzhenitsyn, after his expulsion from the Soviet Union in 1974, gave a speech here in America called "A Warning to the West." He said: "It is precisely because I am the friend of the United States, precisely because my speech is prompted by friendship, that I have come to tell you: 'My friends, I'm not going to tell you sweet words. The situation in the world is not just dangerous, it isn't just threatening, it is catastrophic.' "

Enter Cardinal Karol Wojtyla, a Pole who, in 1978, became the first non-Italian pope in centuries. By the age of 25, the man who would be pope had lost a sister, a brother, and both mother and father. He also watched as the Nazis and then the Russians occupied his beloved country. He knew a little something about human suffering.

The pope traveled to Poland several times, the first in 1979. In 1980, Polish tradesmen began agitating for workers' rights, and, in September of that year, formed a fledgling union called Solidarity. They chose, as their leader, an electrician named Lech Walesa. The pope received Walesa at the Vatican in 1981. Two years later, the pope returned to Poland for a second visit. Walesa, who later became president of Poland, said that Pope John Paul II deserves "the greater credit" for the end of communism in his country. "At the moment when the pope was elected," said Walesa, "I think I had, at the most, 20 people that were around me and supported me -- and there were 40 million Polish people in the country. However ... a year after (the pope's) visit to Poland, I had 10 million supporters and suddenly we had so many people willing to join the movement. ... I compare this to the miracle of the multiplication of bread in the desert."

Enter in 1980 President Reagan, who also had a difficult life. Reagan's father was an alcoholic and an unsuccessful salesman. His father could not hold down a job, causing the family to move numerous times. His mother was a loyal housewife and became Reagan's role model. She taught him about compassion for other people's shortcomings, including those of his own father.

During Reagan's acting career, which included a stint as president of the Screen Actors Guild, Reagan began giving speeches in which he called communism a menace and a threat to worldwide stability. In 1975, he wrote that communism "is neither an economic nor a political system, but a form of insanity, an aberration ... (and he wonders) how much more misery it will cause before it disappears. "

The pope and Reagan first met in 1982 in the Vatican. They agreed, according to Time magazine, "to undertake a clandestine campaign to hasten the dissolution of the communist empire. ... The operation was focused on Poland. ... Both the pope and the president were convinced that Poland could be broken out of the Soviet orbit if the Vatican and the United States committed their resources to destabilizing the Polish government and keeping the outlawed Solidarity movement alive after the declaration of martial law in 1981."

How much, politically, did the pope and Reagan collaborate? Apparently, they left few smoking guns lying around. UPI, however, writes, "Thus began a series of unofficial, intermittent contacts that some writers and historians have elevated to the status of holy alliance, while others have denied almost their very existence."

Mikhail Gorbachev, former president of the Soviet Union, said of the pope, "(communism's collapse) would not have been possible without the presence of this Pope." Gorbachev called Reagan a "great president ... instrumental in bringing about the end of the Cold War."

A perfect political storm.

While we're on the subject of true giants, do you recognize this, from that giant of the neocon right-wing and why he's saying to everyone that the US has no credibility now?

Anti-american, grrrr!!

Well President Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev was the man in charge of the Soviet Union at the time, and must have had something to do with dismantling the whole communist run Soviet system and transforming it into a freemarket, freepress, freespeech style democracy.

The country was after all in a bit of a mess at the time. Sadly still is, which could explain why the Russians seem to like the tough old ex-KGB officer that's in power right now.

Mikhail Gorbachev, former president of the Soviet Union, said of the pope, "(communism's collapse) would not have been possible without the presence of this Pope." Gorbachev called Reagan a "great president ... instrumental in bringing about the end of the Cold War."