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http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/pope/etc/bio2.html

Friday, September 12, 2014

Solidarity and Liberation Theology

By Jane Burns

In the film, we treated Solidarity and Liberation Theology as distinct aspects of John Paul II's papacy. Here we want to look at them together. It is both useful and usual to do so. Observers often argue that the Pope saw Latin America through a Polish lens--that his difficulties with the liberation theologians stemmed from his parochial view of the world. There is obvious truth here. From earliest childhood, Karol Wojtyla was immersed in the Polish Catholic Church, a Church that was intimately bound up with the nation--which actually was a separate nation during partition -- the one place Polish was always spoken, Polish customs were always honored, Polish history always remembered. As Roberto Suro, a correspondent for The Washington Post, said in his interview, "In Poland, the Church was the cradle of Polish identity. It was the incubator. It was the one place where Polish identity survived depressions, Napoleon, the Russian, the Fascists, the Communists...The one institution that survived and preserved a sense of Polish identity has been the Church. And the Church has done that in part because it has been unified."

The Polish Catholic Church has always been intensely authoritarian, orderly, hierarchical. An able boy like Wojtyla was formed by the priests. They literally taught him everything he knew: Father Zacher, his elementary school teacher, also taught him to ski; Father Figlewicz, Karol's religion teacher at high school, instructed him as altar boy at the Church of Our Lady; Father Leonard Prochownik, for a while the priest in Wadowice, preached Catholic-Jewish partnership. These patriarchal figures recognized his abilities--his facility with language, his gifts as a writer and depth as a thinker. They made sure the boy was handed up the only ladder of opportunity in Poland: the steps advancing through the Catholic Church. His Wadowice mentors were delighted when Archbishop Sapieha noticed their star student during a visit to their town. The Church drew from a small pool of talent in Poland. That chance encounter may have paid off during the war when Sapieha chose Wojtyla as one of his secret seminarians. In 1946, the same year Sapieha ordained Wojtyla, he sent the young priest to Rome for graduate study. It was not just Father Karol's first chance to see the world, it was also the world's first chance to see him. It was the beginning of his being known in Rome. Before Cardinal Sapieha died in 1951, he turned Wojtyla's future over to Archbishop Barziak.

He arranged for the young priest to take a second doctorate and later was instrumental in persuading Primate Wyszynski to put Wojtyla forward as bishop. When Bishop Wojtyla accompanied Wyszynski to Rome for Vatican II, he found Father Deskur, a friend from Sapieha's wartime seminary, ensconced as the council's press secretary. Deskur introduced Wojtyla to many Vatican insiders and helped lay the foundation for his coming finally to Pope Paul VI's attention.

If Wojtyla had not impressed people on his own, these connections would have meant little. At the same time, such a system leaves its mark. Those who have been lifted through the ranks become hierarchical and authoritarian in their turn. As Pope, John Paul II has paid assiduous attention to his appointments (virtually all of his bishops share his views), and has never shrunk from using his power against whatever is egalitarian, inchoate and disorderly. Liberation theology was nothing if not egalitarian, inchoate and disorderly.The social problems that liberation theology responded to were extremely messy. The issues were different in Brazil than they were in Argentina; they were different in Chile than they were in El Salvador and Nicaragua. But overall, power was in the hands of the few at the expense of the many. In 1968, the bishops of Latin America decided the Church had to commit itself to a preferential option for the poor. In the decades which followed, the Church in Latin America was fractured, overwhelmed and left-wing in varying degrees, depending on the country.

Roberto Suro told us that "over the course of ten, fifteen years that idea, that strategy, that priority evolved into many forms of action that get lumped into the idea of liberation theology, but basically means that the Church's primary mission had to somehow bring about change in Latin America." Until then, in most places, the Church had sided with the status quo--with the rich and powerful. From that time, the hierarchy was undermined because there was conflict between bishops who favored social action and those who were essentially apologists for the upper classes and for the military regimes. According to Suro, John Paul II's condemnation of liberation theology was, "'There will be no double magisterium. There will be no double hierarchy.'" The Pope saw liberation theology, first of all, as a challenge to Church hierarchy. He instinctively reacted against the participatory democracy inside the base communities where priests and congregations mingled freely. Secondly, the Pope distrusted the openness to difference and discussion within these communities. As Suro said, "The Church he understood and loved was unified in opposition. He grew up in a Church that always had its back against the wall, that was trying to survive an atheistic, totalitarian regime...In Poland, the Church was going in one direction against one foe." This single-minded focus put blinders on John Paul II in Latin America. When the liberation theologians said "Marx," the Polish Pope heard "Communism." When the clergy pointed to the widespread suffering of the poor, the Pope said they were blessed by richness of spirit. When priests invited the people up to the altar, the Pope cried "anarchy." When priests and nuns took up arms against massacre, John Paul II roared at them to "Pray!"

He could not see any similarities between the social revolution in Latin America and the democratic revolution in his Poland. Nor could he admit to any contradiction in his handling of the situations. From the time he was elected, the Pope's trips between Poland and Latin America were often back to back. The contrast between his activism at home and his repressiveness abroad frequently stood out in stark contrast. In January of 1979, John Paul II went to Mexico, attracting the largest crowds in history (estimated at five million people) and showing he was a political force to reckon with. He used his power to denounce liberation theology. "When they begin to use political means," he said. "They cease to be theologians."

In June of the same year, John Paul II flew to Poland. Everywhere he went the extraordinary crowds chanted, "We want God. We want God." In the presence of his combustible countrymen, he all but lit the torch, "Any man who chooses his ideology honestly and through his own conviction deserves respect...The future of Poland will depend on how many people are mature enough to be non-conformist."

In 1980, when the workers struck at Gdansk, there were posters of the Pope everywhere. He supported the strike from the Vatican and sent word to Primate Wyszynski to do the same. When the regime imposed martial law in 1981, the Pope expressed outrage in his radio broadcasts and started sending material, spiritual and financial support home. In 1982, Father Jerzy Popieluszko began joining sit-ins and speaking out against the regime. Poles flocked to his church because of his radical politics. John Paul II personally encouraged his work by sending him a crucifix through friends. It was not long before Father Popieluszko was considered such a challenge, the Communists had him murdered.

Meanwhile, in South America, John Paul II raged against priestly involvement in politics. In 1982, the Pope stopped in Argentina. As he decried the Falkland war, his priests and nuns expressed their support for it by waving banners, saying, "Holy Father bless our war." In 1983, he made his famous trip to Central America where his clerics held a number of positions in the left-wing government. John Paul II publicly scolded Ernesto Cardenal. In private, he negotiated the ex-communication of Miguel D'Escoto, a Jesuit who'd joined the Sandinista's government with permission from his order. In 1984, the Brazilian Franciscan Leonardo Boff, a brilliant liberation theologian, was summoned to the Vatican to answer for his latest book. In it, he used Marxist language to critique the Church and analyze its mission. He was silenced, forbidden from speaking or publishing his work. Ultimately, Boff felt compelled to leave the priesthood.

On and on--there are endless examples of the Pope creating "free zones" in Poland and shutting them down in Latin America. The people who criticize John Paul II for never getting beyond Poland pitch their tents right here. As professor Ron Modras, a former priest who has written about the Polish Catholic Church, said to us, The Pope "speaks eight languages: Polish, Russian, German, French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese and English. Yet, he opens himself to the accusation of being provincial. He thinks in Polish. He is the most traveled world leader in history,and yet he exemplifies how narrow the vision from the Vatican can be and has been." In fact, John Paul II has surrounded himself with so many Poles it's said among Vaticanistes in Rome that "the Tiber will run red with Polish blood" when the Pope passes on.

He sought advice on Latin America from all his advisors, but in the end, the Pope was uncompromising. "As a Pole," Professor Tony Judt of New York University's Remarque Institute said, "he does not compromise with secular authority. The whole history of Polish Catholicism, of Polish romantic nationalism, of Polish idealism in all its political and secular forms is a history of non-compromise."

The criticism is real, but it ignores what the Pope's trip to Cuba demonstrated: that he was capable of developing his views over time. When Communism fell in Poland, John Paul II was bitterly disappointed by his countrymen's response to freedom. Poland, Christ of Nations, was supposed to lead the world in spiritual values--not hurtle down the slippery slope of Western capitalism. But his Poland did just that: embraced consumerism, celebrated licentiousness and legalized abortion. Meanwhile, as the military dictators fell and civil wars ebbed in Latin America, the base communities which were at the heart of liberation theology survived. They fostered the sort of social fabric the Pope approved of: communal solidarity built around the church. In Cuba, John Paul II went beyond messianic Catholicism and simplistic anti-Communism --two central elements of his Polish background. He promoted a new synthesis, calling on Fidel to grant his people more religious freedom, and praising the people for keeping their socialist ideals. Critical of both Marxism and capitalism, it was the vision of a man who had learned from his experience.