George Weigel, evangelizzare l'Europa - di Maria Claudia Ferragni

In NBQ

George Weigel, già docente di teologia, Distinguished senior fellow del prestigioso Ethics and Public Policy Center di Washigton, autorevole giornalista e scrittore cattolico, insignito di numerosi Dottorati Honoris Causa, è considerato il più importante biografo del Beato Papa Giovanni Paolo II. Dando seguito a una promessa fatta al Pontefice stesso solo quattro mesi prima della sua morte, ha di recente pubblicato il libroThe End and the Beginning: Pope John Paul II - The Victory of Freedom, the Last Years, the Legacy.

Lo abbiamo incontrato a Roma, in occasione della storica canonizzazione congiunta dei due più amati Papi del Ventesimo Secolo e gli abbiamo chiesto di parlarci della crisi di fede e politica europea.

Professor Weigel, che fine ha fatto il desiderio di Papa Giovanni Paolo II della riscoperta delle radici cristiane dell'Europa, soprattutto di fronte alla crisi ucraina che riapre scenari di conflitto che ricordano la Guerra Fredda?

Il fatto che oggi l'Europa sia sempre più chiusa su se stessa, incapace di prendere importanti e serie decisioni dal punto di vista politico, è proprio indice del fatto che si è creato un enorme vuoto spirituale e morale, quello di cui parlava con lungimiranza il Beato Papa Giovanni Paolo II. Questo ci dice anche dell'attuale incapacità europea di sostenere il popolo ucraino che desidera essere libero e vivere in una società aperta e giusta. Il movimento del Maidan avrebbe dovuto, infatti, dare una profonda ispirazione a tutta l'Europa a recuperare i suoi valori costituivi, quelli cristiani, ma questo finora purtroppo non è successo.

Quale può essere il ruolo della Chiesa Cattolica oggi, adesso in Europa?

Prima di tutto deve predicare il Vangelo. Questo é il suo compito. Dobbiamo infatti smetterla di dire che bisogna "ricristianizzare" l'Europa, perché va invece "cristianizzata": infatti l'Europa ha completamente dimenticato la fede. Ciò significa quindi che la Chiesa deve assumere un vigoroso atteggiamento missionario e deve assolutamente cominciare a farlo là dove si trova il suo centro: cioè in Europa. Però la Chiesa, proprio come diceva Giovanni Paolo II, deve proporre qualcosa di nuovo. Papa Wojtyla ha infatti letteralmente chiamato e spinto la Chiesa ad abbandonare le "acque basse" e la superficialità rappresentate dalla semplice conservazione del cattolicesimo istituzionale, a favore della ricerca della profondità data dalla nuova evangelizzazione. E ciò deve accadere in primo luogo e prioritariamente in Europa.

Quale può essere il ruolo della Chiesa statunitense anche verso l'Europa?

Sicuramente la Chiesa cattolica americana ha molti problemi, ma può assumere un ruolo estremamente importante perché é nella forma migliore fra tutti paesi occidentali. Sta vivendo un momento di grande vitalità evangelica: ci sono stati centinaia di migliaia di nuovi Battesimi nella Chiesa cattolica durante le recenti festività Pasquali e questa è una grande notizia.

Quindi la Chiesa in America ha imboccato la strada della nuova evangelizzazione e può essere di esempio per la Chiesa in Europa, in Occidente e in tutto il mondo su come si deve muovere la Chiesa nel mondo moderno.

Giovanni Paolo II, un ponte tra Cristo e il nostro cuore - di Arcivescovo Luigi Negri

In NBQ

E’ con profonda commozione e con grande gratitudine a Dio che riviviamo la grande testimonianza cristiana di magistero, di affezione agli uomini e al loro destino che si sintetizza nell’immagine dei 27 anni di pontificato del beato Giovanni Paolo II.

Si è presentato sulla scena del mondo con un amore incondizionato a Cristo presente nella Chiesa, un mistero di umiliazione che è diventato l’unica e reale possibilità di recupero dell’uomo e della sua dignità. Ma allo stesso tempo ha avuto una acutissima compassione dell’esperienza dell’umanità in quel triste passaggio dal secondo al terzo millennio che per la sua presenza e per il suo insegnamento sono stati un kairòs: una situazione eccezionale offerta da Dio alla fede dei cristiani, e offerta agli uomini nella temperie di una crisi della modernità che si era andata compiendo in modo inesorabile.

Giovanni Paolo II si è trovato di fronte al compito di dare una formulazione dell’incontro tra Cristo e il cuore dell’uomo. Questa fu la sua intuizione: la presenza della fede nel mondo non ha ragioni esclusivamente teologiche, ha ragioni profondamente antropologiche. L’affermazione della presenza di Dio in Cristo è la strada lungo la quale l'uomo Cristo rivela profondamente la sua verità e insieme insegna la verità di ogni uomo che vive in questo mondo.

A riaprire il dialogo fra Cristo e il cuore dell’uomo è il cuore annichilito ma non distrutto dalle grandi tragedie del totalitarismo moderno contemporaneo. Giovanni Paolo II ebbe la capacità di scoprire questo livello profondo della vita umana nella storia, quella tensione inesorabile dell’uomo verso il compimento della sua esperienza umana. Egli condivideva con Pascal la certezza che l’uomo supera infinitamente l’uomo.

A quest’uomo cominciò a parlare. E cominciò a parlare nella concretezza della sua esistenzialità quotidiana, andando oltre ogni formulazione ideologica, ogni tentazione umanistica, ogni tentazione di ridurre la vita umana a un problema di giustizia sociale, economica e politica. Ha parlato all’uomo scendendo con lui nelle profondità di quel cuore umano su cui l’insegnamento conciliare ha scritto pagine di straordinaria profondità che hanno trovato il loro radicale compimento teorico e pratico nelle grandi pagine della Redemptor Hominis, il grande manifesto programmatico del cristianesimo del Terzo millennio.

In Cristo l’uomo ritorna ad essere di Dio e per Dio. E mentre torna ad essere di Dio e per Dio si rivela in maniera adeguata quell’impegno antropologico che fa grande l’esperienza umana sulla terra. Solo nel mistero di Cristo e della Chiesa l’uomo è introdotto a comprendere e sperimentare quella antropologia adeguata che si è definitivamente compiuta nella Passione, nella Morte e nella Resurrezione di Gesù di Nazaret.

Quest’uomo, le cui radici sono nel mistero di Cristo, realizza la propria vocazione umana sulla Terra, nella concretezza, addirittura nella lacerazione, di una esperienza umana che senza Cristo rimane incomprensibile a se stessa. Come afferma il numero 10 della Redemptor Hominis: «L'uomo non può vivere senza amore. Egli rimane per se stesso un essere incomprensibile, la sua vita è priva di senso, se non gli viene rivelato l'amore, se non s'incontra con l'amore, se non lo sperimenta e non lo fa proprio, se non vi partecipa vivamente». 

Da qui la preoccupazione di rilanciare in maniera adeguata il mistero del matrimonio e il suo compimento nel matrimonio cristiano. La preoccupazione di insegnare agli uomini e ai cristiani una corretta grammatica dell’affezione, della sessualità, una corretta grammatica di quella paternità e maternità consapevoli e responsabili nella quale l’uomo esercita sulla terra il compito di reale e fondamentale collaborazione al mistero di Dio che genera ogni giorno figli all’umanità e alla Chiesa.

Il magistero di Giovanni Paolo II era sull’uomo, sul matrimonio, sulla sacralità della vita, sulla responsabilità della paternità e della maternità, sulla vocazione a realizzare nel mondo quel matrimonio cristiano che - come ricordava don Luigi Giussani in una delle sue ultime interviste - è la cosa più alta cui l’uomo possa accedere sulla terra, reale immagine ed esperienza della Trinità nel cuore dell’uomo e nei rapporti che caratterizzano la sua vita, personale e sociale.

La Chiesa riscoprì la grandezza dell’essere famiglia, famiglia di Dio per l’uomo, e la famiglia riscoprì la grandezza di essere Chiesa, di essere esperienza viva di quella comunione con Cristo e fra i fratelli che costituisce la novità della vita cristiana, cioè della vita umana redenta.

L’insegnamento sull’uomo, sulla sua vocazione matrimoniale si è articolato poi nella grande lezione della dottrina sociale, in cui l’identità dell’uomo e la sua dignità vennero insegnati nel concreto esercizio di quei fondamentali diritti umani che solo la fede cristiana rivela adeguatamente e solo l’educazione ecclesiale rende esperienza di vita nuova nel mondo.

La Veritatis Splendor, l’Evangelium Vitae, la Fides et Ratio, la Laborem Exercens, la Centesimus Annus, tutto il corpo delle encicliche sociali del Papa Giovanni Paolo II hanno ampiamente insegnato la responsabilità del cristiano e della Chiesa a calarsi dentro la storia e a costruire dentro la storia la novità umana e cristiana che il papa definì «la Civiltà della verità e dell’amore».

Rispondendo alle mie condoglianze il giorno della morte del beato Giovanni Paolo II, l’allora segretario del Papa e oggi cardinale Stanislao Dziwisz mi disse: «Giovanni Paolo II ha insegnato ai cristiani ad essere autenticamente cristiani, agli uomini ad essere uomini di buona volontà, aperti al Mistero che non escludono più dall’ambito della loro vita ma verso il quale anche misteriosamente muovono i passi in attesa dell’incontro gratificante e pacificante con il mistero di Dio che in Cristo si è fatto presenza umana, storica».

I 27 anni del pontificato di Giovanni Paolo II hanno chiuso in maniera irreversibile ogni tentazione di dualismo, estrema conseguenza del grande sbandamento del modernismo all’inizio del secolo XX. La fede genera nel cuore dell’uomo una cultura adeguata, consente la conoscenza profonda del mistero di Dio, del mistero dell’uomo nella realtà della storia, del loro reciproco connettersi ed articolarsi. Il cristiano di Giovanni Paolo II è un cristiano che è consapevole della grazia che gli è stata fatta, e che vive la fede non solo per se stesso ma per il mondo. Ecco la grande intuizione per cui la missione costituisce – come ebbe a definirla nei primi anni ’80 – l’identità e il movimento della Chiesa. La Chiesa non fa la missione come una delle possibili azioni, la Chiesa è missione, la Chiesa si autorealizza nella missione, perché nella missione la Chiesa diventa sempre più se stessa, «la fede si irrobustisce donandola», scrisse nella Redemptoris Missio.

La canonizzazione di Giovanni Paolo II è l’acquisizione definitiva nella Chiesa, di fronte a Dio e di fronte all’umanità, di un cammino cristiano e umano del quale tutto ciò che era stato operato contro Dio è stato inesorabilmente giudicato. Tutto ciò che era tensione al mistero di Dio è stato valorizzato, ma soprattutto è stata testimoniata la pienezza della fede, le condizioni della pienezza di libertà e di umanità per cui la redenzione è l’unica autentica possibilità di una antropologia adeguata, di una storia compiutamente vissuta, di una attesa piena di sacrificio e di letizia per l’instaurarsi di quel regno di Dio che nel mistero della Chiesa viene continuamente riproposto e autenticamente iniziato, portato di generazione in generazione verso il suo compimento. «Quel regno celesto – come diceva Iacopone da Todi – che compie omne festo che il cuore ha  bramato».

I cristiani che hanno seguito il Magistero e la testimonianza del Papa, hanno recuperato il senso del proprio essere uomini nuovi nel mondo, destinati proprio da questa novità a praticarla autenticamente e a comunicarla irresistibilmente, perché ogni uomo che incontra la testimonianza della Chiesa di Cristo, la testimonianza che ogni cristiano è chiamato a dare, possa se vuole accettare di inserire anche lui la sua vita e la sua libertà nel grande mistero della Chiesa in cui Cristo è continuamente presente, incontra l’uomo, riempie la sua vita di una proposta irresistibile. Soprattutto lo accompagna in quella azione educativa per cui le parole, le grandi parole della Chiesa, diventano carne e sangue, diventano esperienza reale, diventano una irresistibile fede in Dio e passione per ogni uomo che viene a questo mondo.

Two Popes and today’s sexual chaos - by Judie Brown

April 25, 2014 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Canonization is always a special event in the Catholic Church. But history will be made two days from now as two recent popes—both of whom have had a profound effect on the Church, her theology, and the world—will be elevated to sainthood.

The first of these, Pope John XXIII, presided over the opening of the Second Vatican Council. That alone made him a controversial pope in the eyes of those with the misguided notion that convening this council was the beginning ofmodernism in the Church. The fact is that the council did not open the doors to error. The misinterpretation of Vatican II documents was preceded by years of misguided attitudes propagated by wayward priests, bishops, and lay theologians. 

But that’s a story for another day. Suffice it to say, Pope John XXIII had the most honorable of intentions. He opened the council on October 11, 1962, saying among other things: “The Church has always opposed . . . errors. Nowadays, however, the Spouse of Christ prefers to make use of the medicine of mercy rather than that of severity.” 

Though he died just eight months later, the phrase “medicine of mercy” has been tossed about like Frisbee. Some have interpreted it to mean that Vatican II documents teach that it is better to be kind than it is to expect the adherence to truth and the avoidance of sin. This attitude could not be further from the truth.

For example, in May 1961, Pope John XXIII taught in Mater et Magistra:

We must solemnly proclaim that human life is transmitted by means of the family, and the family is based upon a marriage which is one and indissoluble and, with respect to Christians, raised to the dignity of a sacrament. The transmission of human life is the result of a personal and conscious act, and, as such, is subject to the all-holy, inviolable, and immutable laws of God, which no man may ignore or disobey. He is not therefore permitted to use certain ways and means which are allowable in the propagation of plant and animal life.

Human life is sacred—all men must recognize that fact. From its very inception it reveals the creating hand of God. Those who violate His laws not only offend the divine majesty and degrade themselves and humanity, they also sap the vitality of the political community of which they are members.

Here we find the Holy Father illuminating the undeniable truth that respecting human dignity is not optional if one desires to live in a way that is pleasing to God. In other words, living in accordance with Catholic teaching means accepting and sharing the “medicine of mercy.” Nothing in Vatican II documents denies this.

Further, Pope John Paul II taught in 1995, “Despite their differences of nature and moral gravity, contraception and abortion are often closely connected, as fruits of the same tree.”

We can conclude, therefore, that genuine mercy can only be communicated if we understand this virtue and how we must live it, speak it, and share it. Aquinas tells us that mercy signifies our grief for the sins of another person. Expressing this requires our conscious decision to aid someone in error—showing him the wrongdoing and helping him find in Christ the will to repent. 

Whether that action involves abortion, contraception, or other threats to the human person, when we become the ministers of the medicine of mercy we help them by sharing truth in love. We are, by our lives and actions, guiding the wayward to encounter truth, repentance, and forgiveness.

This is the essence of Pope John XXIII and Pope John Paul II’s legacy.

So, as we think about these soon-to-be saints, let us ask each of them to intercede for us that we may courageously oppose cruelty toward every one of our brothers and sisters while administering the medicine of mercy to a culture filled with human beings suffering sexual chaos.

Interview: A Tale of Two Saints - by George Weigel

In EPPC 
National Review Online | Published on April 24, 2014

On Divine Mercy Sunday this weekend in Rome — one week after Easter — Pope Francis will celebrate the canonizations of two recent predecessors in the Chair of Peter, Popes John Paul II and John XXIII. John Paul II’s biographer, George Weigel, distinguished senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, discusses the significance of the event with National Review Online’s Kathryn Jean Lopez.

KATHRYN JEAN LOPEZ: Why are John Paul II and John XXIII being canonized? Is it a big deal that this is a “doubleheader”?

GEORGE WEIGEL: It’s probably useful to get one thing straight at the outset: The Church doesn’t “make saints,” and neither does the pope. God makes saints, and the Church (through the pope and his collaborators) recognizes the saints God has made. In the first millennium of Christian history, the Church “recognized” saints through popular acclamation. From the mid 17th century on, the Church used a rather complex (and frankly adversarial) legal process to test whether popular reputations for heroic virtue — the definition of “sanctity” the Church uses in assessing these things — were warranted. That process was reformed by John Paul II in 1983, so that the current process more closely resembles a doctoral seminar in history than a trial.

Multiple canonizations are not all that rare. What gives the “doubleheader” of John XXIII and John Paul II its particular resonance is that both men were beloved, both were controversial, and both were deeply involved with the Second Vatican Council. A lot of the contemporary history of the Catholic Church is summed up in these two lives.

I think Pope Francis’s decision to waive the normal requirement for a second, post-beatification miracle for John XXIII and to celebrate his canonization together with that of John Paul II (after a post-beatification miracle due to his intercession had been confirmed) was inspired and bold. What Pope Francis may be saying is that here are the two bookends of the Second Vatican Council: the pope who had the courage and wisdom to summon the most important Catholic event in 500 years, and the pope who had the courage and wisdom to give that council an authoritative interpretation. I’d also suggest that John Paul II completed the work of John XXIII, by giving post-conciliar Catholicism a new vision of its evangelical, missionary potential — which happens to be the reason John XXIII called Vatican II, as we learn from rereading his magnificent opening address to the Council on October 11, 1962.

LOPEZ: What makes each of them saints?

WEIGEL: As always, it’s a case of “heroic virtue.” Both men had a widespread reputation for sanctity during their lives; indeed, in both cases, there were calls immediately after their deaths for them to be proclaimed saints. The dignity with which both of them bore their final suffering was a great priestly example, as was the calm courage with which both conducted the Office of Peter. And they could “pope” as well as they did because they were both men who had displayed, in their pre-papal lives and ministries, a radical conversion to Christ.

LOPEZ: What is canonization anyway? Does the Vatican have a window into who is in Heaven and who is in Hell? Could this be presumptuous on the part of the Catholic Church?

WEIGEL: “The Vatican” is, depending on the context, a micro-state or a set of buildings, and in either instance, “the Vatican” doesn’t have any privileged insight into human souls. What the Catholic Church does have is the promise of the Lord Jesus Christ that, by the Holy Spirit, she will be preserved in the truth Christ left her as a patrimony. And part of the Holy Spirit’s ongoing preservation of the Church in the truth is the Holy Spirit’s lifting up saintly men and women throughout the ages — and enabling the Church to recognize the sanctity of its sons and daughters, even when that sanctity comes in surprising or unexpected ways. The formal process of “canonization” is intended to weigh claims that X or Y lived the virtues in an exceptional way, a claim that is also weighed against the expectation that God will provide his own signal in the case of X or Y, through the medically inexplicable cures that are attributed to the intercession of candidates for beatification and canonization.

​John Paul II was convinced that God is profligate in “making saints,” and that the divine delight in doing so had not slackened over the centuries. Thus his many beatifications and canonizations were an effort to get the Church of the third millennium to recognize the many saints who surround us, that “great cloud of witnesses” of which the Letter to the Hebrews speaks so eloquently.

As for Hell, the Catholic Church has never declared that X, Y, or Z is certainly in Hell, although the Church continues to believe that Hell exists. The question of Hell’s population is for God to determine. The greatest of poets, Dante, was, of course, less restrained in his census of Hell than the teaching authority of the Catholic Church.

​​LOPEZ: “Vatican Under John Paul II Knew About Sex Abuse In Legion Of Christ For Decades, Documents Reveal,” one headline this week reads. Did Pope John Paul not want to know the truth about Marcial Maciel? Did he know and not care?

WEIGEL: I discussed the Maciel case in The End and the Beginning, the second volume of my biography of John Paul II, and my conclusion today remains the same as it was when that book was published in 2010: John Paul II was deceived by MarcialMaciel, a master-deceiver who deceived many, many people. That, I think, is clear. But that John Paul II knew about Maciel’s perfidies and “didn’t care” is inconceivable.

​LOPEZ: An AP story Monday was headlined “John Paul’s legacy stained by sex abuse scandal.” As his biographer, would you agree? What is his legacy on this front?

WEIGEL: This is another matter I discussed at length in both The End and the Beginning and in my 2002 book on the abuse scandal, The Courage To Be Catholic. There are a number of things to be said, things that don’t fit neatly into wire-service sound bites.

First, John Paul II was a great reformer of the priesthood. The Catholic priesthood in 1978 was in arguably its worst shape since the Reformation: thousands of men had abandoned the ministry, and we now know that others — a small minority, but one was one too many — were behaving horribly in betraying the trust of the young. The crisis of the priesthood was addressed by John Paul II comprehensively, by his teaching, his example, his reform of seminaries, and his reform of the world episcopate. The first thing to be said in fairness about John Paul II and the priesthood is that he is one of the great papal reformers of the priesthood.

Second, it’s clear that the Holy See and the pope were not living the abuse crisis in “real time” with the Church in the United States in 2002, an information lag that led to a misimpression of inattention or refusal to face facts.

Third, when John Paul II was fully informed of what had been revealed in the first four months of 2002, he acted decisively, summoning the American cardinals to the Vatican and initiating a process that led to a major and further reform of U.S. seminaries.

Fourth, the rigorous way the Catholic Church has dealt with what is a societal plague — the sexual abuse of the young — should be taken as a model for other institutions. The plague is real, but a one-eyed obsession with the plague’s impact on the Catholic Church makes it more difficult to address the far more widespread crisis of sexual abuse: within families (where the majority of the abuse of the young takes place) or in government-run schools. One does no good service to the young, and to the protection of the young, by using this horrible problem and these wicked acts to attack the credibility of the Church’s moral teaching on matters that cut against the grain of contemporary lifestyle libertinism.

LOPEZ: Shouldn’t both John Paul II and John XXIII be held responsible for what happened on their watch? Which certainly doesn’t scream “heroic virtue”?

WEIGEL: Local bishops and religious superiors are the ones to be held “primarily responsible” for failures to address, rigorously and decisively, the sin and crime of the sexual abuse of the young.

LOPEZ: Some have accused Pope Francis of being all talk on the topic of sex abuse. Would you agree? Or is there a story being missed?

WEIGEL: I really don’t understand what this accusation means. Is someone seriously proposing that Pope Francis does not care about the victims of abuse? That he is giving a wink-and-nod to these issues, where they remain? He’s just established a commission to oversee the Church’s response to the societal abuse crisis, and it includes both laity and an abuse victim.

The pope’s brief criticism of a U.N. report on the Church and the sexual abuse of the young rightly reminded the world that this is a global crisis, not some uniquely Catholic crisis. If Pope Francis were a less charitable man, he would also have remarked on the U.N.’s dismal record in addressing the rampant sexual abuse committed by U.N. “peacekeeping forces.”

​LOPEZ: The Holy See is about to go in front of a U.N. torture committee. Is there really cause for celebration in the Church about anything this weekend? At some point does Pope Francis have to not just reform but change tradition and teachings from another time?

WEIGEL: The pope is the servant of an authoritative tradition, not its master. One of his tasks is to preserve the integrity of that tradition in its fullness; note that, in his opening address, that’s what John XXIII said was the primary purpose of Vatican II!

​The millions of people who will flood Rome this weekend to celebrate two great modern Catholic leaders and their lives of heroic virtue know that there’s a lot to celebrate in the Catholic Church — including its steady refusal to cave in to what the New York Times editorial board and certain Times op-ed columnists think it should be. Hundreds of thousands of men and women, presumably neither deluded nor insane, were baptized or entered into full communion with the Catholic Church at Easter. The Catholic Church is the world’s premier institutional defender of religious freedom for all. Amidst the confusions of post-modernism, the Catholic Church is the world’s most important institutional defender of the prerogatives of reason to get at the truth of things — including the moral truth of things. The Catholic Church is the largest educator of women and the largest provider of health care to women and children in the Third World. The Church’s best seminaries in the United States are fuller than they have been in 40 years. Young Catholics are giving years of their lives as FOCUS missionaries on college and university campuses across the United States. The Church offers empowerment to the poor through its extensive social-service networks and compassionate support to women in crisis pregnancies.

So, yes, there’s a lot to celebrate, and a lot for which to be grateful.

LOPEZ: There’s a synod on the family coming up in the fall, convened by Pope Francis. What do you expect come of it? Again, Church teaching seems to be from another reality on marriage and family and women.

WEIGEL: Pope Francis understands that there is a crisis of marriage culture throughout the world. And he wants the Church to address that crisis more effectively. That will happen, I think, by lifting up the beauty of Christian marriage as an alternative to the anorexic notion of marriage as a legal contract for mutual convenience; Christian marriage is a covenant of love and self-giving, and the world needs to hear about that. And the Western world needs to come to grips with the fact that a contraceptive culture is leading to demographic oblivion.

We’ve got a lot of resources to address these issues today, resources that weren’t available in the cultural maelstrom of the Sixties and the furor over Paul VI’s encyclical on the morally appropriate means of family planning, Humanae Vitae. We have John Paul II’s magnificent 1981 apostolic exhortation, Familiaris Consortio. We have John Paul’s Theology of the Body. We have brilliant books like Mary Eberstadt’s Adam and Eve After the Pill. Those resources should all be in play in the special meeting of the Synod of Bishops in October, and in the ordinary meeting of the Synod in 2015, which will also address the crisis of family life throughout the world.

Above all, we have the example of couples and families who are the living answer to the global crisis of marriage culture. The Synod fathers should hear from them, early and often, as these discussions unfold over the next year and a half.

LOPEZ: What will you most appreciate or enjoy about the canonizations this weekend?

WEIGEL: I’m looking forward to another global gathering of the great Catholic family from all over the world. It’s likely to be a bit chaotic, but then so, I expect, was the first Christian Pentecost.

LOPEZ: Is there anything about John Paul II you wish people realized?

WEIGEL: I suppose I wish that people would recognize his extraordinary courage in facing down a crippling illness and reminding us that there are no disposable human beings. More importantly, I wish that people would realize that he could do that, and be that, because of his embrace of the Cross as the truth of life.

LOPEZ: Is there anything about John XXIII you wish people realized?

WEIGEL: I wish we could get beyond the stereotypes here. Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli was steeped in quite conventional Catholic piety, as is clear from his spiritual diary, Journal of a Soul. What made him the bold leader he eventually became as Pope John XXIII were his lifelong study of history — which taught him that the Church must adapt its presentation of perennial truths to the demands of a given cultural moment, so that the truth can be heard and engaged — and his life outside what I would call the “Catholic bubble.” He spent decades as a Vatican diplomatic representative in Orthodox and Islamic countries. He was a Holocaust rescuer. He understood that Catholicism had to rediscover its originating evangelical dynamism if it was going to be the force it should be for the healing of the world.

LOPEZ: Is it right to say one is a right-wing and one is a left-wing pope?

WEIGEL: No, it’s quite ridiculous to say that. Which doesn’t mean it won’t be said, alas.

LOPEZ: Is this some sort of reset in the life of the Church?

WEIGEL: If by “this” you mean the canonization doubleheader, it’s the best kind of reset: a reminder that the Church is, at the bottom of the bottom line, in the business of facilitating holiness, which comes through friendship with Jesus Christ.

LOPEZ: Is there an approach to foreign policy and human freedom and flourishing that is consistent and important about the two?

WEIGEL: Both men understood that, at the root of the sorrows of the 20th century, there was a profound anthropological crisis — a crisis in the very idea of the human person. Roncalli understood this experientially and historically, and responded to it in a deeply personal way that exuded pastoral charity. Wojtyla got it experientially, analyzed it philosophically, and put the Christian view of the inalienable dignity of the human person at the center of his teaching and witness.

LOPEZ: What’s Divine Mercy Sunday and what’s significant about it as the doubleheader date? What does it say about Francis?

WEIGEL: “Easter,” as Catholics understand it liturgically, lasts eight days: every day of Easter week is Easter, and so is the Octave of Easter, the Second Sunday of Easter, which John Paul II designated as Divine Mercy Sunday — the day the Church celebrates the capacity of the divine compassion to heal the most broken of lives. That is what the Resurrection of Jesus confirms. And it’s entirely appropriate that two popes through whom the world “saw” divine compassion and pastoral charity in an exceptional way should be canonized on that day. Pope Francis understands this, and that’s why the doubleheader is what it is and when it is.

LOPEZ: With Elizabeth Lev and your son, Stephen, you recently wrote a book called Roman Pilgrimage on the station churches of Rome. Are there any spots you will not miss when in Rome?

WEIGEL: I’ve got to get back to Sts. Cosmas and Damian and St. Praxedes.

LOPEZ: Christians are still celebrating Easter. How is Easter relevant in the world today with all its challenges and possibilities?

WEIGEL: Easter tells Christians that the end of the world’s story has been made manifest in the Resurrection of Jesus from the dead, and his being constituted as Lord and Savior. That changes everything. So, despite the awfulness that we too often see around us, Christians know through Easter that God’s creative and redeeming purposes are going to be vindicated at the end of the drama of history and creation. So we can get about witnessing to the divine mercy we have experienced in our own lives, through friendship with the Risen Christ, in ways that offer the possibility of that friendship to others. And we can do that knowing that, in the end, it’s all a divine comedy, not a cosmic tragedy.

A Soul for All Seasons - by George Weigel

In EPPC

In a March 1996 conversation, Pope John Paul II told me, almost wistfully, “They try to understand me from the outside, but I can only be understood from inside.” His tone that evening was less critical than it was bemused, even resigned. But whether his regrets involved biographers who treated him as a globe-trotting politician or journalists who parsed his every word and deed in conventional left-right categories, the view from outside, he knew, was not going to get anyone close to the essence of Karol Wojtyła.

I agreed with him then; and now, nine years after his death, in the days before his April 27 canonization, I agree with him even more. John Paul II, who embodied the human drama of the second half of the 20th century in a singular way, and whose witness to the truth of humanity’s noblest aspirations bent the curve of history toward freedom, can only be understood from inside out. Or, if you prefer, soul first.

His was a many-textured soul. Some of its multiple facets help explain his extraordinary accomplishments in the Catholic Church and on the world stage.

He had a Polish soul, formed by a distinctive experience of history. Vivisected in the Third Polish Partition of 1795, his country was not restored to the map of Europe until 1918. But during those 123 years of political humiliation, the Polish nation survived the demise of the Polish state through its language, its literature and its faith, with the Catholic Church acting as the safe-deposit box of national identity.

Learning about that hard experience as a boy, Karol Wojtyła was permanently inoculated against the twin heresies that had beset the West for centuries: the Jacobin heresy that the political quest for power runs history, and the Marxist heresy that history is simply the exhaust fumes of economic processes. Knowing in his Polish soul that culture, not politics or economics, drives history over the long haul, John Paul II could ignite a revolution of conscience during his first papal visit to Poland in 1979. He summoned his people to live the truth about themselves, to reject the communist culture of the lie, and to find in that restored national identity irresistible tools of resistance to oppression.

This son of Poland was, at the same time, a man of global vision with a deeply humanistic soul, forged by what he regarded as the crisis of modernity: a crisis in the very idea of the human person. That crisis, he believed, was not confined to communism’s materialist reduction of the human condition, which he tenaciously fought as a university chaplain, a professor of ethics, a charismatic priest and a dynamic bishop. The crisis could also be found in those Western systems that were tempted to measure men and women by their commercial utility rather than by the innate and inalienable dignity that was their birthright.

John Paul II’s conviction, biblically rooted and philosophically refined, was that every human life is of infinite value, at every stage and in every condition. This was the basis of his priestly ministry for almost six decades; it was the conviction that forged his unique moral analysis of world politics; and it was the ground from which he could inspire men and women from a staggering variety of cultures.

He could also touch those lives because of his dramatic soul. As a young man, he confessed in a memoir later in life, he was “obsessed” with the theater. And while he took some useful skills from those experiences on stage— John Gielgud once commented on John Paul II’s “perfect” sense of timing, as Alec Guinness marveled at the resonance of his voice—he also developed a dramatic view of the human condition. We all live, he believed, in a quotidian, yet deeply consequential, moral drama. Every day of our lives is lived in the dramatic tension between who we are and who we should be.

John Paul II intuited this on stage; he refined that intuition as a philosopher. And it was deepened by his Christian conviction that the drama of every human life is playing within a cosmic drama in which the God of the Bible is producer, director, scriptwriter and protagonist. That Christian conviction, in turn, was what allowed him to say, a year after he was shot in St. Peter’s Square in 1981, “In the designs of Providence there are no mere coincidences.”

A man whose soul is formed by the conviction that “coincidence” is merely a facet of providence that he has not yet grasped is a man impervious to the tyranny of the possible. And here, too, the soul of John Paul II helps explain his accomplishment.

When he was elected pope in 1978, some observers, fixated on what they imagined to be possible, saw in the Catholic Church only contention and possible ruin. He saw seeds of reform and renewal, leading to what he would call a “New Evangelization,” a new missionary dynamic in Catholicism that would offer the divine mercy to a broken and wounded humanity. Others, fixated on what seemed settled in world affairs, believed that the Yalta division of Europe after World War II was permanent. But after June 1979 and the rise of the Solidarity movement in Poland, he saw possibilities for dramatic cultural, social and eventually political change in Eastern Europe—and then helped effect them.

If John Paul II seemed able to discern possibilities where others saw only barriers; if he saw (as he put it at the United Nations in 1995), a “springtime of the human spirit” after a winter of murderous discontent embodied in two world wars, the gulag and Auschwitz—well, one could look to his keen mind for an explanation. But the deeper explanation lies in his soul, and in the human character formed by that soul.

It was John Paul’s soul in which hundreds of millions of human beings found an exemplar of decency and an icon of hope. It was the character formed by that soul that made him a champion of resistance against the tyranny of diminished expectations, personal and political.