Celebrating the holy man who helped end the Cold War

Anoteworthy element in the recent 75th anniversary celebrations of VE- Day was the prominence, ubiquitously granted, to Winston Churchill. The two indispensable countries to the defeat of Nazi Germany were the Soviet Union and the United States, not Great Britain. But Churchill was the indispensable man, not because of the armies he commanded, but because of the souls he stirred. His power was the moral force to which he gave expression with unique rhetorical brilliance.

That comes to mind as the Catholic world — and beyond — marks the centennial of the birth of Karol Wojtyła, St. John Paul II, this Monday, May 18. For John Paul was the indispensable man for the end of the Cold War, the peaceful defeat of communism and the dismantling of the Soviet empire in both its external and internal components.

Shortly after the pope’s death in 2005, Henry Kissinger told NBC News that no one had a greater impact on the 20th century. That assessment is surprising coming from the master of realpolitik, who might have been thought sympathetic to Stalin’s dismissive question: “How many divisions has the pope?”

Kissinger had no religious or philosophical solidarity with the Christian humanism of Wojtyła — John Paul. But he knew that there were forces in history that a true practitioner of realpolitik ought to recognize.

What was more real? Where did power reside?

In Stalin’s demand to be recognized as slave master over half of Europe at Yalta? Or in the fearless proclamation by John Paul in Warsaw in June 1979 that “Christ cannot be kept out of the history of man in any part of the globe, at any longitude or latitude of geography; the exclusion of Christ from the history of man is an act against man.”

Ten years after that triumphant return to Poland, communism was finished. The Berlin Wall would come down, and two years later the final tidying up would be completed when the Soviet Union itself was dumped in the dustbin. There were other key figures of course, Ronald Reagan, Margaret

Thatcher and Mikhail Gorbachev. But John Paul was the indispensable man.

Gorbachev himself would visit the Vatican less than a month after the Wall came down. It was a cordial meeting, without the signing of formal acts of surrender, but it was clear that one side had won and the other side had lost. Gorbachev would introduce John Paul to his wife, Raisa, as the “highest moral authority in the world.”

A few months later, John Paul would make his first post- Communist visit to a Warsaw Pact country. Thirty years ago this spring he was greeted in Prague by Václav Havel, the new president of Czechoslovakia, the courageous dissident and cultural leader. He, too, had divisions that Stalin did not know about.

“I do not know whether I know what a miracle is,” said the secular Havel in his historic welcoming speech at the Prague airport. “Nonetheless, I dare say I am party to a miracle now: The messenger of love comes into the country devastated by the ideology of hatred; the living symbol of civilization comes into the country devastated by the rule of the uncivilized; the messenger of peace … of unity in variety comes into the country devastated by the idea of confrontation and division in the world.”

Later, amid the venerable splendour of Prague Castle, the playwright and poet addressed the key question, quoting from his fellow playwright and poet.

“In one of your poems you ask: ‘ Can history flow against the current of conscience?’,” Havel said to John Paul. “It is obvious what you meant by this question: History cannot flow against the current of conscience forever. You were right, as were those who did not lose hope. In our country as in the countries of many of our neighbours and brothers history flowed against the current of conscience for a long time. But that could not go on forever.”

“I welcome you as a writer, an intellectual, an educated man of culture,” Havel continued. “Our revolution has a clearly cultural dimension and a cultural aspect that I am sure you feel close to, as I do.”

The unshakable conviction of John Paul’s long life was that culture drives history more than politics or economics. More even than force of arms. Churchill knew the same when he summoned Britons to their finest hour.

“At the heart of every culture lies the attitude man takes to the greatest mystery: the mystery of God,” John Paul would write in 1991 in his analysis of how communism was defeated. “Different cultures are basically different ways of facing the question of the meaning of personal existence.”

That conviction is not only relevant when confronting the culture- pulverizing forces of totalitarianism. It remains relevant for every culture and nation, in every time and place, that wishes to build a civilization worthy of the human person.

unshakable conviction of John Paul’s long life was that culture drives history.