Witness to Hope

by George Weigel

  Although the visit of the Holy See delegation was, officially, to the Russian Orthodox Church, John Paul II’s decision to name the Cardinal Secretary of State as head of the delegation told the Soviet government that they were very much a focus of Vatican attention on the trip. John Paul had prepared a personal letter to Mikhail Gorbachev, which Cardinal Casaroli was to hand-deliver along with a memorandum outlining the major problems in Soviet-Vatican relations as the Pope understood them, though no meeting with Gorbachev had been scheduled when the Holy See delegation arrived in Moscow. The Pope had also included Joaquín Navarro-Valls in the Vatican group, thinking that there might be need to bring the international media into play. Navarro promptly leaked word of the Pope’s letter to Gorbachev to the press while the Holy See delegation stayed at the Sovietskaya Hotel, waiting for word from the Kremlin.

  They were due to leave Moscow on Monday afternoon, June 13. With forty-eight hours remaining, they still hadn’t heard from Gorbachev, and tension was mounting. Since the Pope’s letter could not be delivered by others, Casaroli faced the prospect of returning home with the historic letter in his luggage. At 4 P.M. on Saturday, June 11, a representative of the Soviet foreign ministry called, said that Gorbachev would meet them in the Kremlin at noon on Monday, and apologized for the delay. Gorbachev wanted the Soviet foreign minister, Eduard Shevardnadze, present, and Shevardnadze had been traveling. Navarro asked the foreign ministry man whether he could tell the world press about the impending meeting; the Soviet official replied, “No, just tell them to be at the Spaskaya Tower of the Kremlin at 11:40 A.M.” Navarro did so, and the press naturally wanted to know why. Was something going to happen? “Just be there,” was the response.

  On Monday morning, Cardinal Casaroli was worried about whether he should wear his cardinal’s cassock and pectoral cross or a business suit with Roman collar. Navarro said, “Your Eminence, this photo is going to be on the front page of every newspaper in the world…” That settled that, and Casaroli donned his cassock. On a hot June morning, he got into his limousine for the drive to the Kremlin wearing a heavy overcoat, so that his red-piped cassock and cross couldn’t be seen until he got out inside the Kremlin walls.

  The Vatican delegation met Gorbachev in his office directly above Lenin’s old lair, which was preserved “as it was.” There were some initial pleasantries, during which the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union told Casaroli not to be nervous, since he and Foreign Minister Shevardnadze had been baptized as infants. Gorbachev, who was full of vitality and confidence, also reminisced about an icon that had been hidden in his home behind a portrait of Lenin. Cardinal Casaroli handed the General Secretary the Pope’s letter. Instead of putting it aside for later, Gorbachev opened it immediately and read both the letter and the memorandum of outstanding difficulties.126

  The letter, on the Pope’s personal stationery, read as follows:

  To His Excellency, Mr. Mikhail Gorbachev

  The Catholic Church looks with great respect and affection on the great spiritual patrimony of the Eastern Slav peoples. With great joy, I have wished that cardinals, archbishops, bishops, and prelates representing the Holy See and the Catholic Church be present at such a great celebration in Moscow.

  I have personally followed the events of international life, and first of all the initiatives in favor of peace [that you have taken]. In recent times, my special attention has been drawn to the promising developments created by the encounters and agreements in these last months between the Soviet Union and the United States of America, especially as regards disarmament, which have given such relief to the whole world.

  I have learned with great interest what you have expressed in your meeting with Patriarch Pimen and the Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church on April 29 last, and I have noticed what you have said about the life of the religious community being linked to civil society by a common history and nationhood, about the right of believers as citizens to the free expression of their own religious convictions, and about their contribution to society, especially as regards values and the solution of the most demanding problems of society, and in particular the cause of peace.

  I have also noticed that you make allusion to the necessity of changing some attitudes taken in the past by state authorities as regards the Church and believers. And with great attention I have noticed the announcement you have made that a new law on freedom of conscience will soon be passed, and will consider also the interests of religious organizations.

  I am convinced that your work, Mr. General Secretary, has created great expectations and legitimate hope on the part of believers. Sharing such sentiments, I would like to express to you the confidence I have that Cardinal Casaroli’s visit will open new perspectives for the situation of Catholics in the Soviet Union. As my predecessor, Pope Paul VI, expressed to the then-Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mr. Gromyko, I would like to express the hope that the question of the situation of the Catholic Church in the USSR could be more easily approached and satisfactorily resolved through a direct contact between the Soviet government and the Apostolic See. Toward that end, I am enclosing with my letter a pro memoria with some indications that I think are useful for a deeper examination of this problem.

  The actual solution of these questions corresponds to the expectation of the Holy See and the entire Catholic Church, but also to vast sectors of world public opinion, which looks with great interest to the initiatives you have taken in many aspects of the social life of your country, in the hope that they will also be extended to the sphere of the religious life of persons and communities. Personally, I feel that I should be remiss in my mission as Supreme Pastor of the Catholic Church if I did not take advantage of such a privileged occasion to draw Your Excellency’s personal attention to such a point. I do so with confidence that all this will find an echo in your heart.

  I wish peace and prosperity to you and to all the peoples of the Soviet Union, to whom go my esteem and very cordial thoughts. Please accept, Mr. General Secretary, the expression of my highest consideration.

  JOANNES PAULUS PP. II

  From the Vatican

  7 June 1988127

  The historic letter, the beginning of a conversation that would have been inconceivable three years before, spoke for itself. John Paul was open to the most wide-ranging possible dialogue with the Soviet leader. It was now up to Gorbachev to follow through with improved conditions for Catholics within the Soviet Union and improved relations between the USSR and the Holy See.*

  As a condition of the Catholic delegations’ presence in Moscow for the millennium celebrations, the Pope had insisted that meetings be held with Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church leaders. Willebrands and Casaroli met with two Ukrainian bishops, Fylmon Kurchaba and Pavlo Vasylyk, at the Sovietskaya Hotel on June 10. The Russian Orthodox leadership was unhappy, but was also unable to block the meeting. Meanwhile, officials at the Soviet Council for Religious Affairs continued to insist that the legalization of the Greek Catholic Church in Ukraine was an internal Russian Orthodox affair—a position in conflict with their usual claim that the Ukrainian Catholic Church was not a religious body but a purely “nationalist” or “separatist” organization.129

  In July, John Paul II took part in two Greek Catholic celebrations marking the close of the millennium year and continued to press for both religious freedom and ecclesial reconciliation. He preached in Ukrainian at a “Moleben” (a special Marian thanksgiving service) held on July 9 at the Ukrainian Pro-Cathedral of Santa Sophia in Rome.130 The next day, July 10, John Paul was the principal concelebrant at a Divine Liturgy celebrated in the Byzantine-Ukrainian rite at the papal altar of St. Peter’s. In addition to Cardinal Lubachivsky, twenty Ukrainian bishops concelebrated along with dozens of Greek Catholic priests. In his homily, the Pope honored the extraordinary courage of the Ukrainian Church under persecution and demanded religious freedom for the Greek Catholics of Ukraine. At the same time, he appealed again for a healing of ethn
ic, religious, and political wounds:

  “From the Baptism of Rus’ began that slow and manifold process of cultural and social maturation which was to have such a deep influence on the formation of the Ukrainian, Byelorussian, and Russian peoples…You in particular, people of the Ukrainian nation, how could you forget that the heritage of the Baptism of your ancestors is shared in common with the Orthodox brethren of your people? Besides, how could you overlook the historic bonds which link your nation with those of Byelorussia and Russia? That Baptism made both you and them members of the same Church….”131

  It was a plea aimed at Moscow as well as at the Catholics of Ukraine, underground and in the Ukrainian diaspora around the world. In each of these venues, but particularly in Russia, it would fall on too many deaf ears to make the full reconciliation John Paul sought possible.

  THE MARIAN YEAR AND THE DIGNITY OF WOMEN

  The 2,000th anniversary of the birth of Christ, which was rapidly approaching, was never far from John Paul II’s mind. The Pope decided that the period between the solemnities of Pentecost in 1987 and the Assumption of Mary in 1988 would be marked as a special “Marian Year” devoted to reflection on Mary, Mother of God and Mother of the Church.132 If, as a pious tradition had it, Mary was a young girl of thirteen or so at the time of the Annunciation (see Luke 1.26–38), the Marian Year marked the 2,000th anniversary of the birth of Mary.

  By some accounts, Paul VI’s declaration of Mary’s title as “Mother of the Church” was a sop to theological conservatives at Vatican II. John Paul II had a different view of the matter. This title, he came to think, had profound implications for how the Church should understand itself. Speaking to the Roman Curia on December 22, 1987, in the middle of the Marian Year, John Paul II explained those implications in a way that must have struck many of his listeners as startling, even quite radical.

  Mary, he suggested, was the first disciple, for her assent to the angel’s message made possible the incarnation of the Son of God. The incarnation had been “extended” in history through the Church, the mystical Body of Christ. Mary’s assumption into heaven prefigured the glorification of all who will be saved. Thus Mary provides a “profile” of what the Church is, of how the people of the Church should live, and of what the destiny of disciples will be.

  This understanding of the relationship between Mary and the Church challenged the way many Catholic leaders had come to think of themselves and their powers. The “Marian profile” in the Church is, John Paul suggested, even “more…fundamental” than the “Petrine profile.” Without being divided from it, the “Marian Church”—the Church of disciples—preceded and made possible the “Petrine Church”—the Church of office and authority. Indeed, office in the Church has no other purpose “except to form the Church in line with the ideal of sanctity already programmed and prefigured in Mary….” The two “profiles” were complementary. But the “Marian profile is…preeminent” and richer in meaning for every Christian’s vocation.133

  The message was unmistakable. Discipleship came before authority in the Church, and sanctity came before power, even the apostolically transmitted priestly power to “bind and loose” sins. This was not Mariology in the service of traditionalism. This was Mariology demolishing the last vestiges of the idea of the Church-as-absolute-monarchy. And John Paul did not hesitate to draw out another implication of the priority of the “Marian Church”: “A contemporary theologian has well commented: ‘Mary is “Queen of the Apostles” without any pretensions to apostolic power: she has other and greater powers.’”

  The theologian was Hans Urs von Balthasar, who had written extensively about the various “profiles” of the one unified Church: the Church of Mary, of Peter, of John, and of Paul. The various rich symbolisms in play here find their unity in Mary and John at the foot of the Cross, which further underscored the institutional point the Pope made. The Curia and the hierarchy existed to serve the sanctification of the Church, a communio of believers redeemed by Christ.134 The Curia and the hierarchy, expressions of the Petrine Church, existed because of the Marian Church of disciples. The Marian Church preceding and making possible the Petrine Church—this was not the way many curial officials, not to mention millions of Catholic laity and clergy, were accustomed to thinking about Catholicism. But it was how John Paul proposed that they should.

  The theological and pastoral framework for the Marian Year was created by two important papal documents: John Paul’s sixth encyclical, Redemptoris Mater, issued on March 25, 1987, and his apostolic letter, Mulieris Dignitatem [The Dignity of Women], issued on August 15, 1988.

  Redemptoris Mater

  The title of John Paul II’s sixth encyclical, Redemptoris Mater [Mother of the Redeemer], links it closely to his first, Redemptor Hominis [The Redeemer of Man]. In the Christ-centered history of salvation, John Paul writes, there is one person who united the two great moments of the Holy Spirit, the “overshadowing” at Nazareth in which Christ is conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit and the sending of the Spirit at Pentecost. That person is Mary. Present to her son as mother, she is also present to the Church as mother. And her motherhood is rooted in faith.135

  John Paul reiterates his teaching on the priority of the “Marian Church” over the “Petrine Church” in Redemptoris Mater, and discusses ecumenical issues in this context, with special reference to the Marian piety of Orthodox Christians. To all Christians, East and West, the Pope asks, “Why should we not all together look to her as our common Mother, who prays for the unity of God’s family and who ‘precedes’ us all at the head of the long line of witnesses of faith in the one Lord?”136 If Mary is “Mother of the Church,” then all Christians should entrust themselves to Mary “in a filial manner.” The Christian “‘welcomes’ the mother of Christ ‘into his own home’ and brings her into everything that makes up his inner life.”137

  The Pope also discusses Mary’s particular importance for women in terms of the priority of discipleship. If the Marian Church of disciples is “before” the Petrine Church of office, then there is a fundamental, baptismal equality of discipleship in the Church—between women and men, as well as between laity and clergy—that is prior to any distinction of functions. As for contemporary feminism, John Paul argues that Mary “sheds light on womanhood as such by the very fact that God, in the sublime event of the Incarnation, entrusted himself to the ministry, the free and active ministry, of a woman.”138 Mary is thus a model for women who will “find in her the secret of living their femininity with dignity and achieving their own true advancement.”139

  Papal Feminism

  Throughout his pontificate, there were few questions on which John Paul thought the Church’s teaching was more misunderstood than on the question of the dignity of women. Mulieris Dignitatem, the apostolic letter of August 15, 1988, with which John Paul closed the Marian Year, was a major effort to remedy that misunderstanding by developing the distinctive feminism implicit in the Pope’s Theology of the Body and briefly sketched in Redemptoris Mater. The public policy implications of this feminism would be drawn out further in John Paul’s 1994 “Letter to Women,” but the theological and philosophical foundations of his feminism are in Mulieris Dignitatem.

  To think through a theology adequate to the dignity of women and the contemporary quest for equality means, for John Paul, going back to “the beginning” and to the mystery of humanity as female and male.140 That we were created in God’s image as male and female is the “fundamental inheritance” transmitted throughout the course of history; that we were redeemed by Christ as male and female is the message of the Church.141

  That evangelical message includes another crucial, divinely ordered truth of salvation history: a woman is to be found “at the center of [the] salvific event ” which is God’s self-revelation to the world. Mary’s “Yes” brought a human being, a woman, into “a union with God that exceeds all the expectations of the human spirit.” Thus Mary’s place “within Christ’s messianic servi
ce ” confirms that the essence of human dignity lies in radical self-giving, not in self-assertion or claims of autonomy.142

  The distorted relationships between men and women, including relationships of domination in which the equal dignity of women is denied, is a problem addressed by one part of the contemporary women’s movement. John Paul fully shares the judgment that something is wrong here, but insists that the root of this domination is not culture (although cultures transmit it) but sin. Sin fractures the community of persons that God had intended “from the beginning,” and which is the ground of the radical equality of men and women as images of God. The liberation of women from these patterns of domination can never be a liberation against. It must be a liberation for, one that safeguards the distinctive vocation of women and men that results from what the Pope calls their “personal originality” and destiny. “In the name of liberation from male ‘domination,’” John Paul writes, “women must not appropriate to themselves male characteristics contrary to their own feminine ‘originality.’” Liberation is for the restoration of communion, of free and equal self-giving—the “original unity” of men and women that God intended. Unity and equality-in-diversity, not domination and not androgyny, are what has been inscribed in human nature “from the beginning.”143