John Paul II: beyond his time.

• Author: Howell, Llewellyn D.
• Position: WORLD WATCHER

HE WAS A GREAT MAN in a Cold War fought by hard-nosed men. At a critical time in human history, when physical, psychological, and ideological conflict were rending human society, John Paul II stepped forward to put his credibility--and ultimately his leadership role in the Catholic Church--on the line. In his native Poland, after becoming Pope, he continued a significant effort to rally Polish Catholics against communism. The Soviet empire was in the midst of collapsing of its own totalitarian and inefficient weight but Pope John Paul II made a significant contribution to moving that collapse along. This especially was true in Poland, but his image and his broad visibility wrought an impact throughout Roman Catholic Eastern Europe and in sympathetic socialist-leaning states elsewhere.

John Paul II will be respected by historians for his clarity of purpose and for the basic honesty that reflected the man beneath the Pope's garb. These are images that parents should want to hold before their children. In the aftermath of the Soviet Union and the Cold War, John Paul II took to the streets--so to speak--to solidify and unify the message of the Roman Catholic Church, expand its reach, and deEuropeanize it. For the Church, these were important bridges into the 20th (yes, 20th) century. The Pope's Church remains mired in the past, stuck on a time in history when church and state converged, when the "civilized" (i.e., Christian) world was all there was and life was organized around unity of enterprise and the family was the source of all social security. Half a millennium ago, Europe's Christian Church separated it from the anarchic Middle Ages and gave it a predictable ethics system and order.

The rise of the European nation-state system coincided with successful challenges to the monolithic control of the roles for human behavior of the Roman Catholic Church. Rules and laws to regulate a growing human diversity slowly were transferred to nonreligious bodies. The American, French, and Russian revolutions catapulted the secular nation-state into the forefront of governance. The separation of church and state was born of the coexistence of multiple cultures and globalization.

By stepping into the realm of politics, John Paul II put the Vatican in the role of nation-state. It no longer was a religious sect in action, rather a challenge to political empire. Just one of the players. The problem with this Pope was this institution, his institution. The...