The Catholic Church is prudently patient in awarding the title “Doctor of the Church” to her greatest teachers. However luminous someone’s explication of the truths of the Catholic faith may seem in his or her time, the efficacy of that teaching can only be tested over generations, sometimes centuries. This is particularly true of the saints who stretched the Church’s understanding, discomfiting some in the process. Thus, it took 294 years for Thomas Aquinas, a theological innovator in his day, to be recognized as Doctor Ecclesiae.
Twenty years after the death of John Paul II on April 2, 2005, it’s too early to declare St. John Paul II a Doctor of the Church. It’s not too soon, however, to imagine why such an honor might be bestowed on him in the future.
Five reasons suggest themselves.
John Paul II’s extensive magisterium provided authoritative keys to the proper interpretation of the Second Vatican Council.
Vatican II defined no dogmas, condemned no heresies, legislated no canons, wrote no creed, and commissioned no catechism: methods by which previous ecumenical councils had signaled, “This is what we mean.” Through his encyclicals and other magisterial texts, as well as through two new codes of canon law and the Catechism of the Catholic Church, John Paul II provided the keys by which the Church could understand the Council’s sixteen documents as a coherent whole, a beautiful tapestry whose pieces are sewn together by the concept of the Church as a communion of disciples in mission.
John Paul II presented the full symphony of Catholic truths in such a way that those truths could be grasped by the modern mind.
At John Paul’s election, Catholic theology – and especially Catholic moral theology – was in crisis. Modernity’s nihilism, skepticism, and relativism had infected Catholic thinking, leading to confusions that fractured ecclesial unity and made evangelization almost impossible. By using modern philosophical and theological tools to challenge the crippling modern and post-modern convention that there is nothing we can know with certainty, John Paul II’s teaching preserved the wisdom of the Catholic tradition while demonstrating that even the most demanding truths of the tradition could be explicated and proposed in terms that the people of the twenty-first century could understand.
John Paul’s knowledge of contemporary philosophy and his extensive pre-papal pastoral experience combined to give him a keen insight into the cultural crisis of our time — the crisis of human nature.
Are we infinitely plastic and malleable? Or are there truths built into the world and into us, truths that point the path to happiness and, ultimately, beatitude?
John Paul’s Christ-centered humanism, his epic Theology of the Body, his writings on the meaning of suffering, and his “papal feminism” were all effective, culture-reforming responses to the utilitarian degradation of human nature: the notion that we are just bundles of morally equivalent desires, the satisfaction of which through our willfulness — “I did it my way” — is the acme of human happiness.
John Paul II’s social doctrine sought to put the democratic project on a more secure foundation by teaching that it takes a certain kind of people living certain virtues to ensure that free politics and free economies support human flourishing and social solidarity.
Events of the past twenty years have vindicated this teaching in spades.
John Paul II defined the Church’s grand strategy for the 21st century and the third millennium: the New Evangelization.
By going to the Holy Land during the Great Jubilee of 2000, John Paul reminded the Church and the world that Christianity is not a myth or a fairy tale; Christianity began with the radical conversion of real men and women in places we can touch and see today, who were so transformed by their encounter with the one they called the Risen Lord that they went out on mission and changed the course of history. In closing the Great Jubilee by calling the entire Church to “put out into the deep” (Luke 5:4), John Paul summoned all Catholics to live the missionary discipleship to which they were consecrated in Baptism.
Despite the efforts of some over the past dozen years to dismiss or deconstruct this great legacy, the living parts of the world Church are those that have embraced John Paul II’s teaching and are embodying it in mission and service. Conversely, those parts of the world Church that have ignored or rejected that teaching are moribund or dying. That basic fact of 21st-century Catholic life warrants the thought that, one day, Catholicism may well acknowledge Pope St. John Paul II, Doctor of the Church.
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And, reason #6: In the encyclical “Veritatis Splendor” (VS, 1993) and the defense of natural law and moral absolutes…
St. John Paul II recalls to us St. Athanasius—who insulated GOD against deconstruction under the nuanced reintroduction of paganism into the Church, with the anamnesis of his “The Incarnation” (317 A.D.). Written shortly before Arius, whose novelty was then excluded (!) by the Council of Nicaea (325 A.D.).
Likewise, St. John Paul II with “Veritatis Splendor” now insulates MAN—the “transcendent dignity of the human person” (the core of the Church’s Social Teaching, CST)—against deconstruction. By protecting men and women from backing into the position of kissing-Cardinal Fernandez with his “Fiducia Supplicans” semi-blessing irregular couples as “couples” (2023 A.D.). Instead, Natural Law/moral absolutes and the unity of faith and morals are explicitly elevated from self-evident and universal truths into the ordinary magisterium of the Church.
In the years following Nicaea, St. Athanasius was EXILED five times…Likewise in the months following Fiducia Supplicants, all of steadfast continental Africa was marginalized as that “special case”—even as much of the rest of the Catholic world also remained openly intact, non-schizophrenic and single-hearted. (Hungary, Poland, the Netherlands, Kazakhstan, Peru, Ukraine, the Coptic Church, and parts of France, Spain and Argentina, and the Orthodox world, as well as the previous Prefect for the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.)
In the decades following “The Incarnation” and Nicaea, ST. JEROME also foresaw (!) our recent years following Veritatis Splendor—when he noticed: “The whole world groaned and was astonished to find itself Arian.” (In his day, an estimated 80 percent of post-Nicaea bishops walked together with Arius.)
How utterly predictable.
It is interesting how the truth is so predictable. Conversely, it is falsehood, imagination, and heresy that is unpredictable. When it comes to the gospel of Jesus Christ, I will take the predictable.
George. Since you studied the saint so thoroughly, you are in the unique position to critique him candidly, and you have done it well. Whether or not he becomes a Doctor of the Church will in no way change his contribution to the Church. Vatican ll was indeed a great council, but was greatly misunderstood and misinterpreted and needed great clarification; and it was St. John Paul ll who did it. But his clarification was done in both word and deed. He LIVED Vatican ll. This is why he is a Saint.
Pope St. John Paul II was a holy man of faith. He knew what he believed and he
clearly taught the truths of the faith to all of us. No ambiguity. He sought
to evangelize and sanctify the world, not to follow the secular world wherever
it wanted to go.
How can we not miss him?
Right on , George! Thanks.
Weigel makes the case for recognizing Karol Wojtyla/John Paul II as a doctor of the Church. His thinking moved the Church forward while keeping it anchored in its deposit of faith. His clarity of doctrine and his perspicacity about what ails modern man and modernity (incl. the contemporary Church) is SORELY missed.
St. John Paul II was certainly a great Pope. His piety was deeply Marian. His 1995 to 1997 general audiences on the Virgin Mary can be found here: http://www.totus2us.co.uk/teaching/jpii-catechesis-on-mary-mother-of-god/
St. John Paul II, pray for us.
Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us now and at the hour of our death.
We seem to have a world where we live as if there’s no tomorrow. Time itself seems accelerated with every passing day. There was a period in Church history when saints were not canonized for a long, long time after their demise. The same goes for those declared Doctors of the Church. These days, a renowned holy person beloved by many is hardly dead when such determinations are made. Are we being too hasty?