I
was one of the multitudes that wept when John Paul II left this earth.
I prayed together with those who went to prayer vigils, from Baclaran
church to St. Peter Square. I cried when the Pope was finally being
taken to the grave. Yes, it was one of the few moments when I shed
real tears.
Fellow progressives might find this unusual. They might find discomfort
in the idea of one who comes from their ranks shedding tears to someone
hyped by the international media organizations as the leading figure
against the Soviet Union during the heydays of Cold War politics.
Well, at least, most of fellow progressives coming from the same university,
who may have developed anti-Catholicism alongside their radicalization.
I wouldn’t blame them though. Radicalization should be best understood
with knowing the context from which it sprang. It is understandable
that people who got fed up with the status quo of a Catholic university
have also developed antagonism towards the Church itself. That goes
with the process of radicalization, I think. To understand radicalization,
one should learn how to contextualize.
The same can be said with Pope John Paul II’s history. The obscure
Polish Bishop, Karol Wojtyla, was confronting communism which became
unpopular for slanting towards Stalinism during the 50s. The Polish
Communist Party detached itself from its people; it was driven by
godlessness and greed. To put it more aptly, it became the devil incarnate.
That was Bishop Wojtyla’s enemy back then, and that was the reason
why opposition to godless Communism became his clarion call as John
Paul II, the Pope.
And unsurprisingly international media organizations, particularly
CNN and FOX, exploited this fact. They even went to the extent of
portraying the Pope as the faithful ally of Reagan and Thatcher during
the 70s until the 80s. What CNN and FOX ignore (and I am grateful
to Conrado de Quiros for pointing this out) was that this same person
also condemned the evils of capitalist expansion. He was critical
of American war-mongering, especially the most recent one in Iraq.
Pope John Paul II opposed the godlessness perpetuated by Communist
Poland, yet he also condemned the godlessness of big American capitalist
enclaves, which perpetuate more evils than the “Evil Empire”
itself, the witch our good ‘ole pal Ronnie (Reagan, not Poe)
was fond of hunting.
John Paul II may not be the most prominent among Vatican II figures,
but he made its core arguments his own, despite the vehement opposition
of top notch Opus Dei bishops. The pope advocated for global ecumenism;
his willingness to engage with other religious movements and organizations
was undeniable. We need not to be reminded that this was the most
courageous thing to do at the time when the Church's concern was asserting
its ascendancy over all other religions.
As on my part, I am not rehearsing the problematics of isolated personalities,
but I do not see anything against my progressivism in my high respect
to, and veneration of, the Holy Father. I identify with the faceless
multitudes who wept last week just like how I identify with the faceless
multitudes that silently move history in this country, but oppressed
by the existing system of governance and economy. I am a Catholic
as much as I am a progressive. Perhaps, the more atheistically inclined
among my fellow progressives just need to be reminded that in the
Philippines, those who can afford to think of the possibility of a
Godless existence come from the bourgeois educated class, and the
most religious come from the masses themselves.
Or maybe, that’s for them to figure out on their own.
