Pope, at WWI Battle Site, Defends Fighting for Liberty

Pope John Paul II went to “Flanders Fields” on Friday and used the visit to the World War I battleground to plead for an end to war.

But he defended fighting for the sake of freedom and decried “simple sentimentalism” in the quest for peace.

“Peace is no longer a question that can be dealt with rhetorically, by merely using easy and unilateral slogans,” the pontiff said in an implied rebuke to at least some radical elements of the world peace movement.

“Deep convictions and total commitment are necessary; a simple sentimentalism does not suffice.”

Declaring that true peace is not just the absence of war but the preservation of human freedom, dignity and justice, the Pope warned that “involvement in the cause of peace must be accompanied by a clear understanding of the principles and values at stake.”

He added, “As the threat that hangs over humanity becomes greater, the moral maturity of mankind must grow stronger.”

John Paul deplored war and cited Ypres, where 250,000 British Empire soldiers lie buried in 170 cemeteries, as “a symbol of the immeasurable grief that war brings with it.” The battleground was the inspiration for John McCrae’s poem “In Flanders Fields.”

But the pontiff stoutly upheld the soldiers’ sacrifice “for the just cause of human dignity . . . defending their own existence in freedom.”

“Those who possess a sense of reality and love for true freedom and dignity of individuals and of nations,” he added, “are thus convinced of the legitimacy of the right to defend oneself against an unjust aggressor.”

The Pope condemned nations that “resort to taking up arms to conquer other countries or to subject whole nations to systems and ideologies which, regardless of their declaration, are in conflict with the fundamental dignity of the human being, and with his fundamental rights and the right of nations to an existence in freedom.”

Rejecting pacifism of the peace-at-any-price variety, John Paul said, “Violence that destroys homes and buildings is serious, but violence directed against the dignity of the individual is intolerable and unworthy of man. Those who are committed to peace will begin by respecting the dignity of man. . . .”

In Belgium on the seventh day of his 11-day pilgrimage to the Benelux countries after earlier stops in the Netherlands and Luxembourg, the pontiff spent all of Friday in Flanders, speaking to overflow audiences in Antwerp, Ypres and Ghent--mostly in their native Flemish, but also in French, German and English.

Here in Ypres, he entered the reconstructed medieval town, which was demolished in World War I, through its historic Menen Gate, of which British soldiers once joked as they passed through its rubble on their way to the trenches, “Tell the last man through to lock the Menen Gate.”

Today, the gate is a British war memorial, and the pontiff paused there for 10 minutes to pray before a cross of artificial poppies.

As the white-robed Pope stood solemnly under the center of the gate, whose walls are inscribed with the names of 54,896 British Empire soldiers killed in the war but whose bodies were never found, a men’s chorus sang “Abide With Me” and six buglers sounded “The Last Post.”

The melancholy bugle call--the traditional British army signal to extinguish lights and campfires at the end of the day--is played at military funerals. At Ypres, two buglers play it every night at 8 o’clock to honor the dead. As McCrae, a Canadian, wrote, “In Flanders fields the poppies blow, between the crosses row on row.”

Earlier, in a meeting with Roman Catholic lay organizations in the busy port city of Antwerp, John Paul faced a polite challenge to a number of traditional church positions.

Speaking for the lay groups, the president of the Interdiocesan Pastoral Council, Aurelien Thijs, tactfully asked the Pope to “proceed with research” aimed at resolving the problems raised by his firm positions against divorce, the elevation of women to high church office, and “married forms of priesthood.”

John Paul did not answer directly but spoke generally about the “important responsibilities” women already hold in the church and about the role of priests who “devote themselves completely to the mission.”

His position on divorce was spelled out three days earlier in Holland, where he said church opposition to it as well as to abortion, premarital sex and homosexuality “will remain the standard for the church for all time.”

At the end of an outdoor Mass in Ghent, John Paul responded with light-hearted quips from the altar platform when hundreds of children waved huge imitation sunflowers and a poster inscribed “65” to honor his birthday, which is today