John Paul’s 10-Year Reign : Active Pope Duels Forces of Dissent

Ten years ago, Karol Wojtyla of Krakow, Poland, assumed the papacy, ushering in a decade of activism that has seen Pope John Paul II travel the world, attempt to bring an unruly flock into line and suffer the jolt of schism in the ranks.

He has drawn the admiration of many as he assumes the role of a world leader on matters of peace and social justice, speaking out on causes ranging from the rights of Latin American peasants to the plight of Palestinians. He has also upset many Roman Catholics in the United States and elsewhere by his consistent doctrinal conservatism.

No Pope has ever traveled so much and delivered so many speeches in embarking on a path to prepare his church for the next century, when the Vatican expects there will be 1 billion Roman Catholics in the world.

The 10 years have allowed the Pope to place like-minded conservatives in key dioceses and in the Curia, the church’s central administration, and to put his people into the College of Cardinals, which serves as an advisory body and elects his successor.

Crackdowns on dissent

From the Vatican, there have been crackdowns on dissent and the censuring of several prominent theologians. Among North American and Western European Catholics have been signs of alienation and a feeling among some women that John Paul is unsympathetic to their aspirations.

The Pope was particularly upset when traditionalist French Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre ordained new bishops on June 30 without his approval, provoking the first significant schism in the church in more than a century. The Pope was described as deeply pained, and bishops asked Catholics to rally around him.

Wounded in an assassination attempt seven years ago and now 68, John Paul has perhaps slowed down a step. He often appears tired and drawn, although Vatican officials insist he has lost none of his drive to set down his vision of the church.

“To say, as many have, that the present Bishop of Rome does not understand the church in the United States or in other parts of the free world is not to condemn him,” Father Richard P. McBrien, a University of Notre Dame theologian, said in a comment published in a 1988 anthology, “The Church in Anguish.” He continued:

“He seems to assume that the only effective way to combat our common enemies in today’s world--atheism and materialism--is through a completely united front. No dissent, no public quarreling, no breaking from the ranks.”

‘Year of 3 Popes’

The year 1978, the “year of the three Popes,” saw the death of Paul VI after a 15-year papacy and the death of his successor, John Paul I, after only 33 days. Then, on Oct. 16, the cardinals elected Archbishop Karol Wojtyla of Krakow as the first non-Italian pontiff in 455 years and the first Pole ever.

At 58, young for a Pope and coming from a Communist country where the church has traditionally been a second center of power, Wojtyla seemed the ideal man to head a growing church still in turmoil from the changes initiated by the Second Vatican Council and battling the challenge of Marxism.

He has pursued his goals energetically and encouraged his bishops to do likewise, whether through an unsuccessful attempt in 1981 to overturn Italy’s law allowing abortions or the successful effort to permit his meeting with political opposition leaders in Paraguay last June.

John Paul says that the church has an obligation to speak out on moral issues but that priests and nuns have no business in partisan politics.

Throughout the decade, John Paul has been critical of both liberal capitalism and Marxist collectivism. Among his visions is a Europe united by its common Christian roots.

The Vatican’s attempt to pursue its agenda in Eastern Europe appeared to suffer a setback when John Paul was wounded by a Turkish gunman May 13, 1981. There were allegations--never proven--that the shooting was inspired by the Soviet Union to halt John Paul’s support for the independent Solidarity labor movement in Poland.

Kremlin Relations Improving

But with Mikhail S. Gorbachev leading the Soviet Union, relations between the Soviets and the Vatican have improved to the point where the Vatican sent a senior delegation to Moscow this year for the celebration of a major religious event by the Orthodox Church. There has even been talk of a papal visit to the Soviet Union, although nothing immediate is expected.

Another focus has been Latin America, where he has sought to weed out Marxist liberation theology by church activists while seeking to counter inroads made by Protestant sects.

Nine of the Pope’s 39 trips have been to Latin America, reflecting Vatican interest in a region expected to include half the world’s Catholics by the year 2000. The Vatican estimates that Catholics now number 850 million worldwide.

John Paul has repeatedly stressed the church’s “option for the poor” but has refused to tolerate the more openly political liberation theologians such as Brazil’s Leonardo Boff, who in 1985 was punished with a year of “obedient silence” for criticizing what he called the church’s “feudal hierarchy.”

Equality Stand

Cardinal Paulo Evaristo Arns of San Paulo, Brazil, a leading human rights advocate and a sort of patron of liberation theologians in the world’s largest Catholic country, has praised the Pope for encouraging church leaders to work for greater social equality.

“In Brazil, where the abyss between the rich and poor is immense, where traditionally the elites rule with scandalous egotism, the words of the Pope have encouraged bishops, priests and laymen in a common struggle for a new society marked by signs of faith, of hope and of fraternity,” Arns said in an interview.

The Pope has frequently reached out to other Christian denominations and religions, convening a multi-faith prayer session in Assisi, Italy, in October, 1986. But he has said that the ordination of women in the Anglican Church poses an obstacle to church unity, and he has angered Jews by receiving PLO leader Yasser Arafat and meeting with Austrian President Kurt Waldheim, who has been linked to Nazi war crimes.

It is often said that Pope John XXIII breathed new life into the church by calling the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965), that produced major changes in the liturgy, the church’s relations with other religions and its view of its role in the world.

If John’s successor, Pope Paul VI, was seen as troubled by doubts and inclined to compromise, John Paul II steers the church with obvious self-assurance.

Although Vatican officials dismiss the suggestion that the Pope has little interest in the super-developed Western societies, the Vatican is clearly counting on the church’s growth in the less-developed nations. Vatican figures show, for example, that most of the increases among seminarians are in the Third World.

Africa is one area that the Vatican is counting on for such growth, and the Pope has made several trips to that continent.

John Paul has twice visited the United States. The 1987 pilgrimage, which included stops in California, allowed for candid criticism from the ranks, but the Pope was unbudging and made it clear that it was a “grave error” to believe dissent from church teaching was compatible with being a good Catholic.

Troublesome issues among North American Catholics include mandatory priestly celibacy and the ban on women becoming priests, and prohibitions on contraceptives, divorce and abortion.

“We’re not going to have a sufficient number of qualified priests if they have to be male celibates,” said Father Daniel Donovan, a theology professor at St. Michael’s College in Toronto.

The Pope recently affirmed that the church is determined to do all it can to fight discrimination against women and has written a document on the issue.

But some American nuns have been among the Pope’s strongest critics.

There have also been differences over the role that national bishops’ conferences should play as a body and investigations of U.S. seminaries and religious orders.

The Pope’s world vision, as laid out in a social encyclical in February, drew some questioning from the Catholic right, usually his strongest defenders.

“World peace is inconceivable unless the world’s leaders come to recognize that interdependence in itself demands the abandonment of the politics of blocs, the sacrifice of all forms of economic, military or political imperialism, and the transformation of mutual distrust into collaboration,” John Paul wrote.