Word: polishing
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...moment will be electric, and not only because John Paul helped inflame the fervor for freedom in his Polish homeland that has swept like brush fire across Eastern Europe. Beyond that, the meeting of the two men symbolizes the end of the 20th century's most dramatic spiritual war, a conflict in which the seemingly irresistible force of Communism battered against the immovable object of Christianity...
...Pope John Paul barely escaped assassination. It is believed in the highest circles of the Vatican that Gorbachev's Kremlin predecessors were the masterminds, though the Soviets deny this. The reason for the attack, claims a ranking official of the Holy See, was that the Polish Pope refused to accept the division of Europe into East and West. "The East bloc," says this official, "realized he was a destabilizing factor...
That he was. While Gorbachev's hands-off policy was the immediate cause of the chain reaction of liberation that has swept through Eastern Europe in the past few months, John Paul deserves much of the longer-range credit. His triumphant tour of Poland in 1979, says a Polish bishop, altered the "mentality of fear, the fear of police and tanks, of losing your job, of $ not getting promoted, of being thrown out of school, of failing to get a passport. People learned that if they ceased to fear the system, the system was helpless." Thus was born Solidarity, backed...
...Soviet Union's 70 million Christians have also been enjoyed by the estimated 74 million Christians who live in the six satellite nations. Poland's Communists "have realized that unleashing conflict with the church has been a mistake throughout the past 45 years," says Alojzy Orszulik, the Polish bishops' spokesman. The nation, which remains 95% Catholic, this year became the first in the Soviet bloc to enact a law restoring all basic rights to the churches. Diplomatic relations with the Holy See were established in July. Hungary, also rapidly liberalizing, is 60% Catholic and has sizable Lutheran and Reformed churches...
...government, even one declaring devotion to the people." But Gorbachev's great strength has been to take the Soviet system and its people to destinations unimagined only a few years ago. The time has come for Gorbachev to accept that there is no middle ground. As his Polish neighbors say these days, "You cannot cross a chasm in two steps...