Word: wojtyla
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Wojtyla wrote last year that Jesus Christ is "a reproach to the affluent consumer society ... The great poverty of people, especially in the Third World ?hunger, economic exploitation, colonialism?all these signify an opposition to Christ by the powerful." Advocates of the Marxist-influenced "liberation theology" in Latin America thus hope that the Pope will be sympathetic to their program. But knowledgeable observers in Rome expect the opposite. Asked on West German TV last year whether Marxism could be reconciled with Christianity, Wojtyla replied bluntly: "This is a curious question. One cannot be a Christian and a materialist...
Poland's shrewd, 77-year-old Primate, Stefan Cardinal Wyszynski, has pressed this opposition role ever since he became Archbishop of Gniezno and Warsaw in 1948. When Cardinal Wojtyla joined the battle, he used his intellectual powers to persuade both disaffected liberal Catholics and Marxists to take the church seriously. The new Pope, says a Czech Jesuit in exile, has been "more dangerous for Communist countries than Cardinal Wyszynski, because he combats Marxism also on theoretical grounds, and with such success that they have been hard put to refute his arguments...
...Wojtyla's election poses embarrassing difficulties for the party. The government discouraged a visit from Pope Paul VI for the church's millennial celebration in 1966, but it can hardly discourage a trip home by a native son. Next spring Poland celebrates the 900th anniversary of the martyrdom of a national spiritual hero, St. Stanislaw of Cracow. Polish bishops last week formally asked the new Pope to attend. If the regime tries to keep him away, the volatile Poles could take to the streets in protest. If the new Pope visits, they will surely take to the streets...
Western observers were puzzled about what Wojtyla's election might mean elsewhere in the Communist world, especially in regard to the Vatican's strategy of Ostpolitik. Diplomatic dealings with Communist regimes to ease persecution of Catholics were pressed assiduously by Pope Paul VI. The imponderable factor is not so much Wojtyla, who knows when to roar and when to purr, but rather the Communist governments and the Christians who have to live with them, especially in the other nations in Eastern Europe...
...negotiations began under Pope John XXIII and are not yet concluded. The difficulty of winning back religious liberties once they are lost could prompt the new Pontiff to think long and carefully before reaching any modus vivendi with Eurocommunism in any of its national guises. At the same time, Wojtyla is living proof that a healthy church can survive under Communism...