Man bears in his soul the Imago Dei

 

 

“The fall of communism did not delude John Paul II into thinking that the battle was over. He understood that the human person always bears the responsibility of seeking the truth, and he set the Catholic Church on a path of evangelical renewal and the creation of a “culture of life” to oppose the “culture of death” that pervaded the free countries of the West as much as it did those elsewhere”.

Michael Toth

 

Michael Toth wrote this month (April, 2026):

John Paul II – Modern Age

 

John Paul II

A “witness to hope” in fighting communism’s desecration of human dignity.

 

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John Paul II saw what the communists refused to see: man bears in his soul the imago Dei. The “fundamental error of socialism,” he would later write, “is anthropological.” 

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“As a young priest I learned to love human love,” he recalled. Wojtyla’s carefully developed humanism—a philosophy often referred to as “personalism”—also enabled him to make crucial contributions to the Second Vatican Council, where he drafted the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World and the Declaration of Religious Freedom. At the council, the intellectually formidable Polish archbishop set forth his conviction that the dignity of each human person is revealed in his or her lifelong quest to know and live the truth.

 

The priestly character of Wojtyła’s pastoral experience was highlighted to the world in his inaugural papal homily, when he made the bold challenge that would define his pontificate: “Be not afraid.” Less than a year later, he undertook the first of his legendary and exhausting travels by returning to his homeland to deliver a message of courage and nonviolence.

 

John Paul II’s support for Poland’s Solidarity movement was instrumental to the free world’s bloodless victory over communism. After the Soviets imposed martial law on Poland in 1981, President Reagan called John Paul II for advice, believing that the Soviet Union would collapse if it lost Poland.

 

With the Reagan administration applying political pressure on the Soviets, John Paul II added the necessary moral pressure, emerging as the primary spiritual force behind the Revolution of 1989. “Step by reluctant step, the Soviets and the communist government of Poland bowed to the pressure imposed by the Pope and the President,” explained one archbishop to an American diplomat.

 

In a 1992 syndicated column that appeared in major newspapers throughout the world, Mikhail Gorbachev concurred that John Paul II was essential to the end of communism in Eastern Europe.

 

The fall of communism did not delude John Paul II into thinking that the battle was over. He understood that the human person always bears the responsibility of seeking the truth, and he set the Catholic Church on a path of evangelical renewal and the creation of a “culture of life” to oppose the “culture of death” that pervaded the free countries of the West as much as it did those elsewhere. In opposing the tragedies of euthanasia and abortion, John Paul II repeatedly returned to the fundamental issue: the nature of the human person and the meaning of life. Between 1979 and 1984, the pope devoted 130 addresses to the “theology of the body,” contesting the myopic vision of sexuality promoted by sexual liberationists with a penetrating perception of the body as loudspeaker of the soul. John Paul II taught that to be truly human was to be self-giving, an insight he called “the Law of the Gift.”

 

In the later years of his pontificate, the aging pope focused on themes of human suffering. He asked for forgiveness for the mistreatment of Jews at the hands of Christians, and other Christians at the hands of Catholics. He reached out to members of other faiths, seeking to make the new millennium a “springtime of the human spirit.” Speaking before the United Nations in 1995, John Paul II explained the source of his hope: faith in Jesus Christ. His words, so emblematic of his personal mission, could well epitomize how he will be remembered in history: “I come before you as a witness: a witness to human dignity, a witness to hope, a witness to the conviction that the destiny of all . . . lies in the hands of a merciful Providence.” Despite his declining physical capacity, the “man of the century” (in one biographer’s words) continued to witness to the Third Millennium. In his stirring 2001 apostolic letter “Novo Millennio Ineunte,” John Paul II once again challenged the faithful to “go out into the deep” and transform all noble and honest activities by bringing them to Christ.