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July 26, 2002 9:00 a.m. A Pope and His Critics What the young people are responding to and the elites don’t get.

hen Karol Wojtyla became pope in 1978, he was a young and fit 58, ruddy-faced, shaped by the outdoors, vibrant with energy. He took the names of the two popes of Vatican II, John XXIII and Paul VI, to signify his intention of putting Vatican II into practice as thoroughly throughout the Church, as he had already done in the archdiocese of Krakow, the cultural capital of Poland. Vatican II was in session from 1962 to 1965.

The new pope said from the beginning that his aim was to bring about the reunification of Europe, East and West. At that time, that "impossible dream" meant bringing down the Berlin Wall, and lifting the greatest persecution of the Christian Church since the time of Christ.

It was soon plain that this unusual new pope saw the whole Church spread around the planet as one community, one People of God. He saw his own task as that of becoming a "universal pastor." He kept reminding everyone of the universal solidarity of all peoples. Wherever he went, he surrounded himself by bishops from all around the world, to show that the papacy is a brotherly teaching office, not a kingly one.

His vision of the Church was in precise measure both hierarchic and also concentric: the whole people of God, confirmed in the faith of the Apostles by the collegial communion of the world's bishops, among whom his own role is pastoral, unitive, and corroborative.

No one can deny that this pope has interpreted his role primarily as pastoral, as a traveler from church to church, continent to continent, round and round the planet, again and again. Under Pope John Paul II, the Curia is more international in make-up and in functioning than it has ever been, with many more top leaders from Africa, Asia, Latin America, North America, and Eastern Europe. His Rome appointments have been first class: Ratzinger, Kasper, Tomko, Stafford, Arinze, Van Thuan, etc. The knock on this pope, however, is that he left too much of church administration to itself; it has not been his chief interest nor his top priority.

And the pope has been a great teacher, issuing one important encyclical after another, winning the praise of philosophers of the stature of Alasdair MacIntyre for his reflections on conscience and truth, the plaudits of ecumenists for his fresh work in that direction, and great acclaim for his rethinking of Catholic social thought in a brace of three encyclicals. The pope's great gifts as a professional philosopher and man of profound, almost mystical prayer life give a rare depth to his papal writings, which guarantees their durability over many generations.

Catholic "progressives" in North America, however, will never forgive him. Among them, Pope John Paul II has many harsh critics, not to say sworn enemies. I have met two priests who say with some intensity that they pray every day for his speedy passage to God, so greatly do they resent his interpretation of Vatican II. Former priest James Carroll calls for the pope's resignation, and preposterously describes the pope's policies as "anti-reform-closed, secretive, dishonest, totalitarian."

The reason is that "progressives" such as Carroll have developed their own legend about Vatican II. According to them, Vatican II repealed the strong papacy of Vatican I and even the Council of Trent, and gave the church over in a revolutionary way to "the people of God." Power to the people!

Last weekend in Boston, for instance, a new organization called "Voice of the Faithful" compared their own hoped-for uprising to the War of Independence in which the United States was born. They foresee a new democratic church, run from the bottom up. Some 66 theologians calling themselves Catholic sent them a letter of theological support.

As near as one could tell from their self-promotion, this new group is trying to decide whether the new church that it is founding will be Anglican (that is, Catholic, but without a pope, and changing its directions to sail with the changing spirit of the times) or Congregationalist (that is, parish-centered and parish-led, with as little to do with bishops and pope as can be worked out). The one thing clear is that this new group does not want to be Catholic, as Catholic has been understood by, say, the Councils of Trent, Vatican I, and Vatican II. As John Paul II, Paul VI, and John XXIII and on back, understood it.

The "progressives" will not forgive John Paul II because what they call sexual liberation the pope, in a quite well-founded, traditional way, regards as the tyranny of the libido, a form of slavery. Whereas they want eagerly to accept the norms of secular society on divorce, homosexual acts, premarital sex, and other pelvic desires, the pope stands with "the democracy of the dead," the voice of the faithful of the past, so many martyrs, so many lovers of chastity. That stand is an outrage to those who regard "Vatican II" as their own playpen, within which to do what they feel like doing. In their minds, "Vatican II" overturned everything unpleasant and challenging in the teaching of the Church. It liberated their desires. It made them feel liberated and modern.

Among the most powerful and deepest of the pope's intellectual initiatives is the new, phenomenological foundation he has given "the theology of the body." "Progressives" avoid arguments at that depth. But it is exactly the unity that the pope sees between soul and body, the unity arising from our persons being thoroughly embodied, and our bodies being thoroughly pervaded by our personhood, that makes the pope's vision seem so "together." He looks at young people whole. He calls them to their wholeness.

That is what young people are responding to.

Richard McBrien, the theologian at the University of Notre Dame who has not had a kind word for Karol Wojtyla during twenty-four years, says that the pope is now too weak, too ill, to be the kind of "draw" that he used to be.

There was never a day on which Richard McBrien could "draw" one hundred thousand young people (much less, think of it as a "low turnout.") I have never had such a day myself.

For Pope John Paul II, anything less than a crowd of four or five million, such as he has had several times since 1978, seems like an intimate gathering.

No man in history has been physically seen by so many people in the flesh at any one time, as he was in Manila. Altogether, cumulatively, certainly no one comes even close. Those who see him in Toronto will be joining the largest cumulative crowd ever to see one man in history. It is as if he has physically wanted to bless every man and woman on the planet. Even his critics. Even his enemies.

— A version of this piece appears in today's National Post.

— Michael Novak, the George F. Jewett scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. Mr. Novak is the author, most recently, of On Two Wings: Humble Faith and Common Sense at the American Founding.