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PASTOR GENERAL'S REPORT, DECEMBER 27, 1982
PAGE 8
Briggs composed a lengthy article in the NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE of October
10, 1982 entitled "Using the World as his Pulpit." Here are some key ex
cerpts:
The Pope sees himself primarily as a spiritual figure who tran
scends racial, regional and ideological boundaries and disputes.
He envisions a better world where human dignity is enhanced
through the transforming power of faith and by the practical
efforts of well-meaning nations. [ Church and state, note. ]
John Paul II has entered many lands as an evangelist presenting
the Christian alternative. He grasps the sober reality that the
church has lost much ground to Marxist Communism, Socialism and,
particularly in Western nations, the powerful specter of secular
ism.•..In response, he has become a crusader with an urgency that
suggests that time is running out.
Underlying this urgency is the Pope's acute awareness of the
approaching end of the second Christian millennium. Prof. George
H . Wi11iams of Harvard's Divinity Schoo1, a 1ongtime friend of
the Pope who has written a searching book, "The Mind of John Paul
II,� says the Pontiff has "more of an eschatological view than
anyone would suspect," and that � the year 2000 he "believes
something decisive will happen in the world."
The substance of eschatology is based on biblical teachings that
God will inaugurate His Kingdom through a series of happenings at
the close of an age. Such premonitions by the Pope relate to both
his mysticism and the business at hand.
!i
he imagines himself
as the head of the church in the final days of the world as we
know it, then his pressing desire to purify and unify the church
before that final judgment has its own logic.
The Pope attributes his survival [ after the May, 1980 assassi
nation attempt] to the miraculous intervention of the Virgin
Mary....Those near him say he believes he was spared in order to
perform a special mission as head of the church....
He is the bearer of a long tradition that has undergone drastic
transformation in the modern age. Shorn of all but a few rem
nants of temporal power, his authority increasingly challenged,
the Pope must rely on persuasion rather than overt power.
More On the Pope's "Declaration to Europe"
Just this week we received a complete text of Pope John Paul II's speech in
Santiago de Compostela, Spain on November 9. This speech was billed as a
"Declaration to Europe."
We carried excerpts of it in this column in the
November 26, 1982 issue of the PASTOR GENERAL'S REPORT.
Through a Roman Catholic information office in Britain, Mr. Frank Brown, in
charge of the Work's operations in the United Kingdom, was able to obtain
the text, which was published in the weekly, English-language edition of
the semi-official Vatican City newspaper, L'OSSERVATORE ROMANO. It appear
ed in the November 29, 1982 edition.