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his own people and its influence on the
rest of Catholic Eastern Europe may
proveto be themost important summit
meeting of the decade, for it is not the
penetration of Western mi l itary
power Moscow has to fear, but the
penetration of freedom and faith.. . .
"How many divisions does the
pope have? And the answer is: More
tha.n Stalin or any of his successors
imagined and more than they
had to think about when the Carter–
Brezhnev
summ~t
was originally
planned."
George F. Will , a columnist for
Newsweek,
also took up this same
theme. In the magazine's June 25
issue, he wrote: "Pope J ohn Paul Il's
homecoming was one of the great
events of the postwar era. Religion is
supposed to be the opiate of the
masses, but it has not hada noticeably
sedative elfect on Poland's surging,
singing, clapping, praying masses.
"No Communist leader in Eastern
Europe or the U.S.S.R. will ever hear
such cheers. For thirty years , atheist
regimes have been enforcing official
ideology, yet Catholicism is the only
mass movement in Eastern Europe;
nothing else, least of all Commu–
nism, is a mass movement anywhere
in the Communist world."
Pope's " Pan-European" Vision
"The pope's visit to Poland," writes
Editor Carl G. Strohm in the June 19,
1979 edition ofthe West German dai–
ly
Die Welt,
"has brought quite a bit
into the light of day. A smart political
mind from Eastern Europe stated the
other day that for the time being there
areonly twocentersin the world which
are in possession of a long-term poli ti–
ca l concept. The one is the Yatican–
theother the Kremlin."
The "long-term political ·concept"
that the Yatican (or at least its current
leader) has in mind was brought dra–
matically to the foreduring Pope John
Paul II's nine-day trip to Poland. (The
pope drew enormous
~rowds ,
includ–
ing one of 1,500,000 at his last mass in
Krakow.) In the long run it amounts to
nothing less than the vision of the
future "spiritual unity" of the conti–
nent under the auspices ofthe Roman
Catholic Church. It is to be the church
which will surmount the ideological
division of Europe.
6
T he pope, reported
Time
maga–
zine in its June 18, 1979 edition,
"seemed to envision an eventual pan–
European Christian alliance against
the secular materialism of both East
and West."
0!1 his trip, the pope continually
referred to himself as "this Polish
Pope, this Slavic Pope," seeming to
imply he had a broad-based mission
to reach al! of Eastern Europe, not
just Roman Catholic believers but
Orthodox followers as well.
Ya tican analysts traveling with
the pope were not surprised to hear
the pope's reference to the "spiri–
tual unity" of Europe. They have
felt he would do everything possible
during his term of office to heal the
eleventh-century break with the.
. Eastern Orthodox churches. (With
this rupture healed, it should prove
easier to patch the later break with
Protestantism!)
One American reporter, John Yi–
nocur, was almost overwhelmed by
the impact the pope had on his mass
audiences and with the impunity
with which he challenged present–
day Communist authorities. Writing
in the J une 11 edition of the
l nterna–
tiona/ Herald Tribune,
Yinocur re–
ported that the situation as it un–
folded in Poland was so new, so unex–
pected that it was actually difficult to
grasp in its entirety.
"Here was ," he said, "a Polish
pope talking daily before assemblies
of his countrymen about how the So–
viet Union and the other Allies had
not cometo their aid during the siege
of Warsaw in World War
11;
about
the Christian history of Czechoslo–
vakia, Bulgaria, Poland, Yugoslavia
and Lithuania; about how Europe
must turn to Christianity if it is to
advance beyond its present divisions;
about how Communism and Chris–
tianity are diametrically opposed,
and how the state must a lways be
subsidiary ' to the full sovereignty of
the nation.' "
"An obvious question," continued
Yinocur , "was what the cumulative
elfect of such comments could be,
refined and repeated .over the next
years.... The themes seeded by the
pope, depending on how they are nur–
tured, could be the source of a new
kind of dialogue in Eastern Europe or
they could provide a permanent e le–
ment of confrontation."
Pope Tells of Europe's
" Fundamental Unity"
On this historie trip, the pope olfered
a vision of the future and perhaps a
glimpse of the long-term lines of his
pontificate.
John Paul II delivered these thun–
derbolt words on one occasion: "Eu–
rope, despite its present and long-last–
ing divisionsof regimes, ideologies and
economic and political systems, can–
not ceaseto seek its fundamental unity
[and] must turn to Christianity. De–
spite the different traditions that exist
in the territory of Europe between its
Eastern part and its Western part,
there lives in each of them the same
Christianity.... Christianity must
commit itself anew to the formation of
thespiritual unityofEurope. Econom–
ic and política! reasons cannot do it.
Wemustgodeeper.... "
The pope said in no uncertain
words that politics alone cannot unite
Europe. fn fact, it is precisely poli–
tics- the ideological divis ion symbol–
ized by the Iron Curtain- which
keeps Europe divided today.
And the process of building a
United Europe on a purely economic
basis has just about come to the end
of the line. Ever since 1950, the pro–
cess of amalgamating the economies
of the free half of Europe has been
under way. Much has been accom–
plished. The structure of the Euro–
pean Economic Community is well
advanced. Yet national perspectives
and jealousies still hover over the
Aickering flame of Europeanism.
Moreover, the economic fortunes
of the Eastern Europeans are still
dictated by Moscow, which domi–
nates the activities of the East bloc's
own "Common Market," called
COMECON (Council of Mutual
Economic Assistance) .
"One may reason.ably question,"
writes Yves Lamen in the European
edition of
Newsweek
(J une 18 ,
1979), "whether tbe process of build–
ing Europe on a purely economic ba–
sis has not reached its limit. "
That's certainly what the pope
meant when he said, "We must go
deeper."
(Continued on page 42)
The
PLAIN TRUTH August 1979