April 2005 | Vol 41 No 4 | Index
 

From the Director…

Dear Mission Friends,

 As many of you know, in addition to my ministry as the Dominican Mission Foundation Director, I am also assigned to our Mission in Mexicali, Mexico.  At this time in Mexicali, we are in the middle of the nine days of our “novenario” commemorating the death of Pope John Paul II.  Each evening we gather at one of our chapels for Benediction, Rosary, and Mass with a reflection on the life of John Paul II.  As the world remembers the late Holy Father, we called upon our missionary in Eastern Europe, Fr. David O’Rourke, O.P. to share with us his reflections on the life of Pope John Paul II. 

It is through your generous gifts that Fr. O’Rourke and all of our Dominican Missionaries are able to build up the Kingdom of the Risen Christ in so many different parts of the world.  Thank you!

In Christ’s Peace,
Fr. Martin de Porres Walsh OP

Pope John Paul II
Resisting, Surviving, and Overcoming Tyranny
By Fr. David O’Rourke, O.P.
Vilnius, Lithuania

 write this one day before the scheduled funeral of Pope John Paul II and three days before I am scheduled to return to Eastern Europe, to the Lithuanian capital of Vilnius.  There, I am working on a documentary about the Soviet takeover of Eastern Europe back in 1939 and 1940.

In the course of the six years that I have worked in Vilnius, I have had many opportunities to learn what it was like to live under the boot of Soviet oppression.  I had more than opportunities, actually.  Like everyone in that part of the world today, we still must cope daily with the remains of  the systematic oppression, the religious persecution, the unbelievable corruption, and the brutality that were the hallmarks of Soviet rule.

I mention this here because John Paul II, before he was pope, lived for many years under this system.  I think it is fair to say that his own, and Poland’s, resistance to tyranny shaped both his life and the way he looked at life.  For during those unbelievably dark days, the one beacon of hope that stood out and really shone in the darkness of Eastern Europe was the Polish Catholic Church.

When the Soviets took over Poland after World War II they began a program of destruction of Polish life as it had been lived for generations.  They were intent on reshaping everything inherited from the past – financial institutions, farms and factories, people’s title to their houses, the hospitals, the schools, and the universities – and remaking them along Marxist lines under the banner of progress.  In Lithuania where I have lived and worked as in most of Eastern Europe, they succeeded.  In Poland they failed.

And they failed in Poland because the Church, long considered the repository of Polish history and traditions, was able to become the symbol, and the place, and the means of resistance.  In church groups you could say what you thought.  People could go to their churches to find copies of underground newspapers.  Inside the churches the priests talked about basic Catholic ideas – human dignity, personal responsibility and choice, human freedom, and the right to praise the name of Jesus anywhere.  None of this was possible outside the churches.

This is not to say that many priests and religious leaders weren’t arrested, or exiled, or killed.  But they were able to present such a solid front that they were able to survive

How did they do it?  They survived only – only – by maintaining an absolutely united front.  No public disagreements among Church leaders.  No public dissent.  No squabbles.  Nothing.  Just an absolutely solid face of unity.

I

 am working on a documentary on the Lithuanian resistance to the Soviet takeover in 1940 onwards.  So I have been working in the KGB archives and interviewing people who were prisoners of the KGB.  And they describe for us how the KGB arrested the clergy and questioned them over and over, day in and day out, no rest, no sleep.  Relentless and clever and always trying to find some weak spot which they could exploit.

 During those unbelievably dark days,
the one beacon of hope that stood out
and really shone in the darkness of Eastern Europe
was the Polish Catholic Church.

 They were always trying to find someone who could be convinced   into,   or    bribed into, or frightened into playing ball with them, and turning against the rest of the Church leaders.  Poland was blessed by tough leaders and one extraordinary archbishop, Stefan Cardinal Wyszynski, who was also the Primate of Poland.  Combining great personal courage with dedication and political skills, he managed to rally the country behind the Church so solidly that the Soviets were afraid to crackdown the way they did everywhere else.  And it wasn’t just resistance to the police.  It also meant no compromise with Marxist ideas.  Cardinal Wyszynski was arrested and imprisoned for three years, but the persecution only turned him into a national hero.  And it was he who became the mentor and model for the young Karol Woytyla.

n the fall of 2001, I was asked to teach the semester course on the practice of family therapy to graduate students in social work at Vilnius University, which I did.  I was startled by the difference between our Western outlook and their mindset.  Here we look at therapy first basically as helping people, with all their differences.  The person always comes first.  Despite the fact that the Russian tanks

 The Soviets failed in Poland because the Church,
long considered the repository of Polish history and traditions,
was able to become the symbol, and the place,
and the means of resistance.

 had been gone for ten years, they were still influenced by Marxist education.  They approached their work theories first.  People and their issues were understood through theories of personality.  We do it the other way around.  And as an example of what that can mean, under the Soviets the Russian psychiatric hospitals were run by the KGB.

Pope John Paul II spent the first half of his adult life in that system and in the Church’s resistance to it.  He lived with that attack on the human spirit – both the police coercion and that Marxist, party-line narrow-minded- ness, for all his adult years until he was elected pope.  And he knew that the Church had survived only by presenting a united front, with no internal dissent.  We all    have   our   own   unique experiences, our own history, and they affect us.  They help play a role in shaping both our strengths and our limitations.