From the President: Remembering Woytyla, Shepherd of Freedom

By Dr. Chris Seiple on 04 April 2005

Visitors to Auschwitz encounter an archway bearing the words of an old German saying: Arbeit Macht Frei. "The work shall make you free." As one ponders how something so seemingly innocuous could come to signify something so hideous, the natural instinct is to look for monsters. But all one finds are ordinary men; men like SS private Oskar Gröning. Stationed at Auschwitz, Gröning participated in the murder of over a million Jews and thousands upon thousands of Poles and Soviet prisoners-of-war.

When asked how he could participate in such atrocities, including the murder of children, Gröning replied: "We were convinced by our worldview that we had been betrayed by the entire world, and that there was a great conspiracy of the Jews against us…The children [were] not the enemy at the moment. The enemy is the blood inside them. The enemy is the growing up to be a Jew that could become dangerous. And because of that the children were included as well."¹

As the Nazis broke ground for their death camp in the spring of 1940, a twenty year old aspiring actor, Karol Wojtyla, had just finished writing his second play in nearby Krakow: "Job: A Drama from the Old Testament." It was written as Wojtyla struggled to understand his own worldview in the context of Nazi oppression. Stripped of any possible dependence on the world during the occupation — he worked in a labor camp, the Gestapo shot his friend, and he lost the last member of his immediate family, his father, to natural causes — Wojtyla had every right to despair.

But he did not. The reality of the Nazi worldview around him made clear that ideas, and their implementation, had consequences. As Wojtyla considered his faith, he recognized that it offered resistance through an alternative worldview, a transcendent idea that provided a freedom not found in occupied Poland, except in the heart. In other words, the young Wojtyla chose to singularly anchor his worldview in the hope of Christ: "If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free."²

It was this unreserved choice — in sharp contrast to the worldview proclaimed by Gröning's archway just 35 miles away — that informed the daily actions of Karol Wojtyla for the rest of his life, beginning with his decision to become a priest in 1942, at Poland's darkest hour. As a disciple of Christ, he understood that he was not guaranteed safety, but that he did have the security of worshiping a King who conquered the death that surrounded him and who reigns in love, in every dimension of life. As he would tell an American audience fifty years after the fall of the Nazi regime: "Do not make an idol of temporal reality. Know that the Kingdom of God is at hand. Wait for the Lord with courage, be stouthearted. Hope in the Lord!"

An indefatigable embodiment of and witness to the Kingdom of God, Wojtyla's worldview never strayed from Christ, who sacrificed himself for his creation and asked only that humanity freely choose Him. As a result, religious freedom was a central tenet of Wojtyla's ministry, a human right that he reintroduced to the Catholic Church and helped to institutionalize at Vatican II. "In faithfulness therefore to the truth of the Gospel, the Church is following the way of Christ and the apostles when she recognizes and gives support to the principle of religious freedom as befitting the dignity of man and as being in accord with divine revelation."³

After Wojtyla became Pope John Paul II, he continued to preach religious freedom. As a function of the truth of Jesus Christ, he taught that religious freedom is an essential precondition for a peaceful society that includes Christians and non-Christians, all of whom are made in God's image.

The right to profess the truth must always be upheld, but not in a way which involves contempt for those who may think differently. Truth imposes itself solely by the force of its own truth. To deny an individual complete freedom of conscience — and in particular the freedom to seek the truth — or to attempt to impose a particular way of seeing the truth, constitutes a violation of that individual's most personal rights… Freedom of conscience, rightly understood, is by its very nature always ordered to the truth. As a result, it does not lead to intolerance, but to tolerance and reconciliation. This tolerance is not a passive virtue, but is rooted in active love and is meant to be transformed into a positive commitment to ensuring freedom and peace for all.⁴

Humility is critical in this formulation of true tolerance and freedom. Without it, the followers of Christ will fail to model their master. Without humility, Wojtyla admonishes us, Christians might pretend to know the mind of an all-knowing and mysterious God.

How modest must [the Christian] be in regard to his own limited insight! How quick must he be to learn, and how slow to condemn! One of the constant temptations in every age, even among Christians, is to make oneself the norm of truth. In an age of pervasive individualism, this temptation takes a variety of forms. But the mark of those who are "in the truth" is the ability to love humbly. This is what God's word teaches us: truth is expressed in love…As we seek the truth together, with respect for the conscience of others, we will be able to go forward along the paths of freedom which lead to peace, in accordance with the will of God.⁵

Without the ability to love humbly as others seek the truth, we soon position ourselves to believe that freedom is the result of our own efforts rather than a gift of grace from our Creator. Karol Wojtyla's worldview was rightly oriented; the truth, not "work," shall set us free. His life demonstrated that an unswerving devotion to the truth of Jesus Christ results in a responsible freedom that lifts up all God's children in peace and justice.

Last updated 21 April 2009