John Paul II and Communism
 After
the fall of the Berlin Wall on November 9, 1989, John Paul
II visited the Czeck Republic on April 21, 1990. He was the first
Pope to enter Czechoslovakia. "Even less than a year ago,"
he said on that occasion, "it was unthinkable that the Pope,
himself a Slav and the son of a sister nation, could come to Czechoslovakia."
But now, he said, "it is providential that it falls to me to
be the first pope to enter this land in order to bring it a greeting
of peace. The faithful of Bohemia, Moravia, and Slovakia have in
Rome a pastor who understands their language. He also understood
their silence, when the Church in this country was the Church of
silence, and he considered it part of his mission to be their voice."
Perhaps the most significant statement the pope
made after the fall of Communism throughout his entire pontificate
was that "the claim to build a world without God has been shown
to be an illusion" (Prague, April 21, 1990). For John Paul
II it was only a matter of when and how Communism would fall. Communism
as a system, in John Paul II’s opinion, fell not only by the
hand of divine Providence, but as a consequence of its own mistakes
and abuses. John Paul II repeated the content of Christianity, its
religious and moral message, its defense of the human person, insisting
that this is a principle to be followed. Thus in his estimation,
Christianity itself became the determining factor in the fall of
Communism.
It was Gorbachev himself who acknowledged publicly
the role of John Paul II in the fall of Communism. "What has
happened in Eastern Europe in recent years would not have been possible
without the presence of this Pope, without the great role even political
that he has played on the world scene" (quoted in La Stampa,
March 3, 1992).
The fall of Communism meant that a Europe of the
spirit was being reborn. While celebrating the fall of Communism,
however, John Paul warned against the dangers of capitalism. "Unfortunately,
not everything the West proposes as a theoretical vision or as a
concrete lifestyle reflects Gospel values." He saw in capitalism
certain "viruses": secularism, indifferentism, hedonistic
consumerism, practical materialism, and also formal atheism.
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