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PASTOR GENERAL'S REPORT, JUNE 27, 1983
PAGE 12
That last statement is indeed worth pondering.
Perhaps it will take
miracles, performed by the power of "the god of this world" to free Poland
from Russia's grip, enabling her and other East Bloc countries to link with
powers in Western Europe to form the last resurrection of the Roman Empire.
Interestingly enough, one English-speaking Pole interviewed on television
referred to John Paul II as a type of modern-day Moses who is saying, "Let
my people go."
Finally, notice this analysis by William Pfaff, writing in the June 27 LOS
ANGELES TIMES:
The� has undertaken the liberation of Eastern Europe. It is
not too much to describe what he has begun with his second visit
to Poland in those words. This audacious program
involves seri
ous risks, but also displays an intelligence, an understanding of
history and a powerful will that are all but invisible among
Western statesmen•••
The pope...seems largely indifferent to what Western governments,
that of the United States in particular, may think of this,
having made it plain that he regards capitalism as�� of�
quisitive material scarcely preferable to the dialectical
materialism of the East.
He simply does not think that the
Soviets are all-powerful and unchallengeable. He is rather less
impressed with them than President Reagan is. It is said in Rome
that the pope is inclined to a millenarian concept of history,
and to suspect that mankind's temporal adventure is approaching
its historical fulfillment [PGR, 12/27/83, p.8J.
He believes that the unity and fervor of Poland's Catholics, in
sisting on religious autonomy and freedom to organize their lives
in common,� provide� first step in the moral reanimation of
the other churches of the East, and then of the West..�.
The pope is on the offensive.... The pope is playing permanence
against the temporal. The churcn will be here, and Poland as
well, for as long as anyone can foresee. Communism's, and the
Soviet Union's, domination of Poland and of the rest of Eastern
Europe is provisional, an episode in history. It will inevitably
end. The Soviet Union will eventually fall back from territories
where� has failed to demonstrate its cultural force, the power
of its ideas.
Statesmanship, it can be argued, consists in recognizing what is
inevitable, and then trying in an intelligent way to hurry it
along-.
That is what the pope is doing. !!_ is� remarkable
spectacle.
Journalist Pfaff is the one who, in the past, has often speculated that the
Soviets, too, must ultimately face reality and allow their Eastern European
states to be partially freed, at least, to run their own affairs, still
having Moscow's trust, much in the manner of Finland.
--Gene H. Hogberg, News Bureau