Faith: Pope's wisdom vs. cheap rhetoric By Uwe Siemon-Netto UPI Religion Correspondent © 2000, UPI Thursday, December 19, 2002 WASHINGTON – Probably no other sacred text has ever been hijacked by the wrong people as often as the angels' jubilant announcement the night Christ was born in Bethlehem: "Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace to men on whom his favor rests." (Luke 2:14, NIV). "Peace on earth!" the Nazis mendaciously howled before ravaging most of Europe. "Peace on earth," the Soviets proclaimed, as they were subjugating half of the continent and many other parts of the world. "Peace on earth!" Christian fellow travelers of the communists aped their mentors, closing both eyes to their acts of inhumanity. Yet this quintessentially Christian message is a realistic one, to wit, the events in the 40 years since the proclamation of the papal encyclical by the name Pacem in Terris (Peace on Earth). In this encyclical, Pope John XXIII reminded the world, in a sense, of the need to have faith in God's ability to move mountains in the lives not just of individuals but also of societies and nations – a thought of typically Christian foolhardiness. To be sure, dismal wars, such as in Vietnam, and holocausts, such as the Chinese Cultural Revolution and the genocide in Cambodia and Rwanda, have taken place since then. But the big nuclear annihilation that seemed distinctly probable back then failed to occur. And the greatest menace many of us have had to live with – Soviet aggression – has literally evaporated. Faithful Christians who have experienced the collapse of Communism first in Poland, then in Germany, where the Berlin Wall suddenly vanished, and then in the rest of Europe could not help but sense God's hand in all this. Nobody is more qualified to remind us of that than John Paul II. As his biographer George Weigel rightly claims, this Polish pope was the principal factor in the fall of Communism. In commemorating his predecessor's encyclical and at the same time addressing World Peace Day 2003 (Jan. 1), John Paul II does not talk with a raised forefinger, like a schoolmaster, to a world at war against terrorism. To do this was the dubious prerogative of Konrad Raiser, secretary-general of the World Council of Churches in Geneva. In the German Lutheran periodical, Synode Direkt (direct synod), Raiser accused the Bush administration of "imperialist thinking," because of its preparations for military action against Iraq. Raiser did this just a few months after a church leader had compared Bush with Hitler during a WCC-sponsored symposium on the war on terrorism. In contrast, John Paul II does not accuse. Whatever his feelings about the evidently impending war – and one can be sure that peace is in his prayers now more than ever – he argues theologically by giving evidence that God will not allow to let this unredeemed world slip from his hands. One hopes that Raiser and colleagues will take note of the pope's message that, yes, religion has a vital role in fostering conditions for peace. But it has to be careful how it exercises this role: It must concentrate – in the pontiff's words – "on what is proper to it: attention to God." It is curious how Rome and Geneva have seemingly switched roles. On the one hand, here is Raiser, allegedly a disciple of Luther who admonished clerics to "grab into the princes' snouts but never interfere with their craft," engaging in the kind of clericalism the 16th-century reformers resolutely rejected – the clerics' presumptuous interference in the secular realm. On the other hand, there is the pope, whose church has often been rightly accused of clericalism, following his predecessor's footsteps as he identifies truth, justice, love and freedom as essential conditions for peace – a statement totally commensurate with Scripture. Peace on earth, this wonderful promise of the first Christmas night, is not achieved with cheap 1960s-style rhetoric. Instead Christians believe that peace is God's gift, which we receive as a divine response to prayer, a gift made possible through the transformation of human souls.

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