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But the Polish church carries a conservative image overall, and its situation is unusual. One seasoned observer at the Protestant-Eastern Orthodox World Council of Churches considers Wojtyla's election "an expression of nostalgia" by the Cardinals, who see Poland's church as an "obedient" one that "does not have to grapple with the problems of secularization, wayward theologians, birth control, empty churches, deserted seminaries or priests straining to get married." Some Catholic liberals argue that while strong church authority is necessary for survival in Poland, it only causes trouble in the West.
Wojtyla is well aware of these tensions. For ten years he was a consultant to the Council for the Laity in Rome, and other visits to the Vatican and extensive reading have kept him abreast of wider church discussions. Monsignor Zdizislaw Pesz-kowsky, of the Polish-American seminary in Michigan, who has known Wojtyla for 24 years, says that while the new Pope is interested in the liberals' agenda—divorce, celibacy, women priests and the like—he "stresses that these problems must be dealt with by priestly zeal," not further compromise.
Last week's papal inaugural speech contained a noteworthy sentence on ecumenism: "Hopefully, thanks to a common effort, we might arrive finally at full communion" with other Christians. That does not appear to be mere lip service. Just four days before Wojtyla's election, Protestant Billy Graham preached to an overflow audience at St. Anne's Roman Catholic church in Cracow—at the personal invitation of Cardinal Wojtyla. The choice of a Pole stirred deep anxiety among Jews in Israel and elsewhere, because of Poland's history of antiSemitism, but hurried phone calls to Poland and Rome reassured Jewish leaders. Besides his wartime exploits, Wojtyla prodded the bishops to back Jewish intellectuals during the Communists' anti-Semitic drive of 1968. He has led many visits to Auschwitz, which lies within the Cracow archdiocese.
Says Jesuit Paul Tipton, head of Alabama's Spring Hill College: "The church must cut through all cultural, ethnic and racial lines. The Catholic Church does this, more so even than the U.N. It is the only voice speaking for peace and justice in the modern world." This, to him, is far more important than birth control or celibacy, and in that world role Wojtyla is certain to be an articulate activist, a strong spokesman for human rights and economic justice.
Wojtyla wrote last year that Jesus Christ is "a reproach to the affluent consumer society ... The great poverty of people, especially in the Third World —hunger, economic exploitation, colonialism—all these signify an opposition to Christ by the powerful." Advocates of the Marxist-influenced "liberation theology" in Latin America thus hope that the Pope will be sympathetic to their program. But knowledgeable observers in Rome expect the opposite. Asked on West German TV last year whether Marxism could be reconciled with Christianity, Wojtyla replied bluntly: "This is a curious question. One cannot be a Christian and a materialist; one cannot be a believer and an atheist."