John Connelly on Pope John Paul II's Legacy of "Repressive Intolerance": Papal Authoritarianism and the Catholic Abuse Crisis

In a review of the complex legacy and complex life of Polish public intellectual Leszek Kolakowski, John Connelly reminds readers of the legacy of the soon-to-be-canonized pope, John Paul II--a legacy of  "repressive intolerance" of anyone who disagreed with him, of "stubborn disregard of critical voices," of a "moral intransigence" that was "theologically threadbare" and often inflicted severe pain on others, in contradiction of what is best about the Catholic pastoral tradition. Connelly writes,

Yet John Paul II’s "management" style was authoritarian. The Second Vatican Council had enshrined a stronger role for the laity—the "people of God"—as well as "collegiality" for bishops, but ideas from below never rose to John Paul II. For twenty-five years, he used his powers of appointment to pack the ranks of the episcopate with men who never wavered in supporting his own positions on controversial issues like birth control (sinful), celibacy in the clergy (essential) and ordaining women (impossible). His "reconsolidation" of authority also had the effect of placing child abusers and their protectors beyond scrutiny. The religious orders he disciplined were ones that harbored dissent: particularly painful was his imposing an interim head of the Jesuit order in 1981, in defiance of its constitution. Sniffing Marxism, he silenced the advocates of liberation theology in Latin America. Advocates of social justice found themselves, in John Allen’s words, consumed by "self-censorship in order to ward off a new round of scrutiny." In 1995, the pope even prohibited the clergy from speaking about the theological possibility of women’s priesthood. This was fatuous because, as theologians have argued, the question of female clergy is a matter not of Catholic theology but of church tradition.

For twenty-five years, he used his powers of appointment to pack the ranks of the episcopate with men who never wavered in supporting his own positions on controversial issues like birth control (sinful), celibacy in the clergy (essential) and ordaining women (impossible). His "reconsolidation" of authority also had the effect of placing child abusers and their protectors beyond scrutiny: it is precisely for this reason that many of us are absolutely persuaded that John Paul II doesn't deserve canonization.

He--and his authoritarian, brook-no-questions style of leadership--are at the very center of the still-unresolved abuse crisis in the Catholic church. It is a cause of serious scandal to raise to the altars a man who protected the serial rapist Marcial Maciel for years, knowing full well what the score was with Maciel. And to raise to the altars the man who appointed the bishops now running the church, who have been conspicuously unable to--let's be honest: they've refused to--resolve the abuse crisis in the Catholic church, because they put the institution's reputation and its money above the well-being of the people of God . . . .