Interview: George Weigel on Pope St. John Paul II and Religious Freedom

Witness to Hope: The Biography of John Paul II. Mr. Weigel is Distinguished Senior Fellow of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, where he holds the William E. Simon Chair in Catholic Studies.

George Weigel: He would, I imagine, think that they misconstrue Dignitatis Humanae, which emphasizes both the dignity of the human person (and thus the necessity of the act of faith being freely made for it to be authentic), and the theological incompetence of the state. John Paul II was no nostalgic for the ancien régime (a nostalgia in which many of today’s integralists often indulge, although what they imagine to be the ancien régime never existed in historical fact). John Paul had a very low view of state power, perhaps the lowest of any pope in modern Catholic history. In addition to his defense of human dignity, however, he also understood that religious freedom for all was essential to the New Evangelization and the Church’s efforts to introduce people to Christ and the Gospel. That mission, in his view, would be imperiled by putting coercive state power behind the Church’s proposal. John Paul II admired President Ronald Reagan. Yet he would have regarded as an absurdity the notion that President Reagan declaring Jesus Christ the King of America would advance the Church’s primary mission of offering friendship with the Lord Jesus and incorporation into the communion of his disciples that is the Church.

Faith, Reason, and the War Against Jihadism. What, in your view, would John Paul II advise in order to sharpen the focus of the Catholic-Muslim dialogue and push forward the religious freedom agenda?

In his 1995 address to the United Nations, John Paul II called religious freedom “the cornerstone of the structure of human rights and the foundation of every truly free society.” Here he is enunciating principles like those embraced by the American founders. You have written of the theological and philosophical foundations of Wojtyla’s defense of religious freedom (The Irony of Modern Catholic History, 150-51). How did those foundations differ in your view from those of James Madison and his colleagues?

Address if you would the significance of Pope John Paul’s defense of religious freedom in his first encyclical, Redemptor Hominis in 1979?

How do you think John Paul II would respond to the decline of religious freedom in the West in the last several years? Would he be surprised or do you think he anticipated it? Would his prescription today be different than in 1979, or 1995?

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