Karol Wojtyla of Krakow: The revolutionary conservative Pope

Adam Michnik, Editor-in-Chief, 'Gazeta Wyborcza', Project Syndicate

Twenty-five years ago, Poland's people were stunned by the choice of their compatriot, Cardinal Karol Wojtyla of Cracow, as Pope. Some were frightened, others wept with joy. Here, said a prominent writer, was "Poland's second baptism." But even in our euphoria, we did not expect how much the new Pope would change not only Poland, but the world.

His first return visit to his native country soon afterwards showed to all the world the new Pope's power. Communist police disappeared from the main streets of Warsaw, yet the streets became models of order. After decades of disempowerment, Poles suddenly regained their capacity for self-determination. In saying aloud that "there can be no just Europe without an independent Poland on its map," the Pope effectively swept away the unjust postwar settlement that had subjugated Poland to Soviet power.

Then, in Auschwitz, the Pope said: "I speak in the name of everyone whose rights go unrecognized and violated anywhere in the world, I speak because I am bound, we are all bound, by truth." On that spot, that Golgotha of modern times, he called the Poles, who remembered dear ones gassed to death in Auschwitz's crematoria as well as those frozen into glass in Siberia's concentration camps, to a brotherhood devoted to struggle against even justified hatred and revenge.

Some see in the Pope the person responsible for a religious revival; others see a man of peace. Some see a defender of the poor, others a critic of liberation theology. For the people of Poland, John Paul II, by making human rights the central subject of his teaching, will forever be the man who gave us courage and hope, who restored our historical identity.

Indeed, the central feature of the first decade of the Pope's reign was his struggle against dictatorship -- Communist dictatorship in particular. The strategy formulated by the Pope for the Catholic Church, and his ability to mobilize millions of believers in its cause, meant that no one could ever again repeat Stalin's question: "How many divisions does the Pope have?" John Paul II demonstrated that moral force was a weapon potent enough to undo Yalta's division of the world.

Perhaps in part because of their strong anticommunist stance, the Polish Church and John Paul II are often branded as "conservative." The accusation is meant to suggest that the Church cannot live comfortably with a pluralist democracy.

To be sure, in the struggle against Communism, the Polish Church was, indeed, conservative -- and thank God for that! It was conservative in its absolute fidelity to evangelical values, to the truth of faith, to its historical identity. For the system of official atheism and legalized mendacity, the Church was a living rebuke.

With Communism gone, however, the problem confronted by John Paul II and his Church today is this: In what language can evangelical values be articulated in a world where evil is not incarnated in a political system but is diffused in individual souls? What is the Pope's message for the postcommunist world he helped create?

John Paul II undoubtedly keeps a distance from liberal economic ideas and the liberal state, which he often charges with permissiveness and moral relativism. A critique of individualism in the name of collective values occurs frequently in the Pope's pronouncements.

He sees the failings of liberalism as particularly pernicious in postcommunist countries. The market economy, despite its practical achievements, seems to him oftentimes to lack a heart and a human face. He sees the market as favoring entrepreneurship over human solidarity.

So John Paul II is no enthusiast of modern Western civilization, with its divorce from the world of values, and he contrasts with it the moral sensitivity of societies with fresh memories of decades of dictatorship. Like Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the Pope tends to believe that it was above all in resistance to totalitarianism that man could become truly free and preserve the fundamental values of civilization.

I confess that I view the heritage of Communism with more skepticism. Totalitarian pressure did, indeed, form exceptional people such as John Paul II and Alexander Solzhenitsyn, people for whom religious faith bought freedom from mendacity and solitude. But it did the same for Andrei Sakharov and Vaclav Havel, who defended their supreme values with reference to, and in the language of, lay humanism.

For most people, however, life under totalitarian dictatorship was not ennobling; it was, rather, a daily immersion in lies, spiritual depravity, and material corruption. This is why postcommunist societies do not demonstrate any nobility or disinterestedness that seriously contrasts with the West. Communism's defeat left a huge black hole in communities' souls, which is now being filled with nationalism, bigotry, and Western consumerism.

But John Paul II's basic intuition is correct: The postcommunist world -- East and West -- is in spiritual crisis, and the Pope wants to shake it into realizing the importance of higher values. Indeed, by his words and example, the Pope disrupts the world: It wants to live in wealth and comfort; he reminds us that we must also live in dignity.

In the end, John Paul II does not fit neatly into any category and often represents a meeting of opposites: Rejection of compromise with ecumenism, toughness with warmth, intellectual openness with insistence on theological orthodoxy. He is a conservative who loves freedom and a "peacemonger" who condemns injustice, but who reminds us that mercy is more important than justice. In this, he personifies the paradox that is Christianity: Unbreakable and lasting principles joined by understanding and tolerance.

Twenty-five years after John Paul II left Poland for Rome, we Poles remain grateful to him for having helped us regain our freedom. It is good that John Paul II is among us. A world where everything changes needs a guardian of what remains the same.

The writer is one of the leaders of Solidarity's fight against communism in Poland.