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Pope John Paul II

Four years ago today, April 2, we lost Pope John Paul II. Our Holy Father succumbed to disease and old age in parallel fashion to Terri Schiavo’s forced starvation by her husband. The Pope seemed to be prolonging his life to pray for Terri while he was still with us. We followed the Pope’s story in the national media and the Schiavo story in our local papers.

The Schiavo story happened in our backyard: the hospice where she died and the court battles between her parents and her husband all took place within 15 miles of our house.  Michael Schiavo’s attorney worked at an office within walking distance of us.

During the Schiavo court battles, I was having Chinese food with friends at one of our favorite lunch hangouts when Judge George Greer, whose ruling eventually made it possible to kill Terri, walked in with a beefy bailiff.

One of my friends greeted the judge, who stopped to talk to her. He had received threats and was afraid to be out alone, he said. The bailiff was protection when the judge wanted to leave his office for lunch. Judge Greer, small and soft-spoken, waved goodbye to us after picking up his takeout order. The transaction took a few minutes and yet it posed so many questions for me.

A disabled woman’s life hung in the balance and a small man picking up Chinese food for lunch had the power to tip the scales to either life or death.  The banality of evil indeed! The judge had a bailiff to protect him, but the woman didn’t have the law on her side. She starved to death on March 31, 2005. Two days later, Pope John Paul II, a vocal champion of life, followed her to eternal life.

Our diocesan bishop could have been as vocal about the sanctity of life as the Pope, but he wasn’t. (Click here for comments by Bobby Schindler, Terri’s brother, about the lack of a diocesan response to the court decision to murder his sister.) At one point, the bishop called Terri’s case a choice ”made within a family,” like deciding which color to paint the dining room or where to go for summer vacation.

Father Frank Pavone came to Pinellas County to plead for Terri’s life, as did many other clerics who found the murder of a disabled woman offensive to God, but the diocese didn’t join them in forcefully speaking out for life. (Abortions are decisions “made within a family,” too, but that doesn’t mean that the Catholic Church doesn’t vigorously defend the rights of the unborn.)

Pope John Paul II had spoken of the dignity of all human beings, including those condemned to death by the few nations that still uphold the death penalty. The Pope was never wishy-washy about what constituted life: It is always sacred, without ifs or buts. Life is sacred–period.

Terri Schiavo died and Pope John Paul II followed her two days later. Four years after their deaths, we have seen another Terri Schiavo in Eluana Englaro, a young Italian woman whose father defied the Church and the law to end her life. It’s not likely that we will see another Pope John Paul II in our lifetime.

In terms of his world outreach, his theological acumen and his force of personality, Pope John Paul II could arguably be called the greatest Pope of the past century. Four years after his passing, we still miss him. May we one day live to see this great servant of God be lifted to sainthood.

Political theorist Hannah Arendt coined the phrase “the banality of evil” during Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann’s trial for his role in the Holocaust. Arendt was struck by Eichmann’s demeanor during the trial: He wasn’t a psychopath, a rabid anti-Semite or a lunatic. He seemed an ordinary, not particularly bright, little man who claimed he was only following orders and doing his job when he committed genocide, in much the same way that an accountant might add a row of numbers or a barber might trim a little off the top. It was just another day at the office when Jews were gassed and beaten by kapos in concentration camps.

Eichmann provided the most banal of excuses for his role in the systematic murder of millions of Jews, Poles, Russians, Romany, Jevohah’s Witnesses, homosexuals–the list of the Third Reich’s victims is long and not very selective–but Arendt could see beyond his blind reasoning.

While there were “good Germans” who insisted their war crimes were just a case of following orders, there were other nations that didn’t support the Nazi regime. She points to Denmark as an example of non-cooperation with Hitler’s murderous intent:

One is tempted to recommend the [Danish] story as required reading in political science for all students who wish to learn something about the enormous power potential inherent in non-violent action and in resistance to an opponent possessing vastly superior means of violence.

The Danes refused to allow the Nazi regime to implement the Final Solution where other nations became collaborators. In fact, their efforts to save Jews are the stuff of legends. Vichy France and the people of the Anschluss certainly bought into Hitler’s plan with enthusiasm or an eye toward being on what they thought would be the winning side.

Nonviolent action and resistance to an enemy that resorts to violence is much more difficult than fighting back or merely “doing one’s job,” as in Eichmann’s case. When the Nazis murdered conscientous objector Franz Jagersttater for refusing to serve, when they beheaded Hans and Sophie Scholl for urging resistance, when they killed St. Maximilian Kolbe and Blessed Titus Brandsma by lethal injection for standing up for Christ against Hitler and when they gassed St. Edith Stein for being born a Jew, they came up against the superior, immovable, nonviolent force of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Banal little men like Eichmann and the petty tyrants that have come before and after him can always claim they were doing their jobs by cooperating with evil. We remember them with disdain or forget about them entirely, but we celebrate the heroes whose revolution and resistance coupled with their love of Christ allowed them to see the difference between doing one’s job and taking the hard road to what is good and right.

Evil may sometimes be banal, but nonviolent resistance is always heroic.