SOURCE: “In the Name of the Father,” in New Republic, December 26, 1994, pp. 21-5.

In the following essay, Wildes examines the importance of phenomenology as the philosophical framework of John Paul's Christian theology and teachings. According to Wildes, “Pope John Paul II has grounded the authority of Karol Wojtyla's modern phenomenology in the ancient authority of God.”

Since the close of the Second Vatican Council, the Roman Catholic Church has struggled, in public, about how it should move: forward into the modern world or backward to the austere certitude of the past. In 1979, when an obscure Polish cardinal was elected pope, it seemed as if a decision had been made in favor of the past. And in the years since, the former Karol Wojtyla has been portrayed—with some reason—as an arch-reactionary. But he is, in fact, something far more complex than that. His theology, as it emerges...