Much of the "conventional wisdom" about John Paul II has emphasized his conservatism, and this is well-merited in many areas of his life.

But was he not, in very substantial areas of that same life, progressive almost to the point of revolutionary, even within the most inclusive parameters of Roman Catholicism? Let's look at several seismic occurrences which he oversaw, indeed personally initiated:

1. In 1984, in dialogue with His Holiness — Ignatius Zakka I Iwas — the [formerly considered?] monophysite (out of union with Rome since the Council of Chalcedon in AD 451) archbishop of Antioch, His Holiness John Paul II oversaw the release of several documents, one each welcoming the other, and one a joint statement. Not only do we have two church leaders recognizing each other as His Holiness, but each recognizes the other as a legitimate heir of St. Peter, one in the Church of Rome, one "called to be his 121st legitimate successor in Antioch."

Ecumenically, their joint statement refers to the ancient schism as caused by "differences in terminology and culture." Less ecumenically, Pope Pius XII on the 1500th anniversary of Chalcedon, the fourth ecumenical council, notes that Chalcedon used "a most exact terminology," and that "separated bodies in Egypt, Ethiopia, Syria Armenia and elsewhere who go wrong mainly in their use of words..."

So not only is the schism following Chalcedon fully reparable if not already repaired, but we have two simultaneously reigning successors of St. Peter.

2. In 1987 at Assisi, His Holiness John Paul initiated a gathering of representatives of many branches of Christianity and many major world religions to pray for peace, including His Holiness the Dalai Lama. While Dominus Jesus, the statement of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, clearly maintains the uniqueness of Jesus for salvation, still John Paul II by his actions includes the whole of humanity within "the People of God," as does Lumen Gentium, Vatican II's document on the church. Again multiple inclusive instances of "His Holiness."

3. In 2001, the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity issued the "Guidelines for Admission to the Eucharist between the Chaldean Church and the Assyrian Church of the East." This document recognizes the existence of a valid celebration of the Last Supper without the words of consecration. One can hardly imagine a more central location of conservative Catholic orthodoxy than the necessity of these words of Jesus at the Last Supper. The Guidelines are clear in the intent, ancient to contemporary, to celebrate the Last Supper as the Eucharist which Jesus celebrated. But such a development under John Paul II seems stunningly non-traditional.

4. In October of 1999, the Catholics and the Lutherans lifted their mutual excommunications of each other concerning Martin Luther's central rationale for the Reformation: subsequent to decades of annotated ecumenical dialogue, nine pages put an end to the most important theological controversy between Lutherans and Catholics, and a central rationale for the whole Protestant Reformation.

5. In 1984, a commission set up by John Paul II recognized the impropriety of the condemnation of Galileo, "The judges who condemned Galileo committed an error."

Surely John Paul II is a preserver of tradition, but his actions in service of such tradition reach back to the earliest levels of Christian humility and inclusiveness. For many whose experience of Catholic Tradition extends only to the last century, or to the Council of Trent (1545-1563), what he has done could seem seismically untraditional.

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Dr. George Gilmore, Ph.D., is professor of humanities at Spring Hill College. His email address is {email ggilmore@shc.edu}ggilmore@shc.edu{/email}. © copyright 2005 by George Gilmore.

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