For Germans, the most moving event of the Church year in 1980 was the visit of Pope John Paul II in Germany. It became for us a great festival of faith, hope, and love- a festival that simply swept aside all the critical, and even hostile, minor tones that had previously sounded dominant.
We must look on the heritage of those days as the most precious treasure of 1980. We shall have need of it, for, even in the Church, there will be repeated undertones of poorly harmonized instruments that will try to become dominant and to establish the pitch – undertones of human weakness or human disappointment with the Chruch that will be seized upon with spiteful glee by the critics of the Faith, as a justification of their own lack of faith, and magnified a thousandfold as though there were nothing more to be said, as though they had already said all that was to be said about Christianity and the Church.
There will be those who will judge humanity, the world, the Church, from the perspective of such critics and will look on their undiminishing attacks as a sign of outstanding morality. There will be those who will search everywhere for evidence of a hidden hypocrisy. We are surrounded more and more by the so-called judges of this world, who teach us to despise ourselves, to despise whatever has the appearance of beauty or goodness. But this false morality, which teaches the degradation of mankind, which looks for truth only in slurs, in accusations, must still face the fact that in the Bible Christ and the Holy Spirit bear the name “Paraclete”, which means “Defender”.
Christ came to vindicate the human race and in so doing vindicated God himself. The Pope’s visit was for us a powerful plea for the vindication of humanity, of the world, of God. For that reason, it did the work of the Paraclete, the Defender sent us by Christ.
From: Zeitfragen und christlicher Glaube, p. 42
