[In the following review, Johnston offers favorable analysis of Crossing the Threshold of Hope.]

One wonders what the College of Cardinals though it was getting when it elected Karol Wojtyla the first non-Italian pope in 455 years. That will remain an eternal secret, but there can be little doubt that Pope John Paul II has surprised everyone with his vitality and political shrewdness.

Now he surprises again with this book—the first ever written by a sitting pope for a general audience. Reading what may be the last testament of this extraordinary but ailing man is an enriching experience, as he presents his views on a range of difficult moral and spiritual questions.

Readers need not be steeped in Catholic theology to appreciate the insight and energy which Crossing the Threshold of Hope brings to questions of the sort that have troubled many of us at one time or another: Why does God tolerate suffering? Why does He not reveal himself more clearly? Why should one believe in Him if it is possible to live an honest life without the Gospel? How does one reconcile the right to life of the unborn with the humanitarian arguments of those who practice contraception on who seek to legalize abortion?

For the politically inclined, the pope comments on the reasons underlying the demise of communism, the continuing problems of capitalism, the needs of the developing world, human rights, Middle East peace (including the establishment of ties with Israel), and the Catholic Church as a force in world politics and international organizations.

Although some of the arguments posed and explanations offered are highly technical and require a close reading, most of the book is conversational; almost rambling in style. On balance, its thrust is pastoral; there are no doctrinal surprises here.

For the pope's purposes, the book is timely. Throughout the 15 years of his papacy, Pope John Paul II's dynamism has inspired admiration and respect, as has his role on the international stage. Gorbachev himself credits the pope with having made possible the recent transformation not only of Poland, but of all Eastern Europe. With the pope's health failing, though, there is concern that his moral authority in the world is also in decline. At this point in his tenure, John Paul II is generally perceived to be engaged in a holding pattern, seeking to stem the tide of moral relativism while avoiding new debates. His traditional stands on issues of church authority and sexuality are viewed as being unresponsive to the realities of women's rights and the population explosion. All but totally lost in this perception are his earlier, genuinely counter-cultural teachings on social justice and reform.

Thus, this book comes at a critical time and provides him a valuable tool for further outreach. Its simultaneous release in 35 countries now makes available to millions his current thinking across a broad spectrum of inquiry. With the obvious need to curtail his extensive travels—62 trips at last count—the book becomes a surrogate for personal presence as he continues his quest to revitalize the 600 million Catholics in local churches the world over.

Especially relevant in this regard is the pope's ecumenical treatment of other religious traditions. He pays homage to their contributions to morality and culture and notes certain commonalities as well as some of their differences with Christianity. In the final analysis, his description suggests that it is the unique balance between involvement and detachment that sets Christianity apart. Both Hinduism and Buddhism, in their different ways, seek a state of detached liberation from the anguish of the human condition. Christianity, on the other hand, acknowledges the world as God's creation “redeemed by Christ” and teaches that it is in the world that man meets God. This, in turn, translates to a positive attitude toward creation and a constant striving toward transformation and perfection.

As a Christian, the pope most closely identifies with the monotheistic religions of Islam and Judaism. He expresses deep respect in this book for the “religiosity” of Muslims and refers to Jews as “our elder brothers in the faith.” In Islam, however, he sees divine revelation reduced to the point where the God of the Koran is essentially a “God outside of the world … only Majesty, never Emmanuel, God-with-us.” Conspicuous by its absence is any comparable treatment of what sets Judaism apart from Christianity, but that may be assumed.

The pope also makes interesting reference to the ancestor worship of the primitive or animistic religions: Here he draws a parallel between veneration of ancestors and the Christian concept of the Communion of Saints; in which all believers—“whether living or dead”—form a single body. Perhaps this accounts for the fact that the fastest rates of growth of the Catholic Church today are among the animists of Africa and Asia. Referring to the church's ever-renewing vitality, the pope recalls the words of Cardinal Hyacinth Thiandoum, who “foresaw the possibility that the Old World might one day be evangelized by black missionaries. “Indeed, there is some speculation that this pope's successor may be either Cardinal Francis Arinze of Nigeria or Cardinal Bernadin-Gantin of Benin.

Ironically, a number of countries in Africa, where most of the church membership growth is taking place, face enormous population problems that seem to make some form of birth control a matter of national survival. Here the pope's treatment falls short of what a policy-maker would need for taking effective action. In defending the rights of the unborn, he indicates that “what is at stake is the commandment Do not Kill!” Whatever the pope's views on war and capital punishment, his treatment of abortion allows for no exceptions because “a child conceived in its mother's womb is never an unjust aggressor, it is a defenseless being that is waiting to be welcomed and helped.” This defense ties to a more pervasive theme that celebrates the dignity of man, the joy of creation, and the concept of “person” as representing the center of the human ethos.

Where the gruel gets thin is in the book's prescription for the problem of overpopulation, suggesting that the answer is “responsible parenthood.” As early as 1932, T. S. Eliot, writing as a high-church Episcopalian, suggested in an essay entitled “Thoughts After Lambeth” that if Catholic doctrine requires unlimited procreation up to the limit of the mother's strength,” then the church should be “obliged to offer some solution to the economic questions raised by such a practice: for surely if you lay down a moral law which leads, in practice, to unfortunate social consequences—such as overpopulation or destitution—you make yourself responsible for providing some resolution of these consequences.” (Until the Lambeth conference of 1930, no Christian denomination viewed contraception as acceptable.)

At the recent International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo, the issue assumed something of a North-South context as the Holy See delegation advocated economic development, health care and education as appropriate remedies. As expressed by the Rev. Diarmuid Martin, deputy head of the delegation, “wealthy states must realize that it is only by helping poor countries raise their living standards that they will solve the population problem, not by forcing them to adopt Western attitudes toward abortion and contraception.”

If Crossing the Threshold of Hope is weak in providing constructive alternatives for population control, it is anything but weak in its criticisms of the inequities and excesses of capitalism. The flaws in the practice of capitalism that initially attracted people to socialism are seen as continuing unabated, a theme the pope has been espousing for some time. In an earlier work titled Sign of Contradiction, he suggested that Western consumerism and communist collectivism both share materialistic utilitarianism as their common philosophical root. It is this consumerism without transcendental ends that ultimately undermines the spirituality and dignity of man.

But here again, the book's prescriptions are weak. The fate of the authoritarian alternatives to capitalism that have wreaked such havoc for most of the 20th century suggests there are limits to what human nature can accommodate. Undeniably, excessive consumerism has contributed to moral indifference and an unhealthy focus on what one has rather than what one is. Many people seem to be losing their sense of balance between individual freedom and discipline, between liberty and justice, between the temporal and the eternal—becoming insensitive to what the pope calls “the Last Things.” Reigning in the excesses of consumerism and individual liberty so that spiritual values can be recaptured and reflected in daily behavior is a very tall order. Enlightened approaches are in woefully short supply and, regrettably, this book offers few clues.

If Pope John Paul II seems unduly conservative in his strong-minded adherence to Catholic doctrine, it is because he takes seriously the words of the Apostle Paul (2 Tim 4:3): “Proclaim the message; be persistent whether the time is favorable or unfavorable … For the time is coming when people will not put up with sound doctrine, but having itching ears, they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own desires, and will turn away from listening to the truth.” Whether or not we are at that time, Pope John Paul II certainly is not a teacher who caters to the itching ears of modernity, telling us what we want to hear. As the pope further notes, “Christ forewarned us, telling us that the road to eternal salvation is not broad and comfortable, but narrow and difficult. We do not have the right to abandon that perspective, nor to change it.”

Perhaps it is unfair to impose upon the pope the task of providing workable solutions to intractable problems, but that is the sort of expectation this inspiring man invites. Whatever else one might think, the pope deserves our respect as a bastion of uprightness and integrity in a world that is undergoing a crisis of moral leadership. Just as man and the divine merge in the figure of Christ, so too do Karol Wojtyla, long-time social revolutionary and champion of human rights, and Pope John Paul II, arch-defender of the faith, come together in this book. It is very worth reading.