page_title: Sign of contradiction
section_title: John Paul II
hierarchical_section_title: Sign of contradiction / The Church and Christians as signs of contradiction / John Paul II
caption_attribution_description: 若望·保禄二世以教宗身分首次造訪波蘭 English: Millions cheer Pope John Paul II during his first visit to Poland as pontiff
context_page_description: A sign of contradiction, in Catholic theology, is someone who, upon manifesting holiness, is subject to extreme opposition. The term is from the biblical phrase "sign that is spoken against", found in Luke 2:34 and in Acts 28:22, which refer to Jesus Christ and the early Christians. Contradiction comes from the Latin contra, "against" and dicere, "to speak".
  According to Catholic tradition, a sign of contradiction points to the presence of Christ or the presence of the divine due to the union of that person or reality with God. In his book, Sign of Contradiction, John Paul II says that "sign of contradiction" might be "a distinctive definition of Christ and of his Church."
context_section_description: A contemporary example seen by many as of a sign of contradiction is Pope John Paul II.
  While Pope, he was called a reactionary and an ultraconservative, and was often criticized, stridently at times, by the media, non-Catholic and Catholics alike. He was criticized for his views on sex, homosexuality, birth control, and the role of women in the church. He was criticized for some of his canonizations, including the canonization of Opus Dei's founder, Josemaría Escrivá.
  According to George Weigel, in Witness to Hope, even many Catholic theologians, especially those who had relativist and secularist tendencies, rebelled against his teaching magisterium, criticizing his views about morality, ecumenicism, the sacraments, and the ordination of women. Weigel also says that there were many attempts to assassinate him. He mentions some historians and investigators who made very plausible connections with communist leaders who feared his influence in Eastern Europe.  When he died, the communist governments in the Eastern Europe had already fallen.
  Traditionalists criticized him for being too open to other religions. 
  On the other hand, on his death, he was highly praised by many, both Catholics and non-Catholics.
  According to Weigel and other Catholic commentators like John Allen, John Paul II has been praised for and will be much remembered for the following things:
  his revolutionary Theology of the Body which gives profound insights on human sexuality, his clear moral teachings in Veritatis Splendor,
  his fight for human rights and dignity which led to the fall of dictatorships and of communism,
  his defense of life and the human embryo through unprecedented infallible teachings on abortion, euthanasia, and murder as grave sins in the Encyclical Evangelium Vitae,
  his push for the universal call to holiness through his many canonizations and his "program for all times," At the Beginning of the New Millennium (Novo Millennio Ineunte) which place sanctity as the number one priority of all pastoral activities in the Catholic Church,
  his teaching on reason as being congruent with the Catholic faith (Fides et Ratio),
  the strides in the work of ecumenism and
  the work on the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which, claim Weigel and some historians of theology, has cleared much of the doctrinal confusion which disturbed the Church and society in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s.
caption: John Paul II in Poland in 1979
exif: {"Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "72", "Image YResolution": "72", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop 7.0", "Image DateTime": "2005:04:08 18:20:46", "Image ExifOffset": "154", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "292", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "8745", "EXIF ColorSpace": "Uncalibrated", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "375", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "267"}