Before John Paul, the Vatican’s dominant diplomatic strategy was Ostpolitik, which tipped toward constant engagement with the status quo. Karol Wojtyla, like many dissidents who emerged in these years, had lived with the daily reality of the communist system. John Paul pushed Vatican policy toward a public, unapologetic claim for individual freedom. On his final trip to Poland, John Paul openly asserted his support for Lech Walesa’s “Solidarnosc” reformers.

Days after Benedict XVI chastised China before thousands in St. Peter’s Square last week, a Chinese newspaper run by the People’s Daily replied to his defense of Christians there: “The Vatican has to face the fact that all religious beliefs are free in China, as long as they do not run counter to the country’s laws.”…

It has been odd in recent years to see prominent atheists make so much effort to diminish Judeo-Christian belief. In the modern world, and certainly in the U.S. from the Pilgrims onward to the Bill of Rights, religious practice has been bound up in the idea—now the principle—of individual freedom. I don’t think secularist arguments alone for individual freedoms have sufficient strength and fiber to stand against their current opposition. Benedict’s fight for freedom and that of recent Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo are the same. Wojtyla and Walesa proved that once already.