But then in 1991 Centesimus annus came in, a 25,000-word encyclical on the 100th anniversary of Leo XIII's Rerum novarum, the momentous condemnation of liberalism and materialism. Materialism meant then what it means today. By liberalism, Pope Leo had in mind contemporary movements that sought, in the name of "modernism," to free human beings from traditional attachments to church and family. In the centennial encyclical, Pope John Paul reiterated his frequent admonitions. The worker or manager who reports to duty at the shop every morning inflamed by the desire to make a better widget and sell more of it is one thing; quite another if he or she goes home listlessly unconcerned with human life and human attachments having to do with respect for the elderly, a love for one's family, the capacity to take joy from Christian perspectives. Papal prose is turgid, but here the Pope did say in almost as many words that socialism was an extravagant historical failure.

If, then, all one need do in evaluating capitalism is admonish against greed and abusive economic-political arrangements, the exorcism is quickly over, and Gerasimov is left as speechless as Gorbachev quickly became after losing his handle on the nuclear football.

John Paul II is by every measurement as cosmopolitan in experience and steeped in erudition as anyone who comes to mind. He speaks eight languages fluently, he is the author of scholarly books and dissertations and has traveled in virtually every country in the world. One supposes that, notwithstanding, he is not by personal experience familiar with the kind of thing one can pick up to read in urban kiosks or turn to view on late-night television. But you'd still deduce that Pope John would not be surprised by anything he read or saw: he has been exposed at very close quarters to the ingenuity of God's creatures, no less creative in depravity than in goodness.

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