c. 2005 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) Words failed me this past week. The ocean of others' words that followed Pope John Paul II's death _ I drank in as many as I could, and loved so many, but none did full justice to Karol Wojtyla, and I came to believe none could. And my own words _ they failed me, too. I tried, but it all seemed so hollow, so insufficient to the man and this moment. I was a writer, frozen, blocked and tongue-tied.

Maybe it was the sorrow and emptiness that came with the passing of John Paul II _ the only pope I had known as a Catholic, one of the reasons I had become a Catholic, a Pope John Paul II Catholic. Or perhaps there was something almost ineffable _ inevitably inexpressible _ about this special pope and man.

There's the word _ man. Pope John Paul II was a man, a real man in the most edifying sense of the term. There was nothing ethereal or wimpish about him. There was a virility about him and his papacy. You could see it in his carriage and his recreational activities _ skiing, kayaking, hiking. And you could see it in the moral courage he showed in confronting the Nazis and Communists or standing against the fashionable evils of our own day _ abortion, euthanasia. He wasn't a pleaser, a soft-pedaler. He wasn't conformed to the world. He was uncompromising in calling good and evil by name. His Catholicism was muscular, his Christian witness masculine.

But this was not the stupid hyper-masculinity of beer commercials, the strutting kind that mocks true manliness, the caricature of manliness that's a reaction to contemporary feminism and a reflection of male insecurity. Pope John Paul II's was the true masculinity of the tender warrior _ sure, strong, gentle. Though moderate of stature and measured in approach, he possessed the masculinity of a loving and knowing father, the father fully in charge of his house: optimistic; respectful, courageous; unafraid, but ever on watch for threats to his flock, his friends and all the human family. His manliness never diminished his respect for all women. No, his respect for women gave his manhood a special nobility.

He managed to combine exquisitely the hard and soft virtues. Strength and weakness were not a contradiction in terms for him. Weakness and humility were the beginning of wisdom, strength and a lifelong path to holiness. “My power is made perfect in weakness,'' Jesus had said.

He had learned this through the example of his father, a captain in the military. He remembered him as a “man of constant prayer.'' As biographer George Weigel wrote, “At night, as in the early morning, young Karol would find his father on his knees praying silently.''

Can a father give a son a greater gift? Real men express their weakness and humility on their knees in prayer and find something for which to stand up and be strong.

Karol Wojtyla could be tough and tender. He could lecture and admonish and yet kneel and pray and weep. He could be stern one moment and full of joy and compassion the next. He could speak truth _ often hard truths that did not necessarily please the world _ but with love and self-control. No rancor. No angry denunciations, not even to his worst detractors. He preached the love of the Gospels but did not neglect their demands on followers.

We have a phrase for the kind of thing Pope John Paul II practiced for more than a quarter-century as pope. We call it “tough love.'' It may say more about what we have lost over the last decades that we had to come up with the phrase for it; we probably shouldn't need modifiers.

Many didn't like what Pope John Paul II stood for, and still don't. Dictators didn't. American presidents didn't. Dissenting Catholics didn't. But one advantage of his long papacy is that critics of one tough stand or another were able to see him over time. The world's been able to appreciate his consistency, constancy and love.

Up above, I almost wrote that his life was the perfect combination of the hard and soft virtues. John Paul II would have been the first to deny this. That's why he spent his life praying and studying the words of his Lord, the one true perfection.

In this, Karol Wojtyla set an example for men and women, but it was a special example to a sex that tends to be more proud, willful and spiritually clueless _ and fails itself and its families as a result. The example of a holy man and holy father.

(David Reinhard is an associate editor of The Oregonian of Portland, Ore.)

KRE/PH END REINHARD