Witness to Hope

by George Weigel

  THE UNIVERSITY CHAPLAIN

  St. Florian’s Church is a five-minute stroll beyond Kraków’s Old Town. One walks through the late thirteenth-century Floriańska Gate, past the 130 gun ports cut into the Barbican (the last remnant of the city’s fortifications), and on through Jan Matejko Place, where the Kraków Academy of Fine Arts is located. A newcomer in 1949 would also have noticed what was left of a once-great monument to King Władysław Jagiełło’s defeat of the Teutonic Knights, built in 1910 with funds provided by the pianist, composer, and patriot, Ignacy Jan Paderewski. The Nazis, offended at the thought of Germans vanquished by Slavs, had wrecked the monument during the Occupation.22 A hundred yards or so farther on is St. Florian’s. Originally built by the noble Potocki family, the large baroque church, damaged during the war, was rebuilt immediately afterward.

  In 1949, the parish was one of the liveliest in the city, counting some of the town’s more prosperous citizens and leading members of the Kraków Catholic intelligentsia among its parishioners. Father Wojtyła joined a parish staff that included the pastor, Monsignor Tadeusz Kurowski, and three other assistants, Fathers Czesław Obtułowicz, Józef Rozwadowski, and Marian Jaworski, who would become a close friend.

  Wojtyła came to St. Florian’s at a time when the communist regime was stepping up its pressure on the Church. In 1947, the communists had formed the “Pax” movement to create a bloc of putatively Catholic opinion subservient to the state. In August 1949, the government issued a decree, allegedly to safeguard freedom of religion, but in fact to tighten its control over the Church. The following year Catholic schools, Catholic Action (a movement for social reform) and other Catholic organizations were declared illegal, and the state took over hundreds of Catholic educational and charitable institutions.

  In April 1950, the Church agreed to a nineteen-point modus vivendi with the regime. The accord was not received happily in Rome, where some curial diplomats feared that too much had been conceded. The modus vivendi acknowledged the supremacy of the Pope in matters of ecclesiastical jurisdiction, like the naming of bishops, and permitted public worship, like pilgrimages, outside church buildings. Monastic orders, a constant irritant for communist governments, were also allowed. In addition, the Church was permitted to conduct religious instruction in the state schools, to maintain its chaplaincies in hospitals and prisons, to publish independent journals, and to maintain its control over the appointment of parish clergy and seminar staffs. The Catholic University of Lublin, the only such entity in the Soviet bloc, was also safeguarded. For its part, the Church agreed to urge its people to work for social reconstruction and to oppose “activities hostile to the Polish People’s Republic.” This modus vivendi would prove short-lived. While it lasted, it created breathing space for the Church while clarifying the ground on which the contest for the future would be engaged.23

  That ground included the upcoming generation of Poles, and Cardinal Sapieha moved aggressively to bolster the Catholic chaplaincy at the Jagiellonian University. The student chaplaincy had traditionally been located at the St. Anne’s collegiate church, a stone’s throw from the Collegium Maius in Kraków’s Old Town. There, Father Jan Pietraszko had proven immensely successful in attracting students and the Kraków intelligentsia—so successful, in fact, that the chaplaincy had to be expanded. To that end, the Prince Cardinal assigned Father Wojtyła to St. Florian’s, where a second center of ministry to students at the Jagiellonian, the Kraków Polytechnic, the Academy of Fine Arts, and other institutions of higher education was to be created. Wojtyła, whose personal pattern of working sixteen- to eighteen-hour days was well-established, energetically took up the challenge. He soon began to attract followers, who found his “naturalness,” as one put it, an attractive alternative to the regime-cowed professors at the universities and to the more clerically minded and distant Polish priests they had previously known.24

  During his years at St. Florian’s, Father Wojtyła initiated a series of intellectual, liturgical, cultural, and pastoral innovations that changed the character of student chaplaincy in the Archdiocese of Kraków while rebutting, point-for-point, the effort by Poland’s Stalinist rulers to reinvent the country’s history and culture.

  Given the militant atheism promoted by the regime and the ideological climate inside the university, it was essential to engage students intellectually.25 Wojtyła, who had begun visiting student dormitories and boardinghouses as soon as he arrived at St. Florian’s, making contacts and drumming up trade, started a series of Thursday evening conferences on two basic issues: the existence of God and the spiritual character of the human person.26 These conferences involved a systematic, step-by-step exploration of Christian doctrine. The point was not the rote memorization of catechism answers as ripostes to communist propaganda; it was to demonstrate that the Church, in the Gospel, had a more compelling answer to the perennial questions of human life than the purveyors of the official state ideology. Christian humanism, in other words, was quietly but unmistakably counterposed to Marxism. The texts of these lectures, written in an extremely dense prose style, were typed clandestinely, mimeographed, and circulated surreptitiously as samizdat.27 In addition to his own lectures, Wojtyła formed a study group that read its way through the Summa Theologiae of St. Thomas Aquinas in the original Latin.28

  The new chaplain’s sermons also began to attract the attention of both students and Kraków intellectuals. Jacek Woźniakowski, the distinguished art historian who was then trying to complete his doctoral degree in art history against communist opposition, remembered Wojtyła’s early sermons as a bit heavy philosophically. But the young priest’s openness to criticism soon led him to a more accessible speaking style. Woźniakowski found Karol Wojtyła, with whom he would work closely for many years, a very intelligent man who quickly learned new ways of doing things from what was demanded of him.29 The Countess Potocka, whose family had helped pay for St. Florian’s, was another friendly critic. She informed the young chaplain that she wanted to be challenged, confronted, and criticized in sermons; Father Wojtyła followed suit.30

  Maria Swiezawska, wife of philosopher Stefan Swiezawski and the niece of the Prince Cardinal, was sufficiently impressed by Wojtyła’s preaching that she sought him out as a catechist and confessor for her two young daughters. Father Wojtyła came to the Swiezawskis’ home, an unusual act for a priest of the time, to give the girls their lessons. He was “never” on time, Mrs. Swiezawska recalled, but she forgave him that because of the remarkable depth of the conferences he was giving at the parish. This was the kind of intellectually demanding Catholic education she wanted for her children, not least because of the regime propaganda that surrounded their lives. It really didn’t matter that much if an 8 P.M. appointment actually began at 10:30 P.M.31

  Jerzy Janik, who had recently completed his doctorate in physics, was another young intellectual, first attracted by Wojtyła’s preaching, who became a lifelong friend. After hearing several impressive sermons, he approached Wojtyła and suggested that they get better acquainted on a ski trip. Wojtyła accepted, and soon after was launched upon what would become a halfcentury-long dialogue with the hard sciences—physics, chemistry, astronomy, and so forth.

  After getting established at St. Florian’s, Wojtyła began to make his way in intellectual circles beyond the parish and the university chaplaincy. Zofia Morstinowa, whom Jacek Woźniakowski remembered as a “frightfully outspoken, fantastic old woman,” presided over a literary salon in which pungent criticism never caused personal wounds. She invited Father Wojtyła to one of her evenings. He arrived wearing a worn-out cassock and seeming a bit awkward socially. His shyness, coupled with the intelligence he displayed when discussing his experiences in France during his graduate studies, made for an attractive mix.32

  Father Karol Wojtyła had been exposed to the liturgical renewal movement during his graduate studies and now set about implementing some of its ideas at St. Florian’s. Wojtyła formed a group to discuss the writin
gs of the Austrian theologian Pius Parsch, which explained the rich texture of the liturgy to Catholics for whom worship was sometimes difficult to connect to daily life. At a time when the Church’s musical tradition of chant was generally reserved for monasteries, Wojtyła started a student choir and taught them Gregorian chant so that they could sing various parts of the Mass. He encouraged his students to use daily missals so that they could follow the Mass more intelligently, and he initiated “dialogue” Masses in which the students made the responses usually given only by the altar boys assisting the priest. Given the time and the place, this determination to involve the laity in the liturgy could only have been regarded as boldly innovative.33

  He also put his theatrical interests into pastoral play at St. Florian’s. During Lent, Father Wojtyła directed parish youngsters and university students in medieval “mystery plays,” exploring biblical themes in a cycle of dramas performed at the parish. While acting as the dramatic impresario of St. Florian’s (and meeting young men and women who would become lifelong friends, like Piotr Malecki and Danuta Plebańczyk), he renewed his contacts with the Rhapsodic Theater, attending performances held in a theater near the parish, participating in post-performance discussions, blessing the marriages of his old colleagues, and celebrating Mass for the Rhapsodists on the troupe’s anniversaries. When the Rhapsodic Theater moved to a new home in 1950, politics made an official dedication ceremony impossible. Father Wojtyła offered a silent prayer at the unofficial dedication, as documents relating to the Rhapsodists were cemented into their new theater’s foundation.34

  Perhaps the hardest-fought battle between Church and regime involved family life, for the communists understood that men and women secure in the love of their families were a danger. Housing, work schedules, and school hours were all organized by the state to separate parents from their children as frequently as possible. Apartments were constructed to accommodate only small families, so that children would be regarded as a problem. Work was organized in four shifts and families were rarely together. The workday began at 6 or 7 A.M., so children had to be consigned to state-run child-care centers before school. The schools themselves were consolidated, and children were moved out of their local communities for schooling. A permissive law was passed that regarded abortion as a means of birth control.

  Whenever they could, Father Wojtyła and his fellow priests at St. Florian’s used the ordinary structures of parish life to combat this assault. Meetings with the parish altar boys, for example, were always held with the parents. Families thus spent time together and could receive religious instruction without the regime claiming that this was an unauthorized Catholic youth group. Wojtyła went much further than adapting traditional structures to new circumstances, though. The regime’s threat to Christian family life was unprecedented, so unprecedented pastoral initiatives were required.

  In 1950, he launched at St. Florian’s the first marriage-preparation program in the history of the Archdiocese of Kraków. In those days, a Catholic couple’s only encounter with a priest prior to their wedding might have been to complete the appropriate legal forms and discuss the ceremony itself. Wojtyła set out to create a pastoral program that systematically prepared young couples for Christian marriage and family life through religious reflection, theological education, and a frank exploration of the practical and personal difficulties and opportunities of married life and child rearing. In 1951, when the Prince Cardinal added a chaplaincy to the city’s health-care workers to his pastoral portfolio, Wojtyła invited lay associates, doctors and nurses, to help lead the program—a commonplace today that was a bold pastoral stroke in its time.

  In working with his young couples, Father Wojtyła didn’t shy away from certain topics as unbefitting a priest’s attention. In a retreat for students a few years after beginning the marriage preparation program, he would tell them, “The sexual drive is a gift from God. Man may offer this drive to God exclusively through a vow of virginity. He may offer it to another human being with the knowledge that he is offering it to a person. It cannot be an act of chance. On the other side there is also a human being who must not be hurt, whom one must love. Only a person can love a person. To love means wishing the other’s welfare, to offer oneself for the good of the other. When, as a result of giving oneself for the good of another, a new life comes into being, this must be a giving arising out of love. In this area one must not separate love from desire. If we respect desire within love, we will not violate love…”35

  In twenty-eight months at St. Florian’s, Father Karol Wojtyła blessed 160 marriages, an average of more than one each week. His intense conversations with engaged couples left a lasting imprint. He came to believe that “young people are always searching for the beauty in love.” They might fall short of the mark, but “in the depths of their hearts they still desire a beautiful and pure love.” The university chaplain, in his days at St. Florian’s, “learned to love human love,” he wrote forty years later.36

  The most long-lasting impact of the St. Florian’s experience on Karol Wojtyła, though, is to be found in the deep personal, spiritual, and intellectual friendships he formed during this period with young laypeople, friendships that have lasted, in some cases, for more than fifty years. These relationships are the clearest window into his style of priestly ministry.

  ŚRODOWISKO

  Previous popes, talking about their formative years as young priests, would have reminisced about their years at the Accademia, the highly selective Roman school for the Church’s diplomats, or their first experiences as seminary professors. In virtually any discussion of his early priesthood, John Paul II will stress the importance of “my Środowisko.” It is a telling difference.

  Środowisko, a term first suggested by Wojtyła himself in the 1960s, is now used as a self-description by a group of some 200 men and women, many of them married couples with grandchildren, which first began to take shape during Wojtyła’s university chaplaincy at St. Florian’s.37 Środowisko does not translate easily. “Environment” is one possibility, but John Paul II prefers the more humanistic “milieu.” In any case, what would later come to be known as Środowisko involved the fusing of several networks of young adults and young married couples with whom Father Wojtyła worked. The earliest of these called itself Rodzinka, or “little family.” A later group of Wojtyła youngsters called themselves Paczka, “packet” or “parcel.”38 Środowisko saw youth groups evolve into networks of intellectual conversation. Both youngsters and intellectuals got involved in vacation excursions. The word itself may be hard to translate, but that this network of friendships was crucial in shaping the ideas and the ministry of Karol Wojtyła the priest, the bishop, and, ultimately, the pope, is indisputable.

  Rodzinka, the “little family” that became the first component of Wojtyła’s Środowisko, began on the evening of February 2, 1951. It was Candlemas, the feast of the Presentation of the Child Jesus in the Temple, and, by Polish custom, the last day to sing Christmas carols. Danuta Skrabianka, a literature student at the university, was living in the women’s dormitory run by the Sisters of Nazareth a block or so from St. Florian’s Church. She and some of her friends had previously met a “young, poorly dressed, pious priest” who turned out to be in charge of the parish’s chaplaincy to students.39 When he invited them to help form a parish choir, they agreed to talk about it. Climbing the twenty-three steep stone steps up to the choir loft of St. Florian’s, they first espied a pair of bad shoes, then a worn cassock—and then the young priest, who shook hands with everyone and started them singing carols. When they had finished the Christmas anthems, the priest asked them to stay and tried to interest them in Gregorian chant. He also invited them to his 6 A.M. Mass the following Wednesday morning. They came back, and were soon joined by young men from the nearby Kraków Polytechnic, whom the young priest had also invited to join the nascent choir. In those Stalinist days, the habit of discretion was strong. The young people didn’t know each other’s last
names, nor did they, at first, know the priest’s name. They began referring to him as “Sadok”—a mysterious character searching for God in two novels by Władysław Grabski, In the Shadow of the Church and Confessional, who decides to become a priest in the second volume.40

  The student choir began singing at Mass at St. Florian’s, and on May 4, 1951, the parish feast day, they sang the Gregorian “Missa de Angelis” for the first time. The Wednesday morning Mass with Sadok became a regular feature on their schedules, as did his 8 P.M. Thursday evening conferences, so heavily philosophical in their language that the students were regularly sent scurrying to their dictionaries.41 Still, they kept coming back. Sadok’s rapport with them was such that they didn’t want to lose contact.42

  After a while, this group of young people, fewer than twenty in number, began meeting in homes (where they learned each other’s surnames) as well as in church. Interested in putting their convictions into action, they began visiting and seeing to the needs of the blind and the sick who had no contact with the state health system. The glue that held them together was prayer, especially liturgical prayer. Father Wojtyła gave them days of recollection, miniretreats to mark special occasions during the year. On the feast day of the saint in whose honor they had been named (which, according to Polish custom, they celebrated instead of birthdays) he said Mass for them and attended name-day parties in their homes. Like students everywhere, they were nervous about exams. Father Wojtyła celebrated Mass with them on exam mornings and joined their post-exam parties at night. Deep friendships began to form among the students, who started calling themselves Rodzinka, “little family.”