Witness to Hope

by George Weigel

  20.See Buttiglione, Karol Wojtyła, pp. 54ff.

  21.See John H. Nota, SJ, “Phenomenological Experience in Karol Wojtyła,” in McDermott, ed., The Thought of Pope John Paul II, p. 198.

  22.See Buttiglione, Karol Wojtyła, p. 57.

  23.John Paul II, Curriculum Philosophicum, p. 4.

  24.Author’s interviews with Karol Tarnowski, April 12, 1997, and Andrzej Szostek, MIC, April 14, 1997.

  25.See Buttiglione, Karol Wojtyła, pp. 58–59.

  26.The dissertation and later Wojtyła writings on Scheler may be found in Karol Wojtyła, Zagadnienie podmiotu moralności (Lublin: Catholic University of Lublin Press, 1991). The Scheler dissertation has been translated into German and Spanish (see Schmitz, At the Center of the Human Drama, p. 154, note 44 for bibliographic references) and Italian (see Buttiglione, Karol Wojtyła, p. 54, note 17, for bibliographic reference).

  27.See Buttiglione, Karol Wojtyła, pp. 58–59.

  28.Author’s interview with Father Józef Tischner, April 23, 1997. See also Rocco Buttiglione, “Toward an Adequate Anthropology,” Ethos, special edition no. 2 (1996), pp. 237–246.

  29.Author’s interview with Father Józef Tischner, April 23, 1997.

  30.Ibid.

  31.See Boniecki, Kalendarium, “1953,” “1954.”

  32.See John M. Grondelski, “Social Ethics in the Young Karol Wojtyła: A Study-in-Progress,” Faith and Reason 22 (1996), pp. 32–33.

  That the course material was essentially Piwowarczyk’s was confirmed by me by Bishop Stanisław Ryłko, to whom I had put the question of the material’s authorship and who subsequently raised the issue with Pope John Paul II. The response I received was that Wojtyła had “elaborated it [Piwowarczyk’s text] but the material was not his [i.e., Wojtyła’s].” (Author’s interview with Bishop Stanisław Ryłko, November 25, 1997.) Thus Jonathan Kwitny is mistaken in his claim [see Man of the Century, pp. 135–142] that Catholic Social Ethics is a major and previously unknown Wojtyła text. Catholic Social Ethics is not a book, but a set of lecture notes based on a two-volume book, and Wojtyła was not the principal author of the notes, as he himself freely concedes.

  33.Oram, The People’s Pope, p. 82.

  34.Author’s interview with Sister Zofia Zdybicka, OSU, April 14, 1997.

  35.See Buttiglione, Karol Wojtyła, p. 38.

  36.Author’s interview with Stefan Swiezawski, April 7, 1997.

  37.Oram, The People’s Pope, p. 82.

  38.Stefan Swiezawski, “Introduction: Karol Wojtyła at the Catholic University of Lublin,” in Wojtyła, Person and Community, p. ix.

  39.Author’s interview with Stefan Swiezawski, April 7, 1997.

  40.Ibid.

  41.Swiezawski, “Introduction,” in Wojtyła, Person and Community, p. xii.

  42.Author’s interview with Tadeusz Styczeń, SDS, April 14, 1997.

  43.Swiezawski, “Introduction,” in Wojtyła, Person and Community, p. xiii.

  44.See Buttiglione, Karol Wojtyła, pp. 58–62.

  45.Author’s interview with Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, September 12, 1996.

  46.These four points are adapted from Swiezawski, “Introduction,” in Wojtyła, Person and Community, pp. xii-xiii.

  47.Author’s interview with Sister Zofia Zdybicka, OSU, April 14, 1997.

  48.John Paul II, Curriculum Philosophicum; author’s interview with Sister Zofia Zdybicka, OSU, April 14,1997.

  49.Author’s interview with Tadeusz Styczeń, SDS, April 14, 1997.

  50.Author’s interview with Sister Zofia Zdybicka, OSU, April 14, 1997.

  51.Author’s interview with Stefan Sawicki, April 15, 1997.

  52.Author’s interview with Sister Zofia Zdybicka, OSU, April 14, 1997.

  53.Ibid.

  54.Author’s interview with Halina Bortnowska, April 7, 1997.

  55.Author’s interview with Sister Zofia Zdybicka, OSU, April 14, 1997.

  56.Ibid.

  57.This position anticipated Wojtyła’s later, sympathetic encounter with the work of the philosophers of dialogue, such as Martin Buber and Emmanuel Levinas. See John Paul II, Crossing the Threshold of Hope, p. 36.

  58.Author’s interview with Halina Bortnowska, April 7, 1997. For the centrality of freedom in Wojtyła’s monographic lectures, see Schmitz, At the Center of the Human Drama, p. 55.

  59.See Schmitz, At the Center of the Human Drama, p. 42.

  60.Ibid., p. 49 [emphasis added].

  61.See ibid., pp. 50ff.

  62.The definitive text of the monographic lectures is Karol Wojtyła, Wyk?ady lubelskie (Lublin: Catholic University of Lublin Press, 1986). For analysis and commentary, see Schmitz, At the Center of the Human Drama, pp. 30–57, and Jarosław Kupczak, OP, The Human Person as Efficient Cause in the Christian Anthropology of Karol Wojtyła, unpublished STD dissertation (Washington, D.C.: Pontifical John Paul II Institute for Studies of Marriage and Family, 1996), chapter two.

  63.Author’s interview with Halina Bortnowska, April 7, 1997. When it was pointed out to him that others might take this as a mark of disinterest or disrespect, Wojtyła replied, “Oh, really?” and explained that it was easier for him to concentrate when he was working this way. This capacity for doing two things at once, and both well, is frequently remarked by Wojtyła’s students and colleagues from the 1960s and 1970s.

  64.Offered this once as a description of his intellectual method, Pope John Paul II agreed that it was a reasonable depiction of the way his philosopher’s mind worked. [Author’s conversation with Pope John Paul II, December 11, 1996.]

  65.Author’s interview with Jerzy Gałkowski, April 14, 1997.

  66.Ibid.

  67.Author’s interview with Sister Zofia Zdybicka, OSU, April 14, 1997.

  68.Author’s interview with Jerzy Gałkowski, April 14, 1997.

  Wojtyła wanted to travel to the University of Louvain in Belgium, as well as to France and Switzerland, to further his research on sexual ethics. The President of KUL approved the proposal and, in early 1958, got the Ministry of Higher Education to agree to the trip. But the government denied Wojtyła a passport, so he never went. [Boniecki, Kalendarium, “1957.”]

  69.Author’s interview with Jerzy Gałkowski, April 14, 1997.

  70.John Paul II, Curriculum Philosophicum; Henri de Lubac, “Love and Responsibility,” in Theology in History (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1996), pp. 581–583.

  71.“Author’s Introduction to the First Edition (1960),” in Karol Wojtyła, Love and Responsibility (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1993), p. 16.

  72.Ibid.

  73.See Buttiglione, Karol Wojtyła, p. 91.

  74.See ibid., pp. 90–91.

  75.Ibid., p. 95.

  76.Ibid.

  77.Ibid., p. 99.

  78.Ibid, p. 105.

  79.On this point see John M. McDermott, SJ, “The Theology of John Paul II: Response,” in McDermott, ed., The Thought of Pope John Paul II, p. 60.

  80.Love and Responsibility was first published in Polish by the KUL Press. A French edition was published in 1965, an Italian edition in 1968, and a Spanish edition in 1969. See Buttiglione, Karol Wojtyła, p. 83, note 1, for bibliographic information.

  81.John Paul II, Curriculum Philosophicum.

  82.Wojtyła, Love and Responsibility, pp. 13, 9.

  CHAPTER 5

  A New Pentecost: Vatican II and the Crisis of Humanism

  1.Author’s interviews with Stanisław and Danuta Rybicki, June 5, 1997; Gabriel Turowski, June 10, 1997; and Bishop Stanisław Ryłko, September 29, 1997; Boniecki, Kalendarium, “1958.”

  In a large archdiocese like Kraków, it is customary for the archbishop to have one or more assistant bishops, known as “auxiliary bishops.” In the Catholic understanding of the episcopacy, a bishop is regarded as “married” to his diocese, so there can be only one bishop of one see at any one time. But since every bishop has to be a bishop of somewhere, auxiliary bishops are given “titular sees,” dioceses that have long since disappeared into the mist
s of history (in North Africa, for example, where Ombi is located) or that have been suppressed when the Catholic population shifted and a new diocese had to be erected elsewhere (such as Walla Walla, Washington). Assignment to a titular see is meant to indicate that the episcopate is not an honorific and that the bishop’s primary task is the care of the people of the Church.

  2.Boniecki, Kalendarium, “1957.”

  3.Ibid., “1958.”

  4.Ibid.; author’s interviews with Stanisław and Danuta Rybicki, April 19 and June 5, 1997; Blazynski, Pope John Paul II, p. 69.

  The rite for the consecration (now called ordination) of a bishop has changed since the Second Vatican Council. I have retained the translation given to participants in a pre–Vatican II episcopal consecration to convey some of the flavor of the ritual of that era.

  5.Boniecki, Kalendarium, “1958.”

  6.A “deanery,” composed of numerous parishes, was an administrative subdivision of the archdiocese.

  7.Boniecki, Kalendarium, “1959.”

  8.Ibid., “1958.”

  9.Ibid.

  10.Ibid., “1960.”

  11.Ibid.

  12.Ibid., “1965.”

  13.Ibid., “1962.”

  14.Ibid.; author’s interview with Teresa Życzkowska, April 19, 1997.

  15.Boniecki, Kalendarium, “1962.”

  16.Author’s conversation with Pope John Paul II, December 13, 1997.

  17.Boniecki, Kalendarium, “1962.”

  18.The Counter-Reformation Council of Trent met in three discontinuous sessions, the first of which began in 1545 and the last of which ended in 1563.

  19.St. Basil, one of the Church Fathers who had a tremendous influence on the early Councils, nonetheless complained of the “shocking disorder and confusion” of conciliar arguments and deplored the “incessant chatter” that overwhelmed the Church when councils met. [See Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Principles of Catholic Theology: Building Stones for a Fundamental Theology (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1987), pp. 368–369.]

  20.Antonio Fappani and Franco Molinari, Giovanni Battista Montini Giovane: Documenti inediti a testimonianze (Turin: Marietti, 1979), p. 171.

  21.There is another interpretation of the Council that continues to draw adherents. In this view, the Council was fundamentally misconceived. The Holy Spirit preserved the Church from fundamental error. But in the opinion of some self-consciously orthodox Roman Catholics, the Council, in its eagerness to engage the modern world, failed to articulate the truths of the faith against their contemporary detractors. But Pope Paul VI and, emphatically, Pope John Paul II have insisted that the Council was a Spirit-guided event for the renewal of the Church, even as their actions and teaching have suggested that the keys to the authentic interpretation of Vatican II needed clarification.

  22.Karol Wojtyła, Sources of Renewal: The Implementation of Vatican II (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1980), p. 9.

  23.John Paul II, Crossing the Threshold of Hope, p. 157.

  24.Ibid., p. 159.

  25.Wojtyła, Sources of Renewal, p. 10.

  26.Boniecki, Kalendarium, “1962” Wojtyła, Sources of Renewal, p. 15.

  27.Author’s conversation with Pope John Paul II, March 20, 1997.

  28.“Murzyn” [The Negro] from Ko?ćioł [The Church], in Wojtyła, Poezje i dramaty, p. 63; translated by the author, Sister Emilia Ehrlich, OSU, and Marek Skwarnicki.

  29.Svidercoschi, Letter, pp. 83–86.

  30.“Pustynia judzka” [The Judean desert], from Wędrowka do miejsc świętych [Journey to the holy places], in Wojtyła, Poezje i dramaty, p. 71; translated by the author and Marek Skwarnicki. Wojtyła’s letter to the priests of Kraków on his trip to the Holy Land is in Boniecki, Kalendarium, “1963.”

  31.“Posadzka” [Stone floor], from Kośćioł, in Wojtyła, Poezje i dramaty, p. 63; translated by the author, Sister Emilia Ehrlich, OSU, and Marek Skwarnicki.

  32.See Boniecki, Kalendarium, “1965.”

  33.See Maliński, Pope John Paul II, pp. 180–184.

  34.Author’s interview with Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, September 12, 1996.

  35.John Paul II, Crossing the Threshold of Hope, p. 158.

  36.Acta et Documenta Concilio Oecumenico Vatican II Apparando: Series I (Antepraeparatoria), Volumen II: Consilia et Vota Episcoporum ac Praelatorum—Pars II: Europa, pp. 741–748.

  37.A whimsical reflection on all this may be found in Robert McAfee Brown, Observer in Rome: A Protestant Report on the Vatican Council (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1964), pp. 131–136, from which some of these example are drawn.

  38.See Acta Synodalia Sacrosanti Concilii Oecumenici Vaticani II, I–3, p. 294. [Hereinafter Acta Synodalia… ]

  39.See Acta Synodalia I–2, p. 315.

  40.See Acta Synodalia I–4, pp. 598–599.

  41.See Acta Synodalia II–3, pp. 154–157.

  42.See Acta Synodalia II–4, pp. 340–342.

  43.See Acta Synodalia III–2, pp. 178–179; see also Avery Dulles, SJ, “Mary at the Dawn of the New Millennium,” America 178:3 (January 31, 1998), p. 9.

  44.Boniecki, Kalendarium, “1964.”

  45.See Acta Synodalia III–4, pp. 69–70, 788–789.

  46.Wojtyła synthesized these two conclusions in a subsequent written intervention on the issue:

  …it is a matter of greatest importance for the existence and the work of the Church in the modern world that each and every person’s right to exercise his religion be strictly observed, and that by virtue of this same right, Catholic parents be able to instruct their children in Christian truth. Moreover, this civil right is grounded not just in a principle of toleration, but in the natural right of every person to be familiar with the truth, which right we must set alongside the Church’s right to hand on the truth. [See Acta Synodalia III–2, pp. 530–532.]

  In this same written intervention, Wojtyła proposed taking the discussion of religious freedom as a civil matter out of the Decree on Ecumenism and inserting it in the proposed document on the Church and the modern world. This solution was not adopted, as the “appendix” on religious freedom to the Decree on Ecumenism was broken loose entirely and, in its civil aspect, dealt with in a separate conciliar declaration, a move Wojtyła came to support.

  47.See Acta Synodalia IV–2, pp. 11–13. The “liberalism” here was that Continental European ideology whose components historically included anti-clericalist resistance to Church privileges under the ancien régime. In this historical-cultural context, “religious freedom,” having been identified with the program of extreme anti-clericals, could be, and often was, taken to be constitutional cover for what was in fact a deep anti-Christian bias.

  48.See Acta Synodalia IV–2, pp. 292–293.

  49.Dignitatis Humanae, 2.

  50.Ibid., 2, 3.

  51.Ibid., 10–11.

  52.Ibid., 15.

  53.Ibid.

  54.Gaudium et Spes, 1.

  55.See Henri Fesquet, The Drama of Vatican II (New York: Random House, 1967), p. 395.

  56.See Acta Synodalia III–5, pp. 298–300.

  57.See ibid., pp. 680–683 and Acta Synodalia III–7, pp. 380–382.

  58.Schema XIII was the only conciliar text drafted in a modern language: French. The French text, and Italian, English, German, and Spanish translations, were distributed to the Council Fathers along with the official text, which was in Latin. The text put the Vatican’s Latin scholars through some hurdles, as they had to create Latin expressions to describe everything from nuclear deterrence to motorists running traffic lights.

  On Wojtyła’s involvement in the preparation of Gaudium et Spes, see J. Grootaers, Actes et Acteurs à Vatican II (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1998), pp. 105–129.

  59.All four would be created cardinals: Garrone and Danielou by Paul VI, de Lubac and Congar by John Paul II. Wojtyła felt a special gratitude toward Garrone; see John Paul II, Crossing the Threshold of Hope, p. 159.

  60.Henri de Lubac, At the Service of the Chur
ch (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1993), p. 171.

  61.John Paul II, Crossing the Threshold of Hope, p. 159. Henri de Lubac’s memoir of the controversies of the 1940s and 1950s may be found in At the Service of the Church.

  62.From the unpublished diary of Cardinal Yves Congar, OP, Journal du Concile: in Ut Unum Sint, Bulletin de liaison de la Province de France, 575, November 1994, pp. 180–181. I am grateful to the Very Reverend Maciej Zięba, OP, Provincial of the Polish Province of the Dominicans, for providing me with this text.

  63.The neologism “Pastoral Constitution” had been devised for Gaudium et Spes to satisfy those who said that the term “Constitution” should be reserved for Council texts that were specifically doctrinal in content and those who wished Gaudium et Spes to have the kind of teaching “weight” that its initial sponsors had hoped for it. It is some indication of the tensions provoked by Gaudium et Spes that the very title of the final text, “Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World,” was given a footnote, which explained what a “Pastoral Constitution” was and how the two parts of the document (a theological meditation on “The Church and Man’s Vocation” and a practical discussion of “Some More Urgent Problems”) related to each other.

  64.On the need for the world to also open its windows, see Peter L. Berger, “For a World with Windows,” in Against the World for the World, Peter L. Berger and Richard John Neuhaus, eds. (New York: Seabury, 1976), and Richard John Neuhaus, The Catholic Moment (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1987).

  65.See Acta Synodalia IV–2, pp. 660–663.

  In the fourth session, Archbishop Wojtyła also submitted written interventions on Gaudium et Spes. One was a set of proposed textual emendations. The other, perhaps his most lyrical intervention at the Council, revisited themes he had developed in Love and Responsibility. He was particularly insistent on the necessity of a dialogue with married couples about marital chastity and the morally appropriate method of regulating births. Marriage was “the school of love and charity,” he wrote, “and it is necessary that love and charity, not simply doctrine, be made clear by the Church.” [See Acta Synodalia IV–3, pp. 242–243.]

  66.Boniecki, Kalendarium, “1964.”

  67.Ibid., “1962.”