Witness to Hope

by George Weigel

  CHAPTER 14

  Reliving the Council: Religion and the Renewal of a World Still Young

  1.See “Rome,” in Encyclopedia Judaica, vol. 14 (Jerusalem: Keter Publishing House, 1972). On the hiding of Jews at Castel Gandolfo, see Emilio Bonomelli, I Papi in Campagna (Rome: 1953) and Saverio Petrillo, I Papi a Castelgandolfo (Rome: 1995). The major documentary resource on the Holy See and the Pius XII during World War II is Actes et Documents du Saint-Siège relatifs à la seconde guerre mondiale, Pierre Blet, Angelo Martini, Robert Graham, and Burkhart Schneider, eds., 11 volumes (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1965–1981). One of the editors summarizes the evidence examined in this Vatican-authorized collection of archival materials in Pierre Blet, SJ, Pie XII et la seconde guerre mondiale d’après les archives du Vatican (Paris: Perrion, 1997).

  2.The addresses of Professor Saban, Rabbi Toaff, and Pope John Paul II at the Synagogue of Rome may be found in John Paul II, Spiritual Pilgrimage: Texts on Jews and Judaism, eds. Eugene J. Fisher and Leon Klenicki (New York: Crossroad, 1995), pp. 60–73. The background to the visit is based on the author’s interviews with Sister Lucy Thorson, NDS, January 15, 1997, and Bishop Pierre Duprey, M.Afr., January 15, 1997.

  3.Author’s interview with Paula Butturini, February 18, 1997.

  4.See “Homily During the Liturgy of the Word—Cuzco (Peru),” in Insegnamenti di Giovanni Paolo II, 1985. Details of the venue are from the author’s interview with Paula Butturini, February 18, 1997, and from Il Mondo di Giovanni Paolo II: Tutti i viaggi internazionale del Papa, 1978–1996 (Milan: Mondadori, 1996).

  5.On these points, see Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger and Vittorio Messori, The Ratzinger Report: An Exclusive Interview on the State of the Church, translated by Salvator Attanasio and Graham Harrison (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1985), pp. 19, 28–29. For Paul VI’s remarks on the “Satan’s smoke,” see OR [EWE], July 13, 1972, p. 6.

  6.See Neuhaus, The Catholic Moment, pp. 112–113.

  7.See Berger and Neuhaus, eds., Against the World for the World.

  8.See Brigitte Berger and Peter L. Berger, “Our Conservatism and Theirs,” Commentary 82:4 (October1986), p. 63.

  9.See Peter L. Berger, A Rumor of Angels: Modern Society and the Rediscovery of the Supernatural (New York: Doubleday Anchor Books, 1970).

  10.Author’s interview with Joaquín Navarro-Valls, December 18, 1997.

  11.Author’s interview with Joaquín Navarro-Valls, October 23, 1998.

  12.John Paul II, Spiritual Pilgrimage, pp. 47–48.

  13.“Pope’s Address to Colloquium on Nostra Aetatae,” OR [EWE], April 29, 1985, p. 3.

  14.Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews, Notes on the Correct Way to Present the Jews and Judaism in Preaching and Catechesis in the Roman Catholic Church, OR [EWE], July 1, 1985, pp. 6–7.

  15.See John Paul II, Spiritual Pilgrimage, pp. 55–59.

  16.Author’s conversation with Pope John Paul II, September 30, 1997.

  17.Ibid.

  18.“History of the World Youth Day,” in Pilgrim Guide Book, JMJ Paris 1997, p. 12.

  19.Citations from To the Youth of the World, OR [EWE], April 1, 1985, pp. 1–9.

  20.John Paul II, “Address to the Meeting of Delegates of National Ecumenical Commissions,” Secretariat for Promoting Christian Unity Information Service #58 (1985/II), pp. 71–72 [emphasis in original].

  21.See Karl Rahner and Heinrich Fries, Unity of the Churches: An Actual Possibility (Philadelphia and New York: Fortress and Paulist, 1985). Karl Rahner’s description of the Rahner/Fries proposal may be found in Karl Rahner, “The Unity of the Church to Come,” in Faith in a Wintry Season, eds. Paul Imhoff and Hubert Biallowons, translations edited by Harvey D. Egan (New York: Crossroad, 1991), pp. 168–174.

  22.John Paul II, “The Twenty-Fifth Anniversary of the Secretariat for Promoting Christian Unity: Address to the Roman Curia,” Secretariat for Promoting Christian Unity Information Service #59 (1985/III), 10 [emphasis in original].

  23.See ibid., 2.

  24.See ibid.

  25.Ibid., 7.

  26.See ibid., 6.

  27.Ibid., 7.

  28.Ibid., 9.

  29.The CDF “notification” on Boff may be found in OR [EWE], April 9, 1985, pp. 11–12. See also Ratzinger, Salt of the Earth, pp. 94–95.

  30.Author’s interview with Cardinal Edward Cassidy, December 7, 1996 (Cardinal Cassidy was nuncio in the Netherlands during the papal visit); the prime minister’s remark is cited in Walsh, John Paul II, p. 147.

  31.Letter to the author from Frans A. M. Alting von Geusau, January 5, 1997.

  32.See Kwitny, Man of the Century, p. 533.

  33.See Walsh, John Paul II, p. 157, note 16.

  34.Ibid., see also Walsh, John Paul II, p. 147.

  35.Letter to the author from Cardinal Edward Cassidy, October 28, 1997. The new seminary was founded by Bishop Johannes Gerardus ter Schure, SDB, whose appointment was another cause of aggravation to Dutch dissidents; the appointment was denounced by the London Catholic weekly, the Tablet, as “a humiliating gesture.” [See Kwitny, Man of the Century, p. 532.]

  36.See Walsh, Pope John Paul II, p. 148.

  37.See Insegnamenti di Giovanni Paolo II, 1985.

  38.Author’s interview with Cardinal Jozef Tomko, November 14, 1996.

  39.On August 15, in Kinshasa, Zaire, John Paul beatified Anwarite Nengapeta, a twenty-five-year-old Zaïroise nun murdered during the Simba rebellion in 1964. Sister Anwarite had told Colonel Olombe, the rebel chieftain who sought to abuse her sexually and who ordered her execution after she resisted his advances, “I forgive you, because you don’t know what you’re doing.” Blessed Anwarite Nengapeta’s murderer attended the beatification.

  40.See “Historic Meeting in Morocco,” OR [EWE], September 9, 1985, p. 12.

  41.Citations are from “Dialogue Between Christians and Moslem,” Origins 15:11 (August 29, 1985), pp. 174–176.

  42.Author’s interview with Cardinal Jozef Tomko, January 19, 1997.

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

  44.The bishops of the United States, heavily influenced by arms control theorists, had expressed serious reservations about the Strategic Defense Initiative in The Challenge of Peace. This was not without its ironies, in that the Reagan administration’s timing of the announcement of SDI was geared at least in part to taking some of the media play away from TCOP. In any event, the United States Catholic Conference was not speaking for the Holy See in expressing its concerns about SDI.

  Gromyko recounts the meeting from his distinctive point of view in his Memoirs, pp. 213–214.

  45.“Letter of Pope John Paul II to the Clergy of Czechoslovakia on the 1100th Anniversary of the Death of St. Methodius,” OR [EWE], May 20, 1985, 2.

  46.Ibid., 3a.

  47.Ibid., 3c, 4. John Paul also wrote that “the sense of responsibility… requires that priests and religious hold in high esteem the doctrinal and disciplinary unity with the Church willed and founded by Christ, that is with the successor of Peter and with the bishops in communion with him.” [Ibid., 3c.] This was a response to those parts of the underground Church in Czechoslovakia which were already experimenting with unauthorized ordinations of bishops and the ordination of married men to the priesthood.

  48.Slavorum Apostoli is John Paul’s only encyclical “epistle,” a style of encyclical that has less doctrinal content than an encyclical “letter.” Unlike other encyclical “epistles,” though, Slavorum Apostoli is addressed to the whole Church, rather than to an individual bishop or group of bishops—another indication of John Paul’s concern to reconnect Slavic Christianity to the Christian West after the artificial Yalta division of Europe, which had resulted in an equally artificial division of Christian consciousness. [See “Editor’s Introduction to Slavorum Apostoli,” in Miller, Encyclicals, pp. 215–216.]

  49.John Paul II, Slavorum Apostoli, 20, in ibid.

  50.Ibid., 14.6.

>   51.Ibid., 22.2.

  52.Ibid., 21.1, 19.2, 11.1, 10.2, 19.1, 18.2, 18.2.

  53.See Broun, Conscience and Captivity, p. 94.

  54.As the Holy See hoped it would. The 1982 instruction had been widely interpreted in the media as aimed at clergy in Latin America. The targets in east central Europe tended to be ignored, but this was where the instruction had its most pronounced immediate effect.

  55.Author’s interview with Father Václav Maly, October 25, 1991. The Velehrad event was also the occasion for some typically acerbic Czech humor. After the event, there was the usual argument about the attendance. The cardinal’s office said 150,000; the regime said 50,000. The Church resistance said, “We’re both right. We’re counting ours, and they’re counting theirs.” [Author’s interview with Bishop František Lobkowicz, O.Praem., October 21, 1991.]

  56.Author’s interview with Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, January 18, 1997.

  57.Cited in Neuhaus, The Catholic Moment, p. 110. Cardinal Danneels was the Synod’s relator, responsible for synthesizing the general discussions and the material from the language-based small group discussions into a final report; Danneels was assisted by the Synod’s “special secretary,” Father Walter Kasper, a distinguished German theologian named bishop of Rottenburg-Stuttgart in 1989. The three Cardinal Presidents of the Extraordinary Synod were John Krol of Philadelphia, Joseph Malula of Kinshasa, and Johannes Willebrands of Utrecht.

  58.Ibid.

  59.Cited in ibid., p. 122.

  60.See, for example, the intervention of Bishop James Malone, “The Value of Collegiality,” in Origins 15:26 (December 12, 1985), pp. 430–431.

  61.Neuhaus, The Catholic Moment, p. 121.

  62.Cited in ibid., p. 123.

  63.As may be inferred from the fact that Etchegaray, then the president of the French Bishops’ Conference, did not succeed François Marty as archbishop of Paris in 1981.

  64.Memorandum to the author from Cardinal Roger Etchegaray, April 12, 1997.

  65.Author’s interview with Cardinal Roger Etchegaray, March 19, 1997.

  66.Details on the Philippine revolution and the statements of Cardinal Sin and the Philippine Bishops’ Conference are taken from Henry Wooster, “Faith at the Ramparts: The Philippine Catholic Church and the 1986 Revolution,” in Religion, the Missing Dimension of Statecraft, eds. Douglas Johnston and Cynthia Sampson (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), pp. 153–176. The De Villa family’s move to EDSA is from the author’s interview with Henrietta T. De Villa, March 25, 1997.

  67.Memorandum to the author from Cardinal Jaime L. Sin, December 9, 1997.

  68.Ibid.

  69.Ibid.

  70.Cited in Wooster, “Faith at the Ramparts,” p. 162.

  71.Cited in ibid., p. 170.

  72.Author’s interview with Archbishop Jorge M. Mejía, January 20, 1997. At the time of the Assisi initiative, then-Bishop Mejía was Secretary, or second in command, at the Justice and Peace Commission.

  73.Ibid.

  74.Ibid.

  75.See The Pope Speaks to India (Bandra-Bombay: St. Paul Publications, 1986), pp. 17, 19.

  76.Author’s interview with Paula Butturini, February 18, 1997.

  77.Author’s conversation with Pope John Paul II, September 30, 1997.

  78.Jorge M. Mejía, “To Be Together to Pray,” OR [EWE], October 13, 1986, p. 8.

  79.Author’s interview with Archbishop Jorge Mejía, January 20, 1997.

  80.Ibid.

  81.Ibid.

  82.Cited in John Paul II, Spiritual Pilgrimage, p. 4.

  83.Cited in ibid., pp. 31–32.

  84.Cited in ibid., pp. 52–53.

  85.Cited in ibid., pp. 80–81.

  86.See Jewish Perspectives on Christianity, ed. Fritz A. Rothschild (New York: Crossroad, 1990).

  87.See David Novak, Jewish-Christian Dialogue: A Jewish Justification (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989).

  88.Karol Wojtyła’s pre-papal understanding of the Trinity is suggested in his last play, the metaphysical poem Radiation of Fatherhood, where, as Józef Tischner suggests, the playwright depicts God, “not [as] an Absolute Solitude but [as] an Absolute Interaction.” The Swiss theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar once put a similar idea slightly differently in a sermon for Trinity Sunday. At Christmas, on Good Friday and Easter, at the Ascension, and at the celebration of the coming of the Holy Spirit to the first apostles at Pentecost, Christians celebrate “God with us.” But how, Balthasar asks, could God be with us if being with were not, somehow, part of the essence of God’s own life? The doctrine of the Trinity is the expression of the Christian belief, forged from Christian experience in history, that God is an absolute reciprocity of self-giving persons, in which vitality is increased by self-giving and egoism is absolutely excluded. [Balthasar, “Trinity: God Is ‘Being With,’” in You Crown the Year with Your Goodness, pp. 141–143.]

  89.John Paul II, Dominum et Vivificantem, in Miller, Encyclicals, 33.1.

  90.See ibid., 35.2, 36.2, 38.1.

  91.See ibid., 42.3, 43.3, 44.3.

  92.See ibid., 46.3–4, 47.1.

  93.See ibid., 57.2.

  94.See ibid., 62.1, 67.1, 67.3.

  95.“Reception of Delegation of Patriarch of Constantinople,” OR [EWE], July 28, 1986, p. 3.

  96.“Observations on the Final Report of ARCIC,” OR [EWE], May 10, 1982, pp. 10–11.

  97.See the letter of Cardinal Johannes Willebrands to the co-presidents of ARCIC-II, OR [EWE], March 11, 1986, pp. 8–9.

  98.See ibid.

  99.“Exchange of Letters on the Ordination of Women to the Priesthood,” in Secretariat for Promoting Christian Unity Information Service #61 (1986/III), p. 106.

  100.Ibid., p. 107.

  101.See ibid., pp. 109–111.

  102.The most recent scholarship on Reformation-era England suggests that the sixteenth-century rupture with Catholicism was far deeper than advocates of the via media believed. See Eamon Duffy’s magisterial study, The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England c. 1400-c.1580 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1992).

  103.On August 6, 1988, Archbishop Runcie wrote a letter to John Paul II, reporting on the discussions at the recently concluded Lambeth Conference; it was the first such report in history. The letter, like the Lambeth Conference itself, confirmed what the 1986 exchange of letters had already made clear: that fundamental differences in understanding the nature of the Church and its relationship to an authoritative and apostolically ordered tradition now lay between Anglicans and Roman Catholics. In his response, dated December 8, John Paul noted that the dialogue he and Runcie had hoped ARCIC-II would conduct on the issues involved in “the mutual recognition of the ministries of our Communions” seemed to have been preempted by “the ordination of women to the priesthood in some provinces of the Anglican Communion, together with the recognition of the right of individual provinces to proceed with the ordination of women to the episcopacy.” All of this, John Paul wrote, threatened to set in motion a process of “serious erosion” in “the degree of communion between us.”

  In his letter, Archbishop Runcie had reminded the Pope that neither he, as Archbishop of Canterbury, nor the Lambeth Conference as a body had “juridical authority over the Anglican Communion.” All of the provinces of the Anglican Communion, he wrote, “have the canonical authority to implement the mission of the Church as they deem right in their own cultures.” This frank admission touched the nub of the issue, for it amounted to a denial, in effect if not in theory, of an apostolically ordered and authoritative tradition that guided the implementation of the Church’s mission in any age or any culture. [See “Exchange of Letters Between Pope John Paul II and the Archbishop of Canterbury, After the Lambeth Conference, 1988,” in Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity Information Service #70 (1989/II), pp. 59–60.]

  On October 2, 1989, Archbishop Runcie and John Paul II signed a Common Declaration during the course of the archbishop’s visit to the Holy S
ee. The declaration confirmed that the question of ordaining women to the priesthood engaged “important… differences” between Anglicanism and Roman Catholicism about the nature of the Church; emphasized that those working for “visible unity” could neither “minimize these differences” nor “abandon their hope or work for unity” but frankly conceded that “we ourselves do not see a solution” to the new obstacles that had been placed in the path of ecclesial reunion. [See “The Common Declaration,” in Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity Information Service #71 (1989/III-IV), pp. 122–123.]

  In 1987, when John Paul announced that he would beatify eighty-five martyrs from England, Scotland, and Wales on November 22 of that year, both Cardinal Basil Hume and Archbishop Runcie issued statements calling on both Anglicans and Roman Catholics to see this moment as an occasion for celebrating what Runcie graciously called the “heroic Christian witness” of the Catholic martyrs and to “together deplore the intolerance of the age which flawed Christian conviction.” [See “Cardinal George Basil Hume, OSB, “The Significance of the Beatification of Eighty-five Martyrs,” and “Statements by Cardinal Hume and Archbishop Runcie on the Beatification,” in OR [EWE], November 16, 1987, p. 8.]

  104.See “Pope’s Christmas Address to the Roman Curia,” OR [EWE], January 5, 1987, pp. 6–7.

  105.Author’s interview with Monsignor Vincenzo Paglia, December 7, 1997.

  106.See “Cardinal’s Intervention with UNO Secretary General,” OR [EWE], February 24, 1986, p. 8; “Expression of Solidarity,” OR [EWE], April 1, 1986.

  107.“Bishops of Nicaragua to All Episcopal Conferences,” OR [EWE], July 14, 1986, p. 2. The most recent attack on the Pope, in an editorial in the official daily, El Nuevo Diario, was, indeed, vicious:

  Between Reagan, who declared yesterday that a smile has broken out on the face of the Statue of Liberty, with the approval of millions for his mercenaries, and this Pope, who dedicates prayers only to the dead Yankees and fills the victims of imperialism with accusations and threats, there exists the most perfidious cohesion and the most serious danger for the peoples, since the period when barbarism and genocide were wrought in the name of the cross and the empire. [Cited in ibid.]