Witness to Hope

by George Weigel

  On March 25, 1993, the flow chart was rationalized a little further (and in a way that reflected John Paul’s understanding of the way the modern world worked) when the Pontifical Council for Dialogue with Non-Believers became part of the Pontifical Council for Culture, which subsequently had two sections: “Faith and Culture” and “Dialogue with Cultures.”

  102.Author’s interview with Archbishop Zenon Grocholewski, January 13, 1997.

  103.See Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, “Homily at the Funeral Liturgy of Hans Urs von Balthasar,” in Hans Urs von Balthasar: His Life and Work, ed. David L. Schindler (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1991). In his homily, Ratzinger described Balthasar’s reluctance to be named cardinal and the Pope’s rationale for making the nomination:

  Von Balthasar was hesitant in opening himself to the honor intended for him by being named to the cardinalate. This was not motivated by a coquettish desire to act the great one, but by the Ignatian spirit which characterized his life. In some way, his being called into the next life on the very eve of being so honored seems to show that he was right about it. He was allowed to remain himself, fully. But what the Pope intended to express by this mark of distinction, and of honor, remains valid: No longer only private individuals but the Church itself, in its official responsibility, tells us that he is right in what he teaches of the Faith, that he points the way to the sources of living water—a witness to the word which teaches us Christ and which teaches us how to live. [See ibid., pp. 294–295.]

  For an introduction to Balthasar’s theology, see Edward T. Oakes, Pattern of Redemption: The Theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar (New York: Continuum, 1994).

  104.See Viaggi e visite di Giovanni Paolo II al 18º anno di pontificato e 50º anno di sacerdozio: dati riassuntivi e statistici (Rome: Radio Vaticana, 1996).

  105.See Santi e Beati Durante il Pontificato di Giovanni Paolo II dal 1978 al 1996 [statistical summary of canonization and beatifications from the Congregation for the Causes of Saints].

  106.This pilgrimage includes celebrating Mass at the tombs of Sts. Peter and Paul, in the crypts of St. Peter’s Basilica and the Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls. Special texts have been prepared for these liturgies by the Congregation for Bishops. [See Liturgy During the “Ad Limina” Visits (Vatican City: Typis Polyglottis Vaticanis, 1988)].

  107.Author’s interview with Cardinal John J. O’Connor, November 8, 1996.

  108.Author’s interview with Cardinal Francis Arinze, November 9, 1996.

  109.Beginning in 1995, the discourse at the group meeting was not delivered personally, but was given to each bishop in an individually addressed envelope after the group Mass in the private chapel.

  110.Author’s interview with Cardinal Francis Arinze, November 9, 1996.

  111.Ibid.

  112.The theology and practice of the ad limina visit are laid out in the Directory for the “Ad Limina” Visit, published by the Congregation for Bishops in 1988. The local preparation of an ad limina includes the assembly of a detailed report, often hundreds of pages long, on virtually every facet of life in a particular diocese. This report is forwarded to the Vatican prior to the bishop’s arrival.

  113.Soloviev had a distinctive view of the Christian failure in modernity: “In earlier times, Christianity was comprehensible to one, incomprehensible to another; but only our age has succeeded in making it repellent and mortally boring.” [Cited in Hans Urs von Balthasar, The Glory of the Lord, volume three: Studies in Theological Styles: Lay Styles (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1986), p. 350.]

  114.Berdyaev (1874–1948) was a converted skeptic of Marxist sympathies who lived in Paris after 1922. Bulgakov (1871–1944) was a “revert,” a one-time candidate for the Orthodox priesthood who became a Marxist activist before returning to Christianity; expelled from the Soviet Union, he was Dean of the Orthodox Theological Academy in Paris from 1925 until he died and a pioneer ecumenist.

  115.Florovsky (1893–1979) taught patristic and dogmatic theology in Paris before becoming Dean of St. Vladimir’s Russian Orthodox Seminary in New York and a leading figure in the ecumenical movement.

  116.Author’s interviews with Irina Alberti, April 13 and 16, 1998.

  117.Ibid.

  118.Sakharov was born in 1921. His great-grandfather was a Russian Orthodox priest, and his mother was pious, so young Andrei was baptized as a child; but he had never practiced Christianity. After helping create the Soviet hydrogen bomb in 1953, he had taken up the cause of arms control and had become interested in cosmology. Sakharov’s security clearance was lifted after the publication of his 1968 dissident essay, “Reflections on Progress, Peaceful Coexistence, and Intellectual Freedom,” but his extraordinary contributions to Soviet science and the self-evident honesty of his dissent gave him a measure of protection for a while. In 1969, his first wife, to whom he had been happily married since 1943, died of a cancer that had been diagnosed too late. The following year, Sakharov met Elena Bonner, a pediatrician and veteran human rights campaigner. They were married in 1972. Sakharov was awarded the 1975 Nobel Peace Prize for his human rights activism and came under immediate and vicious assault in the Soviet media, a process that culminated in his exile to Gorki in 1980. Elena Bonner was similarly exiled to Gorki in 1984.

  119.Author’s interviews with Irina Alberti, April 13 and 16, 1998.

  120.See Edward Kline, “Foreword,” in Andrei Sakharov, Moscow and Beyond: 1986–1989 (New York: Vintage Books, 1992), p. x.

  121.Author’s interviews with Irina Alberti, April 13 and 16, 1998. For details of Sakharov’s evolving views of Gorbachev, see ibid.

  122.Author’s interviews with Irina Alberti, April 13 and 16, 1998.

  123.Cited in Walsh, John Paul II, p. 186.

  124.Author’s interviews with Irina Alberti, April 13 and 16, 1998.

  125.“Cardinal Casaroli at the Celebrations for the Millennium of the Baptism of Rus’ of Kiev,” OR [EWE], July 25, 1998, p. 3.

  126.Details of the Vatican delegation’s experience in Moscow are from the author’s interview with Joaquín Navarro-Valls, February 18, 1998.

  127.With the authorization of Cardinal Angelo Sodano, the Secretary of State of the Holy See, the Italian original of this letter, which I personally examined, was read to me and translated by Archbishop Jean-Louis Tauran, the Holy See’s Secretary of the Section for Relations with States, during an interview in the archbishop’s office on December 12, 1997.

  The word animo is used at the end of the penultimate paragraph, which could also mean an “echo in your mind.”

  128.With the authorization of Cardinal Angelo Sodano, Secretary of State of the Holy See, Archbishop Jean-Louis Tauran, the Holy See’s Secretary for Relations with States, read me an English translation of the Secretariat of State’s Italian translation of the Russian original of this letter, which I examined, in an interview in Archbishop Tauran’s office on December 19, 1998.

  129.Bogdan Bociurkiw, “The Ukrainian Catholic Church in Gorbachev’s USSR,” p. 9.

  130.“John Paul II at ‘Moleben’ in Honor of the Mother of God in the Millennium of the Baptism of Rus’ of Kiev,” OR [EWE], August 8–15, 1988, p. 4.

  131.“Holy Father at Divine Liturgy in St. Peter’s for Millennium of the Baptism of Rus’ of Kiev,” OR [EWE], August 8–15, 1998, p. 5 [emphasis in original].

  132.That is, from June 7, 1987 until August 15, 1988.

  133.John Paul II, “Annual Address to the Roman Curia,” OR [EWE], January 11, 1988, pp. 6–8 [emphasis in original].

  134.See Hans Urs von Balthasar, The Office of Peter and the Structure of the Church (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1986).

  135.John Paul II, Redemptoris Mater, 24.3–24.4, in Miller, Encyclicals.

  136.Ibid., 30.3 [emphasis in original].

  137.Ibid., 45.4, citing John 19.27.

  As Redemptoris Mater made clear, John Paul hoped that the Marian Year of 1987–1988 would help foster unity among Rome, Orthodoxy, and the ancient Christian Churches of t
he East. To further that aim, one of the striking features of the Marian Year was the celebration of a number of Eastern-rite Catholic liturgies in and around Rome at which the Pope presided. In addition, “Eastern-rite usages” were incorporated into the papal celebration of the Latin-rite liturgy. [See Liturgie dell’Oriente Cristiano a Roma nell’Anno Mariano 1987–1988: Testi e Studi (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1990).]

  138.John Paul II, Redemptoris Mater, 46.2, in Miller, Encyclicals.

  139.Ibid.

  140.John Paul II, Mulieris Dignitatem, 1.

  141.Ibid., 2 [emphasis in original].

  142.Ibid., 3–5.

  143.Ibid., 9–11 [emphasis in original].

  144.Ibid., 14.

  145.Ibid., 15–16.

  146.Ibid., 18–19 [emphasis in original].

  147.Author’s conversation with Pope John Paul II, October 23, 1998.

  148.John Paul II, Mulieris Dignitatem, 24 [emphasis in original].

  149.Ibid., 30 [emphasis in original].

  CHAPTER 16

  After the Empire of Lies: Miracles and the Mandates of Justice

  1.“The Holy Father’s Address to the European Parliament,” OR [EWE], November 21, 1988, pp. 11–12.

  2.See Garton Ash, We the People, pp. 26–32.

  3.See ibid., from which these highlights are drawn, for a more detailed account of the Roundtable negotiations and the subsequent election campaign.

  4.Cited in Broun, Conscience and Captivity, p. 97. The entire third Navrátil petition may be found in ibid., pp. 319–320. For a portrait of Augustin Navrátil and the story of his earlier petitions, see Garton Ash, The Uses of Adversity, pp. 215–218.

  5.Author’s interview with Cardinal Edward Cassidy, January 14, 1997.

  6.Ibid.

  7.Ibid.

  8.The communiqué summarizing the joint plenarium and the Pope’s address to the closing session may be found in Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity Information Service #70 (1989/II), pp. 56–58.

  9.One source of tension involved the recent history of the Archdiocese of Seattle, where Archbishop Raymond G. Hunthausen had become a controversial figure, beloved by many and heavily criticized by others. After a 1984 apostolic visitation by Washington Archbishop James Hickey had determined that there were serious deficiencies in pastoral practice in Seattle for which Archbishop Hunthausen bore ultimate responsibility, an auxiliary bishop, Donald Wuerl, was appointed and given special authority over certain areas of pastoral life. The arrangement was not well-received by the archdiocesan staff; Bishop Wuerl was poorly treated by many priests; and, after some months, it became apparent to all concerned that the arrangement could not continue. A three-member commission, composed of Chicago’s Cardinal Joseph Bernardin, New York’s Cardinal John O’Connor, and San Francisco’s Archbishop John Quinn, was appointed to mediate the situation. As a result of their work, Donald Wuerl became bishop of Pittsburgh in 1988 and Archbishop Hunthausen, having accepted the appointment of a coadjutor archbishop, Thomas Murphy, took an early retirement on his seventieth birthday, with Archbishop Murphy succeeding him in 1991. It was widely suggested in the press that the Holy See’s intervention in Seattle was somehow related to Archbishop Hunthausen’s passionate activism against nuclear weapons. In fact, the intervention had nothing to do with that issue, but with liturgical, catechetical, and pastoral practice in the archdiocese.

  10.“Archbishop May Describes U.S. Cultural Context,” Origins 18:41 (March 23, 1989), pp. 679–680.

  11.Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, “The Bishops as Teacher of the Faith,” in ibid., pp. 681–682.

  12.John Paul II, “Opening Address,” in ibid., pp. 677, 679.

  13.“Archbishop May Describes U.S. Cultural Context,” in ibid., p. 680.

  14.The entire exchange between the American bishops and their Roman curial colleagues, which was structured around ten presentations (one by a curial official, one by an American bishop) touching virtually every aspect of the Church’s life in the United States, may be found in Origins 18:41 (March 23, 1989) and 18:42 (March 30, 1989). The latter includes the “synthesis” of the meeting prepared by Cardinal Joseph Bernardin (with Cardinal Gantin, one of the meeting’s two moderators) and remarks by Archbishop May at a teleconference for the press on his return to the United States. Archbishop May’s opening statement at the teleconference did not respond to Cardinal Ratzinger’s challenge to the cultural analysis May had offered at the opening of the special meeting; indeed, it virtually repeated what the archbishop had said in Rome five days before.

  15.Both phenomena were attributable to Dei Verbum, the Council’s Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation.

  16.Cited in James Swetnam, SJ, “‘A Vision of Wholeness’: A Response,” in McDermott, ed., The Thought of Pope John Paul II, p. 94.

  17.See the Pope’s 1991 address to the Pontifical Biblical Commission, in OR [EWE], April 22, 1991, p. 5. See also Joseph Ratzinger, “Biblical Interpretation in Crisis: On the Question of the Foundations and Approaches of Exegesis Today,” in Biblical Interpretation in Crisis: The Ratzinger Conference on Bible and Church, ed. Richard John Neuhaus (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1989).

  For a more detailed discussion of John Paul II’s use of Scripture in his preaching and teaching, see Terence Prendergast, SJ, “‘A Vision of Wholeness’: A Reflection on the Use of Scripture in a Cross-Section of Papal Writings,” in The Thought of Pope John Paul II, ed. John M. McDermott, SJ, pp. 69–91. Father Prendergast’s conclusion is quite accurate: “John Paul does not preoccupy himself with representing the consensus of scholars on how to interpret [the] Scriptures in our day.”

  In 1995, the Pope spelled out the ecclesial mission of biblical scholarship to the Pontifical Biblical Commission in even stronger terms than he had in 1989 and 1991: Your ecclesial task should be to treat the Sacred Writings inspired by God with the utmost veneration and to distinguish accurately the text of Sacred Scripture from learned conjectures, both yours and others’. It is not unusual today with regard to this matter that a certain confusion can be noted inasmuch as there are some who have more faith in views which are conjectures than in words which are divine. [Cited in Swetnam,“‘A Vision of Wholeness’: A Response,” p. 95.]

  18.See Il Mondo di Giovanni Paolo II, p. 138, and Beati Duranti il Pontificato di Giovanni Paolo II dal 1978 al 1996.

  19.See Il Mondo di Giovanni Paolo II, p. 138; Walsh, John Paul II, p. 208.

  20.On the papal message in Malawi and Zambia, see Walsh, John Paul II, pp. 207–208.

  21.Author’s interview with Roberto Tucci, SJ, December 14, 1998; the text of the Pope’s address to the Lutheran bishops is in OR [EWE], June 19, 1989, pp. 7–8.

  22.Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity Information Service #80 (1992/II), pp. 17–25.

  23.Letter to the author from Cardinal Edward Cassidy, December 28, 1998.

  24.See Hans Urs von Balthasar, In the Fullness of Faith: On the Centrality of the Distinctively Catholic (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1988), p. 77.

  25.John Paul II, “Homily at Mass on World Youth Day,” OR [EWE], September 4, 1989, p. 4 [emphasis in original].

  26.See Insegnamenti di Giovanni Paolo II, 1989.

  27.John Paul II, “General Audience” Address, August 23, 1989, in OR [EWE], August 28, 1989, p. 7.

  28.See “The Common Declaration,” Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity Information Service #71 (1989/III-IV), pp. 122–123.

  29.See Woodward, Making Saints, pp. 132–133.

  30.John Paul II, “Reconciling a Divided People,” Origins 19:20 (October 19, 1989), pp. 321, 323–324.

  31.John Paul II, “Prayer for North Korea and China,” in ibid., pp. 324–325.

  32.With the authorization of Cardinal Angelo Sodano, the Secretary of State of the Holy See, the original of this letter, which I personally examined, was read to me by Archbishop Jean-Louis Tauran, the Holy See’s Secretary for Relations with States, during an interview in the arch
bishop’s office on December 19,1998.

  33.Cited in Walsh, John Paul II, p. 215. Bishop Belo of East Timor was a co-winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1996.

  34.John Paul II, “Homily During the Mass for the Faithful of Timor,” OR [EWE], October 23, 1989, p. 6; John Paul II, “Church and State Relations,” Origins 19:22 (November 2, 1989), pp. 363–365.

  35.Il Mondo di Giovanni Paolo II, p. 147.

  36.John Paul II, “Message to the Polish Bishops,” in Origins 19:15 (September 14, 1989), pp. 251–252.

  37.Ibid., p. 253.

  38.The Pope’s analysis here was similar to that of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn in his 1983 Templeton Prize Lecture, delivered in London on May 10, 1983; see “Men Have Forgotten God,” reprinted in National Review, July 22, 1983, pp. 872–876.

  On learning of Cardinal Wojtyła’s election as John Paul II in 1978, the intensely Orthodox Solzhenitsyn threw his arms out and said, “It’s a miracle! It’s the first positive event since World War I and it’s going to change the face of the world!” The Russian author had never met Wojtyła, according to Irina Alberti, but he instinctively knew what Wojtyła’s election meant: resistance to communism would now be rooted in religion and culture, which was the strongest force in the world. [Author’s interview with Irina Alberti, April 13, 1998.]

  39.John Paul II, “Apostolic Letter,” in Origins 19:15 (September 14, 1989), p. 255.

  40.Ibid., p. 254.

  41.Ibid., pp. 254–256.

  42.Ibid., p. 256.

  43.See Serge Schmemann, “East Germany Opens Frontier to the West for Migration or Travel; Thousands Cross,” New York Times, November 10, 1989, pp. A1, A14.

  44.John Paul II, “Homily for the Canonization of Agnes of Bohemia and Albert Chmielowski,” OR [EWE], December 4, 1989, p. 9 [emphasis in original].

  45.The Pope’s dinner guests the night of the canonization were two lay Kraków intellectuals, poet Marek Skwarnicki and painter Stanisław Rodziński. [Author’s interview with Marek Skwarnicki, July 9, 1998.]