Witness to Hope

by George Weigel

  81.John Paul II, Ut Unum Sint, 88, in Miller, Encyclicals.

  82.Ibid., 95.2.

  83.Ibid., 96.

  84.See ibid., 54.2, 57.1.

  85.Richard John Neuhaus, “That They May Be One,” First Things 56 (October 1995), p. 74.

  86.Cited in Edward Idris Cassidy, “‘That They May All Be One’: The Imperatives and Prospects of Christian Unity,” First Things 69 (January 1997), p. 36. For the full text of Raiser’s lecture, see Centro Pro Unione Semi-Annual Bulletin #48 (Fall 1995).

  87.In 1997, Dr. Raiser also suggested that the Pope’s proposal for a common reflection on how a primatial office of unity could be exercised for the benefit of all Christians “begs the question. The issue is not only the different ways of exercising his office, but the rationale behind papal primacy itself. That’s still very difficult for me to get hold of.” [Gabriel Meyer, “World Council of Churches Chief Counts on Roman Participation,” National Catholic Register, January 5–11, 1997, p. 5.]

  88.John Paul II, homily for the solemnity of Sts. Peter and Paul, OR [EWE], July 5, 1995, pp. 6–7 [emphasis in original].

  89.“Ecumenical Patriarch’s Homily for 29 June,” OR [EWE], July 12, 1995, p. 4; “Common Declaration,” in ibid., p. 5.

  90.Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew’s meditations may be found in Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity Information Service #86 (1994/II–III), pp. 112–124. Sister Minke’s meditations may be found in ibid., #89 (1995/II-III), pp. 73–82. These invitations were the initiative of the Master of Pontifical Liturgical Ceremonies, Monsignor Piero Marini, who discussed the proposal with the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity. The invitations were then personally authorized by John Paul II. [Author’s interview with Monsignor Piero Marini, December 9, 1996.]

  91.“Statements of the Pope in the Czech Republic, May 20–24,1995,” Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity Information Service #89 (1995/II–III), p. 69 [emphasis in original]. The correspondence between the Czech Protestant leaders, and Cardinal Cassidy and the Pope, is in ibid., pp. 64–69.

  92.“Pope Pays Tribute to Calvinists,” The Independent, July 3, 1995, p. 9.

  93.John Paul II, “Forgive One Another’s Wrongs,” OR [EWE], April 30, 1997, p. 3.

  94.“Pope to Archbishop,” OR [EWE], December 11, 1996.

  95.John Paul II, “Women: Teachers of Peace,” 4, in OR [EWE], December 14, 1995, pp. 1–2.

  96.John Paul II, Letter to Women, 6, in OR [EWE], July 12, 1995, pp. 1–3.

  97.These addresses began on June 18 and concluded on September 3, 1995. They may be found in OR [EWE], June 21, 1995, p. 1 (for the Angelus address of June 18 on equality of personhood); OR [EWE], June 28, 1995, p. 1 (for the Angelus address of June 25 on the need to build a “culture of equality”); OR [EWE], July 12, 1995, p. 1 (for the Angelus address of July 9 on the complementarity and reciprocity of women and men); OR [EWE], July 19, 1995, p. 1 (for the Angelus address of July 16 on women as guardians of life); OR [EWE], July 26, 1995, p. 1 (for the Angelus address of July 23 on the “feminine genius” essential for society); OR [EWE], August 2, 1995, p. 1 (for the Angelus address of July 30 on women as the primary educators of early childhood); OR [EWE], August 9–16, 1995 (for the Angelus address of August 6 on women and the world of culture); OR [EWE], August 23, 1995, p. 8 (for the Angelus address of August 13 on women in service to the poor and sick) and p. 1 (for the Angelus address of August 20 on equity for working mothers); OR [EWE], August 30, 1995, p. 1 (for the Angelus address of August 27 on women in politics); and OR [EWE], September 6, 1995, p. 1 (for the Angelus address of September 3 on women in the Church).

  98.John Paul II, “1995 Letter to Priests for Holy Thursday,” OR [EWE], April 12, 1995, pp. 6–7 [emphasis in original].

  99.John Paul II, “Message to Mrs. Gertrude Mongella,” OR [EWE], May 31, 1995, pp. 2, 7 [emphasis in original]; author’s conversation with Pope John Paul II, December 13, 1997.

  100.Mrs. Mongella spoke to the Italian Catholic daily, Avvenire. See “Worldwatch,” Catholic World Report, August/September 1995, p. 7.

  101.Letter to the author from Janne Haaland Matlary, February 14, 1997. Dr. Matlary was named State Secretary to the Foreign Minister of Norway (deputy secretary or undersecretary in other systems) in October 1997.

  102.Annabel Miller, “The Holy See in the Public Square,” The Tablet, September 23, 1995, p. 1192.

  103.Mary Ann Glendon, “What Happened at Beijing,” First Things 59 (January 1996), p. 30.

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

  105.Mary Ann Glendon, “What Happened at Beijing,” p. 30.

  106.See ibid. The full text of Professor Glendon’s opening statement is in OR [EWE], September 13, 1995, pp. 4–5.

  107.Author’s interview with Monsignor Peter Elliott, September 22, 1997.

  108.The Clinton administration was determined to avoid a direct conflict with the Holy See at Beijing, as there had been before and during the 1994 Cairo world population conference. The new U.S. strategy of working discreetly through other delegations to advance the administration’s right-to-abortion agenda may have been influenced by a set of cables from the U.S. Embassy to the Holy See to the Department of State in Washington in June 1995. The cable described the “skill and tenacity” of Vatican diplomats at Cairo and the “public affairs virtuosity” of Joaquín Navarro-Valls. The Vatican, according to one cable, had “used the media shrewdly to advertise its views” on the impending Beijing conference, and it was likely, the cable concluded, that the Holy See would play as assertive a role in Beijing as it had in Cairo. [Messages 166/95, 167/95, 172/95, 187/95, and 200/95 to the Secretary of State from Embassy Vatican.]

  109.Memorandum to the author from Mary Ann Glendon, October 20, 1998.

  110.See Mary Ann Glendon, “What Happened at Beijing,” for a more detailed analysis of the EU coalition’s proposals.

  111.Author’s interview with Mary Ann Glendon, September 6, 1998.

  112.The press release read as follows:

  After five days of negotiations at the Fourth World Conference on Women, the Holy See delegation has expressed its concern that a minority coalition is vigorously blocking efforts to bring the Beijing draft Declaration and Program of Action into conformity with the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other basic human rights documents. The European Union figures prominently in this group that is impeding consensus.

  Pointing out that the conference participants have no authority to undermine the pillars of the human rights tradition, Spokesperson Dr. Joaquín Navarro-Valls cited five respects in which the positions of such delegations are at odds with foundational human rights documents and principles. He [also] criticized the delegations’ selective use of human rights language.1. Where the Universal Declaration provides that “recognition of their inherent dignity” and equal rights of all human beings is the very “foundation of freedom, justice, and peace,” a determined coalition of Beijing negotiators is making vigorous efforts to remove all references to human dignity from the Beijing draft.2. The Universal Declaration makes marriage a fundamental right and provides that “the family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State.” At Beijing, the draft document casts marriage and the family negatively as impediments to women’s self-realization (e.g., as associated with violence). Several negotiators, moreover, are pressing to change “family” to the politically correct and ambiguous word “families”—which lends itself to the interpretation that any group of unrelated people may call itself a family.3. The Universal Declaration provides that “Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience, and religion… [including] freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.” At Beijing, an active coalition has aggressively sought to remove all references to religion, morals, ethics, and
spirituality, except where religion is portrayed negatively (e.g., as associated with intolerance or extremism).4. The Universal Declaration provides that “Motherhood and childhood are entitled to special care and protection.” Beijing negotiators have quashed references to motherhood except where it appears in a negative light.5. The Universal Declaration and the Convention on the Rights of the Child make special provision for parents’ rights and responsibilities concerning the education and upbringing of their children. Beijing negotiators are attempting to eliminate all recognition of parental rights and responsibilities from key sections of the draft—even rejecting direct quotations from the Convention on the Rights of the Child.

  The Holy See delegation, in calling attention to these surprising positions, expressed puzzlement about the stances of these negotiators—in view of the fact that most of their own national constitutions mirror the above-cited provisions of the international human rights documents. Surely the provisions of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights should not be so casually brushed aside, he said. [Copy provided to the author by Professor Mary Ann Glendon.]

  113.Author’s interviews with Joaquín Navarro-Valls, December 13, 1997, and Mary Ann Glendon, September 6, 1998.

  114.Mary Ann Glendon, closing statement at the Fourth World Conference on Women, OR [EWE], September 20, 1995, p. 4.

  A full set of Holy See texts and documents relating to the Fourth World Conference on Women may be found in Serving the Human Family: The Holy See at the Major United Nations Conferences, ed. Carl J. Marucci (New York: Path to Peace Foundation, 1997), pp. 415–548.

  115.Glendon believed there were some intriguing, unresolved questions about the way the conference had played itself out: “What deals did the affluent nations make with their client states? Why did the EU caucus champion an agenda so far removed from the urgent concerns of most of the world’s women? Why did delegates from countries with strong family protection provisions in their constitutions (e.g., Germany, Ireland, Italy) not break ranks with the EU when it attacked the spirit of those provisions? Why were the conference documents so skewed from the beginning? Who paid for the thousands of lobbyists… whose main interest was not in women’s needs and rights, but in controlling women’s fertility?” [Mary Ann Glendon, “What Happened at Beijing,” p. 35.] The lack of press interest in such questions post-conference was telling.

  116.See Robert D. Kaplan, The Ends of the Earth: From Togo to Turkmenistan, from Iran to Cambodia, a Journey to the Frontiers of Anarchy (New York: Vintage Books, 1997), and Paul Johnson, “Wanted: A New Imperialism,” National Review, December 14, 1992.

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

  The signing of Ecclesia in Africa was, Cardinal Arinze believed, another moment in which John Paul was helping new Christians understand that they are as much a part of the Church as Christians who forebears were evangelized in the first millennium. When John Paul came to Nigeria in 1982, Arinze recalled, a local priest had remarked, almost with a sense of wonder, “The Pope is here today, we are the center of the Church today.” John Paul’s presence had helped this priest and his people to realize in the concrete, Arinze said, that “the Church is not something over there, in the Vatican, the Church is us, including the Africans… and when he leaves, he leaves people with the experience that we are the Church, all of us, we belong, we count.”

  118.John Paul II, Ecclesia in Africa, 62, in OR [EWE], September 20, 1995.

  119.Ibid., 64, with the Pope directly quoting Propositions 35–37 approved by the Synod for Africa.

  120.Author’s interview with Cardinal Francis Arinze, December 14, 1996.

  121.“Two Rwandan Priests Receive Death Penalty,” National Catholic Register, April 26–May 2, 1998.

  122.John Paul II, homily at the beatification of Father Cyprian Michael Iwene Tansi, OR [EWE], March 25, 1998, pp. 1–2 [emphases in original].

  123.James Rupert, “Nigerians Throng to Papal Mass,” Washington Post, March 23, 1998, p. A14.

  124.Author’s interview with Joaquín Navarro-Valls, March 6, 1996.

  125.Some things in Nicaragua hadn’t changed. Miguel d’Escoto remained a militant Sandinista, and Ernesto Cardenal was still suspended from functioning as a priest. Fernando Cardenal, however, had returned to the Jesuits after disengaging himself from Sandinista politics. There were even opportunities for a bit of banter between old foes. Several months after the Pope’s 1996 visit, Cardinal Miguel Obando Bravo, whose anti-Sandinista resistance had been vindicated by the voters, ran into former Commandante Tomas Borgé, once the hardest of Sandinista hard-liners. Obando had founded Redemptoris Mater [Mother of the Redeemer] University, a new Catholic institution, in a building Borgé had once used as the communications center of his internal security network. When Borgé met the cardinal in the headquarters the commandante had once rebuilt, he said a bit ruefully, “You never know who you’ll be working for.” Obando said that was right, “but I also worked for you: you occupied my offices, our universities, our vehicles, our publishing companies.” Borgé had to laugh. [Author’s interview with Cardinal Miguel Obando Bravo, SDB, November 24, 1997.]

  126.“Holy Father’s Inflight Press Interview,” OR [EWE], February 14, 1996, p. 7; author’s interview with Monsignor Vincenzo Paglia, March 25, 1997.

  127.John Paul II, “Address to the Fiftieth General Assembly of the United Nations Organization,” 1–2 [emphasis in original; hereinafter, John Paul II, UN-II].

  128.Ibid., 9 [emphasis in original].

  129.Ibid., 9–10, 12.

  130.Ibid., 16 [emphases in original].

  131.Ibid.

  132.Ibid., 17.

  133.Ibid., 18 [emphasis in original].

  134.“The Pope in Newark: Vespers at Sacred Heart Cathedral,” OR [EWE], October 11, 1995, p. 2.

  135.See “The Pope in Brooklyn: Mass at Aqueduct Racecourse,” in ibid., pp. 4–5.

  136.Robert D. McFadden, “125,000 Join Pope at Mass in Central Park ‘Basilica,’” New York Times, October 8, 1995.

  137.“Holy Father Celebrates Mass in New York,” in ibid., pp. 1, 7 [emphasis in original].

  138.This was a formulation first coined by England’s great historian of liberty, Lord Acton, and frequently cited by the American Jesuit John Courtney Murray, one of the architects, along with Karol Wojtyła, of Vatican II’s Declaration on Religious Freedom. [“The Pope in Baltimore: Mass at Camden Yards,” in ibid., pp. 11, 13.]

  139.“The Pope in Baltimore: Visit to the Cathedral,” in ibid., p. 13 [emphasis in original].

  140.Paul Gigot, “Pope Offers Cure for Those O.J. Blues,” Wall Street Journal, October 6, 1995.

  141.“‘The Moral Structure of Freedom,’” Wall Street Journal, October 6, 1995 [emphasis in original].

  The New York Times’s Peter Steinfels dug into one of the mysteries of the Pope’s UN address, a reference to the fifteenth-century Cracovian academic, Paweł Włodkowic, whom Steinfels rightly saw as a crucial historic figure in John Paul’s understanding of religious freedom because of his rejection of forced conversion at the Council of Constance. The reference, Steinfels suggested, was a subtle reminder to the fifty-year-old UN that the Catholic Church, and particularly the Church in east central Europe, had been wrestling with questions of religious freedom, ethnicity, ethnic cleansing, and so forth for a very long time. The Pope’s interest in Paweł Włodkowic, whom he had cited in numerous addresses during the pontificate, also had personal dimensions: Włodkowic’s thought was the academic specialty of Dr. Ludwig Ehrlich, a professor of international law, who was the father of Sister Emilia Ehrlich, OSU (John Paul’s English tutor and the manager of his personal Vatican library), and an acquaintance of Cardinal Wojtyła’s in Kraków. [See Peter Steinfels, “Beliefs,” New York Times, October 14, 1995; author’s interview with Sister Emilia Ehrlich, OSU, March 21, 1997.]

  142.“‘We Must Not Be Afraid of Man,’” Baltimore Sun, October 10, 1995.

  For a review of the p
ress coverage of the 1995 papal pilgrimage to the U.S., see James Martin, “The Pope and the Media,” America, October 28, 1995, pp. 24–25.

  143.“TWA Papal Charter Gets Seal of Approval,” USA Today, October 10, 1995, p. 8B.

  144.The texts are in OR [EWE], October 18, 1995, October 25, 1995, and November 8, 1995.

  145.See OR [EWE], November 15, 1995, p. 1.

  146.John Paul II, Apostolic Letter for the fourth centenary of the Union of Brest, OR [EWE], November 22, 1995, pp. 6–8.

  147.“Closing Mass of Synod for Lebanon,” OR December 20/27, 1995, p. 3.

  148.See “Message of the Special Synod for Lebanon,” in ibid., p. 11; the Synod was citing John Paul II’s January 1991 address to the diplomatic corps accredited to the Holy See.

  149.See “Appeals and Announcements,” in “General Index for 1995,” OR [EWE], December 20–27, 1995, p. 15.

  150.See “Jean Paul II souffirait de la maladie de Parkinson,” Le Monde, September 10, 1996, p. 3.

  151.Author’s interview with Joaquín Navarro-Valls, March 20, 1997.

  152.Ibid.; author’s interview with Anna Karoń-Ostrowska, April 8, 1997.

  153.This reticence was European as well as curial, and paralleled the reticence displayed during the last illness of French President François Mitterand. But the Church, a universal institution, cannot be managed by local standards exclusively, especially when a prior precedent of transparency-through-consultation had been set.

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

  155.On the pre-Synod process, see “Editor’s Introduction to Vita Consecrata,” in Miller, Exhortations, p. 617.

  156.John Paul II, Vita Consecrata, 3.1, in ibid.

  157.See ibid., 19.3.

  158.See ibid., 14.3.

  159.Ibid., 104.3 [emphasis in original].

  160.See ibid., 23.2–3.

  161.See ibid., 34.2.

  162.See ibid., 91.1–2.