Lessons in Hope

by George Weigel

  These confusions and misperceptions came to a head in the period immediately preceding the invasion of Iraq in March 2003 by an international coalition led by the United States and Great Britain. January, February, and March 2003 will not, I think, be remembered as high points of modern Vatican diplomacy. The Vatican “foreign minister,” Archbishop Jean-Louis Tauran, so helpful to me in preparing Witness to Hope, said time and again that the world must vindicate the “force of law, not the law of force”—a trope that ignored the hard facts that law is never self-vindicating and that the man who created the Iraq crisis, Saddam Hussein, was an international outlaw by any standard. Tauran and others also kept using, and deprecating, the term preventive war, as if military action in response to an imminent threat was never admissible in just war thinking—which was surely not the conviction in the classic just war tradition. Cardinal Angelo Sodano, the secretary of state, admitted in late January that the term preventive war was “ambiguous”; but he stunned me, and others, by warning against “getting bogged down in the question of whether or not the war [i.e., a possible attack on Iraq to enforce UN resolutions] is moral.” Pragmatic considerations, in the cardinal’s view, were of more consequence than ethical analysis.

  Amid this cacophony, I thought the best thing I could do—in addition to bringing whatever insight I might have to the US debate—was to support Ambassador Nicholson in his efforts to keep Vatican officials and the relevant officials in Washington in open and serious conversation with each other. The problems on this front became intolerably severe in early February 2003, in the immediate aftermath of Secretary of State Colin Powell’s February 5 speech to the UN Security Council. The voluble Archbishop Renato Martino had left the UN to become President of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, from which perch he continued to opine on UN affairs. Thus the day after Secretary Powell’s speech, Martino said in a Reuters interview that he found Powell “vague and unconvincing” and wondered “why those who want to make war do not take into account the serious consequences”—before admitting that he hadn’t read the speech.

  This was beyond the pale, so I wrote a two-page letter to Bishop Dziwisz, which he received on February 7. It was unacceptable, I said, for a senior Vatican official to accuse an American secretary of state, not least one “whose long desire for a non-military resolution of the conflict with Iraq is a matter of public record,” of duplicity and to do so on the basis of impressions. I then addressed Martino’s suggestion that moral frivolity was the order of the day in Washington, quoting Martino on “those who want to make war” being obtuse about “the serious consequences.” This was verging on slander, I wrote, for it assumed a level of recklessness and moral blindness that was deeply offensive. It also contradicted the Pope’s lifelong insistence on the moral responsibility of the laity.

  Archbishop Martino was noticeably less noisy in the weeks immediately following, although he did return to form on St. Patrick’s Day, comparing George W. Bush to the Pharaoh of the Exodus. I wrote Joaquín Navarro, saying that I understood there was little he could do but asking whether he didn’t think that “calmer language” could be found to express the Holy See’s concerns. He admitted that “it is indeed a difficult moment… for everyone.”

  With the first phase of the war winding down, I had a long conversation on May 21 with Archbishop Martino’s replacement at the UN, Archbishop Celestino Migliore, who would become a friend in the years ahead. Neither of us was interested in revisiting the arguments over the deposition of Saddam Hussein. Our common concern was the poverty of thought in Catholic circles that was evident in the debate over the Iraq War, and we explored what we might try to do about that together. Then Mount Martino erupted again, and the President of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace announced at the Gregorian University that “freedom and the restoration of law have never been achieved by force or war.” I wrote Migliore that this struck me as a curious argument for an Italian of Martino’s generation to make, “freedom” and “law” having been restored to Italy by Allied troops during World War II. “This is precisely the kind of gross exaggeration,” I wrote, “that has many friends of the Holy See wondering just what is going on.” Why did Martino, in order to defend the notion of the rule of law in international affairs, “feel it necessary to make statements that have no foundation in reality?”

  At my invitation, Archbishop Migliore offered a thoughtful public response to the twenty-sixth Thomas Merton Lecture, which I delivered at Columbia University in October 2003 and which was later published in First Things under the title “World Order: What Catholics Forgot.” In April 2004, with help from Archbishop Migliore and Father Kevin Flannery, SJ, the Gregorian’s Dean of Philosophy, I organized an international conference in Rome on the Church and world affairs in the twenty-first century. In planning that conference, no one suggested that we invite the President of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, who by then had become Cardinal Martino.

  DARK NIGHT AND SILVER JUBILEE

  ROME, OCTOBER 2003

  THE SUMMER OF 2003 WAS THE LAST OF THE “DARK NIGHTS OF THE soul” that recur in the life of a spiritual Carmelite like John Paul II. The weather was infernally hot, even at Castel Gandolfo. The Pope had been promised an operation to relieve the pain in his arthritic knees, but the doctors decided that, given the Parkinson’s disease, they couldn’t risk putting their patient under general anesthesia, so the operation was called off and the pain continued. The “new springtime of the human spirit” for which John Paul had hoped in 1995 seemed to drift farther beyond his (or anyone else’s) reach: even as the tempo of military operations slowed in Iraq, the war in Afghanistan continued and the difficulties of the transition to a normal society in Iraq intensified.

  In late August, I received an e-mail inviting me to participate in Polish public television’s October commemoration of John Paul II’s silver jubilee, to be anchored from the Vatican. As the e-mail was somewhat garbled and I wasn’t sure how seriously to take it, I faxed Bishop Dziwisz and asked his advice. He quickly replied that “it would be appreciated” if I participated in the program: a polite way of saying “Get over here.” So I flew to Rome only to be shocked and saddened by the evident pain in which the Pope was living, when we met briefly in the Sala Clementina before the program went on-air.

  Several other events were folded into the weeks surrounding the twenty-fifth anniversary of John Paul II’s election, which was formally marked at a Mass in St. Peter’s Square on Thursday evening, October 16. The Pope spoke movingly of having “experienced the divine mercy in a particular way” on the day of his election, as he trembled at the thought of the responsibility that would be his. Three days later, on October 19, Mother Teresa of Calcutta was beatified at another Mass in the Square. The Mass featured one of the more bizarre innovations of Master of Pontifical Liturgical Ceremonies Piero Marini: during the Great Amen, what appeared to be smudge pots were ignited in a variation of the Hindu arti ceremony, in which wicks soaked in ghee are offered to one or more deities—in this case, presumably one. But Marini’s curious adaptations of the Roman Rite were of less concern to me than the fact that the Pope was having great difficulty breathing: at one point, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, one of the principal concelebrants, quietly took over the audible recitation of the Eucharistic Prayer when John Paul was out of breath.

  John Paul II’s last consistory took place on October 21 and included several men whom I had come to know: above all, George Pell, but also Jean-Louis Tauran and Marc Ouellet. With the consistory filling out the College of Cardinals for the next conclave, and given the Pope’s obvious physical difficulties, Rome was rife with papal election rumor mongering, most of it nonsensical but some of it amusingly implausible. I did some NBC work during the anniversary Mass and the consistory with my fellow survivor of the tottering camera platform in Toronto, Keith Miller. Among other things, that gave me the opportunity to quash the more lurid tales swirling through Rome while discussing th
e nature of sanctity in the modern world, which Mother Teresa embodied in a singular way.

  President Bush invited me to be part of the official US delegation at the Pope’s silver jubilee, but I responded that, as I would be working with NBC, it was best that I decline so as not to get wires crossed. Jim and Suzanne Nicholson nonetheless invited Joan (who came for the beatification of the great woman her parents had helped in Calcutta) and me to the buffet dinner they hosted for the US delegation on October 18. Everyone at Villa Richardson that night was deeply concerned about John Paul’s health, and as I hadn’t had an opportunity to see him yet, beyond that brief encounter in the Sala Clementina, I couldn’t do more than suggest that he would soldier on. We were, it seemed, rapidly approaching the end of an epoch.

  T. S. ELIOT AND A GOOD STORY RUINED

  ROME, DECEMBER 2003

  IN EARLY NOVEMBER 2003, ARCHBISHOP JAMES HARVEY (AS HE HAD been since late September) told me that Archbishop Dziwisz (who was bumped up a rank at the same time) was asking whether I was still in Rome and saying that the Pope was sorry he’d missed me in the crush of the papal jubilee, the Mother Teresa beatification, and the consistory. This was another signal to catch a plane, so I came to Rome for a week in mid-December, with Dziwisz inviting me to dinner on Monday evening, December 15.

  When I arrived at the Bronze Doors the Swiss Guard at the desk called upstairs and asked for Dziwisz; he wasn’t immediately available, so the guardsman asked for Msgr. Mokrzycki, who was also not to be found; he then asked for one of the household nuns, who said, “I’m not expecting anyone for dinner.” At which I smiled and said, “Maybe she isn’t, but they are.” After a few minutes it got sorted out and I was directed to the family elevator in the Cortile Sesto Quinto. Archbishop (since October 4) Ryłko arrived at the same time, so we went up to the papal apartment together. As if to indicate that no damage had been done by the forthright exchange of views before the invasion of Iraq, the banter started immediately when Archbishop Dziwisz came in and I observed, by way of congratulation, “So, we now have two archbishops.” Yes, Dziwisz said, “we have two archbishops but you are niente [nothing].” “Not yet,” I replied. Dziwisz then gave me a newly published volume of John Paul’s major philosophical works, Karol Wojtyła: Metafisica della Persona (The Metaphysics of the Person) before taking Ryłko and me into the dining room, where the Pope was already seated at his place and seemed happy to see me.

  John Paul looked much better than he had in October; his face wasn’t frozen as it had been then, his color was good, he spoke easily and swiftly in Polish, and his breathing difficulties were, for the moment, resolved. A letter from Joan, asking prayers for a sick friend, was by his plate and the first thing John Paul said was that he’d offer Mass for her the following day.

  As had become customary over the past three years, we spoke briefly about the various language editions of Witness to Hope; the Pope seemed particularly interested in reactions to the German edition and everyone was grateful that the redoubtable Bishop Joseph Zen in Hong Kong had agreed to get a Chinese edition done. It was a shock to learn that the publishers of the different editions hadn’t sent copies to the papal apartment, so I promised to put a box together and send everything to Archbishop Dziwisz as soon as I got home.

  Then we began discussing John Paul’s new poem, Roman Triptych, which had been published in September. I asked the Pope whether he would write any more poems and got a very emphatic response: “No, è finito!” (No, that’s over!)—at which Dziwisz muttered, with a slight roll of his eyes, “Per oggi…” (For today…). I then told John Paul that he’d “ruined a good story,” meaning the tale of his having broken his pen when he finished writing what was assumed to be his last poem, “Stanisław.” That got me an expressive papal shrug and whatever sort of a wink John Paul could still make.

  The Pope then asked about the family and I mentioned that Gwyneth would be married the following August. That set off a round of banter among John Paul, Dziwisz, and Ryłko, asking whether “Professor Weigel was ready to be a nonno [grandfather],” to which I replied, “Not quite yet.”

  My Christmas gift was T. S. Eliot’s Collected Poems, 1909–1962, and when the Pope unwrapped it and read the title, the old actor immediately said, “Eliot: Murder in the Cathedral”—which, Ryłko noted, had once been performed at Wawel Cathedral, the climactic scene being staged in the sanctuary. When Ryłko asked whether my bishop, the globe-trotting Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, was in good health and I replied that “I really don’t know; we don’t see him in Washington all that much,” knowing looks went around the table. Saddam Hussein had been captured the day before and Dziwisz said something about how awful he looked; I suggested that’s what you look like when you’ve murdered thousands of people, which got expressive grunts from the entire company but no further discussion.

  At 8:30 the Pope, looking tired, announced “Basta!” (Enough!), so after saying grace I went around the table to say good night, going down on one knee as the Pope was still in his chair. His face was far more expressive than in October and he held my hand for a long time, looking deeply into my eyes. Twice, he asked to be remembered to Joan and the children, which I assured him I would.

  I walked over to Archbishop Harvey’s apartment and said that, while I admired the great witness John Paul was giving through his suffering, “I could have wished for a different ending.” To which the Prefect of the Papal Household replied, “But isn’t that another sign of his greatness? That he’s willing to submit himself to public humiliation daily out of dedication to the mission?”

  “I PROVED THEM WRONG!”

  ROME, DECEMBER 2004

  ALTHOUGH I DIDN’T SEE JOHN PAUL II AGAIN FOR A FULL YEAR, the first eleven months of 2004 were full of events that grew out of Witness to Hope and my subsequent work as the “witness to the witness.” On two occasions, at Princeton in February and at a Frassati Society meeting in Indianapolis in September, I spoke about the pontificate and the Pope’s hope for the New Evangelization to large audiences of young adults. Both were impressive in their enthusiasm, and the questions raised at Princeton were so striking that I wrote John Paul about them. In May I gave the fourth annual Tyburn Lecture, on Catholic social doctrine as shaped by the magisterium of John Paul II; the lecture was held at London’s Tyburn Convent, a cloistered Benedictine house of perpetual Eucharistic adoration that houses a memorial to the Catholic martyrs of the Reformation in the UK. In July, after the Kraków summer seminar, I climbed up to Rusinowa Polana in the Tatras with Piotr and Teresa Malecki, replicating another favorite Karol Wojtyła trek. Over pierogi in a wooden-hut restaurant at the high point of a scenic mountain meadow, we signed a postcard for the Pope, and I added “Środowisko honoris causa” in parentheses under my signature; Piotr and Teresa later told me John Paul had found my honorary membership in the group appropriate.

  There were two family occasions in those months in which John Paul participated, if at a distance. On August 14, my older daughter, Gwyneth, married Robert Susil; the Pope sent an autografo, a personally signed blessing, for the occasion. Then on October 19, my father died after a rapid descent into dementia. On October 20, I wrote John Paul, who was always eager to know what was going on in the lives of others and with whom I felt compelled to share the story of my father’s last hours. I told the Pope that my father had died the night before, on the Memorial of the North American Martyrs; that I read the gospel accounts of the Resurrection to him a few hours before he died; and that my brother had been with Dad at the very end, holding his hand and praying him home to the Lord. Two days later, when I returned home from the Vigil service, I found a fax from the nunciature in Washington with a message from John Paul for all who would attend the Mass of Christian Burial at the Cathedral of Mary Our Queen in Baltimore the next day:

  I was deeply saddened to learn of the death of your father, George Shillow Weigel, and I assure you of my prayers for you and your family during this difficult time. I join you and all th
ose present at the Mass of Christian Burial in commending the soul of this husband and father to the merciful love of our Savior, Jesus Christ. To all who mourn George in hope of the Resurrection, I cordially impart my apostolic blessing as a pledge of peace and strength in the Lord.

  Ioannes Paulus PP. II

  It was a thoughtful gesture from a man who knew something about fathers and sons.

  I flew to Rome on December 7 to give a lecture at the Gregorian University that had been postponed because of my father’s death, and to see John Paul II at what had become our customary pre-Christmas dinner.

  From my tour of the papal apartment in 1997 I knew that John Paul II liked large coffee-table books of photographs, so I brought him a large photo album of the national parks of the United States for a Christmas present. When I came to the Vatican for dinner with the Pope on December 15, Archbishop Dziwisz saw me into the dining room with Archbishop Ryłko, and then disappeared on an undisclosed mission. After we shook hands, the Pope, his pastor’s memory sharp as ever, asked, “How is your mother?” I was touched and amazed. It had been almost two months since my father’s death and the Pope had many things on his mind, including his own debilitating fragility; yet the first thing he wanted to know was how Mom was doing. I thanked him for the message to the funeral Mass and said that my mother would be very glad to hear at Christmas that he’d asked for her.

  I then brought the wrapped gift to John Paul, along with a Christmas card from my family. He insisted on opening both right away, and after the wrapping paper was removed the Pope started looking through the book. Finding Rocky Mountain National Park in the table of contents, he turned to those pages, got that look in his eye, and then showed there was still fire and humor inside his increasingly frail body: “Denver. Hmm. World Youth Day, 1993. Hmm. The bishops of the United States said it couldn’t be done. I proved them wrong!”—the last sentence punctuated by pounding his index finger onto a photo of the Rockies. He then opened the Christmas card, noted that there was a new name—my son-in-law Rob Susil’s—and asked Msgr. Mokrzycki for a pen. Laboriously, for the better part of two minutes, he wrote on the card, “God bless all your family! John Paul II.”