Vatican II and the Crisis of Humanism
JULY 4, 1958
Father Karol Wojtyła is named auxiliary bishop of Kraków by Pope Pius XII.
SEPTEMBER 28, 1958
Karol Wojtyła’s episcopal consecration.
JANUARY 25, 1959
Pope John XXIII announces the Second Vatican Council.
DECEMBER 24, 1959
Bishop Karol Wojtyła begins celebrating Christmas midnight Mass in an open field in Nowa Huta.
DECEMBER 30, 1959
Wojtyła submits an essay on the crisis of humanism to the papal commission preparing Vatican II.
JULY 16, 1962
Bishop Wojtyła is elected temporary administrator of the Archdiocese of Kraków.
OCTOBER 11, 1962
Vatican II opens.
NOVEMBER 7, 1962
Bishop Wojtyła addresses the Council on liturgical reform.
NOVEMBER 21, 1962
Wojtyła speaks during the Council debate on revelation.
JUNE 3, 1963
Pope John XXIII dies, and is succeeded on June 21 by Pope Paul VI.
FALL 1963
Bishop Wojtyła enters the Council debate on the Church as the “People of God.”
NOVEMBER 1963
“The Church,” Wojtyła’s poem-cycle on Vatican II, is published pseudonymously in Znak.
DECEMBER 5–15, 1963
Wojtyła visits the Holy Land.
DECEMBER 30, 1963
Karol Wojtyła named Archbishop of Kraków by Pope Paul VI.
MARCH 1964
Archbishop Wojtyła’s inaugural pastoral letter stresses lay responsibility.
SEPTEMBER 25, 1964
Wojtyła addresses Vatican II on religious freedom.
OCTOBER 8, 1964
Wojtyła speaks during the Council’s debate on the lay vocation.
OCTOBER 21, 1964
Archbishop Wojtyła addresses the Council on the Church’s dialogue with the modern world.
DECEMBER 8, 1964
Wojtyła makes one of many reports to Kraków on the Council at St. Mary’s Church.
JANUARY–APRIL 1965
Archbishop Wojtyła works in Ariccia and Rome on a subcommission re-drafting the Council document on “The Church in the Modern World.”
FEBRUARY 1965
Wojtyła writes on the Council and theologians in Tygodnik Powszechny.
APRIL 1965
Archbishop Wojtyła emphasizes viewing the Council “from inside” in another Tygodnik Powszechny article.
JUNE 1965
Wojtyła’s poem-cycle, “Holy Places,” published pseudonymously in Znak.
SEPTEMBER 22, 1965
Archbishop Wojtyła addresses the Council on the responsibilities of religious freedom.
SEPTEMBER 28, 1965
Wojtyła speaks at Vatican II on the Christian understanding of “the world” and the problem of modern atheism.
NOVEMBER 18, 1965
Letters of reconciliation exchanged by the Polish and German hierarchies.
1969
Wojtyła’s Person and Act is published by the Polish Theological Society.
In early August 1958, as his friends Stanisław and Danuta Rybicki awaited the birth of their first child, Father Karol Wojtyła began a two-week Środowisko kayaking trip on the River ?yne in northeastern Poland. Organized by “Admiral” Zdzisław Heydel, the flotilla of kayaks had traveled fifteen miles or so the first day. The vacationers then camped along the riverbank, played soccer, and talked around the campfire. Heydel had left behind in Kraków a detailed daily schedule, so that mail from children and friends who couldn’t join the trip could be forwarded to local post offices where the kayakers could pick it up. On August 5, which happened to be the day Stanisław Rybicki, Jr., was born, Wojtyła got a letter ordering him to report immediately to the Primate, Cardinal Wyszyński, in Warsaw.
They took off in two kayaks, Wujek alone in one, Zdzisław Heydel and Gabriel Turowski in another. Turowski, an immunologist, was known to his friends as “Gąpa” [dumbbell or dummy] because he would play dumb when State Security called him in for interrogation after his annual refusal to participate in May Day demonstrations. The three men pulled off the river at a spot along the road to Olsztynek, the nearest railroad station, and left the kayaks under a bridge. “Admiral” Heydel tried to flag down a passing car. A milk truck stopped, and Heydel said they’d pay for the gas if the driver got them to Olsztynek. Wujek climbed into the back and sat amid the milk containers. When they got to the station in Olsztynek he slipped into the men’s room, put on a cassock, and, as Turowski later put it, “left the men’s room a priest again.”
When Father Karol Wojtyła arrived in the Primate’s office, Cardinal Wyszyński informed him that, on July 4, Pope Pius XII had named him titular bishop of Ombi and auxiliary to Archbishop Baziak, apostolic administrator of the Archdiocese of Kraków. Wojtyła accepted the nomination and went straight to the Ursuline convent in the capital, where he knocked on the door and asked if he could come in to pray. The sisters didn’t know him, but his cassock was a sufficient passport. They led him to their chapel and left him alone. After some time, the nuns began to worry and quietly opened the door of the chapel to see what was happening. Wojtyła was prostrate on the floor in front of the tabernacle. Awestruck, the sisters left, thinking that perhaps he was a penitent. Some hours later they came back. The unknown priest was still prostrate before the Blessed Sacrament. It was late, and one of the nuns said, “Perhaps Father would like to come to supper…?” The stranger answered, “My train doesn’t leave for Kraków until after midnight. Please let me stay here. I have a lot to talk about with the Lord….”
Having settled matters with the Lord, Father Wojtyła went to talk things over with Archbishop Baziak, who presumably expected his new auxiliary bishop to remain in town. Wojtyła told the archbishop that he had to get back to the River ?yne to celebrate Sunday Mass for his friends. Heydel and Turowski met him on the road to Olsztynek, at the bridge where they had flagged down the truck, and they kayaked back to the campsite. His old friends, stunned by the news, wondered what they should call him. Don’t worry, he said, “Wujek will remain Wujek.”1
SUCCESSOR OF THE APOSTLES
And so Karol Wojtyła, at thirty-eight, found himself the youngest bishop in Poland.
Speculation about a “master plan” for Wojtyła devised by Cardinal Sapieha and executed by Archbishop Baziak strains credulity. The Church really didn’t work that way, and neither did the minds of Sapieha and Baziak. On the other hand, the Prince Cardinal held Father Karol Wojtyła in high regard, and it is certainly plausible to imagine Sapieha telling the exiled archbishop of Lwów about his esteem for the young man he had ordained and whose early ministry he had nurtured. Archbishop Baziak, for his part, must have been impressed by the young professor who, even as he shuttled between Kraków and the KUL philosophy department, continued to expand his local pastoral ministry. Wojtyła was now preaching regularly at the great red-brick Mariacki [St. Mary’s] Church that dominates Kraków’s Old Town market square. His St. Florian’s–based student chaplaincy continued to thrive. And he was conducting an extensive ministry with heath-care professionals, stressing on retreats and days of recollection that the renewal of the Church required the renewal of the laity. Eugeniusz Baziak, who had been through a lot in his life, had evidently come to appreciate the combination of intelligence, piety, pastoral zeal, and internal toughness that Father Karol Wojtyła represented. It also says something about Archbishop Baziak that this very formal, even stern, man was not put off by Wojtyła’s entirely different clerical style. Wojtyła’s openness may have struck others as alarmingly freewheeling. Eugeniusz Baziak, who could no more imagine himself kayaking with young couples than he could imagine flying to the moon, must have understood that Karol Wojtyła was a priest to the core.
Father Wojtyła may also have represented for Baziak exactly the kind of resistance to communism that
the archbishop, who had lived under house arrest for three years in the mid-1950s, thought appropriate in the aftermath of the 1956 Gomułka thaw. Though Wojtyła wasn’t agitating on street corners, his teaching and his pastoral work were helping create a generation of confident young Catholics who would embody an ongoing cultural resistance to Marxism—and, by extension, to the usurpation of the Polish state by the Polish United Workers’ Party. “The redemption of mankind,” Father Wojtyła had told a 1957 conference of Catholic physicians, means “assisting man to achieve the greatness he is meant to possess.” That was what communism claimed to do—to liberate humanity for greatness. Father Wojtyła was a magnetic teacher and evangelist who could meet that argument on its own ground and counter it with a more compelling humanism, the liberation of humanity through “union with God,” as he put it to the doctors. That was what the Church was for.2
After baptizing Stanisław Rybicki, Jr., on August 31, the bishop-elect attended his first meeting of the Polish episcopate at Częstochowa and made a five-day preordination retreat at the Benedictine monastery at Tyniec. There was a bit of a fuss about the ceremony. The bishop-elect wanted a liturgical “commentator” who would explain the lengthy, complex rite to the congregation as it unfolded; Archbishop Baziak refused this concession to liturgical renewal. So Wojtyła got hold of a translation of the Latin ritual and recruited a squadron of women who volunteered to hand-make booklets for those attending the service.3
On the feast of St. Wacław (St. Wenceslaus), September 28, 1958, Karol Józef Wojtyła processed into Wawel Cathedral to be consecrated a bishop, receiving the fullness of the priesthood and becoming a successor of Christ’s apostles, according to the Church’s theology. The cathedral was packed with Wojtyła’s friends, academic colleagues, and, of course, the members of his Środowisko, none of whom let the wet, overcast day dampen their spirits.
Seated on the archbishop’s cathedra, or throne, with Father Wojtyła standing before him, Archbishop Baziak began the ceremony by asking that the apostolic mandate, the Pope’s authorization for the new bishop’s consecration, be read. It was the last historic act of the nineteen-year pontificate of Pius XII, who died eleven days later. Baziak then examined the bishop-elect on his commitment to serving the Church. No one doubted his faith, of course, but it was the Church’s ancient practice that her ministers should profess their faith and their commitment publicly, in front of those they were called to serve and govern. Then, the consecration Mass began.
After the first Scripture reading, Father Wojtyła prostrated himself on the floor of the sanctuary while the choir sang the Litany of the Saints over him. At the end of the litany, Wojtyła knelt before Baziak, now seated on a faldstool before the high altar. Amid a deep silence, Archbishop Baziak, assisted by two other bishops, placed the open Book of the Gospels, the yoke of Christ, on Wojtyła’s bowed neck, then laid his hands upon Wojtyła’s head, as did the two co-consecrating bishops. The archbishop then prayed the consecration preface, asking God that the new bishop be sanctified by “the dew of the divine anointing.”
While one of the assisting chaplains bound Wojtyła’s head with a long white cloth, Baziak knelt before the altar and intoned the great hymn to the Holy Spirit, “Veni Creator Spiritus.” As the choir continued the anthem, Baziak, reseated on the faldstool, anointed Wojtyła with holy chrism, first making the sign of the cross on the crown of his head, then anointing the entire crown, while praying, “May thy head be anointed and consecrated by heavenly benediction in the pontifical order.” He then blessed Wojtyła three times, and after cleansing his hands of the chrism with bread crumbs, chanted the prayer of anointing, asking God that the new bishop “may be untiring in his solicitude, fervent in spirit; may he detest pride, cherish humility and truth, and never desert it, overcome by either flattery or fear.”
Baziak next anointed the new bishop’s hands and bound them with a white cloth. He bestowed upon Wojtyła the bishop’s pastoral staff, or crosier, and placed on his right hand a bishop’s ring, praying, “Receive the ring, the symbol of fidelity, in order that, adorned with unshakable faith, thou mayest keep inviolable the Spouse of God, His Holy Church.” Baziak then took the Book of the Gospels from Bishop Wojtyła’s neck and touching it to his bound hands, prayed, “Receive the Gospel, and go, preach to the people committed to thee, for God is powerful to increase His grace in thee, He Who liveth and reigneth, forever and ever.” The new bishop replied, “Amen,” and exchanged the kiss of peace with Archbishop Baziak and his co-consecrators.
After Bishop Karol Wojtyła had cleaned his hands, Mass continued with the proclamation of the Gospel and Archbishop Baziak’s sermon. As the offer-tory began, Bishop Wojtyła presented his consecrator with three gifts: two lighted candles, two small loaves of bread, and two small barrels of wine. The candles were carried by Zdzisław Heydel, the erstwhile kayaking “Admiral,” and Marian Wojtowicz, who later became the first priest in the community founded by Albert Chmielowski. The loaves of bread were presented by Stanisław Rybicki and, according to ancient Kraków custom, a representative of the bakers’ guild. The small barrels of wine were offered by Jerzy Ciesielski and Zbigniew Siłkowski, a friend of the new bishop’s from Wadowice.
At the end of Mass, Archbishop Baziak placed the twin-peaked miter on the head of the kneeling Bishop Wojtyła. Life then imitated art as sunlight burst through the clouds and the cathedral’s stained glass, covering the newly consecrated bishop in a warm glow. Baziak led Bishop Wojtyła to the faldstool, where he sat before his people with miter, crosier, and bishop’s ring as the archbishop and the co-consecrators intoned the Church’s ancient hymn of thanksgiving, the “Te Deum.” As the choir continued the hymn, Bishop Karol Wojtyła rose, walked through the cathedral, and blessed the congregation.
Perhaps it was at this point in the lengthy proceedings that one of Wojtyła’s fellow workers from the Solvay plant shouted out, “Lolek, don’t let anything get you down!” It was, according to reports, a sentiment “received with sympathy by the congregation and by the new bishop himself.”4
Bishop Wojtyła chose as the motto on his episcopal coat-of-arms the Latin phrase Totus Tuus [completely yours], an adaptation of St. Louis de Montfort’s prayer of dedication to the Virgin Mary, which he had first encountered during his nocturnal reading by the dim light of the Solvay chemical plant.
THE YOUNGEST BISHOP IN POLAND
Not everyone thought the appointment of Karol Wojtyła as bishop was a good idea. Professor Adam Vetulani of the Jagiellonian University complained about his “misery” with “cleric-scholars.” See what happens, he wrote a friend: “You educate…a docent and a ‘statesman’ emerges.” Toasting his young friend, whom he insisted on calling “Bishop Docent Karol Wojtyła,” at the post-consecration reception, the curmudgeonly professor could not resist asking “one thing only: may he have adequate strength and time to fulfill the obligations which he has earlier taken upon himself, and for which he has trained through strenuous work for many years.”5
Professor Vetulani need not have fretted. Bishop Wojtyła continued teaching at KUL, although he came to the campus less often. The doctoral seminar would sometimes meet for six hours at a time, to compensate for the less-frequent sessions, and lectures in his introductory course were taken over by some of his philosophical protégés. His upper-division “monographic lectures” continued until 1961.
In the first months of his episcopacy Wojtyła took on a host of new pastoral responsibilities. Always in demand as a guest preacher and retreat master, he now traveled even more extensively throughout the archdiocese, saying Mass, blessing buildings, ordaining subdeacons and deacons, confirming deaf-mute children, supervising meetings of various deaneries for Archbishop Baziak, preaching to days of recollection or special Masses for various groups of professionals, including doctors, lawyers, and intellectuals.6
Ecclesiastical administration has never been Karol Wojtyła’s understanding of his episcopal vocation. For him, the episcopate is
preeminently an office of preaching and teaching, and in the service of that apostolate in Kraków he was indefatigable. In March 1959, to take but one example, he conducted a day of recollection for the staff of Tygodnik Powszechny and preached at retreats for mining engineers, nurses, teachers, lawyers, and physicians. The pace eventually caught up with him. That same month he was diagnosed with mononucleosis, after a blood test that included a difficult biopsy of his bone marrow. The doctor apologized for the discomfort he had caused. The bishop sympathized with the doctor for having had to grind his way through a particularly hard bone.7
Wojtyła’s preaching and teaching in the period just before and after his consecration as a bishop developed themes of renewal that would soon become familiar throughout the Catholic world. At a colloquium for physicians in 1958, he stressed “God’s enormous confidence in the possibilities of man,” a confidence to which the Incarnation of the Son of God bore eloquent witness.8 Later that year, he told a day of recollection for young people that “prayer is the reaction to the mystery that the world carries within itself.” Without prayer we cut ourselves off from the depth-dimension of the world.9 In ?ódz, at a 1960 Lenten retreat for college teachers, Bishop Wojtyła taught that grace was “the very joy of existence” and that “the Church is not an organization of Christ, it is an organism of Christ.”10
His ecclesiastical status may have changed, but other things hadn’t—including the Polish regime’s determination to make life as difficult as possible for the student chaplaincy at the Jagiellonian University and for the archdiocesan health-care ministry. On October 11, 1959, Wojtyła was scheduled to preach at a Mass for the beginning of the academic year in St. Anne’s collegiate church. The regime forbade posting any announcements of the event, except for a small notice in the church vestibule. Yet the church was filled to overflowing, and several professors, including the redoubtable Adam Vetulani, defied the authorities by sitting in the chancel during the service. A few months later, in February 1960, Bishop Wojtyła visited a sanitarium for women run by the Albertine nuns on Zielna Street, meeting and blessing every patient. As a result of his visit, the Albertines noted primly in their diary, they had “difficulties” and “unpleasantness” with the authorities.11 In addition to these relatively minor confrontations, Bishop Wojtyła began, on December 24, 1959, an annual custom that would long be a burr under the communist saddle—Christmas midnight Mass in an open field in Nowa Huta, the so-called model workers’ town outside Kraków, the first town in Polish history deliberately built without a church. Given the freezing winter weather, he wrote some years later, a Christmas Mass for those who had no place else to go that night bore a “striking resemblance in external conditions” to another Christmas, almost 2,000 years before.12
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