Witness to Hope

by George Weigel

  Were the only alternatives, therefore, “stupid conservatism” or a deconstruction of the moral theology?

  The Polish theologians didn’t think so. The Kraków commission memorandum, which reflected the thinking of Cardinal Wojtyła and the moral analysis of Love and Responsibility, tried to develop a new framework for the Church’s classic position on conjugal morality and fertility regulation: a fully articulated, philosophically well-developed Christian humanism that believers and non-believers alike could engage.

  The starting point for moral argument, they proposed, was the human person, for human beings were the only creatures capable of “morality.” This human person, male or female, was not a disembodied self but a unity of body and spirit. My “self” is not here, and “my body” there. As a free moral actor, I am a unity of body and spirit. Thinking about the moral life has to be thinking within that unity, taking account of both dimensions of the human person.

  The Kraków theologians went on to argue that nature had inscribed what might be called a moral language and grammar in the sexual structure of the human body. That moral language and grammar could be discerned by human intelligence and respected by the human will. Morally appropriate acts respected that language and grammar in all its complexity, which included both the unitive and procreative dimensions of human sexuality: sexual intercourse as both an expression of love and the means for transmitting the gift of life. Any act that denied one of these dimensions violated the grammar of the act and necessarily, if unwittingly, reduced one’s spouse to an object of one’s pleasure. Marital chastity was a matter of mutual self-giving that transcended itself and achieved its truly human character by its openness to the possibility of new life.

  This openness had to be lived responsibly. “The number of children called into existence cannot be left to chance,” according to the Kraków memorandum, but must be decided “in a dialogue of love between husband and wife.” Fertility regulation, in fulfillment of the “duty” to plan one’s family, must therefore be done through a method that conformed to human dignity, recognized the “parity between men and women,” and involved the “cooperation” of the spouses. By placing the entire burden on the woman, chemical and mechanical means of fertility regulation like the contraceptive pill and the intra-uterine device violated these criteria. Contrary to the claims of the sexual revolution, such artificial means of contraception freed men for hedonistic behavior while violating the biological integrity of women with invasive and potentially harmful tools. Family planning by observing nature’s biological rhythms was the only method of fertility regulation that respected the dignity and equality of the spouses as persons.

  The Kraków theologians openly admitted that living marital chastity this way involved real sacrifice, a “great ascetic effort [and] the mastery of self.” Education in the virtue of chastity must begin with “respect for others, respect for the body and [for] the realities of sex.” Young people had to be taught “the equality of right between man and woman” as the foundation of “mutual responsibility.” Pastors who shied away from programs aimed at educating couples in fertility regulation through natural biological rhythms were derelict in their duties, and were complicit in the “grand confusion of ideas” that surrounded sexuality in the modern world. Moreover, the memorandum continued, the pastor did not fulfill his responsibilities as a moral teacher by inveighing against promiscuity. On the contrary, no one could preach or teach persuasively on this subject unless the entire question was put in the humanistic context necessary for the Church’s teaching to ring true. It was imperative that pastors work with laypeople in this field, for “well-instructed Christian couples” were better positioned to help other couples live chaste lives of sexual love.

  Elements of the Kraków commission’s memorandum may be found in Humanae Vitae, but Father Bardecki’s suggestion that sixty percent of the encyclical reflected the approach devised by the Polish theologians and Cardinal Wojtyła claims too much.73 Humanae Vitae did make references to Christian personalism, to the good of sexual love, and to the duty of responsibly planning one’s family.74 But the encyclical did not adopt in full the rich personalist context suggested by the Kraków commission. Absent this context, with its emphasis on human dignity and on the equality of spouses in leading sexually responsible lives, Humanae Vitae’s sharp focus on sexual acts opened it to the charge of legalism, “biologism,” and pastoral insensitivity, and left the Church vulnerable to the accusation that it had still not freed itself of the shadow of Manichaeism and its deprecation of sexuality.

  Although the charge would likely have been made in any case, the encyclical’s failure to adopt the full Kraków context made this indictment more difficult to counter. The Kraków proposal came to the same conclusion as the encyclical on the specific question of the legitimate means of fertility regulation. Kraków, however, offered a more compelling explanation of why this position was better fitted to the dignity of the human person, and particularly to the dignity of women.

  The timing of Humanae Vitae could not have been worse; 1968, a year of revolutionary enthusiasms, was not the moment for calm, measured reflection on anything. It is doubtful whether any reiteration of the classic Catholic position on marital chastity, no matter how persuasively argued, could have been heard in such circumstances. On the other hand, one has to ask why a position that defended “natural” means of fertility regulation was deemed impossibly antiquarian at precisely the moment when “natural” was becoming one of the sacred words in the developed world, especially with regard to ecological consciousness. The answer is obviously complex, but it surely has something to do with whether Humanae Vitae provided an adequately personalistic framework in which to engage its teaching.

  The Kraków memorandum also demonstrated that the marital ethic it proposed was not a matter of Catholic special pleading (still less Polish Catholic special pleading); its moral claims could be debated by reasonable people, irrespective of their religious convictions.75 Humanae Vitae did not demonstrate this adequately. The encyclical was a step beyond the “stupid conservatism” that had worried some participants in the Kraków Commission, but it was not enough of a step. Kraków had dealt with the fact that changing cultural conditions required articulating a new context for classic moral principles. Rome remained rather tone-deaf to the question of context. The result was that the principles were dismissed as pre-modern, or just irrational.

  The failure to explicate a personalist context for the Catholic sexual ethic, compounded by the politicization of the post–Humanae Vitae debate in the Church, had serious ramifications for the Church’s effort to articulate a compelling Christian humanism in the modern world. In its first major post–Vatican II confrontation with the sexual revolution—the most potent manifestation of the notion of freedom as personal autonomy—the Church had been put squarely on the defensive. Had the Kraków commission’s memorandum shaped the argumentation of Humanae Vitae more decisively, a more intelligent and sensitive debate might have ensued.

  A CARDINAL IN CONVERSATION

  Henry Kissinger believes it to be “an illusion…that leaders gain in profundity while they gain experience.” High office, because of its endless demands on the officeholder, is an occasion to spend down rather than to build up intellectual capital.76 Karol Wojtyła has been an exception to the Kissinger Rule since he became vicar capitular of the Archdiocese of Kraków at forty-two—in part, because he has insisted on setting time aside for serious intellectual work. During the years of his episcopate, those two hours each day, writing in the solitude of his chapel, produced numerous philosophical essays and three books, as well as a stream of pastoral letters, sermons, poems, and a play. In addition, the cardinal remained a working intellectual by continuing to hold the Chair of Ethics at the Catholic University of Lublin, although he met students on a reduced schedule.

  The archbishop of Kraków also defied the Kissinger Rule because he was a cardinal in constant conversation.

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bsp; The discussion groups he had formed as a young priest continued to meet regularly during his years as archbishop. Jerzy Janik remained the cardinal’s connection to physicists and others in the hard sciences, while Jerzy Ciesielski and Stanisław Rybicki organized his contacts with engineers. Until the end of his Kraków years he met at least four or five times per year with both the scientists’ and engineers’ groups, usually for an entire evening at which a paper would be read and discussed.

  Cardinal Wojtyła also nurtured an ongoing dialogue with historians, with topics often generated by the need for a deeper understanding of major national or local anniversaries. The millennium of Polish Christianity in 1966 was one occasion for a series of such discussions with historians, as was the 600th anniversary of the Jagiellonian University and the 900th anniversary of the pastoral work of St. Stanisław in Kraków.77

  And then there were, of course, the philosophers. In addition to his work with KUL students and faculty, Cardinal Wojtyła opened his home to philosophical conversation among thinkers of various schools of thought, serving on one occasion as a respondent to the venerable Roman Ingarden, who read a paper in German on the concept of responsibility.78 Franciszkańska, 3, also saw a steady stream of visiting artists, musicians, and writers from Poland and abroad. James Michener, a best-selling American writer, stopped by while working on his novel, Poland. Wojtyła later taped an interview for a television series Michener was helping produce. After forty minutes on camera, the cardinal surprised the author by asking, “How did I do? Can I land a job in Hollywood? I studied to be an actor as a young man, you know….”79

  The cardinal kept contact with his literary and theatrical roots in other ways. After the regime closed the Rhapsodic Theater for good in 1967—an action the archbishop protested to the Polish minister of culture, to no avail—Wojtyła helped Mieczysław Kotlarczyk get jobs teaching speech and dramatic theory at the seminary in Kraków and at KUL.80 In June 1974, Wojtyła hosted a two-day study session in his residence on Catholicism and Romanticism in the work of Zygmunt Krasiński. The problems addressed by “the most controversial of the great bards of Polish Romanticism,” he told the conferees, “have not lost their question marks in the contemporary world….”81 ThatKrasiński’s greatest work, The Undivine Comedy, had suggested that only a Christian revolution could address modernity’s discontents was not lost on the cardinal’s audience.

  Tygodnik Powszechny, Znak, and the circle of writers, poets, and intellectuals built around those two publications remained crucial conversation partners for Cardinal Wojtyła. The benefit, Jerzy Turowicz suggests, was mutual: “I have a right to say as his friend that Tygodnik Powszechny had an influence on him.”82 Wojtyła used the editors of the paper and the journal as sounding boards for reflecting out loud on Church affairs throughout Poland, the Church-state situation, and modern culture. His oversight of Tygodnik Powszechny and Znak was exemplary by their editors’ own standards. The archbishop met with the editors every other month to talk over mutual concerns. Later, as the demands on his time increased, these meetings became quarterly but remained real working sessions. The two staffs would come to Franciszkańska, 3, for Mass in the cardinal’s chapel, “followed by dinner and a long conversation…He listened, but preferred that you’d speak, and he’d take the floor at the end.”83 Not once in his sixteen years as vicar capitular and then archbishop did he ask that something not be printed in Tygodnik Powszechny. “There was no censorship,” according to editor Turowicz. “We may have asked his advice, but he never intervened on his own initiative” to alter the paper’s contents or editorial analysis.84

  There were arguments, but Wojtyła had the ability, not universal among senior prelates, to work happily with people with whom he did not always agree. During her years at Tygodnik Powszechny, the peppery Halina Bortnowska often criticized the more traditional “Wyszyński Church,” as she sometimes called it. Wojtyła was far more sympathetic to popular piety, but maintained his friendship with the outspoken young philosopher and writer, whom he asked to edit the revised edition of Love and Responsibility.85

  Then there was politics. The paper’s editors, especially Turowicz and Jacek Woźniakowski, didn’t agree with the position Wojtyła took at the beginning of his episcopate: that any involvement with local politics would impede his pastoral effectiveness, and that commentary on political matters should be the sole prerogative of Primate Wyszyński. Woźniakowski and others argued that ignoring such matters was impossible, that Wojtyła had to be informed if he was going to be effective, and that even if the newspapers were heavily censored, he should at least look at them to get the regime’s view of approved “news” and commentary. Wojtyła reluctantly agreed, and started reading the papers. Woźniakowski said he was “stupefied” at how quickly the archbishop, who had paid absolutely no attention to such things before, caught on, grasped the essentials, learned the arguments and the personalities—and then refused to spend excess time on digging into any more detail than was necessary.86 The paper’s editors were also the archbishop’s contacts with the literary world. Prior to his summer vacation, the cardinal asked Turowicz and his wife to recommend books for him to read while on holiday.

  On several occasions Wojtyła had to mediate between Tygodnik Powszechny and Cardinal Wyszyński. Although he always defended the paper’s independence, the cardinal tried to get his friends to see things from the Primate’s perspective. “This is a problem of disappointed love,” he told them during one discussion. Tygodnik Powszechny had vigorously defended Wyszyński in 1953 so “the Primate imagined that you would follow him in his every idea, and you didn’t; so he has lived through a period of disappointed love toward you.” It was, Woźniakowski recalled, the kind of frank analysis that would not have been forthcoming from other Polish clergy, in talking with lay people.87

  The regime’s continual harassment of the newspaper became enmeshed with the regime’s increasing loathing for Cardinal Wojtyła. The communists could not very well vent their displeasure directly on him, but his colleagues were not immune from retribution. In November 1977, the regime started an aggressive anti–Tygodnik Powszechny campaign, ostensibly because the paper had cut parts of a statement made by Polish party leader Edward Gierek after his meeting with Pope Paul VI. Gierek’s statement had been reprinted in full in all the party-controlled papers, and Tygodnik Powszechny’s editors, who had severe space problems, didn’t feel required to duplicate the coverage. They had also cut the Pope’s statement, which suggested to the editors that the real target of the regime’s animus was the paper’s protector, Cardinal Wojtyła. Confirming evidence appeared in a few weeks. After a Tygodnik Powszechny/Znak editors’ meeting with the cardinal on December 21, 1977, Father Andrzej Bardecki was walking home to his apartment when he was set upon by thugs who, if not members of the SB, were at least “inspired” by the SB. They beat him senseless. Cardinal Wojtyła rushed to the hospital the next morning and said, “You replaced me; you were beaten instead of me.”88

  Cardinal Wojtyła’s intellectual life was also fired by his continuing connection to KUL. As the 1970s wore on, his protégés, including Father Tadeusz Styczeń and Jerzy Gałkowski, began to assume more of the routine work of the Chair of Ethics and organized Wojtyła’s doctoral seminar, which came to Kraków to meet with the Cardinal Professor for two-day sessions. The cardinal paid the expenses of faculty and students alike from the scholarship fund he had set up anonymously at KUL with his modest professor’s salary.

  On December 16–17, 1970, the KUL Faculty of Philosophy sponsored a debate on Person and Act that became an intellectual donnybrook. Among Wojtyła’s faculty colleagues, Mieczysław Krąpiec, Jerzy Kalinowski, and Stanisław Kamiński were quite critical of the book. Even the first among the cardinal’s philosophical disciples, Tadeusz Styczeń, wasn’t sure whether Wojtyła’s proposal to bracket questions of philosophical methodology and concentrate exclusively on human moral action could be done.89 The cardinal gave an oral response to
his critics at the end of the conference. His more formal response was the essay, “The Person: Subject and Community,” which was published in 1976. There, he suggested that what he and his colleagues had been debating at KUL in 1970 (and ever since) was not a matter for philosophers only: “After twenty years of ideological debate in Poland, it has become clear that at the center of this debate is not cosmology or philosophy of nature but philosophical anthropology and ethics: the great and fundamental controversy about the human being.”90

  The cardinal’s friendships with KUL colleagues and students continued to mature in the 1970s. When Jerzy Gałkowski, Tadeusz Styczeń’s successor as Wojtyła’s teaching assistant, became engaged to Maria Braun, another former student of the cardinal’s, the two couldn’t imagine having anyone else bless their wedding. The problem was scheduling, and a solution was finally found. Maria’s family had a vacation place in the Świętokrzyskie Mountains near Kielce; on his way to a meeting of the Polish episcopate in Warsaw, the archbishop of Kraków stopped en route and the wedding was celebrated on July 6, 1964, in a small country church in Bolimów—at 7 A.M. on a Monday morning. “Adventures weren’t unusual with Karol Wojtyła,” the bridegroom later put it. Cardinal Wojtyła sometimes visited the Gałkowskis at their home in Lublin on his increasingly rare trips to KUL. Their oldest son was shy as a small boy and once hid under the dinner table when the cardinal arrived. Wojtyła immediately got down with him saying, “Well, if that’s where you want to play, that’s where we’ll play.”91