Witness to Hope

by George Weigel

  169.See Buttiglione, Karol Wojtyła, pp. 44–53, for an analysis of Wojtyła’s dissertation and its relationship to the thought of Garrigou-Lagrange, whose shortcomings as well as gifts Buttiglione frankly recognizes.

  170.English edition: Karol Wojtyła, Faith According to St. John of the Cross, translated by Jordan Aumann, OP (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1981).

  171.See Buttiglione, Karol Wojtyła, pp. 46–47.

  172.Ibid., p. 51.

  173.See Buttiglione, Karol Wojtyła, p. 53.

  174.Boniecki, Kalendarium, “Theological Studies.” One of the Jagiellonian reviewers of the dissertation, Father Władysław Wicher, while impressed with the work, complained that Wojtyła had spent too much time making his own arguments and too little analyzing St. John’s texts: he was “too much a dialectician, too little a philologist.” It was a complaint similar to Garrigou’s, if along a different axis of criticism, and suggests again that Wojtyła was not simply parroting back the formulas of his traditional Thomistic mentors.

  175.His companion, Stanisław Starowieyski, spent his life as a missionary in Brazil, where he died in the 1980s.

  176.Author’s conversation with Pope John Paul II, January 16, 1997.

  177. Author’s interview with Bishop Stanisław Smoleński, April 9, 1997.

  CHAPTER 3

  “Call Me Wujek”: To Be a Priest

  1.Author’s interview with Danuta Rybicka, April 19, 1997.

  2.See John Colville, The Fringes of Power: Downing Street Diaries, Volume Two: 1941–April 1955 (London: Sceptre, 1987), p. 322.

  3.Davies, Heart of Europe, pp. 4, 80–81; Zamoyski, The Polish Way, pp. 370–371.

  4.See Zamoyski, The Polish Way, p.370.

  5.Blazynski, Pope John Paul II, p. 59.

  6.See John Paul II, Gift and Mystery, pp. 53–54, 69–70.

  7.Author’s interview with Cardinal Franciszek Macharski, April 10, 1997.

  8.Boniecki, Kalendarium; Kwitny, Man of the Century, p. 109.

  9.John Paul II, Gift and Mystery, pp. 61–62.

  10.Ibid., p. 62.

  11.Szulc, Pope John Paul II, p. 159.

  12.John Paul II, Gift and Mystery, p. 62.

  13.See Maliński, Pope John Paul II, p. 95.

  14.See ibid., p. 96.

  15.Boniecki, Kalendarium, “1948.”

  16.Karolak, John Paul II, p. 85.

  17.Ibid., p. 86; see also John Paul II, Gift and Mystery, p. 63, in which the author characteristically ignores his own role in this small rural drama.

  18.Boniecki, Kalendarium, “Theological Studies.”

  19.Taborski, “Introduction to Our God’s Brother,” in Wojtyła, The Collected Plays, p. 150.

  20.Bernstein and Politi, His Holiness, p. 77.

  21.John Paul II, Gift and Mystery, p. 63.

  22.The great statues of the Grunwald Monument were reconstructed in 1976.

  23.Grazyna Sikorska, “Poland,” in Conscience and Captivity: Religion in Eastern Europe, Janice Broun, ed. (Washington, D.C.: Ethics and Public Policy Center, 1988), pp. 178–179.

  24.Author’s interview with Piotr Malecki, April 9, 1997.

  25.See John Paul II, Gift and Mystery, p. 64.

  26.See ibid., pp. 63–64.

  27.I am grateful to Mrs. Danuta Rybicka for providing me with a copy of one of these texts, Rozwaznia o Istocie Człowieka, a November 1951 series of Wojtyła lectures on the nature of the human person.

  28.Boniecki, Kalendarium, “1949.”

  29.Author’s interview with Jacek Woźniakowski, April 11, 1997.

  30.Author’s interview with Krzysztof Zanussi, March 25, 1996.

  31.Author’s interview with Maria Swiezawska, April 7, 1997.

  32.Author’s interview with Jacek Woźniakowski, April 11, 1997.

  33.See Boniecki, Kalendarium, “1949,” “1950,” “1951” author’s interviews with Danuta Rybicka, Piotr Malecki, and Teresa Malecka, April 9, 1997.

  34.Michałowska, “… trzeba dać świadectwo”: 50-lecie powstania Teatru Rapsodycznego, photo #18.

  35.Boniecki, Kalendarium, “1954.”

  36.John Paul II, Crossing the Threshold of Hope, p. 123.

  37.Letter to the author from Danuta Ciesielska, April 15, 1997.

  38.Author’s interviews with Danuta Rybicka and Teresa Malecka, April 19, 1997.

  39.Author’s interview with Danuta Rybicka, April 19, 1997.

  40.Author’s interview with Danuta and Stanisław Rybicki, April 19, 1997.

  41.Author’s interview with Stanisław Rybicki, April 19, 1997.

  42.The St. Florian’s church bulletin announced that, the young people themselves having asked for a series of conferences for their own benefit, the parish priests had agreed; anything the priests were thought to have initiated would have been forbidden by the state authorities. [Ibid.]

  43.Author’s interview with Teresa Malecka, April 9, 1997.

  44.Author’s interview with Bishop Stanisław Ryłko, December 11, 1996.

  45.It did, twenty years later, when Rybicki was appointed an assistant professor at the Kraków Polytechnic, having continued his studies privately in the interim. [Author’s interview with Stanisław Rybicki, April 19, 1997.]

  46.Author’s interview with Teresa Malecka, April 9, 1997.

  47.Author’s interview with Jerzy Janik, July 17, 1996.

  48.Author’s interviews with Piotr and Teresa Malecki, April 9, 1997. Told of Dr. Malecki’s self-description, Pope John Paul II laughed and said, “I think not so terrible …” [Author’s conversation with Pope John Paul II, September 30, 1997.]

  49.Correspondence provided to the author by Teresa Heydel Życzkowska, November 9, 1998.

  50.Ibid. [emphasis in original].

  51.Author’s interview with Teresa Malecka, April 9, 1997.

  52.Author’s interview with Halina Bortnowska, April 7, 1997.

  53.Davies, Heart of Europe, p. 80.

  54.Author’s interviews with Teresa Heydel Życzkowska, April 19, 1997, and Jerzy Janik, July 17, 1996.

  55.Author’s interview with Jacek Woźniakowski, April 11, 1997.

  56.Author’s interview with Piotr Malecki, April 9, 1997.

  57.Boniecki, Kalendarium, “1955.”

  58.Author’s interview with Gabriel Turowski, June 10, 1997. Details of the kayak trips are taken from Dr. Turowski’s manuscript memoir, “Wieli Wujek na Kajakach,” (“Great Uncle in Kayaks”), which he coauthored with his wife, Professor Bozena Turowska, and kindly gave me during our interview.

  59.Danuta Ciesielska, the widow of Jerzy Ciesielski, kindly shared with me the original copy of her husband’s and then-Father Wojtyła’s contributions to the May–June 1957 issue of Homo Dei.

  60.Author’s interview with Teresa Malecka, April 9, 1997.

  61.Author’s interviews with Stanisław Rybicki, April 9, 1997, and June 5, 1997.

  62.Author’s interview with Stanisław Rybicki, June 5, 1997.

  63.Ibid.

  64.Author’s interview with Danuta Ciesielska, April 9, 1997.

  65.Author’s interview with Piotr Malecki, April 9, 1997.

  66.Author’s interview with Danuta Rybicka, June 5, 1997.

  67.Author’s interview with Stefan Sawicki, April 15, 1997.

  68.See Hans Urs von Balthasar, “On Vicarious Representation,” in Explorations in Theology IV (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1995), p. 421.

  69.Author’s interview with Karol Tarnowski, April 12, 1997.

  70.Ibid.

  71.Ibid.

  72.Ibid.; author’s interview with Karol Tarnowski, November 5, 1998.

  73.Ibid.

  74.Author’s interview with Danuta Rybicka, June 5, 1997.

  75.On the Thomistic understanding of the sacrament of penance, see Servais Pinckaers, OP, The Sources of Christian Ethics (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1995), p. 233.

  76.Author’s interview with Stanisław Rybicki, June 5, 1997.

  77.Author’s interview with D
anuta Ciesielska, April 9, 1997.

  78.See Boniecki, Kalendarium, “1954.”

  79.Ibid.

  80.Author’s interview with Teresa Malecka, April 9, 1997.

  81.Author’s interview with Jerzy Turowicz, July 19, 1996.

  82.Ibid.

  83.Ibid.

  84.All citations from Wojtyła’s article on the Mission de France are taken from the French translation of the Polish original, which may be found in Karol Wojtyła, En Esprit et En Vérité (Paris: Le Centurion, 1980).

  85.See “De l’origine des normes morales,” “La loi naturelle,” and “Le problème de la vérité et de la miséricorde,” in Wojtyła, En Esprit et En Vérité, pp. 111–113, 123–125, and 129–130.

  86.Author’s interview with Jerzy Turowicz, July 19, 1996.

  87.Ibid.

  88.Ibid.

  89.Author’s interview with Archbishop Marian Jaworski, July 10, 1996.

  90.See Stanisław Baránczak, “Playing and Praying,” The New Republic (December 4, 1987), p. 48; author’s interview with Anna Karoń-Ostrowska, April 8, 1997.

  91.Author’s conversation with Pope John Paul II, January 22, 1997.

  92.Author’s interview with Stanisław Rodziński, June 9, 1997.

  93.See Taborski, “Introduction to Our God’s Brother,” in Wojtyła, The Collected Plays, pp. 147–148.

  94.See ibid., pp. 150–155.

  95.Professor Stanisław Rodziński suggests that, for Chmielowski, this was not a matter of abandoning art but of coming to the service of God and humanity through art. [Author’s interview with Stanisław Rodziński, June 9, 1997.]

  96.Author’s conversation with Pope John Paul II, January 22, 1997.

  97.Wojtyła, Our God’s Brother, p. 263, in The Collected Plays.

  98.Ibid., p. 266.

  99.Author’s interview with Marek Skwarnicki, April 19, 1997. Mr. Skwarnicki, a distinguished poet and longtime contributor to Tygodnik Powszechny, was deputed by Pope John Paul II to oversee the premiere of Our God’s Brother and of course refused to cut the final sentence.

  100.See Isaiah 58.6. This text was cited by Pope John Paul II in his homily at the canonization of St. Albert Chmielowski, on November 12, 1989.

  101.See, for example, Mark Lawson, “The Pope’s Other Self,” The Tablet, December 14, 1996, p. 1643; Jonathan Luxmoore and Jolanta Babiuch, “Did Karol Wojtyła See and Rescue the Good in Marxism?” National Catholic Register, January 26–February 1, 1997, p. 7. Both of these articles were inspired by Krzysztof Zanussi’s film version of Our God’s Brother, which was premiered in Kraków during John Paul II’s visit to the city on June 8, 1997.

  102.Our God’s Brother had a difficult history after Wojtyła completed it and read sections of it to the editors of Tygodnik Powszechny. [Author’s conversation with Pope John Paul II, January 22, 1997.] The play was then virtually lost, and certainly unknown, for almost thirty years. Shortly after Karol Wojtyła’s election as pope, Juliusz Kydryński, brought his copy of the manuscript, which was evidently in bad shape, to Jerzy Turowicz, who gave it to his colleague Marek Skwarnicki for an opinion. Skwarnicki had no doubts. The play had to be published immediately, finished and polished or not, because the “problematic” with which it dealt was too urgent to permit a delay. After some difficulty persuading John Paul II of this (he claimed the play really wasn’t finished and was understandably concerned about his work), the Pope finally agreed and the play was printed in its entirety in the Christmas 1979 issue of Tygodnik Powszechny. Under Skwarnicki’s personal supervision, it was then produced at Kraków’s Słowacki Theater in 1980. [Author’s interview with Marek Skwarnicki, April 19, 1997.]

  Krzysztof Zanussi’s film of Our God’s Brother illustrates some of the difficulties of producing a compelling presentation of Wojtyła’s plays “outside” the context of the “inner theater” in which they were written. The inner dialogue that Wojtyła and his mentor, Mieczysław Kotlarczyk, intended to facilitate “between” the actor and the audience does not transfer easily to film or to theatrical environments whose audiences have not been prepared for such a different kind of dramatic experience.

  103.John Paul II, Gift and Mystery, pp. 31–33.

  104.Ibid., p. 33.

  105.A literal translation of the title, which would also reflect more accurately one of the play’s central images, would be In Front of the Jeweler’s Shop. Both the Taborski translation of the play into English and the 1988 film use the title The Jeweler’s Shop, which I have adopted here to avoid confusions.

  106.See Buttiglione, Karol Wojtyła, p. 257.

  107.Wojtyła, The Jeweler’s Shop, in The Collected Plays, pp. 297–298.

  108.See Buttiglione, Karol Wojtyła, p. 265.

  109.Author’s interview with Stanisław and Danuta Rybicki, July 17, 1997.

  110.Author’s conversation with Pope John Paul II, September 30, 1997.

  111.Ibid.

  112.Author’s interview with Stanisław Rybicki, June 5, 1997.

  113.Wojtyła’s notion of the dramatic structure of reality and of God’s relationship to the world is similar to, although not derived from, the theology of the Swiss thinker Hans Urs von Balthasar. One difference between the two is that Wojtyła’s “dramatic” intuition was formed in considerable part by his experiences on stage and as a playwright; Balthasar’s came from a deep reading of the European dramatic tradition. For a brief description of Balthasar’s conception of creation and redemption as a “Theo-Drama,” see Angelo Scola, Hans Urs von Balthasar: A Theological Style (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995), pp. 65 ff.

  114.Author’s interview with Stefan Sawicki, April 15, 1997.

  115.Wojtyła’s literary colleagues believe that the German and Italian translations of his work best convey the texture and meanings of the Polish originals, which is sometimes lost in the commercially available English translation. [Author’s interviews with Halina Bortnowska, April 7, 1997, and Marek Skwarnicki, April 19 and June 4, 1997.]

  116.Author’s interview with Anna Karoń-Ostrowska, April 8, 1997.

  117.“Robotnik z fabryki broni” [The armaments factory worker], from Profile Cyrenejczyka [Profiles of a Cyrenean], in Wojtyła, Poezje i dramaty, p. 54; translated by the author and Marek Skwarnicki.

  118.“Pó?niejsze rozpami?tywanie spotkania” [Later recollection of the meeting], from Pieśń o blasku wody [Song of the brightness of water], in Wojtyła, Poezje i dramaty, p. 32; translated by the author and Marek Skwarnicki.

  119.Author’s interviews with Halina Bortnowska, April 9, 1997, and Jacek Woźniakowski, April 11, 1997.

  120.Author’s interview with Marek Skwarnicki, April 19, 1997.

  121.Buttiglione, Karol Wojtyła, p. 242.

  122.Ibid.

  123.“Zanim jeszcze potrafiłem rozróznić wiele profilów” [Before I could discern many profiles], from Profile Cyrenejczyka, in Wojtyła, Poezje i dramaty, p. 50; translated by the author and Marek Skwarnicki.

  124.Author’s interview with Bishop Stanisław Ryłko, December 10, 1996.

  125.Author’s interview with Mieczysław Maliński, April 12, 1997.

  126.Ibid.

  127.Ibid.

  128.Author’s interview with Jacek Woźniakowski, April 11, 1997.

  129.Father Kurowski’s arrest may have had to do with the fact that he was also an official of the archdiocesan chancery, where the secret police believed evidence of Soviet complicity in the Katyn massacre of 1940, first given to Archbishop Sapieha during the war, might be hidden. [Author’s interview with Father Stanisław Małysiak, April 18, 1997.]

  130.Cited in Jan Nowak, “The Church in Poland”, Problems of Communism 31 (January–February 1982), p. 7.

  131.See Broun, Conscience and Captivity, pp. 333–334, for excerpts from this historic memorandum.

  132.Author’s conversation with Pope John Paul II, January 22, 1997.

  133.Ibid.

  CHAPTER 4

  Seeing Things as They Are: The Making of a Philosopher

&
nbsp; 1.Boniecki, Kalendarium, “1955.”

  2.Author’s conversation with Pope John Paul II, September 10, 1996.

  3.Ibid.; author’s interview with Father Stanisław Małysiak, April 18, 1997.

  4.Ibid.

  5.Ibid.

  6.Author’s interview with Father Stanisław Małysiak, April 18, 1997.

  7.The custom of a second doctoral dissertation to qualify for appointment to a university faculty is unknown in North American academic life but is the norm in Europe. “Habilitation” is from the Latin habilitas, “aptitude.”

  8.For an analysis of the consequences of this conclusion, see Edward T. Oakes, SJ, “The Achievement of Alasdair MacIntyre,” First Things 65 (August/September 1996), pp. 22–26.

  9.See Robert F. Harvanek, SJ, “The Philosophical Foundations of the Thought of John Paul II,” in The Thought of Pope John Paul II, ed. John M. McDermott, SJ (Rome: Editrice Pontifica Università Gregoriana,1993), p. 2.

  10.Michael Novak, “John Paul II: Christian Philosopher,” America 177: 12 (October 25, 1997), p. 12.

  11.Ibid.

  12.Ibid.

  13.The example is adopted from ibid.

  14.See Schmitz, At the Center of the Human Drama, p. 32.

  15.On this point, see Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1981).

  16.See Schmitz, At the Center of the Human Drama, p. 33.

  17.Author’s conversation with Pope John Paul II, December 11, 1996.

  18.Maliński, Pope John Paul II, p. 110.

  19.John Paul II, Curriculum Philosophicum, p. 3.