68.Ibid., “1963.”
69.Ibid., “1964.”
70.Ibid., “1965.”
71.Karol Wojtyła, “A propos du Concile,” in Wojtyła, En Esprit et En Vérité, pp. 219–221.
72.Karol Wojtyła, “Le Concile et le Travail des Théologiens,” in Wojtyła, En Esprit et En Vérité, pp. 227–230. This text was the transcription of a broadcast by Archbishop Wojtyła on Vatican Radio on February 12, 1965.
73.Karol Wojtyła, “Le concile vu de l’intérieur,” in Wojtyła, En Esprit et En Vérité, pp. 231–240.
74.Author’s conversation with Pope John Paul II, March 20, 1997.
75.The currently available English translation of Osoba i czyn is entitled The Acting Person (Dordrecht: D. Reidel Publishing Company, 1979). For reasons to be explained below, Person and Act is preferable as an English title, and will be used throughout.
76.John Paul II, Curriculum Philosophicum, p. 7.
77.Ibid.
78.Author’s interview with Tadeusz Styczeń, SDS, April 14, 1997.
79.Cited in de Lubac, At the Service of the Church, pp. 171–172.
80.Author’s interview with Tadeusz Styczeń, SDS, April 14, 1997.
81.Author’s interview with Anna Karoń-Ostrowska, April 8, 1997.
82.By “definitive edition” I mean a final text that has been prepared with the author’s close involvement—which, in this instance, has been impossible. So it seems likely that the third Polish edition, and the translations that will be made from it, will be the “definitive” renderings of Osoba i czyn. [See Karol Wojtyła, Osoba i czyn: oraz inne studia antropologiczne, ed. Tadeusz Styczeń, Wojciech Chudy, Jerzy W. Gałkowski, Adam Roziński, and Andrzej Szostek (Lublin: KUL Press, 1994).] This edition contains an introduction by Rocco Buttiglione which is available in English in Buttiglione, Karol Wojtyła, pp. 352–380.
83.To take one important example, Osoba i czyn makes extensive and untranslated use of the Latin word suppositum, a key Thomistic term to describe the human person as the subject of being and acting. The Tymieniecka retranslation never uses suppositum and translates the Latin into English in different ways at different points in the text. See Kupczak, The Human Person as an Efficient Cause in the Christian Anthropology of Karol Wojtyła, p. 122, note 9.
84.Author’s conversation with Pope John Paul II, September 30, 1997.
Dr. Tymieniecka’s explanation of, and commentary on, the process that led to the Reidel publication of The Acting Person may be found in Phenomenology Information Bulletin 3 (October 1979), pp. 3–52. I discussed the problems of the English edition of The Acting Person with Tadeusz Styczeń, SDS (interview, April 14,1997), Andrzej Szostek, MIC (interview, April 14, 1997), and Andrzej Połtawski (interview, April 23, 1997). See also the discussion in Schmitz in At the Center of the Human Drama, pp. 59–60, n. 6.
85.Wojtyła, The Acting Person, p. 285.
86.See Schmitz, At the Center of the Human Drama, p. 86.
87.Author’s interview with Karol Tarnowski, April 12, 1997.
88.Buttiglione, “Towards an Adequate Anthropology,” p. 243.
89.See Boniecki, Kalendarium, “1965” author’s interview with Cardinal Franz König, December 11, 1997.
90.Author’s interviews with Piotr and Teresa Malecki and Danuta Ciesielski, April 9, 1997.
91.Boniecki, Kalendarium, “1965.”
92.Ibid.
93.Ibid.
CHAPTER 6
Successor to St. Stanisław: Living the Council in Kraków
1.On Karol Wojtyła’s installation as archbishop of Kraków, see Maliński, Pope John Paul II, pp. 192–199; also Peter Hebblethwaite and Ludwig Kauffman, John Paul II: A Pictorial Biography (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1979), p. 62.
2.Boniecki, Kalendarium, “1963.”
3.This account of Wojtyła’s nomination as archbishop of Kraków is taken from the author’s interview with Father Andrzej Bardecki, July 11, 1996, supplemented by material from Boniecki, Kalendarium, “1962” and “1963.” The story of Cardinal Wyszyński’s comment on the “poet” was told me by Father John Hotchkin, who heard it from Wyszyński’s host on the occasion of the remark, Bishop Ernest Primeau.
4.Letter to the author from Bishop Alfred Abramowicz, January 6, 1998. Abramowicz was executive director of the Catholic League for Religious Assistance to Poland from 1960 to 1993, and remembered that the needs of the Polish Church were utterly basic during the 1960s and 1970s: among other things, typing paper and carbon paper. The latter was essential because the regime would usually refuse permission for mimeographing Church documents.
5.See “Lettre pastorale,” in Wojtyła, En Esprit et En Vérité, pp. 215–218.
6.Author’s interview with Bishop Stanisław Smoleński, April 9, 1997.
7.Author’s interview and tour of the archbishop’s residence with Cardinal Franciszek Macharski, April 10, 1997.
8.Ibid. The bishop’s “cassock,” with its shoulder cape, is technically a “simar,” not a cassock. But as “cassock” is the far more commonly used term, I use it here and in describing papal vesture later.
9.Author’s interview with Cardinal Franciszek Macharski, April 10, 1997.
10.Memorandum of November 4, 1997, by Cardinal Franciszek Macharski, prepared at the author’s request.
11.Boniecki, Kalendarium, “1977.”
12.Author’s conversation with Pope John Paul II, January 22, 1997.
13.Author’s interview with Father Władisław Gasidło, June 11, 1997.
14.Boniecki, Kalendarium, “1971.”
15.At a memorial Mass for Father Kurzeja in Miestrzejowice on September 13, Cardinal Wojtyła preached a moving homily:
We feel in our human way that he did not just depart, that he is not just buried. We feel… that he… has been incorporated like a cornerstone into the building of this church, into the building of this community which is the living Church in Miestrzejowice: like a cornerstone. And this is the most magnificent thing that can be said about him…
I know his secret. I can even repeat the words… he spoke to me in 1970… He knew what he was asking for. He knew that this matter would cost him dearly… he even added in jest, “if I have to suffer for this cause, even if I have to go to prison, it will only do me good…” I remember his words and I will not forget them to the end of my life. Because these words, said then in jest, indicated the price of his sacrifice. [Boniecki, Kalendarium, “1976.”]
16.Author’s interview with Father Władisław Gasidło, June 11, 1997.
17.Memorandum to the author from Cardinal Franciszek Macharski, November 4, 1997.
18.Author’s interview with Henryk Woźniakowski, April 10, 1997.
19.Boniecki, Kalendarium, “1971.”
20.Ibid., “1972.”
21.Ibid., “1974.”
22.Ibid., “1975.”
23.Ibid., “1977.”
24.Ibid., “1978.”
25.For a discussion of the public/political meaning of the Corpus Christi procession from a cultural-anthropological point of view, see Jan Kubik, The Power of Symbols Against the Symbols of Power: The Rise of Solidarity and the Fall of State Socialism in Poland (University Park, Pa.: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1994), pp. 89ff.
26.Author’s interviews with Bishop Stanisław Smoleński (April 9, 1997) and Father Stanisław Małysiak (April 18, 1997).
27.Letter to the author from Cardinal Franciszek Macharski, April 20, 1998.
28.On December 8, 1981, Pope John Paul II created the Pontifical Academy of Theology in Kraków with three faculties: theology, philosophy, and Church history. [Historical data on the Faculty of Theology, the Pontifical Faculty of Theology, and the Pontifical Academy of Theology: from a memorandum prepared for the author by the rector’s office of the Pontifical Academy of Theology, April 8, 1998, at the request of Cardinal Franciszek Macharski.]
29.See John Paul II, Gift and Mystery, pp. 88–90.
30.See Blazynski, Pope John Paul II, pp. 160–161.
/> 31.Author’s interview with Bishop Stanisław Ryłko, December 11, 1996.
32.Cited in Grazyna Sikorska, Light and Life: Renewal in Poland (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1989), pp. 116–117.
33.Author’s interview with Father Stanisław Małysiak, April 18, 1997.
34.Author’s interview with Bishop Stanisław Smoleński, April 9, 1997.
35.See Sikorska, Light and Life, pp. 62–63.
36.See Nowak, “The Church in Poland,” p. 11.
37.Author’s interview with Bishop Stanisław Smoleński, April 9, 1997.
38.See Władsysław Gasidło, Duszpasterska troska Kardynała Karola Wojtyły o rodzinę (Kraków: Archdiocese of Kraków, 1996), for a detailed historic account of family ministry in the archdiocese by a former director of the Department of Family Pastoral Care. The sketch above is based on the author’s interview with Father Gasidło, June 11, 1997.
39.Author’s interview with Bishop Stanisław Ryłko, December 11, 1996.
40.Author’s interview with Stanisław Rodziński, April 11, 1997.
41.Ibid.
42.Ibid.
43.Author’s interview with Bogdan Cywiński, November 14, 1998; see also Jacek Kuroń, Wiara i wina: do i od komunizmu (Warsaw: Nowa, 1990).
44.See Rodney Stark, The Rise of Christianity (New York: HarperCollins, 1997), p. 161.
45.Information on the charitable work of the Archdiocese of Kraków under Cardinal Wojtyła’s leadership was provided in a memorandum to the author from Cardinal Franciszek Macharski, November 4, 1997.
46.Author’s interview with Cardinal Edmund Szoka, September 4, 1996.
47.Author’s interview with Henryk Woźniakowski, April 10, 1997.
48.Ibid.
49.Karol Wojtyła, Sign of Contradiction (New York: Seabury, 1979), pp. 144–145.
50.See Oram, The People’s Pope, p. 120.
51.Author’s interview with Teresa Malecka, April 9, 1997.
52.Author’s interview with Jan Nowak, May 13, 1998.
53.One evening, during the May 1978 visit to Kraków of Cardinal William Baum of Washington, D.C., Cardinal Wojtyła announced to his guests that they were going to sleep late in the morning: until 7:30 A.M. The cardinal’s secretary, Monsignor James Gillen, muttered, “That’s late?” To which Cardinal Wojtyła replied, “Who can sleep later than 7:30?” [Author’s interview with Cardinal William Baum and Monsignor James Gillen, November 5, 1996.]
54.Author’s interview with Bishop Stanisław Ryłko, December 11, 1996. Bishop Ryłko was told this by Pope John Paul II’s personal secretary, Monsignor Stanisław Dziwisz, who as his secretary in Kraków had accompanied Cardinal Wojtyła on all visitations.
55.Author’s conversation with Pope John Paul II, September 30, 1997; memorandum to the author from Cardinal Franciszek Macharski, June 17, 1997. Bishop Pietraszko died in 1988, at age seventy-seven.
56.The Catholic Church worldwide is organized into ecclesiastical “provinces,” clusters of dioceses under the supervision of an archdiocese. The ecclesiastical province of Kraków during Wojtyła’s episcopate included the “suffragan,” or smaller, dioceses of Kielce, Tarnów, Częstochowa, and Katowice. The archdiocese at the center of an ecclesiastical province is referred to as the “metropolitan see” hence the Kraków central administration, or Curia, was (and is) called the “Metropolitan Curia.”
Wojtyła organized his Metropolitan Curia in functional divisions. A Division for Clergy handled priest personnel matters, while the Division of Education was responsible for overseeing religious instruction in the archdiocese, and the Pastoral Division handled chaplaincies (such as the chaplaincies to university students and health-care workers). The Division of Family Pastoral Care and the Pastoral Ministry of Charity Division were created by Cardinal Wojtyła. The Pontifical Faculty of Theology was also considered a “division” of the Metropolitan Curia. The archdiocesan tribunal, the court for church legal matters, functioned under one of the chancellors. By contemporary standards, this was a very lean organization, with most divisions having perhaps five priests and laity as staff.
Finances were always challenging. The archdiocesan patrimony was in lands and buildings. But the communists occupied the buildings, which therefore could not produce rental income. At the same time, the archdiocese had to maintain the properties and pay for repairs—even those it had not authorized. Thus the pastoral work of the archdiocese as a whole had to be funded primarily through financial assistance from its parishes. A collection was taken up on the first Sunday of every month for the seminary and the Faculty of Theology. The Metropolitan Curia itself was supported by a collection taken up on the third Sunday of the odd-numbered months of the year. Other collections supported foreign missions and building maintenance, to which the priests of the archdiocese also contributed twenty percent of any offerings given them by the people at Christmas. Special boxes in churches received donations for the home for single mothers.
In one bizarre expression of communist “legality,” the Church, which in the Polish People’s Republic was not a legal entity (and, therefore, theoretically could not own property), nonetheless had to pay taxes on properties in its patrimony and on its income, at a rate of forty percent of unexpended receipts during a calendar year. Neither the archdiocese nor its parishes, lacking legal “personality,” could have banking or checking accounts. Everything was done on a cash basis. During Wojtyła’s episcopate, no program was ever dropped because of a lack of funds. The cardinal himself gave all his income—lecture fees, publication royalties, Mass stipends or other gifts from his people or from foreign visitors—to support his pastoral initiatives, especially the seminary and Faculty of Theology, the Institute for Family Studies, and the home for single mothers.
[Details on archdiocesan organization are taken from the author’s interview with Father Stanisław Małysiak, April 18, 1997. Information on finances was provided in memoranda to the author of March 31, 1998 and May 20, 1998 from Monsignor Bronisław Fidelus, who was Wojtyła’s vice chancellor for economic and financial matters.]
57.Author’s interview with Father Andrzej Bardecki, July 11, 1996; Bishop Stanisław Smoleński, April 9, 1997; and Father Stanisław Małysiak, April 18, 1997.
58.Author’s interview with Father Andrzej Bardecki, July 11, 1996.
59.Author’s interview with Father Józef Tischner, April 23, 1997.
60.Author’s interview with Father Stanisław Małysiak, April 18, 1997.
The cardinal took a similar approach to official permissions for publication. In the wake of the Council, the Znak publishing house was eager to get books by some of the leading conciliar theologians into print in Polish translations. The rules of the day said that if a book had had a nihil obstat and an imprimatur (official Church approval) in its original form then it should have another nihil obstat and another imprimatur in the translated edition. Cardinal Wojtyła was perfectly happy to grant the imprimatur for Znak’s publication of translated works by Karl Rahner and Edward Schillebeeckx, but there was a problem. He had inherited from Archbishop Baziak an archdiocesan reviewer (the censor librorum, as he was known) of a different generation and theological sensibility; this older priest, who was responsible for granting the nihil obstat (which was supposed to precede the bishop’s granting of an imprimatur) began to cause difficulties, complaining in one instance that Rahner had “muddled things.” The cardinal, as a colleague remembered, was “not a man to make old people suffer,” so he wasn’t prepared to fire the reviewer. He found another way.
Calling the man in, he said that he understood there were some problems. Did you, he asked, find anything against faith or morals? No, the old priest replied; but Rahner had such a queer way of expressing things. The cardinal asked, well, why not let the readers decide? Yes, yes, said the old man, but I don’t like what Rahner is saying. Well, in that case, said the cardinal, why not issue the nihil obstat indicating that the censor librorum disagrees with the views expressed, which are not against faith or morals.
The old man finally agreed; Wojtyła had preserved his elderly subordinate’s dignity while getting the needed job done. [Author’s interview with Jacek Woźniakowski, April 11, 1997.]
61.See Blazynski, Pope John Paul II, p. 95.
62.See ibid., pp. 161–162.
63.See Davies, Volume I, p. 19. Easter Vigil–1966 is Karol Wojtyła’s poem-cycle for the millennium of Polish Christianity; see The Place Within, pp. 121–140.
64.Author’s interview with Cardinal Franciszek Macharski, April 10, 1997.
65.Author’s interview with Father Stanisław Małysiak, April 18, 1997.
66.Author’s interview with Bishop Stanisław Smoleński, April 9, 1997. Information on the structure and method of the Synod of Kraków was provided in a memorandum to the author by Bishop Tadeusz Pieronek, April 8, 1997.
67.Thus under the rubric of “The People of God’s Participation in the Prophetic Mission of Christ,” there were Synod documents on evangelization, the family as domestic church, catechetics, theological studies, religious communities, and missionary activity. The sacraments and the sanctification of time were explored in seven documents under the rubric of “The Participation of the People of God in the Priestly Dignity of Christ.” Finally, under the rubric of “The Participation of the People of God in the Royal-Pastoral Service of Christ,” the Synod produced documents on family, children, young people, charitable activity, social renewal, contemporary culture, the structure of the archdiocese, and Mary in the life of the archdiocese. Further Synod documents discussed special concerns or ministries in the archdiocese: ecumenism, the major seminary, the ministry to the sick, environmental protection, and anti-alcoholism.
In adopting this “threefold-office” framework for its reflection, the Synod followed Cardinal Wojtyła’s lead in Sources of Renewal, in which Wojtyła had used the three “offices” of Christ as an interpretive key for organizing the entire teaching of Vatican II. Gaudium et Spes 24 had taught that “man can fully discover his true self only in a sincere giving of himself” it was by participating in the three “offices” of Christ, Wojtyła suggested, that the Christian embodied the Law of the Gift inscribed in human nature in a distinctively Christian way. In exercising the priestly office, men and women gave themselves to God in worship; thus the importance of active participation in the Church’s liturgy. Christians exercised the prophetic office by freely giving themselves to the truth; obedience to the Word of God and to the teaching authority of the Church was, therefore, an embrace of one’s responsibility toward the gift of truth. And mature Christians shared in the royal office of Christ by growing in self-command: “Every Christian who conquers sin achieves the royal self-dominion that is proper to human beings; by doing so he shares in the munus regale [royal office] of Christ and helps bring about Christ’s kingdom”—this, another variant on Christian humanism, was the Church’s answer to atheism and its demands for moral “autonomy.”
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