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108.“Pope’s Message: May the Eucharistic Congress Be an Occasion for Reconciliation,” OR [EWE], December 15, 1986, pp. 2, 24.
109.According to CDF, Curran publicly denied the Church’s teaching on divorce and remarriage, abortion, euthanasia, masturbation, artificial contraception, premarital intercourse, and homosexual acts.
Father Curran did not deny that he denied the Church’s teaching on sexual morality, only that that teaching had not been infallibly defined, and was thus not irreversibly normative. [See “Letter of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith to Father Charles Curran,” OR (EWE), August 25, 1986, p. 3.] For an overview of Curran’s theological method and opinions see the following of his books: Christian Morality Today: The Renewal of Moral Theology (Notre Dame: Fides, 1966); A New Look at Christian Morality: Christian Morality Today II (Notre Dame: Fides, 1968); New Perspectives in Moral Theology (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1976); Toward an American Catholic Moral Theology (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1987). Curran’s account of his dealings with CDF may be found in his Faithful Dissent (Kansas City: Sheed and Ward, 1986).
110.For an overview of the entire Curran case, including a close examination of the legal proceedings, see Larry Witham, Curran vs. Catholic University: A Study of Authority and Freedom in Conflict (Riverdale, Md.: Edington-Rand, Inc., 1991).
111.See Lumen Gentium, 25.
112.John Paul II, “Address at Taizé,” Secretariat for Promoting Christian Unity Information Service #62 (1986/IV), pp. 184–185.
113.John Paul II, “To Community of Taizé,” in ibid., pp. 185–186.
114.See Il Mondo di Giovanni Paolo II, pp. 112–115.
115.See Insegnamenti di Giovanni Paoli II, 1986.
CHAPTER 15
Forward to Basics: Freedom Ordered to the Dignity of Duty
1.On Father Popiełuszko saying that “one cannot murder hopes,” see Kaufman, Mad Dreams, Saving Graces, p. 141. The details of the Kolbe Church’s resistance program are taken from the author’s interview with Father Kazimierz Jancarz, June 16, 1991. Michnik on post–martial law communism is cited in Kaufman, Mad Dreams, Saving Graces, p. 129. Father Maliński’s comments are from the author’s interview with him of June 15, 1991.
2.Roberto Suro, “Pope, on Latin Trip, Attacks Pinochet Regime,” New York Times, April 1, 1987, pp. A1, A10.
3.Author’s interview with Monsignor Christian Precht, April 25, 1998.
4.Details on the planning and strategy of the papal pilgrimage are from ibid.
5.See Walsh, John Paul II, p. 177.
6.Author’s interview with Cardinal Angelo Sodano, December 13, 1996.
7.Author’s interview with Monsignor Christian Precht, April 25, 1998.
8.See Insegnamenti di Giovanni Paolo II, 1987.
9.Teresa “de los Andes” was canonized on March 21, 1993.
10.Author’s interview with Monsignor Christian Precht, April 25, 1998.
11.Author’s interview with Roberto Tucci, SJ, September 25, 1997. Ever the alert planner, Father Tucci said that he had learned a lesson at the O’Higgins Park riot: always have lemons available, because a cut lemon, held in a handkerchief in front of your face, allows you to breathe through tear gas. [Ibid.]
12.Author’s interview with Monsignor Christian Precht, April 25, 1998.
13.Author’s interviews with Roberto Tucci, SJ, September 25, 1997, and Monsignor Christian Precht, April 25, 1998. Neither Tucci nor Precht claims that General Pinochet was directly involved in this affair or concocted the idea of a “permitted” riot at the papal Mass. It also remains unclear precisely who “these people” were. What is certain is that they were not the people involved in the National Accord. [Ibid.]
14.Author’s interview with Cardinal Angelo Sodano, December 13, 1996. See also “Alocución a Grupo de Dirigentes Políticos,” in El Amor Es Mas Fuerte: Mensajes de Juan Pablo II al Pueblo de Chile (a booklet of pilgrimage texts given the author by Cardinal Sodano).
15.The text of this address may be found in Origins 16:44 (April 16, 1987), pp. 776–777.
16.Author’s interview with Monsignor Christian Precht, April 25, 1998.
17.Ibid.
18.Ibid. One bishop who had protested died in an automobile accident, and there were suspicions that his death was not accidental. The bishops’ conference protested to the government. [Author’s interview with Mario Paredes, December 1, 1998.]
19.Letter from Rabbi Leon Klenicki, director of the Interfaith Affairs Department of the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith, to Thomas C. Fox, editor of the National Catholic Reporter, September 30, 1996; copy to the author from Rabbi Klenicki. Years after his nunciature, while he was Cardinal Prefect of the Congregation for Catholic Education, Laghi was accused of cosseting the military regime of Argentina. One piece of evidence cited was that he had occasionally played tennis with the chief-of-staff of the Argentine navy, a member of the ruling junta. Rabbi Klenicki, who had worked on the Timerman case and many other political prisoner cases with Archbishop Laghi in Buenos Aires, noted this strange charge in his letter and wrote that “I had to take many cups of coffee with the Minister of the Interior, but as a consequence I was able to visit prisoners and get… freedom for some of the people imprisoned in the concentration camps.”
20.John Paul II, “Discourse to Civil Leaders,” OR [EWE], May 11, 1987, p. 5.
21.John Paul II, “Homily During Mass in Bahia Blanca,” in ibid., p. 7 [emphasis in original].
22.John Paul II, “Homily at Viedma,” in ibid., p. 8.
23.See “Liturgy of the Word in Mendoza,” in ibid., p. 10.
24.John Paul II, “Homily at Tucuman,” in ibid., p. 15; the Pope was citing Gaudium et Spes, 75.
25.John Paul II, “Mass at Rosario,” in OR [EWE], May 18, 1987, p. 11 [emphasis in original].
26.John Paul II, “Address to Young People, Buenos Aires,” in ibid., p. 15.
27.John Paul II, “Homily for Palm Sunday, World Day of Youth,” in OR [EWE], May 25, 1987, p. 12.
28.John Paul II, “Address to the Bishops of Argentina,” in ibid., p. 14.
29.She later wrote, “It was my first encounter with the Cross and the divine power that it bestows on those who carry it. For the first time, I was seeing with my very eyes the Church, born of the Redeemer’s sufferings, triumphant over the sting of death. That was the moment my unbelief collapsed and Christ shone forth—in the mystery of the Cross.”
30.Edith Stein, Essays on Woman (Washington, D.C.: ICS Publications, 1987), pp. 258–59.
31.Biographical details on Edith Stein are taken from Waltraud Herbstrith, Edith Stein: A Biography (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1985). See also Edith Stein, Life in a Jewish Family 1891–1916: An Autobiography (Washington, D.C.: ICS Publications, 1986) and Edith Stein, Self-Portrait in Letters 1916–1942 (Washington,D.C.: ICS Publications, 1993).
32.Author’s conversation with Pope John Paul II, December 12, 1997.
33.See Woodward, Making Saints, pp. 134–144.
34.See ibid., pp. 127–128, 143.
35.See John Paul II, “Homily at the Beatification of Edith Stein,” in Spiritual Pilgrimage, pp. 91–98.
36.See Woodward, Making Saints, p. 216.
37.See James Tunstead Burtchaell, CSC, Rachel Weeping (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1984), pp. 141ff. The phrase lebensunwertes Leben was coined by two distinguished German academics, the jurist Karl Binding and the psychiatrist Adolf Hoche, in a 1922 book entitled The Permit to Destroy Life Not Worth Living, and was adopted by the Nazis the next decade from this eminently establishmentarian source.
38.On March 10, 1987, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith had released an “Instruction on Respect for Human Life in Its Origin and on the Dignity of Procreation,” known by the Latin title Donum Vitae [The gift of life]. The instruction sought to clarify the moral issues involved when technology intervened in human reproduction. Its most controversial conclusion was that in vitro fertilization
(IVF) using gametes donated by spouses violated the moral integrity of procreation by separating it from marital intimacy. Less controversially, the instruction also rejected IVF with gametes donated by a nonspouse, and “surrogate motherhood.” The instruction also taught that so-called spare human embryos created by IVF could never be used for nontherapeutic experimentation, since “the human being must be respected—as a person—from the very first instant of his existence.” Moreover, the instruction taught that “it is immoral to produce human embryos destined to be exploited as disposable ‘biological material.’”
Donum Vitae was criticized for insensitivity to the plight of childless couples who could, through advances in medical technology, render their marriages fruitful—something the Church had long taught was one purpose of marriage. The Instruction acknowledged the suffering involved in infertility, but disagreed with the claim that a couple had a “right” to have a child, for such a “right” would be “contrary to the child’s dignity and nature. The child is not an object to which one has a right, nor can he be considered as an object of ownership: rather, a child is a gift, the supreme gift and the most gratuitous gift of marriage, and is a living testimony of the mutual giving of his parents.” For that reason, the “right” involved was the child’s: “the right… to be the fruit of a specific act of the conjugal love of his parents.”
39.For John Paul II’s address to the West German bishops, see Origins 17:3 (June 4, 1987), pp. 45–47.
40.John Paul II, “Apostolic Letter on the Sixth Centenary of the ‘Baptism’ of Lithuania,” OR [EWE], June 29, 1987, pp. 1–3.
41.Lech Wałęsa, The Struggle and the Triumph (New York: Arcade Publishing, 1991), p. 115.
42.John Paul II, “Address to Authorities of the Polish People’s Republic,” OR [EWE] July 6, 1987, p. 6 [emphasis in original].
43.John Paul II, “Homily During Inaugural Mass of Eucharistic Congress,” OR [EWE], July 13, 1987, pp. 3–4 [emphasis in original].
44.See ibid., p. 4.
45.John Paul II, “Homily at Catholic University of Lublin,” in ibid., pp. 8–9 [emphasis in original].
46.John Paul II, “Homily During Ordinations at Lublin,” in ibid., pp. 10–11 [emphasis in original].
47.John Paul II, “Homily at the Beatification of Karolina Kozka at Tarnów,” in ibid., p. 3.
48.See John Paul II, “Homily During Mass at Kraków,” in ibid., p. 8.
49.John Paul II, “Address to Seafaring People at Gdynia,” in ibid., pp. 7–8 [emphasis in original].
50.The papal visit to the memorial demonstrated yet again the regime’s talent for clumsiness. Ordinary Gdańsk citizens were not allowed near the venue; a crowd of sullen party members, dragooned into playing the role of audience, stood by quietly while the Pope, Cardinal Casaroli, and others walked to the monument, prayed, and left. An aside from John Paul to his party indicated that he knew exactly what was happening: “Divine Providence could not do better. In this place, silence is a cry.” [See Wałęsa, The Struggle and the Triumph, p. 119.]
51.John Paul II, “Homily During Mass for Workers at Gdańsk,” in OR [EWE], August 3, 1997, pp. 2–3.
52.John Paul II, “Address to Polish Episcopal Conference,” OR [EWE], August 10, 1997, pp. 6–7 [emphasis in original].
53.“General Jaruzelski’s Remarks upon Pope’s Departure,” Origins 17:6 (June 25, 1987), p. 90.
54.Ibid.
55.Ibid.
56.John Paul had discussed this possibility with the Polish bishops, many of whom were enthusiastic about it. The Pope suggested that caution was in order, given the “credibility” problem involved in reaching an agreement with a regime carrying the historical baggage of the Polish People’s Republic. It was another indication of John Paul’s intuition that the end of Polish communism was nearer than might be thought. He may also have wanted to avoid a structured relationship between the Holy See and the Polish communist state that might make it even more difficult for other independent social forces, like Solidarity, to gain their rightful position in society. [See John Paul II, “Address to Polish Episcopal Conference,” OR (EWE), August 10, 1987, p. 7.]
57.Waldheim became Secretary-General when the Soviet Union refused to consider the candidate supported by the United States, Max Jacobsen, a Finnish socialist of Jewish heritage. See Daniel Patrick Moynihan, A Dangerous Place (Boston: Little, Brown, 1978), p. 83.
58.The IJCIC is composed of the World Jewish Congress, the Synagogue Council of America, the American Jewish Committee, B’nai B’rith International, and the Israel Jewish Committee on Interreligious Consultations.
59.See, for example, Sergio I. Minerbi, The Vatican and Zionism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990).
60.John Paul II, “Address After Meeting with the President and Mrs. Reagan,” in John Paul II, The Pope Speaks to the American Church, pp. 142–145 [emphasis in original].
61.John Paul II, “To the Reverend George V. Coyne, SJ, Director of the Vatican Observatory,” in John Paul II on Science and Religion: Reflections on the New View from Rome, ed. Robert John Russell, William R. Stoeger, SJ, and George V. Coyne, SJ (Rome: Vatican Observatory Publications, 1990), pp. M2–M14.
62.The Synod on the Laity was originally scheduled for 1986, but was moved to 1987 when John Paul decided to summon the Extraordinary Synod for the twentieth anniversary of Vatican II.
63.Questions were raised at the time as to why lay men and women were not members of a Synod that was discussing their vocation and mission in the Church. The answer is that the Synod is a Synod of Bishops. To have included lay members would have violated the integrity of the Synod as an institution and would have been redolent of the very clericalism the Synod was trying to overcome: the notion that only members of the clergy (in this case, bishops) “count” in the Church. This understanding of the Synod of Bishops is, however, in some tension with the fact that priests have been appointed full members of the Synod.
64.John Paul II, Christifideles Laici, 3.2, in Miller, Exhortations.
65.See ibid., 1.1–7.6.
66.Ibid., 17.2 [emphasis in original]; on the universality of the call to holiness, see ibid., 16.2.
67.Ibid., 15.8 [emphasis in original], 15.6.
68.See ibid., 23–24.
69.Ibid., 26.1 [emphasis in original].
70.Ibid., 27.6.
71.See ibid., 34.
72.See ibid., 36–44.
73.See OR [EWE], December 21–28, 1987, pp. 7–8 [emphasis in original].
74.Secretariat for Promoting Christian Unity Information Service #66 (1988/I), pp. 21–22.
75.“The Joint Declaration of Pope John Paul II and Patriarch Dimitrios I,” in ibid., pp. 9–10.
76.Thus the so-called hidden encyclical of Pius XI, Humani Generis Unitas, a defense of the unity of the human race in the face of racism and anti-Semitism, was never an “encyclical” in any sense of the term; it was a draft—in fact, several drafts—which had never been put into a coherent whole, much less given definitive form by the Pope’s agreement and signature. The notion of a “hidden encyclical” is a publisher’s trick or a polemicist’s device, not a serious appraisal. [See Georges Passelecq and Bernard Suchecky, The Hidden Encyclical of Pius XI, transl. Steven Rendall (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1997).]
77.Author’s interview with Archbishop Jorge M. Mejía, January 20, 1997.
78.See Roberto Suro, “The Writing of an Encyclical,” in Aspiring to Freedom, ed. Kenneth A Myers (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1988), pp. 164–166.
79.See ibid., p. 167.
80.John Paul II, Sollicitudo Rei Socialis, in Miller, Encyclicals, 15.2.
81.Ibid., 15.4.
82.Ibid., 15.5–15.6 [emphasis in original].
83.Ibid., 16.2.
84.Ibid., 44.5 [emphasis in original].
85.Ibid., 21, 22 [emphases in original].
86.Cited in Richard John Neuhaus, “Sollicitudo Behind the Headlines,” in Aspiring to Freedom, p. 135. Neuhaus conceded that there was material
in the encyclical to warrant Rosenthal’s headline, especially for newspapers obsessed with politics and the superpower rivalry, but he also argued that a better headline would have read, “Pope Says Freedom and Human Rights Essential to Global Development.” [Ibid.]
87.William F. Buckley, Jr., “What Is the Pope Saying?” National Review, March 18, 1988, pp. 17–18.
88.“Papal Gull,” The New Republic, March 14, 1988, pp. 5–7.
89.Several progressive celebrations of Sollicitudo Rei Socialis are gathered in The Logic of Solidarity: Commentaries on Pope John Paul II’s Encyclical “On Social Concern,” Gregory Baum and Robert Ellsberg, editors (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1989); see also Gregory Baum, “The Anti-Cold War Encyclical,” The Ecumenist, 26 (1988), pp. 65–74.
For more tempered critical responses to Sollicitudo Rei Socialis, see Michael Novak, “The Development of Nations,” and Neuhaus, “Sollicitudo Behind the Headlines,” in Aspiring to Freedom. In the same volume, Peter Berger (“Empirical Testings”) raises interesting questions about the encyclical’s suggestion that democracy is a precondition to economic development.
90.Sollicitudo Rei Socialis, 20.3.
91.Author’s interview with Joaquín Navarro-Valls, February 18, 1998.
92.See Alejandro Bermudez, “Paraguay’s Bishops Strive to Aid Imperiled Democracy,” National Catholic Register, September 20–26, 1998, p. 1.
93.Cited in Walsh, John Paul II, p. 182.
94.Author’s interview with Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, September 20, 1997.
95.Author’s conversation with Pope John Paul II, January 16, 1997.
96.The documentation is in an “Informatory Note” published in OR [EWE], June 27, 1988, pp. 1–2.
97.Cardinal Ratzinger’s telegram is in OR [EWE], July 4, 1988, p. 12.
98.The decree of excommunication is in OR [EWE], July 11, 1988, p. 1.
99.See John Paul II, Ecclesia Dei, in ibid.
100.Author’s interview with Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, September 20, 1997.
101.Author’s interviews with Archbishop Zenon Grocholewski, January 13, 1997, and Cardinal Edward Cassidy, January 14, 1997.