Witness to Hope

by George Weigel

  44.“Visit to Republic of Lebanon: Meeting with Youth,” OR [EWE], May 21, 1997, pp. 2–3.

  45.Author’s conversation with Celestine Bohlen, June 7, 1997.

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

  47.Ibid. Eighteen months after Mother Teresa’s death, the Pope did agree to dispense with the normal five-year wating period before the formal process of seeking her beatification could be opened by the Archdiocese of Calcutta.

  48.In early July, 1997, Patriarch Aleksy tried to revive the idea of a meeting with John Paul with a letter to Rome expressing the hope that such a meeting could still be arranged. No place or date was suggested, but Holy See spokesman Joaquín Navarro-Valls said that some encouragement had been taken from the fact that the letter expressed the hope for a meeting in the indeterminate future. The following year, in his Easter 1998 message, Aleksy continued to complain about “proselytism” and “aggressive triumphalism,” and said that “unless serious and clear progress to resolve these problems is under way, the majority of Orthodoxy cannot accept a meeting with the Pope.” In 1997, the Russian Orthodox Church was the major institutional supporter of a law “On Freedom of Conscience and Religious Association” that restricted the missionary activities of religious communities unknown in Russia until recent years. Evangelical Protestants were a primary target of the legislation, which the Catholic Church in Russia ineffectually opposed.

  49.Details of the plans for the aborted meeting in Vienna and its aftermath are taken from the author’s interview with Cardinal Edward Cassidy, September 19, 1997; from the Secretariat for Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs Newsletter on the Eastern Churches and Ecumenism 21 (June 5, 1997), p. 1; from Arthur DuNunzio, “Far from Unity, Catholic World Report (August/September 1997), pp. 34–35; from “World Watch,” Catholic World Report, June 1998, pp. 12–13; and from “World Watch,” Catholic World Report, August/September 1998, p. 6.

  50.Bartholomew I, “Dialogue, from an Orthodox Perspective,” Origins, 27:20 (October 30, 1997), pp. 333, 335–337.

  51.Author’s interview with Ronald G. Roberson, CSP, October 31, 1997. Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew would later insist that his remarks about an “ontologically different” way in which Catholicism and Orthodoxy existed had been misinterpreted, suggesting that he had been referring to different ways of life rather than essential differences. (Author’s interview with Ronald G. Roberson, CSP, March 1, 1999.)

  52.“The Church in the World,” The Tablet, February 14, 1998, p. 223.

  53.John Paul II, Spiritual Pilgrimage, pp. 98–99.

  54.See Daniel T. Wackerman, “The Pope’s Maestro,” America 171:17 (November 26, 1994), pp. 5–8, 26.

  55.John Paul II, “The Roots of Anti-Judaism,” Origins 27:22 (November 13, 1997), pp. 365, 367.

  56.“Joint Press Communique: Meeting in Rome and Castel Gandolfo,” in John Paul II, Spiritual Pilgrimage, p. 103.

  57.Reactions to We Remember: Celestine Bohlen, “Vatican Repents Failure to Save Jews From Nazis,” New York Times, March 17, 1998, pp. A1, A11; William Drozdiak, “Vatican Apologizes to Jews,” Washington Post, March 17, 1998, pp. A1, 15; Paul Elie, “John Paul’s Jewish Dilemma,” New York Times Magazine, April 26, 1998, pp. 34–39.

  58.Information on the Joint Declaration and Response is taken from the author’s interviews with Cardinal Edward Cassidy, October 10, 1998, and June 7, 1999, and Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, December 16, 1998. See also Richard John Neuhaus, “Setback in Rome,” First Things 86 (October 1998), pp. 80–82. A copy of Cardinal Cassidy’s July 30, 1998, letter to Dr. Noko was provided to the author by Cardinal Cassidy. The texts of the Joint Declaration and Response, and Cardinal Cassidy’s press conference statement on June 25, 1998, may be found in Origins 28:8 (July 16, 1998), pp. 120–132. Dr. Noko’s letter to the LWF executive committee may be found in Origins 28:17 (October 8, 1998), pp. 288–290.

  59.John Paul II, Universi Dominici Gregis, prologue.

  60.Ibid., 44, 55, 61.

  61.Ibid., prologue.

  62.Ibid., 62.

  63.Ibid., 74.

  64.See Reese, Inside the Vatican, p. 87.

  65.Author’s conversation with Pope John Paul II, October 23, 1998.

  66.Pope Pius XII was photographed by a physician during his death agonies and the pictures peddled to the tabloid press. The managers of popes also managed to botch Pius XII’s embalming; the decomposing body could be heard bursting inside the casket during the pre-funeral ceremonies.

  67.Universi Dominici Gregis, 30.

  68.Ibid., 17.

  69.Ibid., 77.

  70.Ibid., prologue.

  71.“World Watch,” Catholic World Report, June 1998, pp. 10–11.

  72.Dziwisz took as his episcopal motto Sursum Corda [“Lift up your hearts”], the phrase from the Mass that Henryk Siekiewicz used as the epigram for his great trilogy of novels.

  73.Shortly after the consistory, two of the new cardinals died: Alberto Bovone, the Prefect of the Congregation for Saints, and Jean Balland, the archbishop of Lyons.

  74.Author’s interview with Irina Alberti, April 16, 1998; Vatican Information Service 980212 (February 10, 1998).

  75.Author’s interview with Tadeusz Styczeń, SDS, October 23, 1998. The texts of John Paul II’s 1998 Austrian pilgrimage may be found in OR [EWE] June 24, 1998, July 1, 1998, and July 8, 1998.

  76.“Austrian Catholics Vote for Sweeping Reforms to Church,” The Tablet, October 31, 1998.

  77.See Catholic World Report, June 1998, pp. 6–7.

  78.“Portugal’s Voters Reject Attempt to Liberalize Abortion Law,” National Catholic Register, July 12–18, 1998, pp. 15–16.

  79.Author’s interview with Cardinal Edward Cassidy, October 10, 1998.

  80.The New York Times headlined the story, “Attend Mass on Sundays, Pope Reminds the Wayward” [New York Times, July 8, 1998, p. A5]; “Catholics Told to Improve Mass Attendance: Pope Says Weekend Leisure Pursuits Must Leave Time for Obligatory Worship,” readers of the Washington Post were informed [Washington Post, July 8, 1998, p. A20].

  81.John Paul II, Dies Domini, 1, 2.

  82.Ibid., 4.

  83.Ibid., 11.

  84.“…the Sabbath’s position as the seventh day of the week suggests for the Lord’s Day a complementary symbolism, much loved by the Fathers. Sunday is not only the first day, it is also the “eighth day,” set within the sevenfold succession of days in a unique and transcendent position which evokes not only the beginning of time but also its end in the ‘age to come.’ Saint Basil explains that Sunday symbolizes the truly singular day which will follow the present time, the day without end which will know neither evening nor morning, the imperishable age which will never grow old; Sunday is the ceaseless foretelling of life without end which renews the hope of Christians and encourages them on their way.” [Ibid., 26.]

  85.Ibid., 30.

  86.New York Times, July 24, 1998, p. A1.

  87.On this point, see “Episcopal Conferences: Theological Bases,” unpublished lecture delivered by Cardinal Francis George, OMI, September 8, 1998.

  88.See Lumen Gentium, 12.

  89.The diverse expressions of the Catholic charismatic renewal were likely the most numerous expression of this phenomenon after Vatican II. One of its manifestations, the “El Shaddai” movement in the Philippines, regularly drew between 800,000 and a million people to revival-type meetings every Saturday of the year. By the late 1990s, renewal movements and new communities with global reach and a significant numbers of members included the Focolare, the Neocatechumenal Way, Communion and Liberation, and the “Regnum Christi” movement associated with the Legionaries of Christ, a new religious community of priests. Opus Dei, which was fitted into the hierarchical structure of the Church through being created a “personal prelature,” functions as a renewal movement but is not the quite the same, structurally. [Author’s interviews with Archbishop Paul Cordes, March 22, 1997, and Cardinal J. Francis Stafford, Dec
ember 18, 1998. See also Paul J. Cordes, In the Midst of Our World: Forces of Spiritual Renewal (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1988).]

  90.The celebration in St. Peter’s Square was preceded by a four-day-long international congress of “renewal movements and new ecclesial communities,” as the curial terminology had it.

  91.The testimonies may be found in Il Papa e i Movimenti (Milan: Edizioni San Paolo, 1998), pp. 17–39.

  Chiara Lubich’s spirituality, like John Paul II’s, is deeply Carmelite, stressing Christ’s abandonment on the Cross as the model of, and warrant for, abandoning one’s own life to God’s providential plan. The abandoned Christ, Chiara Lubich once said, “married atheism and God-forsakenness,” which is the modern condition. [Author’s interview with Chiara Lubich, February 25, 1997. See also Chiara Lubich, Unity and Jesus Forsaken (New York: New City Press, 1985).] John Paul II personally encouraged the stipulation in the Focolare’s statutes specifying that a woman will always be the movement’s president. [See Chiara Lubich: A Life for Unity—An Interview with Franca Zambonini (New York: New City Press, 1992), pp. 142–143.]

  Luigi Giussani’s most influential book is The Religious Sense (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1997).

  92.The Pope’s address is in OR [EWE], June 3, 1998, pp. 1–2.

  93.See Paul J. Cordes, Born of the Spirit: Renewal Movements in the Life of the Church (South Bend, Ind.: Greenlawn Press, 1994), pp. 64–66.

  94.John Paul II, homily for the canonization of Edith Stein, 2, in OR [EWE], October 14, 1998, p. 1; author’s conversation with Pope John Paul II, October 23, 1998.

  95.John Paul II, homily for the canonization of Edith Stein, 6.

  96.Ibid., 4.

  97.The canonization of St. Edith Stein was severely criticized by the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith [ADL], which charged that it was part of an attempt to “Christianize” the Holocaust and deflect attention from what ADL suggested was the considerable Christian responsibility for the Nazi genocide of the European Jews. Rabbi David Novak of the University of Toronto said of the ADL statement, “What it says in effect is that the Catholic Church killed Edith Stein and is now trying to cover up its guilt by making her a saint. It is an obscene statement.” [See Abraham H. Foxman and Rabbi Leon Klenicki, “The Canonization of Edith Stein: An Unnecessary Problem,” a statement issued by the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith; Rabbi Novak’s comment is cited in First Things 90 (February 1999), p. 71.]

  98.John Paul II, homily at twentieth anniversary Mass, 2, in OR [EWE], October 21, 1998, p. 2.

  99.Author’s conversation with Pope John Paul II, October 23, 1998.

  100.John Paul II, Fides et Ratio, 1.

  101.See ibid., 45–48.

  102.See ibid., 48.

  103.Cited in ibid., 79.

  104.Ibid., 1.

  105.Ibid., 107.

  EPILOGUE

  The Third Millennium: To See the Sun Rise

  1.Author’s interviews with Anna Karoń-Ostrowska, April 8, 1997, and Danuta Michałowska, April 22,1997. I Without Name was subsequently produced on stage in London, and published in Poland as Volume 87 in the “Więz Library” series.

  2.Statistics on the first twenty years of the pontificate of John Paul II are taken from the Vatican Information Service: “The 20 Years of John Paul II: 11th Longest Papacy in History” (# VIS 981013 [1500], “Some Statistical Data on the Pontificate of John Paul II” (# VIS 981013 [1930]), and “14 Million Attend General Audiences in 20 Years of Papacy,” (# VIS 9810103 [60]).

  3.In the 1998 encyclical Fides et Ratio, John Paul wrote that Gaudium et Spes 22 had been, throughout the pontificate, “one of the constant reference-points of my teaching.” [Fides et Ratio, 60.]

  4.On this point, see Ratzinger, Principles of Catholic Theology, p. 378.

  5.John Paul II, UN-II, 2.

  6.Balthasar, In the Fullness of Faith, p. 105.

  7.One who was excommunicated, the Sri Lankan Tissa Balasuriya, OMI, was reconciled to the Church in short order.

  8.Author’s interview with Teresa Malecka, November 9, 1998.

  9.On these points, see Balthasar, In the Fullness of Faith, pp. 55–57.

  10.On “tradition” beginning inside the Trinity, see Hans Urs von Balthsar, Theo-Drama IV: The Action (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1994), pp. 52–53.

  11.Historian of doctrine Jaroslav Pelikan claims that the pedigree of this famous distinction is impossible to determine; see Pelikan, The Melody of Theology: A Philosophical Dictionary (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1988), pp. 252ff.

  12.Author’s conversation with Pope John Paul II, December 13, 1997.

  13.For a critical yet affirming view of the Synod from inside, see Neuhaus, Appointment in Rome.

  14.Author’s conversation with Pope John Paul II, October 23, 1998.

  15.Restorationist critics must also recognize that John Paul has, in fact, addressed key theological and practical themes in liturgy in the 1980 apostolic letter Dominicae Cenae, in the 1998 apostolic letter Dies Domini, and in several ad limina addresses to various groups of bishops; for examples of the latter, see the Pope’s ad limina address to the bishops of Provence on March 8, 1997 (OR [EWE], March 19, 1997, pp. 5–6) and his October 1998 ad limina address to the bishops of the Northwest United States (OR [EWE], October 14, 1998, pp. 3, 10.

  16.Author’s interview with Cardinal Jozef Tomko, November 14, 1996.

  17.See Reese, Inside the Vatican, pp. 192–201.

  18.Letter of Pope John Paul II to Maciej Zięba, OP, June 21, 1994.

  19.Author’s interview with Rocco Buttiglione, January 21, 1997.

  20.Author’s interview with Bishop Pierre Duprey, M.Afr., January 15, 1997.

  21.See “Evangelicals and Catholics Together: The Christian Mission in the Third Millennium,” First Things 43 (May 1994), pp. 15–22, and “The Gift of Salvation,” First Things 79 (January 1998), pp. 20–23. The intricacies of “translating” these kinds of initiatives into a Latin American context are explored in Neuhaus, Appointment in Rome, pp. 117–149.

  22.Author’s interview with Archbishop Oscar Cruz, November 22, 1997.

  23.That hope was exemplified in a memorial address delivered by Cardinal Agostino Casaroli in Rome on November 22, 1997, at a commemoration of the centenary of the birth of Pope Paul VI. In a lengthy encomium to the late pontiff, delivered before John Paul II, the Roman Curia, and thousands of invited guests, the former Secretary of State suggested, in so many words, that while the past two decades had been an interesting and stimulating period, they should be understood in the manner of an interregnum, after which it would be time to return to the kind of papacy modeled by Paul VI, the man perfectly prepared to be Pope. It was, in more ways than one, an extraordinary statement. A close reading of it, set against the record of the previous nineteen years, suggested that this most accomplished of curial officials had not begun to grapple with the sea change that John Paul II, whom he had served for twelve years, had effected in the papacy.

  The dramatic difference in preparation for the papacy between Giovanni Battista Montini and Karol Wojtyła was captured by Casaroli in a single sentence, which readers outside the curial milieu could only regard as ironic in its implications: “It is an old and beatiful tradition of the ecclesiastics in the Roman Curia to reserve part of their free time for some form of direct exercise of the priestly ministry.” However unintended, and with no attempt to demean the pastoral passion of Paul VI, the contrast here between Wojtyła’s formation as a priest and bishop and that of veteran Curialists could not have been more pronounced. [See “Il Discorso del Cardinale Agostino Casaroli,” in L’Osservatore Romano, November 24–25, 1997, pp. 6, 8.]

  24.As of October 8, 1998, Italian cardinals constituted less than twenty percent of the electoral college that will choose John Paul II’s successor. The electoral college created in part by John XXIII was, by contrast, thirty-six percent Italian; and in his first consistory, in December
1958, John XXIII actually increased the percentage of Italian and curial cardinals in the college.

  25.Letter to the author from Pope John Paul II, January 2, 1995.

  26.Author’s interview with Father Józef Tischner, April 23, 1997.

  27.John Paul II, Crossing the Threshold of Hope, p. 22 [emphasis in original].

  28.See ibid., pp. 20, 22.

  29.Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1981).

  30.See Balthasar, Theo-Drama IV: The Action, p. 73.

  31.Author’s interview with Halina Bortnowska, April 7, 1997; Chesterton on More is cited in James Monti, The King’s Good Servant but God’s First (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1997), p. 15.

  32.On this point, see Balthasar, In the Fullness of Faith, pp. 20–21.

  33.Author’s interview with Piotr and Teresa Malecki, July 13, 1998; author’s conversation with Pope John Paul II, December 16, 1998.

  AFTERWORD

  The Great Jubilee of 2000

  1.See John Paul II, Letter Concerning Pilgrimage to the Places Linked to the History of Salvation, 2, 5, 10, 11.

  2.A day later, Archbishop Jean-Louis Tauran, the papal “foreign minister,” announced that the visit had been “indefinitely postponed” rather than “canceled”: a diplomatic effort to keep alive the possibility of a future papal pilgrimage to Iraq that was technically accurate, in that no formal invitation had ever been extended by the Iraqi government. The fact remained that the responsibility for the “indefinite postponement” lay with the Baghdad regime.

  Three months after the “postponement,” Avvenire, an Italian newspaper with close ties to the Holy See’s Secretariat of State, ran a story stating that the failure to reach agreement on a papal visit to Ur had been because of the Baghdad government’s position, which had “compromised” the “spiritual nature” of the Pope’s pilgrimage. Two days later, an evidently stung Iraqi government responded; its ambassador to the Holy See wrote a stiff letter to Avvenire, blaming the failure of the visit on British and American violations of Iraqi sovereignty. [ZENIT News Service, March 3, 2000; March 6, 2000.]