The End and the Beginning

by George Weigel

  57. For further details of the funeral Mass of John Paul II and the week preceding it, see George Weigel, God’s Choice: Pope Benedict XVI and the Future of the Catholic Church (New York: HarperCollins, 2005), pp. 75–103.

  58. Author’s interview with Cardinal Francis Arinze, December 17, 2007.

  59. Author’s interview with Cardinal Leonardo Sandri, March 15, 2008.

  60. Pope Benedict XVI, “Meeting with Clergy,” Origins 38:13 (September 4, 2008), p. 207 [emphasis added].

  61. T. S. Eliot, “Four Quartets,” in Eliot, Collected Poems 1909–1962 (New York: Harcourt Brace & Company, 1963), p. 190.

  Chapter Ten

  1. See Edmund Morris, Dutch: A Memoir of Ronald Reagan (New York: Random House, 1999).

  2. See Weigel, Witness to Hope, pp. 7ff.

  3. The German theologian Karl Rahner, S.J., argued that the completion of the lifelong process of metanoia is in fact the Christian meaning of death: it is at the point of death that we can make a complete, radical, and unreserved gift of ourselves to God (an offering that can be made in an anticipatory way prior to the moment of death, but which would be impossible were the “immortality project” of certain twenty-first-century bioethicists to reach fulfillment). See Karl Rahner, S.J., The Theology of Death: Quaestiones Disputatae 2 (New York: Herder and Herder, 1961), chapter 1.

  4. See Weigel, The Truth of Catholicism, pp. 72–91.

  5. Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1813.

  6. Pope John Paul II, Gift and Mystery, p. 20 [emphasis in original]. For more on Karol Wojtyła’s education in faith, see Weigel, Witness to Hope, chapters 1 and 2.

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

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

  9. Ibid.

  10. As he did, for example, prior to the appointment of Jean-Marie Lustiger as archbishop of Paris; Lustiger, reluctant to accept the nomination, was told by Stanisław Dziwisz, “You are the fruit of the prayer of the Pope.” See Weigel, Witness to Hope, pp. 388–90.

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

  12. Author’s interview with Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, September 12, 1996.

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

  14. Ibid.

  15. John Paul II, Address to the Fiftieth General Assembly of the United Nations Organization, October 5, 1995, 16 [emphasis in original].

  16. Ibid., 17.

  17. Ibid.

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

  19. Author’s interview with Bishop Stanisław Smoleński, April 7, 1997.

  20. Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1827.

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

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

  23. Author’s interview with Karol Tarnowski, November 5, 1998.

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

  25. John Paul II, Rise, Let Us Be on Our Way!, pp. 139–40.

  26. “Reflections on Fatherhood,” in Karol Wojtyła, The Collected Plays and Writings on Theater, trans. Bolesław Taborski (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987), p. 368.

  27. Author’s interview with Stanisław Grygiel, February 20, 1997.

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

  29. Throughout the pontificate, the dissident Swiss theologian Hans Küng was both ill informed and malicious in his criticism of John Paul II, and not least of the Pope’s intellectual openness. See “Hans Küng,” in Fergus Kerr, Twentieth Century Catholic Theologians (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2007), pp. 146–47, n. 5, for one among many examples.

  30. See Franco Bucarelli, “God’s Athlete,” Columbia, November 2007, p. 19.

  31. Author’s interview with Hanna Suchocka, November 11, 2008.

  John Paul’s first question, on greeting the prime minister, was “Are your parents still alive?” to which Suchocka had to answer, “No.” Having been orphaned himself, Suchocka believed, John Paul wanted to know what other people’s parents’ reaction had been to their children’s rise to unexpected eminence. Thus the first thing on John Paul II’s mind when meeting the prime minister of Poland was not public policy, but the person in front of him.

  32. Author’s interview with Cardinal Franz König, December 11, 1997.

  33. Author’s conversation with Pope John Paul II, March 20, 1997.

  John Paul II retained his deep affection for the veteran editor of Tygodnik Powszechny, Jerzy Turowicz, until “Pan Jerzy’s” death in January 1999, even as the Pope wondered about the newspaper’s seeming fondness for theological currents of thought that cut across the grain of his own theological sensibility and magisterium.

  34. Author’s interview with Stanisław Rybicki, April 9, 1997.

  35. Author’s interview with Piotr and Teresa Malecki, Stanisław and Danuta Rybicki, Karol Tarnowski, and Danuta Ciesielska, November 8, 2008.

  36. Author’s conversation with Father Maciej Zięba, O.P., December 4, 2008.

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

  38. Author’s interview with Cardinal Joachim Meisner, October 17, 2001.

  39. Author’s conversation with Pope John Paul II, September 25, 1994; author’s interview with Cardinal John J. O’Connor, November 8, 1996.

  40. Author’s conversation with Pope John Paul II, September 24, 1999.

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

  42. Plato identified the four cardinal virtues as prudence, justice, courage (fortitude), and temperance in The Republic IV, 427. The Catechism of the Catholic Church discusses the cardinal virtues in 1803–5.

  43. Author’s interview with Jerzy Gałkowski, April 14, 1997.

  44. See John Paul II, Rise, Let Us Be on Our Way, pp. 49–50.

  45. Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1807.

  46. Author’s interview with Hanna Suchocka, November 11, 2008.

  47. Morris West, The Devil’s Advocate (Chicago: Loyola Classics, 2005), p. 25.

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

  49. Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1809.

  50. For an account of this remarkable sermon, see Weigel, Witness to Hope, pp. 250–51.

  51. Gaudium et Spes, 37.

  52. John Paul II, Evangelium Vitae, 104.

  53. See John Paul II, Dominum et Vivificantem, 27.

  54. Author’s interview with Cardinal Stanisław Dziwisz, December 2, 2008; “John Paul II Helps Possessed Woman in Vatican,” ZENIT News Service, September 10, 2000.

  55. “John Paul II Helps Possessed Woman in Vatican,” ZENIT News Service, September 10, 2000.

  56. Author’s interview with Cardinal Stanisław Dziwisz, December 2, 2008.

  57. Ibid.

  58. Catechism of the Catholic Church, 395.

  59. See ibid., 385.

  60. Ibid., 309 [emphasis in original].

  61. John Paul II, Dominum et Vivificantem, 35.

  Chapter Eleven

  1. J. N. D. Kelly, The Oxford Dictionary of Popes (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), p. 302.

  2. Cited in Antonio Fappani and Franco Molinari, Giovanni Battista Montini Giovane (Turin: Marietti, 1979), p. 171.

  3. The 1985 World Youth Day in Rome took place prior to the Pope’s decision to make these events a regular part of the rhythm of the Church’s life, such that some count Buenos Aires-1987 as the first international World Youth Day, strictly speaking.

  4. For an ecumenical study of the many roles of Peter in the early Church, see Peter in the New Testament, eds. Raymond E. Brown, Karl P. Donfried, and John Reumann (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1973).

  5. John Paul II, Redemptoris Missio, 39.

  6. Author’s conversations with Vittorio Sozzi and Roberto Presilla, February 27, 2002.

 
7. Author’s interview with Cardinal Camillo Ruini, March 17, 2008. See also Marcello Pera, “Relativism, Christianity, and the West,” and “Letter to Joseph Ratzinger,” in Joseph Ratzinger and Marcello Pera, Without Roots: The West, Relativism, Christianity, Islam, trans. Michael F. Moore (New York: Basic Books, 2006).

  8. The story of this confrontation is told in detail in Weigel, Witness to Hope, pp. 715–27.

  9. See ibid., pp. 766–71, for a detailed account of the drama at Beijing.

  10. On the Extraordinary Synod, see ibid., pp. 487–90, 502–5.

  11. Author’s interview with Archbishop John Onaiyekan, November 30, 2001; author’s interview with Cardinal Francis Arinze, December 17, 2007.

  12. The Synod on the Laity and Christifideles Laici are discussed in Weigel, Witness to Hope, pp. 552–55.

  13. Author’s conversation with Father Alberto Garbin, December 17, 2008.

  14. See, for example, Ann Carey, Sisters in Crisis: The Tragic Unraveling of Women’s Religious Communities (Huntington, IN: Our Sunday Visitor Publishing Division, 1997).

  15. See, for example, Council of Major Superiors of Women Religious, The Foundations of Religious Life: Revisiting the Vision (Notre Dame, IN: Ave Maria Press, 2009).

  16. Despite the Council’s decree on priestly formation, the serious theological work at the Council, these commentators argued, had centered on the episcopate (discussion of which dominated the preparation of the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church), while the Council’s practical effect within the ordained ministry had been to restore the diaconate as a permanent office in the Church.

  17. On Pastores Dabo Vobis, see Weigel, Witness to Hope, pp. 656–57.

  18. Author’s interview with Cardinal William W. Baum, November 5, 1996.

  19. See Lumen Gentium, 39–42.

  20. For more on the changes wrought by Divinus Perfectionis Magister, see Weigel, Witness to Hope, pp. 448–49.

  21. Avery Cardinal Dulles, S.J., “John Paul II and the New Evangelization,” in Dulles, Church and Society, p. 97.

  22. See ibid., pp. 92–96, with the appropriate references in John Paul II’s magisterium.

  23. Ibid., p. 100.

  24. See, for example, Gaddis, The Cold War.

  25. See de Lubac, The Drama of Atheist Humanism.

  26. On Centesimus Annus, see Weigel, Witness to Hope, pp. 612–19.

  27. Author’s interview with Father Robert Gahl, December 12, 2008.

  28. John Paul II, Evangelium Vitae, 20.

  29. On these questions, see Russell Hittinger, “Introduction to Modern Catholicism,” in eds. Witte and Alexander, The Teachings of Modern Roman Catholicism on Law, Politics, and Human Nature, pp. 1–38; at p. 21, Hittinger notes “a steady deterioration of any ontological density to the state” in twentieth-century Catholic thought.

  On Vatican II’s acceleration of the shift from an ontologically “thick” Catholic theory of the state to a thinner notion of the limited, constitutional state and its relationship to the question of religious freedom, see John Courtney Murray, S.J., “The Issue of Church and State at Vatican Council II,” Theological Studies 27:4 (December 1966).

  One controversial facet of this new approach to the state involved John Paul II’s teaching on capital punishment. For a review of the debate, see Avery Cardinal Dulles, S.J., “The Death Penalty: A Right-to-Life Issue?” in Dulles, Church and Society, pp. 332–47.

  As the debate over John Paul II’s social doctrine unfolds, it may be hoped that it is not distorted by efforts to portray Karol Wojtyła as beholden to a Marxist analysis of modern social and economic life, a theme advanced doggedly over the years by Jonathan Luxmoore and Jolanta Babiuch in the pages of the London Tablet. Their misreading of the sources of Wojtyła’s social thought rests in part on a misunderstanding of Catholic Social Ethics, a text adopted by Wojtyła from Father Jan Piwowarczyk during Wojtyła’s seminary teaching days in Kraków—a text that Wojtyła did not regard as his own—and by a more fundamental failure to recognize that Thomas Aquinas had analyzed questions of distributive justice seven centuries before Karl Marx.

  30. On the origins and work of Bea’s Secretariat for Christian Unity, see Jerome-Michael Vereb, C.P., “Because He was a German!” The Origins of Roman Catholic Engagement in the Ecumenical Movement (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2006). On “real but imperfect” communion, see Vatican II’s Decree on Ecumenism, Unitatis Redintegratio [The Restoration of Unity], 3. On the “hierarchy of truths,” see Unitatis Redintegratio, 11. For a description of the scene at the Phanar in Istanbul at the lifting of the mutual excommunications of 1054, see Lawrence Cardinal Shehan, A Blessing of Years (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1982), pp. 203–5.

  31. See Weigel, Witness to Hope, p. 525.

  32. Author’s interview with Ronald G. Roberson, C.S.P., March 3, 1997.

  33. On the difficulties in bringing the Joint Declaration to a successful conclusion, see Weigel, Witness to Hope, pp. 826–28.

  34. For more on John Paul II’s ecumenical initiatives with Orthodoxy and their reception within the complex Orthodox world, see Weigel, Witness to Hope, pp. 358–60, 555–57, 651–52, 672–73, 764, 821–22.

  35. For a more comprehensive discussion of Ut Unum Sint, see ibid., pp. 760–66.

  36. On the 1985–86 crisis in Anglican-Catholic relations, see ibid., pp. 518–22.

  In 1980, John Paul II created the “Pastoral Provision” by which married Anglican priests and bishops could be received into the full communion of the Catholic Church and be ordained as priests; unmarried former Anglican clergy could also be ordained as Catholic bishops. The Pastoral Provision also permitted the formation of parishes that retained elements of Anglican liturgy. The Pastoral Provision is under the authority of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. According to former Anglican bishop Jeffrey Steenson, John Paul II urged Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, prefect of CDF, to “be generous with the Anglicans.” [Author’s interview with Jeffrey Steenson, December 15, 2008.] See www.pastoralprovision.org for a history of this initiative.

  37. Geoffrey Wainwright, “A Methodist Tribute to Pope John Paul II,” Pro Ecclesia XIV:3 (Summer 2005), pp. 265–67.

  38. As of November 2009, “Evangelicals and Catholics Together” had published seven common statements: on Christian political responsibility (“Evangelicals and Catholics Together: The Christian Mission in the Third Millennium,” First Things 43 [May 1994], pp. 15–22); on salvation by faith (“The Gift of Salvation,” First Things 79 [January 1998], pp. 20–23); on Scripture and tradition (“Your Word Is Truth,” First Things 125 [August/September 2002], pp. 38–42); on the nature of the Church (“The Communion of Saints,” First Things 131 [March 2003], pp. 36–42); on prayer and mission (“The Call to Holiness,” First Things 151 [March 2005], pp. 23–26); on the defense of life (“That They May Have Life,” First Things 166 [October 2006], pp. 18–25); and on Mary in the economy of salvation and in Christian piety (“Do Whatever He Tells You,” First Things 197 [November 2009], pp. 49–59).

  39. Timothy George, “John Paul II: An Appreciation,” Pro Ecclesia XIV:3 (Summer 2005), p. 270.

  40. See David Martin, Tongues of Fire: The Explosion of Protestantism in Latin America (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 1993).

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

  42. This theme of the “elder brothers” echoed the 1848 “Manifesto” of the great Polish Romantic poet and playwright Adam Mickiewicz, a philo-Semite. In an interesting historical coincidence, Mickiewicz’s “Manifesto” was written in Rome. [Author’s interview with Jerzy Kluger, March 15, 1997.]

  43. For more on John Paul II’s visit to the Great Synagogue of Rome, see Weigel, Witness to Hope, pp. 482–85.

  44. For an account of this negotiation, see ibid., pp. 697–713.

  45. This was not simply a mistaken popular view. It was held by the Israeli scholar and diplomat Sergio Minerbi, who continued to insist until the ink was dry
on the Fundamental Agreement that any such accord was impossible for Catholic theological reasons; see Minerbi, The Vatican and Zionism: Conflict in the Holy Land 1895–1925 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990). After John Paul’s death, Minerbi argued in an unpersuasive and indeed nasty article that the Pope’s initiatives toward Jews and Judaism masked certain classic, if muted, anti-Semitic attitudes (including the deicide charge, which Minerbi bizarrely attributed to John Paul’s encyclical on the Holy Spirit, Dominum et Vivificantem); see Minerbi, “Pope John Paul II and the Jews: An Evaluation,” Jewish Political Studies Review 18:1–2 (Spring 2006).

  46. The full text of Dabru Emet may be found in First Things 107 (November 2000), pp. 39–41. The document is summarized in Weigel, The Truth of Catholicism, pp. 137–43.

  47. John Paul II, “Lessons of the Galileo Case,” Origins 22:22 (November 12, 1992), pp. 369–74. John Paul’s initiative in the reexamination of the Galileo affair is described in more detail in Weigel, Witness to Hope, pp. 629–31.

  48. The papal message is available at http://www.newadvent.org/library/docs_jp02tc.htm.

  49. Assisi I was motivated in part by the Pope’s concern about a global nuclear war. John Paul believed that many politicians were “too feeble” to take the lead in the pursuit of peace; thus, as he once put it, “We have to do something with prayer, because prayer can do what politicians can’t do.” [Author’s interview with Msgr. Vincenzo Paglia, December 7, 1997.]

  50. John Paul II, Discorso alla Curia Romana per gli Auguri di Natale, 22 December 1986, 7 [author’s translation]. Even curial progressives such as Cardinal Roger Etchegaray were opposed to official follow-up activities modeled on Assisi I, so John Paul gave responsibility for the project’s continuation to the Sant’Egidio Community. [Author’s interview with Msgr. Vincenzo Paglia, December 7, 1997.]