Let’s be principled to a principled Pope
Comments. Considerations. Questions.
by Kenneth Bagnell
One evening, roughly 30 years ago, after the sexual abuse scandals had broken out, a Catholic priest – a good man and a faithful one- was asked on television if the vocation he chose had many painful aspects. He smiled and replied in four words: “It’s a lonely life.” I suspect that like most vocations, it’s most lonely at the top. The papacy is the world’s most vivid example of being “at the top.”
I suggest that’s all that’s behind the letters written to and from Pope John Paul II, recently exploited by the BBC. It’s now many years ago since the earlier Cardinal Karol Wojtyla, who became Pope in 1978, wrote a book on philosophy. Before it was completed, an American, scholar and Catholic, Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka contacted him and offered to go to Poland to discuss the book’s development. They began an exchange of letters which, in time, (it’s claimed by some,) were touched by personal words of affection. She became his editorial assistant on his major literary work. That’s perfectly reasonable. Most of us who have written non-fiction books had a researcher who not only helps us in the content but in the checking and rechecking. Inevitably we become grateful friends as I, a mere journalist, have with my researcher Mary Rutherford – a published poet and former researcher for Pierre Berton – who remains a close friend.
But the most unjust aspect is that letters to Anna Teresa, don’t add up to a questionable relationship, and most certainly not immorality. George Weigel, an internationally acclaimed Vatican historian, said roughly a week ago, that he himself quoted from some of the so called “revelations” back in the late 1990’s, in Witness to Hope, a major volume on the papacy. In it he has a very lengthy footnote, which I’ve read. The book itself apparently was more scholarly than readable. Weigel calls it “an extraordinary dense work…” Papal scholars and friends agreed. The inside joke among the Pope’s Polish friends was that “the first assignment in purgatory for priests who misbehaved would be to read Wojtyla’s Person and Act.” Not exactly an inviting review.
Obviously the next step for the massive volume was to rewrite it. Wojtyla agreed that he’d cooperate with Anna Theresa, first in overseeing its translation to English. “The result,” Weigel writes, “according to everyone involved, was a much-improved text.” Naturally, not everybody agreed and further complications developed: more translations were needed. Unfortunately those translations didn’t truly surface until Cardinal Wojtyla became Pope John Paul II in 1978. Confusion following confusion following confusion! Hence it took several years of collaboration. Again more problems: to satisfy all parties, two “chapter sevens” were included, one with a heading saying it was “unrevised.” That complicated revelation bears no indication whatsoever that Pope John Paul II had a girlfriend named Anna Theresa Tymieniecka. One Polish friend was simply a business assistant of another Polish person, the then Cardinal Karol Wojtyla. I’m not at all sure of any, even minor, relevance that justifies the claim of the BBC report
In any case, is a Priest, Bishop or Cardinal, denied a common, indeed warm friendship with a woman? I should hope not. Nothing in the information provided by the BBC verifies any improper aspect to Wojtyla’s business or social relationship with Professor Tymieniecka. To make specific reference to what is being said by his biographer, here are three segments of the lengthy statement on the matter from George Weigel, one of Catholicism’s most highly regarded Vatican scholars:
- 1. “That Karol Wojtyla had many friendships –including close friendships with women — has been well known for decades. And ought hardly be surprising. I carefully explored some of those friendships in “Witness to Hope” and the second volume of my John Paul II biography, The End and the Beginning. Many of those relationships date back to Wojtyla’s years as a university chaplain in Stalinist Poland. Others were formed when he was Archbishop of Krakow. Still others formed when he was Pope. John Paul cherished his friendships, kept them green over time, and was intensely loyal to his friends…”
- 2. “These problems only surfaced after Wojtyla had been elected Pope – when he had no time to check hundreds of pages of text in a language in which he was not entirely comfortable. So John Paul II, appointed a commission… to review and correct the English text prepared by Tymieniecka. But she refused to take corrections from anyone but Wojtyla and furthermore, was eager to get the book into print to take advantage of the author’s new, worldwide celebrity. She also claimed that she had Wojtyla’s agreement to publish hers as “the definitive text” of the book, although why any “definitive” text would have two chapter sevens, one of which is labelled “unrevised,” was not clear then and is not clear today…”
(3) “I (George Weigel) once asked his former seminary spiritual director, Stanislaw Smolenski (who later became his auxiliary Bishop in Krakow) to summarize the character of the young Karol Wojtyla he had known during the long dark night of Nazi occupation. He was, Bishop Smolenski replied: a man who “loved easily.” Karol Wojtyla had completely normal relationships and friendships as a teenager and young adult with both men and women. As a mature man, he took the decision to express his capacity for love as a celibate in the priesthood of the Catholic Church. He was choosing to express his love and his paternal instinct spiritually, through the gift of his life in service of others…” The Vatican Press office, which is never surprising, simply dismissed the BBC story as “no great revelation.” (No surprise there.) But the reflective thought that struck me as intelligent, honest and humane came, not surprisingly, from a Jesuit, James Martin, a writer for the magazine America. Here it is: “This story which is almost sure to be misunderstood, needs to be seen in the context of his and her humanity, his promise of celibacy, and her response to it and especially his overall treatment of Anna-Theresa Tymieniecka. In the end are we surprised that a saint could love? Or that someone could love in return? Because that’s part of sanctity: loving and being loved.” Absolutely.
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All past blogs are archived on my website: your comments are welcome: www.kennethbagnell.com.