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CHAPTER 1

Karol Wojtyla as a Theologian

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PRELIMINARY QUESTIONS

Some might question whether John Paul II should be ranked among the theologians. Since the age of thirty-eight he has been a bishop, and for the past twenty-five years pope, heavily charged with pastoral and administrative responsibilities. As a pastoral leader he has sought to express, defend, and promote the teaching of the Church, but he has rarely engaged in the kinds of academic research and speculation that are expected of university professors. Should not theology be defined rather in terms of the work of professors who freely probe the sources and develop their theories even when such pursuits bring them into conflict with official Church teaching? Can a pastor claim to be a theologian?

These questions, though they might seem to undermine the very purpose of this book, are not unanswerable. In the first place, we may recall that Karol Wojtyla did pursue academic studies to the extent of earning doctorates both in theology and in Christian ethics. He taught for some years on seminary and university faculties and published more than three hundred articles in scholarly journals, especially in the field of moral theology. At Vatican II he played a significant role in supporting the major renewal of Catholic doctrine effected by the council. His appointment as a bishop should not disqualify him any more than it disqualifies Gregory of Nyssa and John Chrysostom, Hilary and Ambrose, Augustine and Anselm, and other doctors of the Church who taught from episcopal chairs. If the papal office excluded its occupants from the theological confraternity, one would have to delete Leo the Great and Gregory the Great from the roster of theologians. It may be time for us to recognize again what was obvious to earlier generations, viz., that theology is not the special preserve of professors.

Among the Catholic theologians of the second half of the twentieth century, John Paul II holds a place of special eminence. Perhaps more than any other single individual he has succeeded in comprehensively restating the contours of Catholic faith in the light of Vatican II and in relation to postconciliar developments in the Church and in the world. With his keen interest in contemporary culture, philosophy, economics, and international affairs, he has been able to give fresh relevance to the Catholic tradition. Avoiding the pitfalls of compromise and polemics, he has offered a serene and balanced presentation of what Catholics may and should believe on a multitude of questions. No private theologian, however brilliant, speaks with comparable authority.

To present the theology of John Paul II is a challenge. For one thing, he has written, and continues to write, so extensively on so many different topics that the material vastly exceeds what most students, including the present author, have been able to digest. My objective is the relatively modest one of gathering up the essentials of his teaching on strictly theological questions. This book is no substitute for detailed studies of the pope's teaching on specific themes.

As a pastoral leader, the pope is more concerned with presenting normative Catholic doctrine and giving pastoral exhortation than with pursuing the fine points of speculation. But his remarkable formative experiences and powers of insight give freshness and power to all that he writes. To indicate his distinctive contribution I shall try to pick out his more personal insights rather than recapitulate his complete teaching.

It is admittedly difficult to be sure whether works published in the pope's name were actually written by him. In preparing encyclicals and other official documents he unquestionably makes use of assistants who are responsible for many of the footnotes and no doubt for parts of the actual text. But we can find much that is distinctive to the pope, especially if we use as clues what he published before he became pope, when he was working as a private theologian, and his "unofficial" writings as pope, such as the interview Crossing the Threshold of Hope and his reflections on the fiftieth anniversary of his priestly ordination, Gift and Mystery. Many of his official writings as pope, notably his first encyclical, Redemptor hominis, are so personal in tone that they cannot plausibly be ascribed to another hand.

THEOLOGICAL FORMATION

For the purposes of the present monograph it will not be necessary to give a detailed account of the biography of John Paul II. We shall not be concerned with Wojtyla the actor, poet, sportsman, and linguist, though all of these interests have probably affected his theology in one way or another. Nor shall we attempt to investigate his political influence, vast though this has been, or even his pastoral ministry as bishop and pope, although some aspects of his theology touch closely on his concerns as a pastor. But a few indications of his formation and ministry are indispensable to set his theology in proper context.

Born in Wadowice, Poland, on May 18, 1920, Karol Wojtyla lost his mother when he was eight, his only brother when he was twelve, and his father when he was twenty. As a Pole living through the horrors of the Nazi occupation, the devastation of World War II, and the harsh domination of the Soviet Union, the young Wojtyla acquired great powers of endurance. His piety and faith were tried by fire and purified.

One early influence that should be mentioned is that of Jan Tyranowski, a remarkable layman who was a tailor in Kraków. As a young man, Tyranowski had been a leader in Catholic Action and in the Marian Sodality. During the Nazi occupation he organized from the parish a kind of informal academy, of which Wojtyla was a member. Tyranowski trained the group in ascetical and mystical theology in the tradition of Adolphe Tanquerey's textbooks and inspired some of his followers to peruse the mystical works of St. John of the Cross and St. Teresa of Avila. Tyranowski also organized a "living rosary" of young men who turned in prayer to the Blessed Virgin to save Poland from its perils. As a leader of one of the fifteen "chaplets" (corresponding to the fifteen mysteries of the rosary) Wojtyla met for an hour every week with Tyranowski to consult about his life of prayer. Tyranowski seems to have been an authentic mystic, and he gave Wojtyla a lasting respect for Carmelite spirituality. Wojtyla at one point considered becoming a Carmelite.

After his first year at the Jagiellonian University at Kraków (1938–39) Karol Wojtyla's course of study was interrupted by the war. He labored for two years in a stone quarry connected with the Solvay chemical plant and in 1942 secretly entered an underground seminary organized by the future Cardinal Adam Stefan Sapieha. After completing the prescribed course of study, partly at the Jagiellonian University, he was ordained a priest on November 1, 1946. Two weeks later Cardinal Sapieha sent him to Rome to study with the Dominicans at the Angelicum for a doctorate in theology. His dissertation was on the theology of faith of John of the Cross. While fully accepting the idea of faith as an assent to revealed truths, John of the Cross, as interpreted by Wojtyla, held that for union with God it was necessary for faith to be vivified by charity, which effects a transformation through participation in the divine life. The spirit adheres to God in darkness, without support of any proper representation. In an appendix to the dissertation Wojtyla tried to show that John of the Cross's teaching on faith agreed with that of Thomas Aquinas, a point that some scholars had contested.

In the interval between his two years in Rome, Father Wojtyla was directed by Cardinal Sapieha to spend his summer holiday of 1947 visiting France, Belgium, and Holland. In Paris, where he lived at the Polish seminary, he made contact with the worker-priest movement (which interested him as a former worker-seminarian) and studied the issues raised by Fathers Henri Godin and Yvan Daniel in their book La France, pays de mission? He visited the vibrant parish run by the Abbé Michonneau on the outskirts of Paris and studied other efforts to win the working classes back to the Church. He then traveled to Belgium, where he met Canon Joseph Cardijn, who had founded the Young Christian Workers (Jocistes) to bring the working people to the practice of the faith. Cardijn, he found, was critical of the worker-priest movement in France. He felt that priests should present themselves distinctly as priests and not "go secular" in their effort to reach out to workers. While reserving judgment on the new experiments being conducted in France, Wojtyla admired the zealous efforts of the priests to reclaim the masses from secularism and disbelief and expressed the hope that the faith in Poland would not be eroded by a split from culture such as had occurred in France. Before returning to Rome Wojtyla also spent some time at Ars, where he deepened his devotion to St. Jean Vianney, the great apostle of the confessional.

After defending his dissertation in July 1948, Father Wojtyla returned to Poland, where he was initially assigned to parish duties in a small country parish. A year later he was transferred to a parish in Kraków, where he was given special responsibility for working with university students. Two years after that, in 1951, he was sent back to the Jagiellonian University to study for a second doctorate, this time in philosophy. He wrote on the ethics of a German phenomenologist, Max Scheler, who had tried to build an ethical system on the basis of a personally experienced hierarchy of values. Relying heavily on feeling and emotion, Scheler rejected the role of authority. Wojtyla found some merit in Scheler's personalism, but he believed that it needed to be corrected to provide for a personal relationship to God and reverence for Jesus as a commanding moral authority.

After teaching briefly at the seminary faculty at Kraków (1953–54), Father Wojtyla joined the philosophy faculty of the Catholic University of Lublin. He published many journal articles in the next few years and established himself as one of the leaders of "Lublin Thomism," a personalist interpretation of Thomas Aquinas influenced by French philosophers such as Maurice Blondel, Emmanuel Mounier, and Gabriel Marcel.

On July 4, 1958, Pius XII named Wojtyla auxiliary bishop of Kraków. Consecrated on September 28, he was compelled to relinquish his full-time academic career. As bishop he continued to work closely with youth groups, and it was partly out of that experience that he developed the ideas for his next book, Love and Responsibility (Lublin, 1960). In this volume he set sexual activity within the larger framework of a theology of interpersonal love. The symbolism of sexual intercourse, he maintained, required that the act take place within marriage and be open to the possibility of procreation.

INVOLVEMENT IN VATICAN II

Already as a young bishop Wojtyla submitted numerous suggestions to the antepreparatory commission for the agenda of the coming council. In a nine-point memorandum he singled out, in the first place, the importance of proposing Christian personalism as an antidote to contemporary materialism in its various forms (scientific, positivist, and dialectical). The human person, created in the image and likeness of God and called to share eternally in the inner life of the triune God, stands above all visible creation. Christian personalism, he said, should be the foundation of all ethics.

As a second point Bishop Wojtyla spoke of ecumenism. Christians separated from the Catholic Church, he said, are not outside the Body of Christ, which is one, even though wounded by heresy and schism. The council should emphasize factors that unite Christians, thus contributing to a union of hearts that could eventually lead to doctrinal reconciliation.

Wojtyla's third point was to foster the lay apostolate without confusing the roles of clergy and laity. In his remaining six points he dealt with the formation of future priests, clerical celibacy, the intellectual standards of seminaries, the role of vowed religious in the Church, the reform of the liturgy, and the updating of canon law. In all his main points he anticipated the agenda of Vatican II and the postconciliar papacy.

By the time of his appointment as archbishop of Kraków (January 13, 1964) the council had gone through its first two sessions, and Wojtyla was heavily involved in its work. As a member of the drafting committee for the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World he contributed to the section dealing with the role of the Church in relation to the world (part I, chapter 4).

The Acta Synodalia of the council contain some twenty-three of Wojtyla's interventions, several of them in the name of the whole Polish episcopate, some in writing, and eight orally delivered. In terms of their subject matter the interventions can be listed as follows: On the Sacred Liturgy (#1). Bishop Wojtyla insists that Christian initiation should be understood not simply as baptism but as including the catechumenate. Baptism itself is not a sufficient introduction to the Christian life.

On the Sources of Revelation (#2). The real source of revelation is neither Scripture nor tradition but God himself, who speaks through both these channels.

On the Media of Social Communication (#3). Communication, Wojtyla holds, should be used not simply as a means of entertainment and gratification, as in a consumerist culture, but for the true development of the human person.

On the Church (##4, 5, 7, 8). The main goal of the Church is sanctification. The teaching office is subordinate to this goal. The chapter on the People of God should precede that on the hierarchy, which is an instrument for the common good of the whole people of God. The evangelical counsels of chastity, poverty, and obedience should be so explained that they are seen as having significance for all Christians, not just for consecrated religious.

On the Blessed Virgin Mary (##4, 6, 9). It is a mistake, says Bishop Wojtyla, to put this chapter at the end of the Constitution on the Church, where it appears as a mere appendix. As mother, Mary built up Christ's physical body, and now she performs the same office toward the Church. This chapter should therefore come immediately after the first, in which the Mystery of the Church is described.

On the Lay Apostolate (##13, 14; cf. 5). The exhortation to engage in apostolic activities should be focused not just on associations but on individual persons, who must give an example of living the faith. The apostolate is a service not just to the Church but also to humanity. Lay people have an apostolate both within the Church and from Church to the world.

On Religious Freedom (##10, 11, 12, 18, 19). The schema deals mainly with immunity from coercion, presenting a negative and partial conception of freedom, especially inadequate for interchurch relations. Mere tolerance is too static; it cannot serve as a principle of growth, which involves unity in the truth. More should be said about the power of truth to give freedom. Christian freedom is grounded in the word of God and in the grace that liberates from sin and its consequences. The council should proclaim the Christian doctrine of freedom on the basis of revelation rather than give a lesson in political philosophy. Finally it should be said that religious freedom is limited not only by positive law but by the moral law itself.

On the Church in the Modern World (ordered by topics).

(a) General Observations (##15, 20). The tone of the document should not be authoritarian, but should indicate that Catholics join with the rest of humanity in seeking true and just solutions to the problems of human life. Starting from experience, the document should show how the truth embodied in divine and natural law respects and enhances human values. Speaking pastorally to the world, the Church should keep the focus on eternal salvation, which transcends immanent worldly finality. The work of creation should be seen as being completed by God's redemptive act in the cross of Christ, which profoundly alters the condition of all human beings. In the light of Christ the Church knows the integral truth about man.

(b) Atheism (#20). The dialogue with atheism should begin with the study of the human person and should show that the vocation of the person cannot be fulfilled except with the help of God the Redeemer. A clear distinction should be made between atheism stemming from personal conviction and that imposed by state propaganda.

(c) Marriage and the Family (##17, 21). Marriage should be seen as a school of love and charity. The mutual fidelity of the spouses mirrors the union between Christ and the Church. Scientific knowledge about fertility can serve virtue and be consonant with human dignity and responsibility in family planning.

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Excerpted from "The Splendor of Faith"
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