Man of the Century: The Life and Times of Pope John Paul II. - book reviews

National Catholic Reporter, Sept 26, 1997 by Arthur Jones

Popes who reign at the end of the century always have a better chance of being called the "man of the century" than popes who rule in the earlier decades.

Had this century ended on June 4, 1963 -- the day after John XXIII (Angelo Roncalli) died, three months after he issued his globe-shaking yet world-embracing encyclical, Pacem in Terris, seven months after his church-changing Second Vatican Council (1962-65) opened -- he truly and rightly could have been the "man of the century."

In five years Roncalli altered Catholic and Christian and interfaith and interideology world history. Even after 36 biographies (just in English and Italian -- plus three-score books on Vatican II), John XXIII's impact has scarcely been adequately measured.

The last pope who rounded out a century, Leo XIII (Gioacchino Pecci -- 1878-1903), 25 years pontiff, was widely hailed -- and loved -- as "the working man's pope." He was a serious contender, against Charles Darwin or Karl Marx, for man of the 19th century.

And consider, again in this century, a pope such as Benedict XV (1914-22), that oddly shaped and rather sad nobleman, Giacomo della Chiesa, the first pontiff to be faced with a world war. He had a harder pontificate than John Paul II Imagine Benedict's agony: The leaders of all the major powers in the First World War and practically all the combatants were Christians. And he was the head of Christendom. For Christians might he, in his failures and frustrations, be an Imitation of Christ-style man of the century?

For Jonathan Kwitny, Pope John Paul II is man of the century because of Karol Wojtyla's firsthand role with Solidarity in the overthrow of communism in Poland and, by extension, Eastern Europe. The Pan-Slav liberator.

Thanks to Kwitny we now have the vital companion book to Tad Szulc's 1995 biography Pope John Paul II. These journalistic navigators, very different in their approaches, have provided an important cocked-hat sighting of John Paul II. They located him in his time. Not a happy time -- and Kwitny's work illuminates this -- for those Catholics, including bishops, whose touchstones are Vatican II's "people of God" designation (terminology Archbishop Wojtyla opposed), Medelin, the 1968 Latin American Bishops Conference (which as pope he has subverted through his episcopal appointments), and collegiality (which he ignores, or twists to suit his purposes).

It takes Kwitny about 120 pages to build up steam, but this is a very large book-- 750 pages. Once he is chuffing along, Kwitny at his best is a very good read indeed.

There are three Wojtylan trajectories in Kwitny's book. First, he is the man of destiny -- destined to be pope. Second, there is Wojtyla's intellect and strength of will, leading to direct actions (such as openly protecting Catholic journals and clandestinely ordaining Czech priests; providing funding and guidance to Solidarity) that helped overthrow the Marxists. Third, Wojtyla the priestly controversialist and thinker about human sexuality issues was, Kwitny contends, the key figure in the final version of Pope Paul's 1968 anti-contraception encyclical, Humanae Vitae, and Paul VI's preferred successor. Perhaps.

This is journalism, not history -- the journalists always beat the historians to the bookstore shelf. One difference between journalism and history is that for a journalist, a good quote is proof. For historians, it is not.

I must, however, now make an unfortunate and unanticipated diversion.

About 150 pages into the volume, Kwitny, in passing, delivers a smack at the late Catholic writer Peter Hebblethwaite -- which as a reviewer I could ignore but as the NCR editor who hired Hebrelethwaite I ought not.

In a lengthy footnote, Kwitny writes, in part: "Hebblethwaite was particularly esteemed by Catholics who disagree with Vatican policy on sexual issues, but he also often wrote with sketchy sourcing about matters that were persuasively denied to me by everyone who seemed in a position to know. These denials rarely found their way into his articles. When I tried to question Heblethwaite, he refused to talk to me. Eventually I discounted his undocumented words, which explains why some other things he wrote are not repeated in this book."

Hebblethwaite's writings have to stand history's tests on their merits. I initially hired Hebblethwaite in the mid-1970s to cover Poland, which he did. Not an easy time to quote sources. When I based him in Rome as Vatican correspondent, his coverage of this pope's travels was superb and insightful; his frequent stories of Vatican intrigues accurate and solid. Reporting Vatican intrigue is difficult to do and even harder to publicly source.

Hebblethwaite certainly indulged himself with some betes noires and occasional notable journalistic flights of fancy -- not least concerning Cardinal Giovanni Benelli or his worries about the always pending infallibility status of Humanae Vitae. Yet over three decades Hebblethwaite wrote probably 1,500 articles in a range of newspapers and magazines for a dozen editors on both sides of the Atlantic. For which or how many of these does Kwitny stone him? Kwitny provides no clue -- though he's entitled to his view. Now back to Pope John Paul II.