The Mind of John Paul II/Sources of Renewal/How the Pope Became Infallible

...No pope has ever come to the papacy with such extensive prepapal writings...

...Peter with a voice of persuasion and command that approaches in diversity of tongues those heard by the first Conventicle of the Resurrected Christ in the upper Room at Pentecost...

...August Hasler is a recently deceased (at the age of 43) Swiss diocesan priest who from 1966 to 1971 was a staff member of the Vatican Secretariat for the Promotion of Christian Unity...

...Two years before his election in October of 1978, Cardinal Wojtyla preached a Lenten retreat to Pope Paul VI which later was published under the title Sign of Contradiction...

...matters and has even read three dissertations in his capacity as docent since he became pope...

...Today Williams can write that "the great Polish mystic, metropolitan, and moralist is now, as Pontiff, himself a sign of contradiction-in his physical and intellectual prowess, his admirable self-possession and self-discipline in all circumstances, the liberality and even winsome unconven-tionality of his tactics, and his gentle severity in his administration of the See of St...

...In the Fall of 1963, at the Polish College in Rome, friends of the bishop recall how one evening he spoke with great enthusiasm about the council and several of its periti, including Karl Rahner and Hans Kiing...

...Aimed at a wider and less sophisticated and affluent audience, this book intends to tell the whole truth about papal infallibility and Vatican I: (1) the dogma "has no basis either in the Bible or in the history of the church during the first millennium...

...Such a method . . . excludes in every way things which show an 'ecclesial' mentality...

...These three books, about popes or by one, assume, in view of this event, a heightened relevance...

...The second part deals with what is called the formation of consciousness and focuses on creation, the Trinity, redemption, the church as the people of God and the es-chatological character of this people...

...Williams's sketches of the three thrusts of Thomism, the principles and concerns of the Nouvelle Theologie and phenomenology, provide lucid contexts for his discussions of the Polish prelate's intellectual development...

...For example, he twice quotes Hans Urs von Balthasar in a way that leaves the reader with the impression that von Balthasar thinks that the dogma is a "gigantic disaster...

...It is Williams's study of John Paul II more than Hasler's study of Pius IX that will in fact deepen understanding among Protestants and Catholics, indeed among all interested people, of the legitimate role of the Petrine ministry in the modern world.rine ministry in the modern world...

...James Heft I HAD literally just finished reading George Williams's highly informative, sympathetic and yet critical study of John Paul II when the radio carried the shocking news of the attempted assassination of this pope...

...Secondly, despite his avowed purpose of furthering ecumenical relations between Protestants and Catholics, he seems ironically unaware that precisely those ecumenical dialogues have come to conclude that infallibility is an ecclesial and ecumenical concept...

...A fascinating chapter is devoted to Bishop Wojtyla's participation in Vatican II...

...and (3) that papal infallibility is an ideology, that is, "a doctrine with no substrate in reality, something which arises out of needs of interest groups and is spread and protected by them...

...He still holds that chair, draws a salary, is consulted on university THE MIND OF JOHN PAUL II ORIGINS OF HIS THOUGHT AND ACTION George Huntston Williams Seabury, $26.95, 392 pp...

...Especially helpful are his analyses of, first, Wojtyla's first doctoral dissertation done under the direction of Garrigou-LaGrange, the traditional Thomist and the opponent of the Nouvelle Theologie...

...The third and last part discusses the formation of attitudes, that is, of qualities that enable a person to take a position and be ready to act in accordance with it...

...and third, the analyses of two of Wojtyla's most important books, Love and Responsibility (1960), a "per-sonalistic thomistic" essay on Christian marriage, and The Acting Person (1969, published in English in 1979 after some revision by himself and an American phenomenologist friend, Dr...

...He wrote How the Pope Became Infallible as a condensed version of his two-volume heavily footnoted 1977 study which sold for a modest $150...

...Almost every papal commentator admits that John Paul II is a complex person, but none to date has delved into his life and thought as deeply as George Williams...

...He held the rank of docent, below that of professors ordinary and extraordinary but above doctor adjunct and doctor assistant...

...Whoever is a teacher expert in his profession well knows that he is able to teach also by the so-called 'heuristic' method of permitting the pupil to find the truth as though on his own...

...Of the seven popes of this century, only John Paul II was a university professor, occupying the chair of ethics at the Catholic University of Lublin at Cracow for three years before being named Bishop...

...It is not difficult to catch Hasler misreading some of his sources...

...Along with Hans Kiing, Hasler is out of step with the growing consensus of the ecumenical discussions that there is an important place for infallibility in the life of the whole church...

...George Williams, for many years the Hollis Professor of Divinity at Harvard University, is a Protestant church historian and expert on the Polish church, who first met the pope in 1962 when he attended Vatican II as an observer, and then again ten years later when he spent a Guggenheim sabbatical semester at Lublin...

...His deep affection for the pope is evidenced not only by the thoroughness of his study, but by the forthrightness with which he offers his criticisms-, the sharpest of which include the pope's overly negative picture of the United States, his tendency to blame theologians for most of the current trouble in the church, and his choice of the "narrower way" of solidification of doctrine and discipline ("the mysteries are almost all too clear...

...An examintion of von Balthasar's actual text (Elucidations, p. 100), however, shows that he writes that those who think that of Vatican I' 'put themselves among the ranks of the terribles simplificateurs...

...Even this condensed version contains a great deal of detailed information, some of which, garnered from private letters and journals, locked up until recently in the Vatican Archives, has not before been available...

...On his sixtieth birthday, May 18, 1980, he was given a complete bibliography of his works from 1949-1978 containing 630 titles (some duplicate each other in a second and third language...

...The longest chapter of the book describes the attitude of participation and emphasizes the need for all Christians to witness boldly in the world to the person of Christ...

...More generally, Hasler has consistently presented an interpretation of the dogma more sweeping than what the council had actually defined: namely, an infallibility that is not absolute (there are real limitations on the pope), nor separate from the rest of the church (the pope must consult and represent the faith of the church), nor finally personal (the pope is not made perfect by the fact that on certain occasions he can teach reliably whatever is necessary for salvation...

...Many themes of his two-year pontificate appear in these pages, especially his preoccupation with the dignity and freedom of the human person...

...Finally, one specific comment and two general criticisms...

...In September of 1965, he was the first of the Fathers to give a strong defense of the document on religious freedom, a document on which John Courtney Murray labored and one which contains America's most distinctive contribution to the Council...

...He undertook the study, he writes, to repay a debt to the Holy Spirit...

...Thus in 1975 a team of Lutheran and Catholic scripture scholars and theologians stated that the portraits of Peter in the New Testament and in the writings of the first few centuries are "obviously reconcilable with and indeed favorable to the claims of the Roman Church for the papacy...

...Anna Tymieniecka).' The inspiration for The Acting Person, a Christian anthropology of the person-as-revealed-in-his-acts that reflects phenomenological analyses and Thbmistic principles (Wojtyla will conclude, as Williams puts it, that "a Catholic ethicist may be phenomenological in his methodology but not a phenomenologist"), was his exhilarating experience as a participant in the four sessions of Vatican II...

...On the tenth anniversary of the opening of the Council, John Paul II published in 1972, a book which outlines principles for the implementation of the Council: Sources of Renewal...

...The first part of the book introduces the basic significance of the Council's, initiative by concentrating on the need for deeper faith, for dialogue, and for belief in the church herself...

...Hasler's study indirectly points out the need to avoid a sort of "historical docetism" which would minimize the disagreements and confrontations that inevitably characterize the day-to-day proceedings of any church Council, albeit some more than others...

...Williams discusses six interpretations made by Wojtyla during public sessions where he argued, among other things, that the document on the church should speak of the whole people of God before discussing the priesthood, and that the tone of Gaudium et Spes should be such " that the world sees that we are not so much teaching the world itself in such an authoritative manner, but rather along with the (rest of the) world itself we seek the true and just solution of the difficult problems of human life...

...2) the Council itself was manipulated by Pius IX and several archinfallibilists to such an extent that it was not free and that therefore its decrees are invalid...

...HOW THE POPE BECAME INFALLIBLE PIUS IX & THE POLITICS OF PERSUASION August Bernhard Hasler Doubleday, $14.95, 383 pp...

...Despite the word "implementation," the purpose of this sys-tematization of many Council texts, especially ones drawn from Lumen Gentium and Gaudium et Spes, is not so much the "how," but rather the more basic questions of the "what" to implement...

...More directly, it raises sharply certain questions -none of them new -that ought not to be glossed over by those who would overemphasize the formal author-ity of the magisterium: for example, the xise role of Pius IX in bringing about le definition, and more deeply, the relationship between dogmatic tradition and historical documents...

...second, his analyses of Wojtyla's second dissertation, his habilitation thesis, done to prepare him for university teaching, on whether a Christian Ethic could be erected on Max Scheler's phenomenology (although Wojtyla later said of his study of Scheler that "it opens up a new world, a world of values, and a fresh view of mankind," he remonstrated with his superior who wanted him to get the second doctorate, explaining that he didn't see himself as an academician, but as a pastor...

...It is Williams's supposition that there is a continuity between the prepapal and papal writings, and he devotes the larger portion of his study to a careful analysis of the former...