Italian Doubts About the Polish Pope
SENIGALLIA, SILVIO F.
BEYOND PERSONALITY Italian Doubts About the Polish. Pope BY SILVIO F. SENIGALLIA Rome In my first article following the election of Karol Cardinal Wojtyla as Pope in 1978 ("Waiting for John...
...Despite their belief that a religious person must accept life's sorrows and deprivations with resignation, many do use contraceptives and feel hurt by an inflexible Vatican position that is based on an abstract evaluation of a primary feature of human life...
...Conservatives, whose sympathy for the Polish people is profound, offer a different criticism...
...During the past year, though, the enchantment began to fade...
...Any speculation as to who fed Levi the wrong line-or possibly the right line at the wrong time -would now be idle...
...ment to maintaining the Church's condemnation of all artificial forms of birth control...
...After delineating this subtle distinction, Ms...
...Indeed, they are obligated to guarantee the availability of all forms of contraception...
...His predecessor, the Hamletlike Paul VI, appointed a special commission to reassess this stance in the light of modern social trends, then sat on the body's recommendations for three years in an agony of indecision...
...An Italian, or better still a Roman, was easier to understand and love...
...In addition to being very simpatico, he seemed to increase the flood of visitors and pilgrims to Rome, bringing the city more money and prestige...
...Karol Wojtyla remains very well liked and highly respected...
...It has been claimed that IOR buttressed Calvi's tottering empire with two letters of patronage, and consequently should repay some of the $1.4 billion in Banco Ambrosiano assets that have disappeared through Panamanian banks...
...But when he declared last September 17thatamanand wife who limit their fecundity are guilty of atheism, or at least rebellion against God, Catholic consciences were deeply perturbed...
...For the vast majority of Italians, however, given their deep commitment to the Church, the matter is naturally more urgent...
...No doubt aware of these worries, John Paul was able to quiet them...
...Upon John Paul's return to Rome, the Vatican daily Osservatore Romano ran an editorial telling Walesa that his noble role had come to an end, that new circumstances in Poland required a fresh approach to the country's difficulties...
...they accuse the Pontiff of having used his trip to Poland last June to contrive a modus vivendi between the Church and the Communists, thereby weakening Solidarity and its leader...
...The politician's observation struck many as a reference to the Pontiffs speech during his early September visit to Vienna, which categorized abortion-legalized in Italy in the late 1970s -as a horrible evil and a rejection of God...
...All Italians were shocked and saddened by the attempt on John Paul's life in early 1980...
...The slow erosion of his consensus stems, rather, from a dispassionate appraisal of his rigid doctrines and a grow-ing impatience with his politics...
...Nobody in Italy expected John Paul, known beforehand to be very conservative on religious questions, to make any fresh moves toward reform...
...In the end, though, Mar-cinkus' solid position appears to have been unaffected-perhaps, sources in Rome's financial circles cautiously venture, because he wasthechannel for the American and Vatican money fun-neled to Solidarity and its supporters among the Polish clergy during the free trade union's peak period in 1980-81...
...Even John Paul's shrewdly leaked threat to take up residence in Warsaw if the Soviet Union invaded Poland to quash the independent trade union Solidarity won approval...
...A major point of contention has been John Paul's unswerving commitStLvro F. Senigallia regularly reports for The New Leader from Italy...
...The popolino, Rome's churchgoing working class, was also disappointed with the selection of the priest from Walovicza...
...The nonobserv-ant minority, of course, does not consider itself bound by the Pope's rulings, so its disagreement on the issue is largely an academic affair...
...Attacks on the Church in the PCI press have therefore focused instead on the connections between the Vatican Bank, IOR, and Milan'sBancoAmbro-siano, whose fraudulent collapse led to the mysterious death of its chairman, Roberto Calvi, found hanged under London's Blackfriars Bridge in 1982...
...Lech Walesa...
...it is an unpleasant source of friction with the Eastern European parties...
...Peter's Square, yet one could detect a tinge of regret in the volume of the cry...
...And the popolino were quickly won over by the Holy Father's warm smile and attractive personality...
...This also has been a source of dismay and embarrassment for the predominantly Catholic Christian Democratic Party (DC), Italy's leading political grouping and a traditional ally of the Church...
...His initial appointments, especially the choice of Agostino Cardinal Casaroli as Secretary of State, gave the Curia's old-timers an inflated sense of optimism about their ability to go on steering Vatican policy...
...Managing editor Virginio Levi was immediately fired for having given the impression that the Pope favored compromise and restraint...
...The Pope, she stated, thinks, as he must, on apure theological-moral plane, formulating for the flock guidelines for an ideal life...
...This is especially true in Italy, where99 per cent of the population is Catholic and 80 per cent actively practices the religion...
...Costa's words further suggest the differences between the Italians and their Polish Pope that are now surfacing in the political sphere...
...The era of good feelings lasted about four years...
...More than one Italian cardinal in the Curia, it was said, viewed John Paul with apprehension not only because they felt the first "foreign" Pontiff in five centuries might threaten their power, but because they feared conflicts in the area of interpreting the Church's mission...
...Over the years, they had come to regard the head of the Vatican in an almost proprietary fashion...
...As Bishop John Quinn, who was then chairman of the American Episcopal Conference, told the 1980 Synod here, the contraception issue is "an immense problem...
...Thus the DC leaders can hardly tell female members not to take the pill, much less initiate steps to prevent its use...
...The party, in contrast, operates on a political-administrative level...
...He is outspoken, crystal clear, always carrying his concepts to extreme consequences...
...Costa let fall an extremely revealing remark: "We must say right away that Wojtyla, hardly a Latin, Mediterranean personality, refrains from nuances and cautious wording...
...Nothing personal is involved...
...Finally, when it was widely thought that a change was in the offing, the bull Hu-manae Vitae was promulgated sanctioning the existing dogma...
...The Communists would really like the general furor over Poland to simmer down...
...Progressives feel that with tragic events taking place all over the globe, the head of the world's Catholics should view General Wojciech Jar-uzelski's oppressive military regime with the same severe yet detached concern he exhibits toward, say, General Augusto Pinochet's government in Chile...
...According to a poll taken by a reliable sociological institute in Turin, 15 per cent of the women and 24 per cent of the men among scrupulous Catholics voiced clear un-happiness over the Pope's intransigence in the area of sexuality...
...Italians told one another with pride that "our Pope" was not taking any guff from the Rooskies...
...They wanted the man in white to continue being one of them...
...Last month, in fact, it was left to Silvia Costa, the brilliant Rome City Councilwoman who was recently appointed head of the DC propaganda department, to reconcile the Pontiffs and Caesars' points of view...
...The affair bearsmentioning primarily because it was at first expected to lead to thedisgraceof Monsignor Paul Mar-cinkus, the Vatican's American financial wizard...
...But it may be pertinent to note that according to Milan's Rightist // Giornale, a September issue of the Polish underground weekly To Be Continued quoted Walesa as acknowledging the "wisdom" of the Vatican paper's argument, advocating the replacement of Solidarity by regional unions, and expressing a willingness to step down as the confederation's chief...
...Although the Italian Communist Party (PCI), as is well known, has been consistent in its total condemnation of the Jaruzelski regime's treatment of the Polish workers, it expressed no qualms about the Pope's behavior last summer...
...The special attention John Paul devotes to his native land is beginning to arouse a measure of impatience and disquiet among some of the politically-minded...
...Beyond the outrage evoked by the sight of blood on the immaculate cassock, the nation was obviously rallying around the foreigner as "our" Pope, who had survived his ordeal with admirable courage and fortitude...
...Pope BY SILVIO F. SENIGALLIA Rome In my first article following the election of Karol Cardinal Wojtyla as Pope in 1978 ("Waiting for John Paul II's Next Move," NL, January 1, 1979), I reported that there was concern in Vatican circles over the possibility of a "Polish Papacy...
...To be sure, John Paul was greeted with the traditional shout of Viva II Papa when he first appeared on St...
Vol. 66 • October 1983 • No. 20
