MM#362--Witness To Hope - 25 years later

0:07 Welcome to the Theory to Action podcast, where we examine the timeless treasures of wisdom from the great books in less time, to help you take action immediately and ultimately to create and lead a flourishing life. Now here's your host, david Kaiser. Hello, I am David and welcome back to another Mojo Minute flourishing life. Now here's your host, david Kaiser. Hello, I am David, and welcome back to another Mojo Minute, and happy October 22nd, 2024, the feast day in the Catholic Church for St John Paul II. Now, who is that? That would be Carol Watiwa, the 264th successor to the Apostle Peter and Vicar of Christ, formerly known as John Paul II.

0:57 He was declared a saint in 2014, and today is his feast day. And, primarily, this podcast is all about books, and we're going to talk about a book that has shaped how we've known or how we learned about John Paul II over his life Probably one of the most important figures in the second half of the 20th century. Probably one of the most important figures in the second half of the 20th century Certainly has reshaped the Catholic Church, and the world for that matter, over his whole lifetime. So we will talk about that shortly, but for now, we want to know who is the man that we celebrate today's feast day.

1:44 Well, like I said, karl Watiwa was born in Poland and he would lead the Catholic Church from 1978 to his passing in 2005. He was the first non-Italian pope in 455 years when elected. He's the first from a Slavic country, and he brought a fresh new perspective to the papacy. Now, what was John Paul II's impact? I would say he impacted far beyond the Catholic Church only. He reshaped the papacy by taking it out of Rome and to the world. He emphasized human dignity and religious freedom, certainly played a very important and crucial role in the fall of communism in Eastern Europe, which we talked about earlier in this podcast or from this mic, rather, with nine days in June, all about the fall of Eastern European communism.

2:49 John Paul II was a prolific writer. He produced numerous encyclicals, apostolic exhortations and other documents that continue to influence Catholic thought today and in the future. He championed what the most important event in the 20th century for Catholics Vatican II, or the Second Vatican Council, as its formal name goes by and in that council the number one attribute that came out was the universal call to holiness. John Paul II literally and practically taught Catholics, namely throughout Poland as bishop and cardinal, but then formally throughout the whole universal church, throughout the whole worldwide church.

3:38 In his implementation of that council, he beatified and canonized more individuals than all of his predecessors in the past 500 years combined. And that brings us to our book, and that book is Witness to Hope. It is the comprehensive biography written by George Weigel. It was published in 1999. It remains the definitive biography of John Paul II and we are going to feature it at the end of this month by publishing, if I could speak, publishing our first Academy Review biography.

4:22 Well, correction, it is not the first. I wanted it to be the first but events moved us to make the first BB Netanyahu. But it'll be the second biography that we've done in the Academy Review. So at the end of this month, witness to Hope, as an Academy Review, will be coming out. So members, stay tuned. I will say it's probably the hardest Academy review I've ever had to do. The book is over a thousand pages, so many key points, so many nuggets of wisdom. It was inexhaustible. Hard to corral all that into some eight to 10 key points and nuggets of wisdom, hard to decide.

5:07 So it was probably, like I said, the toughest Academy review I've ever had to do so far. And we're approaching 50 in the Academy on the Academy review bookshelf. So that's exciting. Me review a bookshelf, so that's exciting. But today we're celebrating Witness to Hope 25 years later. So published in 1999, in October, and we're staring at, 25 years later, the influence of that definitive biography. In case you don't know, it's a detailed account of Wotila's life, from his childhood in Poland through the papacy, insights into his theological and philosophical foundations, an analysis of his role in world events, particularly the fall of communism.

5:56 I would say the book has an enduring relevance because, 25 years after its publication, witness to Hope continues to be crucial for understanding the way John Paul II thought. It offers us a comprehensive look at the man behind the papal throne. It humanized a figure often seen only through his public role. The book provides incredible context to John Paul II's teachings. It helps readers understand the continuity of his thought and his actions and illuminates the Pope's vision of culture.

6:40 And this is a key point I tried to drive home in the Academy Review. A key point the Pope's vision of culture driving the force of history, and that perspective that remains relevant in today's world. So often today's world believes economics or politics drives the narrative and drives history. Pope John Paul II said no, culture drives everything. It ultimately drives politics and it ultimately drives economics, and both of those are further downstream than culture.

7:23 If you correct the culture, everything else will be corrected downstream. So it's a fascinating. Look. So many books prior to George Weigel's Witness to Hope just missed the mark. And I find it relevant because I was a college senior in 1997. I had a senior thesis with a title of US foreign policy and the downfall of communism in conjunction with the Holy Sea, and ultimately I read a lot of.

8:07 I read some biographies there's only probably four or five in English about John Paul II before 1990, before 1997. And most of them I thought I was getting good information and it turned out I really wasn't. But those were the only biographies in English and so I wish I had witness to hope when I was writing my senior thesis was really no correlation between US foreign policy and the Vatican in terms of the downfall of Eastern European communism, but Witness to Hope would have illuminated a lot of roads that I was going down, a lot of trails of thought that I was going down, and would have made that my job just so much simpler and easier.

9:06 Ultimately I read two books. His Holiness by God awful author turns out 25 years later, 20, some 27 years later now Carl Bernstein of the famed Woodward and Bernstein on the Watergate publication All the President's Men. But Carl Bernstein wrote a book just absolutely horrific. Looking back on it I thought I was getting the real deal. Just tells you how bad some books can be, how bad some books have total blind spots. And Tad Sulks His Holiness, or Tad Sulks John Paul II, the Definitive Biography.

9:48 So both of those books were my main thrust of my senior thesis. So I wished that this book, witness to Hope, had come out earlier. One thing I did miss it was my own fault. One thing I did miss it was my own fault is I had missed George Weigel's publication in English of the Final Revolution book, which was the real book that put George on the radar of John Paul II. In terms of John Paul II wanting Weigel to write his biography, john Paul II had read all the biographies written about him in English and, I believe, in Polish, and he just thought all of them were kind of rubbish, like they didn't even come close to capturing him.

10:45 So he was quite, very gracious to George and George has talked about this in the last month about the 25th anniversary of his book and how that all came to be. I'll put a link in the show notes. He wrote a commentary on First Things, the Catholic well-read Catholic journal, but regardless I want to talk about the two books that I used to learn about John Paul II before Witness to Hope, and I want to talk about a article that George had written in 1997, in January, that I had also missed.

11:30 So for that, let's go to that article, because I think you'll find it quite illuminating. That the Pope played an indispensable role in the communist crackup is now widely conceded. What remains deeply controverted is how we should understand his impact on world affairs. In 1992, former Washington Post reporter and Watergate celebrity, carl Bernstein, argued in a Time magazine cover story that the Pope had forged a quote holy alliance with President Ronald Reagan for the illicit purpose of toppling European communism. Bernstein now joins with Marco Pelletti, veteran Vatican correspondent for La Republica, to expand the Holy Alliance argument and wed it to a more comprehensive account of John Paul II's life in papal ministry.

12:27 On both these accounts, his holiness fails. The Holy Alliance hypothesis, which hinges on a June 1982 meeting between the Pope and President Reagan at the Vatican, is chronologically deficient. John Paul II had been in office for almost four years by the time he met Reagan and had, by Soviet lights, already done catastrophic damage to the Alta system with his historic June 1979 pilgrimage to Poland. That's what we referenced when we talked about the previous podcast episodes nine days in June. Back to the article. That pilgrimage was the moral, spiritual and psychological impetus behind the formation in the summer of 1980 of Solidarity, the Polish independent trade union.

13:18 That was also a political opposition with 10 million members. Poletti adds some interesting detail, gleaned from recently released Soviet archives and interviews with the Reagan administration officials, to the story of how the Holy See and the White House helped nurse solidarity through the imposition of martial law in 1981 and the hard years of struggle that led to the electoral dismantling of Polish communism in June 1989. But does intelligence sharing amount to a holy alliance? Solidarity activists derided the Bernstein hypothesis when it was first brooded in 1992, and there is nothing in his holiness to suggest that their judgment was mistaken.

14:09 Suggest that their judgment was mistaken. Conspiracy theories of history are usually unilluminating, and His Holiness is no exception. The hidden history of our time, as Bernstein wrote, is not the fact that John Paul II and US Special Ambassador Vernon Walters studied satellite intelligence photography together in the Papal Library, where that the US government provided clandestine financial support for solidarity during the 1980s. As an aside, my research only discovered that AFL-CIO members would, or leadership would work with Reagan behind the scenes to provide what was then fax machines and copiers, which was kind of a big deal in the early 80s to mass produce the solidarity pamphlets, but there was no high-level orchestration back and forth.

15:05 And another book that was only written in 2016 expands more on all of this so-called holy alliance Paul Kengor is the pope and a president is a fascinating, really deep dive into the weeds of that whole relationship. Yes, john Paul II and Ronald Reagan were close, but there was no active holy alliance at all. Going back to the article, the real, hidden history of the communist collapse took place in the minds and hearts and souls of those millions who were moved to take the risk of resistance by John Paul II's challenge to call good and evil by name, as the Pope put it out put it on his second pilgrimage to Poland in 1983,.

15:54 Any treatment of John Paul II as essentially a political actor in these epic events misses the rich texture of the great human drama that took place in the Warsaw Pact countries between 1979 and 1989. That took place in the Warsaw Pact countries between 1979 and 1989. It also, and just as unfortunately, misses the singular nature of John Paul II's address to world politics, which is first and foremost religious and moral rather than political and ideological. And ideological.

16:36 Indeed, john Paul II's strategy towards communism marked a decisive shift beyond the more accommodist currents prevalent in Vatican quarters. During the pontificate of Paul VI, the Polish pope explored the possibilities of what might be called a post-Post-Constantinian approach to the church's engagement with the principalities and powers, that approach which stresses the defense of basic human rights as a defense of the human person made in the image of God and defense of the human person, or rather, I'm sorry, in defense of the human person made in the image of God, and repositions.

17:17 Diplomacy within the context of bold and public and moral witness, struck communism at its most vulnerable point, and we'll stop here as a quick aside again. That's why, especially from this microphone, we have called on Pope Francis, most especially, to turn that same rhetoric that John Paul II used against Polish communism and Soviet communism for that matter and turn that same logic, that same rhetoric, towards communist China. The fact that there is this corrupt, secret bargain between the Catholic Church and Red China is a disgrace to John Paul II's leadership and to the Catholic Church as a whole to be in bargain with the communist Chinese and all the Chinese Catholics that are suffering under the brunt instrument of that horrific totalitarian regime.

18:23 Pope Francis has to correct the record, has to get out of that bargain, has to shed light on the transparent or provide more transparency to the Chinese Catholics. They are suffering. They require and indeed should receive much better leadership. It's horrific what Pope Francis is doing in terms of China. Back to our article. Over the past 18 years it has also had a marked effect in such diverse places as the Philippines, chile, paraguay and the World Conference on Population and Development at Cairo in 1994.

19:15 But for all his impact on the politics of nations, john Paul II cannot be understood as a political pope. Ii cannot be understood as a political pope. His evangelical diplomacy is framed by religious and moral conviction, not by the rules of the game as the world understands those conventions. And the rules of the game is what most historians try to capture about John Paul II and why George Weigel's book Witness to Hope is so good and brilliant. For that matter, it's probably going to become probably almost already is a modern classic, especially within Catholic circles, because it taught us what was really going on underneath all the surface level of John Paul II's thought, his witness and, frankly, his radical example as a Christian in the modern world.

20:14 Now, one book I do want to quote from John O'Malley. The Jesuit wrote a pretty good book, the History of the Popes From Peter to the Present, and I just want to share one quote from this book because it emphasizes what John Paul II meant to the world. Going back to the book, or going back to this book In 104 pastoral visits outside Italy he had traveled to every corner of the globe, logging up to some 750 000 miles. He was no prisoner of the vatican. As bishop of rome, he visited 317 of the city's 333 churches and he made 146 pastoral visits to other cities and towns within Italy.

21:05 His public audiences every Wednesday in the Vatican. He spoke to a total of well over 17 million pilgrims and addressed many more millions during his travels. More than 8 million pilgrims came to Rome during the Holy Year of 2000. He held 738 meetings or audiences with heads of states around the world. He created 231 cardinals. By the time he died, there was very few bishops in the church that he had not named. He had canonized some 482 saints, far more than all of his predecessors put together, and he declared 1,338 individuals blessed.

21:46 While he was Pope, he published in his own name therefore not officially as Pope five books, the last of which appeared the year he died. And he had hardly been laid to rest when his successor, pope Benedict XVI, initiated the process for his canonization. He is, in many people's minds, the man of the century. He was indeed a man of the century. He was indeed the man who gave me my first witness to a radical Christian in the modern world, a radical Christian in the modern world.

22:28 He was probably the principal reason why I pursued Catholicism with the amount of vigor that I did and ultimately came to the church in 1998, at Easter. So it was great affection that I looked upon John Paul II as Pope for all those years. I was fortunate enough to go see him in 2002 in Rome for beatification ceremony, and it's a memory that I'll treasure for the rest of my life. Now, getting back to Witness to Hope, written by George Weigel, we're going to pull a quote from this book because I think, not only within Catholic circles but within worldwide circles, what John Paul II meant to the whole world and what his radical witness to as a Christian, what his radical witness to as a Christian to the world meant and why so many people, even non-Catholics, agree that he was indeed the man of the 20th century.

23:33 Go on to Witness to Hope, 25 years later for this wonderful quote. On October 4th 1995, john Paul II arrived in the United States for the pastoral visit and UN address that he had to be postponed from the year. Before Addressing the United Nations General Assembly in October of 1979, john Paul II had exuded physical vigor, vitality and a sense of command. Sixteen years later, a much frailer Pope, slightly hunched in his posture, walking far more slowly and showing an occasional tremor in his left hand, arrived at the General Assembly rostrum to speak to the delegates in the world on the UN's 50th anniversary.

24:26 His sense of command was, if anything, more palatable on October 5th 1995. He was no longer a historic curiosity by the reckoning of admirers and critics alike. He was one of the most dominant figures of the 20th century and a maker of contemporary history. Before a global television audience, he had some things to say about what the century had meant and what a new century and a new millennium might bring. Later on we pick up the quote. The 20th century was drawing to a close, enmeshed in a great paradox. The century had begun with humanity full of self-confidence and certain that it had come of age.

25:13 It was ending with the world full of fear. Human beings were afraid of themselves, afraid of what they might be capable of, afraid of the future. At the turn of the millennium, in order to make possible a new flourishing of the human spirit, meditated through an authentic culture of freedom, we must learn not to be afraid. We must discover a spirit of hope and spirit of trust, said John Paul II. This was not the Pope quickly added optimism. This was hope, a hope nurtured in the inner sanctuary of conscience, where man is alone with God and thus perceives that he is not alone amid the enigmas of existence.

26:02 Optimism was a matter of psychology. Hope was a theological virtue informed by faith, in order to conquer fear. At the end of this century of sorrows, he suggested Even politicians and diplomats had to regain sight Of that transcendent horizon Of possibility to which the soul of man aspires. Hope required a secure foundation. For him, as for all Christians, that foundation was Jesus Christ, in whose death and resurrection were fully revealed, in God's love and His care for all creation.

26:44 That particular conviction led to a universal hope, for it was precisely because Christians believed that God had become part of the history of humanity in Jesus Christ, that quote. Christian hope for the world and its future extends to every human person. That was why Christian faith led not to intolerance but to respectful dialogue with other religious traditions and to a sense of responsibility for all humanity. And that, finally, was why he was at the United Nations.

27:25 He was not in the General Assembly Hall as one more player in the politics of nations. He had come, he said, because he was a quote witness to hope. Further on, he would say this we must not be afraid of the future. We must not be afraid of the future, we must not be afraid of man. It is no accident that we are here. Each and every human person has been created in the image and likeness of the one who is the origin of all that is. We have within us the capacities for wisdom and virtue, the capacities for wisdom and virtue.

28:07 With these gifts and with the help of God's grace, we can build in the next century, in the next millennium, a civilization worthy of the human person, a true culture of freedom. We can and must do so, and in doing so we shall see that the tears of this century have prepared the ground for a new springtime of the human spirit. And so today, october 22nd, 2024, 25 years later as we reflect upon John Paul II's legacy John Paul II's legacy After the publication of Witness to Hope we're reminded of its enduring impact, how this biography is now a modern classic.

28:51 It not only chronicles the life of this remarkable man, but also continues to inspire and inform readers about the power of faith, hope and human dignity in shaping our world. So in today's Mojo Minute, let us appreciate this biography, witness to hope, and continue to explore Pope St John Paul II and his teachings and his lasting importance for all the world. And finally, until next time, remember John Paul II's famous exhortation to all of us be not afraid, be not afraid of Jesus Christ in your life.

29:37 And, as we always say here at the Mojo Minute and on this podcast, theory to Action, keep fighting the good fight. Thank you for joining us. We hope you enjoyed this Theory to Action podcast. Be sure to check out our show page at TeamMojoAcademycom, where we have everything we discussed in this podcast, as well as other great resources. Until next time, keep getting your mojo on.