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Continued Biography George Weigel on John Paul II

George Weigel, author of the most authoritative biography of John Paul II, a sequel brings new revelations about the communist attacks against the pope. Although it is a continuation of Witness to Hope, which reached 1999, The End and the Beginning (1) does not focus only on the final six years of the pontificate of John Paul II. Also addresses some aspects of the period before his arrival to the chair of St. Peter's and 1980's.

Signed by Antonio R. Rubio
Date: April 29, 2011

The years since the fall of communist regimes Weigel have allowed unprecedented access to documents from the archives of the secret police in Poland, other ex-communist countries and the White House, which sheds new light on issues already dealt with in Witness to Hope .

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Weigel George Weigel, who knows how to combine political science with the study of theological and ecclesiastical, has divided the book into three parts. In the first, "The Fight for Freedom" presents the period 1945-1989, since the establishment of the communist regime in Poland until the fall with the first free elections in June 1989. The second part, "The Last Years", addresses the last six years of his pontificate, from the Great Jubilee of the Pope to death on 2 April 2005, and provides a chronicle of his suffering physical and moral, in line with the events that shaped the early years of the third millennium. Finally, the third part, "The Legacy", Weigel takes stock of the pontificate of John Paul II, which aims to present the widely recognized success of the Pope and those facts which, in his view, are failures or unfulfilled purposes .




The Soviet KGB sensed that the Polish pope was the greatest threat to the geopolitical system in place in Yalta, and attacked him with all means

is not a book written by a theologian or a Vatican to use, though containing elements addressed by this class of authors. Weighs more overall work of the historian and political scientist, if you will, of a nimble pen essayist good understanding of the main currents of thought in contemporary culture.

historical and cultural references as permeate and influence all trials Weigel ecclesial issues. After all, is an author fully identified with American neoconservatism. Where once Democrats in tune with the Kennedy era, the subsequent evolution of left-wing party into positions led to Republican principles, those of a conservative revolution that democratic capitalism can go hand in hand not only of Protestantism but also of Catholicism that rejects the socialism and state intervention.

The worst enemy to the Communists

In the first part of the book Weigel describes the years of Wojtyla, priest and bishop of Krakow during the Communist regime. Here, as in his earlier biography, highlights the importance that the future pope was a culture, it was what helped Poland to survive during the Nazi and Communist domination. The culture represented an area of \u200b\u200bfreedom in the midst of a totalitarian regime, with the added value that is strongly imbued Polish Christianity. Poems and plays of Wojtyła are the expression of a humanistic culture that opposes communism that people only see categories, not humans.




Weigel To Pope John Paul II is a rebirth of the Church after years of confusion and mental suffering following the Council

However, the novelty of the book is the confirmation that over three decades Karol Wojtyla was spied near the SB, the security services of the communist regime. Weigel access to files presents the vision he had of his opponents, very close to reality: he was a man of strong convictions, not easily influenced.

Over time, despite the friendly and conciliatory nature of the future pope, the regime will realize that is faced with "a very dangerous ideological opponent, and in the decade of 1970, amid labor and political disturbances that threaten the system, concludes that "Wojtyla is the only and real ideological threat in Poland, far more than the Cardinal Wyszynski, who was imprisoned by the Communists in the hardest years of Stalinist repression.

The voice of the Church of silence

Hence the surprise and amazement that marked his election as Pope on October 16, 1978. The Soviet KGB have the intuition that the greatest threat to the geopolitical system in place in Yalta, which was confirmed when John Paul II becomes the great defender of human dignity and religious freedom, without continuous Front convictions of communist rule. A report from the archives of those years indicates that the Soviets considered less dangerous to Solzhenitsyn that a Polish pope in Rome.

Moscow preferred the perpetuation of the Church of silence and understanding with the Vatican by a Ostpolitik should only hope to save what is salvageable. John Paul II wanted to go much further, as evidenced by the fact that on a visit to Assisi, a pilgrim remind the Church of silence no longer existed because now I would be speaking the voice of the Pope. Moreover, Weigel does not fall into the simplicity of assuming the establishment of a "holy alliance" between Reagan and Pope John Paul II to fight the communist bloc. But fails to highlight the good relationship between the two personalities and allowed to draw some parallels in their lives, including the mutual interest for the world stage.

particular interest are the pages devoted to the founding of the Solidarity trade union and the establishment of martial law in Poland in 1981. John Paul II managed to keep the flame of hope for their country, particularly in the visits in 1983 and 1987, a continuation of those nine days in June 1979, the time of his first visit, which invoked the Holy Spirit renewal of the land. Weigel

see more decisive work of Pope in the fall Communism that Gorbachev's own, I really wanted to change the system without changing the system. The last Soviet leader would also be impressed by the successor of Peter, which is very evident in the presentation of his wife Raisa Pontiff in a private hearing on December 1, 1989: "It is the highest moral authority on earth and Slavic like us. "

The dramatic recent years

The second part of the book is dedicated to the late Pontiff's so intense and dramatic. Start the journey to the Holy Land in 2000, with the emotional relationship a private prayer in the Basilica of the Holy Sepulchre, and continues with audiences of the Great Jubilee, designed by John Paul II as an opportunity to evangelize and bring people from all walks of Rome. No less significant are the trips that follow the footsteps of St. Paul in Athens and Damascus, or the momentous trip to Ukraine, a sign of reconciliation between Catholics and Orthodox, between Poles and Ukrainians.

Weigel chronicles a somewhat hasty historical facts with new challenges from the 11-S, the debate about Europe's Christian roots, the war in Iraq ... They are also the years of numerous beatification and canonization, in much of martyrs as witnesses and models Christ at the beginning of the third millennium. Finally, the illness of John Paul II will be the culmination of his identification with Christ and an example for a world that does not understand the sacred gift of life.

Renewal in the Church

The third part of the work is a balance of the pontificate of John Paul II, that Weigel is a rebirth of the Church after years of confusion and mental suffering following the Council. According to our author, was a time when it experienced an energy deficit of evangelization, but this would be overcome by a pope become a witness of hope for all mankind.

is very successful given the significance Weigel devotion to Divine Mercy, born in Poland and John Paul II will not only universal beatification and canonization of Faustina Kowalska religious, but also with the establishment of a festival set for the second Sunday of Easter. In this and other aspects of the teaching of John Paul II, Christianity appears as the most authentic expression of humanism, as a barrier against the dehumanizing utilitarianism of our time. The authentic human liberation undergoes a radical conversion to Christ.

Weigel points out that the pope knew the philosophy of history, so dear to some thinkers Slavs as Soloviev and Solzhenitsyn. Shared with them the belief that the engine of history lies not in politics or economics but in culture.

This helped him to reject the Jacobin fallacy that history is a struggle for power, conceived as a way to impose one's will on others, and the Marxist fallacy that history is the result of economic forces impersonal.

By contrast, for the Pope's policy can not be separated from ethics and, consequently, the true liberation is liberation evil, making it necessary to seek the truth about the human person. Create

free societies after the fall of communist regimes in Europe, John Paul II would endeavor to defend was not enough to create free societies but had to build on the truth about the human person. The moral order could not be absent from public life. Weigel also makes emphasized that many who cheered the Pope's position against communism in the name of freedom never understand that they also fight for the culture of life was part of the fight for freedom. It was a fight against the culture of death unfortunately some have reduced in cases of abortion or euthanasia, to a mere matter of "choice."

Moreover, the ideologies of the nineteenth century, advocates of atheistic humanism, would endeavor to show that the God of the Bible is an enemy of human freedom, not wanting to admit that freedom is embedded in the Decalogue Sinai, which in turn refers to that universal morality can be known through human reason. Consequently, John Paul II always defend the universality of human rights, as Weigel points are currently being questioned as an imposition of Western world postmodern Islamists, autocratic and communist East Asia.

Moreover, Pope Wojtyla will be one of the staunchest defenders of reason in a time that is questioned by relativism incapable of believing that humans can get to the truth. Weigel emphasizes the enlightened eighteenth century would have been the first surprise of this paradox, but in reality it is not a new theological studies have always required knowledge of philosophy.

In encyclicals Veritatis Splendor and and Fides et ratio criticized the separation between faith and reason, rather connected with the progressive weakening of the moral life. As it stands the author, everything has been reduced to the mantra of "choice." Faith and reason are to be two eyes must work together.

"Pacifism functional"

Perhaps one of the most questionable aspects of this work is Weigel's view on international relations of the Holy See. The author does not believe a series of contemporary dogmas on the subject, supposedly made by the Vatican, as the superiority of international organizations on bilateral relations which it describes as "functional pacifism" which would have forgotten the traditional just war theory. According

Weigel, Vatican diplomacy would have stayed in the schemes of the peaceful revolutions of 1989 in Eastern Europe and tried to repeat it elsewhere in the world, but this would not be viable with the massacres in the former Yugoslavia, Saddam's tyranny Hussein or Islamic terrorism. In fact, Weigel acknowledged that John Paul II is radically opposed to the war in Iraq, not acceptable even for the reason to overthrow a tyrannical regime, which would have been opposed only by nonviolent means.

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