ABOUT THE CHURCH AND THE VATICAN

Interesting comments here on revelations made in a book published earlier this week by the postulator of John Paul II's cause for beatification. I knew there was a reason why I was queasy about all the emphasis on self-flagellation! Not that I don't believe John Paul II was incapable of it, but he would have been the last person to 'advertise' his acts of self-mortification, since by its very nature, it should concern no one but the person making the sacrifice.


Some troubling questions
about Mons. Oder's revelations
by Salvatore Izzo




VATICAN CITY, January 29 (Translated from AGI) - The Vatican newspaper has not said a word about the book. And in Vatican circles, there is much criticism.

From Poland, especially from Cracow, there appears to be widespread disapproval among those who were close to Karol Wojtyla of the book Perche e santo (Why he is holy) written by Mons. Stanislaw Oder, the postulator of the late Pope's cause for beatification.

"The first reason to be disconcerted," says Gianfranco Svidercoschi, formerly deputy editor of L'Osservatore Romano, co-author of one book with the late Pope and of Cardinal Stanislaw Dsiwisz's memoir about the Pope, "is that for the first time in memory, the postulator of a cause has revealed a considerable part of the testimonies given by clergy and laymen behind closed doors during a canonical process".

Even worse, he said, is to have the disclosures made even before the process has been completed.

[I would agree that for both reasons, publication of the Oder book was at the very least, premature, and ultimately improper.]

"We are still awaiting the verification and approval of the miracle and after that, the final approval by Benedict XVI," he explained.

He also cites Oder's statement in the book that, "Thinking back, the fact that the Pope had wanted to meet me when he was alive was a sort of 'precognition'. Perhaps he wanted to know better the man who would represent him before the Congregation for the Causes of Sainthood."

Svidercoschi said it was like saying that John Paul II was certain he would be made a saint, and so he wanted to get to know the man who would be his postulator. "That was not John Paul II at all!"

What about the previously unpublished documents included in the book?

"It is not made clear that some texts were simply drafts, preparatory notes. So without such an explanation, it would seem that John Paul II had seriously thought of resigning. What he did was to ask experts in canon law if - like bishops who must retire at age 75 and cardinals who can no longer vote in a papal conclave after they turn 80 - there could be an automatic age limit for a Pope".

In the end, Svidercoschi points out, although John Paul II knew that Paul VI had laid down certain guidelines for what should be done if a Pope were incapacitated and unable to carry out his functions, he decided that he would stay for as long as God wanted him to".

As quoted in all his other biographies, Svidercoschi says, the Pope remarked, "Did Christ come down from the Cross?"

More generally, Svidercoschi raised the question of whether it was proper to publish drafts which the Pope had decided not to use - such as a handwritten letter to his would-be assassin Ali Agca - since obviously, the Pope had a reason for not using these drafts.

"Perhaps he did not think these discarded texts really expressed what he wanted. So how can we consider them significant if he himself did not?," the writer says. "I think that seeking to make a media 'scoop' at any cost ends up falsifying the image of this great Pope".

As for the late Pope's acts of self-mortification, Svidercoschi said, "I do not believe he self-flagellated". [Though I do not see why his opinion should matter in this respect.]

He thinks that the testimony of the nun during the investigative part of the beatification process was most likely a mistaken interpretation.

"The sounds that she claims to have heard coming from the Pope's room could well have been due to physical affliction from his illness," he notes. "We must not forget that the assassination attempt in May 1981 left serious and recurrent physical problems even in a man who was very strong and loved sports."

Out of thousands of pages of testimonies collected, he said, there are so many details that acquire a different and perhaps equivocal sense when isolated and emphasized - in the process, he said, the late Pope's personality can tend to be distorted.

He questions particularly Oder's interpretation of John Paul II's statements about Medjugorje.

"If he had said that he would want to go to Medjugorje some day, it cannot be interpreted to mean he approved of the so-called Marian apparitions reported by the Bosnian seers. If he had been convinced of it, he would have done something concrete about it [like have the CDF investigate the so-called apparitions, after the local bishop had carried out due investigation and concluded 'nothing supernatural had happened'].

"If he wanted to go there, he had more than enough time, since he reigned for at least 20 more years after the apparitions were first reported. [He also visited Bosnia some time during then and did not include Medjugorje in his itinerary, nor meet with the 'seers'.]

"He would have taken responsibility even in such a sensitive matter, as he did when he decided to disclose to the world the 'third secret' of Fatima."

Svidercoschi deplored that "the episodes cited and repeated in the media these days - some of them coming from the testimony of just a single person - end up being 'absolutized' and tailored to a particular interpretation."

Such as, he said, "John Paul II's attitude about Medjugorje (which was far more cautious than the Oder book makes it appear); his relationship with Padre Pio (which the Pope had clearly explained in our book together, Dono e mistero); and the inference about his self-flagellation (was it witnessed at all by the nun who recounts it, or merely 'heard'?)"

Likewise, he said, the hypothesis of a supposed plot by the Red Brigade to kidnap the Pope (about which at the time referred to, there was not a hint heard in the Vatican), or the account of the Pope's confrontation with General Jaruzelski [the Polish Communist leader at the time of a visit to Poland by John Paul II in 1983) - in which it should at least have been pointed out that twice during that visit, the Pope had threatened to go back to Rome if the Communist government tried any undue pressure on him."

In short, Svidercoschi says, a clear differentiation must be made between the investigative process for beatification, in which "everyone who testifies recalls what he remembers, what he understood, what he sensed or what he thinks he saw or simply deduced about the candidate. Not everything a witness says has the same weight or significance" - and reporting these details selectively in a book.

The cardinals and bishops of the Congregation for the Causes of Sainthood, he pointed out, "do not approve the final 'positio' recognizing the heroic virtues of the candidate on the basis of individual details and testimonies, but on the overall person that emerges from these testimonies - his historical reality as well as his true personality - and if from these testimonies as well as the candidate's writings, from his acts, practices and beliefs, there do not emerge any shadows that are out of line with Christian doctrine, then they will not look further into details because doing so will not gain them any more knowledge to act upon".