Does the church have a legitimate role in the politics of the state? If actions are any indication, Pope John Paul II certainly does.
According to a new book by Jonathan Witny, formerly of the Wall Street Journal, it was Bishop Karol Wojtyla who literally created the Solidarity movement that eventually overthrew Communism in Poland and lit the fuse that led ultimately to the explosion of the Soviet empire.
“Man of the Century” shows that the then-bishop went so far as to hand out packets of Church cash to the Solidarity dissidents to keep the movement alive during its infancy. He also oversaw a smuggling network that had tentacles throughout the Soviet bloc, trained and ordained covert priest, fostered an underground press in Eastern Europe and instigated a hunger strike.
Kwitny finds that the man who would become pope virtually singlehandedly rescued Solidarity during a series of crises that threatened its existence in the 1980s. He gives little credit to the role of the United States during this period and attacks the theory postulated by author Carl Bernstein who found in “Holy Alliance” that America was pivotal to the movement.
When the Communists cracked down on Solidarity with martial law in December 1981, priests at the Vatican, acting at the pope’s direction, passed millions of dollars in cash to the Solidarity underground to keep it alive, Kwitny reports.
Wojtyla began secret aid to the Polish resisters during a Soviet crackdown in 1953. That same year, he published an underground book, “Catholic Social Ethics,” that laid out the principles for nonviolent revolution — principles similar to those later enunciated by Martin Luther King Jr. A group of religious publications Wojtyla oversaw and contributed to became the basis for Poland’s underground press, Kwitny writes.
The smuggling network he directed included laymen as well as underground priests. Many of the goods smuggled were publications that helped instigate the “Prage Spring” rebellion of 1968. After helping start Catholic Intelligentsia Clubs in 1956, the synod became a virtual political party, the book says. He also helped inspire the Committee for Defense of Workers, an illegal organization that grew into Solidarity. Though its leaders and members were hunted down by the government and jailed, the groups of promoted and protected by Wojtyla.
“Karol Wojtyla, as bishop of Krakow, forged the Solidarity revolution — in his philosophy classes, his community synods, his secret ordination of covert priests, his clandestine communications seminars, the smuggling network he oversaw throughout the Eastern Bloc, and above all by his example,” Kwitny writes. Even in its name, Solidarity was not just a shipyard union, but an idea rooted in Catholic tradition and formulated afresh by Wojtyla starting with a 1953 book daringly published underground. … Time and again, as pope, he singlehandedly rescued the revolution he begat, often in dramatic private confrontations.”
