John Paul II’s Centesimus Annus and Today’s Debates
In a recent article on the social doctrine of John Paul II in the Jesuit journal La Civiltà Cattolica, Fr. Fernando de la Iglesia Viguiristi, S.J., had this to say about one
John Paul II
Knowing Suffering from Inside
Imagine yourself as a twenty-year-old Polish worker living in a dingy apartment in Dębniki, a working-class neighborhood of Kraków, in early 1941. After a brilliant beginning to your university career,
John Paul II and Me (and the Poles)
In the first chapter of Profiles in Courage, John F. Kennedy quoted an exasperated congressman, John Steven McGroarty, who wrote an irritating constituent in these neatly acerbic terms: “One of the
Another Assault on John Paul II
On May 13, 1981, Pope John Paul II had lunch in the papal apartment with Dr. Jerome Lejeune, the renowned French pediatrician and geneticist who identified the chromosomal abnormality that
Recycling the Same Old Same Old
In December 2021 and May 2022, I had the pleasure of teaching a mini course in Rome, exploring the life and thought of St. John Paul II. My students came
On John Paul II’s 75th Anniversary
By any worldly measure, 1946 was an annus horribilis in Poland. With the exceptions of Cracow and Lodz, every Polish city lay in ruins. The homeless and displaced numbered in the millions.
The Casaroli Myth
When I met Cardinal Agostino Casaroli on February 14, 1997, the architect of the Vatican’s Ostpolitik and its soft-spoken approach to communist regimes in east central Europe in the 1960s and 1970s
The Educational Pilgrimage of St. John Paul II and Its Impact on the World
Editor’s note: The Pioneer Institute, a Boston-based public policy research center, has just published a groundbreaking study, A Vision of Hope: Catholic Schooling in Massachusetts. The book explores the history and achievements of
From Christendom Times to Apostolic Times
Thirty years ago, on January 22, 1991, John Paul II’s eighth encyclical, Redemptoris Missio (The Mission of the Redeemer), was published. In a pontificate so rich in ideas that its teaching has
Fr. Maciej Zięba, O.P. (1954–2020)
A wretched year came to a sorrowful end when Father Maciej Zięba, O.P., died in his native Wrocław, Poland, on December 31. The birthplace of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Wrocław was also
“Those Who Question the Sanctity of John Paul II Don’t Know What They’re Talking About”
From 1991 until 2005, Cardinal Camillo Ruini served John Paul II as the papal Vicar for Rome—the man who handled the daily affairs of the diocese of which the pope
American Democracy’s Moral and Cultural Foundations
This essay is in response to James M. Patterson’s “Do We Still Hold These Truths?” For someone who was arguably the most prominent Catholic intellectual in the United States in
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A theological time-bomb
Silence, No; Deafness, Yes