The MacNeil/Lehrer Report; Pope John Paul II

ROBERT MacNEIL: The new pope, John Paul II, whose election has stunned the Catholic world, returns to the Sistine Chapel today to say mass and take over leadership of world Catholicism.

Good evening. The Conclave of Cardinals probably could not have chosen a pope more likely to electrify the curiosity of the world. While congratulations poured in today, from world leaders from President Carter to Queen Elizabeth, Communist leaders joined cautiously in the applause for a man who`s thought to keep Christianity alive behind the Iron Curtain. Tonight, the character, personality and religious philosophy of this surprising choice: Cardinal Karol Wojtyla of Poland, the first non-Italian pope since 1522. What does the election mean? Jim?

JIM LEHRER:. Robin, we`ve all been treated to a gush of information about Cardinal Karol Wojtyla of Krakow, Poland, since yesterday afternoon, and much of it has been contradictory, some of it dead wrong. At one time, for instance, there were three correct pronunciations of his last name making the rounds, all three different. Some reports label him a liberal on social issues, a moderate on church law and theology; others say no, he`s an archconservative all around. Some say he`s a staunch, fiery anti-Communist; other say he`s actually a soft accommodator of Communism. The uncontroverted part of his biography is this: he`s fifty-eight years old, born in a small village near Krakow. His father, who worked in a chemical factory, died as a Polish soldier in World War II. After working in that same factory his son studied at a seminary in Krakow, was ordained in 1946, went off to Rome to get his doctorate, and returned to Poland in 1948, about the same time the Communists were taking over. He was made Archbishop of Krakow in 1964, a cardinal in 1967. He speaks Italian, French, English, Russian, Ukranian and German, in addition to Polish. He`s an avid skier and mountain climber, and likes to play pingpong. For a better feel for the man and his current situation in Poland, here`s an excerpt from a film that is due for broadcast in November on Public Television. The narrator- interviewer is author James Michener. The interview was done last June.

(June 1978.)

JAMES MICHENER: Poland is almost totally Catholic. The Catholic Church has as strong a hold on the national spirit as ever, despite the government`s basic antagonism.

One overriding fact about the Polish people is this: in a nation of thirty- five million, thirty million -- yes, thirty million -- believe in and adhere to the Roman Catholic Church; this in a Communist society that on paper is anti-church.

His Eminence Cardinal Wojtyla is one of the two leaders of the Roman Catholic Church in Poland. We met in the garden of his residence in Krakow. Your Eminence, this is my fourth visit to your beautiful headquarters here. Every time I come I learn something new. This time when I was driving down from Warsaw I saw the building of quite a few new churches. Does the government put any difficulties in your way in the building of churches?

KAROL Cardinal WOJTYLA: Yes; I must say, the last few years is better.

MICHENER: Is the position of the Catholic Church in Poland different from what it is in the United States?

WOJTYLA: The Church in Poland is a thousand years old, and the United States only two hundred years, and different political and economical systems also. I could say -- so I said so many times in the United States - - that the Church in Poland is living its own life; that is very important. And I suppose that that is important for the Church everywhere, to live its own life, to be different, to ... realize its own mission. The most important problem is a meeting of a different, antinomistic ideology, that is, atheism and Marxism -- that is an anti religious ideology and system.

MICHENER: Yet you seem to survive; I see big numbers of people going to church...I see large numbers of people going to church on Sunday.

WOJTYLA: Ah, yes, very good. It has improved, the life, no? the (unintelligible) of the Church.

MacNEIL: The new pope speaking to James Michener in Poland last June. What can we surmise from the election yesterday? --surmise, because of course the cardinals take an oath of, secrecy. But Richard Ostling, religious editor of Time magazine, is one of those journalists expert in the dynamics of church politics. Today he`s been following up on the fallout from that election. Mr. Ostling, is there any point in asking how big a surprise it was?

RICHARD OSTLING: Well, I think everyone was very startled by this, mainly because of the nationality aspect, not because he has not been an outstanding church leader but because any non-Italian would have been shocking. And then the Eastern European aspect, which is very dramatic.

MacNEIL: He comes from relatively less obscurity in terms of well known church leaders than the first Pope John Paul.

OSTLING: Yes, I think it would be fair to say that if he were an Italian and were elected instead of Cardinal Luciani it would not have been that much of a surprise.

MacNEIL: Why a non-Italian, do you gather? Do you think there was a deliberate desire to seek a non-Italian in this conclave, or did they get there for some other reason?

OSTLING: Well, my hunch at this point is that certainly they didn`t set out to elect an East European; but the field of Italians was just too weak, it was too flawed. Each of the candidates that they might have chosen had certain marks against him, and when they came right down to it. I think they were forced, to find decisive leadership that they needed, to go outside of Italy, and once having done that I think Wojtyla was a natural choice.

MacNEIL: Was it a search for a man and dynamic qualities in a man, or a search for a particular combination of ideological positions?

OSTLING: A little of each, but I would start with the man: his known qualities, his vigor, his good health, his good mind, his ability to lead in a very difficult situation. Catholicism is under some repression in many other countries besides Poland, and I think this will serve him in good stead.

MacNEIL: I see. Now, what does his choice signify? What statement are the cardinals making about Church doctrine and the pace of reform by choosing him?

OSTLING: Well, he certainly would be a conservative in doctrine; any electable pope would be. On the other hand he seems to be a very supple person in his thinking, he`s very well educated, as Pope Paul was; and so we have a man of some potential for intellectual leadership. I think also his very sophisticated handling of the Communist problem is exactly what a pope needs to be the primate of Italy at this time.

MacNEIL: Well, thank you. Jim?

LEHRER: Now to a man who knows the new pope and his background well, both professionally and personally. He`s Professor George Williams of the Harvard Divinity School, a student of the Church in Eastern Europe. Professor Williams has known Pope John Paul II, Karol Wojtyla, since 1961. He`s with us tonight in the studios of Public Station WGBH in Boston. Mr. Williams, I understand that in an interview with the Harvard newspaper before this conclave began you predicted that Cardinal Wojtyla would be chosen the pope. You must have been the only man to do so. Why did you think it was going to be him?

GEORGE WILLIAMS: I was quite certain that someday Cardinal Wojtyla would be elected pope in any case. I had come to know him in 1961 and again at the Vatican Council as an observer, and I felt that the qualities that he represented, already acknowledged by Mr. Ostling, his intellectual grasp of the world situation, his capacity to think innovatively and at the same time being a faithful conservative Polish Catholic with a concern for the working classes of the world, for the developing nations; and I felt that having made a choice of an Italian once again in the late pontiff, they would move dramatically to Eastern Europe or to Latin America, and I thought that if they went to Eastern Europe it could be none other than Cardinal Wojtyla.

LEHRER:I think you may have the distinction of being the only man in the world who predicted that; if there`s anybody else, at least I haven`t heard of them. You know him well; let`s talk about some of these things. You used the word "conservative" too; Mr. Ostling did also. He is a conservative on theology and Church law, is that correct?

WILLIAMS: Well, with this modification: he has two doctor`s degrees, one from the Gregorian University in Rome and the other from the Catholic University of Lublin. And that is a free university, it has the most prestigious humanistic library in all of Poland; people have to come there from Krakow and Warsaw to get books they can`t get there. And in that university his doctorate was related to sex and marriage. The exact title of the book was Love and Responsibility or Accountability. And then earlier he had receive recognition or another work which seems to me even more innovative in its character; it is entitled in English" An Assessment of the Possibility of Erecting a Christian Ethic on the Basis of the System of Max Scheler. "Max Scheler was a German phenomenologist, the son of Jewish Protestant parents, who at the age of fourteen was converted to Catholicism; and it seems to me that if he takes this ethical system of phenomenology as a possible basis for new thinking about church ethics, he is capable within the framework of papal doctrine to make some innovations.

LEHRER: Are you talking about new thinking and innovations on issues like abortion, married priesthood, those kinds of issues that face the Church here in the United States?

WILLIAMS: Yes, and also relations with both Eurocommunism and the Soviet bloc Communists. Not on abortion; there`ll be absolutely no change on that. But I do think that his pastoral book on marriage and responsibility -- love and responsibility -- for his own large archdiocese of Krakow, two and a half million people, with three seminaries, publications center for Znak, a very intellectual periodical, I think that he was facing problems that his own parishioners were facing; and in dealing with that problem he showed himself capable of innovation.

LEHRER: Would the word "pragmatic" fit as an apt description of this man?

WILLIAMS: Well, pragmatic, if one would say "personalism", too; pragmatic personalism. He is very personal in his conversation with any individual, he will more often ask questions than pontificate - to pun; he really is interested in drawing out others in conversation and in his immense reading in the field of ethics. And on the side of Marxism he is outstanding as a scholar in terms of his mastery; he`s read Das Kapital, all the writings of Lenin, and he is able to speak with university theorists of Marxism in the Communist bloc nations, in their terms.

LEHRER: Let me ask you in a word: do you like the man personally?

WILLIAMS: Oh, he`s a magnificent figure, and you know he was on the stage when he was younger; that`s why his voice is so resonant and powerful. He`s a mountain climber, as you`ve already said; and he is, as I say, a loving person who takes other persons seriously. One of. his other works -- he`s written six books -- is called The Actin Person, and the lecture that he gave at Harvard in the summer school session was entitled "Participation and Alienation", which again shows the kind of thinking he`s capable of.

LEHRER: All right. Mr. Williams, thank you. Robin?

MacNEIL: We also wanted to get the views of some leading American laymen who are deeply interested in the direction the Church is taking in this country. How will the choice of pope affect American Catholics? First James Buckley, for six years a United States Senator from New York, now chief executive of the Taconic Petroleum Corporation and an active layman in his local parish, Sharon, Connecticut. Mr. Buckley, what does the selection signify to you in terms of doctrine?

JAMES BUCKLEY: Well, I`ve learned a lot in the last five minutes, and I like what I hear. We need a man who, I think, understands that the Catholic Church represents some eternal truths, and vet he has the experience and the force of intellect to be able to talk about those truths in the context of today`s world. And he has lived in a very complicated part of that world.

MacNEIL: I infer from what you said, you needed a man like that, that you feel that the pace of reform and change may have been going a bit too rapidly in the Church in this country.

BUCKLEY: Well, I think that reform and change aren`t necessarily the same thing. Yes, there has been a tremendous amount of change, and this has been unsettling for a great number of Catholics; and I believe the time has come to establish an aura of stability, an aura of authority not in terms of a dictatorial sense but rather in terms of the authority the comes with a belief. And this may be very well the man who can do that. We have enormous problems in this + country, we are awfully preoccupied with "me". And it seems to me that this is a man who can remind Catholics of their own tradition and of the relevance of their traditional truths.

MacNEIL: To you as a political conservative -- or perhaps that`s irrelevant, too -- just as a man who has been a politician in this country as well as now a businessman, what is the significance of his coming from Eastern Europe?

BUCKLEY: Well, it`s intriguing. There are those such as Solzhenitsyn who believe we are entering into a period -- in fact we are in the period -- in which we have the great contest between good and evil. And I think that`s a great deal to say of that, but here is a man who knows the nature of what Solzhenitsyn describes as the antihuman aspects of a particular political ideology. I believe that he can speak with an authority that can command attention, I believe that in a sense having emerged from that background he represents the fact that the Church has lived through a great deal over the ages and will continue to.

MacNEIL: Americans have been leaving the Church or becoming less careful about their devotion because -- and especially the younger ones, one reads -- they feel that the directives from Rome have been irrelevant to their daily lives. Do you feel that this man could reverse that?

BUCKLEY: If he speaks with the right eloquence, if he understands the temper of the times so that he can make his message ring true to the heart, to the mind, I think the answer is yes. One thing that struck me recently was reading about a study that indicated those faiths who kind of abandoned their own traditions in the search of an elusive social relevance have ultimately been found irrelevant spiritually and have lost much of their following. I believe this is a time to take stock in the Catholic Church here in the United States and around the globe.

MacNEIL: In fact, how much power or influence does Rome still exercise on the daily lives of American Catholics? How much does the identity of the pope matter?

BUCKLEY: It depends on the individual; the pope has no troops, no KGB. It depends on whether he can in effect cause the individual Catholics to see a duty to abide by the teachings of the Church. This is a voluntary servitude, you might say, that is at the guts of the job and the guts of his position.

MacNEIL: So his personal charisma could be very relevant.

BUCKLEY: I think so.

MacNEIL: Thank you. Jim?

LEHRER: Another leading Catholic layman from the other end of the political spectrum, Sargent Shriver, former head of the Peace Corps, the 1972 Democratic candidate for Vice President, now a Washington attorney. Mr. Shriver, let me ask you, where Robin left off with Mr. Buckley, does it really matter to the average American Catholic who the pope is, except during symbolic times and times like this when the pope dies and a successor is chosen?

SARGENT SHRIVER: I think for the most part it has not mattered to individual Catholics; but this pope, I think, could matter, because I think he has the capacity to personify the love of Christ for men, not just the intellectual appeal of Christianity or the duty to adhere to some system of morality but the love of Christ for people. Because this man is almost apostolic in his background; he`s a working man, just like St. Peter was a fisherman. This man worked as a laborer under the Nazis. He`s a man whose principal interest and occupation has been with people, it`s pastoral. And he has performed that under the most difficult circumstances that anybody could do it. So if anybody thinks they`re having a tough time in the United States practicing Christianity or any religion, all they have to see is what this man has been able to achieve under a much more arduous circumstance.

LEHRER: Let`s pick up on some of the points that Mr. Buckley made. He says that change has come, to paraphrase, in some ways too quickly here in the Church in the United States. Do you agree with that?

SHRIVER: No, I don`t. I think it was long overdue. I think that the Catholic Church had become rather stiff over three or four hundred years and it was very methodical, it was legalistic, it was juridical; it was a system whereby if you did certain things you were sure to go to Heaven, and that`s never been true of Christ`s teaching. And so I think that the Church is much stronger now than it used to be. It may not have as many people parading into mass on Sunday or popping as much into a collection plate, but the people who do go understand why they`re going much better than they did before.

LEHRER: Do you think that the new pope should bring more stability, not authority -- I`m trying to paraphrase here again what Mr. Buckley said; he called it an aura of stability. Would you favor that?

SHRIVER: I`m not worried about stability or change; I think the big thing that the Church has to personify is the love of Christ. Christ brought love to the world, he didn`t bring stability. He said, "I bring a sword." Don`t come to me looking around for some sort of vapid peace, some sort of security. He didn`t propose social security for the people in the Catholic Church; there wasn`t any social security for the first twelve apostles. Nor was there political security.

LEHRER: Do you think the new pope can bring the young people who have been disaffected from the Catholic Church back into the Church?

SHRIVER: Well, he can`t do it by himself, obviously, but I mean he could make a big contribution, in my judgment.

LEHRER: What could he do?

SHRIVER: He`s already doing great. His whole life is a testament, I think, to what Christianity stands for, and that is that it`s a religion of the people, it`s a religion that`s practical, it`s a religion that holds up an ideal that is more important than politics, it`s more important than nationalism; it`s universal, it`s catholic -- that`s what catholic means, universal -- it`s one, it`s the same religion in Poland as it is here; and the new pope said that each national church had to fulfill its own mission. Now, he didn`t mean that in terms just of nations, but he did say, you know, in that interview with James Michener that we`re carrying out our mission here in Poland. And that`s going to be a little different than the one in the United States, because of the different culture, the different political s,7stem, and so on. But it`s one church, wherever it is, and I think he personifies that.

LEHRER: You think the cardinals made a great choice, in other words.

SHRIVER:I think it`s a miraculous choice.(Laughing.)

LEHRER :Okay. .Robin?

MacNEIL: Let`s pursue the idea with our earlier guests of what this election could mean to American Catholics. As the religion editor of Time magazine, obviously you`ve been preoccupied with that, too, Per. Ostling. What would you like to contribute on that score?

OSTLING: Well, I think the pope first and foremost acts as an inspiration, and I think this man, for reasons that both of your guests have said, is well equipped to do that. He does have a practical feel, he`s a sleeves- rolled-up man, he`s had a variety of experiences; he decided on the priesthood as a young man -- he was not put into an artificial pre-seminary environment. He has worked with young people, he was a worker priest in Western Europe. He has all kinds of resources that he can draw on in terms of the stress of human life. On the other hand, I would not expect dramatic initiatives, at least for many years, in any of the kind of doctrinal questions like birth control that have so agitated Catholics in our country.

MacNEIL: Professor Williams in Boston, do you see a major impact on the Church in its present state in the United States?

WILLIAMS: Well, I do think that Catholics are very much aware who the pope is, and I think non-Christians as well, and above all, Christians who are not Catholic. I would like to bespeak a word from their point of view. The testimony of the Christian world was evident at the funerals of both popes that departed from us, and I think that I would like to emphasize that the new pontiff has a very strong sense, coming out of the Polish situation, which borders upon which was anciently the orthodox part of Christendom, Russian Orthodox -- Ukranian orthodox -has a very strong sense of the relationship to the other churches and even to other religions. He`s been in the commission under Cardinal Konig, dialogue with non-believers, even. So that he is admirably fitted for attracting, not to membership in the Church but to cooperation with the Roman Catholic Church, of many religious groups and even secular people.

MacNEIL: Finally, I wonder if you`d all be interested in speculating, with what little time remains, on the likely impact of this on East West relations, the relations of the Communist world to our world, and also the development of what`s called Eurocommunism. Do you have any feelings about that, Senator Buckley?

BUCKLEY: Not really, no. I think time alone will tell. He`s a man who obviously knows both sides pretty well.

MacNEIL: Mr. Shriver, do you have any feelings about that?

SHRIVER: Well, I think if anyone can deal with that problem effectively it`s likely to be this man, for the reasons that Senator Buckley just said.

MacNEIL: Do you feel that, as some people have wondered in the speculation that`s followed in the last twenty-four hours, that this man could, by having coexisted with Communism, having survived with it, would make the traditional argument of Christianity -- particularly in Italy, where Communism is very strong and many Christians vote Communist -- make their argument against Communism rather hard to defend now?

SHRIVER: No, I don`t, because I think he`s made it clear the level at which the argument against Communism exists; it doesn`t exist only at a political level. Christianity is not a political system, it`s a religion. And what it claims for itself is the right to exist and to pursue its mission no matter what system it is, whether it`s a monarchy or Communism or a Fascist dictatorship or a democracy. And as long as it has the right and privileges that it has to have to exist, to offer mankind salvation according to revelation, then the Catholic Church will get along okay, as it does in Poland.

MacNEIL: Professor Williams, you said that the new pope was a student of ?Marx and of Lenin. Do you see his election having any relevance to the sort of East-West ideological struggle and the development of Communism in Western Europe?

WILLIAMS: Yes, I do. I feel that in taking the name that he did, he was really, as far as his political policy is concerned -- although he`s professed not to wish to be political -- following the second of those two names, Paul. Paul was the pilgrim pope, gone to other continents, who really wanted to establish a new kind of relationship with the Eastern bloc in his Eastern policy, and that meant the abandonment of an ancient -- going back to the thirteenth century -- policy of the subordination of orthodox churches and others to papal authority. And the Polish Church now has become extremely cosmopolitan. I`ve regretted very much the statements in the press and elsewhere that the Poles are nationalistic and their church is; it has really become, as a result of Vatican II, very cosmopolitan, global-minded...

MacNEIL: Professor Williams, I hate to break you off; I would love to pursue those ideas but our time is up, I`m afraid. Thank you for joining us this evening. Thank you, Mr. Shriver in Washington. Good night, Jim.

LEHRER: Good night, Robin.

MacNEIL: Mr. Buckley, Mr. Ostling here. That`s all for tonight. We`ll be back tomorrow night. I`m Robert MacNeil. Good night.