The Cathoholic

The End and the Beginning: Geoge Weigel on the Record

The End and the Begining: Pope John Paul II -- The Victory of Freedom, the Last Years, the Legacy, George Weigel's sequel to his memorable biography of the late pontiff, was released today.  Weigel shared his thoughts with me in an interview posted on the National Catholic Register, where he discusses the key issues and unexpected developments that make his latest book so engaging.

What is the value of time for a biographer, even one who knew the flesh-and-blood man he is writing about?

Weigel: Obviously time gives one some emotional distance on the person about whom one is writing. But in my case, the most important “time factor” was the fact that I came into possession, after the Pope’s death and through the courtesy of Polish academic colleagues, of a cache of remarkable materials from the files of the Polish secret police and communist-era foreign ministry, the East German Stasi, the KGB, the Hungarian secret police, and the White House, none of which had been previously available. Those materials allowed me to explore the communist war against John Paul II in considerable (and dramatic) detail; some have said that the first third of The End and the Beginning reads like an espionage novel. And I expect there’s something to that.

In another exchange, Weigel addresses the pope's two-track strategy for dealing with communist regimes:

John Paul II sought to transform the Holy See’s policy of Ostpolitik by creating the foundation for the nonviolent overthrow of the Soviet empire. Yet he appointed Cardinal [Agostino] Casaroli, a strong advocate of Ostpolitik, as his secretary of state. Why did he do that, and what does that decision reflect about his approach to foreign policy? Other examples?

Weigel: I have long argued that the appointment of Casaroli, architect of the Ostpolitik of Paul VI, as John Paul II’s secretary of state, was an extremely shrewd move on John Paul’s part. With Casaroli as principal Vatican diplomatic agent, no communist government could accuse John Paul of reneging on Paul VI’s agreements or dramatically changing the Vatican’s policy line. Meanwhile, John Paul II himself went around and over the heads of governments with moral appeals to oppressed peoples around the world, calling them to live in the truth, which was his basic weapon against communism. It was a classic good cop-bad cop strategy.

 

 

The End and the Beginning: Pope John Paul II - The Victory of Freedom, the Last Years

George Weigel's sequel to Witness to Hope, his 1999 bestselling biography of Pope John Paul II, was released today. The End and the Beginning: Pope John Paul II - the victory of Freedom, the Last Years, the Legacy offers a penetrating reappraisal of his pontificate, but it also contains a fascinating portrait of Soviet-bloc spy agencies's efforts to penetrate Polish Catholic institutions and the Vatican. My book review in the National Catholic Register notes:

As Weigel tells it, Soviet-bloc informants had penetrated the Vatican, just as they had burrowed into Polish Catholic organizations. The new Pope devised his own solution to deal with this problem: he kept his own records of sensitive discussions and intelligence. Unlike his predecessors, he didn’t “dictate memoranda or conversations with prominent personalities or political figures … for ready reference in the Vatican’s Secretary of State. … Rather, in the evening, John Paul would go over each day’s meeting and conversation … with his longtime secretary Stanislaw Dziwisz. Dziwisz recorded all of this in a series of diaries that were kept in the papal apartments.

 

 

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo: Just reporting the facts, or exploiting women?

I recently finished reading the bestselling thriller, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. It was a fast read. But lot's of graphic depictions of sexual assaults against women and ritualized sadism left me disturbed and rather regretful that I had subjected myself to the grisly activities of a serial killer. Friends of mine have expressed the same misgivings, and some have been surprised and even angry that those who recommended the book didn't bother to mention the searing descriptions of violence directed against women. Here's my take on the book in Headline Bistro. I've seen the film, too, and reached a similar conclusion regarding its mix of fast-paced narrative and scences of sadistic violence.