New Details Emerge of John Paul II’s ‘War’ Against Communism
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L
Lutheranteach
Guest
I don’t buy that as a truism at all. The Catholic Church has a history of aligning itself with democratic governments where it is a minority religion and aligning itself with dictatorships where it’s the major religion. In short the Church does what looks to be best for the Church which may or may not be the best thing for the people of the country (ies) in question.
S
Shin
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'Cardinal Stanislaw Dziwisz, Pope John Paul’s longtime secretary, who once remarked about the church’s battle with Poland’s communist regime: “You must understand that it was always ‘them’ and ‘us.’” What he meant, Weigel said, was that "the struggle between communism and Catholicism could not be understood as a matter of episodic confrontations… It was all war, all the time."
He catalogued efforts by communist regimes to place spies in local Catholic hierarchies and the Vatican, to exploit the church’s moves toward openness and dialogue, to create ecumenical confusion and to compromise church leaders by planting false stories.
In 1983, Weigel recounted, the Polish security police even decided to blackmail Pope John Paul. The instrument chosen was a fake diary said to have been written by a deceased female employee of the Archdiocese of Krakow, in which the diarist reported she had been the future pope’s lover. The plot fell apart when one of the conspirators, after successfully planting the diary in the home of a Krakow priest, got drunk, crashed his car and blabbed to police about what he’d just done. . . Weigel noted that the same security police operative would surface a year and a half later – as one of the men who beat Solidarity activist Father Jerzy Popieluszko to death and dumped his body in the Vistula River.
Weigel said Soviet bloc intelligence services tried to manipulate the debates of the Second Vatican Council for political ends, a process that continued as the “Ostpolitik” policy of the Vatican developed and prevailed. He said the Hungarian regime used the Vatican’s diplomatic opening to take control of the Catholic Church in the country; most bishops nominated after 1964 were cooperators with internal security and foreign intelligence services, he said.
At the Pontifical Hungarian Institute in Rome,** all the rectors and half the students in the late 1960s were trained agents** of Hungarian secret intelligence, he said.
Weigel said communist moles were placed successfully at Vatican Radio, at the Vatican newspaper and in pontifical universities. When Pope John Paul II was elected, he took some counter-intelligence steps; for one thing, materials dealing with Poland were no longer archived in the Secretariat of State but were kept in the papal apartment “where there was no chance for mischief-makers to prowl around,” Weigel said.’
I was reading the CNS news article, about George Weigel writing about the Communist infiltration of the Church. The article is supportive and admits it.
Weigel of course if famous for his biographical work and support of Pope John Paul IInd.
I’m glad with this article and Weigel’s work, that this is coming out into the open from a source that people will listen to. Weigel is not the kind of source you would usually expect for this kind of information. The methods however, discussed in the article on how this war was dealt with within the Vatican… one can only shake ones head… and notice the before and after of amount of control within the Church herself…
I once read that people in the West habitually did not believe in conspiracies, unlike Italians and people in Europe, more accustomed to their work.
And many seem to believe it impossible for them to have effect upon the Church too.
He catalogued efforts by communist regimes to place spies in local Catholic hierarchies and the Vatican, to exploit the church’s moves toward openness and dialogue, to create ecumenical confusion and to compromise church leaders by planting false stories.
In 1983, Weigel recounted, the Polish security police even decided to blackmail Pope John Paul. The instrument chosen was a fake diary said to have been written by a deceased female employee of the Archdiocese of Krakow, in which the diarist reported she had been the future pope’s lover. The plot fell apart when one of the conspirators, after successfully planting the diary in the home of a Krakow priest, got drunk, crashed his car and blabbed to police about what he’d just done. . . Weigel noted that the same security police operative would surface a year and a half later – as one of the men who beat Solidarity activist Father Jerzy Popieluszko to death and dumped his body in the Vistula River.
Weigel said Soviet bloc intelligence services tried to manipulate the debates of the Second Vatican Council for political ends, a process that continued as the “Ostpolitik” policy of the Vatican developed and prevailed. He said the Hungarian regime used the Vatican’s diplomatic opening to take control of the Catholic Church in the country; most bishops nominated after 1964 were cooperators with internal security and foreign intelligence services, he said.
At the Pontifical Hungarian Institute in Rome,** all the rectors and half the students in the late 1960s were trained agents** of Hungarian secret intelligence, he said.
Weigel said communist moles were placed successfully at Vatican Radio, at the Vatican newspaper and in pontifical universities. When Pope John Paul II was elected, he took some counter-intelligence steps; for one thing, materials dealing with Poland were no longer archived in the Secretariat of State but were kept in the papal apartment “where there was no chance for mischief-makers to prowl around,” Weigel said.’
I was reading the CNS news article, about George Weigel writing about the Communist infiltration of the Church. The article is supportive and admits it.
Weigel of course if famous for his biographical work and support of Pope John Paul IInd.
I’m glad with this article and Weigel’s work, that this is coming out into the open from a source that people will listen to. Weigel is not the kind of source you would usually expect for this kind of information. The methods however, discussed in the article on how this war was dealt with within the Vatican… one can only shake ones head… and notice the before and after of amount of control within the Church herself…
I once read that people in the West habitually did not believe in conspiracies, unlike Italians and people in Europe, more accustomed to their work.
And many seem to believe it impossible for them to have effect upon the Church too.
P
Prague
Guest
Wow!
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