The secret letters of Pope John Paul II - BBC

[Peccavi]

Only God know the secrets of our hearts. All else is speculation.

 

[angell1]

sorry guys, but if there is a problem with unmarried priests being friends with the opposite sex, you’re just going to have to take it up with Jesus.

after all, wasn’t he accused of the same thing?

if it was a chaste relationship, then there is no problem, no sin. and no one has the right to tell someone that they should give up a friendship if it isn’t causing issues

I certainly understand the concerns, but as someone who has very few friends in life and difficulty making them, it really bothers me when I get told to not be friends with people because of perceived dangers of occasions of sins which generally aren’t even present

 

[rose_kelly]

I wonder what possessed her to sell the letters for publication? because that’s what she did according to the programme.

 

[_Abyssinia]

John Paul II: Claim of ‘improper relations’ denied

Warsaw - Poland’s national library on Monday said there was “no basis” for suggestions that pope John Paul II had improper relations with a married woman, after a BBC documentary, based on letters from its archives, detailed their “intense” 30-year friendship.

While the report does not claim the late pontiff broke his vow of celibacy with Polish-born philosopher Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka, it does say that the tone of some of his letters to her point to intense feelings between them.

But the library said its documents did not point to anything improper in their relationship.

“The statements made in the media have no basis in the content of the letters of John Paul II to Anna Teresa Tymieniecka which are in the National Library of Poland’s archives,” it said in a statement on Monday ahead of the programme’s broadcast.

"John Paul II was surrounded by a circle of friends - including clergymen, nuns and laypeople - with whom he stayed in close contact.

“Anna Teresa Tymieniecka was within this circle of friends - John Paul II’s friendship with her was neither secret nor extraordinary.”

But a close associate of John Paul II said it was “possible” that a married woman had fallen in love with him before he became head of the Roman Catholic church.

“Women fall in love with priests all the time, and it’s always a big headache,” Father Adam Boniecki, editor-in-chief of the progressive Tygodnik Powszechny Catholic weekly, told AFP.

“If she was in love with Wojtyla, she was most likely not alone,” said Boniecki, himself the author of a detailed account of the pope-turned-saint’s life.

Tymieniecka “translated Karol Wojtyla’s books into English, making his work known to US academics… but her translations caused tension between the two”, Boniecki told AFP.

Edward Stourton, the senior BBC journalist who made the documentary, said more than 350 letters were found at the National Library of Poland, the first dated in 1973 and the last a few months before his death in 2005.

“I would say they were more than friends, but less than lovers,” he said.

m.news24.com/news24/World/News/john-paul-ii-claim-of-improper-relations-denied-20160215

 

[Exiled_Child]

There is also a BBC Panorama documentary on at 8:30pm GMT tonight about these letters. What are Catholics to make of this exactly?

News link: bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-35552997

Thanks for the link, Catholic Nation. Oh, and those photos accompanying the article are great!

I hope someone posts the Panorama documentary to YouTube after it airs, because that’s really the only way I’ll be able to see it.

 

[Lily_Bernans]

I wonder what possessed her to sell the letters for publication? because that’s what she did according to the programme.

Money, of course, which if it’s true, is a betrayal of JP’s lifelong loving friendship with her.

I’ll not condemn her yet. The report I read did not list a source, so I cannot take it completely seriously. However, even if she gave them away for nothing, I think it’s still a betrayal. Even though they weren’t lovers, I’m sure JP wrote the letters for her eyes only. Sure, others knew about the friendship. Others were present during the ski trips and the camping trips, and others were invited to the Vatican, but I honestly don’t think JP intended the world to read the letters he wrote to a dear friend, innocent though the friendship was.

While the report does not claim the late pontiff broke his vow of celibacy with Polish-born philosopher Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka, it does say that the tone of some of his letters to her point to intense feelings between them.

That reporter should learn the difference between celibacy and chastity. I’m pretty sure the late pontiff was not married! And I would highly doubt that he broke his promise, not vow, but promise, of chastity. If you’ve taught Theology of the Body like I have, you pretty much know this pontiff never engaged in anything unseemly, even before he entered the seminary. Theology of the Body is a good course, but there are two or three things in it that show quite clearly that the writer was inexperienced in “the ways of the flesh.” I don’t know how else to say it and keep it as nice as possible. I’m on JP’s side here. I was just surprised, though why, I don’t know. I have friends who are priests myself. Just friends.

 

[Lily_Bernans]

Wow, you are quite the divinizer, knowing the personal intentions and feelings, impulses, passions etc…of JP2.
Tell me where I can find your gift!!

Oh, Clem! You have to be born with the gift! You can’t acquire it!

 

[Peter_Plato]

The excerpts I read were definitely quite romantic, which is okay, I guess, as long as he didn’t act on the impulse, and I do not think he did. If you’ve read any of his poetry, you’d know he was too passionate a man to write that kind of thing to “just a friend.”

He gave her the scapular and told her he “travels” to Pomfret every day!

It’s probably completely innocent, but it’s just such a new view of him. It’s surprising.

I suppose we should leave it up to God to judge.

Oh, wait… JP II was declared a saint by the Church. That would mean God has already judged, no?

 

[Lily_Bernans]

I suppose we should leave it up to God to judge.

Oh, wait… JP II was declared a saint by the Church. That would mean God has already judged, no?

Oh, I’d never be so silly as to judge JP II. He loved poetry, so I’m not surprised the letters contained poetic passages. I was sort of taken aback at first, but after a few hours, I got used to it. It was just an intense friendship after all. They seem to have both been intense persons.

I have friends who are priests. I’ve gone skiing with one in a group. One wrote me a poem. Another gives me books. But we’re just friends, so I guess I understand the whole thing. And they were both Polish, and Polish people have a romantic turn of mind to begin with.

 

[_Abyssinia]

George Weigel, who wrote Witness to Hope, an influential biography of St John Paul, described the story as “a tempest in a teapot” that would not change his perception of St John Paul II “in the slightest”.

“Why should anyone find it odd that priests and bishops should have friendships with women, including the kind of friendships in which emotions and ideas are expressed in correspondence? Only those who imagine that celibacy is some weird and warped form of bachelorhood would find it odd,” he said

“Moreover, as my own Witness to Hope demonstrates, Karol Wojtyla was in correspondence with women who were his friends when he was a young priest; so the fact that he had an extensive correspondence with Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka and Wanda Poltowska as a bishop and as pope isn’t any big surprise. As I know from my own correspondence with him, John Paul II used letters to think things through, so again there’s no surprise that he did so in his letters with Tymieniecka.

“If these letters help some people understand that Karol Wojtyla, John Paul II, was a real person, I’ll be pleased; but many of us have known that for a very long time.”

catholicherald.co.uk/news/2016/02/15/bbc-to-air-documentary-on-st-john-pauls-friendship-with-a-woman/

 

[Dwyer]

Unfortunately, the secular Media, I predict, is going to run with this as much as they can and portray the Pope’s friendship with this woman as something it was not and then make the case for Benthamite Modernism entering the Catholic Church.

Looks like the British Press is running with it and it’s now on the Canadian CBC website.
My local news has a Newsy video about it.

I haven’t seen anything on U.S. Cable News about this story so far, but I’m sure there will be a Media firestorm about it if the Corporate Media can pry themselves away from their sole focus on the Election Primary and Donald Trump said this and that.

 

[Lily_Bernans]

Well, I was surprised at first, but no longer. I’ve real a lot of books about the pope and written by the pope, and I knew he liked women in a friendly way, and had women friends, especially when he was a young actor, before he considered the priesthood. It’s not odd that some of these friendships lasted a lifetime, and I hope they brought great comfort to the pope. I would imagine being pope is a very lonely job, and lacks the reward that some people so often associate with it. It’s a very heavy responsibility.

And, as I’ve said, I, myself, having spent my entire life - so far - so close to the Church, have several good friends who are priests. We are good friends because our personalities mesh, and we have similar interests and like discussing them. I see no difference except my priest friends and I are not Polish nor are we famous in any way.

 

[edwest2]

Unfortunately, the secular Media, I predict, is going to run with this as much as they can and portray the Pope’s friendship with this woman as something it was not and then make the case for Benthamite Modernism entering the Catholic Church.

Looks like the British Press is running with it and it’s now on the Canadian CBC website.
My local news has a Newsy video about it.

I haven’t seen anything on U.S. Cable News about this story so far, but I’m sure there will be a Media firestorm about it if the Corporate Media can pry themselves away from their sole focus on the Election Primary and Donald Trump said this and that.

Donald Trump? Never!

Ed

I mean, it’s not like the Pope is that important to the secular media.

 

[_Abyssinia]

Those letters between John Paul II and a woman? Not so secret, actually.

catholicnewsagency.com/news/those-letters-between-john-paul-ii-and-a-woman-not-so-secret-actually-52016/

 

[Abynissa]

The point has nothng to do with secular press but what was written in the letters. Note the only letters that were released by Polish National Library were from Pope John Paul II to Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka.

The press was not allowed to read the letters from Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka to Pope John Paul II so we may never know which makes me suspicious.

 

[LongingSoul]

Carl Bernstein says the relationship was never illicit. I hope it never was. I knew JP II had many women friends before he was ordained, when he was an actor, but I didn’t know he had an intimate relationship with a woman throughout life. Intimate, but non-sexual, of course. It does change my perception of him. I feel a little let down. I had thought this was a man who lived his entire life for Christ. Can’t anyone do without the opposite sex?

Why do you bother posting? That is a shallow and divisive reflection of a holy and pure man. Show some restraint and stop posting anti Catholic rubbish.

 

[Lily_Bernans]

Why do you bother posting? That is a shallow and divisive reflection of a holy and pure man. Show some restraint and stop posting anti Catholic rubbish.

No, it’s not. It’s just an honest reaction to an initial post that did not contain all the facts. I feel it’s much ado about nothing now. In fact, I feel the pope was just being kind and caring about someone’s feelings.

I’m a devout Catholic, and that means I’m not a Catholic “yes-woman.” I’ve never spent an anti-Catholic hour in my life.

JP II would approve of my prudence. And BTW, there are posts AFTER that one in which I state that I see nothing wrong with JP II having friends. He was an outgoing and loving person. Never a harsh word from him. There are some who would do good to emulate him.

 

[Lily_Bernans]

Donald Trump? Never!

Ed

Right! Trump? Never!

 

[Lily_Bernans]

Unfortunately, the secular Media, I predict, is going to run with this as much as they can and portray the Pope’s friendship with this woman as something it was not and then make the case for Benthamite Modernism entering the Catholic Church.

Looks like the British Press is running with it and it’s now on the Canadian CBC website.
My local news has a Newsy video about it.

I haven’t seen anything on U.S. Cable News about this story so far, but I’m sure there will be a Media firestorm about it if the Corporate Media can pry themselves away from their sole focus on the Election Primary and Donald Trump said this and that.

The US secular media doesn’t care. They are far too engrossed with the deep divisions in the Republican Party that must be healed soon or Clinton will win by a landslide.

The Church has made the letters clear now. Just JP II being kind and concerned, as he always was, and still is.

 

[Brendan_64]

The whole thing is an attempt to smear this great pope and saint with innuendo. There is no evidence of anything morally wrong or illicit, yet that doesn’t stop people from wanting to smear St Pope John Paul.

The media do not like the Catholic Church. They do not like the Church’s teachings on sexuality and they see it as a given that the Church needs to liberalise its teachings. Who better to have a pop at than the man who was foremost in declaring the Church’s teachings on sexuality to the world?

This article sums up the irrelevance of the so-called revelations made by the programme.

catholicherald.co.uk/commentandblogs/2016/02/16/the-secret-letters-of-pope-john-paul-ii-a-silly-programme-that-revealed-no-secrets/#.VsLuaPwHVq0.facebook