John Paul II: capitalism’s trenchant critic
John Paul II: capitalism’s trenchant critic
John Paul II: capitalism’s trenchant critic
The publication of a long-suppressed text by a young Catholic university lecturer in Communist Poland illustrates the tensions and subtleties of the Church’s struggle against Communist misrule – and debunks the claim that Pope John Paul II was a champion of neo-liberal economics
When a two-volume book by the future Pope St John Paul II was published for the first time on Monday, it was the final act in a 20-year effort to see it brought to the world’s attention. Katolicka Etyka Spoleczna (“The Catholic Social Ethic”) could significantly change our understanding of some of the key threads in the late pope’s life and work. It will certainly require the revision of the standard biographies, and will be a serious rebuff to those who have sought to portray him as a life-long true believer in liberal capitalism.
The 120,000-word text, published by Poland’s Catholic University of Lublin, shows the then Fr Karol Wojtyla was deeply versed in Marxism. It also reveals a young priest keenly aware of social injustices, drawn to ideas being taken up by liberation theologians in Latin America and sympathetic to campaigns to limit the excesses of the free market.
The book includes sections on revolution, class struggle and “the objective superiority of the Communist ideal”. It discusses Catholic justifications for popular resistance and how far Church teaching can embrace economic and historical determinism.
“In the contemporary Communist movement, the Church sees and acknowledges an expression of largely ethical goals,” Wojtyla writes. “Pius XI has written that criticism of capitalism, and protest against the system of human exploitation of human work, is undoubtedly ‘the part of the truth’ which Marxism contains.”
The editors acknowledge that the text was intended by Wojtyla as a “teaching aid” for theology students rather than for publication. It shows that while Wojtyla was aware of Marxism’s philosophical errors, he understood the “social and moral motives” behind its critical diagnosis of capitalism – a diagnosis which also instilled a “commitment to the cause of working people”. Even when seen in the “specific historical context” of Communist rule in Eastern Europe, it provides a “hermeneutic key” for better understanding John Paul II’s social encyclicals, Laborem Exercens (1981), Sollicitudo Rei Socialis (1987) and Centesimus Annus (1991).
Wojtyla compiled Katolicka Etyka Spoleczna from his lecture notes while completing an associate professorship at Krakow’s Jagiellonian University, and continued working on it after the university’s theology faculty was forcibly closed by Poland’s Communist rulers in 1954.
Attention was drawn to Wojtyla’s unpublished text in 1996 by John Grondelski, a theologian at New Jersey’s Catholic Seton Hall University, who was shown one of few surviving copies by Professor Jerzy Galkowski, a former pupil of Wojtyla. Grondelski detected clear “lines of continuity” with John Paul II’s later teaching.
The late Professor Tomasz Styczen, director of Lublin’s John Paul II Institute and a close friend of Wojtyla, assured me he was indeed the author, saying: “Wojtyla believed social injustices, and the righteous anger they aroused, represented a failure by those who accepted them – Marx and Marxism would never have emerged if not for such terrible injustices, and that’s why he spoke of the seeds of truth to be found in them. Yet he also realised early on that Marxism was based on a mistake, since it failed to take account of free choice and personal responsibility.”
Far from rejecting Marxist concepts such as alienation and exploitation, Wojtyla identified their historical origins in Christian tradition, and showed the different meaning attached to them by thinkers back to Augustine and Aquinas.
Working for social justice formed part of “building God’s kingdom”, and “the evil which is class struggle” could be justified in achieving it, when “an exploited class fails to receive in a peaceful way the share of the common good it has a right to”. Wojtyla concluded: “The Church is aware that the bourgeois mentality and capitalism as a whole, with its materialist spirit, acutely contradict the Gospel”.
There remained fierce resistance in some powerful quarters to any discussion of Wojtyla’s anti-capitalist outlook. George Weigel again dismissed Katolicka Etyka Spoleczna as an “alleged Wojtyla text”, asserting without any firm evidence that the Pope “did not regard the work as his own”.
Knowing little if any Polish, Weigel was increasingly out on a limb. Professor Szostek authenticated Wojtyla’s authorship of Katolicka Etyka Spoleczn.
Professor Agnieszka Lekka-Kowalik, the John Paul II Institute’s latest director, says its release has been timed for the Catholic university’s current centenary and the run-up to St John Paul II’s 100th birthday in May 2020.
The appearance of Katolicka Etyka Spoleczna will require the updating of biographies of St John Paul II, especially those which portray John Paul II as a prophet of US-style capitalism. The complex and detailed text illustrates the deep thought and preparation which went into the Catholic Church’s struggle against Communist misrule – a struggle substantially shaped by the insights and intuitions of Karol Wojtyla. It also serves as a reminder that no political or ideological lobby, however rich and powerful, can lay proprietorial claim to the social doctrine of the Church.
The 120,000-word text, published by Poland’s Catholic University of Lublin, shows the then Fr Karol Wojtyla was deeply versed in Marxism. It also reveals a young priest keenly aware of social injustices, drawn to ideas being taken up by liberation theologians in Latin America and sympathetic to campaigns to limit the excesses of the free market.
The book includes sections on revolution, class struggle and “the objective superiority of the Communist ideal”. It discusses Catholic justifications for popular resistance and how far Church teaching can embrace economic and historical determinism.
“In the contemporary Communist movement, the Church sees and acknowledges an expression of largely ethical goals,” Wojtyla writes. “Pius XI has written that criticism of capitalism, and protest against the system of human exploitation of human work, is undoubtedly ‘the part of the truth’ which Marxism contains.”
The editors acknowledge that the text was intended by Wojtyla as a “teaching aid” for theology students rather than for publication. It shows that while Wojtyla was aware of Marxism’s philosophical errors, he understood the “social and moral motives” behind its critical diagnosis of capitalism – a diagnosis which also instilled a “commitment to the cause of working people”. Even when seen in the “specific historical context” of Communist rule in Eastern Europe, it provides a “hermeneutic key” for better understanding John Paul II’s social encyclicals, Laborem Exercens (1981), Sollicitudo Rei Socialis (1987) and Centesimus Annus (1991).
Wojtyla compiled Katolicka Etyka Spoleczna from his lecture notes while completing an associate professorship at Krakow’s Jagiellonian University, and continued working on it after the university’s theology faculty was forcibly closed by Poland’s Communist rulers in 1954.
Attention was drawn to Wojtyla’s unpublished text in 1996 by John Grondelski, a theologian at New Jersey’s Catholic Seton Hall University, who was shown one of few surviving copies by Professor Jerzy Galkowski, a former pupil of Wojtyla. Grondelski detected clear “lines of continuity” with John Paul II’s later teaching.
The late Professor Tomasz Styczen, director of Lublin’s John Paul II Institute and a close friend of Wojtyla, assured me he was indeed the author, saying: “Wojtyla believed social injustices, and the righteous anger they aroused, represented a failure by those who accepted them – Marx and Marxism would never have emerged if not for such terrible injustices, and that’s why he spoke of the seeds of truth to be found in them. Yet he also realised early on that Marxism was based on a mistake, since it failed to take account of free choice and personal responsibility.”
Far from rejecting Marxist concepts such as alienation and exploitation, Wojtyla identified their historical origins in Christian tradition, and showed the different meaning attached to them by thinkers back to Augustine and Aquinas.
Working for social justice formed part of “building God’s kingdom”, and “the evil which is class struggle” could be justified in achieving it, when “an exploited class fails to receive in a peaceful way the share of the common good it has a right to”. Wojtyla concluded: “The Church is aware that the bourgeois mentality and capitalism as a whole, with its materialist spirit, acutely contradict the Gospel”.
There remained fierce resistance in some powerful quarters to any discussion of Wojtyla’s anti-capitalist outlook. George Weigel again dismissed Katolicka Etyka Spoleczna as an “alleged Wojtyla text”, asserting without any firm evidence that the Pope “did not regard the work as his own”.
Knowing little if any Polish, Weigel was increasingly out on a limb. Professor Szostek authenticated Wojtyla’s authorship of Katolicka Etyka Spoleczn.
Professor Agnieszka Lekka-Kowalik, the John Paul II Institute’s latest director, says its release has been timed for the Catholic university’s current centenary and the run-up to St John Paul II’s 100th birthday in May 2020.
The appearance of Katolicka Etyka Spoleczna will require the updating of biographies of St John Paul II, especially those which portray John Paul II as a prophet of US-style capitalism. The complex and detailed text illustrates the deep thought and preparation which went into the Catholic Church’s struggle against Communist misrule – a struggle substantially shaped by the insights and intuitions of Karol Wojtyla. It also serves as a reminder that no political or ideological lobby, however rich and powerful, can lay proprietorial claim to the social doctrine of the Church.
