John Paul II made no secret of his interest in the political upheavals and religious controversies in his native Poland. But a book of his private correspondence about to be published in Poland demonstrates an astonishing attention to detail--and an acute sensitivity to anything he saw as a departure from church teachings. In "John Paul II: Greetings and Blessings," Marek Skwarnicki, a well-known Roman Catholic writer in Cracow, makes public the letters he got from John Paul II throughout his entire papacy, right up until two weeks before the pope's death.
The most revealing letters are from the 1990s, when the role of the church in a newly free Poland split many of those who had battled the communist system. As a bishop and then cardinal in Cracow, the future pope wrote for Tygodnik Powszechny, a prestigious Catholic weekly. His letters indicate he continued to read it closely once he was installed in Rome. But as younger writers and editors began to make their mark, he worried about its liberal leanings. He wrote disapprovingly of its secular focus and complained about the frequent use of the term "controversial pontificate" when referring to his rule. The church always needs "ferment," he wrote, but: "That ferment is the love of the Church, and can never be any liberal criticism of the Church."
At the same time, he was heartened by the publication of articles by religious writers he approved of, including American contributors Michael Novak, Richard John Neuhaus and George Weigel, who would later write a widely praised biography of him. As he saw it, those Americans had a better understanding of Catholic issues than some of his wavering countrymen.
