Bishop Barron on St. John Paul II's “Lessons in Hope”

[Music] well George Michael's latest book lessons in hope my unexpected life with st. John Paul the second is the third panel if you want in a triptych of books that he's written so go back to witness to hope and then the end in the beginning were discussions of John Paul the seconds life and they were marked by lots of careful analysis probably tens of thousands of footnotes this third book is much more personal much more anecdotal it's really about the interweaving of these two lives waggles own and john paul ii as a kind of illustration of John Paul's principle that for people of faith there are no coincidences but just aspects of God's providence we haven't fully understood so Weigel reads the intertwining of these two lives as an exercise in God's providence and is always the case with God's providence it was to the mutual benefit of both Wagle recounts really how his his distant preparation for this task began when he was a young man and a student of Western philosophy which prepared him very well to analyze the life of a pope whose mind was very much shaped by the metaphysics of st. Thomas Aquinas and the phenomenology of Edmund Husserl so Weigel as a student of philosophy was positioned well to tell that story the second thing that really prepared him was his immersion what I would call the storm wound long of the immediate post conciliar period when for a lawful lot of Catholic intellectuals vatican ii represented a sort of you know first step in the right direction toward the total modernization of the church the idea being that the church really was there to accommodate itself to the times rather than to read the signs of the times through the lens of the gospel which was what vatican ii actually taught but whiles growing dissatisfaction with the runyan catholic liberalism of the time led him to such thinkers as omar de luboc and yosef rotzinger and hans arose von Balthasar three figures who had a big impact on of the mind of saint john paul ii i think a third element that especially emphasizes in his preparation is his immersion in the political and cultural life of poland in the wake of the events of 1989 so Weigel becomes a a student of polish culture a student of that particular revolutionary change and this came through real strongly in the book that everyone he talked to this means academics it means people on the street it means union organizers it means everybody in between they all said when they were asked okay what was the real turning point June 1979 which means John Paul the seconds first trip to Poland that famous speech he gave in victory square in Warsaw where he spoke of human rights he spoke of God he spoke of Providence and salvation and the people responded with that famous 15 minute long chant of we want God we want God and so Weigel began to think through that experience in light of that event that John Paul's calling upon the Catholic intellectual and spiritual tradition was what triggered this massive change so those three things I would say prepared him for the rather fateful night 1995 when he had dinner with Shiva Stanislav Jeeva Qi was John Paul's secretary with Richard John Newhouse and with john paul ii himself during which dinner john paul essentially popped the question he asked why go if he would be his biographer and Weigel knew that you know like it or not his life would totally change upon saying yes to that invitation a part of the book I found surprisingly interesting was when Michael went into the years of preparing this biography and you think ok an academic telling you about how we wrote a biography wouldn't be all that compelling but in fact it it is all these conversations he had with a range of people who influenced john paul ii and i think the very best and most creaking where his conversations with John Paul the second youth group so these people now you know fully adults but who has young kids were shaped by Carl boy T WA these stories you know were very informative very funny the anecdotes are wonderful so that part of the book I thought was was surprisingly intriguing I was especially struck in the second part of the book second half of the book by the many accounts that y ou has of his lunches and dinners with John Paul the second so John Paul was famously gregarious and loved to have people over to his apartment for lively dinner conversations and that's how he kept plugged in how he learned what was going on in the world how he was learning about the latest philosophical trends and political movements and so on so why go with obvious delight tells these stories of these dinners and lunches marked by lots of laughter marked by high-level intellectual conversations marked by multiple languages and as I read those accounts I thought in some ways it's a beautiful metaphor for the whole of John Paul the second papacy lively smart multicultural philosophically informed deeply curious full of gospel enthusiasm it was like a light motif like an icon in some ways of John Paul the second papacy and you know what finally struck me was John Paul the humanist I think his Weigel reads him that maybe is the interpretive key so John Paul famously would make reference to gaudium at spez paragraph 22 so the Vatican to document gaudium it's been this paragraph 22 has the line about its in light of the word made flesh that human beings really understand who they are in other words Christology is the key to the proper humanism John Paul diagnosed the central problem of the 20th century which was marked by the the worst totalitarianism is the worst expressions of violence the fundamental problem was bad anthropology a bad understanding of human beings john paul ii inform by the great christian tradition and given focus by guarding his house 22 saw that the right anthropology is one that's grounded in Christology the glory of god is a human being fully alive God became human that we might become sharers in the divine nature John Paul got all that and not only got it intellectually he got it in his bones and then he exemplified it in his papacy so those are a couple lessons that I took from reading of George waggles book and I'd recommend it to anyone who's interested in john paul ii and interested in the life of the church now in our time [Music]

Channel: Bishop Robert Barron

Views: 44,394

Rating: 4.8943744 out of 5

Keywords: Bishop Barron, George Weigel, Interview, John Paul II, Catholic, Catholicism

Id: 93GtLNMRxnY

Length: 7min 39sec (459 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 02 2017