But I saw that it contained a rather interesting personal anecdote:
Nearly 25 years ago, a Pole was dining in my college in Cambridge. He told us that he had been an altar boy in Poland, and had often served the masses of the Archbishop of Cracow. [Karol Wojtyla] A year or two after that prelate, Karol Woytila, [sic] had been installed in the See of Rome, he decided to visit him, for John Paul II never became too grand for his old Polish friends.
The Pope (so he told the story) strode up to him, punched him lightly in the chest, and began: Introibo ad ad altare dei … to which our guest responded: Ad deum qui laetificat iuventutum meum. ("I will go unto the altar of God’’ "To God who giveth joy to my youth.’‘) This was the opening exchange between priest and server of the old "Tridentine’’ Latin mass, abolished in the early1970s, and the two continued it right down to the Confiteor.
Then the Pope shrugged his shoulders and said: "Well, that’s no use to us anymore." His old altar boy replied: "No, Holy Father, and that’s why I no longer go to church." To which the Pope (he said) instantly rejoined: "Don’t blame me. Blame that maniac John XXIII!"
Ah.
Right.
That's the "maniac" that Jaypeetooweeluuvyoo wanted to see canonised.
Do I remember someone once suggesting that the reason nothing John Paul II did ever made any sense, was that he was "slightly nuts"? I think I do.
Santo...
oh never mind.
This so perfectly represents the Trad caricature of John Paul II, that we can be certain it was fabricated. I fear Hilary was duped.
ReplyDeletetake it up with the author.
ReplyDeleteI must say that I'm rather inclined to believe it - it comes from a good source and is consistent with other details of his pontificate
ReplyDeleteAlice Von Hildebrand reported once in an article for the New Oxford Review, that in an interview with Cardinal Silvio Oddi in March of 1985, John XXIII had told him on his death bed:
ReplyDelete"Silvio, Silvio; my pontificate has been a failure. All the things I wanted to accomplish have not been done; what I did not want to take place is being realized."
My first knee jerk response was to think, oh that can't be true. Then I remembered the koran kissing incident. Oh heck, I don't know what to think anymore. I am sure that JPII should not be cannonized yet though.
ReplyDeleteI think JPII WAS a bit nuts. I think it was only the Holy Spirit that spared us from real damage. Definitely not The Great in my view.
ReplyDeleteA lot of what he wrote was at best ambiguous.
The new bloke is a lot more normal and acts like a pope.
Julian