The Hidden Pope by O'Brien Darcy;

Author:O'Brien, Darcy;
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781497658561
Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.

Chapter 17

THE STORY OF MY PRIESTLY VOCATION? IT IS KNOWN ABOVE ALL TO GOD,” Pope John Paul II begins a lyrical memoir, Gift and Mystery, published in 1996. “At its deepest level, every vocation to the priesthood is a great mystery; it is a gift which infinitely transcends the individual…. Faced with the greatness of the gift, we sense our own inadequacy.” Despite this sense of mystery, however, the pope manages in a few succinct paragraphs to isolate certain events, people, and circumstances that affected his decision to begin studies toward his ordination. This decision was not made definite until late 1942, under the most trying and dangerous of conditions.

Although he does not say it directly, the determining and all-encompassing factor among many was the war and the particularly ghastly form that it took in Poland under the German occupation. Faced with the loss of companions and loved ones and, soon enough, the unimaginable horrors of mass exterminations, he confronted what he would later come to term the affliction of the twentieth century—“the culture of death.” In the midst of unspeakable Vernichtung (annihilation), to use Hitler’s word, he asked himself, “What is to be done?” How best to affirm life, against the apparent triumph of death? Becoming a priest seemed at least the beginning of an answer or, as he would say it, God’s answer.

Other than the paramount and cumulative effects of the war itself, there were seven subsidiary factors that may be considered as strong influences on his choice of vocation. Alone, none of these would have been sufficient to convince him to redirect his focus from literature and drama to the priesthood. A point must be emphasized, however, and it is something that has often been misunderstood about Wojtyla: he never wholly abandoned those first two loves but rather continued them as serious avocations within a larger purpose. Whatever else it meant giving up, for him the priesthood never required renunciation of poetry, drama, or, indeed, performance.

The first wartime influence on his vocation included his experiences as a common laborer. He worked among people whom, as a university-centered intellectual, he would otherwise never have intimately encountered. After holding various odd jobs, including running errands for a restaurant, to support himself and his father, Lolek was vulnerable to the fate of Teofil Bojes and tens of thousands of other Polish men and women who were deported to the Reich as slave laborers. The only safeguard was to obtain an identity card, or Ausweiss, which stated that the holder was employed in an industry essential to the German war effort.

As with Jurek’s good fortune under the Russians, Lolek was able to enlist the help of a sympathetic official who was in a position to be of assistance. Because of the expertise of the Polish manager of the Solway bicarbonate plant, the Germans left him in place, although the name of the plant was changed to the East German Chemical Works. Located west of Debniki in the Borek Falecki industrial district, the plant produced limestone-derived products, including caustic soda, an ingredient in explosives.

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