A Life with Karol: My Forty-Year Friendship with the Man Who ...

Not About Forty Years of their Friendship, March 22, 2008

Many biographies have been written about Pope John Paul II, and these have been both good and thorough (e.g. Witness to Hope by Weigel, His Holiness by Bernstein & Politi). Thus, the main reason for buying this book written by his personal secretary, Cardinal Stanislaw Dziwsz, has to be the personal, behind-the-scenes stories he can tell of the human being who happened to be Pope John Paul II. As much is promised by the title of the book: A Life with Karol: My Forty-Year Friendship with the Man Who Became Pope.

The book does not deliver on its promise, however. By my count, there were maybe four instances where we get an eyewitness view from the cardinal: when he was called to be secretary, when they evaded security to go skiing soon after John Paul became pope, the attempted assassination, and the pope?s last moments.

Other than those, the book seems to be written entirely in support of the cause for the sainthood of the pope. This is unfortunate, as the pope is turned from human being into something like a statue. For instance, the cardinal writes that ?Once? I did see him get really angry,? and as he tells the story, he writes that the pope ?replied with something like ire in his voice.? The pope is apparently incapable of real anger, only of something like ire. Even Jesus was capable of real anger!

In places, Cardinal Dziwisz speaks like an omniscient narrator, able to get into the thoughts of people, and making realizations on their behalf. Quite a few times, it made me stop and ask: how did he know that?

Perhaps it is to be expected, that having been so close to a great man, that there is that simultaneous desire to share and to not share, to tell the world all he knows but also to keep for oneself the best tidbits, and to make sure that nothing stands in the sainthood. Perhaps in the future, when sainthood is settled and years has passed, he will write another book and we will learn more about the human being that is Karol Wojtyla. But for now, to read about John Paul, go for the other biographies.

Source: http://www.listenable.org/cat/biographies-memoirs/4832.html

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