Palimpsest Wojtyły. Jan Paweł II, polski mesjanizm i katolicka nauka społeczna
Wojtyła’s Palimpsest. John Paul II, Polish Messianism and Catholic Social Teaching

Summary/Abstract: In 1953 Karol Wojtyła started his lectures on Catholic social teaching at the Theological Faculty of the Jagiellonian University. The course was generally based on notes prepared by Professor Jan Piwowarczyk, a former lecturer, removed from teaching for political reasons. For a long time Wojtyła’s own script was not available for researchers. Many commentators speculated about the content of his early lectures; some of them argued that Wojtyła was at that time close to Marxism, whereas others denied that the lectures were actually authored by him. Finally, in 2018, the full version of the lectures was published in Polish. It turns out that Wojtyła usually merely repeated or slightly reformulated Piwowarczyk’s material, though in some cases he added some original content. In this paper I analyse these additions to find some traces of Wojtyła’s earliest views. I argue that they clearly indicate influences of Polish romantic messianism. Wojtyła in a way translated his early inspirations into the language of Catholic social teaching. That is why he wrote about the idea of the Kingdom of God on earth, supported the doctrine of the missions of particular nations and defended the religious meaning of collective suffering.

• Details
• Contents