The End and the Beginning: Pope John Paul II--The Victory of Freedom, the Last Years, the Legacy [ペーパーバック]

Writers often disappoint when they return to address topics they have covered in the past. Nobody for example thinks that "The Dangerous Summer" is anywhere nearly as good as the other works Hemingway wrote on Spain. George Weigel's "Witness to Hope" was a wonderful and insightful biography of John Paul II. Now, a decade after that book, Weigel returns to cover the pope's last years and the legacy in "The End and the Beginning."

Drawing on newly opened archives pertaining to the intelligence departments of Communist countries, Weigel is able to offer great insight into their attempts to malign the Church in general and John Paul II in particular. Weigel also offers an unforgettable portrait of the last years of John Paul. Readers will find parts of it moving, especially as Weigel offers a poignant take on the pope's declining health. As he had in "Witness to Hope," Weigel is able to provide insight on John Paul as he understands the turbulent history of Poland in the 20th century which is essential to understanding the late Holy Father.

Weigel offers a very weak take on an issue that he differed from both John Paul II and Benedict XVI on--American intervention in Iraq. Weigel seems content to offer snide comments on the Holy See's opposition to the Iraq War such as "uncoordinated (and sometimes unintelligible)." He also whitewashes parts of it. For example, Weigel does not bring up his fellow Catholic neoconservative Michael Novak who tried to put American intervention in Iraq in Catholic terms--only to be swatted down by the Vatican when he went to Rome. All Weigel can do is offer a lame extended quote from Italian journalist Sandro Magister that John Paul II was not condemning the war constantly or calling it un-Christian. This will not do. With American troops remaining in combat operations in Iraq for more than seven years after the fall of Saddam Hussein, John Paul II and the Holy See seem a bit wiser in retrospect than Beltway Catholics like Weigel and Novak. Weigel's pathetic take on the Vatican and the Iraq War is a last gasp of a strain in his thinking which often puts the GOP over the Holy See. It's regrettable but it does not mar his work as a whole.

Weigel has a habit of pointing the blame at the Vatican bureaucracy whenever he thinks John Paul II failed--whether it is on the American military action in Iraq or the Church's response to numerous sex scandals in 2002. Still, Weigel is not afraid to criticize the pope for appointing bishops who served more as bureaucrats than as pastors.

While not quite as remarkable a book as "Witness to Hope," Weigel produced a solid and memorable volume in "The End and the Beginning." While there are some flaws in the book, Weigel gathered enough new material to justify the new book. Weigel's argument that John Paul II fulfilled the ideas that emerged at Vatican II and helped revitalize the Church at a troubling and crucial time is powerful and well-written. This serves as welcome compliment to "Witness to Hope."

Without a doubt, Weigel had to finish what he had started with "Witness to Hope"; he promised the Holy Father that he would. But this book is not merely the continuation of a narrative. Fascinatingly enough, Weigel was able to obtain access to information detailing precise information about the how Communist authorities attempted to infiltrate, influence and corrupt the work of John Paul II in his mission to bring freedom to Poland, and ultimately to much of the Eastern bloc. They key word here is "attempted." More than a biography, I think this book qualifies as a "page turner." Truth is much more exciting than fiction. That's what JPII believed (I love that he used to annotate things "JPII"), and that's what this book delivers.

When Weigel published "Witness to Hope" in 1999, six very productive years still remained in John Paul's pontificate, and now five years after John Paul's death, that story has finally been told in full. But more than that, the opening of secret archives which reveal the extent of the Polish Communist regime's fear and loathing both of the Catholic Church and of Karol Wojtyla allows Weigel to explore previously unknown territory and to explain more fully John Paul's place in history, both as a foe of the poisonous ideology of Communism and as the greatest evangelist of the Christian Gospel in many centuries. And more to point, with a deft combination of the disciplines of history, theology, political philosophy, and biography, Weigel explains that it was precisely Wojtyla's faith in the Lord Jesus and his skill as an evangelist that made him such a deadly foe to Communism. Anyone who wants to understand either the present shape of Catholic Christianity or the end game of the deadly ideological conflicts of the 20th century should read this book deeply.