The second conclave begins
A Polish cardinal returns to Rome in late 1978
1978 A.D.
Today in Papal History marks the day in which the Cardinal Archbishop of Kraków, Karol Wojtyla, entered the conclave that would elect him pope.
This was the year’s second conclave in as many months, thanks to the untimely death of (the soon-to-be-Blessed) Pope John Paul I, who reigned for just 33 days before dying of a sudden heart attack.
As the story goes, Cardinal Wojtyla had suspected he might be elected pope – after all, according to Jason Evert’s great book on John Paul II, a poem by the famous Pole Juliusz Slowacki a century earlier seems to have foretold it:
Amid discord God strikes
At an immense bell,
For a Slavic pope
Open is the throne…
Boldly like God, he bravely face the sword;
For him the world is dust…
So behold, here comes the Slavic Pope,
A brother of the people.
So, naturally, Wojtyla was relieved when he wasn’t chosen in the August conclave.
At any rate, the Polish cardinal had barely returned home when he heard the news at breakfast that the new pope had died. It’s said that he dropped his utensil, was overcome with emotion, and immediately developed a migraine headache before retreating to his chapel for many hours, laying prostrate on the floor.
When leaving for the Eternal City once more shortly thereafter, his driver bade him farewell and wished for a safe journey back to Poland once the conclave was all over.
Cardinal Wojtyla responded soberly, “One never knows.”
Are you aware of Cardinal Karol Wojtyla's 1970 book title Person and Action? The following are some of the 37 “theses,” extracted from the book.
Thesis No. 15 - God is not an historical being who works with man - and man does not cooperate with God, but only acts in cooperation with other men. Religion doesn’t take its origin from divine revelation, but is simply the result of human imagination. The Catholic religion is no different from other cults.
Thesis No. 16 - Divine Revelation is impossible to prove.
Thesis No. 17 - The only real significance of the New Testament is found in the philosophical explanations.
Thesis No. 18 - Each divine mystery is to be considered as a variation or nuance of a system of pure thought. Traditional dogmatic Christianity is one of these erroneous systems.
Thesis No. 21 - A purely human community, united and universal; this is the true Christian church according
to the meaning of the Gospel, understood in a new way,
quite contrary to the existing totalitarian church.
Thesis No. 22 - The principles of “dialogue” and “neighbor” are those which lead to the salvation of Christianity, not the Revelation of creation, Redemption, or the Universal Judgement.
Thesis No. 24 - Salvation - the self-realization of humanity – doesn’t have an eternal nature. It will not bring to mortal man any resurrection of the body. The naive hope of eternal life - and also the belief in the Assumption and the return of the Lord in His body - must be conceived only symbolically.
Thesis No. 25 - In the other world after death, we will not be rewarded for our good deeds, nor punished for our sins.
Thesis No. 27 - Even those who have helped the world become more civilized will die, and in this way, they will find salvation.
Thesis No. 28 - How can man create his soul so easily? Because he did not create it from nothing, but from existing matter: the animal soul, evolved phylogenetically, which he received from his parents, his ancestors and the apes and he can only improve.
Thesis No. 32 - There is no reason to worry for the souls of aborted babies. They are safe as original sin does not exist.
Thesis No. 33 - There is no need to be baptized or to use other traditional forms of initiation of non-Christians or non-believers. As well there is no need to convert followers of other religions.
Thesis No. 35 - Man is the visible God. To see man is to see God.
I can also provide you with quotes from his own encyclicals and homilies where he clearly teaches that Man is God.
What is your opinion of John Paul II's gathering in Assisi when he setup pagan altars in Catholic churches and prayed with those pagans?