The Roman Catholic Church has a reputation for being at least somewhat misogynistic; this reputation is not unearned, given the unequal role allowed to women. What many people don't realize, however, is the important role played by a female philosopher in refining, clarifying, and developing the ideas of John Paul II.

In The Pontiff in Winter: Triumph and Conflict in the Reign of John Paul II, John Cornwell explains who she was and what she did:

[Anna-Teresa] Tymieniecka was by all accounts sexually appealing, highly intelligent, the daughter of a landed Polish family. More to the point, she was a serious professional philosopher with privileged links into philosophical circles around Europe; she seemed to have met everybody and to have read everything.

The focus of the collaboration between Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka and Karol Wojtyla was his book Acting Person, about the fragmentation of personhood in modern society. The original was evidently very difficult and perhaps not all that well written, but Tymieniecka saw in it great promise and she approached Wojtyla with an offer to translate it into English and thereby bring his ideas to a wider audience — after appropriate revisions and amendments from her, that is.

At the heart of the recast work are leading and exalted notions: of personhood as created in the image of God; will and self-donation as the realization of our full humanity; notions of human dignity, freedom, and love, derived form a Christ-based anthropology and humanism. Over the next thirty years, the core ideas would return again and again through his writings with ever greater force, especially in relation to sexual morals. It is not too much to say that Dr. Tymieniecka helped to bring into greater focus, and even made available to Wojtyla, some of his most powerful ideas as Pope...

Unfortunately, powerful clerical forces would later seek to keep people from realizing that the new pope owed so much to Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka, a mere woman:

When the book was published in 1977, he acknowledged his huge debt to Dr. Tymieniecka and passed over to her the right to the English translation. After he became Pope the following year, a commission was established to scrutinize and handle his literary works up to the point of his election. With John Paul’s agreement, the commission attempted to stop publication of the Tymieniecka-Wojtyla edition. She, in turn, took legal advice about suing the Pope for copyright infringement. Part of her weaponry was a prodigious correspondence with him, which now sits under lock and key in an archive at Harvard University...

Dr. Huntstanton Williams has said: “Their work together was extremely important. And afterward the Vatican and the Pope behaved rather badly in trying to suppress knowledge of their collaboration.”

Isn’t it curious that Wojtyla’s attitude towards his working, professional relationship with Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka changed so dramatically only after he became pope, became a world figure, and assumed a position where all of his relationships would come under closer scrutiny? It’s curious, but it’s surely no coincidence.

For the world to discover that the pope’s earlier ideas and theology, both of which probably played a role in his election as pope, were considerably influenced by the assistance of a female philosopher would be tragic. At least, it would be tragic from the perspective of Catholic prelates in the Vatican. I doubt they could handle the scandal of a pope’s philosophy being assisted by a woman.

 

Read More Book Notes from the Book Reviews on this site.