Solidarity (Catholic Theology) - Priesthood

Priesthood

On finishing his studies at the seminary in Kraków, Wojtyła was ordained as a priest on All Saints' Day, 1 November 1946, by the Archbishop of Kraków, Cardinal Sapieha. Sapieha sent Wojtyła to Rome's Pontifical International Athenaeum Angelicum, the future Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas, Angelicum to study under the French Dominican Fr. Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange beginning on November 26, 1946. Wojtyła earned a licence in July 1947, passed his doctoral exam on June 14, 1948, and successfully defended his doctoral thesis entitled Doctrina de fide apud S. Ioannem a Cruce (The Doctrine of Faith in St. John of the Cross) in philosophy on June 19, 1948. The Angelicum preserves the original copy of Wojtyła's typewritten thesis. Among other courses at the Angelicum, Wojtyła studied Hebrew with the Dutch Dominican Peter G. Duncker, author of the Compendium grammaticae linguae hebraicae biblicae.

According to Wojtyła's schoolmate the future Austrian Cardinal Alfons Stickler in 1947 during his sojourn at the Angelicum Wojtyła visited Padre Pio who heard his confession and told him that one day he would ascend to "the highest post in the Church." Cardinal Stickler added that Wojtyła believed that the prophecy was fulfilled when he became a Cardinal.

Wojtyła returned to Poland in the summer of 1948 with his first pastoral assignment in the village of Niegowić, fifteen miles from Kraków. He arrived at Niegowić at harvest time, where his first action was to kneel and kiss the ground. This gesture, which he adapted from French saint Jean Marie Baptiste Vianney, would become a ‘trademark’ action during his Papacy.

In March 1949, Wojtyła was transferred to the parish of Saint Florian in Kraków. He taught ethics at Jagiellonian University and subsequently at the Catholic University of Lublin. While teaching, he gathered a group of about 20 young people, who began to call themselves Rodzinka, the "little family". They met for prayer, philosophical discussion, and to help the blind and sick. The group eventually grew to approximately 200 participants, and their activities expanded to include annual skiing and kayaking trips.

In 1953, Wojtyła's habilitation thesis was accepted by in the Faculty of Theology at the Jagiellonian University. In 1954, he earned a Doctorate in Sacred Theology, evaluating the feasibility of a Catholic ethic based on the ethical system of phenomenologist Max Scheler with a dissertation entitled "Reevaluation of the possibility of founding a Catholic ethic on the ethical system of Max Scheler" (Ocena możliwości zbudowania etyki chrześcijańskiej przy założeniach systemu Maksa Schelera). Scheler was a German philosopher who founded a broad philosophical movement which emphasised the study of conscious experience. However, the Communist authorities abolished the Faculty of Theology at the Jagellonian University thereby preventing him from receiving the degree until 1957. Wojtyła developed a theological approach which combined traditional Catholic Thomism with the ideas of personalism, a philosophical approach deriving from phenomenology, which was popular among Catholic intellectuals in Kraków during Wojtyła's intellectual development. He translated Scheler's Formalism and the Ethics of Substantive Values.

During this period, Wojtyła wrote a series of articles in Kraków's Catholic newspaper Tygodnik Powszechny ("Universal Weekly") dealing with contemporary church issues. He focused on creating original literary work during his first dozen years as a priest. War, life under Communism, and his pastoral responsibilities all fed his poetry and plays. Wojtyła published his work under two pseudonyms – Andrzej Jawień and Stanisław Andrzej Gruda – to distinguish his literary from his religious writings (under his own name), and also so that his literary works would be considered on their merits. In 1960, Wojtyła published the influential theological book Love and Responsibility, a defence of traditional Church teachings on marriage from a new philosophical standpoint.