By Br. Alexis Bugnolo
The story goes that the future Pope, John Paul II, was refused a doctorate at the Angelicum in 1948, because the famous Thomist, Father Garrigou-Lagrange blocked it on grounds that it claimed that the supernatural virtue of faith was experience based, a thesis which is without a doubt not a little tinged with Modernism.
The controversy recently erupted on Twitter, and I will summarize the amazing discoveries.
First, the Vatican Website officially claims that the future pope earned a Doctorate in Philosophy in 1948 at the Angelicum. You can even find an entry in the Angelicum Library for the thesis.
However, the Pope John Paul II website in Poland displays a photocopy of the Examination Record for the Doctoral Thesis, showing that Wojtyla earnd 50/50 both for the examination for the doctoral studies and for the defense of his thesis:
The problem and mystery is, however, that the Examination Record, in Latin, clearly indicates that the Thesis of the future pope was submitted in the Faculty of Theology.
Furthermore, Father Thomas Michelet, O. P., says the Thesis was never published, probably due to lack of funds, and for that reason the Doctorate WAS NEVER AWARDED to Wojtyla. He cites the Wikipedia Footnote about this from John Paul II’s biography there:
The future pope would return to Poland and earn a Masters and Doctorate in Theology from the Jagellonian University in Warsaw, using a modified second version of his original thesis.
Perhaps Doctorates of Philosophy were awarded in the Faculty of Theology, in 1948? That is the only solution I can imagine to the documentary discrepancy.
But it remains bizarre in the extreme that such a perfect thesis would never have been published — not even during the Pontificate of Pope John Paul II ! — since without publication, he was denied the Conferral of the Doctorate in Philosophy.
However, in 1948, to publish a thesis which contained doctrinal or philosophical errors would be a canonical crime and make the publisher subject to action by the Holy Office. And maybe this is where the story about Father Garrigou-Langrange was on the mark. Is the truth which the Vatican has been hiding for 40 years?
——————-
CREDITS: The featured image shows Father Garrigou-Lagrange and Father Karol Wojtyla, when they were both in their youth.
Poland was wrecked and broke after WW II, and even in 1948 the cost of publishing a doctoral thesis would have been considered an unjustified luxury when there were still people living in bombed out basements trying to get enough to eat day to day. Money was needed for more urgent things. I find this not at all surprising, as I knew several WW II vets who stayed in the army of occupation and told terrible suvival stories of the civilian populace, even up to the early 1950’s.
My best friend’s mother was Polish, and married an American soldier because he kept her family fed out of his own rations– she liked, but at first didn’t love him, but eventually they had a long and happy marriage in Texas.
Petrichor,
What you say sound plausible, but it does not answer the question, because surely during his Pontificate, if there was nothing wrong with the Thesis, the Angelicum would have published it and conferred upon him the Doctorate in Theology or Philosophy. This was never done. Why?
I would like to venture a guess on this topic based on things I heard in Theology and Psychology classes years ago.
There is an erroneous modernist idea in theology that basically teaches that faith comes as a result of a loving encounter with a specific other person, and even suggests that his encounter is necessary in order to have the faith necessary for salvation.
A less radical interpretation of the role of a loving relationship
in the formation of faith within a person comes from Dr. C. G. Jung who said that the human beings have a natural propensity for faith in God but this is nurtured by human relationships , especially by the father figures in their lives. Jung demonstrated how he became this substitute father figure in the treatment sessions with a patient who was in denial of the reality of God .In the patient’s dream he appeared to be standing in a field of wheat and swaying with the wheat as he held the little child.
Jung interpreted the dream as a projection of God image onto him , because what is denied was projected. Jung also said the the God image in dreams appears as a man in the dreams of Jews and Christians, and often a woman in the dreams of pagans.
IMHO, C. G. Jung gives a reliable psychological reason for the all- male Catholic Priesthood.
BTW , Psychologist Dr. Paul Vitz wrote a book in the 1990’s entitled , Faith of the Fatherless which discusses the importance of fathers in the formation of faith .
JMJT
M
Whereas the faith which alone saves is a supernatural gift of grace, which God foreordains from eternity to give a man, by which it becomes possible for him to believe what God has revealed, on the authority of Himself; belief here meaning the supernatural act of the intellect in assenting to revealed truth. I did a video on the 3 supernatural states of the mind, here:
https://www.fromrome.info/2023/04/01/br-bugnolo-speaks-on-the-3-supernatural-states-of-mind-2/
What about Bergoglio’s exams? It would be interesting to know if he really has diploma.