TedLipien.com

“ ... the Gospel as an idea is primarily a male sphere ... ” “We cannot leave the affairs of the Kingdom of God to women.”– Karol Wojtyła Why was John Paul II so opposed to the ordination of women as priests and how can we interpret his comment to a group of male university students, made in Poland in the late 1960s, that “the Gospel as idea is primarily a male sphere,” and also telling them that “We cannot leave the affairs of the Kingdom of God to women.”? In trying to answer these questions, Ted Lipien has been guided by his knowledge of Polish history and traditions as well as more than 30 years of reporting on events in Poland as a journalist living in the United States and in Europe.

Ted Lipien searched through Karol Wojtyła’s writings, particularly his early statements and books on issues affecting women, many of them published only in Polish and never made available to Western readers. He has also included accounts, previously unpublished in the West, of Wojtyła’s dealings with women who knew him as a priest, attended his university lectures, or helped him to promote natural birth control methods. In trying to examine his relationships with women in much closer detail than what his other biographers have done so far, Ted Lipien relied on written accounts of people who knew him best from his younger years in Poland.

Working with the sisters of Our Lady of Mercy, Cardinal Wojtyła was instrumental in lifting the Vatican's ban on Sister Faustina (Faustyna) Kowalska's religious diary. WOJTYŁA’s WOMEN How They Shaped the Life of Pope John Paul II and Changed the Catholic Church describes Wojtyła's role in elevating Sister Faustina to sainthood.

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