SOURCE: “Neither Capitalist Nor Marxist: Karol Wojtyla's Social Ethics,” in Commonweal, October 10, 1997, pp. 17-21.

In the following essay, Kwitny examines John Paul's contradictory affinity for Marxist revolution and free market principles as delineated in Catholic Social Ethics. According to Kwitny, John Paul endorses “class-conscious revolution,” though objects to “Marxism's subjugation of the individual human spirit … after the revolution.”

Romuald Kukolowicz, now in his seventies, is the son of Polish Catholic intellectuals. In 1953, he was working as a clerk. At the time, Poland was firmly part of Stalin's Soviet empire. During World War II, Kukolowicz had done work as an underground printer. Some friends from those days, now students at the Jagiellonian University in Krakow, approached him, raving about a young professor whose lectures on Catholic ethics and communism were inspiring and ought to be published. Did Kukolowicz know anyone who could do it?

Kukolowicz found an underground printer...