Those in the Catholic Church who are making a case for the sainthood of John Paul II have published a new book revealing that the Pope used a belt to whip himself and occasionally slept on the floor in order to draw closer to God. The book was written by Monsignor Slawomir Oder, the primary promoter for John Paul’s canonization cause.
In the book, Oder wrote that John Paul frequently denied himself food — especially during the holy season of Lent — and “frequently spent the night on the bare floor,” messing up his bed in the morning so he wouldn’t draw attention to his act of penitence.
“But it wasn’t limited to this. As some members of his close entourage in Poland and in the Vatican were able to hear with their own ears, John Paul flagellated himself. In his armoire, amid all the vestments and hanging on a hanger, was a belt which he used as a whip and which he always brought to Castel Gandolfo,” the papal retreat where John Paul vacationed each summer.
While there had long been rumors that John Paul practiced self-mortification, the book provides the first confirmation and concludes John Paul did so as an example of his faith.
I am not sure what to make of all of this, if anything. As a Christian, I think certain spiritual disciplines of self-denial, such as fasting for example, are important. I also think that suffering is a means of drawing one closer to God. But what John Paul II did sounds downright medieval. And, in fact, it is. Self-flagellation was quite common in monasteries and convents in the Middle Ages. According to this article, there was a Catholic sect in the thirteenth century known as the Flagellants who were known for participating in displays of public whipping. The movement was eventually condemned by the Church.
I did find an interesting exchange on this topic between Andrew Sullivan and one of his readers. It appears that John Paul II’s practice of whipping himself might be in violation of the Church’s teaching that the body is a gift from God and should be respected as such. In other words, John Paul II may have committed what Sullivan’s reader calls a “moral crime” by violating “the general Catholic principle that one cannot do evil…in order to promote a good, however good that ultimate end is.” Sullivan’s short response to this reader is worth a look.
Meanwhile, over at the Commonweal blog, Lisa Fulliam, a professor of moral theology at the Jesuit School of Theology at Berkeley, defends the usefulness of “moderate ascetical practices,” but is “weirded out” by John Paul’s II practice self-flagellation.
ADDENDUM: Reader Tim Lacy has called my attention to another take on this at Politics Daily. Thanks, Tim!
John,
From another article here to add to your list of perspectives:
“While self-mortification evokes images of an unhealthy and medieval spirituality — or, more recently, the masochistic albino monk portrayed in “The Da Vinci Code” — the practice, or at least the principle, has never disappeared. Pope Paul VI, who died in 1978, and Mother Teresa, were among the more prominent Catholics known to have used what is a called a cilice, a band usually worn around the thigh with prongs pointing inward. A cilice is the modern version of the hair shirt, though it is not quite as gruesome as it sounds. And those who flagellate themselves usually do with a small rope or cord using light lashes that are mostly symbolic.”
– TL
Thanks, Tim. This is really interesting to me.
It all falls under the devotional theology/philosophy of mortifications. It's totally foreign to most Protestants, of course, but has a long, mostly positive history in Catholicism. It's not just medieval, but also very early churchish. It's all in the line of thought of sacrifice, imitating Jesus, and even martyrdom (or preparation for it). …I'll have to read what Aquinas says on the subject. – TL