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Who knows if this is true? but it’s certainly an interesting anecdote:
Nearly twenty five years ago, a Pole was dining in my college in Cambridge. He told us that he had been an altar boy in Poland, and had often served the masses of the Archbishop of Cracow. A year or two after that prelate, Karol Woytila, had been installed in the See of Rome, he decided to visit him, for John Paul II never became too grand for his old Polish friends. The Pope (so he told the story) strode up to him, punched him lightly in the chest, and began: Introibo ad ad altare dei … to which our guest responded: ad Deum qui laetificat iuventutem meam. (“I will go unto the altar of God”, “To God who giveth joy to my youth.”) This was the opening exchange between priest and server of the old “Tridentine” Latin mass, abolished in the early 1970s, and the two continued it right down to the Confiteor. Then the Pope shrugged his shoulders and said: “Well, that”s no use to us anymore.” His old altar boy replied: “No, Holy Father, and that’s why I no longer go to church.” To which the Pope (he said) instantly rejoined: “Don”t blame me. Blame that maniac John XXIII!”
If you haven’t looked through this article by John Casey, a fellow of Gonville and Caius College at Cambridge, it’s worth a read.
St. Louis-Marie de Montfort,
Pope St. Pius X,
St. Joseph,
St. Ambrose of Milan,
St. Thomas Aquinas,
St. Francis (and St. Clare),
St. Catherine of Siena,
St. Alphonsus Ligouri,
St. John Chrysostom,
Why did he leave because there was no TLM? Has he come back now that the TLM is allowed again? To base ones belief and faith is God and Jesus on the presence or absence of the TLM is a bit much isn’t it?
A lot of people left when the TLM was lost. However, my question is what language was JPII speaking in? Maniac, might be a bad translation.
That’s a good point – “maniac” may well be too strong for what he said in Polish, though it was the best translation that his Polish interlocutor could come up with when he related the story.
I guess I would not believe this one. Could a person dedicated to building up the Church be guilty of tearing it down (or slandering) by such language….even very loosely translated?
If he truly said this – and it doesn’t seem unreasonable to me that he did – I understand it to me: “Oh Giovanni, you wild man, calling a council at such a time!” I guess, though, the blame lies at the feet of Paul VI. Recall that the council initially planned by John XXIII’s own people was modeled at on the Roman diocesan synod that had happened just a few years prior – a very conservative was in the offing until it was hijacked by various northern European prelates. All the prepared documents were thrown out.
My thought when I read this story was that it might be true, but you have to keep in mind that JPII did have rather a sassy sense of humor at times. So I would imagine this line said with a wink and a smile, as it were.