The Polish Factor
Memory and Identity: Conversations At the Dawn of a Milleniumby Pope John Paul II
Rizzoli, 2005
(172 pages, $19.95, hardcover)
reviewed by Mark Wegierski
This book, which originally appeared in Polish in 2003, was based on John Paul II’s conversations with two prominent Polish theologians, and includes an epilogue by his personal secretary, Stanislaw Dziwisz. It was a huge bestseller in Poland and is considered among the most directly political of the late pope’s publications.
After his identification of both Nazism and communism as “ideologies of evil,” the pope draws out his argument further, pointing to a possible third, now-emerging danger for the West, where “the anti-evangelical currents . . . strike at the very foundations of human morality.” These include:
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