Today Roger Cohen had a remarkable story in the International Herald Tribune. Many stories have been written about the Pope since his recent death, but few can stand with Cohen's article. He told how a young priest saved the life of a starving thirteen year old Jewish girl during the Holocaust. This child survived the war to become the grandmother of Cohen's wife. The priest eventually became Pope John Paul II.

The last line of Cohen's story is, "I do not know what moved this young seminarian to save the life of a lost Jewish girl."

James Taranto quoted this story in his Best of the Web blog for the Wall Street Journal. Taranto mentions that, "when the New York Times proper republished Cohen's story, it changed that last sentence to: 'What moved this young seminarian to save the life of a lost Jewish girl CANNOT BE KNOWN.' (emphasis Taranto's).

The Times decision to reword Cohen's article for him damaged a sentence that had no problem. The Times' editors added a complication, but no new meaning. They pushed the verb into an unnatural place at the sentence's end, so that the rewritten sentence begins with a dependent clause. They (probably unintentionally) transformed the direct statement that Cohen does not know what moved the priest to save the girl into an impersonal philosophical thesis regarding epistemology - "it cannot be known". Had I been the editor, I would have left Cohen's work alone; I might have replaced "what moved" with "why this young seminarian saved...", because fewer words are always better, but the Times' change was gratuitous - and also condescending to Cohen, whom they hired to write. My suggestion is not really necessary, either, but it would have done no harm, in contrast to the Times' change, which did.

Be that as it might, Taranto adds, "Hmm, could it have been his religious faith?" that motivated the young Woytila to save a life.

No doubt the young Karol Woytila viewed this action, as all his actions, as motivated by his Catholic faith. Everything a priest does should be to bear witness to the divine truth of his religion, and to exemplify that faith to the world. This statement, however does not end the discussion, but rather begins it.

The next question is, "Why did this priest take his faith to mean that he should do what he can to save the life of this Jewish child?" Other Catholics, and other priests of his generation and for dozens of earlier generations, believed that the death of a young Jewish girl would bear witness to Catholic teaching that Jews lost Israel, were exiled among other nations, and must suffer and die in order to give Christian witness to the Jewish sin of rejecting and crucifying Jesus, and to demonstrate that the Roman Catholic Church had replaced Israel as the Elect of God.

Other priests made other choices. Father Tiso, who was both an ordained Catholic priest and president of Slovakia, chose to deport thousands of Slovak Jews to what he knew was certain death at Auschwitz. When asked to spare at least the lives of those Jews who had been baptized into his church, this priest responded that there was no such thing as "innocent Jewish blood", because their ancestors had crucified Jesus. Many priests saved Jews by hiding them in monasteries, but many others actively helped the Nazi death machine. The youthful Karol Woytila might have chosen to follow their example.

That he did not do so says something about his character as an individual. His particular religious faith accorded to his humanity. I, like Roger Cohen, do not know what motivated him to make the choice he made. I have read no biography detailing the future Pope's early education - what teachers influenced him and what books he read. To some extent, I agree with the Times' epistemological view that character is observed, but never understood - assuming their editor did not hit on that phrase accidentally while absent-mindedly messing up a perfectly straight sentence.

I do say, however, that the future Pope's inspiring example came from his own heart. He might have turned that child over to the police and felt he was acting for the greater glory of God by insuring her death, as did Father Tiso by sending thousands of other Jewish children to the gas-chambers. Woytila's greatness lay in his choice, and in the Christian doctrine he rejected, as much as in that which he affirmed.

This example from the Pope's young manhood shows the way to his leadership in trying to reconcile Jews and Catholics. The way his passing was mourned in Israeli and Jewish circles showed he succeeded. His human decency and integrity were his weapons against Communism as well. The religious faith upon which he chose to act was his own.