Peggy Noonan is one of my favorite writers. She first achieved fame as Ronald Reagan's best speechwriter - the combinaion of the Gipper's delivery and Noonan's words produced some of the greatest political speeches of our time. Her book What I Saw at the Revolution remains one of the best books on the Reagan Revolution. So I jumped to order her new biography of Pope John Paul II.
My copy hasn't arrived yet, but Father Richard John Neuhaus of the mostly Catholic, mostly conservative opinion monthly First Things, which also is one of my essential reads, has read Noonan's book and praises it highly:
I have had a chance to read her John Paul the Great (Viking) and am pleased to report that it is a wondrous gift. It does not purport to be a biography, although it draws intelligently on the work of Weigel and others. It is, rather, Ms. Noonan’s powerfully affecting story of how she found in John Paul “a spiritual father.”
She writes with remarkable grace and candor of the times of storms and crashes in her own life when she reached, frequently in desperation, for a truth that might ground the world and her place in the world. There was Bible study, mainly with evangelical Protestant friends, and then the discovering, for the first time, of the adventure of the Rosary. All along she was sustained by the companionship of John Paul, and through John Paul the companionship of Christ. Her personal encounters with the pope were few and fleeting, but, as she tells so movingly, his presence to her was, and is, a constant grace.
Along the way, she has incisive things to say about the joys and afflictions that attend being a Catholic today, as well as bracing reflections on the leadership of the Church that might have a startling and salutary impact on some bishops. John Paul the Great is an edifying and instructive read, and a gift you might want to share with others.
