SOURCE: “Surprising, Demanding, Impressive,” in Commonweal, January 13, 1995, pp. 21-2.

In the following review, Steinfels offers positive assessment of Crossing the Threshold of Hope.

Millions of people scarcely able to understand this book will purchase and peruse it. Other millions who could appreciate and benefit from its insights will spurn it out of hand. The reason is the same in both cases: the author is the pope.

Behind the widespread interest and best-seller status of Crossing the Threshold of Hope is the belief that it will reveal a “real pope” behind the official Vicar of Christ, a down-home Karol Wojtyla who will relax, invite us into his Vatican apartments, and tell us what he really believes, how he really prays, what really makes him tick, all in terms at once more intimate, more accessible, and yet more oracular than those of papal documents or Catholic theology generally.

The book...