Evidently, he had somehow come across a book that I recall having had read at table when I was in the novitiate at Los Gatos during Pius XII's time, namely, Father John Gerard, S.J.'s An Autobiography of a Hunted Priest, concerning the fate of Catholics during the English Reformation. It upset me somehow, when I first read it in a biography of Sir Thomas More, that the only English bishop not to apostatize at that time was St. John Fisher. Campion, Southwell, Olgivie, Briant, and others heroically paid the price. Martyrdom is definitely inconvenient and, therefore, conventional wisdom counsels its avoidance. We are not followers of Rousseau, who tells us that our peace comes from without, from reorganization.
Statecraft comes from soulcraft.
No one has thought more wisely than John Paul II about what is possible in the upcoming century. Yet I wonder less about why he has been so concerned about the year 2000 than why he has been concerned about martyrdom. His Tertio Millennio Adveniente indicated a strenuous effort on his part to alert a lethargic Church to the need to make known specifically, even to its members, what it held about God, what it is that has been revealed to us about his inner life, the Trinity. So what if our thoughts are fuzzy and confusing. God is so merciful.