After being denied his bishop’s permission to join the Carmelite Order, Fr. Wojtyla was assigned first to a rural, and then an urban, parish. He eagerly involved himself "in youth ministry and in serious dialogue with the world of learning and culture" (Jean-Paul II, quoted in Man of the Millennium, page 18).

He taught ethics and moral theology at the Jagiellonian and then at the University of Lublin, where he remained until his election to the papacy. Meanwhile his studies in the phenomenology of Max Scheler earned him a doctorate in philosophy. His greatest philosophical work, Person and Act (mistranslated The Acting Person, according to George Weigel), laid the foundation for his philosophical understanding of personalism, the hallmark of his contribution to philosophy and theology.