If the world is a global village…
He was the village priest.
Four years ago today, Pope John Paul II passed into eternal life. What to say about such an enormous life and legacy in one small space?
Some thoughts, from what I’ve heard and what I’ve written…
Fr. Richard John Neuhaus once said he’d asked a lifelong friend of Pope John Paul’s why the man had such magneticism with young people, why he was able to draw them in such great numbers over so many years. The answer:
“He told them to settle for nothing less than moral and spiritual greatness. It was his one message for over 50 years that attracted them so. He always had the same message, but found a thousand different ways to say it.â€
The ‘personalism’ of JPII was based on his lifelong commitment to establishing a new understanding of the human person in the modern culture. His active particpation in the Second Vatican Council helped him carry out that mission. The Council’s pastoral constitution Gaudium et Spes was the specific blueprint to restoring order to a modern civilization that, as John Paul stated in Memory and Identity, was corrupted by the Englitenment.
John Paul likens what happened in Poland after the Marxists came to power with “the philosoophical developments that occurred in Western Europe in the wake of the Enlightenment. People spoke, among other things, of the ‘decline of Thomistic realism’ and this was understood to include the abandonment of Christianity as a source for philosophizing…”
Therefore, “the foundations of the ‘philosophy of evil’ also collapsed”. This is a critical point, because as John Paul points out at this point in Memory and Identity, evil “can only exist in relation to good and, in particular, in relation to God, the supreme Good.” And, with the force of an ideological perception, all that went before it: “All this, the entire drama of salvation history, had disappeared as far as the Enlightenment was concerned. Man remained along: alone as creator of his own history and his own civilization; alone as one who decides what is good and what is bad, as one who would exist and operate etsi Deus non daretur, even if there were no God.”
That downward spiral has continued to resent time, as we know. Memory and Identity was released in 2005, John Paul’s last year of life.. It’s a reflection on the present in light of the past, seeking the roots of current events, hoping that a clear sense of this memory will help us now keenly shape an identity, aware of false ideologies.
This was his message to millions of Poles in Victory Square in 1979, in perhaps the most famous homily he ever gave. ‘You are not who they say you are’ was a ringing exhortation to the people there that still resonates with people everywhere. It was more than a moment in history. It’s the timeless message of human dignity and the quest for God.
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Some notes from Centesimus Annus, written May 1, 1991.
“48.These general observations also apply to the role of the State in the economic sector. Economic activity, especially the activity of a market economy, cannot be conducted in an institutional, juridical or political vacuum. On the contrary, it presupposes sure guarantees of individual freedom and private property, as well as a stable currency and efficient public services. Hence the principle task of the State is to guarantee this security, so that those who work and produce can enjoy the fruits of their labours and thus feel encouraged to work efficiently and honestly. The absence of stability, together with the corruption of public officials and the spread of improper sources of growing rich and of easy profits deriving from illegal or purely speculative activities, constitutes one of the chief obstacles to development and to the economic order.
Another task of the State is that of overseeing and directing the exercise of human rights in the economic sector. However, primary responsibility in this area belongs not to the State but to individuals and to the various groups and associations which make up society. The State could not directly ensure the right to work for all its citizens unless it controlled every aspect of economic life and restricted the free initiative of individuals. This does not mean, however, that the State has no competence in this domain, as was claimed by those who argued against any rules in the economic sphere. Rather, the State has a duty to sustain business activities by creating conditions which will ensure job opportunities, by stimulating those activities where they are lacking or by supporting them in moments of crisis.”