The best of John Paul II

Okay…some of the best of JPII. The Splendor of Truth is right up there near the top, for me. He wrote it because the Church addresses the serious issues of the day as they become cultural controversies like human sexuality, the place of the family, the morality of politics and economics.

Today, however, it seems necessary to reflect on the whole of the Church’s moral teaching, with the precise goal of recalling certain fundamental truths of Catholic doctrine which, in the present circumstances, risk being distorted or denied.

This was issued on August 6, 1993, and post-Vatican II distortions and dissent had already caused great confusion for nearly 30 years.

In fact, a new situation has come about within the Christian community itself, which has experienced the spread of numerous doubts and objections of a human and psychological, social and cultural, religious and even properly theological nature, with regard to the Church’s moral teachings. It is no longer a matter of limited and occasional dissent, but of an overall and systematic calling into question of traditional moral doctrine, on the basis of certain anthropological and ethical presuppositions.

Because it was systematic, John Paul could pick it apart and refute it.

At the root of these presuppositions is the more or less obvious influence of currents of thought which end by detaching human freedom from its essential and constitutive relationship to truth. Thus the traditional doctrine regarding the natural law, and the universality and the permanent validity of its precepts, is rejected; certain of the Church’s moral teachings are found simply unacceptable; and the Magisterium itself is considered capable of intervening in matters of morality only in order to “exhort consciences” and to “propose values”, in the light of which each individual will independently make his or her decisions and life choices.

If the natural law is rejected and truth is unacceptable, any belief can and will fill that vacuum. The devastation to society of 34 years of abortion on demand is only one example of that, which is true whether we accept it or not.

Which brings up “The Gospel of Life“…