year iii
c h r i s t i a n a n t r hop ol o gic a l a n d c u lt u r a l r e v i e w / n ยบ 6 / y e a r i i i
Cardinal Paul Poupard John XXIII, man of unity and peace Stanislaw Grygiel John paul II, PASsion for man
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PONTIFICIA UNIVERSIDAD CATร LICA DE CHILE
Livio Melina recognizing life
HUMANITAS Christian Anthropological and Cultural Review HUMANITAS review came into being to provide the University with a source of reflection and study at the service of the academic community and the wider public in general. Its objective is to reflect the concerns and teachings of the Papal Magisterium (Decree of the Rector from the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile 147/95, par. 2). EDITOR Jaime Antúnez Aldunate EDITORIAL COMMITTEE Hernán Corral Talciani Samuel Fernández Eyzaguirre Gabriel Guarda O.S.B. René Millar Carvacho Pedro Morandé Court Ricardo Riesco Jaramillo Francisco Rosende Ramírez Juan de Dios Vial Correa Juan de Dios Vial Larraín Arturo Yrarrázaval Covarrubias ASSISTANT EDITOR Bernardita M. Cubillos WEB CONTENT MANAGER Francisco Javier Tagle Montt COUNCIL OF CONSULTANTS AND COLLABORATORS Honorary President: H.E. Cardinal Francisco Javier Errázuriz Ossa, Archbishop Emeritus of Santiago de Chile. Héctor Aguer, Anselmo Álvarez O.S.B., Carl Anderson, Andrés Arteaga, Francisca Alessandri, Antonio Amado, Felipe Bacarreza, Rémi Brague, Jean-Louis Bruguès O.P., Rocco Buttiglione, Massimo Borghesi, Carlos Francisco Cáceres, Cardinal Carlo Caffarra, Stratford Caldecott, Cardinal Antonio Cañizares, Jorge Cauas Lama, Guzmán Carriquiry, William E. Carroll, Alberto Caturelli, Cesare Cavalleri, Fernando Chomalí, Francisco Claro, Jesús Colina , Ricardo Couyoumdjian, Mario Correa Bascuñán, Francesco D’Agostino, Adriano Dell’Asta, Vittorio di Girolamo, Carmen Domínguez, Carlos José Errázuriz, Jesús Colina, Luis Fernando Figari, Alfredo García Quesada, Juan Ignacio González, Stanislaw Grygiel, Gonzalo Ibáñez SantaMaría, Raúl Hasbun, Henri Hude, José Miguel Ibáñez, Raúl Irarrázabal, Lydia Jiménez, Paul Johnson, Jean Laffitte, Nikolaus Lobkowicz, Alfonso López Quintás, Alejandro Llano, Raúl Madrid, Javier Martínez Fernández, Patricia Matte Larraín, Carlos Ignacio Massini Correas, Mauro Matthei O.S.B., Cardinal Jorge Medina, Livio Melina, Augusto Merino, Dominic Milroy O.S.B., Antonio Moreno Casamitjana, Fernando Moreno Valencia, Rodrigo Moreno Jeria, José Miguel Oriol, Máximo Pacheco Gómez, Mario Paredes, Francisco Petrillo O.M.D., Bernardino Piñera, Aquilino Polaino-Lorente, Cardinal Paul Poupard, Javier Prades, Dominique Rey, Héctor Riesle, Florián Rodero L.C., Alejandro San Francisco, Romano Scalfi, Cardinal Angelo Scola, David L. Schindler, Josef Seifert, Gisela Silva Encina, Robert Spaemann, Paulina Taboada, William Thayer Arteaga, Olga Ulianova, Luis Vargas Saavedra, Miguel Ángel Velasco, Juan Velarde Fuertes, Aníbal Vial, Pilar Vigil, Richard Yeo O.S.B., Diego Yuuki S.J.
Council of Consultants and Collaborators Héctor Aguer: Archbishop of La Plata, Argentina. Anselmo Álvarez O.S.B: Abbot of Santa Cruz del Valle de los Caídos. Carl A nderson: Supreme Knight of the Knights of Columbus. Andrés Arteaga: Assistant Bishop of Santiago. Francisca Alessandri: Professor, Faculty for Journalism, PUC. Antonio Amado: Professor of Metaphysics, University of Los Andes. Felipe Bacarreza: Bishop of Los Ángeles, Chile. Rémi Brague: French Philosopher. Ratzinger Prize 2012. Jean-Louis Bruguès O.P.: Archivist of the Vatican Secret Archives and Librarian of the Vatican Library, Bishop Emeritus of Angers, France. Massimo Borghesi: Italian philosopher, senior professor of the University of Perugia, Italy. Rocco Buttiglione: Italian philosopher and politician. Carlos Francisco Cáceres: Member of the Academy of Social, Political and Moral Sciences, Institute of Chile. Cardinal Carlo Caffarra: Archbishop of Bologna, Italy. Stratford Caldecott: Director of the Centre for Faith and Culture, Oxford. Cardinal Antonio Cañizares: Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Cult and the Discipline of Sacraments. Jorge Cauas Lama: Member of the Academy of Social, Political and Moral Sciences, Institute of Chile. Guzmán Carriquiry: Secretary of the Pontifical Commission for Latin America. William E. Carroll: Aquinas Fellow in Theology and Science, Blackfriars. Faculty of Theology, University of Oxford. Alberto Caturelli: Argentine philosopher. Cesare Cavalleri: Director of Studi Cattolici, Milan, Italy. Fernando Chomalí: Archbishop of Concepción. Member of the Pontifical Academia Pro Vita, PUC. Francisco Claro: Professor at the Faculty for Physics, PUC. Jesús Colina: Director of Aleteia. Ricardo Couyoumdjian: Professor History Institute, PUC. Member of the History Academy, Institute of Chile. Mario Correa Bascuñán: Secretary General PUC, professor at the Law Faculty, PUC. Francesco D’Agostino: Professor of Philosophy of Law at the University Tor Vergata of Rome, former President of the National Bioethic Committee of Italy. Adriano Dell’Asta: Professor, Catholic University, Milan, Italy. Vittorio di Girólamo: Professor and art historian. Carmen Domínguez: Director of the PUC Centre for the Family. Professor at the Law Faculty, PUC. Carlos José Errázuriz: Consultant of the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith, professor at Pontifical Università della Santa Croce. Luis Fernando Figari: Founder of “Sodalicio de Vida Cristiana”, Lima, Peru. Alfredo García Quesada: Pontifical Consultant for the Cultural Council, professor of the Pontifical and Civil Faculty of Theology, Lima, Peru. Juan Ignacio González: Bishop of San Bernardo, Chile. Stanislaw Grygiel: Polish philosopher, tenured lecturer of the John Paul II Chair, Lateranense University, Rome. Raúl Hasbun: Priest of the Schöenstatt Congregation, professor at the Pontifical Senior Seminary of Santiago. Henri Hude: French philosopher, former Rector of the Stanislas College, Paris. Gonzalo Ibáñez Santa-María: Professor and former Rector of University Adolfo Ibáñez. José Miguel Ibáñez Langlois: Theologian and poet. Raúl Irarrázabal Covarrubias: Architect, President of the Chilean Association of the Order of Malta. Paul Johnson: British historian.
Jean Laffitte: Bishop of Entrevaux. Secretary of the Pontifical Council for the Family. Nikolaus Lobkowicz: Director of the Eastern and Central European Studies Institute, University of Eichstätt, Germany. Alfonso López Quintás: Spanish philosopher. Member of the Royal Spanish Academy of Moral and Political Sciences. Alejandro Llano: Spanish philosopher, former Rector of the University of Navarra, Spain. Raúl Madrid: Professor, Law Faculty, PUC. Patricia Matte Larraín: Member of the Academy of Social, Political and Moral Sciences, Institute of Chile. Mauro Matthei O.S.B: Benedictine monk and priest. Historian. Cardinal Jorge Medina: Prefect Emeritus of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments. Javier Martínez Fernández: Archbishop of Granada, Spain. Carlos Ignacio Massini Correas: Professor at the National University of Cuyo, Argentina. Livio Melina: President of the John Paul II Pontifical Institute for Studies of Marriage and the Family. Augusto Merino: Political Scientist, professor at University Adolfo Ibáñez. Dominic Milroy O.S.B: Monk at Ampleforth, former Rector of the Ampleforth College, York (G.B.). Fernando Moreno: Philosopher. Member of the Academy of Social, Political and Moral Sciences, Institute of Chile. Rodrigo Moreno Jeria: Member of the Chilean Academy of History. José Miguel Oriol: President of Editorial Encuentro, Madrid, Spain. Mario J. Paredes: Director of Catholic Ministries at American Bible Society. Francesco Petrillo O.M.D: General Superior of the Orden de la Madre de Dios. Bernardino Piñera: Archbishop Emeritus of La Serena, Chile. Aquilino Polaino-Lorente: Spanish psychiatrist. Cardinal Paul Poupard: President Emeritus of the Pontifical Council for Culture. Javier Prades: Dean of the Faculty for Theology at San Dámaso, Madrid, Spain. Member of the International Theological Commission. Dominique Rey: Bishop of Tréjus-Toulon, France. Florián Rodero L.C: Professor of Theology, Athenaeum Regina Apostolorum, Rome. Alejandro San Francisco: Professor at the Institute of History, PUC. Romano Scalfi: Director of the Christian Russia Center, Milan, Italy. Cardinal Angelo Scola: Archbishop of Milan. David L. Schindler: Director of the John Paul II Institute for Studies of Marriage and the Family, Washington D.C., U.S.A. Josef Seifert: Austrian philosopher. Gisela Silva Encina: Writer. Robert Spaemann: German philosopher. Paulina Taboada: Medical doctor, member of the Pontifical Academy Pro Vita. William Thayer Arteaga: Member of the Academy of Social, Political and Moral Sciences, Institute of Chile. Olga Uliánova: Ph. D. in History, University of Lomonosov, Moscow. Researcher at the University of Santiago. Miguel Ángel Velasco: Director of Alfa y Omega, Madrid, Spain. Juan Velarde Fuertes: Member of the Royal Spanish Academy of Moral and Political Sciences. Príncipe de Asturias Prize in Social Sciences (1992). Aníbal Vial: Former Rector of University Santo Tomás. Pilar Vigil: Medical doctor, member of the Pontifical Academy Pro Vita. Richard Yeo O.S.B: Abbot and President of the Benedictine Congregation, England.
H U M A N I T A S
Humanitas Nº 6 2014 - Year III
Bia nnual English Digital Edition
Canonization of John XXIII “THE GOOD POPE,” MAN OF UNITY AND PEACE Cardinal Paul Poupard
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Canonization of John Paul II PASSION FOR MAN Stanislaw Grygiel
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RECOGNIZING LIFE. THE EPISTEMOLOGICAL QUESTION: GOSPEL, SCIENCE AND ETHICS Livio Melina
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Editorial Sunday April 27 th, 2014 4
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The Pope in his own Words
Front cover:
Saints John XXIII and John Paul II.
H U M A N I T A S
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See the Digital Version of English and Spanish edition on our page www.humanitas.cl
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sunday april
27 th, 2014
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he everlasting dimension of this date as a true historical event—The Second Sunday of Easter during which the Church celebrated the Divine Mercy —is established by the different mighty torrents that convene together on it. As if foreshadowing the Year of the Faith that commemorated the 50 years of the Second Vatican Council—the historical moment that “encompasses the entire doctrinal history of the Church,”—Benedict XVI, in January 2007, stated that “the enlightened minds of Christian thinkers had already intuited and faced this epochal challenge” years before it took place. In fact, we were facing “a world that the modern epoch had profoundly transformed and that, for the first time in history, found itself facing the challenge of a global civilization in which the center could no longer be Europe or even what we call the West and the North of the world.” After the luminous and also dramatic pontificate of Pius XII (1939–1958), in which those concerns and ideas took shape, the world found out, with surprise and amazement, that a new Pope had been elected who was of advanced age and who, therefore, would lead a brief pontificate. The son of deeply faithful Italian peasants—with a long life of service for the Church in complex diplomatic contexts—he took the bold initiative of summoning the Second Vatican Council. We speak of Blessed John XXIII, whose canonization, together with Blessed John Paul II, took place on the date of the title of this editorial. The first duty of the Council inaugurated in 1962 would be to close the First Vatican Council, which had been interrupted by the wars of Italian unification in the middle of the 19th Century, almost as a sign that foreshadowed the events to come and to confirm that the Second Vatican Council “encompasses the entire doctrinal history of the Church.” The first Council was presided over by Pope Pius IX—beatified by John Paul II in 2000 in the same ceremony of John XXIII’s beatification. The Church, guided by the Spirit, once more seemed to take on, in that “entire doctrinal history,” both the Syllabus of modern mistakes and the anti Syllabus the new Council would
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EDITORIAL soon after formulate, particularly by means of the Constitution Gaudium et spes. All this, understood correctly, was done according to a hermeneutics of reformation and continuity, not of rupture, as Benedict XVI explained in his well-known speech to the Roman Curia in 2005. Pope Ratzinger himself reveals this picture to us: “Precisely so as ‘to place the modern world in contact with the life-giving and perennial energies of the Gospel’ (John XXIII, Apostolic Constitution Humanae Salutis, 3), the Second Vatican Council was convened. There the Church, on the basis of a renewed awareness of the Catholic tradition, took seriously and discerned, transformed and overcame the fundamental critiques that gave rise to the modern world, the Reformation and the Enlightenment. In this way the Church herself accepted and refashioned the best of the requirements of modernity by transcending them on the one hand, and on the other by avoiding their errors and dead ends.” (Benedict XVI, May 12th, 2010). After John XXIII passed away—following the first session of the Second Council—his successor, Paul VI presided over the remaining three sessions and its closure. It would be this Pontiff’s responsibility, in what could have been compared to a true Calvary, to govern the Church in the turbulent years that followed the Council, when St. Peter’s barque had to sail in a world deeply disturbed in its moral categories due to the “Sixties’ revolution,” whose spirit would infect all nations of Western and Christian culture, including wide sections of the Church. In the middle of this struggle, the Pontiff expressed his affliction through these words: as the doors and windows of the Church had been opened to dialogue with the world, “the smoke of Satan,” said Paul VI, came in through them. Actually, the cost of this difficult but necessary historical turn implied that all the dichotomies that shook the world in those decades would embed themselves inside the Church, particularly the conflict known as “Cold War.” In the midst of this long and difficult stage, after the death of Paul VI, the Spirit that guided the Church gave a strong sign, to those who wish to
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acknowledge it, of the growing reality which the Church had prophetically anticipated. In fact, for the first time in centuries, in the conclave of 1978, the Pope chosen was not Italian. Moreover, Pope Montini’s two successors, Karol Wojtyla and Joseph Ratzinger, important actors within the Council and outstanding figures in the Church and the 20th Century, came from two specially slaughtered nations that suffered due to historical upheavals during the first half of the 20th Century: Poland and Germany. Under their administration, 34 decisive years implementing the Second Vatican Council went by, bringing forth the Church to the beginning of the third millennium. The canonization of the Pontiff who summoned the Second Council, John XXIII, and of the one who implemented it through the 26 years of his pontificate, John Paul II, decreed by a Pope coming “from the ends of the earth,” Francis, seems to give closure to a historical cycle and begin a new one. The end comes, then, for the process begun by John XXIII, enlightened by the intuition described above (see quotes from Benedict XVI in the second and fifth paragraphs), a reformation based on continuity and not rupture; long and arduous, but necessary—let’s remember Blessed John Henry Newman and his genuine consciousness of tradition: the Church always needs to change to be Herself–which today expresses, through the voice of the current Pontiff, the Gospel’s light, as it can be appreciated every day, in a strong accordance with the man of our time. This was a historical turn which could very well be understood as a gift from the Divine Mercy that will protect the Church until the end of time and which, during the times we live in, has manifested itself in a specially evident form of magisterium—that of the Council and of the succeeding Popes who developed it—reminding modern man, possessed by the sense of his own power and autonomy, of the fact that all good comes from God.
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EDITORIAL In the light of what is said above, it is not only a human coincidence that the universal summons made by the canonizations on Sunday April 27th, 2014 is to take place on the solemnity of Divine Mercy, established by John Paul II in response to the Polish saint Faustina Kovalska’s petition, and that, silently in contemplative prayer, Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, the faithful and providential hand that the Lord placed next to the great Polish Pope, attends the ceremony. JAIME ANTÚNEZ ALDUNATE Director of Humanitas
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Canonization of John XXIII (1881-1963)
“The Good Pope,” M an of unity and peace By Cardinal Paul Poupard
Born on November 25, 1881 in Sotto il Monte, near Bergamo, the third son of a large and poor peasant family, Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli entered the minor seminary in 1893, and in 1900 he went to Rome in order to finish his studies in theology. There, he was ordained priest on August 10, 1904.
The figure of Pope John XXIII is remembered in the context of his canonization on April 27th, 2014. It is precisely this Pope, the man of unity and peace, the one who thrills us with the intimate confessions—written by his own hand—in Journal of a Soul, which he began at fourteen years of age and kept until 1962, a few months before his death at eighty-one. When he gave his old notebooks and ragged pages to his faithful secretary Monsignor Loris Capovilla, good Pope John entrusted them him with these words: “My soul is in those pages. I was a good innocent boy, a little shy. I wanted to love God above anything and only thought about becoming a priest in the service of simple souls that require patient and diligent care.” Then, he makes a moving confession related to the end of his pontificate: “Oh, Jesus, here I am before you, old as I am now, at the end of my service and my life. Keep me closely connected to your heart, in a single beat with mine.”
It is precisely the blessed Pope John XXIII himself,
man of unity and peace, who entertains us with the confessions of his Diary1, which he began at the age of fourteen and regularly kept until 1962, a few months before his death at eighty one years old. As he gave his old ragged notebooks and worn pages to his faithful secretary, Monsignor Loris Capovilla, good Pope John confided to him: My soul is in those pages. I was a good innocent boy, a little shy. I wanted to love God above anything and only thought about becoming a priest in the service of simple souls that require patient and diligent care.
* Cardinal Paul Poupard is
President Emeritus of the Pontifical Council for Culture and of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue. He is member of the Council of Consultants and Collaborators of HUMANITAS.
1 JOHN XXIII, Journal de l’âme, Cerf, 1964.
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Sixty years before, he wrote: If I had to be like Saint Francis de Sales, my beloved saint, it would not mean anything to me, not even being chosen Pope. A great and intense love for Jesus Christ and His Church, a calmness of inalterable spirit, an incomparable sweetness with the neighbor: that is all.
HUMANITAS Nº 6 pp. 08 - 37
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As Patriarch of Venice, he was chosen Pope on October 28, 1958 and crowned in Saint Peter’s Basilica, in Rome, on November 4. The Council he had announced on January 25, 1959 began on October 11, 1962. He died on June 3, 1963 after a pontificate of less than five years.
And this moving confession by the end of his pontifical service: Oh, Jesus, here I am before you, old as I am now, at the end of my service and my life. Keep me closely connected to your heart, in single beat with mine. I remember that with gratitude. I was then one of his young collaborators in the Secretariat of State, during the 60s, when, against all forecasts, he embarked the Church on the spiritual adventure of the Second Vatican Council, which opened the way to the future and boldly forged our path toward the third millennium. The humble people of Rome adopted him for good the day of his death with these simple words that speak of a deep human and supernatural affection: “Papa Giovanni: papa buono, papa santo”: “Pope John: good Pope, holy Pope.”
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A few lines about his life Born on November 25, 1881 in Sotto il Monte, near Bergamo, the third son of a large and poor peasant family, Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli entered the minor seminary in 1893, and in 1900 he went to Rome in order to finish his studies in theology. There, he was ordained priest on August 10, 1904. His bishop, Monsignor Radini Tedeschi, named him his secretary; youth chaplain; spiritual director; and teacher of history, apologetics, and patrologia at the seminary in Bergamo. After the war, during which he served generously as sergeant nurse and chaplain, he founded a learning institution and oversaw the Catholic Action and missionary work, occupying himself, at the same time, in the monumental edition of the Pastoral visits of Saint Charles Borromeo to Bergamo. He, thus, got in contact with the prefect of the Ambrosian Library of Milan, the future Pius XI, and with all the current of the Council of Trent, perceiving its fruitfulness for the Church. In 1921, the Congregation of the Mission called him to the Vatican to reorganize the work for missionary cooperation, especially of Pauline Jaricot’s Society for the Propagation of the Faith, which he established in Italy. Consecrated bishop on March 19, 1925, he represented Rome in Sofia as apostolic representative in Bulgaria. He was the first official contact between both cities in the millennium. Then, between 1934 and 1944, for ten years, he was Apostolic Delegate in Turkey and Greece, until he set out for Paris, where he was named Apostolic Nuncio on December 22, 1944. On January 14, 1945 he presented both his credentials to General de Gaulle as well as the vows of the diplomatic body. He became Cardinal on January 12, 1953 after eight years of an apostolic nunciature marked by numerous contacts, not only within the circle of the Church, but with everyone. He literally crosses France, as he testifies in his diary. As Patriarch of Venice, he was
His life boasted no extraordinary event until his election as Pope. In 1948, when he was sixty-seven years old, he even thought it was over. His personal notebooks bear witness of a greater detachment year by year, with a total availability to God, following his motto: Obedience and peace.
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A man of God among men, completely man and man of God, during his whole life, John XXIII was a man of unity.
chosen Pope on October 28, 1958 and crowned in Saint Peter’s Basilica, in Rome, as I remember, on November 4. The Council he had announced on January 25, 1959 began on October 11, 1962. He died on June 3, 1963 after a pontificate of less than five years. His life boasted no extraordinary event until his election as Pope. In 1948, when he was sixty-seven years old, he even thought it was over. His personal notebooks bear witness of a greater detachment year by year, with a total availability to God, following his motto: Obedience and peace. Hence, he finds the peace, freedom, and serenity of a life of service. That is the secret of the extraordinary spiritual radiance of the good Pope John, a man of God among men. The following confession in his diary, Journal of a Soul, is an illustration of his life: This is the mystery of my life. Do not look for a different explanation. I have always repeated the same phrase by Saint Gregory Nazianzen: “God’s will is our peace.”
A MAN COMPLETELY MAN AND VISIBLY A MAN OF GOD
A man of unity A man of God among men, completely man and man of God, during his whole life, John XXIII was a man of unity. As secretary to his bishop in Bergamo, he found being a shepherd for all, in those difficult times, an ideal experience. But, is not every moment difficult in life in the world? As he would later say: The bishop is the fountain on the town square, the fountain of living water that runs across the world, day and night, in winter and summer, for small children and mature men. That is where one goes to quench one’s thirst, to wash, to purify, to strengthen, and just to see it run brings serenity and peace.
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He is the biblical image of the living water that runs as an uninterrupted river that crosses all Sacred History, from Genesis to the Apocalypse. Men of all kinds come to my poor fountain. My function is to give water to all.
As a soldier during the war, he created a bond with his comrades due to his good humor, always at everybody’s disposal. As representative of the Holy See in Eastern Europe, among peoples divided by faith, he always sought what unites instead of emphasizing, as many others, what divides. He did so with a “candid sincerity,” according to what his successor, Paul VI, expressed during the Angelus on October 28, 1973.2 It would be as a man of unity that he inaugurated the Ecumenical Council by inviting our divided brothers, the Anglican, Protestant, and Orthodox Christians. He was a man of unity when he received men of all creeds. One of his most moving encounters was, undoubtedly, the one in which he welcomed a group of Israelites with open arms saying: “I am Joseph, your brother” —biblical words that resound deeply.
Humility
He was a man of unity when he received men of all creeds. One of his most moving encounters was, undoubtedly, the one in which he welcomed a group of Israelites with open arms saying: “I am Joseph, your brother” —biblical words that resound deeply.
It was the afternoon of his election. The crowded multitude clapped loudly as the Loggia that dominates Saint Peter’s square opened for the first traditional blessing of the Urbi et Orbi, of the city and the world. The new Pope, simply dressed with the widest of the three robes prepared by those who had not foreseen the election of Cardinal Roncalli, had just said with an earnest humor : “Eccomi qua,” “Here I am now tied up, ready to be delivered!” Later, he narrated how he had experienced the scene: Imagine that in Saint Peter’s square, when I had to give my “Urbi et Orbi” blessing, the television and film projectors were so bright that I could not see the enormous crowd that seemed
2 Osservatore Romano, October 29-30, 1973.
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Smiling goodness, gentleness, gift of kindness, wisdom of an old peasant, serenity of a man of God: everything has been said about this collection of qualities (…)
to extend until the Tiber. I blessed the universe, but as I walked from Saint Peter’s balcony I thought of all the projectors that would be pointing at me from that moment onwards. I said to myself: “If you do not stay in the school of the sweet and humble Master, you will cease to see the world’s reality, you will be blind.”3
3 See R. P. Carré, L’humilité de Jean XXIII, in Foi vivante, No. 9, p. 173, OctoberDecember 1961.
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Some of us were with him in December 1960, the day after Doctor Fischer—Archbishop of Canterbury, primate of the Anglican Church—made him an official visit. With a smile, he told us: I will make you a small confession: I received Doctor Fischer yesterday. He is an important person, the leader of the Anglican
(…) as far as to forget that the human gifts in Roncalli, the man, were at the service of Jesus Christ’s Gospel and the Church’s mission. (…)
Church…. And since that had been decided a month before, from time to time I told myself: “Well, Giovanni (that was his name as Pope and what he called himself), well, Giovanni, this is not petty, in three weeks, in fifteen days, in three days, etc., you are going to receive Doctor Fischer, you see, it is not a petty thing. What are you going to say and do? If your father and mother saw you, what would they say? Even if you are Pope, you cannot change the Creed to suit those who are not Catholic…” “And then… —a moment of silence and John XXIII goes on, meditative and cheerful, —and then the door opened and Monsignor announced: “Holy Father, it is Doctor Fischer.” So, what did I do? What could I do? I opened my arms to him
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and we embraced, because before being divided, we are first brothers in Jesus Christ, and that is stronger than anything else.
He ended his “small confession,” as he said, with these words, which are perhaps for me the most evident encounter I have had with living humility:
(…) This requires energy, tenacity, and perseverance that I wish to set as an example to those young people who may deem the effort useless and who may easily see John XXIII as the mere result of a happy temperament.
My friends, as you can see, I am just a poor man. I am not a great theologian, a great philosopher, a great historian, a great erudite, nor a great politician; but maybe our good God required a poor man to do that, and it would have been very difficult for a great theologian, a great… etc; but now that it is done, a greater one may come and go on, because I simply started it.
Suddenly, he stopped, dropping his hands on his lap with a familiar gesture, saying: “Ecco, basta, coraggio figlioli, andiamo…”—which means more or less: “I have finished, enough, courage my sons, let’s go on…” Smiling goodness, gentleness, gift of kindness, wisdom of an old peasant, serenity of a man of God: everything has been said about this collection of qualities as far as to forget that the human gifts in Roncalli, the man, were at the service of Jesus Christ’s Gospel and the Church’s mission through prolonged patience during his whole life. This requires energy, tenacity, and perseverance that I wish to set as an example to those young people who may deem the effort useless and who may easily see John XXIII as the mere result of a happy temperament.
A man of God In order to understand what I have said, it is enough to reread his retirement notes and his Journal of a Soul, where he never ceased to write down his decisions and reflections from his adolescence to his death. That is his secret. That is where he reveals, by means of his sincere confessions, his own personality in authentic spiritual depth. Let’s listen to him:
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When the root is healthy, the tree grows vigorously, even among rocks (January 30, 1939). I have never detached myself from obedience, the source of inner peace and good results (November 14, 1938). Saying farewell to my loved ones, my mother, whom I may not see again on this earth, is a sad and moving thing; but I know I proceed with obedience, which moderates and softens everything (October 6, 1938). Everybody knows, to some extent, how to give advice and critique; but it is a different thing to do a useful and simple service (May 10, 1939). The small thorns that we bear for our love for Jesus become roses. Calm and patience (1938). Even if I had to be Pope and my name were pronounced and venerated by all mouths and carved on marble, what would I be when in front of the divine judge? Nothing! (Spiritual Exercises, December 10-12, 1902). I own a dignity that I never deserve, I confess it. I am busy all day, now in a nice home with my typewriter or tedious conversations, among many difficulties and thorns that belong to Jesus Christ and, by right, to the Catholic Church, but which completely lack in Christ’s meaning and even more so the
“A well-born son never separates himself from his mother without keeping in his face, in his features and in his words, something from the land that shaped him.� (April 30, 1961, to the pilgrims of his diocese)
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John XXIII summoned the Second Vatican Council. He was cheered by a threefold spirit: the renewal of the Church, the union of Christians, the opening to the world. He offered his life and long agony to these intentions, which were followed by all, young and old, with their ears close against their transistors.
“sensus ecclesiae”; always in contact with the so-called great ones of the world, but sad in the view of pettiness of spirit in relation to the supernatural; carefully preparing events from which nothing but good results should come, and being then a spectator to the frailty of human hopes (January 31, 1931). During the first days of this pontifical service, I did not notice what it meant to be Bishop of Rome and, therefore, shepherd for the universal Church. Then, week after week, there was light. I felt at home, as if I had never done anything else in my entire life (1963). Having started and ended my eightieth year no longer disturbs my spirit. I do not want more nor less than what the Lord has given me (1961). I experience the satisfaction of being faithful to devotional practices: the breviary, the rosary and meditation, the permanent union with God and all spiritual things (1961). My personal tranquility, which impresses the world so much, lies completely on the following: to stay within obedience, as I always have, and not wishing to live longer —nor pray for this—, not even one more day after the angel of death comes to call me and take me to Heaven, as I expect (1961). I suffer with pain and love. I have been able to follow my death step by step. Now, I take the path towards my end once again. It is not the time for crying. With death, a new life begins, the glorification in Christ. I am ready to leave, absolutely ready. We will continue to love each other in Heaven (June 1, 1963).
A shepherd A few days before passing away, he confides in Monsignor Martin: Every day is good to live and every day is good to die too. Regarding myself, the suitcases are ready, but I am also willing to continue working.
And to his secretary, Monsignor Capovilla, who weeps and tells me what he said the following morning, still moved and disturbed: Why do you cry, don Loris? In the Psalm of the Breviary we say: “I rejoiced at the things that were said to me: we shall go into
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the house of the Lord.” (“in domum domini ibimus” in the Latin text that is familiar to him). The time has come for me and do not worry over anything after my death. I will think about it…
That was the man who many superficially judged as a stocky man, with clear gestures and good temperament, a happy temperament overall, an optimist and smiling prelate, that is, a great diplomat, the pontifical diplomacy’s peasant from the Danube. On April 30, 1961, he said to the pilgrims of his diocese said: A well-born son never separates himself from his mother without keeping in his face, in his features and in his words, something from the land that shaped him.
His earthly mother, of course, but also his mother from Heaven, the Church he loved as a son: the Church, Mater et Magistra, according to the title of his great encyclical; the Church, mother and teacher of men; that Church that was inherited from Pius XII and transmitted to Paul VI, as the open flower of an unexpected spring, in an atmosphere of Pentecost. John XXIII was the shepherd, the good shepherd, of that Church, as he declared the day after his election. He was soon recognized as such, first by the Romans, later by all Christians and, finally, by the whole world. Although his predecessors stayed in the Vatican, he went out very often, always awakening great sympathy on his way. The Romans used to say familiarly: “Giovanni fuori le mura,” and the Americans used to call him Johnnie Walker, after the whisky. He is still, for everybody, “good Pope John,” who does not spend time crying over the misfortunes of the times, addressing, instead, the hearts of men, calling them to work and transform it. I remember how, one afternoon, on Italian television— RAI—they were trying to choose the most appropriate man to send to Mars as a representative of the Earth. Someone proposed John XXIII, but the jury had already decided on Doctor Schweitzer… There was an awkward moment. An expert broke the silence: “Our Pope John
Christians and non-believers, grieved his death as a personal mourning: the death of a father. In Moscow, Patriarch Alexis invited the Orthodox to pray (…)
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The Spirituality of John XXIII
Only for today Only for today, I will seek to live the livelong day positively without wishing to solve the problems of my life all at once. Only for today, I will take the greatest care of my appearance: I will dress modestly; I will not raise my voice; I will be courteous in my behavior; I will not criticize anyone; I will not claim to improve or to discipline anyone except myself. Only for today, I will be happy in the certainty that I was created to be happy, not only in the other world but also in this one. Only for today, I will adapt to circumstances, without requiring all circumstances to be adapted to my own wishes. Only for today, I will devote 10 minutes of my time to some good reading, remembering that just as food is necessary to the life of the body, so good reading is necessary to the life of the soul.
Only for today, I will do one good deed and not tell anyone about it. Only for today, I will do at least one thing I do not like doing; and if my feelings are hurt, I will make sure that no one notices. Only for today, I will make a plan for myself: I may not follow it to the letter, but I will make it. And I will be on guard against two evils: hastiness and indecision. Only for today, I will firmly believe, despite appearances, that the good Providence of God cares for me as no one else who exists in this world. Only for today, I will have no fears. In particular, I will not be afraid to enjoy what is beautiful and to believe in goodness. Indeed, for 12 hours I can certainly do what might cause me consternation were I to believe I had to do it all my life. Prayer from the Spiritual Life Plan
Repentance and forgiveness I am the perfidious disciple that betrayed you, the presumptuous one that denied you, the despicable one that looked down on you, that mocked you; the cruel one who crowned you with thorns, who whipped you. All this and even much more have I done with my sins! And you, you are my good Jesus, you guided me tenderly in my sin, on the cross you prayed for me, and from your pierced heart you made a wave of divine blood drop down that cleaned my heart from filth. You snatched me from death, dying for me, and defeating death you brought me life, you opened Paradise for me. Oh, love, oh, love of Jesus! And, however, finally this love won, and I am with you, oh Master of mine, oh, my Friend, oh, my Husband, oh, my Father: here I am in your heart! Journal of a soul, 192
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Through all this day I haven’t pleased Jesus. I have been far from Him… Oh, God, increasingly humiliate me, Make me aware of my true nothingness, otherwise, If I go on like I have done in these last days, I will be reduced to wrongdoing. Do not let this ever occur, oh Lord, I promise from now on To love you, always love. Oh Jesus, charity and forgiveness. Journal of a Soul, 95 Obedience Just as I understand—and now without being tired— that the beginning of sanctity is my total abandonment to the holy will of the Lord, even in the small things … may the Lord help me to never give up on this matter. Journal of a Soul, 648 I know nothing: Only this I wish, The will of God In everything and always, In his glory in the total sacrifice of my being. Lord Jesus, always keep me in this disposition. My Mary, good mother, Help me “so Christ may be proclaimed” Journal of a Soul, 648 Prayer A reason for inner joy is knowing that keeping myself humble and modest is not difficult for me. I don’t wish, I don’t think about anything else than to live and die for the souls that have been entrusted to me. Prayer is my relief. Journal of a Soul, 853 – 854 – 856 The priest Priesthood, the cross, simplicity of heart.
The cross In life there is nothing better than carrying the cross, as the Lord has put it on my back and in my heart. I must consider myself as the man of the cross and love the one that God gives me without thinking of anything else. Everything that does not honor God, serve the Church, is for the good of souls is dispensable and unimportant. Journal of a Soul, 641
Brief Biography of John XXIII John XXIII, Angelo Roncalli, was born in the province of Bérgamo in 1881, part of a country family, in which he absorbed a living, concrete, and generous faith. He became a priest, and for some years worked as Secretary for his Bishop and devoted himself to teaching in the Seminary and to study. During the First World War he was an army Chaplain and later on accompanied many young men who suffered in the war. After his consecration as Bishop in 1944 he was charged with diplomatic activities abroad. In 1953 he was named Cardinal and Patriarch of Venice. In 1958 he was elected Pope, and a few months later announced his wish to convoke a Second Ecumenical Vatican Council. He died in June, 1963. He was beatified by Pope John Paul II on September 3, 2000 and was canonized on April 27, 2014 at Saint Peter’s Square.
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is so good that we wish to keep him with us on earth. No, we do not want to send him to Mars!” As it rarely happens, the auditorium in RAI resounded with applause, both long and warm. However, as the taxi driver said: “He was too good, he could not last,” and the waiter from a pizza place at Piazza Navona: “Uno come quello, non lo fanno più”: “They will not make one like him again.” That was the spontaneous popular canonization before the beatification proclaimed by John Paul II.
A man of the Church John XXIII summoned the Second Vatican Council. He was cheered by a three-fold spirit: the renewal of the Church, the union of Christians, the opening to the world. He offered his life and long agony to these intentions, which were followed by all, young and old, with their ears close against their transistors. “Soffro con dolore, ma con amore”: “I suffer with pain, but with love,” he said opening his arms. And when he was asked at the beginning of the Council, he answered: “My part will be the suffering.”4 It was suffering, prayer, and effective daily action, without spectacular feats, but by means of successive touches, almost unnoticeable at the beginning. When I arrived at the Vatican, at the start of John XXIII’s pontificate, I remember how a new image of the Pope was being shaped: not a diplomat or a politician, but a man with a heart and a man of God, a man who earns extraordinary popular trust and affection very quickly. Why? Because, through human contact, man to man, such a flame of
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love grew that everyone felt included and loved in the best part of themselves. Together with that, all, Christians and non-believers, grieved his death as a personal mourning: the death of a father. In Moscow, Patriarch Alexis invited the Orthodox to pray. In Paris, the Sephardic synagogue’s rabbi invoked this same intention during the Sabbath, while in Rome, from their jail Regina Coeli, the prisoners cabled the Pope: “With great love, we are close to you.” As Jean Guitton5 said: “Pope John succeeded in taking the shadow away from death in the same way as he achieved to simplify life.” Le Monde’s editorial on June 5, 1963
4 See Paul Poupard, Le Concile Vatican II, col. “Que sais-je?”, PUF, 19972, “L’initiative du pape Jean XXIII”, p. 3-5 and 115-117.
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celebrated the apostle of dialogue. R. Escarpit affirmed: “Lights can go out, but not the memory of them,” and H. Fesquet declared: “John XXIII reconciled the Church with this century.” When we think that this young Lombard peasant was only fourteen years old when he put on his robes and from that day on his brothers and sisters stopped talking to him in a familiar tone, we tell ourselves that, decidedly, the eighty-year-old Pope had a secret in order to be in such good terms with the modern world, with which he did not share ideas nor lifestyle. He trusted this secret to Indro Montanelli, the well-known Italian journalist: (…) In Paris, the Sephardic synagogue’s rabbi invoked this same intention during the Sabbath, while in Rome, from their jail Regina Coeli, the prisoners cabled the Pope: “With great love, we are close to you.”
5 Le Figaro, June 8, 1963. 6 Quoted by J. D’Hospital, Le Pape du Concile, in Le Monde,
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Since I entered priesthood I put myself at the Holy Church’s disposal. I followed it with no anxiety or ambition. Everything is there and only there. There is no need to go further.6
God’s gardener That is John XXIII’s and his radiation’s secret during the shortest pontificate of the 20th Century before John Paul I’s quick passing. And millions of believers do not stop gathering around his grave in the Vatican crypts. He was God’s gardener, the great uncle that welcomed us to his farm, solid as an oak, with his arms open to the world. Physically, mentally, morally, and spiritually, he was a vigorous man of boundless human and supernatural vitality. In our time, he personified the Gospel’s message for the entire world. And, as it is today joyfully declared, he did it with credibility, speaking the language of the whole world with his human voice, his well-placed head and the eyes of a person who does not lie. He was not an intellectual that juggled with words and ideas, but an earthly man who knew the cost of disrespecting the laws of nature and life, a man who knew the price of bread and how to milk a cow. One day, he deprived himself in order to send 150.000 liras to his brother, who did not have enough money to replace a cow he has lost. He could have been a shepherd, a peasant, a wine-
maker, or the town baker; but as his brother Zaverio said: “When he was young, he was always praying, so he obviously had to become a priest.” For that reason, the whole world, especially the poor, spontaneously adopted him as one of them, as someone who understood them, that did not flatter them, that actually tells it like it is, but with the tone of someone who knows very well that life is not always comfortable and that one not always does what one wants. There are many stories about Pope John. Many are true, like the one about the beginning of his pontificate, when one night he restlessly shifted in his bed wondering how to solve the great troubles that were presented to him: After all, I am just the Pope; to begin with, it is the Holy Spirit who must direct its Church…” He adds: “Get back to sleep immediately!
A man of profound faith and great hope, John XXIII declared: There are people who claim that everything is wrong. “Niente affatto”: this is entirely not true. Look at all the brave people, fathers and mothers who sacrifice themselves for their families, happy and healthy children, and young people who enter life courageously. Instead of speaking ill of the bad, let’s help the good become better and the bad to convert.
This was his method. Faithful to Saint Ignatius of Antioch, whom he liked to quote: “It is better to be Christian without saying so, than saying so without being one.” His spiritual kinship was also close to Therese de Lisieux, whose sister wanted her to speak lofty words at her deathbed, according to the customs at the convent of the time; but she protested: “No, I would not be true. I am appalled by pretense.” John XXIII was like that. Everything in him was true, that is, unexpected and spontaneous, springing from a source with no pressures, what has been called in his case the santa ingenuità, holy ingenuity, candor of innocence, which was not ignorance, but the will of not seeing evil.
Cover of Time Magazine declaring John XXIII “Person of the year” 1962.
Physically, mentally, morally, and spiritually, he was a vigorous man of boundless human and supernatural vitality. In our time, he personified the Gospel’s message for the entire world. And, as it is today joyfully declared, he did it with credibility.
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Man of peace On March 7, 1963, Pope John was strongly criticized when he received Adjoubei and his wife, who was the daughter of Kruschev, chief of the Soviet Union at the time. He talked widely about it with Cardinal Marty on May 9, 19637: Look, —he told me—I know there are people who were surprised about that visit and who even got upset. Why? I have to receive everyone who comes to my door. I saw them… and we talked about the children, we always have to talk about the children… I saw Mrs. Adjoubei crying. I gave her a rosary, mentioning that she may not know what it was for and that she was not obliged to use it, of course, but that simply looking at it would remind her that there used to live a Mother who was perfect.8
A man calls at his door? How could he keep it closed? One must open it, with the risk of exposing oneself. Did Christ do something else? “Watch out, those people are leftists,” he was told. And what do you want me to do? It is not my fault. I have to take them as they are and try to speak to them!
That freeing intuition—of which after fifty years, we are celebrating its anniversary— allows for the establishing of a bond between Kruschev and Kennedy during the crisis in Cuba (…)
This explains his famous distinction, in his great encyclical Pacem in terris about peace among all nations, based on truth, justice, charity, and freedom, addressed on Holy Thursday, April 11, 1963, not only to the clergy and believers of the entire universe, as it is the custom, but also “to all men of good will”: It is important to always distinguish between the mistake and the man who professes it, even if it involves people who absolutely ignore the truth or only partly know it in terms of religion or moral practice. The man who makes a mistake does not lose his condition of man nor automatically loses his dignity as a person, which must be always taken into account. Besides, human nature’s capacity of overcoming an error and seeking the path of truth never disappears. On the other hand, man never lacks the help of divine Providence in this matter. Hence, he who today is devoid of the light of faith or who professes wrong doctrines, may very well embrace truth, illuminated by
5 June 1963. 7 Preface of “Juan XXIII” by Michel DE KERDREUX, Beauchesne, 1970, p. 7. 8 See Monsignor Loris Capovilla’s conference in the seminary of Bergamo, in August 1963, according to the notes of a listener, in La settimana del
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divine light, tomorrow. In fact, if Catholics, because of purely external reasons, establish relationships with those who do not believe in Christ or who believe in him the wrong way because they live mistakenly, can offer them a moment or stimulus to reach the truth.9
(…) shows through fact that even though ideological systems are by nature intolerant, men never become absolute enemies and always keep the best part of themselves intact, allowing them to understand each other and avoid the worst.(…)
That freeing intuition—of which after fifty years, we are celebrating its anniversary—allows for the establishing of a bond between Kruschev and Kennedy during the crisis in Cuba; shows through fact that even though ideological systems are by nature intolerant, men never become absolute enemies and always keep the best part of themselves intact, allowing them to understand each other and avoid the worst. For John XXIII, it is not about adapting the Church to the time’s tastes, but to reinstitute in the world the taste for the Gospel. Romans used to say he was furbo, which means subtle, of ability tinged with gentle cunning, which is great praise coming from their mouths. In order to understand the clamor from the Gospel, “I want to see Jesus,” it is necessary to have seen John XXIII on Palm Sunday in 1963, a few weeks before his death, making his way with great difficulty through the crowd of the great workers’ suburbs to the church of Saint Tarcisius, near Via Apia, and the palms thrown before him. Enthusiasm, screams, applause, blessings here and there, a small sign of affection to a mother, smiles for children, and a few words in front of a microphone that make the crowd burst with laughter or, in contrast, become speechless: Soon it will be Easter. I promise you I will still live in old age as your Pope… Do not forget, my children, you must pray and that you must be faithful to our good God in your prayers… And now, it is up to you to listen to our prayer: let us go through, it is time for us to go back to work at the Vatican.10
Clero, No. 20, June 3, 1973. 9 John XXIII, Pacem in terris, Nº 158. 10 See Daniel-Rops, Trois images du Saint-Père, La Croix, April
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A father That is what may have been called “the John XXIII phenomenon” or the “Roncalli mystery,” and it was simply an answer to a dissatisfied humanity’s search, always aspiring to happiness: a good and simple man, as a father surrounded by the affection of all his children; but his family was Rome and his children the world. When we speak of the Pope, we call him “Holy Father.” John XXIII clearly makes us see the fertile mystery of the priest’s spiritual paternity with all men.11 We are reminded of his encyclical Mater et Magistra from May 15, 1961, that each hungry child on a street in Bombay, each ageing worker in Leningrad, each peasant cutting sugar canes in a Latin-American country or each woman cloistered in a medina in the north of Africa is just as important as every rich person in the world, and they are all individually sacred and respectable. The Church has never forgotten anyone and, when obliged to choose, she leans towards the poor.12
(…) For John XXIII, it is not about adapting the Church to the time’s tastes, but to reinstitute in the world the taste for the Gospel.
17, 1963. 11 See J. Gritti, Jean XXIII dans l’opinion publique, Centurion, 1967. 12 Georges Hourdin, in L’Express,
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In order to understand the clamor from the Gospel, “I want to see Jesus,” it is necessary to have seen John XXIII on Palm Sunday in 1963, a few weeks before his death, making his way with great difficulty through the crowd of the great workers’ suburbs to the church of Saint Tarcisius, near Via Apia, and the palms thrown before him.
With a preference for verbal expression—since November 30, 1895, he decides to be “less of a charlatan” during recess. And as nuncio in Paris fifty-two years later, in 1947, he writes: Take care, take care, know when to stay silent, know how to speak within measure. I perceive in my conscience a contrast, that sometimes becomes a scruple, between the compliments I also like to make to these brave and dear Catholics of France and the obligation, which I deem part of my ministry, of not hiding, due to mere formality or fear of seeming disagreeable, the account of deficiencies and the real situation of the Church’s oldest daughter in terms of religious practice, the unease generated by the unresolved school situation, the shortage in the clergy, and the propagation of laicism and communism. My precise duty in this respect is reduced to a question of form and measure. The nuncio is no longer worthy of being considered the ears and eyes of the Holy See if he limits himself to compliment and even magnifies what is painful and grave.
Cardinals Roncalli (future John XXIII) and Cardinal Montini (future Paul VI). John XXIII blessing an audience.
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Truth and charity He was greatly benevolent with people, but with a demanding preoccupation for the truth. As he liked to repeat: “Omnia videre, multa dissimulare, pauca corrigere”: “See all, conceal much, correct little,” according to the proverb that used to quote: “gutta cavat lapidem”: “the drop ends up piercing the stone.” He mistrusted extraordinary things. So, one day he said the following to nuns who were talking about vision and revelation: But we have the Gospel, sisters, and everything is there. We have not finished meditating about it in order to put it into practice. It may be more difficult, but it is better than those people who consider themselves mystical and confuse their highest level of thought with Heaven…
That way he joined the snake’s prudence with the dove’s simplicity. This is what he said with a big smile to a visitor who wanted him to bless a crusade, a word that he did not like too much:
To him, the Council was first a place to meet God in prayer, with Mary, as the apostles at the cenacle before Pentecost.(…)
Madam, I will gladly bless every good thing you do!
It was his discreet and firm way of instructing with love. With an army chaplain that presents himself before him in dress uniform, he assumes the position of attention saying: Sergeant Roncalli, at your service.
To a woman who declares she is Superior General of a Congregation of the Holy Spirit, he says: I am, in fact, only a servant for Jesus Christ, the second person of the Holy Trinity.
He receives the journalists that visit him the day after his coronation with familiar trust: I am very tired and I think you are too. I did not sleep last night and was flicking through newspapers, out of curiosity, to see what they said about me. What an imagination and how many lies! It is sad to have put in so much work to write that.
No one got angry, but all of them understood the lesson.
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(…) An encounter with the Holy Spirit, the Council was also a meeting among bishops and between them and the Bishop of Rome (…)
Our Holy Father Pope John XXIII was really ours, from the flower seller to the Sorbonne professor, from the elevator technician to the Muslim chief of State who called him “the Pope of dialogue.” He is prayed to as the saint that is an example of goodness, sweetness, mercy, and passionate pursuit of unity and peace, living among us as the ideal of Beatitudes. He was a father to everyone, with a special preference for children. On the night of the opening of the Council, the Romans marched on Saint Peter’s Square with lit candles in their hands, the flaccolata, and everybody waited for the Pope to speak. John XXIII opened his window and with a strong voice that trembled with emotion, he declared: Come, sons, it is late; go back to your homes, it is time to put the children in bed; you will be loving to them and it will be Pope John’s affection.
John, as it is written at the beginning of the Gospel, and as it was recalled by Cardinal Suenens to the Fathers of the Council during the second session: “There was a man sent by God: he was called John. He came here to give testimony of the light, so that everyone believed because of him.” For all, he was the familiar sun that lights and warms the earth and whose mere presence illuminates the daily greyness.
The Council Pope His most unexpected decision—to summon the Council—was soon perceived as an evident need, even though he did not really know how it would be done. With regard to the Council—he said smiling—we are all novices. The Holy Spirit will be there when all the bishops have met. We will see.
To him, the Council was first a place to meet God in prayer, with Mary, as the apostles at the cenacle before Pentecost. An encounter with the Holy Spirit, the Council was also a meeting among bishops and between them and the
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Bishop of Rome; a gathering where the separated brothers were invited as observers, coming from all places, even Moscow; it was, lastly, an encounter with the whole world through press projectors, radio and television directed to all corners of the world to Saint Peter’s Cathedral. For John XXIII, the Council also needed to be a contribution to the peace between men and peoples, between religions and social classes, between cultures and thought systems. He said the following on a day he was collecting his writings and speeches that amounted to volumes in his library: “Do you know what I feel in front of these volumes?” He hesitates a little and then simply says: “I feel sincere.” This is how he welcomed Protestants and Orthodox at the Council: Try to read into my heart. Perhaps you will find there much more than in my words… I have had numerous meetings with Christians of diverse denominations… We have not parlayed, but spoken; we have not argued, but loved each other.
(…) a gathering where the separated brothers were invited as observers, coming from all places, even Moscow; it was, lastly, an encounter with the whole world
He had a talent for images: The Council—he said—by joining gesture and word, is the open window, removing the dust and sweeping, putting flowers and opening the door saying: “Come and see, here is our good God’s house.”
Catholic That was John XXIII, man of unity and peace, Jesus Christ’s priest, vigorous and solidly rooted in tradition, living each day merrily as a gift from God, and open to the hope of a more brotherly world and to a Church that is closer to men because they are more transparent to God. John XXIII stood opposite the man who belongs to the system, right or left, and no one could attribute a system to him because he was absolutely Catholic in the widest sense of the term. Let’s hear him speak at the Christmas party at Saint Peter’s cathedral:
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Our hearts fill with tenderness as we address to you our fatherly vows. We would like to be able to stop at the table of the poor, in the workshops, in places of study and science, next to the beds of the sick and the old, every place in which there are people praying and suffering, working for themselves and for others… Yes, we would like to place our hands on top of children’s heads, look in the eyes of the young, and cheer up fathers and mothers to perform their daily duties. We would like to repeat to all the words of the angel: “I proclaim to you good news of great joy: your Savior has been born today.”
That was John XXIII, man of unity and peace, Jesus Christ’s priest, vigorous and solidly rooted in tradition (…)
With these simple words, John, Peter’s successor, repeated to the world the great news: the Lord loves us and we are called to love him back, to love ourselves. And that voice from the Church is usually smothered by the noise of the world in our ears. John broke the wall of sound. His word awaked an echo and men recognized his voice as a calling addressed to the best in them by someone who loved them as a brother. And that is precisely why they all mourned him as sons would their own mother. A GREAT HEART OPEN TO THE WORLD
The day after his death, the French television asked for my testimony for “Cinq colonnes à la une,” on June 7, 1963. Monsignor Dell’Acqua, substitute at the Secretariat of State—who passed away later when he was Cardinal Vicar General of Rome—authorized me to use the letters received during the Pope’s illness. The following are the most essential. Your Holiness, two Jewish people from France are praying for you. I was never this happy for having a Pope that understands poverty. We have a greater need for a good father than wise theologians who we do not understand much. Dear good Pope, you are goodness itself. And goodness, the true one, attracts and one wishes to be good when in company of a good person.
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May God protect you, heal you; it is my utmost desire. Above all, I pray you, let them heal you well. For the first time in my life, I am writing to a Pope, but it is because you are a good Pope and we love you. Holy Father, I am a girl from France who is quite afflicted because of your illness. I pray for you every morning, so that the Good God keeps you on earth because we really need you. I will certainly keep praying for you to the Good God and I send you all the affection of a respectful little girl. Vatican City, Sirs, I am not a believer, I never go to mass; however, Pope John XXIII has earned my sympathy with his encyclical in favor of peace. I wish him a quick recovery with all my heart and send him my respect. My wife and children are observant. I have not prayed since I got married in 1926; but today, believe me, I pray for you, for your recovery, because I admire you. I hope God understands me. Even though I do not believe in God, I send you my wishes of good health and pray every night that He keeps you still near us. You are so good, Your Holiness. I hope that you feel a little better by the time you receive this letter. I pray you, forgive me, Your Holiness, but I cannot help crying nor send you a great kiss though this medium. Mireille. Holy Father, I was deeply moved when I read in the newspaper of the Far East that you were sick. I have been praying for you every day. I would like you to live as long as I am old enough to visit you. I want to have a saint’s name. I am Buddhist, so I do not know many saint names to choose from. You can pick the name of a saint you like. I appreciate it very much. Your daughter who prays to God that your illness improves. From a Muslim from North Africa: If you are no longer present, may those around you be illuminated by God’s Holy Spirit so that your successor, appointed by them, continues on the illuminated path you followed. Amen.
(…) living each day merrily as a gift from God, and open to the hope of a more brotherly world and to a Church that is closer to men because they are more transparent to God.
The miracle of goodness These testimonials are eloquent. If I had to explain in a few words John XXIII’s still living radiance, I would say with his Secretary: “Because he was a Pope with his heart open to God, to the world and to men. His originality is the miracle of goodness, source of hope.”
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John XXIII was a man of hope, as John Paul II, his successor, emphasized:
John XXIII stood opposite the man who belongs to the system, right or left, and no one could attribute a system to him because he was absolutely Catholic in the widest sense of the term.
June 20, 1961. 13 John Paul II, Audiencia general, November 25, 1981. 14 François Mauriac, in Figaro Littéraire, Paris, June 8, 1963, p. 20. 15 Cardinal König, Commemoration of John XXIII twenty years after his death, on October 8, 1983, Synod of Bishops in the Vatican. 16 John Paul II, Homilía en Bérgamo, April 26, 1981, en
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The main key of his action in the Church was his optimism… Having been called to the Church’s supreme government responsibilities when he had only three more years, or little more, to turn 80, he was still young, in his mind and his heart, as if by a prodigy of nature. He knew how to look to the future with an unbreakable hope; he hoped for a new blossoming of a new era for the Church and for the world, […] a new Pentecost; a new Easter, that is, a great awakening, retaking the most courageous path.13
As François Mauriac wrote the day after his death, “John XXIII would have been the Pope of hope, with whom the acceleration of history became the acceleration of grace.”14 “Obedience and peace,” that was his motto. These simple words—he wrote in his Journal of a Soul since 1925, when he was forty-four years old—are a bit of my history and my life. His goodness was undoubtedly the fruit of God’s grace. It matured during a whole life of priesthood, within obedience to the Church and, at the same time, with faith in God’s goodness and mercy, who is near every person who seeks him. God’s love spoke to the world through Pope John and the world was deeply moved. Father Leiber, Pope Pius XII’s collaborator for many years, revealed that this great Pope had confided to him the following when the illness that would result in his death started: the sensation that his death would put an end to an era in the history of the Church.15 And, in fact, John Paul II declared in Bergamo on April 26, 1981: (Pope John was) a man of wonderful simplicity and evangelical humility, which in the course of less than five years of his pastoral ministry in Saint Peter’s cathedral, he began a new era for the Church. As an old man of eighty, he expressed the incredible youth of the Church, a youth that knows no sunset. In love with tradition, he started a new life in the Church and Christianity.16
The legacy that belongs to good Pope John XXIII, man of unity and peace,17 is entrusted to us. And it is our duty to reap the fruit of his testimony. It is the universal path to sainthood that is open to everyone, challenging history. Let’s follow him with the happiness of shared love. Memory is the hope of the future. And hope is faith in love. “The future of humanity is in the hands of those who know how to give reasons to live and reasons to hope to coming generations.”18 The future is in our hands and we are in God’s hands.
The voice from the Church, usually smothered by the noise of the world, had an effect in our ears. John broke the wall of sound. His word awaked an echo and men recognized his voice as a calling addressed to the best in them by someone who loved them as a brother.
Translated by Ana María Neira
Documentation Catholique, t. LXXVIII, pp. 467-470. 17 See Cardinal Paul Poupard, Un pape pour quoi faire? IIème partie, ch. II: “Jean XXIII, Pape de transition,” Paris, Ed. Mazarine, 1980, pp. 203-230. 18 Gaudium et spes, No. 31.
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Passion for man By Stanislaw Grygiel
Before becoming John Paul II, Karol Wojtyla saw in man a big question about transcendence. Transcendence— the center towards which human thought and action move— integrates the being in the beingsomeone. Because of transcendence man is himself.
* Stanislaw Grygiel is ordinary
of Philosophical Anthropology of the John Paul II Pontifical Institute for Studies on Marriage and the Family of Rome at the Lateran University. He is member of the Council of Consultants and Collaborators of HUMANITAS.
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It is enlightening to return to John Paul II’s anthropology after his canonization, together with his predecessor’s, John XXIII. Pope Wojtyla’s view of man, in the pursuit of an answer, is always associated to the mystery of the Incarnate Word. He does so by means of a sui generis “reduction” of man to the Son of God: in Him, there is the realization and defense of the human person. Christ was sent to man as God’s great question, calling the human person towards the dialogue that transfigures him. And the true consideration of man is only reached by the one who incessantly turns to Christ as his Beginning and End. John Paul II does not accept battles for the human person in a field of chaos. He always moves the battlefield to a higher ground, where man’s reality, disintegrated into senseless fragments, is rebuilt in a beautiful landscape. Man’s ultimate battlefield is the Cross. In it, John Paul II looks for the reunion of the human person and society. In front of this “magna quaestio” of God and man “the thoughts of many hearts will be revealed” (Lk. 2:35), and therefore his freedom and order, but also his desire and chaos.
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efore becoming John Paul II, Karol Wojtyla saw in man a big question about transcendence. Transcendence—the center towards which human thought and action move—integrates the being in the being-someone. Because of transcendence man is himself. Transcendence expresses itself through moral experience, in which man moves away from the norms depicted on the cave’s wall and directs all his being towards infinitely distant things… Karol Wojtyla started thinking about the human person precisely from the point of view of the experience of this call to conversion. Transcendence is not part of the question’s landscape, but the landscape demands transcendence. Without transcendence there would be no landscape, but only a random collection of things that are too close to man’s hands to be able to be what constitute the sense of his being. If transcendence were identified with any of these things, it would also require integration. With transcendence there can only be questioning. Transcendence announces to man that he is also beyond… As it calls him to what is beyond, it calls him to
HUMANITAS Nº 6 pp. 40 - 67
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Episcopal Consecration of his personal secretary, now Cardinal Archbishop of Krakow, Stanislaw Dziwisz.
itself and to himself. Therefore, through this dialogue, man turns… into someone else. Put in a different way, wisdom’s friend converts himself daily. In the metanoia of his being we find what cardinal Wojtyla called the person’s integration through transcendence. Through the experience of the moral imperative—and not in this or that system of thought—the truth of the human person is revealed. It is freedom; not any kind of freedom or whim, but freedom that is love and an answer to love. In the experience of freedom compelled to an act of love, man discovers he is a word spoken by someone else before he can utter anything. The human person can be a word that is full of meaning because the word of love is in it, giving it all before receiving. The word that is man, to whom love has made its announcement, becomes a question about his transcendence. This transformation happens at the moment man understands his inability to locate himself with his own efforts in a landscape that is permanently endowed with meaning, indestructible by suffering and death. The question on transcendence frees man from the landscape’s immanence. Transcendence does not give man any beha-
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vioral rules; it just gives itself. Fascinated with the afterlife of transcendence, man knows where to go and feels guilty if he does not grow in that direction. Therefore, the more he converts, the more he feels a sinner. And it must be thus, because the afterlife would not be transcendence otherwise. Transcendence is present in man’s freedom as “per procura”: a light shines from it that makes the truth of things rise from the chaos of darkness. Everything gains importance with this light, despite its provisional character, so that man cannot but love these things and, at the same time, he can love them in accordance to justice. The truth of things protects his freedom from the degeneration of whim. Love that is inspired by justice makes man’s being fair; it justifies him. Sometimes it must justify him with death. If he works on the Earth, in all freedom, that is, in the presence of transcendence, man cultivates his being as he cultivates the world’s being. He cultivates it as the peasant cultivates his own field. He cultivates it through
transcendence announces to man that he is also beyond... as it calls him to what is beyond, it calls him to itself and to himself. Therefore, through this dialogue, man turns... into someone else.
Cardinal Wojtyla salutes his predecessor, Paul VI.
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to karol wojtyla, human actions represent a symbolic reality that refers man to transcendence, making him walk in its direction. every action requires a specific language: the myth, which expresses its condition as a miniature version of the story of the fall and man's hope of recovering essential justice.
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the seed thrown on the earth with the hope of a harvest. This work during the wait for fruitfulness is what Karol Wojtyla—and then John Paul II—calls culture. Man’s lack of culture or society shows how both are dominated by whim, which never creates culture and, in fact, does not go beyond comfort and pleasure. We never see directly a person’s being, i.e. the dialogue of their freedom answering to the Love of transcendence. The person hides his own intimacy to the point of having to guess at it. Everything that is revealed through gesture, which we can only explain with the person’s being that answers to the afterlife of transcendence, leads us towards intimacy in the same way footprints lead hunters in the thicket of the forest to the animal’s lair. The story of the dialogue among men that is deciphered in these gestures allows us only to guess at the story of the dialogue between the human person’s intimacy and He that is “intimior intimo eius,” without whom intimacy would not be so. To Karol Wojtyla, human actions represent a symbolic reality that refers man to transcendence, making him walk in its direction. Every action requires a specific language: the myth, which expresses its condition as a miniature version of the story of the fall and man’s hope of recovering essential justice. Through the alliance with His people and with each man personally, God Himself reveals about His own being only that, without it, men would not be able to respond to His proposed divinity. He reveals to them everything that makes them become what they are, nothing more. Man’s actions are interpreted through transcendence and his being should be interpreted likewise, as action proceeds from it (“agere sequitur esse”). Man’s being has a beginning and an end, birth and death. When man finds himself in transcendence, especially by confronting death and the suffering that accompanies it, a big question mark is drawn into his experience of moral obligation. Is there meaning in human freedom—and not whim—if
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Saint John Paul II with Blessed Teresa of Calcutta and Sister Lucía dos Santos.
it must suffer and both it and whim are death’s prey? Death and suffering have elevated man to a level that is beyond ethics, where only transcendence can answer the question concerning his own being, which has become “magna quaestio.” Man does not read the answer in his own nature, especially the one he desires. Through the experience of the moral imperative Karol Wojtyla “read” that particular kind of text that is the nature of the personal being. Without this “text”, man would lack the principle of action, and there could only be a question on what man in general is, but not on what the personal being is. Job, the pagan of the land of Hus, knew how to read his own nature. He was an intellectual in the deepest sense of the term (from “intus-legere”). By living from the gift of this “text” and not from a hypothesis, he had avoided evil when his life shined bright with the star of success. The outer shape of his actions was no different from those of his friends. Only when he became a victim of misfortune, along with suffering and death, was it evident that Job had “read” man and the world; his friends, on the other hand, only had their own thoughts. Their friendship with Job was formal because they did not understand the fundamentals linked to the beginning and to the end. He, on the
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John Paul II leading the Via Crucis at Rome's Colisseum and saluting the Orthodox Patriarch.
contrary, rewarded them with a friendship with which he told them he defended them from themselves. He did not even feel frustrated when what they said hurt him. In fact, he was not faithful to what his friends were, but to what they had to become. By turning into a “magna quaestio” for himself, he became a “magna quaestio” for them. Trapped inside their own thoughts, Job’s friends did not understand that the “text” written by God in man is the text of a laborious freedom and a difficult birth. They had been frightened by the vehemence of Job’s questions to God. According to them, Job uttered blasphemies against God. They did not think for a second that Job could have been defending God from their impious thoughts. So great was their idolatry in their theological reasoning, grown in solitude and, thus, outside the dialogue with God. Idolizing, theological reasoning offends God and negates man. Whoever experiments its influx loses the capacity of sharing his thoughts with others. It is not strange, then, that such a person cannot tremble over death and another’s suffering. Why? It is only possible to participate in someone else’s suffering and death if such is considered within the perspective of transcendence, which is common to all. Reading the same text is a condition for the dialogue. In order to read
man's lack of culture or society shows how both are dominated by whim, which never creates culture and, in fact, does not go beyond comfort and pleasure.
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man’s nature and not one’s own thought about an argument, it is necessary to reach man’s concrete being, that is, his person. We have to reach our desire for transcendence, which makes us “capaces Dei.” The person is united with love and his desire is understood only in the light of hope. Only by believing in God is it possible to believe in the person of man without the risk of disappointment. He who reads the person’s nature in this way participates in the difficult birth. Let us remember that the word nature comes from the Latin “nascor,” I am born, whose future participle points to something that must be born. Job’s friends did not understand the nature of the hu-
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man person because they had done without the experience of suffering and death. They continued thinking outside hope, so, instead of reading the nature of their own being together with He who writes it, they created monologues. Their rationalism prevented them from offering anything to Job. And he was not interested in the exchange of opinions, but in the dialogue with gifts, which to him would have been their words if they had been endowed with such gifts. Empty words were unacceptable to him. His words, on the contrary, were full of presence and that is why God was able to receive them. There was a separation between ethics and salvation in the ethical thinking of Job’s friends because they did not know the gift. In their reasoning, each of them built a sort of ethical monologue that was an adaptation of God, transforming Him into an idol. All idolatry is the product of an ethics that, not basing itself on the person’s being as desire of transcendence but on the passions that enter it, looks for a way beyond what is ethical to adapt itself to man’s conscience. As he found himself in the ray of light cast by suffering and death, Job understood the substantial insufficiency of an ethics that is not inspired by the reading of superhuman objectives in man’s nature, that is, in the reading of the presence of the transcendence that comprises it. This does not mean that Job did not acknowledge the need of an ethics. More so, it was precisely at that moment that it acquired importance to him. However, while he found the answers to ethical questions in himself, he had to seek Salvation outside of himself. In the light of Salvation, Job, so bound by ethics in his life, became a question. If there is no answer to the soteriological question, the answers to ethical questions have no meaning: they are mere moralisms [empty moral speeches]. The question of salvation determines the existence, or not, of the ethical questions’ context, even when it is not located within that context. The question over Gift places ethical questions in a context forever endowed
Time Magazine named John Paul II as person of the year in 1994.
the anxious question of man about himself develops and matures in the question of God. Mercifully oriented towards the human person through the act of the Incarnation, it is introduced in the dialogue that is his inner life.
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with meaning. Man decides his fate inasmuch as he lives in hope, which allows him to move toward the direction his desire tends. Karol Wojtyla’s pondering was not limited to ethical questions because he possessed a consciousness about man, that is, of his personal bond with God, who entrusts truth and goodness to his freedom. In his ethical questions we find the question of the transcendence of the human person. These questions set up the context of the human person’s actions, and each of them is man’s answer to its categorical call and non-verification of ephemeral ethical hypotheses. We must not be surprised, then, by the easiness with which ethical questions, in Karol Wojtyla’s thinking, overlap with the question of grace. They form an organism in which the question of man’s divine past, which allows him to understand his own present sin, comes together with the hope of recovering everything he has lost. The encounter between these two questions gives rise to the anthropology that cardinal Wojtyla will eventually call proper anthropology. Karol Wojtyla’s anthropology led to John Paul II’s testimonial thinking. I allow myself to point out that, somehow, he must have sensed where the path he was following would take him. Karol Wojtyla entered Peter’s order as John Paul II, where man’s “magna quaestio” meets the “Magna Quaestio” that is Christ. Karol Wojtyla’s pondering on man goes back to “ad Christum Redemptorem,” by permanently returning to the foundations of being and action, united now to the communion of people entrusted to him by Peter. With the liberty that can only be permitted to the love thrice confessed to Christ, John Paul II speaks of him as the divine answer to man’s question on the transcendence of the beginning and the end. While he gives testimony to Christ, he not only gives a testimony about Salvation, but about God’s Creation through his Son. John Paul II does a sui generis “reduction” of man to the Son of God.
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The question of man’s divine past, which allows him to understand his own present sin, comes together with the hope of recovering everything he has lost. The encounter between these two questions gives rise to the anthropology that cardinal Wojtyla will eventually call proper anthropology.
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It is not politics or economics’ responsibility to decide over a person’s service to people, but it is the responsibility of the person’s service to people to decide over politics and economics. (…)
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In him, as it is always said, the realization and defense of the human person is found. In fact, Christ was sent to man as God’s great question, calling the human person to a dialogue that transfigures him. Only he who thinks about this question and defends it continuously returns to Christ as Beginning and End. Ethical foundations protect man from evil and with the foundation of Christ man is protected from himself. By bearing witness to the act of creation, John Paul II bears witness, through faith, of the divine definition of man, without which one could not speak of the truth and action of his being. Thinking means searching for this Definition with all one’s being, because in it we may clearly find every man’s identity. The thought that creates it is God Himself. Thus, searching for the definition of one’s own being is to look for Him in one’s own realization, i.e. Salvation. It is useful to understand the definition of the truth of knowledge not as “adaequatio intellectus cum re,” but as the coherence of man’s human person with the nature of being, known by means of the first. In this acceptance of the truth, knowledge is love and love is knowledge. The man that seeks such a truth becomes that and gradually experiences in a smaller degree the pressure that acts outside the dialogue between his own freedom and God’s freedom. Proper anthropology protects human thought from servility and human subjectivity from the invasion of the objective world. In Peter’s testimony there is man’s truth, saving him. Here, man, who asks God about himself, receives Christ’s person. In him, the anxious question of man about himself develops and matures in the question of God. Mercifully oriented towards the human person through the act of the Incarnation, it is introduced in the dialogue that is his inner life. The dialogue with God frees the human person of all that is not God. In the question-testimony given to Christ by Peter, man appears as a judged being who knows where Peter’s question should aim: “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have
the words of eternal life” (Jn 6:68). A man that has been judge as Peter was, cannot and must not judge everything. Therefore, it is not surprising how determined John Paul II is in emphasizing that no human will, even with a majority supporting it, has the right to decide over human freedom, i.e. over his knowledge and love. No human will has the right to decide over his rights and duties, because they do not come from political decisions, but from an identity devised “in the heavens before the making of the world.” Nothing can decide over the birth or death of a conceived human being. This, in fact, comes from beyond, where calculations of human intellect and the technical capacity of his hands cannot reach: the place where man comes from and that can only be reached by man’s love and hope, together with the song that express them. There can only be song about love and hope and they are not submitted to vote. John Paul II’s intransigence which reminds us that the human person has already been judged in Christ, in the acts of creation and redemption, inevitably awakens
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criticism in all who, for different reasons, do not want to acknowledge God’s authority. By starting his catechism with a reflection on man’s creation and resurrection, John Paul II defends the human person’s body by arguing that its meaning comes from the love that unites two people. This union is not only physical, but the union of the two bodies’ beauty, and it is not a matter of possession, but something destined to be. In this union, by generating one and the other, they create the space for a new gift: the human person. The meaning of the body is expressed in its beauty, transforming the whim of man’s immanence into freedom. Friendship, marriage, families, and nations are born from this freedom-love. This is what John Paul II refers to when he speaks of society. On the other hand, when he speaks of the State he refers to something that must be defined and guarded. A state that does not achieve these essential duties is not worth the name; it is but a parasite to man. It is not politics or economics’ responsibility to decide over a person’s service to people, but it is the responsibility of the person’s service to people to decide over
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politics and economics. If politics and economics were the basis of love and freedom, instead of the other way around, the person, together with his friendship, marriage, family and society, would be mistreated. Injustices originate from this misconception. John Paul II defends the human person, marriage, the family and society itself from the lack of reflection of a whim that looks like freedom, but which is not so. The individual’s freedom, which is his faithful love, is protected by the truth that is inscribed in the act of man’s creation and resurrection. When the “text” of the human person’s nature is not read, coexistence among men occurs as a struggle that often develops into conflict. War makes evident the lack of preoccupation for that which makes the individual person, people, and societies, what they are. Man, transformed into a question of the transcendence of the beginning and the end, stays in the past by means of love and resides with love in the future by means of hope. Because of these virtues, it measures present things with those that are far away. The present is not suspended over a void created by the past and the future. In the dialogue from which God’s people arises, man dominates the present and responsibly makes history. The memory of the past and the future surpasses man’s historical memory. It is the memory of his divine origin and, moreover, of his divine destiny. Man, in his condition as created entity, living prophetically, receives the Word-Coming that is Christ. It is given to him so that the divinization of his created being is produced in him. This divine-human dialogue is realized in the dialogue among humans, where man welcomes another and gives himself to him in return. The concept of incarnate coming cannot be understood without it being word-coming and vice versa: being word-coming can only be understood in the light of Incarnation. The coming of the divine word into the coming of human words is what we call tradition. Words that do not find their place are dead, or not born. The coming in the path towards the superhuman word
(…) If politics and economics were the basis of love and freedom, instead of the other way around, the person, together with his friendship, marriage, family and society, would be mistreated. Injustices originate from this misconception.
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implies existing disinterestedly from birth to death. The less selflessness there is among men, the greater the risk of them understanding each other and viewing birth, death, friendship, marriage, and society in the same way they view products administered according to market rules. The gift is realized when it is received. So it happens with birth and also man’s death. He who is a gift waits for love to receive him. Men who live by calculations fail to understand words that have not been calculated. Only love can speak with love. No one can be forced to give a gift and no one can be forced to accept it. That is why, if birth and death are attained through technology, by not being acts of freedom and love, they radically hurt the person. The society that has forgotten the principles of freedom and love will only create a history of the production of life and death, a history of radical injustice. John Paul II’s reflections on what occurs to man in the act of creation, and in the end, in the act of Resurrection, finish, according to a natural succession, with a reflection on man’s emancipation from injustice, i.e. in the history of his heart. John Paul II dedicated the third part of his catechism to this history. Man’s heart is restless, and because of this it cannot be the starting point or the finish line for its own work. In the history of man, God’s Transcendence is manifested as an incomprehensible union of truth and love, Justice and Mercy. There is no doubt that the categorical moral obligation imprints a direction in that history. It begins with the mystery of sin that hurts man’s nature without destroying it, so that he can remember that he used to be different… The instinct of self-defense speaks in it. Man immediately and spontaneously defends himself. Just as his thought, his ethical effort, expresses itself in a daily metanoia, with the hope of finding salvation in the transcendence he is drawn to. John Paul II looks at the dramatic history of the human heart through the dramatic history of Christ. As he thinks about man, he thinks about Christ, and vice versa. When
The memory of the past and the future surpasses man’s historical memory. It is the memory of his divine origin and, moreover, of his divine destiny. Man, in his condition as created entity, living prophetically, receives the WordComing that is Christ.
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Man’s heart is restless, and because of this it cannot be the starting point or the finish line for its own work. In the history of man, God’s Transcendence is manifested as an incomprehensible union of truth and love, Justice and Mercy.
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he repeats Peter’s words in the name of everyone, “Lord, to whom we shall go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and to know that you are the Holy One of God” (Jn 6:68-69), he is thinking about man as someone who is destined for divinity and of Christ as someone who is “destined” to humanity. It is not by coincidence that his first encyclical begins with these words: “The ‘Redemptor hominis’ is the center of the universe and history.” In this center, justice is identified with mercy and mercy with justice. John Paul II thinks about the history of the human heart through grace, which grows where there is sin and where man is as weak as defective wood and iron… It knows what sin is because it knows what grace is. With no consideration to the misery of time, it reveals duties to man that he will not understand if he continues to look at himself in the light of his own sin. I believe that men who are slaves to contemporary civilization feel offended by this Pope because they do not search in grace the criterion to think about themselves and society, but in sin. John Paul II also thinks about the human person’s sociopolitical life in the light of grace. Together with the proclamation that the integration of the person, and therefore also the integration of society, is not realized in a doctrine, but in the person of Christ, John Paul II defends man and society from all kinds of totalitarianism that force men into accepting idolizing and mortifying behaviors and, thus, expressing themselves with hypocritical gestures in which nobody reveals himself. Social justice reigns where there are just men, that is, where free men act, moved by the desire of something transcendent that allows them to be even more than themselves. The transcendence of the objects around which man moves does not lead to freedom. By promising to participate in someone else’s life, only the grace of love gives what is transcendent to him who aspires for it. Every gift of these free men is a sign and presence of the supernatural gift without which there is no justice.
He who chooses the criterion of freedom in the struggle for liberty is mistaken. Experience teaches that sooner or later we only become sensitive to cold and heat. Politics and economics, practiced without remembering the grace of truth and mercy, in the characteristic oblivion of man’s weakness and sin, cease to generate peace and justice, because they do not integrate people. They just create situations where lies and sin are disguised by a simulation of truth and virtue. In the situations of lies and sin, “ars gobernandi” degenerates into “ars dominandi.” Aware of the fact that the drama of man’s heart history is solved in the encounter with his weakness and sin and grace, John Paul II reminds the rich and the poor of human weakness and divine grace. He does not defend the poor against the rich. If he defended them, he should also defend the rich against the poor. He would enter a dialectic in which the master strikes the servant and the latter, in turn, does not look at the master with love, especially when he is in his hands. Master and servant are caricatures of the human person, and their struggle to achieve better positions in this dialectical society is just a squabble, sometimes inflamed, between impulsive and irresponsible children.
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Testimonies and Testament Testimony of Benedict XVI “How can we sum up the life and evangelical witness of this great Pontiff? I will attempt to do so by using two words: "fidelity" and "dedication", total fidelity to God and unreserved dedication to his mission as Pastor of the universal Church. (…).With his words and gestures, the dear John Paul II never tired of pointing out to the world that if a person allows himself to be embraced by Christ, he does not repress the riches of his humanity (…). The love of Christ was the dominant force in the life of our beloved Holy Father. Anyone who ever saw him pray, who ever heard him preach, knows that. Thanks to his being profoundly rooted in Christ, he was able to bear a burden which transcends merely human abilities: that of being the shepherd of Christ’s flock, his universal Church.” Testimony of Pope Francis “He was ‘the great missionary of the Church’: he was a missionary, a man who carried the Gospel everywhere, as you know better than I. How many trips did he make? But he went! He felt this fire of carrying forth the Word of the Lord. He was like Paul, like Saint Paul, he was such a man; for me this is something great.” Prayer of Mother Teresa “Under the weight of the Cross the Pope, following the example of Jesus, teaches us to ‘love’ the Cross. The Cross of the Christian is always a Holy Cross: teach us, O Lord, to learn to stay under the sign of the Cross. After the Cross, O Lord, comes the radiant dawn of the Resurrection. Our Holy Father already encountered this dawn of Resurrection in May of 1981after vanquishing the dark night of that tragic event. As then, so today, the Pope will return to serve the Church, having once again loved it at the foot of the Cross. (…) For us the Holy Father is presence, is grace, Is hope, is certainty. May our certainty, O Lord, not be damaged. In moments of suffering and hardship. We thank you, O Lord, for all the good that you wish for us.” The Testament “The times we are living in are unspeakably difficult and disturbing. The Church's journey has also become difficult and stressful, a characteristic proof of these times - both for the Faithful and for Pastors. In some Countries, the Church finds herself in a period of persecution no less evil than the persecutions of the early centuries, indeed worse, because of the degree of ruthlessness and hatred. Sanguis martyrum - semen christianorum ["The blood of martyrs is the seed of Christians" (Tertullian)]. And in addition to this, so many innocent people disappear, even in this Country in which we live.... I would like once again to entrust myself entirely to the Lord's grace. He Himself will decide when and how I am to end my earthly life and my pastoral ministry. In life and in death [I am] Totus Tuus through Mary Immaculate. I hope, in already accepting my death now, that Christ will give me the grace I need for the final passover, that is, [my] Pasch. I also hope that He will make it benefit the important cause I seek to serve: the salvation of men and women, the preservation of the human family and, within in it, all the nations and peoples (among them, I also specifically address my earthly Homeland), useful for the people that He has specially entrusted to me, for the matter of the Church and for the glory of God Himself.” (Spiritual Testament of Saint John Paul II)
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My beloved city “As the end of my earthly life draws close, I think back to its beginning, to my Parents, my Brother and my Sister (whom I never knew, for she died before I was born), to the Parish of Wadowice where I was baptized, to that city of my youth, to my peers, my companions of both sexes at elementary school, at high school, at university, until the time of the Occupation when I worked as a labourer, and later, to the Parish in Niegowic, to St Florian's Parish in Krakow, to the pastoral work of academics, to the context... to all the contexts... to Krakow and to Rome... to the persons who were especially entrusted to me by the Lord. I want to say just one thing to them all: "May God reward you!" “In manus Tuas, Domine, commendo spiritum meum”, A.D. 17.III.2000”. (Spiritual Testament of Saint John Paul II)
Chronological Biography 1920, May 18. Karol Józef Wojtyla is born in Wadowice, Poland, son of Karol Wojtyla and Emilia Kaczorowska. 1929, April 13. His mother dies. 1938, August. He moves with his father to Krakow and is enrolled in the Faculty of Arts of the Jagiellonian University. 1941, February 18. His father dies of a heart attack. Karol is left alone and starts working as a laborer in the quarry of Zakrzewek. 1946, November 1. He is ordained to the priesthood in Krakow and shortly after travels to Rome to continue his studies in theology. 1958, July 4. After three years of study, he is appointed Auxiliary Bishop of Krakow. 1964, January 13. He was appointed Archbishop of Krakow. 1967, June 26. He is made Cardinal by Pope Paul VI. 1978, October 16. He is elected Pope. 1979, June 2-10. He makes his first Pastoral Visit to Poland. 1981, May 13. An assassination attempt on his life takes place at St. Peter’s Square, with two successive hospitalizations at the Gemelli Hospital which he finally leaves on August 14.
1983, June 16-25. Second Pastoral Visit to Poland, where the martial law is in force. 1986, October 27. He presides over the First World Day of Prayer for Peace convoked in Assisi with the representatives of the Christian Churches and the religions of the world. 1988, July 2. He ratifies the full ecclesial ex-communion of priests who were linked to the traditionalist Fraternity founded by Bishop Marcel Lefebvre. 1992, October 31. End of the “revision” of the Galileo Galilei case with the “loyal apology” for the wrongdoings which the erudite had suffered. 1999, December 24. He opens the Holy Door of Saint Peter’s Basilica and starts the Great Jubilee of the Year 2000. 2005, February 24 – March 13. He is admitted at the Gemelli Hospital due to a respiratory crisis and is operated of tracheotomy. 2005, April 2. He dies at 9:37 pm. in the Vatican. 2011, May 1st. Pope Benedict presides over his beatification. 2014, April 27. Pope Francis proclaims him SAINT.
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For this reason and none other, John Paul II decisively said “No!” to theologians that look at man’s life and society through the perspective of feelings born from difficult political and pastoral experience. Even though they have nothing but noble intentions, when those feelings are left to themselves, they end up at the mercy of the servantmaster dialectic, which is always totalitarian. Using Norwid’s language, we would say that John Paul II “descends” to “human questions” about man considering the question about the person of Christ. “Human questions” in which Christ’s prophetic trace is not present, are merely technical and, more or less efficaciously, treat their own being and others as objects. Objects are desired. The chaos of man’s desire, provoked by the lordship of reason and will’s servility for pleasure and comfort, destroys friendship, marriage, families, and societies. It is common to speak of John Paul II’s great strategy and his ability in ousting “adversaries.” There is as much truth in this as there is misunderstanding. The strategist wins because he looks at the case from a higher level. John Paul II’s thinking travels from man in his beginning until his end, therefore including God’s surprises for us. God comes to us when we least expect Him. John Paul II does not accept battles over the human person on the grounds of chaos. He always takes the battlefield to a higher level, where man’s reality, disintegrated in senseless fragments, is reconstituted in a beautiful landscape. The ultimate battlefield for man is the Cross. In it, John Paul II looks for the reintegration of the human person and society. In front of this “magna quaestio” of God and man “the thoughts of many hearts will be revealed” (Lk 2:35), and therefore his freedom and order, but also his desire and chaos. Thus, the feelings in Job’s heart and his wife’s and friends’ hearts were expressed while facing suffering. When we say “person”, we mean communication of the persons. In the union of the beauty of human bodies, which happens with God and not of themselves, God’s
John Paul II looks at the dramatic history of the human heart through the dramatic history of Christ. As he thinks about man, he thinks about Christ, and vice versa. (…)
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(…) When he repeats Peter’s words in the name of everyone, “Lord, to whom we shall go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and to know that you are the Holy One of God”, he is thinking about man as someone who is destined for divinity and of Christ as someone who is “destined” to humanity.
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people is born, so the “magna quaestio” becomes the “magna quaestio” of society. Events in human society always happen in the same way they do in the society of divine persons. Every person is love. A society without persons becomes a mere sum of individuals in a mass. The space of the interpersonal dialogue of love, to which God’s word gives life, is the Church’s space, in the widest sense of the term. The Church does not postulate ideological or doctrinal opinions and hypotheses; she is concerned with being present among men, creating a divine-human friendship through which we grow. The Church shows the person of God to the human person. That is why the Church, even when it exists in it, is different to this world. Beyond its serious moral shortcomings, she is an authority for the world and not the other way around. If society cannot do without persons and persons cannot do without the Church, nothing in social life can replace the Church. The Church is not only concerned with man, but also with society. That is the reason why social doctrine is necessary in the Church and she releases encyclicals like “Centesimus annus.” The Church—John Paul II says—must not create civilization or serve one system today and another one tomorrow. The Church, in fact, does not arise from that or is directed towards that. It ministers to the special vigil of the people in the presence of God’s gift. The Church, which must show the person of Christ to the human person, cannot prevent suffering or death from occurring. If it did so, it would cease to protect and there would be no act of adoration in a world where the coming is realized in the Church. Man would not live in spirit and truth. The absence of suffering and death cannot be anything but a cosmic tragedy, a tragedy of the individual person and of the people. Christ severely reprimanded Peter when he tried to convince him not to enter Jerusalem, where he was to suffer and die. He openly called him Satan because he felt according to man and, therefore,
John Paul II does not accept battles over the human person on the grounds of chaos. He always takes the battlefield to a higher level, where man’s reality, disintegrated in senseless fragments, is reconstituted in a beautiful landscape.
Cardinal Ratzinger, future Benedict XVI and- in that time -Dean of the College of Cardinals, presides Saint John Paul II's funeral.
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against man. John Paul II’s reflection on man is a difficult one, because, with Christ, he watches over the human suffering that rises from life. It is the reflection that Job’s friends fail to understand. Nevertheless, in his prayer Job gained consciousness and acted in harmony with its own nature to save them; he trusted God. “No man is an island.”
The Church shows the person of God to the human person. That is why the Church, even when it exists in it, is different to this world. Beyond its serious moral shortcomings, she is an authority for the world and not the other way around.
Translated by Ana María Neira
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recognizing life
the epistemological question: gospel, science, and ethics by Livio Melina
"In his own service to the People of God, Saint John Paul II was the Pope of the family. He himself once said that he wanted to be remembered as the pope of the family. I am particularly happy to point this out as we are in the process of journeying with families towards the Synod on the family. It is surely a journey which, from his place in heaven, he guides and sustains." Pope Francis
What are we speaking about when the subject is bio-ethics? To what does its subject “life” point us? To an abstract entity, defined by science and able to be manipulated by technology, or to the quality which belongs to the very being of a living subject? The clarification that Revelation brings to the recognition of life does not come from outside but rather from within human experience. The light of the Word of God, corresponding to the heart of man, gives rise to a patrimony of human evidence of rational value, which is capable of guiding man's action in placing increasingly sophisticated technical skills at the service of the great destiny to which the life of man and the cosmos is called.
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hat are we speaking about when the subject at hand is bio-ethics? To what does its subject “life” point us? To an abstract entity, defined by science and able to be manipulated by technology, or to the quality which belongs to the very being of a living subject? The question of life is at the heart of bioethics. And yet it is oftentimes neglected, if not censored, as though it were a completely obvious point. Bioethics comes from a practical urgency: to establish ethical, publicly shared standards to regulate medical science’s interventions in life. New and increasingly extraordinary powers over life itself allow us to intervene not only at its beginning
HUMANITAS Nº 6 pp. 68 - 97
* Msgr. Livio Melina is President of the Pontifical John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family of Rome at the Lateran University. He is member of the Council of Consultants and Collaborators of HUMANITAS.
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Evangelium vitae has proposed more than a casuistry, more than a bioethical limit: it has called for the development of a new and authentic “culture of life” (n. 95) to which the light of the Gospel can bring its own essential contribution.
and end, but indeed in its biological form and genetic structure, which there are already plans to reshape. The deep unrest over the unusual scenarios which lie ahead has crystallized into a demand for ethical criteria to put a limit on the powers of biotechnology. Confronted with the pluralism of today’s western societies, it is thought that we need to find them in reference to the formal dimension of justice; that is, by seeking procedural rules in reaching a majority consensus, leaving aside the essential perspective of the goodness of the acting subject, which is relegated to the private sphere. Thus the root question is removed, that of the objective value of the good of life for the subject who is acting. Consequently bioethics puts aside the question of what life is, taking for granted that it falls to biological knowledge to define it. Ethics’ only task, it is assumed, is subsequently to set rules and limits on the powers of science.1 Thus, ethics inevitably remains alien to life, about which it wishes to speak. It always arrives too late, once the games are over. And it arrives as an undesired and petulant guest. Two factors are at work here: the extreme power of scientific knowledge, which marginalizes as non-objective every other form of knowledge; and the lack of critical reflection on it and on ethics itself, which has become reduced to problems of logical-formal argumentation.2 Even more bitter would be the objections if we were then to introduce into the bioethical debate reference to the Christian faith and to the enlightening contribution the Gospel has made to the mystery of life, as the subject of my article demands. The suggestion of possible religious foundations for bioethics certainly does not find a favorable welcome in the discussions which take place in
1 Within the bioethics debate in Italy, two works should be mentioned which recently have put in question the complaint and re-proposed the root question: A. SCOLA (edited by), Quale vita? La bioetica in questione, Mondadori, Milano 1998; G. Angelini (edited by), La bio-etica. Questione civile e problemi teorici sottesi, Glossa, Milano 1998. 2 Cf. G. Angelini, “La questione radicale: quale idea di ’vita’?”, in ID., La bioetica, cit., 177- 206.
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the present climate of our democratic societies; indeed, it meets with attitudes of distrust and suspicion. It cannot avoid reckoning with an objection of radical impertinence, which tends to exclude religion from the public debate on ethics. Respect for social pluralism would imply a prejudicial “secularization” of structures. Reference to absolute and indisputable truth, not only those of a religious nature, but also those which are philosophical, would give rise to intolerance and rigidity. Only “weak thinking” lacking in truth would simultaneously be able to guarantee the autonomy of every subject and the flexibility of the solutions adopted. As we see, it is not only the public importance of religion which is being contested here, but reason’s very ability to grasp universal truths which are valid for everyone. We must therefore examine the relationship between the very concept of reason and the truth about the good of life, and those conditions that allow for an authentic and just social coexistence. Our reflection is therefore divided into the following successive stages: first, the epistemological problem shall be illumined by showing how the overcoming of scientific reductionism in relation to the subject of life requires a well-structured and integrated approach to reason, which in opening itself to faith can find therein a singular light. Secondly, we will look at “life” as an object of biological science and therefore at the originality of personal human life, for which the cognitive attitude, involving the freedom of the subject, cannot but modulate itself as a recognition. Therefore, in a third step, we will present the contribution made by theological reflection, which acknowledges Jesus Christ as the “Word of life” and its “Lord.”
Grounded in the philosophical context of the Cartesian dualism between subject and object, between res cogitans and res extensa, modern scientific biology posits the poorer, quantitative material element as intelligible par excellence and then seeks to explain life mechanically, beginning from what lacks life. (…)
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1. Knowledge of the living organism: the epistemological problem
1.1 Overcoming epistemological reductionism
(…) After having methodologically excluded final causality, it is then forced to give up efficient causality as well. Only quantity and its derivatives would be knowable (…)
Critical reflection of modern science lays bare the intrinsic provisionality of its methodologies in understanding life and demonstrates the need to integrate its contributions in a more comprehensive and detailed understanding of reason.3 Grounded in the philosophical context of the Cartesian dualism between subject and object, between res cogitans and res extensa, modern scientific biology posits the poorer, quantitative material element as intelligible par excellence and then seeks to explain life mechanically, beginning from what lacks life. After having methodologically excluded final causality, it is then forced to give up efficient causality as well. Only quantity and its derivatives would be knowable. The mechanistic model of nature typical of dualism leads inevitably to an ontology of materialistic monism: matter produces life, which cannot but be understood as a meaningless and open-ended adventure, a combination of chance and necessity.4 According to Jonas, however, this concept misses the decisive point of life itself, that it “is individuality that has in itself its own center”5; it is a totality unified in an active self-integration that, while depending on matter, uses it freely in view of the immanent goal of the organism itself. Life, in fact, means “spontaneous movement that tends towards an end”6: the autonomy of the form is not independence from matter but rather dynamic identity, which is realized in a relationship of continuous exchange with the surrounding environment. In this sense there is no organism without teleology and there is no teleology 3 H. Jonas, Organismo e libertà.Verso una biologia filosofica, Einaudi,Torino, 1999. 4 J. Monod, Le hasard et la nécessité. Essai sur la philosophie naturelle de la biologie moderne, Le Seuil, Paris, 1970. 5 Ibid.,110. 6 Ibid.,105.
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without a certain degree of interiority, for which reason it would not be out of place to speak of freedom beginning with the most basic levels of the phenomenon of life. Therefore, “life can only be recognized by life.”7 This is the great advantage of having been endowed with a body: the ability to understand the body “from within.” Jonas’ statement should be understood as the proposal of a concept of reason which, by refusing the one-sidedness of objectification, acknowledges being rooted in the concreteness of the bodily and historical subject and therefore open to reality in accord with the totality of its constitutive factors, in a differentiated and multi-level approach.
1.2 Broadening the concept of reason and the contribution of theological knowledge In the modern age’s rationalistic conception, reason is the sole and autonomous source of the norms of public law. The model of a scientific knowledge developed irrespective of the subject and so technologically powerful, becomes, by its prevalence, a factor in the marginalization of theology. However, the end of the modern age also involves the crisis of this unilateral type of rationality and thus this exclusion is being called into question.8 The broadening of the concept of reason, understood as openness to reality in the totality articulated by its dimensions, also involves the possibility of a new consideration of the contribution of a theological perspective. If “faith” understood as a human attitude is not extraneous to “reason” in its dynamic with truth, then the contribution of a superior light received through the free act of theological faith also cannot be prejudiciously excluded. In this sense, the modern contrast between faith and reason can be overcome by rediscovering a non “rationalistic” conception of reason and a non fideistic notion of faith. Reason, in fact, is not separated from the act by which the human conscience in its
(…) The mechanistic model of nature typical of dualism leads inevitably to an ontology of materialistic monism: matter produces life, which cannot but be understood as a meaningless and open-ended adventure, a combination of chance and necessity.
7 Ibid.,127. 8 See: R. Guardini, La fine dell’epoca moderna. Il Potere, Morcelliana, Brescia, 1984.
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The model of a scientific knowledge developed irrespective of the subject and so technologically powerful, becomes, by its prevalence, a factor in the marginalization of theology.
wholeness first refers to truth. Faith, before being a theological virtue, is—in the Augustinian understanding—a universal anthropological figure of access to truth:9 only in faith, as a free and reasonable response to being, which reveals itself through sign, can one come to know what is beyond the limited grasp of the concept. Thus theology too, as a critical and systematic reflection on Revelation, cannot from the outset be considered extrinsic to or outof-bounds in the bioethics discussion on the mystery of personal human life. H.T. Engelhardt’s statement that “if theology cannot provide a contribution of moral theory to the endeavors of bioethics, it can however provide aesthetic suggestions of meaning and purpose”10 can and must be overcome. On the one hand, it exposes the limit of the rationalistic formalism of a moral code, which in order to be purely rational and universal, has nothing to say about the meaning and scope of the life of man and has to leave this necessary argument to theology. On the other hand, this statement would relegate theology to the field of aesthetics, i.e., to subjective taste, and to what on that account must be confined to the private sphere, as it does not have the dignity of a publicly defensible and arguable knowledge.11 If the presupposition of theology is an act of faith in Revelation, it does not thereby reject rationality, nor does it exclude it from dialogue. Theology instead means to argue rationally beginning from Revelation, which for its part advances the indefeasible claim to tell the truth about man, a truth that should be publicly put forth.
9 In this regard: F. Chiereghin, Fede e ricerca filosofica nel pensiero di S. Agostino, Cedam, Padova, 1965; ID., Saggi di filosofia della religione, Cusl, Padova, 1988. 10 H.T. Engelhardt, ”We look for God and we find the abyss: bioethics and natural theology,” in AA.VV. (edited by E.E. Shelp), Teologia e bioetica. Fondamenti e problemi di frontiera, Dehoniane, Bologna, 1989, 149-165. 11 This is the essential meaning of the Encyclical Fides et ratio: see J. Ratzinger, “Fede, verità e cultura. Riflessioni in collegamento con l’Enciclica ‘Fides et ratio’”, in ID., Fede verità tolleranza. Il cristianesimo e le religioni del mondo, Cantagalli, Siena, 2003, 193-221.
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2. The Phenomenon of “life” and its “re-cognition”
2.1 The phenomenon of “life”, object of biological science The phenomenon of "life" means, according to the common observation, an uncommunicated, spontaneous movement that originates from within the being itself.12 Experimental sciences and, in particular, biology study those vital phenomena which occur within a limited mass of extremely complex and constantly changing matter, revealing its distinctive characteristics: metabolism, i.e. continuous renewal through assimilation of material from without and elimination of waste; the individuality of living things that present themselves as organisms, endowed with morphologically and functionally different organs that are related and coordinated with each other; the specific differentiation of living matter; specific generation whereby every living thing comes from another or from other living beings of the same species; variability and adaptability, as the ability to mutate so that it can live in profoundly different conditions from those in which the same organism had lived previously; responsiveness, or the ability to respond to environmental stimuli; the demarcation of the organism’s existence in a determined life cycle; and self-regulation, whereby each part develops and operates in service of the whole, through a governance, a moderation and a coordination of the individual functions of the organism. What is living thus appears as an open system in which a complex equilibrium of streams is established, and which is endowed with individuality and capable of interaction with the environment.13 Within the world of living beings, varying degrees
If “faith” understood as a human attitude is not extraneous to “reason” in its dynamic with truth, then the contribution of a superior light received through the free act of theological faith also cannot be prejudiciously excluded.
12 Cf. Aristotle, De anima,II,1,403 b 16. In merito: M.SANCHEZ SORONDO (edited by), La vita, PulMursia, Roma, 1998. 13 Cf. G. Sermonti, Le forme della vita. Introduzione alla Biologia, Armando, Roma, 1981; M. Locquin (edited by), Aux origines de la vie, Payard, Paris, 1987.
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Faith, before being a theological virtue, is—in the Augustinian understanding—a universal anthropological figure of access to truth: only in faith, as a free and reasonable response to being, which reveals itself through sign, can one come to know what is beyond the limited grasp of the concept. (…)
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of implementation of life may be seen: traditionally we distinguish between vegetative life, which encompasses several vital functions (nutrition, growth, reproduction) and animal life, with higher vital functions: sensitivity and spontaneous motion, which are recognizable only in animals. In more complex organisms we then find tropisms and reflexes, which in higher animals become spontaneous movements or, to be more precise, instinctive. Today there is a tendency to distinguish, rather than between vegetative life and animal life, between the former and the life of relationship, which involves sensitivity and motility and diversified abilities to react to the environment, considering instinctive behavior as the proper character of the higher animals. In lower living beings, it is instead assumed that any distinction between animals and plants can be contrived. The phenomenon of “life” in its various degrees of actualization, thus presents itself with elements of continuity relative to the order of the lower physic-chemical phenomena and with dimensions of a quantum leap. To this corresponds the classic debate between mechanists,
who attempt to trace the property of life only to exchanges of chemical and physical phenomena, and vitalists, who instead emphasize the positive irreducibility of the vital phenomena at this level of explanation. In effect, the biology of the living being is a wholly unique case for epistemology, since it shows how biology cannot be reduced to a mathematical formulation of the living world. Although hypothetically experimental, biology can be understood as an analysis of the phenomena of life simply in energetic and physic-chemical terms, therefore by considering explanations in terms of finality as a residue of irrationality to reduce and eliminate as much as possible, it becomes increasingly clear that it cannot make any real progress without breaking with a rigid mechanicism. In order to “save the appearances of the sensible” and to advance through more fruitful hypothesis, for several decades now there has been a forceful anti-mechanistic reaction, which reevaluated concepts such as “organic,” “life,” “immanent activity,” and even “soul.” The synthetic intuition of vital reality, the phenomenological intuition of the organic with which biology occupies itself is therefore also associated with an analytical reduction. Even with the necessary distinctions and while continuing to leave plenty of room for physicchemical analysis, biology feels the need to open up the categories and concepts which can be in continuity with a theoretical philosophical explanation. This is certainly not a matter of moving from the rigid mechanism of positivist rationalism to an irrational vitalism that does not respect the legitimate distinction and methodological autonomy of experimental biology. It is rather a matter of showing how, on the basis of the integral respect for the results of experimental science, a philosophy of living may arise which interprets them in a light all its own, thus offering biology its rationale. Thus the physic-chemical dimension will not remain juxtaposed with the vital dimension of biological phenomenon but rather shall be ordered to it.
(…) Thus theology too, as a critical and systematic reflection on Revelation, cannot from the outset be considered extrinsic to or out-of-bounds in the bioethics discussion on the mystery of personal human life.
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The phenomenon of “life” in its various degrees of actualization, thus presents itself with elements of continuity relative to the order of the lower physic-chemical phenomena and with dimensions of a quantum leap. (…)
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In effect, an epistemological critique of the biological sciences shows the limits and aporias of a reductionist approach to the phenomenon of “life.” According to Michael Polanyi,14 a living organism can be viewed as a system that functions under the control of two distinct principles: its biological structure, which as a higher principle serves as a limiting condition to put to use the resources of the physicchemical processes, the latter in turn, as a lower principle, allow the various organs to perform their functions. In this sense, the structure of living things is alien to the laws of physics and chemistry that the organism uses: they are irreducibly higher principles that are added with a regulatory function. Or, with Hans Jonas, we would say that the identity of a living organism is the identity of a form in time and not the identity of matter: this living form is ontologically “the overall structural and dynamic order of a multiplicity.”15 Information is reducible neither to matter nor to energy, although its storage, transmission, and conversion depend physically on both matter and energy. Genetics then pushes towards the adoption of a multilevel analysis and an informational paradigm as most suitable for interpreting the phenomenon of “life.”16 The living individual represents a true paradox for experimental biology, being at once its object and its aporia.17 In fact, individuality cannot be predicated of the subject but only of being.18 The unity of the organism which it takes up as its proper object of investigation eludes the experimental method.19 Thus, the insufficiency of a pu14 Cf. M. Polanyi, “Life’s Irreducible Structure,” in Science 160 (1968) 1308-1312. 15 H. Jonas, Dalle fede antica all’uomo tecnologico, Il Mulino, Bologna, 1991, 192. si veda anche: ID., The Phenomenon of Life: Toward a Philosophical Biology, Harper & Row, New York, 1966. The biological factor of “life” implies two irreducibilities which are irreducible to chemistry and physics: the living organism’s capacity for self-control, which guarantees its identity, and intrinsic finalism: Cf. PH. Caspar, “Génération: enracinement biologique et enjeux spirituels,” in Anthropotes XIV/2 (1998) 287-358. 16 Cf. R. Colombo, ”Vita: dalla biologia all’etica,” in SCOLA, Quale vita?, cit., 169-195. 17 Cf. PH. Caspar, La saisie du zygote humain par l’esprit. Destin de l’ontogenèse aristotélicienne, Paris-Namur 1987, 411ff. 18 In fact, although matter is the principle of individuation, it is only in union with the form that the individual becomes intelligible. 19 In this regard see the position of D.L. Schindler, “A Response to the Joint Statement, ‘Production of Pluripotent Stem Cells by Oocyte Assisted Reprogramming’,” in Communio 32 (Summer 2005) 369-380, regarding a recent debate in the United States: “the determination of the presence of life in its most minute beginnings is not precisely obvious in the same manner as a positivistic fact, but always involves philosophical mediation (though sometimes unconscious).”
rely experimental approach, while it signals the limits of scientific intelligibility, sets in motion the dynamics of metaphysical reason. How could a scientist engage in bio-logy who claimed fundamentally to eliminate the idea of the function of the compound which it analyzes, who did not try to understand its “form,” i.e., the reason for the order of the different parts which interact giving rise to the phenomenon of life? If one in no way assumes in one’s investigation the existence of a structure of one’s object in relation to the vital function, one would immediately see it vanish. The aporia of this type of bioethical reflection regarding its own object—life—and the purpose for which it was instituted here comes to the fore. A reductionist explanation of all vital human phenomena leads to the understanding that man is only an association of cells, an accidental stadium of evolution and that DNA is the essence of life.20 A vision such as this then becomes incapable of grasping the organism as a whole beyond the sum of its individual parts. It becomes incapable of recognizing the human dignity of the mystery of life itself, and therefore the validity of an ethical perspective beyond the mere procedural consensus about principles. Truth and error, not less than freedom and dignity, become empty concepts when the soul is reduced to its chemical components. The particular character of the moral crisis in which we find ourselves is highlighted here. As Leo R. Kass states, “We find ourselves in a stormy sea without a precise map for the journey, for we adhere more and more to a vision of human life which at once gives us an enormous power over life and simultaneously denies any possibility of nonarbitrary rules to guide its use.”21 Hence there resonates in a particularly disturbing way the Gospel’s admonition: “What will it profit a man, if he gains the whole world and forfeits his life?” (Mt 16:26).
(…) To this corresponds the classic debate between mechanists, who attempt to trace the property of life only to exchanges of chemical and physical phenomena, and vitalists, who instead emphasize the positive irreducibility of the vital phenomena at this level of explanation.
20 Cf. L.R. Kass, Life, Liberty and the Defense of Dignity. The Challenge for Bioethics, Encounter Book, San Francisco 2002, 133-139. 21 Ibid.,138.
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2.2 Originality of personal human life
A reductionist explanation of all vital human phenomena leads to the understanding that man is only an association of cells, an accidental stadium of evolution and that DNA is the essence of life.
Today’s commonly widespread mentality tends no longer to recognize man’s special place among the other living beings, particularly among the higher animals. Modern science’s evolutionist methodological postulate implies a continuity between the animal world and the human world, between animal life and human life. And yet ethical experience spontaneously presents us with the irreducible originality of that respect demanded by human life compared to that demanded by the life of animals and plants. How can we explain this diversity? In order to express the special dignity that ethical experience recognizes in the life of a human being, here we come up against the concept of person and in its relations with life: what does “personal life” mean? Generally, we think about man’s relationship with his humanity differently, for example, than we think about a dog’s belonging to his animal species.22 Man is not merely an example of a species with determinate characteristics common to all the others. In order to discover what qualifies as a person, we refer either to his rational interiority (intellect and free will, the capacity for reflection and self-governance) or to his life’s social character, which is an interweaving of relationships. Yet being a person is not definable through the qualitative characteristics common to the species: “who” we are is not purely identical with “what” we are. Persons are not a “something” but a “someone.” Personhood is therefore not a concept that describes an individual’s belonging to a species; rather, it indicates the original manner in which individuals of the human species participate in their humanity. The concept of “person” signifies, according to St. Thomas Aquinas, “what is most perfect in all nature; that is, a subsistent individual of a rational nature.”23 While “man” 22 Cf. R. Spaemann, Personen. Versuche über den Unterschied zwischen‚ etwas’ und ‚jemand’, Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart, 1996. 23 St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I, q. 29, a. 3.
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refers to universal human nature, to the common species which is expressed in so many examples, the term “person” indicates the most individual human being in his concrete and unrepeatable individual reality. The concept of person is intrinsically associated with a special dignity to be acknowledged and respected. To say “person” is to indicate a peculiar dignity of existence, which has value as an end to be affirmed for its own sake and which must never to be used as a means to another. Above all, we want to pause to investigate the reasons for this eminent dignity of the person. It should therefore be observed that the proper and specific reason for the dignity of the person is not simply the common human nature in which he participates together with all the other billions of human beings, but his being truly a “unique and unrepeatable” person, as John Paul II used to recall.24 If the tradition had insisted above all on his rational and free nature, the modern sensibility is to place the accent on the individuality of each subject, which constitutes him as endowed with an independent and incommunicable interiority. Though countless men have lived over the course of human history, each person exists in the world as if he were the only one: sui iuris et alteri incommunicabilis. From the moment that man, as a person, is not a simple example of a species, his individual value impinges on the common and collective nature. The person indicates a most concrete whole, in which the common nature of the human species with all its characteristics is certainly included, but this nature is appropriated by the individual subject in an absolutely unique way. The concretely existing totality of the person, by its value, transcends common nature and the sum of its parts. We might sum it up in this way: the person, while possessing a nature, is not reducible to it. Nor can we reduce the person to the individual qualities that distinguish him and make him precious, such
A vision such as this then becomes incapable of grasping the organism as a whole beyond the sum of its individual parts. It becomes incapable of recognizing the human dignity of the mystery of life itself, and therefore the validity of an ethical perspective beyond the mere procedural consensus about principles.
24 Cf. John Paul II, Enc. Redemptor hominis 13, § 3.
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Truth and error, not less than freedom and dignity, become empty concepts when the soul is reduced to its chemical components. The particular character of the moral crisis in which we find ourselves is highlighted here.
as intelligence, sensitivity, goodness and so on. They may vanish and fade without reducing his value. It is precisely the experience of love which reveals the irreducible originality of the concrete person.25 Indeed, it reveals the irreplaceability of the beloved with any other person.26 One who loves may never be consoled for the loss of the beloved by saying: “I will be able to find the qualities he possessed in another person, because in the end the human species continues and, within it, one can certainly find other men with excellent qualities.” One who speaks in this way would only show that he had never truly loved, that in his love he had never really reached the profound mystery of the other person, but rather that he had remained on the surface: that he had appreciated some of the things which the other had, but not his person. Love does not have as its object the qualities of the common species, nor even those of a single individual as such, but rather the unique and irreducible person of the other. What is irreducibly personal in the other is what qualifies his eminent dignity and his subjectivity. Contemporary personalism has forcefully indicated that the person cannot be reduced to the category of object, but must rather be considered as a subject. Now it is precisely on the basis of his incommunicability and irreducibility as a subject that the person is open to a relationship with the other person. While an object can be dominated and used as a means, a subject must be acknowledged and affirmed for itself, as an end, with its own proper dignity. This manifests itself clearly in the encounter with the other person. He is therefore not a being closed in a self-sufficient pride, but is open to reciprocity and dialogue wherein a subject to subject relationship is revealed. It is in love that the person is revealed as a person, in his unique unrepeatability. The irreducible difference of every person becomes a call to communion between persons, in which alone the person 25 Cf. J.J. Pérez Soba Diez del Corral, La pregunta por la persona. La respuesta de la interpersonalidad, “Studia Theologica Matritensia,” Madrid, 2004. 26 Cf. J. Crosby, The Selfhood of the Human Person, CUA Press,Washington DC, 1996, 41-81.
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truly finds himself. Found at the heart of the person there is a vocational dimension which, in an ecstatic dynamic, leads him out of himself to the encounter with the other, to receptivity, and to mutual gift. What is the relationship between the biological dimension of life and the person? In the perspective followed here, being a person is not a characteristic one casually adds to a living being of the human species. To be a person is the very way in which man is man: it is part of the intimate heart of his humanity. Aristotle’s observation on the relationship between life and the living being should also be set forth here: vivere viventibus est esse:27 just as life coincides with the very being of the living, being a person belongs to the essence of the concrete man. It is essential at this point to observe that the body makes up an integral part of the person, it participates in its dignity and it connotes the vocation to openness and to the gift of self. The person, in his concrete totality, is a substantial union of soul and body: there is no person without the body.28 The body is not an instrument to be used or manipulated for one’s own pleasure as one would treat something inferior, as something one “has,” which one may dispose of liberally. An instrumental conception of the body, as is prevalent today, implies a deleterious dualism. The apparent exaltation conceals a substantial reduction and a potential misunderstanding of its value. Together with the spirit, it instead determines man's ontological subjectivity and is therefore permeated with the very dignity of the person.29 The body in its masculinity and femininity takes on the value of “sign in some sense sacramental” of the person. It is called to become the manifestation of the spirit. This implies a deep co-penetration of the biological dimension with the personal dimension: any separation
The identification of the personal dimension with a biological or accidental functional quality of the human being, is however a consequence of the adoption of a sensist, empiricist, cognitive perspective, for which only the “fact” verifiable through biological science exists.
27 Aristotle, De Anima, II, 4, 415 b 13. 28 Cf. St. Thomas Aquinas, In III Sent., d. 5, q. 6, a. 2: “non tantum ab anima habet homo quod sit persona, sed ab ea et corpore, cum ex utrisque subsistat.” 29 See the Wednesday catecheses of John Paul II, Uomo e donna lo creò. Catechesi sull’amore umano, LEV—Città nuova, Roma, 1985, XLV, 187-189.
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In this renewed biocentrism, which rejects the JudeoChristian heritage of anthropology, there converges and collides a vague pantheism typical of certain environmentalist currents and the scientistic revindication of being able to experience everything without attributing a privileged character to human life.
would understate that the being of the person consists in the life of man. The basic functions and biological processes in man are not something a-personal but involve personal relationships and dimensions of existence. Human beings eating and drinking, beyond the physiological functions of their body, enter in and become part of a plan of life and work, they open for socializing and sharing. All the more sexual relationships, which integrate the instinctual and emotional drives into a relationship of one person with another in the sign-sacrament of their bodies.
2.3 “Re-cognizing” life: anthropological and ethical dimensions The affirmation of personal being is at the same time an affirmation of a particular dignity that must be recognized, and of ethical requirements of respect that must be honored. Indeed, it is only in relation to the freedom of other people that the personal character of a human being is determined. I can define myself as a person only in relation to persons. Persons are given to one another not as objects (etwas “something”) to talk about and to have, but as "subjects" (jemand: “someone”) with whom to talk and to respect in their irreducible subjective otherness.30 The ethical density of the interpersonal relationship is the context in which one gives or does not give recognition to the person. Recognizing persons as persons thus reveals itself as the first and foundational duty, and indeed as the radical foundation of every duty that follows. The relationship with the person of the other is the original ethical experience, in which the absoluteness of the duty emerges. Emmanuel Levinas powerfully captured the emergence of the ethical dimension in the encounter with the face of the other person: “The relationship with the face is immediately ethical. The face is what you cannot kill: whose meaning consists in saying ‘you shall not kill me.’”31 30 Cf. Spaemann, op. cit., 13-24. 31 E. Lévinas, Etica e infinito. Dialoghi con Philippe Nemo, Città Nuova, Roma 1984, 101.
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The experience of moral duty therefore corresponds to the perception of the person and his dignity. In fact, it speaks of duty in the proper sense only in reference to persons. The recognition of the person in his dignity as an end and never as a means, of a subject and not a thing, of “someone” to respect and love and not of “something” to use, appears as the original ethical experience, as a free response suited to the reality of the other and of the relationship. It presents itself with traits of singular absoluteness, it imposes itself on consciousness unconditionally and yet without necessity. The denial of this due recognition to another, however, has a repercussion of the utmost gravity on the subject that does not do it: one who does not treat another human being as a person injures himself in his own dignity as a person. Denying the ethical density of the interpersonal relationship means descending from the level in which even his own person has meaning.
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The Son is the Logos of creation, the Wisdom that is the origin of its order and that establishes its meaning. The Spirit of God, which is the “Spirit of life,” directs its dynamism of development towards a growing autonomy, which has its summit in man, called to be the “spokesman” of creation. (…)
Opposed to these theses, in “secular” bioethics, is the tendency to draw a clear distinction between biological human life and personal human life: what is relevant on the moral plane would not be the biological connection to a particular species, but the factual verifiability of the presence of a certain capacity or the empirical manifestation of certain behaviors that allow the individual to be qualified as independent. In this sense, only normal adult beings who are capable of understanding and willing have the moral status of persons in the strict sense. And therefore: not all human beings are persons; according to H.T. Engelhardt “merely biological human life precedes the beginning of the life of persons in the strict sense, and usually continues for some time after their death.”32 In this line, the Australian bioethicist Peter Singer condemns as “speciesism” (speciesism) the—in his view—unfounded bias for those beings who, from the mere biological point of view, belong to our own human species. He identifies the decisive criteria for the attribution of personality with a property of the nervous system developed to feel pain. And with surprising and ruthless consistency he concludes: “The life of a newborn child of the human race thus has less value than the life of a pig, a dog, or a chimpanzee.”33 The absurdity of this separation between human and person should logically lead to the affirmation that consciousness (an element that would make a difference) is a factor added occasionally to humans in order to produce the person. The identification of the personal dimension with a biological or accidental functional quality of the human being, is however a consequence of the adoption of a sensist, empiricist, cognitive perspective, for which only the “fact” verifiable through biological science exists.
32 Cf. H.T. Engelhardt, Manuale di bioetica, Il Saggiatore, Milano 1991: cap. IV, §: “La vita umana biologica contrapposta alla vita umana personale.” For a detailed critical review of the recent debate on the concept of person: L. Palazzani, Il concetto di persona tra bioetica e diritto, Giappichelli,Torino, 1996. 33 P. Singer, Practical Ethics, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1980, 48-71.
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And yet the recognition of the personal nature of the human being is not an arbitrary attribution which prescinds from any biological basis. The recognition presupposes he who is recognized and does not create existence or value. Certainly there is a debt to humanity due the human being in its infancy, who can develop as a person only when he is treated by his mother and the environment as a person. But this anticipated credit, the foundation of education, is based on the intrinsic qualities of the small human being. Only in fairy tales does a piece of wood, when treated like a child, then indeed become a child made of flesh and bones. In this sense, it is incorrect to speak of “potential persons”: persons are always in act. Personality is not the result of a development but rather the inherent characteristic feature that allows such development to occur. On the other hand, there is a contradiction in the claim to render conditional upon certain particular empirical assertions, that are by their nature more speculative, the unconditionality of that respect owed to the recognized personhood or its practical applications. It must therefore be concluded, with Robert Spaemann, that there is only one criterion for being a person: the biological belonging to the human species. “The being of the person is the life of a man. [...] And therefore person is man and not a quality of man.”34
(…) The Son and the Spirit are, as Ireneaus said, the two hands the Father used to create everything.
2.4 Symbolic ontology and openness to the mystery of life Life, the object of bioethics, therefore presents itself to our gaze according to diverse ontological degrees of actuation. Personal human life stands at the summit and coincides without possible separation with the life of the human being. Beginning with this ontological summit, which also serves as a fundamental ethical criterion, we 34 Cf. Spaemann, op. cit., 264.
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The theological motivation for the value of human life is found in that “specific and special bond with the Creator” that was established in his original deliberation: “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness (Gn 1:26; EV 34).
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must then consider the issues relating to the care of the lower forms of life and respect for the environment. Now, as we have said, the person constitutes the most perfect level that exists, the highest degree of being that we can encounter. And the person is given the freedom to learn in the manner of a “re-cognition,” in which the person is fully involved in a relationship of subject to subject. If, as we have seen, there are different degrees of manifestation and symbolic density of the sign, to these there will also correspond a depth of diversified involvement of freedom. The most basic and simple levels of being may involve a minimal involvement and almost prescinded from freedom, but those which are higher and more perfect require the maximum participation of the whole subject. The most critical point of the dramatic interpellation of freedom will occur right in knowing the person, the ontological summit in whom being gives itself: knowing [conoscere] always has the modality of a “re-cognizing” [“ri-conoscere”]. Thus ethics is always a dimension necessarily present and not simply juxtaposed to an objective metaphysical knowing in which freedom would not be involved. Being manifests itself in the real symbol of the person together as true and as good and asks to be freely acknowledged. Ethics, which has its original moment in the relationship with the other person, indeed becomes a particularly dense place for ontology. It is the place of existential perception, though not necessarily thematized by the dimension of “mystery” that life implies, in the sense that in caring for the life of the other, the possibility is opened to freedom to seize a transcendence there revealed. On this basis, a path toward dialogue naturally opens with the Christian faith and with theology in a strong sense, understood as a critical and systematic reflection on Revelation. The Gospel of life can illumine the concept of life that bioethics uses as a paradigm. In Christianity, in fact, truth has an eminently historical and personal character: it is an event that gives itself in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of God made man, “the way, the
truth, and the life” (Jn 14:6). The Christian faith appears, therefore, as the free and supernatural realization of an original anthropological structure of faith that, far from contradicting reason, opens up its horizon and allows for its openness to truth. Thus also theology cannot prejudicially be considered extrinsic and out of the game in bioethical discussions that deal with the mystery of personal human life.
3. The Contribution of the Gospel to the Recognition of the Mystery of Life
3.1 Theology of life in the light of creation A precise “theology of life” is developed in the Encyclical Evangelium vitae. In harmony with the faith of the Church which confesses that life shines forth through the Gospel of Jesus Christ (cf. 2 Tim 1:10), such theology possesses an authentic Christological dimension which is focused on the mysteries of his life, death, and resurrection. Yet the Christian doctrine of creation has long been accused of having given rise to a unilateral anthropocentrism, which on the one hand would not be sustainable in the face of evolutionary theories,35 and on the other hand is recognized as responsible for the ecological imbalance of our civilization’s consumerist exploitation. The philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer was the first to criticize harshly Jewish religion and Christianity, claiming that their insistence on man’s central and dominant position would lead us to consider the rest of creation as an object that mankind may exploit at will.36 The biblical command: “Subdue the earth” (Gn 1:28) would have degraded every other form of life to a simple object to be used, and thus led to the abuse of plants, animals, and the world’s resources in general.
If every created thing subsists by virtue of its relationship with the Creator and if, in particular, every form of life manifests something of the richness of God’s life, nonetheless there exists a clear distinction between human life and the life of other creatures.
35 Cf. J. Rachels, Creati dagli animali. Implicazioni morali del darwinismo, Ed. Comunità, Milano, 1996.
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The human person is in a unique and singular relationship with God. While all other living beings stand in a generic and mediated relationship with God, the human being, every human being, finds himself in a relationship of personal immediacy with Him.
For this reason, one would have to pass from pride and unjustified anthropocentrism to biocentrism:37 no longer should man stand at the center of the cosmos, but life in its many and varied forms, in its varied degrees of actualization, and in its inexhaustible dynamism. In this renewed biocentrism, which rejects the Judeo-Christian heritage of anthropology, there converges and collides a vague pantheism typical of certain environmentalist currents and the scientistic re-vindication of being able to experience everything without attributing a privileged character to human life: a naturalism opposed to reason and a rationalism which claims to dominate without limit over nature, even human nature. This debate, with its undifferentiated accusations and with its internal contradictions, yet invites us to distinguish more accurately between the anthropocentric conception of modernity, which holds nature to be pure matter to be manipulated by the plan of progress developed by human reason, and the authentic biblical vision of man. If nature is a pure product of chance and necessity without any intrinsic end or without any plan, if it is a mere object that expresses no creative will, “then man remains the sole subject and will.” The world, therefore, first the object of human knowledge, has now become the object of his will, which of course is a will to power over things. This will, once power has so increased to surpass need, becomes pure and simple desire, a desire that has no limits.”38 Thus we see that an exacerbated anthropocentrism which is responsible for the degradation of the world to an object is not the fruit of the biblical narrative, but on the contrary, involves the very loss of the authentic meaning of creation. Indeed, the task entrusted by the Creator to man to “till and keep the earth” (cf. Gen 2:15) indicates the responsibility entrusted to him in order to take care of the world as God’s creation by discovering 36 Cf. A. Schopenauer, “Sulla religione,” in Parerga paralipomena, Boringhieri,Torino, 1963. 37 See the special number dedicated to the theme: “«Antropocentrismo o biocentrismo?” di Anthropotes XIII/1 (1997).
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and following its rhythm and internal logic. Creation is therefore not pure matter, or worse, “material” to master, but a garden to cultivate, with forms of life whose languages we should learn.39 A theology of creation in line with Trinitarian Christocentrism can allow us to grasp the original co-belonging of man and every living being to God’s creative design.40 The Son is the Logos of creation, the Wisdom that is the origin of its order and that establishes its meaning. The Spirit of God, which is the “Spirit of life,” directs its dynamism of development towards a growing autonomy, which has its summit in man, called to be the “spokesman” of creation. The Son and the Spirit are, as Ireneaus said, the two hands the Father used to create everything.41 The purpose of creation is therefore not merely anthropocentric but has as its end the glorification of God, through the cooperation of man in the accomplishment of a project developing towards its full realization. The eschatological perspective described in Chapter VIII of the Letter to the Romans brings together man and creation in a single destiny, which “has been groaning together in travail until now” (Rom 8:21ff), because it too awaits the revelation of the sons of God, to enter into the freedom of glory. Christ has already entered in, with his true risen body, the first fruits not only of humanity, but of all creation.42 The Trinitarian breath of the creative design allows us to grasp better the theological unity of anthropology and biology. Nature, in its many and varied forms of life,
According to traditional Catholic doctrine, taught by Pius XII in Humani generis and repeated by John Paul II in Evangelim vitae, n. 43, the immortal soul of every person is created immediately by God and with it image and likeness is transmitted.
38 H. Jonas, Dalle fede antica all’uomo tecnologico, Il Mulino, Bologna, 1991, 262-263. 39 Cf. J. Ratzinger, Creazione e peccato. Catechesi sull’origine del mondo e sulla caduta, Paoline, Cinisello Balsamo, 1986, 30-34. 40 See: W. Pannenberg, Teologia sistematica, vol. II, Queriniana, Brescia, 1994, cap.VII:“La creazione del mondo,”11-201; of the same: Toward aTheology of Nature. Essays on Science and Faith, Louisville, Kentucky, 1993. 41 Saint Irenaeus, Adversus Haereses, IV, 20, 1. 42 See the charming and panoramic contribution offered by J. Granados, “Love and the Organism: A Theological Contribution to the Study of Life», which will appear in an upcoming edition of Communio (USA), following its presentation at the Symposium of Communio for the Centenary of the birth of H.U. von Balthasar: “Love alone is credible” (Washington DC, April 14-17, 2005). The author, starting with the analogy of the modern dualism between the material world and the dimension of spirit and the issues surrounding gnosticism, shows the fruitfulness in the reflections of the Fathers of the second century for a theological understanding of created nature, in which
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should neither be sacralized nor despised, but recognized in its creatureliness. Man is neither absolute master nor a simple accidental biological form. As the summit of creation he is called to an immediacy in his relationship with God and to an eternal destiny of communion with Him, which does not exclude creation but includes it as having been entrusted to his care. A relation of finalization is established with God. Every man is created in view of a personal communion with God in knowledge and love. It is this vocation to eternal life which enables us to understand even more the significance of his origin “to the image and likeness” of God.
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3.2 Theological dimensions of human life in light of the Gospel Within the horizon of its responsibility to serve creation, human life is intangible and therefore deserves unconditional respect, not because it is life, but because it is the life of a person. But why should human life, so precarious and contingent, deserve absolute respect and unconditional love? Why should the life of a human person be considered an asset worthy of unconditional respect? To these important questions, to which human reason alone cannot give a comprehensive answer, theology offers ways of resolution both sound and enlightening. The theological motivation for the value of human life is found in that “specific and special bond with the Creator” that was established in his original deliberation: “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness (Gn 1:26; EV 34). If every created thing subsists by virtue of its relationship with the Creator and if, in particular, every form of life manifests something of the richness of God’s life, nonetheless there exists a clear distinction between human life and the life of other creatures. This distinction is grasped by the theology of image: the human person is in a unique and singular relationship with God. While all other living beings stand in a generic and mediated relationship with God, the human being, every human being, finds himself in a relationship of personal immediacy with Him. It is first a relationship of origin. In the second Yahwist account of creation (Gn 2:7), the life of man, who also
was formed from mud, does not arise in continuity with the lower biological forms but rather through a new and extraordinary intervention of God, who breathes forth his divine breath. According to traditional Catholic doctrine taught by Pius XII in Humani generis and repeated by John Paul II in Evangelim vitae n. 43, the immortal soul of every person is created immediately by God and with it his image and likeness is transmitted. Secondly, a relation of finalization is established with God. Every man is created in view of a personal communion with God in knowledge and love. It is this vocation to eternal life which enables us to understand even more the significance of his origin “to the image and likeness” of God. Man’s specific creatureliness is ordered to a gratuitous and supernatural gift: the participation in the very life of God as a “son in the Son.” In fact, “this is eternal life, that they know Thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom Thou has sent” (JnJn 17:3). The Resurrection of Christ in his true body and Mary’s Assumption into heaven show how the body also is called to divinization and can participate in communion with God.43 For this reason, the full value of human life, beginning from its initial stages and in its most humble biological dimensions, can be adequately grasped only from the perspective of the supernatural end to which he is destined. If only God can take the initiative in calling a creature to participate in his very divine life, and if every human being created by him is in fact predestined to this most lofty vocation in the Son through the Spirit, then we must affirm that, from the first moment of human life, God himself is involved in this Trinitarian and personal initiative in a unique and unrepeatable vocational bond. In light of this Christocentric theological anthropology, the good of human life can be explained in the articulation of its fundamental dimensions, avoiding materialistic depreciation or undue sacralization. The concept of life, in
If only God can take the initiative in calling a creature to participate in his very divine life, and if every human being created by him is in fact predestined to this most lofty vocation in the Son through the Spirit, then we must affirm that, from the first moment of human life, God himself is involved in this Trinitarian and personal initiative in a unique and unrepeatable vocational bond.
love and the living organism are comprised in their mutual interaction.
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It would be a grave mistake to relegate “eternal life” only to the afterlife. For on the contrary, it already begins in the temporal phase and stands as the seminal beginning of the end, and as a pole which attracts teleologically and gives meaning to every other area of life.
fact, though in itself simple and immediate, is semantically very complex. In the absence of a fitting distinction of the expressions and of an organic understanding of its connections, we run the risk of dangerous confusion. Man’s physical life is oriented toward the value of the person, who is called in Christ to share in the divine life. On the basis of the Johannine theology concerning “life,”44 and employing the terminological distinctions found in it, we can recognize three fundamental distinctions. At the basic level, in fact, is βι'ος, which man fundamentally shares with other living beings. It is that organic dynamic which spontaneously tends to assert itself and self-preservation through exchanges with the environment, but which inevitably decays and falls into the inorganic. At a higher level of nature we find the truly human spiritual dimension of life (ψυχη'). It derives in man from the spiritual principle of the soul and qualifies him as a conscious and free person. The dignity belonging to the spiritual soul is to tend and strive toward the infinite, to be capax Dei. Finally, in terms of grace, we find the event which is qualitatively new and non-deductible from the lower levels (both constitutively and essentially as a requirement), of the divine, supernatural life (ζοη').45 Here it is a matter of a gift totally dependent on God's gratuitous love that opens up the dimension of man's participation in the intimate life of God himself: eternal life. In the previous tripartite organically structured division, the distinction of the two phases of human life must be coordinated: the temporal (in via) and the final (in patria). Yet it would be a grave mistake to relegate “eternal life” only to the afterlife. For on the contrary, it already begins in the temporal phase and stands as the seminal beginning of the end, and as a pole which attracts teleologically and gives meaning to every other area of life. Earthly life is at once relative and sacred: it is 43 Cf. J.J.Walter, “Theological Issues in Genetics,” in Theological Studies 60 (1999) 124-134. 44 In this regard: F. Mussner, Zôè. Die Anschauung vom “Leben” im vierten Evangelium, Zink, München, 1952; R.W. Thomas, “The Meaning of the Terms “Life” and “Death” in the Fourth Gospel and in Paul,” in Schottish Journal of Theology 21 (1968) 199-212.
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not the supreme good to which all must be sacrificed or preserved at all costs; nor is it even an instrumental good at our complete disposal. The Creator alone is its absolute Master, to whom alone falls the choice to end it since his was the initiative that gave it origin. Man, in relationship to himself, does not possess “an absolute but rather a ministerial dominion,” as a reflection of God’s unique and infinite lordship. Charity, as a total dedication of oneself to God loved above every other thing, and to persons, who bear his image, realizes the ultimate meaning of life and anticipates the final destiny of the blessed. In fact “the truest and most profound meaning of life is to be a gift which is realized in giving oneself.” By revealing on the Cross the summit of love, Christ testifies that “greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends” (Jn 15:13), and thus he proclaims that “life reaches its center, its meaning and its fullness when it is given away.” The reflection on bioethics has led us to discover a fundamental aporia, which is presented as it relates to its object—life—when it is entrusted to the analysis of science alone. A simple application of the cases in this analysis is inadequate to the scope of the problems and runs the risk of becoming an accomplice to technocratic tendencies when it is left to mere biology to define what life is.46
Earthly life is at once relative and sacred: it is not the supreme good to which all must be sacrificed or preserved at all costs; nor is it even an instrumental good at our complete disposal. (…)
45 Cf. H. De Lubac, Petite Catéchèse sur nature et grâce, Communio-Fayard, Paris, 1980, 18-25. 46 An example is offered in the present bioethics debate in the United States. In order to avoid the moral reservations that were raised about the destruction of cloned human embryos and then destroyed in view of the withdrawal of pluripotent stem cells, some have suggested an alternative called ANT (Altered Nuclear Transfer): it is a cytological-embryonic procedure intended to produce stem cells through the transfer of an oocyte of a nucleus of an altered somatic cell, to mutate one or more essential genes in the first normal embryonic development. Subsequently a second technique has also been proposed, similar to the first, called OAR (Oocyte Assisted Reprogramming), in which the cytoplasm of the oocyte is altered, again for the sake of creating an embryonic entity in order to create an entity that is not capable of embryonic develop beyond the level of cellular totipotency. Concerning this see the discussion reported in D.L. Schindler, “A Response to the Joint Statement, ‘Production of Pluripotent Stem Cells by Oocyte Assisted Reprogramming,’”, in Communio 32 (Summer 2005) 369-380, in which the grave limits of the approach become clear, which claims to decide whether human embryonic life on the basis of purely biological criteria such as epigenesis, in the end looking upon the organism as nothing more than the sum of its parts and denying the embryonic entity its qualification as human only because the gene for development is intentionally mutated. See the speech from the inventor of the technique: W.B. Harblut, “Altered Nuclear Transfer as a Morally Acceptable Means for the Procurement of Human Embryonic Stem Cells,” in CUA Debate, 4-5 October 2004; and the critical comment of R. Colombo, “Altered Nuclear Transfer as an Alternative Way to Human Embryonic Stem Cells: Biological and Moral Notes,” in Communio 31 (Winter 2004) 645-648.
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Evangelium vitae has proposed more than a casuistry, more than a bioethical limit: it has called for the development of a new and authentic “culture of life” (n. 95) to which the light of the Gospel can bring its own essential contribution. This implies a profound epistemological reflection on the domain of bioethics, to which here we have been able to indicate only a few lines of research. The extraordinary wealth of the object to be known—life—needs to be investigated by a corresponding multi-faceted complexity of approaches, but also by a fundamental unity of vision that ensures the unity of formal discipline. Scientific rationality must allow itself to be guided by a contemplative, indeed a metaphysical gaze on life for which the appropriate attitude is recognition. The theology of creation, and even more the Gospel of life, offer this gaze foundational perspectives and in-depth possibilities of great interest. The clarification that Revelation brings to the recognition of life does not come from outside but rather from within human experience. The light of the Word of God, corresponding to the heart of man, gives rise to a patrimony of human evidence of rational value, which is capable of guiding man's action in placing increasingly sophisticated technical skills at the service of the great destiny to which the life of man and the cosmos is called.
(…) The Creator alone is its absolute Master, to whom alone falls the choice to end it since his was the initiative that gave it origin. Man, in relationship to himself, does not possess “an absolute but rather a ministerial dominion,” as a reflection of God’s unique and infinite lordship.
Translated by Diane Montagna
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the pope in his words
the wounds of jesus: scandal, yet also test of faith “Saint John XXIII and Saint John Paul II were not afraid to look upon the wounds of Jesus, to touch his torn hands and his pierced side. They were not ashamed of the flesh of Christ, they were not scandalized by him, by his cross; they did not despise the flesh of their brother;� said H.H. Francis in the homily he addressed for the Holy Mass of Canonization of Blessed John XXIII and John Paul II.
At the heart of this Sunday, which concludes the Octave of Easter and which Saint John Paul II wished to dedicate to Divine Mercy, are the glorious wounds of the risen Jesus. He had already shown those wounds when he first appeared to the Apostles on the very evening of that day following the Sabbath, the day of the resurrection. But, as we have heard, Thomas was not there that evening,
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and when the others told him that they had seen the Lord, he replied that unless he himself saw and touched those wounds, he would not believe. A week later, Jesus appeared once more to the disciples gathered in the Upper Room. Thomas was also present; Jesus turned to him and told him to touch his wounds. Whereupon that man, so straightforward and accustomed to testing everything personally, knelt
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before Jesus with the words: “My Lord and my God!” (Jn 20:28). The wounds of Jesus are a scandal, a stumbling block for faith, yet they are also the test of faith. That is why on the body of the risen Christ the wounds never pass away: they remain, for those wounds are the enduring sign of God’s love for us. They are essential for believing in God. Not for believing that God exists, but for believing that God is love, mercy and faithfulness. Saint Peter, quoting Isaiah, writes to Christians: “by his wounds you have been healed” (1 Pet 2:24, cf. Is 53:5). Saint John XXIII and Saint John Paul II were not afraid to look upon the wounds of Jesus, to touch his torn hands and his pierced side. They were not ashamed of the flesh of Christ, they were not scandalized by him, by his cross; they did not despise the flesh of their brother (cf. Is 58:7), because they saw Jesus in every person who suffers
On the body of the risen Christ the wounds never pass away: they remain, for those wounds are the enduring sign of God’s love for us. They are essential for believing in God. Not for believing that God exists, but for believing that God is love, mercy and faithfulness.
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In these two men, who looked upon the wounds of Christ and bore witness to his mercy, there dwelt a living hope and an indescribable and glorious joy. This hope and this joy were palpable in the earliest community of believers, in Jerusalem. and struggles. These were two men of courage, filled with the parrhesia of the Holy Spirit, and they bore witness before the Church and the world to God’s goodness and mercy. They were priests, and bishops and popes of the twentieth century. They lived through the tragic events of that century, but they were not overwhelmed by them. For them, God was more powerful; faith was more powerful – faith in Jesus Christ the Redeemer of man and the Lord of history; the mercy of God, shown by those five wounds, was more powerful; and more powerful too was the closeness of Mary our Mother. In these two men, who looked upon the wounds of Christ and bore witness to his mercy, there dwelt a living hope and an indescribable and glorious joy (1 Pet 1:3,8). The hope and the joy which the risen Christ bestows on his disciples, the hope and the joy which nothing and no one can take
from them. The hope and joy of Easter, forged in the crucible of self-denial, self-emptying, utter identification with sinners, even to the point of disgust at the bitterness of that chalice. Such were the hope and the joy which these two holy popes had received as a gift from the risen Lord and which they in turn bestowed in abundance upon the People of God, meriting our eternal gratitude. This hope and this joy were palpable in the earliest community of believers, in Jerusalem, as we have heard in the Acts of the Apostles (cf. 2:42-47). It was a community which lived the heart of the Gospel, love and mercy, in simplicity and fraternity. This is also the image of the Church which the Second Vatican Council set before us. John XXIII and John Paul II cooperated with the Holy Spirit in renewing and updating the Church in
This is also the image of the Church which the Second Vatican Council set before us. John XXIII and John Paul II cooperated with the Holy Spirit in renewing and updating the Church in keeping with her pristine features, those features which the saints have given her throughout the centuries.
keeping with her pristine features, those features which the saints have given her throughout the centuries. Let us not forget that it is the saints who give direction and growth to the Church. In convening the Council, Saint John XXIII showed an exquisite openness to the Holy Spirit. He let himself be led and he was for the Church a pastor, a servant-leader, guided by the Holy Spirit. This was his great service to the Church; for this reason I like to think of him as the pope of openness to the Holy Spirit. In his own service to the People of God, Saint John Paul II was the pope of the family. He himself once said that he wanted to be remembered as the pope of the family. I am particularly happy to point this out as we are in the process of journeying with families towards the Synod on the family. It is surely a journey which, from his place in heaven, he guides and sustains. May these two new saints and shepherds of God’s people intercede for the Church, so that during this two-year journey toward the Synod she may be open to the Holy Spirit in pastoral service to the family. May both of them teach us not to be scandalized by the wounds of Christ and to enter ever more deeply into the mystery of divine mercy, which always hopes and always forgives, because it always loves. (Vatican, April 27,2014)
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“why do you seek the living among the dead?” “These words are like a milestone in history; but are also like a ‘stumbling block’ if we do not open ourselves to the Good News, if we think that a dead Jesus is less bothersome that a Jesus who is alive!,” said H.H. Francis in his Easter Wednesday General Audience
This week is the week of joy: we ce-
lebrate the Resurrection of Jesus. It is a true and deep joy founded on the certainty that the Risen Christ shall never die again; rather, he is alive and at work in the Church and in the world. This certainty has abided in the hearts of believers since that first Easter morning, when the women went to Jesus’ tomb and the angels asked them: “Why do you seek the living among the dead?” (Lk 24:5). “Why do you seek the living among the dead?” These words are like a milestone in history; but are also like a “stumbling block” if we do not open ourselves to the Good News, if we think that a dead Jesus is less bothersome that a Jesus who is alive! Yet how
How often do we search for life among inert things, among things that cannot give life, among things that are here today and gone tomorrow, among the things that pass away…
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many times along our daily journey do we need to hear it said: “Why do you seek the living among the dead?” How often do we search for life among inert things, among things that cannot give life, among things that are here today and gone tomorrow, among the things that pass away… “Why do you seek the living among the dead?” We need this when we shut ourselves in any form of selfishness or self-complacency; when we allow ourselves to be seduced by worldly powers and by the things of this world, forgetting God and neighbor; when we place our hope in worldly vanities, in money, in success. Then the Word of God says to us: “Why do you seek the living among the dead?” Why are you searching there? That thing cannot give you life! Yes, perhaps it will cheer you up for a moment, for a day, for a week, for a month ... and then? “Why do you seek the living among the dead?” This phrase must enter into our hearts and we need to repeat it. Shall we repeat it three times together? Shall
It is not easy to be open to Jesus. Nor is it a given that we shall accept the life of the Risen One and his presence among us. The Gospel shows us different reactions: that of the Apostle Thomas, that of Mary Magdalen and that of the two disciples of Emmaus: it does us good to compare ourselves with them. we make the effort? Everyone: “Why do you seek the living among the dead?” Today when we return home let us say it from the heart in silence and let us ask ourselves this question: why in life do I seek the living among the dead? It will do us good. It is not easy to be open to Jesus. Nor is it a given that we shall accept the life of the Risen One and his presence among us. The Gospel shows us different reactions: that of the Apostle Thomas, that of Mary Magdalen and that of the two disciples of Emmaus: it does us good to compare ourselves with them. Thomas places a condition on belief, he asks to touch the evidence, the wounds; Mary Magdalene weeps, she sees him but she does not recognize him, she only realizes that it is Jesus when he calls her by name; the disciples of Emmaus, who are depressed and feeling defeated, attain an encounter with Jesus by allowing that mysterious wayfarer to accompany them. Each one
on a different path! They were seeking the living among the dead and it was the Lord himself who redirected their course. And what do I do? What route do I take to encounter the living Christ? He will always be close to us to correct our course if we have strayed. “Why do you seek the living among the dead?” (Lk 24:5). This question enables us to overcome the temptation to look back, to what was yesterday, and it spurs us on to the future. Jesus is not in the sepulcher, he is risen! He is the Living One, the One who always renews his body, which is the Church, and enables it to walk by drawing it towards Him. “Yesterday” is the tomb of Jesus and the tomb of the Church, the tomb of truth and justice; “today” is the perennial Resurrection to which the Holy Spirit impels us, bestowing on us full freedom. Today this question is also addressed to us. You, why do seek the living among the dead, you who withdraw into yourself after a failure, and you
This question enables us to overcome the temptation to look back, to what was yesterday, and it spurs us on to the future. Jesus is not in the sepulcher, he is risen! He is the Living One, the One who always renews his body, which is the Church, and enables it to walk by drawing it towards Him
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Today this question is also addressed to us. You, why do seek the living among the dead, you who withdraw into yourself after a failure, and you who no longer have the strength to pray? who no longer have the strength to pray? Why do you seek the living among the dead, you who feel alone, abandoned by friends and perhaps also by God? Why do you seek the living among the dead, you who have lost hope and you who feel imprisoned by your sins? Why do you seek the living among the dead, you who aspire to beauty, to spiritual perfection, to justice and to peace? We need to hear ourselves repeat and to remind one other of the angels’
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admonition! This admonition: “Why do you seek the living among the dead” helps us leave behind our empty sadness and opens us to the horizons of joy and hope. That hope which rolls back the stones from tombs and encourages one to proclaim the Good News, capable of generating new life for others. Let us repeat the Angels’ phrase in order to keep it in our hearts and in our memory, and then let everyone respond in silence: “Why do you seek the living among the dead.” Let’s repeat it! Behold, brothers and sisters, He is alive, He is with us! Do not go to the many tombs that today promise you something, beauty, and then give you nothing! He is alive! Let us not seek the living among the dead! Thank you. (Vatican, April 23, 2014)
anointed with the oil of gladness “The Lord anointed us in Christ with the oil of gladness, and this anointing invites us to accept and appreciate this great gift: the gladness, the joy of being a priest,” said H.H. Francis in the homily he addressed during the Holy Chrism Mass.
I n the eternal “today” of Holy
Thursday, when Christ showed his love for us to the end (cf. Jn 13:1), we recall the happy day of the institution of the priesthood, as well as the day of our own priestly ordination. The Lord anointed us in Christ with the oil of gladness, and this anointing invites us to accept and appreciate this great gift: the gladness, the joy of being a priest. Priestly joy is a priceless treasure, not only for the priest himself but for the entire faithful people of God: that faithful people from which he is called to be anointed and which he, in turn, is sent to anoint. Anointed with the oil of gladness so as to anoint others with the oil of gladness. Priestly joy has its source in the Father’s love, and the Lord wishes the joy of this Love to be “ours” and to be “complete” (Jn 15:11). I like to reflect on joy by contemplating Our Lady, for Mary, the “Mother of the living Gospel, is a wellspring of joy for God’s little ones” (Evangelii Gaudium, 288). I do not think it is an exaggeration to say that priest is very little indeed: the incomparable grandeur
of the gift granted us for the ministry sets us among the least of men. The priest is the poorest of men unless Jesus enriches him by his poverty, the most useless of servants unless Jesus calls him his friend, the most ignorant of men unless Jesus patiently teaches him as he did Peter, the frailest of Christians unless the Good Shepherd strengthens him in the midst of the flock. No one is more “little” than a priest left to his own devices; and so our prayer of protection against every snare of the Evil One is the prayer of our Mother: I am a priest because he
The priest is the poorest of men unless Jesus enriches him by his poverty, the most useless of servants unless Jesus calls him his friend, the most ignorant of men unless Jesus patiently teaches him as he did Peter, the frailest of Christians unless the Good Shepherd strengthens him in the midst of the flock.
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The fullness of the Gift, which no one can take away or increase, is an unfailing source of joy: an imperishable joy which the Lord has promised no one can take from us. has regarded my littleness (cf. Lk 1:48). And in that littleness we find our joy. Joy in our littleness! For me, there are three significant features of our priestly joy. It is a joy which anoints us (not one which “greases” us, making us unctuous, sumptuous and presumptuous), it is a joy which is imperishable and it is a missionary joy which spreads and attracts, starting backwards – with those farthest away from us. A joy which anoints us. In a word: it has penetrated deep within our hearts, it has shaped them and strengthened them sacramentally. The signs of the ordination liturgy speak to us of the Church’s maternal desire to pass on and share with others all that the Lord has given us: the laying on of hands, the anointing with sacred chrism, the clothing with sacred vestments, the first consecration which immediately follows… Grace fills us to the brim and overflows, fully, abundantly and entirely in each priest. We are anointed down to our very bones… and our joy, which wells up from deep within, is the echo of this anointing.
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An imperishable joy. The fullness of the Gift, which no one can take away or increase, is an unfailing source of joy: an imperishable joy which the Lord has promised no one can take from us (Jn 16:22). It can lie dormant, or be clogged by sin or by life’s troubles, yet deep down it remains intact, like the embers of a burnt log beneath the ashes, and it can always be renewed. Paul’s exhortation to Timothy remains ever timely: I remind you to fan into flame the gift of God that is within you through the laying on of my hands (cf. 2 Tim 1:6). A missionary joy. I would like especially to share with you and to stress this third feature: priestly joy is deeply bound up with God’s holy and faithful people, for it is an eminently missionary joy. Our anointing is meant for anointing God’s holy and faithful people: for baptizing and confirming them, healing and sanctifying them, blessing, comforting and evangelizing them. And since this joy is one which only springs up when the shepherd is in the midst of his flock (for even in the silence of his prayer, the shepherd who worships the Father is with his sheep), it is a “guarded joy”, watched over by the flock itself. Even in those gloomy moments when everything looks dark and a feeling of isolation takes hold of us, in those moments of listlessness and boredom which at times overcome us in our priestly life (and which I too have experienced), even in those moments God’s people are able to “guard” that
joy; they are able to protect you, to embrace you and to help you open your heart to find renewed joy. A “guarded joy”: one guarded by the flock but also guarded by three sisters who surround it, tend it and defend it: sister poverty, sister fidelity and sister obedience. The joy of priests is a joy which is sister to poverty. The priest is poor in terms of purely human joy. He has given up so much! And because he is poor, he, who gives so much to others, has to seek his joy from the Lord and from God’s faithful people. He doesn’t need to try to create it for himself. We know that our people are very generous in thanking priests for their slightest blessing and especially for the sacraments. Many people, in speaking of the crisis of priestly identity, fail to realize that identity presupposes belonging. There is no identity – and consequently joy of life – without an active and unwavering sense of belonging to God’s faithful people (cf. Evangelii Gaudium, 268). The priest who tries to find his priestly identity by soul-searching and introspection may well encounter nothing more than “exit” signs, signs that say: exit from yourself, exit to seek God in adoration, go out and give your people what was entrusted to you, for your people will make you feel and taste who you are, what your name is, what your identity is, and they will make you rejoice in that hundredfold which the Lord has promised to those
who serve him. Unless you “exit” from yourself, the oil grows rancid and the anointing cannot be fruitful. Going out from ourselves presupposes selfdenial; it means poverty. Priestly joy is a joy which is sister to fidelity. Not primarily in the sense that we are all “immaculate” (would that by God’s grace we were!), for we are sinners, but in the sense of an ever renewed fidelity to the one Bride, to the Church. Here fruitfulness is key. The spiritual children which the Lord gives each priest, the children he has baptized, the families he has blessed and helped on their way, the sick he has comforted, the young people he catechizes and helps to grow, the poor he assists… all these are the “Bride” whom he rejoices to treat as his supreme and only love and to whom he is constantly faithful. It is the living Church, with a first name and a last name, which the priest shepherds in his parish or in the mission entrusted to him. That mission brings him joy whenever he is faithful to it, whenever he does all that he has to do and lets go of everything that he has to let go of, as long as he stands firm amid the flock which the Lord has entrusted to him: Feed my sheep (cf. Jn21:16,17).
Priestly joy is deeply bound up with God’s holy and faithful people, for it is an eminently missionary joy.
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A “guarded joy”: one guarded by the flock but also guarded by three sisters who surround it, tend it and defend it: sister poverty, sister fidelity and sister obedience. Priestly joy is a joy which is sister to obedience. An obedience to the Church in the hierarchy which gives us, as it were, not simply the external framework for our obedience: the parish to which I am sent, my ministerial assignments, my particular work … but also union with God the Father, the source of all fatherhood. It is likewise an obedience to the Church in service: in availability and readiness to serve everyone, always and as best I can, following the example of “Our Lady of Promptness” (cf. Lk 1:39, meta spoudes), who hastens to serve Elizabeth her kinswoman and is concerned for the kitchen of Cana when the wine runs out. The availability of her priests makes the Church a house with open doors, a refuge for sinners, a home for people living on the streets, a place of loving care for the sick, a camp for the young, a classroom for catechizing children about to make their First Communion… Wherever God’s people have desires or needs, there is the priest, who knows how to listen (ob-audire) and feels a loving mandate from Christ who sends him to relieve that need
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with mercy or to encourage those good desires with resourceful charity. All who are called should know that genuine and complete joy does exist in this world: it is the joy of being taken from the people we love and then being sent back to them as dispensers of the gifts and counsels of Jesus, the one Good Shepherd who, with deep compassion for all the little ones and the outcasts of this earth, wearied and oppressed like sheep without a shepherd, wants to associate many others to his ministry, so as himself to remain with us and to work, in the person of his priests, for the good of his people. On this Holy Thursday, I ask the Lord Jesus to enable many young people to discover that burning zeal which joy kindles in our hearts as soon as we have the stroke of boldness needed to respond willingly to his call. On this Holy Thursday, I ask the Lord Jesus to preserve the joy sparkling in the eyes of the recently ordained who go forth to devour the world, to
Many people, in speaking of the crisis of priestly identity, fail to realize that identity presupposes belonging. There is no identity – and consequently joy of life – without an active and unwavering sense of belonging to God’s faithful people.
spend themselves fully in the midst of God's faithful people, rejoicing as they prepare their first homily, their first Mass, their first Baptism, their first confession… It is the joy of being able to share with wonder, and for the first time as God’s anointed, the treasure of the Gospel and to feel the faithful people anointing you again and in yet another way: by their requests, by bowing their heads for your blessing, by taking your hands, by bringing you their children, by pleading for their sick… Preserve, Lord, in your young priests the joy of going forth, of doing everything as if for the first time, the joy of spending their lives fully for you. On this Thursday of the priesthood, I ask the Lord Jesus to confirm the priestly joy of those who have already ministered for some years. The joy which, without leaving their eyes, is also found on the shoulders of those who bear the burden of the ministry, those priests who, having experienced the labors of the apostolate, gather their strength and rearm themselves: “get a second wind”, as the athletes say. Lord, preserve the depth, wisdom and maturity of the joy felt by these older priests. May they be able to pray with Nehemiah: “the joy of the Lord is my strength” (cf. Neh 8:10). Finally, on this Thursday of the priesthood, I ask the Lord Jesus to make better known the joy of elderly priests, whether healthy or infirm. It is the joy of the Cross, which springs
from the knowledge that we possess an imperishable treasure in perishable earthen vessels. May these priests find happiness wherever they are; may they experience already, in the passage of the years, a taste of eternity (Guardini). May they know, Lord, the joy of handing on the torch, the joy of seeing new generations of their spiritual children, and of hailing the promises from afar, smiling and at peace, in that hope which does not disappoint. (Vatican, April 17, 2014)
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HUMANITAS Christian Anthropological and Cultural Review HUMANITAS review came into being to provide the University with a source of reflection and study at the service of the academic community and the wider public in general. Its objective is to reflect the concerns and teachings of the Papal Magisterium (Decree of the Rector from the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile 147/95, par. 2). EDITOR Jaime Antúnez Aldunate EDITORIAL COMMITTEE Hernán Corral Talciani Samuel Fernández Eyzaguirre Gabriel Guarda O.S.B. René Millar Carvacho Pedro Morandé Court Ricardo Riesco Jaramillo Francisco Rosende Ramírez Juan de Dios Vial Correa Juan de Dios Vial Larraín Arturo Yrarrázaval Covarrubias ASSISTANT EDITOR Bernardita M. Cubillos WEB CONTENT MANAGER Francisco Javier Tagle Montt COUNCIL OF CONSULTANTS AND COLLABORATORS Honorary President: H.E. Cardinal Francisco Javier Errázuriz Ossa, Archbishop Emeritus of Santiago de Chile. Héctor Aguer, Anselmo Álvarez O.S.B., Carl Anderson, Andrés Arteaga, Francisca Alessandri, Antonio Amado, Felipe Bacarreza, Rémi Brague, Jean-Louis Bruguès O.P., Rocco Buttiglione, Massimo Borghesi, Carlos Francisco Cáceres, Cardinal Carlo Caffarra, Stratford Caldecott, Cardinal Antonio Cañizares, Jorge Cauas Lama, Guzmán Carriquiry, William E. Carroll, Alberto Caturelli, Cesare Cavalleri, Fernando Chomalí, Francisco Claro, Jesús Colina , Ricardo Couyoumdjian, Mario Correa Bascuñán, Francesco D’Agostino, Adriano Dell’Asta, Vittorio di Girolamo, Carmen Domínguez, Carlos José Errázuriz, Jesús Colina, Luis Fernando Figari, Alfredo García Quesada, Juan Ignacio González, Stanislaw Grygiel, Gonzalo Ibáñez SantaMaría, Raúl Hasbun, Henri Hude, José Miguel Ibáñez, Raúl Irarrázabal, Lydia Jiménez, Paul Johnson, Jean Laffitte, Nikolaus Lobkowicz, Alfonso López Quintás, Alejandro Llano, Raúl Madrid, Javier Martínez Fernández, Patricia Matte Larraín, Carlos Ignacio Massini Correas, Mauro Matthei O.S.B., Cardinal Jorge Medina, Livio Melina, Augusto Merino, Dominic Milroy O.S.B., Antonio Moreno Casamitjana, Fernando Moreno Valencia, Rodrigo Moreno Jeria, José Miguel Oriol, Máximo Pacheco Gómez, Mario Paredes, Francisco Petrillo O.M.D., Bernardino Piñera, Aquilino Polaino-Lorente, Cardinal Paul Poupard, Javier Prades, Dominique Rey, Héctor Riesle, Florián Rodero L.C., Alejandro San Francisco, Romano Scalfi, Cardinal Angelo Scola, David L. Schindler, Josef Seifert, Gisela Silva Encina, Robert Spaemann, Paulina Taboada, William Thayer Arteaga, Olga Ulianova, Luis Vargas Saavedra, Miguel Ángel Velasco, Juan Velarde Fuertes, Aníbal Vial, Pilar Vigil, Richard Yeo O.S.B., Diego Yuuki S.J.
Council of Consultants and Collaborators Héctor Aguer: Archbishop of La Plata, Argentina. Anselmo Álvarez O.S.B: Abbot of Santa Cruz del Valle de los Caídos. Carl A nderson: Supreme Knight of the Knights of Columbus. Andrés Arteaga: Assistant Bishop of Santiago. Francisca Alessandri: Professor, Faculty for Journalism, PUC. Antonio Amado: Professor of Metaphysics, University of Los Andes. Felipe Bacarreza: Bishop of Los Ángeles, Chile. Rémi Brague: French Philosopher. Ratzinger Prize 2012. Jean-Louis Bruguès O.P.: Archivist of the Vatican Secret Archives and Librarian of the Vatican Library, Bishop Emeritus of Angers, France. Massimo Borghesi: Italian philosopher, senior professor of the University of Perugia, Italy. Rocco Buttiglione: Italian philosopher and politician. Carlos Francisco Cáceres: Member of the Academy of Social, Political and Moral Sciences, Institute of Chile. Cardinal Carlo Caffarra: Archbishop of Bologna, Italy. Stratford Caldecott: Director of the Centre for Faith and Culture, Oxford. Cardinal Antonio Cañizares: Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Cult and the Discipline of Sacraments. Jorge Cauas Lama: Member of the Academy of Social, Political and Moral Sciences, Institute of Chile. Guzmán Carriquiry: Secretary of the Pontifical Commission for Latin America. William E. Carroll: Aquinas Fellow in Theology and Science, Blackfriars. Faculty of Theology, University of Oxford. Alberto Caturelli: Argentine philosopher. Cesare Cavalleri: Director of Studi Cattolici, Milan, Italy. Fernando Chomalí: Archbishop of Concepción. Member of the Pontifical Academia Pro Vita, PUC. Francisco Claro: Professor at the Faculty for Physics, PUC. Jesús Colina: Director of Aleteia. Ricardo Couyoumdjian: Professor History Institute, PUC. Member of the History Academy, Institute of Chile. Mario Correa Bascuñán: Secretary General PUC, professor at the Law Faculty, PUC. Francesco D’Agostino: Professor of Philosophy of Law at the University Tor Vergata of Rome, former President of the National Bioethic Committee of Italy. Adriano Dell’Asta: Professor, Catholic University, Milan, Italy. Vittorio di Girólamo: Professor and art historian. Carmen Domínguez: Director of the PUC Centre for the Family. Professor at the Law Faculty, PUC. Carlos José Errázuriz: Consultant of the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith, professor at Pontifical Università della Santa Croce. Luis Fernando Figari: Founder of “Sodalicio de Vida Cristiana”, Lima, Peru. Alfredo García Quesada: Pontifical Consultant for the Cultural Council, professor of the Pontifical and Civil Faculty of Theology, Lima, Peru. Juan Ignacio González: Bishop of San Bernardo, Chile. Stanislaw Grygiel: Polish philosopher, tenured lecturer of the John Paul II Chair, Lateranense University, Rome. Raúl Hasbun: Priest of the Schöenstatt Congregation, professor at the Pontifical Senior Seminary of Santiago. Henri Hude: French philosopher, former Rector of the Stanislas College, Paris. Gonzalo Ibáñez Santa-María: Professor and former Rector of University Adolfo Ibáñez. José Miguel Ibáñez Langlois: Theologian and poet. Raúl Irarrázabal Covarrubias: Architect, President of the Chilean Association of the Order of Malta. Paul Johnson: British historian.
Jean Laffitte: Bishop of Entrevaux. Secretary of the Pontifical Council for the Family. Nikolaus Lobkowicz: Director of the Eastern and Central European Studies Institute, University of Eichstätt, Germany. Alfonso López Quintás: Spanish philosopher. Member of the Royal Spanish Academy of Moral and Political Sciences. Alejandro Llano: Spanish philosopher, former Rector of the University of Navarra, Spain. Raúl Madrid: Professor, Law Faculty, PUC. Patricia Matte Larraín: Member of the Academy of Social, Political and Moral Sciences, Institute of Chile. Mauro Matthei O.S.B: Benedictine monk and priest. Historian. Cardinal Jorge Medina: Prefect Emeritus of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments. Javier Martínez Fernández: Archbishop of Granada, Spain. Carlos Ignacio Massini Correas: Professor at the National University of Cuyo, Argentina. Livio Melina: President of the John Paul II Pontifical Institute for Studies of Marriage and the Family. Augusto Merino: Political Scientist, professor at University Adolfo Ibáñez. Dominic Milroy O.S.B: Monk at Ampleforth, former Rector of the Ampleforth College, York (G.B.). Fernando Moreno: Philosopher. Member of the Academy of Social, Political and Moral Sciences, Institute of Chile. Rodrigo Moreno Jeria: Member of the Chilean Academy of History. José Miguel Oriol: President of Editorial Encuentro, Madrid, Spain. Mario J. Paredes: Director of Catholic Ministries at American Bible Society. Francesco Petrillo O.M.D: General Superior of the Orden de la Madre de Dios. Bernardino Piñera: Archbishop Emeritus of La Serena, Chile. Aquilino Polaino-Lorente: Spanish psychiatrist. Cardinal Paul Poupard: President Emeritus of the Pontifical Council for Culture. Javier Prades: Dean of the Faculty for Theology at San Dámaso, Madrid, Spain. Member of the International Theological Commission. Dominique Rey: Bishop of Tréjus-Toulon, France. Florián Rodero L.C: Professor of Theology, Athenaeum Regina Apostolorum, Rome. Alejandro San Francisco: Professor at the Institute of History, PUC. Romano Scalfi: Director of the Christian Russia Center, Milan, Italy. Cardinal Angelo Scola: Archbishop of Milan. David L. Schindler: Director of the John Paul II Institute for Studies of Marriage and the Family, Washington D.C., U.S.A. Josef Seifert: Austrian philosopher. Gisela Silva Encina: Writer. Robert Spaemann: German philosopher. Paulina Taboada: Medical doctor, member of the Pontifical Academy Pro Vita. William Thayer Arteaga: Member of the Academy of Social, Political and Moral Sciences, Institute of Chile. Olga Uliánova: Ph. D. in History, University of Lomonosov, Moscow. Researcher at the University of Santiago. Miguel Ángel Velasco: Director of Alfa y Omega, Madrid, Spain. Juan Velarde Fuertes: Member of the Royal Spanish Academy of Moral and Political Sciences. Príncipe de Asturias Prize in Social Sciences (1992). Aníbal Vial: Former Rector of University Santo Tomás. Pilar Vigil: Medical doctor, member of the Pontifical Academy Pro Vita. Richard Yeo O.S.B: Abbot and President of the Benedictine Congregation, England.
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c h r i s t i a n a n t r hop ol o gic a l a n d c u lt u r a l r e v i e w / n ยบ 6 / y e a r i i i
Cardinal Paul Poupard John XXIII, man of unity and peace Stanislaw Grygiel John paul II, PASsion for man
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PONTIFICIA UNIVERSIDAD CATร LICA DE CHILE
Livio Melina recognizing life