Matrimonio e Famiglia - Seminario di studi su Giovanni Paolo II - di Cardinal Carlo Caffarra

In Caffarra.it

Desidero premettere subito che la mia relazione avrà un carattere testimoniale. In un duplice senso. Dirò cose che si basano su numerosi colloqui personali col b. Giovanni Paolo II, ed anche cose che vi comunico non principalmente attraverso ragionamenti formalmente corretti, ma attraverso l’invito ad un reditus ad seipsum. Una comunicazione più agostiniana che scolastica.

1. La vicenda di questo Istituto ebbe inizio la sera del 20 gennaio 1981 quando, durante la cena, Giovanni Paolo II mi chiese di realizzare il suo progetto di fondare un Istituto di studi sul matrimonio e la famiglia.

Da quel momento iniziò un dialogo molto profondo, che da parte mia nasceva dall’esigenza che sentivo assai forte, di capire fino in fondo il progetto concepito dalla mente di quel grande pontefice, le sue ragioni ultime. Non era solo in questione la costituzione di un istituto accademico, ma la testimonianza che il Papa desiderava rendere alla Chiesa e al mondo circa il matrimonio e la famiglia. Una testimonianza di cui Egli avvertiva drammaticamente la necessità: una testimonianza alla verità circa il bene dell’amore coniugale. Egli un giorno mi disse: "l’amore coniugale non è amato". Intendeva dire, non è più riconosciuto nella sua preziosità propria. Non si sbagliava, se ora consideriamo a quali relazioni oggi esso è equiparato.

Vorrei fermarmi un momento su questo punto, perché è di fondamentale importanza. Egli non voleva – ne esistevano già tanti, anche nella Chiesa – un luogo dove si producessero nuove opinioni da contrapporre ad altre opinioni, a riguardo del matrimonio e della famiglia. Ma un luogo di ricerca di una verità, di un bene che Adamo aveva scoperto "fin dal principio", quando vide per la prima volta la donna. Verità e bene che anche oggi l’uomo e la donna riscoprono in se stessi, quando diventano "una sola carne". E’ questo un punto di vista molto difficile da fare proprio, tentati come siamo di pensare la ricerca comune della verità come una controversia fra rivali, anziché di compagni di viaggio incamminati verso la meta, e la questione, cui oggi assistiamo, una questione alla fine di leggi, non una quaestio de veritate amoris.

Giovanni Paolo II ci chiedeva di essere scopritori – testimoni della verità circa il bene inscritto nella relazione uomo-donna. Ritornerò più avanti su questo "punto sorgivo". Ho detto relazione. Il bene di cui stiamo parlando è un bene relazionale, della persona in quanto è-in-relazione. Non un bene individuale.

La prima, grande testimonianza che il Santo Pontefice diede sono state le 134 catechesi sull’amore umano, che saranno la "carta topografica", per così dire, della vita intellettuale dell’Istituto. Alla fine della prima catechesi [5 settembre 1979], Giovanni Paolo II dice:

"Il ciclo di riflessione che iniziamo oggi, coll’intenzione di continuarlo durante i successivi incontri del mercoledì, ha anche come scopo fra altri, accompagnare, per così dire, da lontano i lavori preparatori del Sinodo, non affrontando direttamente il suo tema, ma dirigendo l’attenzione alle radici profonde".

Il testo è di grande importanza.

La Chiesa stava affrontando per la prima volta a livello sinodale il tema del matrimonio e della famiglia. Quale aiuto dà il Papa ai futuri Padri Sinodali? Li conduce "al principio"; li guida verso l’inizio, là dove nasce l’uomo e la donna nel matrimonio.

E’ caratteristico del grande Pontefice il tipo di aiuto che Egli ha voluto dare ai Padri Sinodali. Non è entrato nelle questioni particolari: molte, già allora, gravi e difficili. Ha desiderato che i Padri ri-scoprissero le "radici". E questo è l’aiuto che l’Istituto ha sempre cercato di dare alla Chiesa, secondo la proposta del Santo Pontefice.

Devo fermarmi un momento su questo punto. La nostra ragione è talmente indebolita che sentendo parlare di verità, pensa subito ad opinioni circa il matrimonio, ad una qualche teoria della famiglia. Opinioni alla quali si contrappongono altre opinioni; teorie contestate con altre teorie. E così è accaduto nel mondo di oggi. Il risultato non poteva che essere la convinzione che non esiste alcuna verità circa il matrimonio.

Quando siamo invitati a guardare "all’inizio", "alle radici" il Santo Pontefice non sta costruendo una sua e nuova antropologia. Più semplicemente ci dice: "guarda te stesso guardando al "Principio"" e "guarda il "Principio" guardando te stesso". E’ l’agostiniano "in interiore homine habitat Veritas".

Posso esprimermi anche nel modo seguente. Se uno avesse chiesto a Giovanni Paolo II se stava facendo un’esegesi dei primi due capitoli della Genesi, sia pure coll’autorevolezza propria del Papa, alla quale comunque si potevano opporre altre esegesi, egli – penso – si sarebbe meravigliato della domanda. Egli si vedeva nel ruolo di chi conduce gli altri a scoprire se stessi alla luce del "Principio".

Se non si percorre questa via, è inevitabile che si imbocchi la via dei farisei che interrogano Cristo sul matrimonio, cioè la via della casistica.

Esiste certo una legge sull’indissolubilità, ma quando è lecito eccepirvi? Che gravità devono avere le ragioni per farlo? L’uomo visto alla luce della legge. E in questa visione è comunque eliminato l’uomo. Anche se si allargano le maglie delle eccezioni.

Se penso secondo la prospettiva della casistica, nel momento in cui mi prendo cura della persona e delle sue relazioni, il problema che diventa centrale è: la persona è in grado di osservare la norma oppure questa è un peso da cui in parte o in tutto può essere dispensata? Mi infilo dentro al dilemma: o la legge morale o il bene della persona.

Studi storici ormai a portata anche dei non "esperti" hanno dimostrato che questo modo di accostarsi alla persona umana è iniziato, col Nominalismo, quando si negò che l’essenza delle proposizioni normative della morale si trova nella verità del bene che in esse è oggettivato.

Accettando questa prospettiva, si può giungere perfino a svuotare il Vangelo della grazia in nome del Vangelo della grazia.

Uno dei momenti in cui ho visto più chiaramente tutto questo, fu durante un dialogo con Giovanni Paolo II. Si parlava di Humanae Vitae. Egli disse – e me lo ripeté più volte – che la grande Enciclica di Paolo VI arrivò in un momento in cui la Chiesa non possedeva una robusta, adeguata antropologia. L’Enciclica stessa argomentava sulla base di un concetto di legge naturale quanto meno assai fragile. E il Santo Pontefice aggiungeva che bisognava riscoprire e ripensare la verità antropologica implicata in quell’insegnamento della Chiesa, oggettivata nell’Enciclica.

Il Santo Pontefice considerava questo non un dettaglio secondario della grande quaestio de veritate circa il bene del matrimonio. Ma uno dei punti in cui questo bene poteva essere riconosciuto in tutto il suo splendore o negato gravemente. Non sto parlando del comportamento del singolo coniugato\a. Se non è chiaro questo si finisce per parlare fra sordi.

Giovanni Paolo II era così consapevole della gravità della questione che nella Cost. Ap. Magnum matrimoni sacramentum [10 ottobre 1981], che fondò canonicamente l’Istituto, è detto esplicitamente che uno dei suoi compiti è l’elaborazione di una antropologia adeguata alla base dell’Enc. Humanae Vitae.

Tutto questo appare chiaramente anche in un’altra pagina del Vangelo, dove uno scriba fa la domanda: chi è il mio prossimo? La domanda è in ordine all’estensione del secondo comandamento: "quali persone comprende?". Lo scriba era fuori dalla prospettiva giusta; guardava in una direzione sbagliata. Non guardava al soggetto-uomo, ma ai vari attributi che possiamo predicare del soggetto: il prossimo sono gli ebrei o anche i pagani? Sono gli amici o anche i nemici? E così via. Il samaritano della parabola esce dalla "prospettiva dei predicati"; si libera di conseguenza dalla tirannia delle opinioni anche consolidate riguardo all’uomo, ed accede alla verità dell’uomo. Quando e come? Quando si commuove per il ferito. E’ questa commozione che fa scoprire al samaritano la semplice verità dell’uomo, alla quale appartiene sia il samaritano sia il ferito. Un’appartenenza che respinge ogni forma di relativismo.

Il Santo Pontefice ha voluto questo Istituto perché fosse possibile creare un luogo dove, nella comunione di studenti e docenti, fosse aperto il sentiero verso il "Principio": un sentiero che non si interrompesse.

In questo contesto – l’ho già detto in vari modi – la vera, più profonda intenzionalità di Giovanni Paolo II nel volere l’Istituto, era l’offerta alla Chiesa di una antropologia adeguata. Fu interessante nei primi anni di vita dell’Istituto sentirmi dire: "ma voi che cosa fate? Siete un Istituto di filosofia, o di teologia, o di etica?". Questa domanda, vi dico sinceramente, mi meravigliava molto. La risposta la diede Giovanni Paolo II stesso nella catechesi del 2 aprile 1980 [n. XXIII], che conclude e riassume tutto il primo ciclo.

"Abbiamo cercato di chiarire nel modo più profondo possibile il significato di questo Principio, che è la prima presenza di ogni uomo nel mondo, maschio e femmina, la prima testimonianza dell’identità umana secondo la parola rivelata".

Nel momento in cui ha origine il matrimonio, ha origine la persona umana nella sua intera verità. Il matrimonio è il sentiero che conduce dentro l’uomo; la visione plenaria dell’uomo è il sentiero che conduce alla Verità del matrimonio.

Come è stato scritto "non possiamo rendere conto filosoficamente dell’essenza dell’uomo, finché non comprendiamo la vera essenza dell’amore. Poiché solo nell’amore l’uomo si desta alla sua piena esistenza personale, solo nell’amore egli attualizza la totale pienezza della sua essenza" [D. von Hildebrand, Man and Woman, Franciscan Herald Press, Chicago 1966, pag. 32].

E’ una correlazione sulla quale il Santo Pontefice mi richiamava spesso, perché essa fosse la chiave di volta dell’Istituto. L’errore antropologico coinvolge inevitabilmente il matrimonio [ed il lavoro, ma di questo non devo parlare]. Non è un caso dunque il fatto che l’uomo perdendo se stesso ha di conseguenza perduto il matrimonio.

E’ assai importante quanto Giovanni Paolo II dice nella stessa catechesi succitata:

"Penso che fra le risposte che Cristo darebbe agli uomini del nostro tempo e alle loro domande, nonostante siano tante urgenti, ci sarebbe tuttavia quella che diede ai farisei. Rispondendo a questi interrogativi, Cristo si rimetterebbe sopra tutto al "principio". Lo farebbe in un modo anche più deciso ed essenziale, in quanto la situazione spirituale e culturale dell’uomo di oggi sembra estraniarsi da quel "principio" e assumere forme e dimensioni che divergono dall’immagine biblica di quel "principio" in punti sempre più chiaramente più distanti".

E’ un richiamo molto forte ad una vera metodologia pastorale, sempre valida.

2. In che modo il Santo Pontefice ricostruisce la verità circa il bene dell’uomo alla luce del "Principio", e quindi risponde alle questioni odierne circa il matrimonio? Il dramma Raggi di paternità comincia da questo interrogativo, che denota la condizione dell’uomo.

"Da tanti anni ormai vivo come un uomo esiliato dal più profondo delle mia personalità e nello stesso tempo condannato ad indagarla a fondo. In tutti questi anni l’ho penetrata a prezzo di incessanti fatiche, spesso però pensando con sgomento che l’avrei perduta; che sì, verrà cancellata in mezzo ai processi della storia, in cui decide la quantità o la massa".

[K. Wojtyla, Tutte le opere letterarie, Bompani ed. Milano 2001, pag. 887]

E’ questa la condizione paradossale della persona umana: costretta a cercarsi sempre perché sempre nel rischio di perdersi. E Giovanni Paolo II ritiene che l’uscita da questa condizione, la via per trovare finalmente se stessi è la via dell’amore, di cui l’amore coniugale è la forma arche-tipica, della quale Dio stesso si è servito per rivelare Se stesso. Ci aiutano a capire tutto questo due testimonianze.

Il Santo Pontefice mi raccontò che alcuni suoi sacerdoti di Cracovia, dopo aver letto Amore e responsabilità, gli dissero che questa opera esigeva una riflessione sull’uomo che mostrasse che quella dottrina era veramente radicata nell’uomo. "Fu in quel momento" mi disse " che nacque Persona e atto".

Un’altra volta, eravamo a Castel Gandolfo, mi disse che la verità antropologica più profonda che il Concilio aveva detto stava espressa nel seguente testo: "l’uomo non trova pienamente se stesso se non nel dono sincero di se stesso" [ Cost. Past. Gaudium et spes 24].

La via della ricostruzione di un’antropologia adeguata è trovata: il dono di sé. Nel Canto del Dio nascosto, K. Wojtyla scriveva:

"L’amore mi ha spiegato ogni cosa,

l’amore ha risolto tutto in me –

perciò ammiro questo Amore

dovunque esso si trovi".

[Tutte le opere, cit., pag. 49]

Egli si ferma in particolare sull’amore coniugale; sulla relazione che si istituisce nel matrimonio; sul dono di sé quale propriamente accade nel matrimonio.

E’ necessario uscire da un uso eccessivamente analitico della ragione per cogliere il "centro" della visione di Giovanni Paolo II, e compiere un atto di intelligenza sintetico. E’ al contempo antropologia, etica, teologia.

Non è questo il momento di fare un’esposizione completa della costruzione dell’antropologia. Desidero richiamare la vostra attenzione su due punti.

Il primo. La via per ritrovare l’uomo, imboccata da Giovanni Paolo II, doveva incrociare la realtà del corpo e della diversità sessuale. Credo che sia stato uno dei più grandi apporti che il Santo Pontefice ha lasciato in eredità alla Chiesa, di aver costruito una profonda teologia del corpo e della diversità sessuale. Sono tentato di pensare infatti che la difficoltà che il pensiero cristiano trova non raramente nell’affrontare le tematiche odierne, sia dovuta alla dimenticanza pressoché totale della teologia del corpo.

La tematica viene affrontata per la prima volta nella Catechesi XIV [9 gennaio 1980], e penso che fin dall’inizio se ne dà l’intuizione centrale, là dove si dice:

"Sorge allora [=quando l’uomo è di fronte alla donna] la persona umana nella dimensione del dono reciproco, la cui espressione – che è l’espressione anche della sua esistenza come persona – è il corpo umano in tutta la verità originaria della sua mascolinità e femminilità".

Il testo è semplicemente mirabile. La persona umana, in quanto costituita per il dono di sé, è espressa nella sua corporeità sessuata. Questa esprime il dono come caratteristica fondamentale della persona. La "persona-dono" e "il corpo sessuato" sono simultanei. Di conseguenza, se si separa il corpo-sesso dalla persona o la persona dal corpo-sesso, non è più possibile costruire un’antropologia adeguata. Se l’età classica, anche teologica è orientata a separare la persona dal corpo-sessuato, la modernità ha separato il corpo-sessuato dalla persona. La grande tesi di Tommaso dell’unità sostanziale della persona umana non è risultata vincente. La riprende il Conc. Vaticano II, quando dice dell’uomo: "corpore et anima unus".

Il secondo. Si comprende la grande importanza che Giovanni Paolo II dava all’insegnamento dell’Enc. Humanae Vitae ed il modo nuovo di fondarlo. Le due cose stanno in piedi o cadono assieme.

Se consideriamo l’Humanae Vitae principalmente e fondamentalmente una legge morale, entriamo necessariamente nella logica della casuistica, dell’applicazione cioè dell’universale al particolare. Il Santo Padre non l’ha mai vista in questa luce, ma piuttosto nella logica – nel logos – del dono di sé quale accade nel matrimonio. Secondo la verità propria dell’amore coniugale.

In tale modo si evade dalla logica casuistica: universale-particolare; e si evade da una considerazione biologistica. Si entra nella persona: nella verità del suo amore e dono coniugale di sé. Il dramma vero dell’uomo non è il passaggio dall’universale al particolare. E’ il rapporto fra verità e libertà.

Una volta, il Card. Gagnon, ora defunto, mostrò al Santo Pontefice – ero presente anch’io – l’articolo di una rivista statunitense – non ricordo più quale – che sosteneva la seguente tesi. Abbiamo speso milioni di dollari per diffondere una mentalità contraccettiva. I risultati sono stati scarsi. La colpa è solo di un uomo: Giovanni Paolo II. Il Santo Pontefice rispose [ricordo quasi alla lettera le sue parole]: "non è così; non sono io: è la verità dell’amore coniugale che si impone per se stessa, se detta".

Mi piace concludere questo secondo punto della mia riflessione con un testo di Fratello del nostro Dio:

"Lei ha mai cercato di penetrare in tutta la mole di quei beni ai quali l’uomo è chiamato?... Non si può pensare soltanto un frammento di verità, bisogna pensare con tutta la verità".

[Tutte le Opere, cit. pag. 713].

Non si comprende l’Humanae Vitae se non nel contesto di una antropologia adeguata. L’Es. Familiaris consortio ha offerto, in un documento del Magistero, l’esempio di questa contestualizzazione [cfr. 28-31]

Forse la cosa più profonda che il Santo Pontefice ha detto, e che esprime tutta la sua cura pastorale del matrimonio, è alla fine della Bottega dell’orefice. Teresa, una delle protagoniste, dice:

"…creare qualcosa che rispecchi l’Essere e l’Amore assoluto è forse la cosa più straordinaria che esista! Ma si campa senza rendersene conto".

[pag.869]

E’ rimasta solo la Chiesa Cattolica a farci sentire il respiro dell’eternità nell’Amore umano. E se anche essa rinunciasse a farlo sentire?

George Weigel, evangelizzare l'Europa - di Maria Claudia Ferragni

In NBQ

George Weigel, già docente di teologia, Distinguished senior fellow del prestigioso Ethics and Public Policy Center di Washigton, autorevole giornalista e scrittore cattolico, insignito di numerosi Dottorati Honoris Causa, è considerato il più importante biografo del Beato Papa Giovanni Paolo II. Dando seguito a una promessa fatta al Pontefice stesso solo quattro mesi prima della sua morte, ha di recente pubblicato il libroThe End and the Beginning: Pope John Paul II - The Victory of Freedom, the Last Years, the Legacy.

Lo abbiamo incontrato a Roma, in occasione della storica canonizzazione congiunta dei due più amati Papi del Ventesimo Secolo e gli abbiamo chiesto di parlarci della crisi di fede e politica europea.

Professor Weigel, che fine ha fatto il desiderio di Papa Giovanni Paolo II della riscoperta delle radici cristiane dell'Europa, soprattutto di fronte alla crisi ucraina che riapre scenari di conflitto che ricordano la Guerra Fredda?

Il fatto che oggi l'Europa sia sempre più chiusa su se stessa, incapace di prendere importanti e serie decisioni dal punto di vista politico, è proprio indice del fatto che si è creato un enorme vuoto spirituale e morale, quello di cui parlava con lungimiranza il Beato Papa Giovanni Paolo II. Questo ci dice anche dell'attuale incapacità europea di sostenere il popolo ucraino che desidera essere libero e vivere in una società aperta e giusta. Il movimento del Maidan avrebbe dovuto, infatti, dare una profonda ispirazione a tutta l'Europa a recuperare i suoi valori costituivi, quelli cristiani, ma questo finora purtroppo non è successo.

Quale può essere il ruolo della Chiesa Cattolica oggi, adesso in Europa?

Prima di tutto deve predicare il Vangelo. Questo é il suo compito. Dobbiamo infatti smetterla di dire che bisogna "ricristianizzare" l'Europa, perché va invece "cristianizzata": infatti l'Europa ha completamente dimenticato la fede. Ciò significa quindi che la Chiesa deve assumere un vigoroso atteggiamento missionario e deve assolutamente cominciare a farlo là dove si trova il suo centro: cioè in Europa. Però la Chiesa, proprio come diceva Giovanni Paolo II, deve proporre qualcosa di nuovo. Papa Wojtyla ha infatti letteralmente chiamato e spinto la Chiesa ad abbandonare le "acque basse" e la superficialità rappresentate dalla semplice conservazione del cattolicesimo istituzionale, a favore della ricerca della profondità data dalla nuova evangelizzazione. E ciò deve accadere in primo luogo e prioritariamente in Europa.

Quale può essere il ruolo della Chiesa statunitense anche verso l'Europa?

Sicuramente la Chiesa cattolica americana ha molti problemi, ma può assumere un ruolo estremamente importante perché é nella forma migliore fra tutti paesi occidentali. Sta vivendo un momento di grande vitalità evangelica: ci sono stati centinaia di migliaia di nuovi Battesimi nella Chiesa cattolica durante le recenti festività Pasquali e questa è una grande notizia.

Quindi la Chiesa in America ha imboccato la strada della nuova evangelizzazione e può essere di esempio per la Chiesa in Europa, in Occidente e in tutto il mondo su come si deve muovere la Chiesa nel mondo moderno.

Giovanni Paolo II, un ponte tra Cristo e il nostro cuore - di Arcivescovo Luigi Negri

In NBQ

E’ con profonda commozione e con grande gratitudine a Dio che riviviamo la grande testimonianza cristiana di magistero, di affezione agli uomini e al loro destino che si sintetizza nell’immagine dei 27 anni di pontificato del beato Giovanni Paolo II.

Si è presentato sulla scena del mondo con un amore incondizionato a Cristo presente nella Chiesa, un mistero di umiliazione che è diventato l’unica e reale possibilità di recupero dell’uomo e della sua dignità. Ma allo stesso tempo ha avuto una acutissima compassione dell’esperienza dell’umanità in quel triste passaggio dal secondo al terzo millennio che per la sua presenza e per il suo insegnamento sono stati un kairòs: una situazione eccezionale offerta da Dio alla fede dei cristiani, e offerta agli uomini nella temperie di una crisi della modernità che si era andata compiendo in modo inesorabile.

Giovanni Paolo II si è trovato di fronte al compito di dare una formulazione dell’incontro tra Cristo e il cuore dell’uomo. Questa fu la sua intuizione: la presenza della fede nel mondo non ha ragioni esclusivamente teologiche, ha ragioni profondamente antropologiche. L’affermazione della presenza di Dio in Cristo è la strada lungo la quale l'uomo Cristo rivela profondamente la sua verità e insieme insegna la verità di ogni uomo che vive in questo mondo.

A riaprire il dialogo fra Cristo e il cuore dell’uomo è il cuore annichilito ma non distrutto dalle grandi tragedie del totalitarismo moderno contemporaneo. Giovanni Paolo II ebbe la capacità di scoprire questo livello profondo della vita umana nella storia, quella tensione inesorabile dell’uomo verso il compimento della sua esperienza umana. Egli condivideva con Pascal la certezza che l’uomo supera infinitamente l’uomo.

A quest’uomo cominciò a parlare. E cominciò a parlare nella concretezza della sua esistenzialità quotidiana, andando oltre ogni formulazione ideologica, ogni tentazione umanistica, ogni tentazione di ridurre la vita umana a un problema di giustizia sociale, economica e politica. Ha parlato all’uomo scendendo con lui nelle profondità di quel cuore umano su cui l’insegnamento conciliare ha scritto pagine di straordinaria profondità che hanno trovato il loro radicale compimento teorico e pratico nelle grandi pagine della Redemptor Hominis, il grande manifesto programmatico del cristianesimo del Terzo millennio.

In Cristo l’uomo ritorna ad essere di Dio e per Dio. E mentre torna ad essere di Dio e per Dio si rivela in maniera adeguata quell’impegno antropologico che fa grande l’esperienza umana sulla terra. Solo nel mistero di Cristo e della Chiesa l’uomo è introdotto a comprendere e sperimentare quella antropologia adeguata che si è definitivamente compiuta nella Passione, nella Morte e nella Resurrezione di Gesù di Nazaret.

Quest’uomo, le cui radici sono nel mistero di Cristo, realizza la propria vocazione umana sulla Terra, nella concretezza, addirittura nella lacerazione, di una esperienza umana che senza Cristo rimane incomprensibile a se stessa. Come afferma il numero 10 della Redemptor Hominis: «L'uomo non può vivere senza amore. Egli rimane per se stesso un essere incomprensibile, la sua vita è priva di senso, se non gli viene rivelato l'amore, se non s'incontra con l'amore, se non lo sperimenta e non lo fa proprio, se non vi partecipa vivamente». 

Da qui la preoccupazione di rilanciare in maniera adeguata il mistero del matrimonio e il suo compimento nel matrimonio cristiano. La preoccupazione di insegnare agli uomini e ai cristiani una corretta grammatica dell’affezione, della sessualità, una corretta grammatica di quella paternità e maternità consapevoli e responsabili nella quale l’uomo esercita sulla terra il compito di reale e fondamentale collaborazione al mistero di Dio che genera ogni giorno figli all’umanità e alla Chiesa.

Il magistero di Giovanni Paolo II era sull’uomo, sul matrimonio, sulla sacralità della vita, sulla responsabilità della paternità e della maternità, sulla vocazione a realizzare nel mondo quel matrimonio cristiano che - come ricordava don Luigi Giussani in una delle sue ultime interviste - è la cosa più alta cui l’uomo possa accedere sulla terra, reale immagine ed esperienza della Trinità nel cuore dell’uomo e nei rapporti che caratterizzano la sua vita, personale e sociale.

La Chiesa riscoprì la grandezza dell’essere famiglia, famiglia di Dio per l’uomo, e la famiglia riscoprì la grandezza di essere Chiesa, di essere esperienza viva di quella comunione con Cristo e fra i fratelli che costituisce la novità della vita cristiana, cioè della vita umana redenta.

L’insegnamento sull’uomo, sulla sua vocazione matrimoniale si è articolato poi nella grande lezione della dottrina sociale, in cui l’identità dell’uomo e la sua dignità vennero insegnati nel concreto esercizio di quei fondamentali diritti umani che solo la fede cristiana rivela adeguatamente e solo l’educazione ecclesiale rende esperienza di vita nuova nel mondo.

La Veritatis Splendor, l’Evangelium Vitae, la Fides et Ratio, la Laborem Exercens, la Centesimus Annus, tutto il corpo delle encicliche sociali del Papa Giovanni Paolo II hanno ampiamente insegnato la responsabilità del cristiano e della Chiesa a calarsi dentro la storia e a costruire dentro la storia la novità umana e cristiana che il papa definì «la Civiltà della verità e dell’amore».

Rispondendo alle mie condoglianze il giorno della morte del beato Giovanni Paolo II, l’allora segretario del Papa e oggi cardinale Stanislao Dziwisz mi disse: «Giovanni Paolo II ha insegnato ai cristiani ad essere autenticamente cristiani, agli uomini ad essere uomini di buona volontà, aperti al Mistero che non escludono più dall’ambito della loro vita ma verso il quale anche misteriosamente muovono i passi in attesa dell’incontro gratificante e pacificante con il mistero di Dio che in Cristo si è fatto presenza umana, storica».

I 27 anni del pontificato di Giovanni Paolo II hanno chiuso in maniera irreversibile ogni tentazione di dualismo, estrema conseguenza del grande sbandamento del modernismo all’inizio del secolo XX. La fede genera nel cuore dell’uomo una cultura adeguata, consente la conoscenza profonda del mistero di Dio, del mistero dell’uomo nella realtà della storia, del loro reciproco connettersi ed articolarsi. Il cristiano di Giovanni Paolo II è un cristiano che è consapevole della grazia che gli è stata fatta, e che vive la fede non solo per se stesso ma per il mondo. Ecco la grande intuizione per cui la missione costituisce – come ebbe a definirla nei primi anni ’80 – l’identità e il movimento della Chiesa. La Chiesa non fa la missione come una delle possibili azioni, la Chiesa è missione, la Chiesa si autorealizza nella missione, perché nella missione la Chiesa diventa sempre più se stessa, «la fede si irrobustisce donandola», scrisse nella Redemptoris Missio.

La canonizzazione di Giovanni Paolo II è l’acquisizione definitiva nella Chiesa, di fronte a Dio e di fronte all’umanità, di un cammino cristiano e umano del quale tutto ciò che era stato operato contro Dio è stato inesorabilmente giudicato. Tutto ciò che era tensione al mistero di Dio è stato valorizzato, ma soprattutto è stata testimoniata la pienezza della fede, le condizioni della pienezza di libertà e di umanità per cui la redenzione è l’unica autentica possibilità di una antropologia adeguata, di una storia compiutamente vissuta, di una attesa piena di sacrificio e di letizia per l’instaurarsi di quel regno di Dio che nel mistero della Chiesa viene continuamente riproposto e autenticamente iniziato, portato di generazione in generazione verso il suo compimento. «Quel regno celesto – come diceva Iacopone da Todi – che compie omne festo che il cuore ha  bramato».

I cristiani che hanno seguito il Magistero e la testimonianza del Papa, hanno recuperato il senso del proprio essere uomini nuovi nel mondo, destinati proprio da questa novità a praticarla autenticamente e a comunicarla irresistibilmente, perché ogni uomo che incontra la testimonianza della Chiesa di Cristo, la testimonianza che ogni cristiano è chiamato a dare, possa se vuole accettare di inserire anche lui la sua vita e la sua libertà nel grande mistero della Chiesa in cui Cristo è continuamente presente, incontra l’uomo, riempie la sua vita di una proposta irresistibile. Soprattutto lo accompagna in quella azione educativa per cui le parole, le grandi parole della Chiesa, diventano carne e sangue, diventano esperienza reale, diventano una irresistibile fede in Dio e passione per ogni uomo che viene a questo mondo.

Two Popes and today’s sexual chaos - by Judie Brown

April 25, 2014 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Canonization is always a special event in the Catholic Church. But history will be made two days from now as two recent popes—both of whom have had a profound effect on the Church, her theology, and the world—will be elevated to sainthood.

The first of these, Pope John XXIII, presided over the opening of the Second Vatican Council. That alone made him a controversial pope in the eyes of those with the misguided notion that convening this council was the beginning ofmodernism in the Church. The fact is that the council did not open the doors to error. The misinterpretation of Vatican II documents was preceded by years of misguided attitudes propagated by wayward priests, bishops, and lay theologians. 

But that’s a story for another day. Suffice it to say, Pope John XXIII had the most honorable of intentions. He opened the council on October 11, 1962, saying among other things: “The Church has always opposed . . . errors. Nowadays, however, the Spouse of Christ prefers to make use of the medicine of mercy rather than that of severity.” 

Though he died just eight months later, the phrase “medicine of mercy” has been tossed about like Frisbee. Some have interpreted it to mean that Vatican II documents teach that it is better to be kind than it is to expect the adherence to truth and the avoidance of sin. This attitude could not be further from the truth.

For example, in May 1961, Pope John XXIII taught in Mater et Magistra:

We must solemnly proclaim that human life is transmitted by means of the family, and the family is based upon a marriage which is one and indissoluble and, with respect to Christians, raised to the dignity of a sacrament. The transmission of human life is the result of a personal and conscious act, and, as such, is subject to the all-holy, inviolable, and immutable laws of God, which no man may ignore or disobey. He is not therefore permitted to use certain ways and means which are allowable in the propagation of plant and animal life.

Human life is sacred—all men must recognize that fact. From its very inception it reveals the creating hand of God. Those who violate His laws not only offend the divine majesty and degrade themselves and humanity, they also sap the vitality of the political community of which they are members.

Here we find the Holy Father illuminating the undeniable truth that respecting human dignity is not optional if one desires to live in a way that is pleasing to God. In other words, living in accordance with Catholic teaching means accepting and sharing the “medicine of mercy.” Nothing in Vatican II documents denies this.

Further, Pope John Paul II taught in 1995, “Despite their differences of nature and moral gravity, contraception and abortion are often closely connected, as fruits of the same tree.”

We can conclude, therefore, that genuine mercy can only be communicated if we understand this virtue and how we must live it, speak it, and share it. Aquinas tells us that mercy signifies our grief for the sins of another person. Expressing this requires our conscious decision to aid someone in error—showing him the wrongdoing and helping him find in Christ the will to repent. 

Whether that action involves abortion, contraception, or other threats to the human person, when we become the ministers of the medicine of mercy we help them by sharing truth in love. We are, by our lives and actions, guiding the wayward to encounter truth, repentance, and forgiveness.

This is the essence of Pope John XXIII and Pope John Paul II’s legacy.

So, as we think about these soon-to-be saints, let us ask each of them to intercede for us that we may courageously oppose cruelty toward every one of our brothers and sisters while administering the medicine of mercy to a culture filled with human beings suffering sexual chaos.

Interview: A Tale of Two Saints - by George Weigel

In EPPC 
National Review Online | Published on April 24, 2014

On Divine Mercy Sunday this weekend in Rome — one week after Easter — Pope Francis will celebrate the canonizations of two recent predecessors in the Chair of Peter, Popes John Paul II and John XXIII. John Paul II’s biographer, George Weigel, distinguished senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, discusses the significance of the event with National Review Online’s Kathryn Jean Lopez.

KATHRYN JEAN LOPEZ: Why are John Paul II and John XXIII being canonized? Is it a big deal that this is a “doubleheader”?

GEORGE WEIGEL: It’s probably useful to get one thing straight at the outset: The Church doesn’t “make saints,” and neither does the pope. God makes saints, and the Church (through the pope and his collaborators) recognizes the saints God has made. In the first millennium of Christian history, the Church “recognized” saints through popular acclamation. From the mid 17th century on, the Church used a rather complex (and frankly adversarial) legal process to test whether popular reputations for heroic virtue — the definition of “sanctity” the Church uses in assessing these things — were warranted. That process was reformed by John Paul II in 1983, so that the current process more closely resembles a doctoral seminar in history than a trial.

Multiple canonizations are not all that rare. What gives the “doubleheader” of John XXIII and John Paul II its particular resonance is that both men were beloved, both were controversial, and both were deeply involved with the Second Vatican Council. A lot of the contemporary history of the Catholic Church is summed up in these two lives.

I think Pope Francis’s decision to waive the normal requirement for a second, post-beatification miracle for John XXIII and to celebrate his canonization together with that of John Paul II (after a post-beatification miracle due to his intercession had been confirmed) was inspired and bold. What Pope Francis may be saying is that here are the two bookends of the Second Vatican Council: the pope who had the courage and wisdom to summon the most important Catholic event in 500 years, and the pope who had the courage and wisdom to give that council an authoritative interpretation. I’d also suggest that John Paul II completed the work of John XXIII, by giving post-conciliar Catholicism a new vision of its evangelical, missionary potential — which happens to be the reason John XXIII called Vatican II, as we learn from rereading his magnificent opening address to the Council on October 11, 1962.

LOPEZ: What makes each of them saints?

WEIGEL: As always, it’s a case of “heroic virtue.” Both men had a widespread reputation for sanctity during their lives; indeed, in both cases, there were calls immediately after their deaths for them to be proclaimed saints. The dignity with which both of them bore their final suffering was a great priestly example, as was the calm courage with which both conducted the Office of Peter. And they could “pope” as well as they did because they were both men who had displayed, in their pre-papal lives and ministries, a radical conversion to Christ.

LOPEZ: What is canonization anyway? Does the Vatican have a window into who is in Heaven and who is in Hell? Could this be presumptuous on the part of the Catholic Church?

WEIGEL: “The Vatican” is, depending on the context, a micro-state or a set of buildings, and in either instance, “the Vatican” doesn’t have any privileged insight into human souls. What the Catholic Church does have is the promise of the Lord Jesus Christ that, by the Holy Spirit, she will be preserved in the truth Christ left her as a patrimony. And part of the Holy Spirit’s ongoing preservation of the Church in the truth is the Holy Spirit’s lifting up saintly men and women throughout the ages — and enabling the Church to recognize the sanctity of its sons and daughters, even when that sanctity comes in surprising or unexpected ways. The formal process of “canonization” is intended to weigh claims that X or Y lived the virtues in an exceptional way, a claim that is also weighed against the expectation that God will provide his own signal in the case of X or Y, through the medically inexplicable cures that are attributed to the intercession of candidates for beatification and canonization.

​John Paul II was convinced that God is profligate in “making saints,” and that the divine delight in doing so had not slackened over the centuries. Thus his many beatifications and canonizations were an effort to get the Church of the third millennium to recognize the many saints who surround us, that “great cloud of witnesses” of which the Letter to the Hebrews speaks so eloquently.

As for Hell, the Catholic Church has never declared that X, Y, or Z is certainly in Hell, although the Church continues to believe that Hell exists. The question of Hell’s population is for God to determine. The greatest of poets, Dante, was, of course, less restrained in his census of Hell than the teaching authority of the Catholic Church.

​​LOPEZ: “Vatican Under John Paul II Knew About Sex Abuse In Legion Of Christ For Decades, Documents Reveal,” one headline this week reads. Did Pope John Paul not want to know the truth about Marcial Maciel? Did he know and not care?

WEIGEL: I discussed the Maciel case in The End and the Beginning, the second volume of my biography of John Paul II, and my conclusion today remains the same as it was when that book was published in 2010: John Paul II was deceived by MarcialMaciel, a master-deceiver who deceived many, many people. That, I think, is clear. But that John Paul II knew about Maciel’s perfidies and “didn’t care” is inconceivable.

​LOPEZ: An AP story Monday was headlined “John Paul’s legacy stained by sex abuse scandal.” As his biographer, would you agree? What is his legacy on this front?

WEIGEL: This is another matter I discussed at length in both The End and the Beginning and in my 2002 book on the abuse scandal, The Courage To Be Catholic. There are a number of things to be said, things that don’t fit neatly into wire-service sound bites.

First, John Paul II was a great reformer of the priesthood. The Catholic priesthood in 1978 was in arguably its worst shape since the Reformation: thousands of men had abandoned the ministry, and we now know that others — a small minority, but one was one too many — were behaving horribly in betraying the trust of the young. The crisis of the priesthood was addressed by John Paul II comprehensively, by his teaching, his example, his reform of seminaries, and his reform of the world episcopate. The first thing to be said in fairness about John Paul II and the priesthood is that he is one of the great papal reformers of the priesthood.

Second, it’s clear that the Holy See and the pope were not living the abuse crisis in “real time” with the Church in the United States in 2002, an information lag that led to a misimpression of inattention or refusal to face facts.

Third, when John Paul II was fully informed of what had been revealed in the first four months of 2002, he acted decisively, summoning the American cardinals to the Vatican and initiating a process that led to a major and further reform of U.S. seminaries.

Fourth, the rigorous way the Catholic Church has dealt with what is a societal plague — the sexual abuse of the young — should be taken as a model for other institutions. The plague is real, but a one-eyed obsession with the plague’s impact on the Catholic Church makes it more difficult to address the far more widespread crisis of sexual abuse: within families (where the majority of the abuse of the young takes place) or in government-run schools. One does no good service to the young, and to the protection of the young, by using this horrible problem and these wicked acts to attack the credibility of the Church’s moral teaching on matters that cut against the grain of contemporary lifestyle libertinism.

LOPEZ: Shouldn’t both John Paul II and John XXIII be held responsible for what happened on their watch? Which certainly doesn’t scream “heroic virtue”?

WEIGEL: Local bishops and religious superiors are the ones to be held “primarily responsible” for failures to address, rigorously and decisively, the sin and crime of the sexual abuse of the young.

LOPEZ: Some have accused Pope Francis of being all talk on the topic of sex abuse. Would you agree? Or is there a story being missed?

WEIGEL: I really don’t understand what this accusation means. Is someone seriously proposing that Pope Francis does not care about the victims of abuse? That he is giving a wink-and-nod to these issues, where they remain? He’s just established a commission to oversee the Church’s response to the societal abuse crisis, and it includes both laity and an abuse victim.

The pope’s brief criticism of a U.N. report on the Church and the sexual abuse of the young rightly reminded the world that this is a global crisis, not some uniquely Catholic crisis. If Pope Francis were a less charitable man, he would also have remarked on the U.N.’s dismal record in addressing the rampant sexual abuse committed by U.N. “peacekeeping forces.”

​LOPEZ: The Holy See is about to go in front of a U.N. torture committee. Is there really cause for celebration in the Church about anything this weekend? At some point does Pope Francis have to not just reform but change tradition and teachings from another time?

WEIGEL: The pope is the servant of an authoritative tradition, not its master. One of his tasks is to preserve the integrity of that tradition in its fullness; note that, in his opening address, that’s what John XXIII said was the primary purpose of Vatican II!

​The millions of people who will flood Rome this weekend to celebrate two great modern Catholic leaders and their lives of heroic virtue know that there’s a lot to celebrate in the Catholic Church — including its steady refusal to cave in to what the New York Times editorial board and certain Times op-ed columnists think it should be. Hundreds of thousands of men and women, presumably neither deluded nor insane, were baptized or entered into full communion with the Catholic Church at Easter. The Catholic Church is the world’s premier institutional defender of religious freedom for all. Amidst the confusions of post-modernism, the Catholic Church is the world’s most important institutional defender of the prerogatives of reason to get at the truth of things — including the moral truth of things. The Catholic Church is the largest educator of women and the largest provider of health care to women and children in the Third World. The Church’s best seminaries in the United States are fuller than they have been in 40 years. Young Catholics are giving years of their lives as FOCUS missionaries on college and university campuses across the United States. The Church offers empowerment to the poor through its extensive social-service networks and compassionate support to women in crisis pregnancies.

So, yes, there’s a lot to celebrate, and a lot for which to be grateful.

LOPEZ: There’s a synod on the family coming up in the fall, convened by Pope Francis. What do you expect come of it? Again, Church teaching seems to be from another reality on marriage and family and women.

WEIGEL: Pope Francis understands that there is a crisis of marriage culture throughout the world. And he wants the Church to address that crisis more effectively. That will happen, I think, by lifting up the beauty of Christian marriage as an alternative to the anorexic notion of marriage as a legal contract for mutual convenience; Christian marriage is a covenant of love and self-giving, and the world needs to hear about that. And the Western world needs to come to grips with the fact that a contraceptive culture is leading to demographic oblivion.

We’ve got a lot of resources to address these issues today, resources that weren’t available in the cultural maelstrom of the Sixties and the furor over Paul VI’s encyclical on the morally appropriate means of family planning, Humanae Vitae. We have John Paul II’s magnificent 1981 apostolic exhortation, Familiaris Consortio. We have John Paul’s Theology of the Body. We have brilliant books like Mary Eberstadt’s Adam and Eve After the Pill. Those resources should all be in play in the special meeting of the Synod of Bishops in October, and in the ordinary meeting of the Synod in 2015, which will also address the crisis of family life throughout the world.

Above all, we have the example of couples and families who are the living answer to the global crisis of marriage culture. The Synod fathers should hear from them, early and often, as these discussions unfold over the next year and a half.

LOPEZ: What will you most appreciate or enjoy about the canonizations this weekend?

WEIGEL: I’m looking forward to another global gathering of the great Catholic family from all over the world. It’s likely to be a bit chaotic, but then so, I expect, was the first Christian Pentecost.

LOPEZ: Is there anything about John Paul II you wish people realized?

WEIGEL: I suppose I wish that people would recognize his extraordinary courage in facing down a crippling illness and reminding us that there are no disposable human beings. More importantly, I wish that people would realize that he could do that, and be that, because of his embrace of the Cross as the truth of life.

LOPEZ: Is there anything about John XXIII you wish people realized?

WEIGEL: I wish we could get beyond the stereotypes here. Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli was steeped in quite conventional Catholic piety, as is clear from his spiritual diary, Journal of a Soul. What made him the bold leader he eventually became as Pope John XXIII were his lifelong study of history — which taught him that the Church must adapt its presentation of perennial truths to the demands of a given cultural moment, so that the truth can be heard and engaged — and his life outside what I would call the “Catholic bubble.” He spent decades as a Vatican diplomatic representative in Orthodox and Islamic countries. He was a Holocaust rescuer. He understood that Catholicism had to rediscover its originating evangelical dynamism if it was going to be the force it should be for the healing of the world.

LOPEZ: Is it right to say one is a right-wing and one is a left-wing pope?

WEIGEL: No, it’s quite ridiculous to say that. Which doesn’t mean it won’t be said, alas.

LOPEZ: Is this some sort of reset in the life of the Church?

WEIGEL: If by “this” you mean the canonization doubleheader, it’s the best kind of reset: a reminder that the Church is, at the bottom of the bottom line, in the business of facilitating holiness, which comes through friendship with Jesus Christ.

LOPEZ: Is there an approach to foreign policy and human freedom and flourishing that is consistent and important about the two?

WEIGEL: Both men understood that, at the root of the sorrows of the 20th century, there was a profound anthropological crisis — a crisis in the very idea of the human person. Roncalli understood this experientially and historically, and responded to it in a deeply personal way that exuded pastoral charity. Wojtyla got it experientially, analyzed it philosophically, and put the Christian view of the inalienable dignity of the human person at the center of his teaching and witness.

LOPEZ: What’s Divine Mercy Sunday and what’s significant about it as the doubleheader date? What does it say about Francis?

WEIGEL: “Easter,” as Catholics understand it liturgically, lasts eight days: every day of Easter week is Easter, and so is the Octave of Easter, the Second Sunday of Easter, which John Paul II designated as Divine Mercy Sunday — the day the Church celebrates the capacity of the divine compassion to heal the most broken of lives. That is what the Resurrection of Jesus confirms. And it’s entirely appropriate that two popes through whom the world “saw” divine compassion and pastoral charity in an exceptional way should be canonized on that day. Pope Francis understands this, and that’s why the doubleheader is what it is and when it is.

LOPEZ: With Elizabeth Lev and your son, Stephen, you recently wrote a book called Roman Pilgrimage on the station churches of Rome. Are there any spots you will not miss when in Rome?

WEIGEL: I’ve got to get back to Sts. Cosmas and Damian and St. Praxedes.

LOPEZ: Christians are still celebrating Easter. How is Easter relevant in the world today with all its challenges and possibilities?

WEIGEL: Easter tells Christians that the end of the world’s story has been made manifest in the Resurrection of Jesus from the dead, and his being constituted as Lord and Savior. That changes everything. So, despite the awfulness that we too often see around us, Christians know through Easter that God’s creative and redeeming purposes are going to be vindicated at the end of the drama of history and creation. So we can get about witnessing to the divine mercy we have experienced in our own lives, through friendship with the Risen Christ, in ways that offer the possibility of that friendship to others. And we can do that knowing that, in the end, it’s all a divine comedy, not a cosmic tragedy.

A Soul for All Seasons - by George Weigel

In EPPC

In a March 1996 conversation, Pope John Paul II told me, almost wistfully, “They try to understand me from the outside, but I can only be understood from inside.” His tone that evening was less critical than it was bemused, even resigned. But whether his regrets involved biographers who treated him as a globe-trotting politician or journalists who parsed his every word and deed in conventional left-right categories, the view from outside, he knew, was not going to get anyone close to the essence of Karol Wojtyła.

I agreed with him then; and now, nine years after his death, in the days before his April 27 canonization, I agree with him even more. John Paul II, who embodied the human drama of the second half of the 20th century in a singular way, and whose witness to the truth of humanity’s noblest aspirations bent the curve of history toward freedom, can only be understood from inside out. Or, if you prefer, soul first.

His was a many-textured soul. Some of its multiple facets help explain his extraordinary accomplishments in the Catholic Church and on the world stage.

He had a Polish soul, formed by a distinctive experience of history. Vivisected in the Third Polish Partition of 1795, his country was not restored to the map of Europe until 1918. But during those 123 years of political humiliation, the Polish nation survived the demise of the Polish state through its language, its literature and its faith, with the Catholic Church acting as the safe-deposit box of national identity.

Learning about that hard experience as a boy, Karol Wojtyła was permanently inoculated against the twin heresies that had beset the West for centuries: the Jacobin heresy that the political quest for power runs history, and the Marxist heresy that history is simply the exhaust fumes of economic processes. Knowing in his Polish soul that culture, not politics or economics, drives history over the long haul, John Paul II could ignite a revolution of conscience during his first papal visit to Poland in 1979. He summoned his people to live the truth about themselves, to reject the communist culture of the lie, and to find in that restored national identity irresistible tools of resistance to oppression.

This son of Poland was, at the same time, a man of global vision with a deeply humanistic soul, forged by what he regarded as the crisis of modernity: a crisis in the very idea of the human person. That crisis, he believed, was not confined to communism’s materialist reduction of the human condition, which he tenaciously fought as a university chaplain, a professor of ethics, a charismatic priest and a dynamic bishop. The crisis could also be found in those Western systems that were tempted to measure men and women by their commercial utility rather than by the innate and inalienable dignity that was their birthright.

John Paul II’s conviction, biblically rooted and philosophically refined, was that every human life is of infinite value, at every stage and in every condition. This was the basis of his priestly ministry for almost six decades; it was the conviction that forged his unique moral analysis of world politics; and it was the ground from which he could inspire men and women from a staggering variety of cultures.

He could also touch those lives because of his dramatic soul. As a young man, he confessed in a memoir later in life, he was “obsessed” with the theater. And while he took some useful skills from those experiences on stage— John Gielgud once commented on John Paul II’s “perfect” sense of timing, as Alec Guinness marveled at the resonance of his voice—he also developed a dramatic view of the human condition. We all live, he believed, in a quotidian, yet deeply consequential, moral drama. Every day of our lives is lived in the dramatic tension between who we are and who we should be.

John Paul II intuited this on stage; he refined that intuition as a philosopher. And it was deepened by his Christian conviction that the drama of every human life is playing within a cosmic drama in which the God of the Bible is producer, director, scriptwriter and protagonist. That Christian conviction, in turn, was what allowed him to say, a year after he was shot in St. Peter’s Square in 1981, “In the designs of Providence there are no mere coincidences.”

A man whose soul is formed by the conviction that “coincidence” is merely a facet of providence that he has not yet grasped is a man impervious to the tyranny of the possible. And here, too, the soul of John Paul II helps explain his accomplishment.

When he was elected pope in 1978, some observers, fixated on what they imagined to be possible, saw in the Catholic Church only contention and possible ruin. He saw seeds of reform and renewal, leading to what he would call a “New Evangelization,” a new missionary dynamic in Catholicism that would offer the divine mercy to a broken and wounded humanity. Others, fixated on what seemed settled in world affairs, believed that the Yalta division of Europe after World War II was permanent. But after June 1979 and the rise of the Solidarity movement in Poland, he saw possibilities for dramatic cultural, social and eventually political change in Eastern Europe—and then helped effect them.

If John Paul II seemed able to discern possibilities where others saw only barriers; if he saw (as he put it at the United Nations in 1995), a “springtime of the human spirit” after a winter of murderous discontent embodied in two world wars, the gulag and Auschwitz—well, one could look to his keen mind for an explanation. But the deeper explanation lies in his soul, and in the human character formed by that soul.

It was John Paul’s soul in which hundreds of millions of human beings found an exemplar of decency and an icon of hope. It was the character formed by that soul that made him a champion of resistance against the tyranny of diminished expectations, personal and political.

The Joys and Sorrows of Francis's Magisterium - by Sandro Magister

The innovation in method of "Evangelii Gaudium" explained by an Australian theologian. But the pope is not always interpreted correctly. Not even by the director of "La Civiltà Cattolica." The emblematic case of the baptism in Córdoba 

In Chiesaespresso

ROME, April 15, 2014 – From the dicastery heads of the Roman curia called to report at the beginning of this month of April, Pope Francis wanted to hear just one thing, summarized as follows in the official statement: "the reflections and reactions raised in the different dicasteries by the apostolic exhortation 'Evangelii Gaudium' and the perspectives opened for its implementation."

The fact that "Evangelii Gaudium" is essentially the action plan of the pontificate of Jorge Mario Bergoglio is now beyond all doubt.

But it is precisely for this reason that understanding it is so important. And at the same time so difficult. Because the form in which "Evangelii Gaudium" is written is not at all in keeping with the classical canons of the ecclesiastical magisterium, just like the everyday public discourse of Pope Francis.

In the analysis published as an exclusive below, Paul-Anthony McGavin maintains that Francis shuns abstractions, prohibits what he calls "cold syllogisms," and instead loves thinking and action that are "holistic," or all-encompassing. And he shows how precisely this is the novelty of method in "Evangelii Gaudium."

McGavin is a 70-year-old Australian priest of the diocese of Canberra and Goulburn and an ecclesiastical assistant at the University of Canberra. In 2010 he published in "L'Osservatore Romano" an equally extensive and in-depth commentary on the encyclical "Caritas in Veritate" of Benedict XVI.

In Pope Francis - McGavin writes - "we encounter a mind that is grounded in a pastoral empiricism . . . that integrates concrete circumstances within a structured and fundamental understanding of the Gospel."

But McGavin himself acknowledges that this "unfragmented" mentality exposes the pope to substantial risks of misunderstanding. Especially when some of his statements are taken by the media as self-contained aphorisms and turned into comprehensive keys of interpretation for the current pontificate. 

Two recent examples are proof of this misunderstanding.

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Over the span of 36 hours, between Thursday the 10th and Friday the 11th of April, Pope Francis lashed out - and not for the first time - against the "dictatorship of uniform thought" that suppresses "the freedom of nations, the freedom of the people, freedom of conscience."

He then forcefully defended "the right of children to grow up in a family with a dad and a mom, in relation to the masculinity and femininity of a father and a mother, thus preparing affective maturity."

He furthermore expressed the toughest of views on "the horrors of educational manipulation" that "with the pretense of modernity pushes children and young people to walk the dictatorial path of the single form of thought." And he added the testimony of a "great educator" who had told him a few days earlier, referring to concrete projects of education: "At times one cannot tell with these projects if one is sending a child to school or to a reeducation camp."

And finally he reiterated his opposition to the killing of all "unborn life in the mother's womb," citing the summary judgment of Vatican Council II: "Abortion and infanticide are abominable crimes."

The references to events, to laws, to judicial decisions, to opinion campaigns attributable to "gender" ideology, in the news recently in Italy, France, and other countries, were transparent in the words of Pope Francis.

But in the media in general his warnings had practically no impact. As if they were a pure abstraction, with no influence on reality and foreign to any judgment. Because the key to explaining everything - in the media's narration of Pope Francis - is by now the "who am I to judge?" spoken by the pope for the first time during the press conference on the return flight from Rio de Janeiro and a second time in the interview with "La Civiltà Cattolica," in reference to the homosexual who "is of good will and is in search of God."

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The second example shows how a distorted and extensive use of the "who am I to judge?" has also made a breach in the Church, and even in some who should have been reliable interpreters of Pope Francis's thinking.

On April 1, at a crowded public conference in Rome, the director of "La Civiltà Cattolica" and the pope's interviewer, Fr. Antonio Spadaro, said:

"If it had not been for Pope Francis it would not have been easy to baptize a baby girl born to a lesbian couple."

The Jesuit was referring to the baptism announced with great fanfare and then administered on April 5 in Argentina, in the cathedral of Córdoba, of the little daughter of a woman united in a civil "marriage" with another woman, both present at the rite as "mothers" and assisted by President Cristina Kirchner as "godmother."

But if this, according to Fr. Spadaro, was the happy news fostered by Pope Francis, it must be said that there is nothing new but rather something very old and traditional in the baptism of a newborn girl, however she may have come into the world. Only a few progressive and anti-Constantinian Catholic currents are against the age-old practice of infant baptism.

The news, for the Church, was instead in all the rest of the highly touted ceremony in Córdoba. Where everything - from the unnatural "family," to the two "mothers," to the "godmother" Kirchner who was an active proponent of the law that allowed the two to be united in "marriage," to the concealed biological father of the newborn girl - spoke of complete submission to that "single form of thought" so staunchly opposed by Pope Francis.

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WHAT’S NEW IN "EVANGELII GAUDIUM"?

by Paul-Anthony McGavin


Pope Francis has attracted wide media attention with his one-line remarks and magazine style interviews. The popular press has largely lauded his remarks, hearing what they want to hear, propagating what they want to hear, and not hearing his refrain: “I am a son of the Church.” 

"Evangelii gaudium" is the first extended and considered literary statement that encompasses much of what the Holy Father has been saying in oral formats. What I intend to show is that what is new in "Evangelii gaudium" is what I call method, the manner of thinking and reasoning.

Pope Francis does not present himself as a scholar, and his simple conversational one-line remarks are often made with unvarnished language. What becomes evident in "Evangelii gaudium" is that he nevertheless has refined intellectuality. The manner in which he thinks is sophisticated and has a distinct method or methodology that may be seen in "Evangelii gaudium". This method is not new. What is new is the simplicity and clarity of its statement.

The irony, however, is that his method is at once simple and complex.

It is simple because it is straightforward. It is simple because there is constant reference to concrete situations, rather than to abstractions that cover all or various situations.

It is complex because it is situated in a cluster of understandings. The Pope’s oft-quoted single-line remarks in fact situate in a mind that sees a cluster of understandings, and not just single-line perspectives that call upon the mentality that we find in syllogistic logic. Pope Francis is a system thinker.

To say “a system thinker” seems abstruse, when Pope Francis is not an abstruse man. To use a different idiom, Pope Francis tends to think “holistically”. He tends to locate the questions with which he deals in view of a whole understanding of the work of God in Christ (the Gospel, "Evangelium"), and that whole understanding in the varieties of situations that are evoked. That is, in the concrete circumstances where he is considering the reception and living out of what God has done and is doing in the Church. His thought is always situated pastorally, rather than abstractly. Yet, however, he sees and thinks through the issues that engage his focus in a whole-view way that is complex.

Let’s look at an example of this from "Evangelii gaudium":

"There also exists a constant tension between ideas and realities. Realities simply “are”, whereas ideas are “worked out”. There has to be a continuous dialogue between the two, lest ideas become detached from realities. It is dangerous to dwell in the realm of words alone… So a third principle comes into play: realities are greater than ideas. This calls for rejecting the various means of masking reality: angelic forms of purity, dictatorships of relativism, empty rhetoric, objectives more ideal than real, brands of ahistorical fundamentalism, ethical systems bereft of wisdom" (n. 231).

One could get hung-up on the rather wide-sweeping list of examples that closes this excerpt, a diverse list that includes things that are likely to provoke an “Ouch!” in most readers. Rather, our attention should focus on the distinction between ideas and realities.

The Pope proposes that ideas are constructed or “worked out”, whereas realities simply “are”. In strict terms, his dichotomization may be questioned, because the subject must perceptually focus on “realities”, must engage an epistemology in order to comprehend the “reality” – just as the subject must engage an epistemology in order to give mental form to something that is noetic, to “ideas”. But introducing such strict philosophical and psychological issues would deflect from the central point that the Pope is making.

His focus is that there is a tension between the conceptual world and the practical world, and that this tension calls us to dialogue. This is an example of what I have named as at once simple and complex. People can readily grasp that there is often a disjunction between the world of ideas and the world of realities. It is a simple proposition. But once this perspective is engaged, it leads to complexity. This could be the complexity of conflict, or of pathways toward a resolution. The Pope proposes the latter, he proposes dialogue that typically is complex and culturally situated.

Just think how complex it is to moderate the position of someone who has constructed an asceticism that is non-incarnational (“angelicism”); or to moderate the position of someone who sees the whole moral order as self-defined (the “dictatorships of relativism”); or to moderate the position of someone whose position stands outside historical understandings of God’s providence in the world (an “a-historical version of Christianity”), to mention just three of the Pope’s examples. 

The Pope comes down on the side of “realities”, saying that “realities are greater than ideas”. This would seem at odds with his emphasis on tension and on dialogue. But it is not really a departure from the points of tension and dialogue. It is an approach that proceeds from the Gospel as first rooted in “realities”, rather than in “ideas”.

The Gospel first involves the “realities” – the facts – of Our Lord’s incarnation, his earthly life, his passion, his resurrection, and his ascension. That is, the Gospel first involves the facts of God’s action in Christ. "He is Risen!" is not first the proclamation of an idea, but of a fact, an experienced fact (n. 7, quoting "Deus Caritas est," 217). The Gospel is predicated upon "witness: That which we have heard, which we have seen with our own eyes, which we have looked upon and touched with our hands concerning the Word of life" (1 John 1:1). The astonishing power of the Christian idea is that it articulates the realities of historical acts as encountered by witnesses.

It is this “reality” that precedes “ideas” in the Christian scheme of things. For the Christian – and using just three of the Pope’s examples – sin is a reality; salvation in Christ is a reality; injustices are a reality (of course, many mistakenly think injustices as perceptual rather than objective, but I do not speak to that); unkindnesses are a reality (although of course misguided sensibilities may wrongly attribute unkindness). In each of these three examples, one can see dangers in detaching from empirical matter-of-factness the notions of sin, injustice, or unkindness: “It is dangerous to dwell in the realm of words alone…” (n. 231).

These reduced-form remarks of the Pope are situated in a comprehensive perspective, in a holistic perspective that is undergirded by a fundamental experience of and appreciation of the Gospel. It is a perspective that is at once simple and complex. It is a perspective that engages dialogue. It is a perspective that unmasks conceits of one kind or another (whether conceits of an artifice of religiosity or of a humanist relativism). The “rejecting the various means of masking reality” (n. 231) may seem a harsh turn of phrase, and here I would turn to the non-textual image of the body language of Pope Francis (n. 140): he can hardly keep a closed body posture; it constantly is open; the typical gesture is toward a meeting, toward a conversation, dialogue. Again taking up the text portion, it is a dialogue of truthfulness, and truthfulness that encounters matter-of-factness.

One sees in this example that the direction of the Holy Father’s manner of thinking and acting is not what I call single-line. He is not grabbed by single-line propositions (“cold syllogisms”, n. 142). His tendency is to thought and action that is holistic – toward a whole understanding of the Gospel, and to the grounding of that whole understanding in matter-of-fact circumstances that avoid abstractions. He is not drawn to a “desk-bound theology” (n. 133). His instinct is toward a pastoral theology.

The pastoral theology focus of Pope Francis may be illustrated with two other key quotations:

"Pastoral ministry in a missionary style is not obsessed with the disjointed transmission of a multitude of doctrines to be insistently imposed" (n. 35). "It needs first to be said that in preaching the Gospel a fitting sense of proportion has to be maintained" (n. 38).

Again in these small quotes we see an implicit holistic grasp of the Gospel; again we see that the significances of aspects of the proclamation or of corollaries of the proclamation are situated in a whole that gives them proportion. What the Pope presents derives from systemic understanding. This is not intellectualist systematizing, but systemic understanding that is grounded in pastoral experience. 

The Pope will be misunderstood if his various utterances (particularly those that grab the media as “sound bites”) are taken as one-line dictums, for the Pope’s mind is not a fragmented one. In Pope Francis we encounter a mind that is grounded in a pastoral empiricism, but an empiricism that is in whole-system dialogue with the foundations of Catholic faith that integrates concrete circumstances within a structured and fundamental understanding of the Gospel.

This is not to say that in each and every respect this integration is perfect. An Apostolic Exhortation forms part of magisterial teaching, but it is not unreformable. Pope Francis retains an Argentine passport, and his larger cultural situation is Latin America. And Latin America and Central America are without exception comprised of nations that are marked with poverty and political instability. His own perspective on this (his own “take”) is rather “culturally formed” – it is formed experientially, rather than conceptually. In brief, Pope Francis is not a social scientist, and does not bring a social science understanding of the poverty and political instability of his cultural background. One could hear him say, understanding has to begin “with realities”, not “with ideas”. Yet the “facts” are that about a century ago, Argentine and Australia had similar configurations of economy and society, but now Australia is materially more advanced, and is more equalitarian and with relatively little poverty. I regard the reasons for this divergence between Australia and Argentine (my home and the Pope’s home) as mainly “cultural” – and cultural divergences that reflect rather different conceptualizations (“ideas”) of economy and civil society. 

I am not about to launch into an excursus on economy and society. I make these remarks to underscore that everything said in "Evangelii gaudium" is not said with equal robustness. There are points where as both a social scientist and a theologian I have heavily annotated "Evangelii gaudium" in a qualifying ways (particularly nn. 48-50 and 144-147, and 152f). But even within sections so annotated, one still finds restatement of the central thesis of Pope Francis. For example:

"Why complicate something so simple [as in biblical calls to almsgiving]? Conceptual tools [such as economic theories] exist to heighten contact with the realities they seek to explain, not to distance us from them [and to dampen direct action to alleviate poverty]" (n. 194).

One can see in this compressed exclamation, the urgency of the Pope’s call to grounded theorizing that is consistent with the generalizations that I earlier made. But in its textual context one can see a perspective that is not well informed in social science terms (nor perhaps in biblical terms if the perspective in Lukan parables is taken a paradigm). 

This suggests that in reading "Evangelii gaudium" we should engage in “conversation”, in dialogue (nn. 31, 133, 137, 142, 165). That is, we should not engage the text as “the last word”, but try to enter the tensions in the text in a conversational manner that moderates positions.

Much in the Exhortation reflects personal positions of the Pope (his “personality”) and his Latin American culture (and a principle of cultural groundedness is crucial to his paradigm: see nn. 115, 123, 132f). His readers will have differing personalities and differing cultural perspectives. The strong contribution of "Evangelii gaudium" is the way it demonstrates a holistic method that has diverse applications for living and communicating the joy of the Gospel. Whether concerning issues of economy and society and social science understanding; or with issues of liturgical inheritance and contemporary expression; or with tangled issues of moral discernment; or with tangled issues of giving a good account in particular situations of the faith of the Church – we need to find both simplicity and complexity that involve tension and that call to sympathetic dialogue.

This is a call to charity, and "charity covers a multitude of sins" (James 5:20). The Exhortation of Pope Francis is, indeed, a call to charity and to joy – joy in the Gospel, "Evangelii gaudium".

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The agenda-setting apostolic exhortation of Pope Francis's pontificate:

> Evangelii gaudium

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The April 10 homily of Pope Francis against the "dictatorship of uniform thought":

> "Anche oggi…"

The April 11 speech at the International Catholic Child Bureau:

> "Vi ringrazio…"

The speech on the same day to the Italian Movement for life: 

> "Quando sono entrato…"

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In the homily on April 10, in denouncing the "idolatry of uniform thought," Bergoglio specified that often "when some governments ask for financial help, we hear the response: ‘if you want this help you have to think this way and you have to enact this law and that, and that other.'"

This denunciation made by the pope can be set alongside what was written in the latest issue of "Il Regno," in an article on "Churches and gay rights" in Africa:

"The idea that the decriminalization of homosexuality is above all a priority of the West has taken on new vigor partly because of the hypothesis of cuts in development aid for Uganda floated by the United States, France, Holland, and Sweden, while the World Bank has frozen an award of 90 million dollars. But already at the end of 2011, after the statements of British prime minister David Cameron and former United States secretary of state Hillary Clinton on the possible suspension of aid for countries without guarantees of 'homosexual rights,' the spokesman of the episcopal conference of Zambia, Fr. Paul Samasumo, had asked that aid not be tied 'to the promotion of immorality.' On that occasion, various other Christian Churches had taken the same stance."

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English translation by Matthew Sherry, Ballwin, Missouri, U.S.A.