Posted on 04/07/2005 7:50:57 PM PDT by Coleus
Help us gauge the historical significance of Pope John Paul II.
There are only two possible competitors to John Paul II being the most significant pope since the Reformation: Pius IX in the 19th century, who was also one of the youngest popes ever and reigned for a long, long time. Vatican I and the doctrine of papal infallibility happened under him, along with the loss of the papal states.
The other competitor would be John XXIII, and that's just because of Vatican II. But his pontificate was so brief, it was almost like a flare against the darkness. So I think John Paul II, on balance, given everything, would rise above even them.
How did John Paul II change Catholicism in relation to evangelical Protestantism?
He was eagerly interested in reaching out to everybody. I think his greatest interest, ecumenically, was not with Protestants or evangelicals, it was with the Eastern Orthodox churches. He talked about the church being able to breathe with its two lungs, of which he meant East and West. He saw the Protestant movement and evangelicalism as an offshoot of one of the lungs, and therefore not urgent on the agenda.
But having said that, I think he came to see, particularly in the last probably 10 to 15 years of his pontificate, the enormous importance of evangelicalism as a world Christian force. You know the often quoted statement by Wolfhart Pannenberg that the three great ascendant forces in world Christianity in the 21st century will be Roman Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, and Protestant evangelicalism.
And the pope, because he was the most-traveled pope in history with more than 200 countries visited, was able to see some of this up close and personal.
(Excerpt) Read more at christianitytoday.com ...
And what was his rationale?
It's most clearly expressed in his encyclical Evangelium Vitae: The Gospel of Life, in which he essentially argues for the integrity of every individual person made in the image of God, and that the gospel, if we're going to be faithful to that gospel and faithful to biblical anthropology, requires us to be engaged as advocates for the sanctity of human life wherever we encounter it. That's a very brief summary of about a 70-page document.
Do not ask for whom the bell tolls...
"Whatever is opposed to life itself, such as any type of murder, genocide, abortion, euthanasia, or wilful self-destruction, whatever violates the integrity of the human person, such as mutilation, torments inflicted on body or mind, attempts to coerce the will itself; whatever insults human dignity, such as subhuman living conditions, arbitrary imprisonment, deportation, slavery, prostitution, the selling of women and children; as well as disgraceful working conditions, where people are treated as mere instruments of gain rather than as free and responsible persons; all these things and others like them are infamies indeed. They poison human society, and they do more harm to those who practise them than to those who suffer from the injury. Moreover, they are a supreme dishonour to the Creator".
Choices once unanimously considered criminal and rejected by the common moral sense are gradually becoming socially acceptable.
"Even certain sectors of the medical profession, which by its calling is directed to the defence and care of human life, are increasingly willing to carry out these acts against the person. In this way the very nature of the medical profession is distorted and contradicted, and the dignity of those who practise it is degraded."
"conscience itself, darkened as it were by such widespread conditioning, is finding it increasingly difficult to distinguish between good and evil in what concerns the basic value of human life"
here's a kind of ecclesiology that we can't accept and a kind of sacramentalism that most evangelicals can't accept. And the pope has been very strong in reaffirming these, I would say, that are still obstacles to Christian unity. I don't see a way forward around these issues.
I agree here. It will be interesting to see what direction the next Pope takes.
I'm against the death penalty. I'm pro-life in all situations.
55. This should not cause surprise: to kill a human being, in whom the image of God is present, is a particularly serious sin. Only God is the master of life! Yet from the beginning, faced with the many and often tragic cases which occur in the life of individuals and society, Christian reflection has sought a fuller and deeper understanding of what God's commandment prohibits and prescribes. 43 There are in fact situations in which values proposed by God's Law seem to involve a genuine paradox. This happens for example in the case of legitimate defence, in which the right to protect one's own life and the duty not to harm someone else's life are difficult to reconcile in practice. Certainly, the intrinsic value of life and the duty to love oneself no less than others are the basis of a true right to self-defence. The demanding commandment of love of neighbour, set forth in the Old Testament and confirmed by Jesus, itself presupposes love of oneself as the basis of comparison: "You shall love your neighbour as yourself " (Mk 12:31). Consequently, no one can renounce the right to self-defence out of lack of love for life or for self. This can only be done in virtue of a heroic love which deepens and transfigures the love of self into a radical self-offering, according to the spirit of the Gospel Beatitudes (cf. Mt 5:38-40). The sublime example of this self-offering is the Lord Jesus himself.Moreover, "legitimate defence can be not only a right but a grave duty for someone responsible for another's life, the common good of the family or of the State".44 Unfortunately it happens that the need to render the aggressor incapable of causing harm sometimes involves taking his life. In this case, the fatal outcome is attributable to the aggressor whose action brought it about, even though he may not be morally responsible because of a lack of the use of reason. 45
"we are confronted by an even larger reality, which can be described as a veritable structure of sin. This reality is characterized by the emergence of a culture which denies solidarity and in many cases takes the form of a veritable 'culture of death'"
"A person who, because of illness, handicap or, more simply, just by existing, compromises the well-being or life-style of those who are more favoured tends to be looked upon as an enemy to be resisted or eliminated. In this way a kind of "conspiracy against life" is unleashed."
"While it is true that the taking of life not yet born or in its final stages is sometimes marked by a mistaken sense of altruism and human compassion, it cannot be denied that such a culture of death, taken as a whole, betrays a completely individualistic concept of freedom, which ends up by becoming the freedom of 'the strong' against the weak who have no choice but to submit."
"To claim the right to abortion, infanticide and euthanasia, and to recognize that right in law, means to attribute to human freedom a perverse and evil significance: that of an absolute power over others and against others."
"When conscience, this bright lamp of the soul, calls 'evil good and good evil', it is already on the path to the most alarming corruption and the darkest moral blindness."
The strongest link to Eastern Orthodox Churches and Evangelicals is through the (Ukrainian) Greco Catholic Church. Present Ukrainian Patriarch Cardinal Lubomyr Husar is probably the strongest candidate to achieve that. He was born in prosecuted Ukraine, lived in US and is familiar with problems on both sides. Reunification of both lungs would be the next major step in strenghtening the Christ's Church. Let's pray!
Beware of flames thrown your way! (At least you didn't put in a good word for Terri Schiavo . . . )
I've put in MANY good words for Terri. I'm STILL thinking about how the government failed her. I wake up in the middle of the night thinking about it.
I do too. I had yet another dream about her last night.
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