D
djeter
Guest
In 2005 Pope John Paul II surveyed his life and experiences and sat down to write a chapter in a slender volume he would title “Memory and Identity.” The book was an elaboration of the main themes of some conversations that had taken place in 1993 in Castel Gandolfo. Two Polish philosophers, Jozef Tischner and Krzysztof Michaiski, founders of the Vienna-based Institute for Human Sciences (Institut für die Wissenschaften vom Menschen), had invited him to undertake a critical analysis, from a historical and philosophical point of view, of the two dictatorships that marked twentieth-century Polish history: Nazism and communism.
Those conversations had been recorded and subsequently transcribed. In the year before his death the Holy Father sought to enlarge the perspective of the discussion. Beginning from these conversations, he set the reflections in a broader context. The result was“Memory and Identity.” One chapter especially concerned the mystery of evil or mysterium iniquitatis — the great eruption of evil that had held Europe by the throat for most of the twentieth century — first through the rise and fall of the fascist states and later with the occupation of Eastern Europe by the Soviet Union. The Pope didn’t end there however – no great triumph of the West in the Cold War or neocon hymns to Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan for John Paul II. He wrote also of the newer “ideologies of evil.”
Ironically enough what had happened in John Paul’s beloved homeland of Poland after the Marxists came to power had much the same effect as the philosophical developments that had occurred in Western Europe in the wake of the Enlightenment and had come to a slow fruition in the Western democracies in the latter half of the twentieth century. The old Pope had lived in one and observed the other. He could tell the difference and knew there wasn’t any.
He surveyed a world where the true, the good, the beautiful and societies ordered towards a transcendental structure of being now seemed to be quaint ideals of a past either dead or dying. He searched for the words to teach his children one last time the lessons of the Gospel and found these profound and challenging observations.
I was struck by the bluntness of some of his observations, particularly his readiness to identify the motivation for gay marriage and gay families as another “ideology of evil.” One wonders how many contemporary Bishops now would express views so shorn of the correct PCisms. One thing we can say is that John Paul did not go quietly…
As is my custom, I’ve prepared reading selections I found compelling – the best of the best…
Hope you enjoy them.
Here:
payingattentiontothesky.com/2009/11/02/book-recommendation-reading-selections-from-memory-and-identity-%e2%80%93-pope-john-paul-ii/
In Christ,
dj
Those conversations had been recorded and subsequently transcribed. In the year before his death the Holy Father sought to enlarge the perspective of the discussion. Beginning from these conversations, he set the reflections in a broader context. The result was“Memory and Identity.” One chapter especially concerned the mystery of evil or mysterium iniquitatis — the great eruption of evil that had held Europe by the throat for most of the twentieth century — first through the rise and fall of the fascist states and later with the occupation of Eastern Europe by the Soviet Union. The Pope didn’t end there however – no great triumph of the West in the Cold War or neocon hymns to Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan for John Paul II. He wrote also of the newer “ideologies of evil.”
Ironically enough what had happened in John Paul’s beloved homeland of Poland after the Marxists came to power had much the same effect as the philosophical developments that had occurred in Western Europe in the wake of the Enlightenment and had come to a slow fruition in the Western democracies in the latter half of the twentieth century. The old Pope had lived in one and observed the other. He could tell the difference and knew there wasn’t any.
He surveyed a world where the true, the good, the beautiful and societies ordered towards a transcendental structure of being now seemed to be quaint ideals of a past either dead or dying. He searched for the words to teach his children one last time the lessons of the Gospel and found these profound and challenging observations.
I was struck by the bluntness of some of his observations, particularly his readiness to identify the motivation for gay marriage and gay families as another “ideology of evil.” One wonders how many contemporary Bishops now would express views so shorn of the correct PCisms. One thing we can say is that John Paul did not go quietly…
As is my custom, I’ve prepared reading selections I found compelling – the best of the best…
Hope you enjoy them.
Here:
payingattentiontothesky.com/2009/11/02/book-recommendation-reading-selections-from-memory-and-identity-%e2%80%93-pope-john-paul-ii/
In Christ,
dj