The Theological Presentation of the Theology of the Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC)

The CCC arose in response to the confusion concerning the faith during the first 20 years of the post-conciliar period, from 1965 to 1985. Then-Cardinal Ratzinger wrote:

“In October 1985, twenty years after the close of the Second Vatican Council, the Holy Father convoked an extraordinary synod… Its task was to look not only to the past but also to the future: to pinpoint the situation of the Church; to recall the principal intention of the Council; to ask how to make this intention our own today and to render it fruitful for tomorrow. In this context there arose the idea of a catechism of the universal Church, analogous to the Roman Catechism of 1566.” The Content of the Catechism: At the offering of the CCC to the press on October 11, 1992, Cardinal Ratzinger as head of the SCDF posed the rhetorical question: “Is the catechism really a book of morals? The answer is: Yes it is, but it is something more. It deals with the human person, but in the conviction that the human question cannot be separated from the God question. One does not really speak rightly of man without speaking of God as well. However, we cannot really speak correctly about God if he himself does not tell us who he is.” With this, Cardinal Ratzinger unfolds before us the development that took place in Vatican II, namely that the ontological architecture of the human person is effectively in the image and likeness of the divine Persons. Hence, we immediately have the theological ground of the four parts of the CCC: (I)The Creed that tells us who God is, (II) the sacraments that tell us how man becomes empowered to act like God, (III) the morality of human acts that are “Life in Christ,” that is living as Ipse Christus, and (IV) Prayer that is the very act of divinization. The content of the CCC is not merely conceptual as a book of theology “but a book of the faith for the teaching of the faith.” But what is that content? Ratzinger wrote in 1993 that “The faith does not have permanence in and of itself. One can never simply presuppose it as something already concluded in itself. It must be continually re-lived. And as it is an act, an act that embraces every dimension of our existence, it must always be thought through anew and always borne witness to anew.” Dei Verbum#5 of Vatican II had taught that “‘The obedience of faith’ (Rom. 16, 26; cf. Rom. 1, 5; 2 Cor. 10, 5-6) is to be given to God who reveals, an obedience by which man commits his whole self freely to God, offering the full submission of intellect and will to God who reveals….” We have here a development of the understanding and formulation of the faith in Vatican I. Vatican I stated that “we are bound by faith to give full obedience of intellect and will to God who reveals [can.1]…. (Faith) is a supernatural virtue by which we, with the aid and inspiration of the grace of God, believe that the things revealed by Him are true, …” Vatican II goes beyond Vatican I in the acceptance of revelation by the faculties of intellect and will as data that is true. Vatican II, rather, understands “an exchange of subjects” where the believer can state “I live; no not I; Christ lives in me” (Gal 2, 20). It understands revelation to be the very Person of Jesus Christ to Whom one must give oneself and Who must be received within oneself. This speaks of a living identity of faith and sanctity. Ratzinger went further in explaining in his habilitation thesis (1956) that Revelation (the very Person of Christ) does not take place until the believing subject receives Him and there is the “exchange of subjects.” John Paul II contrasted the twoVatican formulations of faith: “Thus while the old definition in my catechism spoke principally of the acceptance as truth ‘of all that God has revealed,’ the conciliar text, in speaking of surrender to God, emphasizes rather the personal character of faith. This does not mean that the cognitive aspect is concealed or displaced, but it is, so to speak organically integrated in the broad context of the subject responding to God by faith.” The act of faith, then, involves the giving of one’s entire self to the revealing Person of Jesus Christ, the perfect Revelation of the Father (“Philip, he who sees me, sees also the Father” Jn. 14, 9). In its clearest and most radical terms, Ratzinger asked the question: “What does the Church believe? This question includes the others: who believes and how should one believe” The Catechism has dealt with both fundamental questions: the question of ‘what’ to believe and of ‘who’ believes, as one question with an interior unity. In other words, the catechism illustrates the act of faith and the content of faith in their inseparability” [my emphasis]. He clarifies: “The faith is an orientation of our existence as a whole, in its completeness. It is a basic decision, one which has effects in every aspect of our existence and one which is realized only if it is supported by all the efforts of our existence. Faith is not solely an intellectual process, or solely one of will or emotions; it is all of these together. It is an act of the entire self, of the whole person in the unity of all the elements of that person gathered into one…. It is a highly personal act.” CCC #166 says: “Faith is a personal act – the free response of the human person to the initiative of God who reveals himself. But faith is not an isolated act. No one can believe alone, just as no one can live alone. You have not given yourself faith as you have not given yourself life. The believer has received faith from others and should hand it on to others. Our love for Jesus and for our neighbor impels us to speak to others about our faith. Each believer is thus a link in the great chain of believers. I cannot believe without being carried by the faith of others, and by my faith I help support others in the faith.”The Novelty of the CCC: There is a parallel and a large divergence between the Catechism of Trent and the CCC. Cardinals Ratzinger and Schönborn show great respect for the conclusions reached by Pedro Rodriguez and Raul Lanzetti in their investigation of the Roman Catechism, to wit: “the primacy in catechesis is to be given to God and to his works. Whatever man has to do will always be a response to God and to his works…God is first; grace is first.” But there is a divergence. The divergence is the epistemology of subject and object. Trent (as well as Vatican I) was concerned about objective truths such as “what are we to believe.” Vatican II’s epistemological slant appears in Cardinal Ratzinger’s formulation above: “Is the catechism really a book of morals? The answer is: Yes it is, but it is something more. It deals with the human person, but in the conviction that the human question cannot be separated from the God question.” And with that the Catechism enters into the epistemological level that the entire Second Vatican Council worked in. That is one cannot understand the human person without understanding what is a divine Person, and how the act of faith is the incorporation of the divine Person in the human person. Hence, the act of faith, as understood in Vatican II, demands an anthropology that is God-like, i.e., relational. Pedro Rodriguez is clear in his announcement that it is precisely because of this personalist understanding of faith and its act of incorporating Christ within the human person to the point of a personal exchange, that the anthropology is developed and enhanced from the received individualist anthropology. In a word, you need a different kind of man to be able to take in the transcendent Trinity as revealed by Jesus Christ. Like must be known by like. If the divine Persons are relations and self-gift to each other, then to know them, the believer must be capable of being relation and self-gift. The rest of the CCC follows on this objective turn to the subject. The remark of Pedro Rodriguez in footnote 10 (see below) is most important in this respect: “ ‘La razon mas alta de la dignidad humana consiste en la vocacion del hombre a la communion con Dios.’ Estas palabras de Gaudium et spes 19, citadas al principio de la seccion (n. 27), informan la antropologia fundamental que se va construir en ella y que va a orientar todo el discurso del Catechsimo” (my emphasis). Sacraments: The second part of CCC is on the sacraments as the incorporation of the human person into divine life. Man is made in the image of likeness of the divine Persons, but he must actually participate in them. This is the work of the sacraments, and the work of the sacrament is to give a specific action to the human person to be “another Christ.” This specific action is the liturgy. Ratzinger writes: “Since it is completely determined by Vatican II, the newness of the second part which deals with the Sacraments is immediately visible in its title: ‘The Celebration of the Christian Mystery.’ This means that the sacraments are envisaged entirely in terms of salvation history, based upon the Paschal mystery, in which we are included. This also means that the sacraments are understood entirely as liturgy, in terms of the concrete liturgical celebration. In this the Catechism has accomplished an important step beyond the traditional new-scholastic teaching on the sacraments. Already medieval theology to a large extent had separated the theological consideration of the sacraments from their liturgical realization and, prescinding from this, treated the categories of institution, sign, efficacy, minister, and recipient, such that only what referred to the sign kept a connection with the liturgical celebration. Certainly, the sign was not considered so much in the living categories of matter and form. Increasingly, liturgy and theology were ever more separated from one another; dogmatics did not interpret the liturgy, rather its abstract theological content, so that the liturgy appeared almost to be a collection of ceremonies, which clothed the essential – the matter and the form – and for this reason could also be replaceable.” The great work of the Council is the recovery of the universal call to holiness through the action of Christ, principally in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass which is the one transcendent action of the Person of Christ as Subject instantiated as Flesh and Blood here and now. All the other sacraments are liturgy emanating from that one sacrament/sacrifice and pointing to the action of self. Consider Matrimony that developed from being considered an objective institution with a hierarchy of ends to a communion of subjects that fulfill the call to sanctity by the gift of self, and in so doing embrace, enhance and transcend the previous objective development. Concerning Holy Mass, it is most instructive to see the energetic teaching of our Father on the privileged locus of the Mass lived out in the street (read: the sanctification of work).Morality:In his 1992 press conference, Cardinal Ratzinger started with the rhetorical question “Is the catechism really a book of morals?” To which, as we saw, the answer is both Yes and No. Yes because it speaks about human actions as good or bad. But No in the sense that moral quality would be derived from conformity with the natural law thought that had prevailed in the pre-conciliar manuals. I would offer that the moral criterion before the Council was the created nature of man as object, while the moral criterion of the Council and post-council is the ontological tendency of the subject or person. Both criteria are objective as ontological and realist, but the difference - which is a deeper ontology and a heightened realism - is the epistemological lens that one is looking through. The consequences are considerable. Case in point would be the contraceptive question. Msgr. Cormac Burke, former member of the Roman Rota wrote that “for long in Catholic teaching a hierarchical presentation was made of the ends of marriage, with procreation being the principal end. Vatican II, which twice emphasizes that marriage is of its nature ordered to procreation, does not use the term "primary" end. In two major documents of the post-conciliar magisterium a clear and integrated view of the ends of marriage has been articulated. The “Catechism of the Catholic Church” declares that these ends are twofold: ‘the good spouses themselves, and the transmission of life,’ which is identical to what was already stated in the 1983 ‘Code of Canon Law’.... Rather than any hierarchy between them, it is their mutual interdependence and inseparability which are now emphasized” Commenting on this, Burke remarked: “I consider the new emphasis here to be a ‘development’ from the teaching of Pius XI and Pius XII.” And I repeat, the consequences are considerable. If one does not understand the moral criterion of sexual morality to be the subject/person as self-gift, then all of the post-conciliar logic of the Magisterium is not understood. IVF, cloning, nuclear transfer, pre-natal adoption, etc. are all violations of the personalist/subjective anthropology of finding self by sincere gift of self enunciated in Gaudium et spes #24. And what is this moral criterion that is not objectified nature but person? Cardinal Ratzinger proclaimed in the key-note address to the bishops’ workshop in 1991: “There is an inner ontological tendency within man, who is created in the likeness of God, toward the divine. From its origin, man’s being resonates with some things and clashes with others. This anamnesis of the origin, which results from the god-like constitution of our being, is not a conceptually articulated knowing, a store of retrievable contents. It is, so to speak, an inner sense, a capacity to recall, sot that the one whom it addresses, if he is not turned in on himself, hears its echo from within. He sees: that’s it! That is what my nature points to and seeks.” Elsewhere, he wrote that “Christianity, in working out its concrete moral norms, largely resorted to contemporary models of ethical thought for guidance. It leaned chiefly on the Stoic ethic. The recourse to classical antiquity and especially to Stoic philosophy resulted in the emergence of two chief principles in Christian teaching on marriage. (1) … “generative in the double sense that marriage was entirely subordinated to the genus humanum, the human race as such, and was thus subordinated to human procreation in the social sense.” This “relegates marriage to the biological level, seeing it chiefly as a means to the end of procreation. Thus the concept of the end supplies the basic norm for judging marital ethics.” (2) “naturalistic because the Stoics saw in nature the directive activity of the Logos; the natural order revealed an all-pervasive divine meaning. Accordingly, the Stoics considered the overriding moral norm to be nature; a thing was right if it was ‘according to nature’ (kata physin). Cardinal Ratzinger then goes on to explain that “With this as a background, we can begin to see the great significance of the fact that the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World eliminated both these categories. Neither the concept of the ‘prime end of procreation’ nor the concept of marital behavior ‘according to nature’ has any place in the Constitution. This elimination of ancient categories was the result of struggle and effort and clearly marked a radical turn toward new modes of moral teaching, and a turning away from forms that have up to now characterized moral theological tradition. The procreative view is here supplanted by a personalistic view, which of course must not overlook the essentially social meaning of marriage.” So clear and firm is this point of the communion of subjectivities that the canonical understanding of matrimony passed from being a natural institution (raised to the dignity of a sacrament) with primary and secondary ends, to being a “covenant” directed to the “good of the spouses” in a communion of persons in the 1983 Code of Canon Law. In fine, only God is good, and one becomes good by freely consenting to the “ontological tendency” of the human person to respond to the divine call to make the gift. "Christian moral theology is never simply an ethics of the law, it surpasses even the realm of an ethics of virtue: it is a dialogical ethics, because the moral human action develops out of the person's encounter with God, therefore it is never an activity in itself, self-sufficient and autonomous, pure human achievement, but a response to the gift of love and thus a being drawn into the dynamic of love - of God Himself - who first of all truly frees the person and brings him to his true high dignity." Prayer: “The fourth part, which deals with prayer [principally as the Our Father], in some way summarizes the parts that preceded it: Prayer is applied faith. It is inseparably united with the sacramental world. Sacraments predispose one to personal prayer, and in turn they alone give personal prayer a solid orientation in that they insert it into the church’s common prayer and , therefore, into Christ’s dialogue with the Father. However, prayer and morality are also inseparable: it is only through conversion to God that the ways of true human fulfillment are opened…. Prayer is an expression of hope…. Thus in the four parts of the catechism we see the mutual integration of faith, hope and charity. From the very moment we believe, were allowed to hope. Because we believe and hope, we are capable of loving.” The Theological Vision of the CCC:The overriding truth of the CCC is the consciousness of the Person of Christ who becomes the experience of Revelation when He is received within the believing subject. It is within this consciousness of Christ that all the “truths” of the Catechism hold together. Cardinal Schönborn wrote (quoting Cardinal Ratzinger) that “The ‘hierarchy of truth’… is a principle of organic structure.’ It should not be confused with the degrees of certainty; it simply means that the different truths of faith are ‘organized’ around a center. It is right, therefore, to require that a catechism correspond to this principle…” He points to three criteria for the organization of the whole work: (a) the mystery of the Blessed Trinity as the center of the hierarchy of truth; (b) the Christocentric approach; (c) the fourfold plan of the Catechism, intrinsically expressing a principle of organic structure. The truth of the CCC in its totality and in its several parts consists in the embeddedness of all truths with each other depending on the authority of Christ as Word of the Father, and not on the subjective certainty of theological propositions.

Smartphones down: A real pilgrimage takes time, reflection

The Large Epistemological Problem: We are not experiencing reality.

A pilgrim group gathers at the Sanctuaries ofOur Lady of Lourdes in France. (CNS file/Nancy Phelan  Wiechec)

By Cindy Wooden
Catholic News Service

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Father Caesar Atuire is not naive enough to ask his pilgrims to leave their smartphones at home.

However, the CEO of a Vatican-related pilgrimage agency does ask his pilgrims to at least look at the holy sites -- perhaps even say a prayer -- before clicking and capturing the moment in a photo, text message, Tweet or Facebook post.

Father Atuire, a Ghanaian-born priest of the Diocese of Rome, personally leads at least three of the pilgrimages he oversees each year for Opera Romana Pellegrinaggi, which organizes spiritual travel from Rome for 40,000-50,000 people each year and assists about 700,000 pilgrims visiting the Eternal City annually.

More and more, he said, helping travelers become pilgrims means overcoming a fixation with images that completely overshadows experiencing the reality of setting off on a journey, meeting new people, exploring different cultures and entering into prayer.

People at audiences and Masses with Pope Benedict XVI see the pope through their camera lens, cellphones and iPads. The same thing happens at Christian holy sites around the world, he said.

"What I insist with our pilgrims is live the experience and, if the experience is so powerful, then try to immortalize it with an image, but don't start off with the image," he said.

A second, similar modern obstacle to an authentic pilgrim experience is Facebook or other social networks and the general ease of communicating with others anywhere in the world.

Father Atuire talks about "being present, but absent." He said, "I can be here with you, but all that I'm doing is geared toward telling people elsewhere what I'm doing right now. That's a kind of absenteeism that's becoming very pronounced even in our pilgrimages."

The third big risk is speed, he said.

"It takes 90 minutes to fly from Rome to Lourdes," and as soon as the plane lands, he said, people are calling home, "asking the kids to take the laundry out of the machine. And I say, 'Wait a minute, you still aren't here.'"

People's minds, hearts and souls need time to move from thoughts of work, home or school, Father Atuire said, so his agency offers catechesis on the planes. In addition, each morning guides conduct a brief meeting to remind people of where they are and what they're about to do.

All people need a break from the daily grind now and then, he said. They need to get in touch again with their families, with nature, with themselves and with God.

If a person isn't traveling for work, they usually either are "running away from something or searching for something," the priest said.

The key difference between leisure travel and a pilgrimage is the search for a spiritual encounter, he said, and throughout history certain shrines and sites have become known as places with "a density of God's presence," he said.

For the priest, who travels often, the three places that top his list for "spiritual density" are the chapel of Christ's tomb in Jerusalem's Church of the Holy Sepulcher; the grotto where Mary appeared to St. Bernadette in Lourdes, France; and the Sea of Galilee in the silence of the early morning or late evening.

"I don't think you can do anything but pray" in those places, he said.

"Religious experience has a corporal dimension," Father Atuire said. "When people are in search of a deep religious experience, the body somehow needs to be involved," so setting off from home and going on a pilgrimage is quite natural, not only for Christians, but also for members of most other major religions.

"Christian pilgrimage is all about encounters," beginning with encountering other seekers and believers, but also being encouraged by them or learning from them how to move closer to the encounter with God.

Unfortunately though, he said, too many people today focus so much on getting to the holy places that they lose sight of the fact that a pilgrimage is a journey: "The road is the pilgrimage and it prepares you for the encounter."

While a pilgrimage is a purposeful break from one's normal routine, it's not a break from rules and good manners, he said.

"A pilgrimage is putting order into your life, going back to put real order in your life -- order in terms of your relationships with other persons, order in terms of your relationship with God," he said. "Sin is disorder, and a pilgrimage is an opportunity to recover that harmony that has been lost through everyday life. That's why it's a deeply religious experience."

Although often immersed in the nitty-gritty of chartering planes and buses, booking hotels and writing homilies for his pilgrims, Father Atuire does have a dream file, and it already includes a detailed itinerary. He just needs to find the time, the resources and the pilgrims.

One day, he said, he'd love to take a group to the Marian shrine at Kibeho, Rwanda, where young people reported apparitions of Mary in the 1980s; the local bishop has recognized the apparitions as authentic.

"It's a region of Africa that is struggling to find peace, stability and growth" following the genocide of the 1990s, Father Atuire said. He would like to bring a group of pilgrims with him, "look into Our Lady's message and see what signs of hope we can find there."

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Peace Comes From Respect For Life. As Mother Teresa said: Abortion is the principal cause of was. Pope's Address to Leaders of Lebanon "What nowadays passes for tolerance does not eliminate cases of discrimination, and at times it even reinforces them" BEIRUT, Lebanon, SEPT. 15, 2012 (Zenit.org).- Here is a Vatican translation of the address Benedict XVI gave today to the Lebanese president and other political leaders and dignitaries. * * * Mr President, Representatives of the Parliamentary, Governmental, Institutional and Political Authorities of Lebanon, Chiefs of Diplomatic Missions, Your Beatitudes, Religious Leaders, Brother Bishops, Ladies and Gentlemen, Dear Friends, «سَلامي أُعطيكُم» (Jn 14:27)! With these words of Christ Jesus, I greet you and I thank you for your presence and your warm welcome. Mr President, I am grateful to you not only for your cordial words of welcome but also for having allowed this meeting to take place. With you, I have just planted a cedar of Lebanon, the symbol of your beautiful country. In looking at this sapling, and thinking of the care which it will need in order to grow and stretch forth its majestic branches, I think of this country and its future, the Lebanese people and their hopes, and all the people of this region which seems to endure interminable birth pangs. I have asked God to bless you, to bless Lebanon and all who dwell in these lands which saw the birth of great religions and noble cultures. Why did God choose these lands? Why is their life so turbulent? God chose these lands, I think, to be an example, to bear witness before the world that every man and woman has the possibility of concretely realizing his or her longing for peace and reconciliation! This aspiration is part of God’s eternal plan and he has impressed it deep within the human heart. So I would like to speak to you about peace, echoing Jesus’ invocation: «سَلامي أُعطيكُم». The wealth of any country is found primarily in its inhabitants. The country’s future depends on them, individually and collectively, as does its capacity to work for peace. A commitment to peace is possible only in a unified society. Unity, on the other hand, is not the same as uniformity. Social cohesion requires unstinting respect for the dignity of each person and the responsible participation of all in contributing the best of their talents and abilities. The energy needed to build and consolidate peace also demands that we constantly return to the wellsprings of our humanity. Our human dignity is inseparable from the sacredness of life as the gift of the Creator. In God’s plan, each person is unique and irreplaceable. A person comes into this world in a family, which is the first locus of humanization, and above all the first school of peace. To build peace, we need to look to the family, supporting it and facilitating its task, and in this way promoting an overall culture of life. The effectiveness of our commitment to peace depends on our understanding of human life. If we want peace, let us defend life! This approach leads us to reject not only war and terrorism, but every assault on innocent human life, on men and women as creatures willed by God. Wherever the truth of human nature is ignored or denied, it becomes impossible to respect that grammar which is the natural law inscribed in the human heart (cf. Message for the 2007 World Day of Peace, 3). The grandeur and the raison d’être of each person are found in God alone. The unconditional acknowledgement of the dignity of every human being, of each one of us, and of the sacredness of human life, is linked to the responsibility which we all have before God. We must combine our efforts, then, to develop a sound vision of man, respectful of the unity and integrity of the human person. Without this, it is impossible to build true peace. While more evident in countries which are experiencing armed conflict – those wars so full of futility and horror – there are assaults on the integrity and the lives of individuals taking place in other countries too. Unemployment, poverty, corruption, a variety of addictions, exploitation, different forms of trafficking, and terrorism not only cause unacceptable suffering to their victims but also a great impoverishment of human potential. We run the risk of being enslaved by an economic and financial mindset which would subordinate "being" to "having"! The destruction of a single human life is a loss for humanity as a whole. Mankind is one great family for which all of us are responsible. By questioning, directly or indirectly, or even before the law, the inalienable value of each person and the natural foundation of the family, some ideologies undermine the foundations of society. We need to be conscious of these attacks on our efforts to build harmonious coexistence. Only effective solidarity can act as an antidote, solidarity that rejects whatever obstructs respect for each human being, solidarity that supports policies and initiatives aimed at bringing peoples together in an honest and just manner. It is heartening to see examples of cooperation and authentic dialogue bearing fruit in new forms of coexistence. A better quality of life and integral development are only possible when wealth and competences are shared in a spirit of respect for the identity of each individual. But this kind of cooperative, serene and animated way of life is impossible without trust in others, whoever they may be. Nowadays, our cultural, social and religious differences should lead us to a new kind of fraternity wherein what rightly unites us is a shared sense of the greatness of each person and the gift which others are to themselves, to those around them and to all humanity. This is the path to peace! This is the commitment demanded of us! This is the approach which ought to guide political and economic decisions at every level and on a global scale! In order to make possible a future of peace for coming generations, our first task is to educate for peace in order to build a culture of peace. Education, whether it takes place in the family or at school, must be primarily an education in those spiritual values which give the wisdom and traditions of each culture their ultimate meaning and power. The human spirit has an innate yearning for beauty, goodness and truth. This is a reflection of the divine, God’s mark on each person! This common aspiration is the basis for a sound and correct notion of morality, which is always centred on the person. Yet men and women can turn towards goodness only of their own free will, for "human dignity requires them to act out of a conscious and free choice, as moved in a personal way from within, and not by their own blind impulses or by exterior constraint" (Gaudium et Spes, 17). The goal of education is to guide and support the development of the freedom to make right decisions, which may run counter to widespread opinions, the fashions of the moment, or forms of political and religious ideology. This is the price of building a culture of peace! Evidently, verbal and physical violence must be rejected, for these are always an assault on human dignity, both of the perpetrator and the victim. Emphasizing peacemaking and its positive effect for the common good also creates interest in peace. As history shows, peaceful actions have a significant effect on local, national and international life. Education for peace will form men and women who are generous and upright, attentive to all, especially those most in need. Thoughts of peace, words of peace and acts of peace create an atmosphere of respect, honesty and cordiality, where faults and offences can be truthfully acknowledged as a means of advancing together on the path of reconciliation. May political and religious leaders reflect on this! We need to be very conscious that evil is not some nameless, impersonal and deterministic force at work in the world. Evil, the devil, works in and through human freedom, through the use of our freedom. It seeks an ally in man. Evil needs man in order to act. Having broken the first commandment, love of God, it then goes on to distort the second, love of neighbour. Love of neighbour disappears, yielding to falsehood, envy, hatred and death. But it is possible for us not to be overcome by evil but to overcome evil with good (cf. Rom 12:21). It is to this conversion of heart that we are called. Without it, all our coveted human "liberations" prove disappointing, for they are curtailed by our human narrowness, harshness, intolerance, favouritism and desire for revenge. A profound transformation of mind and heart is needed to recover a degree of clarity of vision and impartiality, and the profound meaning of the concepts of justice and the common good. A new and freer way of looking at these realities will enable us to evaluate and challenge those human systems which lead to impasses, and to move forward with due care not to repeat past mistakes with their devastating consequences. The conversion demanded of us can also be exhilarating, since it creates possibilities by appealing to the countless resources present in the hearts of all those men and women who desire to live in peace and are prepared to work for peace. True, it is quite demanding: it involves rejecting revenge, acknowledging one’s faults, accepting apologies without demanding them, and, not least, forgiveness. Only forgiveness, given and received, can lay lasting foundations for reconciliation and universal peace (cf.Rom 12:16b, 18). Only in this way can there be growth in understanding and harmony between cultures and religions, and in genuine mutual esteem and respect for the rights of all. In Lebanon, Christianity and Islam have lived side by side for centuries. It is not uncommon to see the two religions within the same family. If this is possible within the same family, why should it not be possible at the level of the whole of society? The particular character of the Middle East consists in the centuries-old mix of diverse elements. Admittedly, they have fought one another, sadly that is also true. A pluralistic society can only exist on the basis of mutual respect, the desire to know the other, and continuous dialogue. Such dialogue is only possible when the parties are conscious of the existence of values which are common to all great cultures because they are rooted in the nature of the human person. This substratum of values expresses man’s true humanity. These values are inseparable from the rights of each and every human being. By upholding their existence, the different religions make a decisive contribution. It cannot be forgotten that religious freedom is the basic right on which many other rights depend. The freedom to profess and practise one’s religion without danger to life and liberty must be possible to everyone. The loss or attenuation of this freedom deprives the person of his or her sacred right to a spiritually integrated life. What nowadays passes for tolerance does not eliminate cases of discrimination, and at times it even reinforces them. Without openness to transcendence, which makes it possible to find answers to their deepest questions about the meaning of life and morally upright conduct, men and women become incapable of acting justly and working for peace. Religious freedom has a social and political dimension which is indispensable for peace! It promotes a harmonious life for individuals and communities by a shared commitment to noble causes and by the pursuit of truth, which does not impose itself by violence but rather "by the force of its own truth" (Dignitatis Humanae, 1): the Truth which is in God. A lived faith leads invariably to love. Authentic faith does not lead to death. The peacemaker is humble and just. Thus believers today have an essential role, that of bearing witness to the peace which comes from God and is a gift bestowed on all of us in our personal, family, social, political and economic life (cf. Mt 5:9; Heb 12:14). The failure of upright men and women to act must not permit evil to triumph. It is worse still to do nothing. These few reflections on peace, society, the dignity of the person, the values of family life, dialogue and solidarity, must not remain a simple statement of ideals. They can and must be lived out. We are in Lebanon, and it is here that they must be lived out. Lebanon is called, now more than ever, to be an example. And so I invite you, politicians, diplomats, religious leaders, men and women of the world of culture, to testify with courage, in season and out of season, wherever you find yourselves, that God wants peace, that God entrusts peace to us. «سَلامي أُعطيكُم» (Jn 14:27) says Christ! May God bless you! Thank you!

Sewn Inside Pascal's Coat - Romano Guardini

“A few days after the death of Pascal, a domestic of the house noticed by chance that, in the lining of the coat of the famous deceased, there was something which seemed thicker than the rest, and having undone this place to see what it was, he found a small, folded parchment, written in Pascal’s hand, and in this parchment, a paper written in the same hand: the one was a faithful copy of the other. The two pieces were immediately placed in the hands of Madame Perier [Pascal’s sister], who showed them to several of his special friends. All agreed that this parchment, written with such care and with such remarkable characters, was without a doubt a sort of memorial which he kept very carefully in order to conserve the memory which he kept very carefully in order to conserve the memory of something which he wanted always present to his eyes and mind, since for eight years he took care to sew it in and remove it whenever he had new clothes made.”

At the top of the sheet there is a cross surrounded by rays. Underneath, the following:

The Year of grace 1654

Monday, November 23, day of saint Clamant, pope and martyr,

and others in the martyrology.

Vigil of Saint Chrysogonus, martyr, and others.

From about ten-thirty in the evening to about half an hour after

Midnight,

Fire.

God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob,

Not of the philosophers and savants.

Certitude, certitude; feeling, joy, peace.

God of Jesus Christ.

Deum meum et Deum vestrum.

“Thy God shall be muy God.”

Forgetting the world and everything except God. He is only found by the paths taught in the Gospel.

Grandeur of the human soul.

“Just Father, the world has not known you, but

I have known you.”

Joy, joy, joy, tears of joy.

I separated myself from him: Dereliquerent me fontem aquae vivae.

“My God, will you abandon me?”

May I not be eternally separated from him.

“This is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God,and

Him whom you have sent, Jesus Christ.”

Jesus Christ.

Jesus Christ.

I separated myself from him; I fled him, renounced him,

Crucified him.

May I never be separated from him!

He is only kept by the opaths taught in the Gospel.

Total submission to Jesus Christ and to my director.

Eternally in joy for a day of trial on earth.

Non obliviscar sermons tuos. Amen.[1]

“This is an historical document in the strict sense of the word. It attests an event which separates a before and an after. Not an episodic feeling, a fugitive presentiment, an abstract insight devoid of obligation, which could have ensued at any moment, but rather a turning point and decision which stands in history. And which engenders history: the inner, Christian history of this man, in that it brings to its I culmination everything experienced up to this point, and fixes a new beginning…

Something colossal has happened here. Pascal has stood in fire. We may not take the word allegorically. If the elect of religious experience speak of inner ‘light,’ of inner ‘glow,’ they do not intend to use comparisons, but mean real beaming, real burning… coming, of course, from another source than physical nature of psychic consciousness. It is an experience of the spirit; more exactly, of the Holy Spirit, of the ‘Pneuma.’ There takes place therein an elucidation in certitude, a seizure by glory, a clarification of life, which place man on a new level of existence.”[2]

---

[1] Romano Guardini “Pascal For Our Time,” Herder and Herder (1966) 33-34

[2] Ibid. 34-35.

Justice, Terrance Williams and the death penalty Archbishop Charles Chaput Even when a defendant is well defended, properly tried and justly found guilty, experience shows that capital punishment simply doesn’t work as a deterrent. Nor does it heal or redress any wounds, because only forgiveness can do that. It does succeed though in answering violence with violence — a violence wrapped in the piety of state approval, which implicates all of us as citizens in the taking of more lives. Turning away from capital punishment does not diminish our support for the families of murder victims. They bear a terrible burden of grief, and they rightly demand justice. Real murderers deserve punishment; but even properly tried and justly convicted murderers — men and women who are found guilty of heinous crimes — retain their God-given dignity as human beings. When we take a murderer’s life we only add to the violence in an already violent culture, and we demean our own dignity in the process. Both Scripture and Catholic tradition support the legitimacy of the death penalty under certain limited conditions. But the Church has repeatedly called us to a higher road over the past five decades. We don’t need to kill people to protect society or punish the guilty. And we should never be eager to take anyone’s life. As a result, except in the most extreme circumstances, capital punishment cannot be justified. In developed countries like our own, it should have no place in our public life. Last month here in Pennsylvania, execution warrants were signed for four men. A judge stayed one of the execution warrants, but the three remaining warrants could potentially result in the first execution in our state in 13 years. One of the cases in which appeals seem to be exhausted involves Terrance Williams. In October, Williams is scheduled to die by lethal injection for the murder of Amos Norwood in 1984, a crime committed when he was 18 anda college freshman. Williams is indisputably guilty of the crime. He’s also mentally competent. His defense attorneys argue that he was repeatedly sexually abused as a youth, including five years of abuse at the hands of the man he murdered, and that this helped motivate his violence. The state counters that all of Williams’ claims — including claims of sexual abuse — have had proper judicial review and been rejected. Terrance Williams deserves punishment. No one disputes that. But he doesn’t need to die to satisfy justice. We should think very carefully in the coming days about the kind of justice we want to witness to our young people. Most American Catholics, like many of their fellow citizens, support the death penalty. That doesn’t make it right. But it does ensure that the wrong-headed lesson of violence “fixing” the violent among us will be taught to another generation. As children of God, we’re better than this, and we need to start acting like it. We need to end the death penalty now.

Remembering On the Occasion of Rereading Old Stuff on JPII - April 19, 2005

The Root Cause of the Universal Impact of John Paul II

(Fundamentally, it is Our Lady) 

1) Definitive Numbers of Attendance at Pope's Funeral
6,000 Media Personnel on Hand

VATICAN CITY, APRIL 12, 2005 (Zenit.org).- Three million people came to Rome to attend John Paul II's funeral rites, an event covered by 6,000 media personnel, the Holy See announced.

Vatican spokesman Joaquín Navarro Valls reported the data on the presence of the media and numbers of pilgrims to Rome, from the moment of the Pope's death until the day of his funeral, April 2-8. ZENIT already reported some of the preliminary figures last Sunday.

According to the Holy See's statement, the Vatican press office and the Pontifical Council for Social Communications accredited 6,000 journalists, photographers and radio and television agents for the media coverage of the event.

The press note stated that 137 television networks in 81 countries notified the pontifical council that they broadcast the funeral. The real number was likely higher.

The funeral was followed on the Holy See's Internet web page by 1.3 million people.

The Mass was concelebrated by 157 cardinals. Seven hundred archbishops and bishops and 3,000 prelates and priests were present. Three hundred priests distributed Communion.

There were 169 foreign delegations present, as well as 10 monarchs, 59 heads of state, 3 heirs to the throne, 17 heads of government, 3 spouses of heads of state, 8 vice heads of state, 6 deputy prime ministers, 4 presidents of parliaments, 12 foreign-affairs ministers, 13 other governmental ministers, 24 ambassadors, and 10 presidents, directors-general and secretaries-general of international organizations.

Also present were delegations of 23 Orthodox and Eastern Orthodox Churches, 8 Churches and ecclesial communions of the West, and 3 international Christian organizations.

In addition, there were several delegations and officials of Judaism, and 17 delegations of non-Christian religions and organizations for interreligious dialogue.

Citing data from the Italian Civil Protection, the Holy See reported that during the period the body of the Pope lay in state in St. Peter's Basilica, 21,000 entered the church every hour, or 350 a minute.

The average time necessary to see the Pope's mortal remains was 13 hours, with a maximum wait of 24 hours. The line extended for 5 kilometers (approximately 3 miles).

On the day of the funeral, 500,000 faithful were in St. Peter's Square and the Via della Conciliazione and were able to follow the funeral Mass, while 600,000 followed it on large screens in other parts of Rome. There were 29 large screens placed around the city.

Four hundred disabled persons followed the Mass in reserved places in the atrium of St. Peter's Basilica.

Some of the 10,000 volunteers distributed 3 million free bottles of water among pilgrims.

Twenty-one medical posts were set up and first-aid treatment was given to 4,000 people.

The municipality of Rome sent 20 SMS messages to the cell phones of 43,500 citizens with information on hospitality for pilgrims and the traffic.

2) The reason for the unprecedented interest in John Paul II, beyond a secularist interpretation: Editorial by National Catholic Register:

“The truth is, his pontificate was perfect in a way — and it was more than Karol Wojtyla was capable of.

Yes, Karol Wojtyla was a talented man, but not that talented. As a playwright, he learned about the importance of drama and the power of arresting insights — but he wasn’t a great playwright. As a poet, he learned to reflect the beauty of God’s creation in words — but he wasn’t a great poet. As a writer, he was philosophically rich and theologically deep in a way that will change the course of the Church — but he was a dense writer who is difficult to read.

The sum total of the talents of this Pole from Wadowice couldn’t possibly be credited with all that Pope John Paul II did, any more than the fisherman Peter’s management expertise can be credited with the Church’s success during its rocky beginnings.

Above all, God deserves our praise and our gratitude for Pope John Paul II.

In the end, perhaps the one thing the Holy Father did was at the same time the simplest and most difficult thing he was asked to do.

He prayed. Deeply. Insistently.

For hours, every day.

As Msgr. Lorenzo Albacete once said, the real secret of the Christian message is "All you have to do is do what you’re supposed to do. The Pope has done what he’s supposed to do. And boy, has he really done it."

It takes a profound love to do what you’re supposed to do, day in and day out. John Paul had that love. That’s what gave him an edge.

Even as an altar boy, he had done what he was supposed to do. Even when the German army entered Poland in 1939.

"It was the first wartime Mass before the altar of the crucified Christ and the scream of sirens and the thud of explosions have remained forever in my memory," said Father Kazimierz Figlewicz, who was a priest in Krakow at the time. "Nonetheless Karol in his imperturbable way had crossed over the bridge and walked to the cathedral because he was always observant in his religious commitments."

When the Church made him a priest, he continued to do what he was supposed to do — using his priesthood to reach young couples and college students.

When the Church made him a bishop in a land torn by communism, he did what he was supposed to do — he opposed the communists in a fearless but careful way, maximizing the rights of the Church and the power of his witness at the same time.

When the Church made him Pope in a time of intense turmoil in the Church, he did what he was supposed to do again.

It could have been different. Karol Wojtyla could have insisted on being an actor. He could have insisted on being a university professor. He could have become a full-time poet. He could have clung to the things he thought were valuable in his personality and asserted them. He may have made a mark on the world of some kind.

But instead he lost himself in God’s plan, handed over his talents, did what he was supposed to do — and achieved more than any man or woman in memory.

And at the end of his life, God proved who deserves the credit for the Pope’s astounding success. The illness that struck the Pope was marked by the way it targeted the very talents that had supposedly accounted for his success.

As a speaker, the younger John Paul could be very eloquent — but his speeches for almost the last decade of his life were difficult to listen to as he strained and slurred his words.

The athletic, spry John Paul had inspired people by his custom of bending down to kiss the ground of the nations he visited, his sportsman pursuits and his vigorous character. At the end of his life he could barely move, and his hands shook as he was wheeled around on a podium.

The former actor’s face expressed a range of emotions that helped him communicate with his audience. But at the end, he couldn’t smile well, laugh, show concern or use his face much at all.

Yet, even when the talents of the man faded, the people still flocked to see the Pope. They flocked to him at the 2000 World Youth Day in Rome, and he surprised critics and fans alike when they flocked to him again in Toronto in 2002.

Karol Wojtyla had no charismatic aura on his own. It was given to him by God, and it was charged to incandescence by his fidelity in the simple obligations of his Christian life: prayer, the sacraments, obedience to the Church.

It wasn’t Karol Wojtyla people were coming to see. It was Peter — the one who was given a special grace by God to be Vicar of Christ.

On our front page, we say, "Pray for Us, Pope John Paul II." We repeat it here.

Pray for us, Your Holiness. Give us the courage to follow your simple path of conversation with God and acceptance of his will. Your life shows us where true greatness lies: In loving God enough to do what we’re supposed to do. Pray that we learn this lesson and do it.

Pray that we will be worthy of you, John Paul the Great.

3) The above is certainly correct. But it fails to bring out the unique development that was at the core of the Second Vatican Council and this Pope. I refer to the uniqueness of the human person, the meaning of freedom as the self-mastery, self-possession and self-gift of the “I” that is oneself. And how that “I” is the unique gift that is not God’s gift, but “mine.” It is the mystery of the relative autonomy – or “theonomy” – of my freedom to become myself as image of the Three Persons.

       Does this mean that God’s causality is not primary and universal? No! Without Him we can do nothing. But the mystery consists in the engendering of a free person, who is not merely an instrumental cause or a secondary cause. Notice the Pope’s “definition” of freedom: “The Crucified Christ reveals the authentic meaning of freedom; he lives it fully in the total gift of himself and calls his disciples to share in his freedom” (Veritatis Splendor #85).

4) What everyone senses about John Paul II: he has made a radical gift of self to each one of us. It is extremely personal. Persons, young and old, interviewed while queuing up to pass by the body exactly why they came, explained, without giving reasons, that they simply had to be there. There was the sense of a most personal relation when in fact extrinsically and empirically there was no such relation from the outside. It makes one recall his first phrases of Redemptor Hominis:

       “When we penetrate by means of the continually and rapidly increasing experience fo the human family into the mystery of Jesus Christ, we understand with greater clarity that there is at the basis of all these ways that the Church of our time must follow, in accordance with the wisdom of Pope Paul VI, one single way: it is the way that has stood the test of centuries and it is also the way of the future. Christ the Lord indicated this way especially, when, as the Council teaches, `by His Incarnation, He, the Son of God, in a certain way united Himself with each man. The Church therefore sees its fundamental task in enabling that union to be brought about and renewed continually. The Church wishes to serve this single end: that each person may be able to find Christ, in order to that Christ may walk with each person the path of life, with the power of the truth about man and the world that is contained in the mystery of the Incarnation and the Redemption…

         “Accordingly, what is in question here is man in all his truth, in his full magnitude. We are not dealing with the `abstract’ man, but the real, `concrete,’’ `historical’ man. We are dealing with `each’ man for each one is included in the mystery of the Redemption and with each one Christ has united Himself for ever through this mystery…. The object of her [the Church’s] care is man in his unique unrepeatable human reality. The Council points out this very fact when, speaking of that likeness, it recalls that ‘man is the only creature on earth that God willed for itself. Man as `willed’ by God, as `chosen’ by Him from eternity and called, destined for grace and glory – this is `each’ man, `the most concrete’ man, `the most real;’ this is man in all the fullness of the mystery in which he has become a sharer in Jesus Christ, the mystery in which each one of the four thousand million human beings living on our planet has become a sharer from the moment he is conceived beneath the heart of is mother.”[1]

       The mystical reality is that in giving himself to Christ, he gave himself to the Christ in me, and in each person. People felt this with emotion. The NCR editorial above touches on this but without having hit the key. It was God in John Paul II and his obedience to do “what he was supposed to do.” But it’s not just doing things as performances. He did drama, he wrote poetry, he became a priest, he did philosophy and theology, he became Pope, and he traveled. He obeyed. He did what he was supposed to do. But as Lorenzo Albacete said, “boy, has he really done it." Or as the farmer in the Midwest remarked after his first trip to the United States, “Your Pope really knows how to pope.”

It’s all in the “boy.” The obedience was not compliance. It was free gift of his whole self. That’s what stirs the emotion, creates the novelty, produces the greatness. The gift was spousal. It was total and unto death. “He loved them to the end.” On the world stage, he showed us how to live and how to die. The poetry, the drama, the philosophy, even the papacy were the occasions and the incarnations of the gift. But, again, not any gift. Not an object, but the “I.”  He could not do it without being loved by God (which is called “grace”). But he was the agent of the gift of himself. Only he could give himself. God could not do it since then He would violate the very freedom that He gave us. It was his gift, and the content was himself. Which, by the way, is the meaning of the priesthood of Jesus Christ.

   Here he lives out what was the key to the Council and the center of his understanding of the human person: Made in the image of a trinity of Persons, “man, the only earthly being God has willed for itself, finds himself by the sincere gift of himself.”  This: “the only earthly being God has willed for itself,” is his understanding of man as “an unfinished being, as indicated precisely by this `fissure’ in him open to the infinite. According to this view, other natures in the world of nature are in their own way `finished beings,’ while man, open to the absolute, awaits his completion.”[2]

       In  August 1991 at Jasna Gora, Poland (after the collapse of Communism), John Paul addressed the 1.7 million young people of world youth day with the words of God’s Self revelation:

`“I AM” (The Word): behold the name of God. So responds a Voice from the burning bush to Moses when he asked to know the Name of God. `I am who am’ (Ex. 3, 14)… As evening drew near, before the Sabbath at Passover, Jesus was taken from the cross and placed in the tomb. The third day he came among his `startled and terrified’ disciples to say to them: `Peace be with you! ... It is I myself!’ (Lk. 24, 36-37, 39): the divine `I AM’ of the Covenant – of the Paschal Mystery – of the Eucharist.

“Man was created in the image and likeness of God, to be able to exist and to be able to say to his Creator `I am.’ In this human `I am’ is all the truth of life and conscience. `I am’ before You, who `Are.’

“When  God asked the first man: `Where are you?,’ Adam responded, `I hid, (from you)’ (cf. Gen. 3, 9-10), almost trying not to be before God. You cannot hide, Adam! You cannot help but be before him who has created you, who has made you in the way that `you are,’ before him `who searches hearts and knows’ (Rom. 8, 27).”

5.) John Paul II, stripped of almost all his objective powers, retains his subjective self-gift, and the entire world knew it. He continued to “radiate fatherhood, and we continued to be affirmed.

 The proof that it was the “I” of John Paul II that was given and to whom the people, particularly the youth of the world, were responding, was that piece by piece he was stripped of gesture, facial expression, ambulatory power, and finally, word. He never ceased to communicate his “I” nor the gift of it with mouth agape attempting to speak from his window on his last Wednesday attempt. Struggling to speak to the people in St. Peter’s Square and finding no sound, he put one hand before his face and pounded the plastic lecturn before him. Everyone understood. He had a clarity of consciousness and loved us “to the end.” Previously, having lost most of his body as vehicle of communication, he remarked facetiously that he ruled the Church “from the neck up.”

At Lourdes last August, Cardinal Lustiger framed it this way: "The pope, in his weakness, is living more than ever the role assigned to him of being the Vicar of Christ on earth, participating in the suffering of our Redeemer. Many times we have the idea that the head of the church is like a super-manager of a great international company, a man of action who makes decisions and is judged on the basis of his effectiveness. But for believers the most effective action, the mystery of salvation, happens when Christ is on the cross and can't do or decide anything other than to accept the will of the Father."

And when the Lord took the “I” at 9, 32 pm April 2, 2005, tens of thousands of people standing outside in St. Peter’s Square dropped into an eerie, total silence and then to their knees, moved by profound emotion. We all did.

            3) The Key to the Mind of John Paul II is Disclosing the “I” as the Ultimate Created Reality: Being As Opposed to Consciousness.

Basically, he does what is called a “phenomenological” description of what we have seen of Helen Keller discovering her “I”as real being by naming the water (as Adam naming the animals). 

“We walked down the path to the well-house, attracted by the fragrance of the honeysuckle with which it was covered. Someone was drawing water and my teacher placed my hand under the spout. As the cool stream gushed over one hand, she spelled into the other the word water, first slowly then rapidly. I stood still, my whole attention fixed upon the motion of her fingers. Suddenly I felt a misty consciousness as of something forgotten – a thrill of returning thought; and somehow the mystery of language was revealed to me. I knew then that `w-a-t-e-r’ meant the wonderful cool something that was flowing over my hand. That living word awakened my soul, gave it light, hope, joy, set it free! There were barriers still, it is true, but barriers that could in time be swept away.

I left the well-house eager to learn. Everything had a name, and each name gave birth to a new thought. As we returned to the house every object which I touched seemed to quiver with life. That was because I saw everything with the strange, new sight that had come to me. On entering the door I remembered the doll I had broken. [She had earlier destroyed the doll in a fit of temper.] I felt my way to the dearth and picked up the pieces. I tried vainly to put them together. Then my eyes filled with tears; for I realized what I had done, and for the first time I felt repentance and sorrow.”

What had happened? Helen had exercised her subjectivity as cause by “throwing” (Ballein) the “likeness” (sym): w-a-t-e-r at the wet flowing object. She had experienced herself as cause, and therefore came to a consciousness of herself as “self.”

Walker Percy: “before, Helen had behaved like a good responding organism. Afterward, she acted like a rejoicing symbol-mongering human. Before, she was little more than an animal. Afterward, she became wholly human. Within the few minutes of the breakthrough and the several hours of exploiting it Helen had concentrated the months of the naming phase that most children go through somewhere around their second birthday.”… 3

           

   Karol Wojtyla’s fundamental discovery is the experience of the “I” as being. Experience is always about reality, and therefore about being. In modern thought, the “I” has been identified with consciousness, or the thought about thinking. Reflective thought, not experience, was the access. Wojtyla experiences himself as the cause of free action. His “I” is not the result of reflection on the act of thinking or willing. It is discovered as the cause of an experience of (free, not instinctual or stimulus-response mechanism) self-determination as a free act. “But as the need increases to understand the human being as a unique and unrepeatable person, especially in terms of the whole dynamism of action and inner happenings proper to the human being – in other words, as the need increases to understand the personal subjectivity of the human being – the category of lived experience takes on greater significance, and, in fact, key significance. For then the issue is not just the metaphysical objectification of the human being as an acting subject, as the agent of acts, but the revelation of the person as a subject experiencing its acts and inner happenings, and with them its own subjectivity.[3]

            “The experience of the human being cannot be derived by way of cosmological reduction; we must pause at the irreducible, at that which is unique and unrepeatable in each human being, by virtue of which he or she is not just a particular human being – an individual of a certain species – but a personal subject. Only then do we get a true and complete picture of the human being. We cannot complete this picture through reduction alone; we also cannot remain within the framework of the irreducible alone (for then we would be unable to get beyond the pure self). The one must be cognitively supplemented with the other. Nevertheless, given the variety of circumstances of the real existence of human beings, we must always leave the greater space in this cognitive effort for the irreducible; we must, as it were give the irreducible the upper hand when thinking about the human being, both in theory and in practice. For the irreducible also refers to everything in the human being that is invisible and wholly internal and whereby each human being, myself included, is an `eyewitness’ of his or her own self – of his or her own humanity and person.”[4]

    Perhaps, the analytical genius of Wojtyla comes to the fore precisely here.

    The “I” is being, not consciousness. But the experience which discloses the “I” as being is the work of consciousness. He distinguishes the consciousness of the experience of sensible things - which is taken from the experience (sensible perception) of the external world: this pink cloud – from the consciousness of the experience of the self (“I”) in the act of self-determination in the moment of morality: responsibility or guilt. In its (non abstractive) mirroring function, consciousness grasps the subject (not yet experienced as “I”), which has been objectified by reflective (not “reflexive,” in the terminology of Wojtyla) thought, and then “actualized” (subdued/mastered) by itself. He distinguishes between the reflectiveness of the mind turning back on its own act of knowing things and the reflexiveness of consciousness which captures both the reflections of the subject in potency to self-determine, and in the act of moving itself. This capturing both states of the self as pre and post self-determination, as potency and act with respect to itself, constitutes the experience of the “I” as “I.” And he corroborates this when he remarks in Fides et Ratio #83 that “In a special way, the person constitutes a privileged locus for the encounter with being, and hence with metaphysical enquiry.”

He remarks in the Acting Person: “The consequence of the reflexive [not reflective] turn of consciousness is that this object – just because it is from the ontological point of view the subject – while having the experience of his own ego also has the experience of himself as the subject. In this interpretation `refexiveness’ is also seen to be an essential as well as a very specific moment of consciousness. It is, however, necessary to add at once that this specific moment becomes apparent only when we observe and trace consciousness in its intrinsic, organic relation to the human being, in particular, the human being in action. We then discern clearly that it is one thing to be the subject, another to be cognized (that is, objectivized) as the subject, and a still different thing to experience one’s self as the subject of one’s own acts and experiences… This discrimination is of tremendous import for all our further analyses, which we shall have to make in our efforts to grasp the whole dynamic reality of the acting person and to account for the subjectiveness that is given us in experience.

   Indubitably, Man is, first of all, the subject of his being and his acting; he is the subject insofar as he is a being of determinate nature, which leads to consequences particularly in the acting. In traditional ontology that subject of existing and acting which man is was designated by the term suppositum – ontic support – which, we may say, serves as a thoroughly objective designation free of any experiential aspects, in particular of any relation to that experience of subjectivity in which the subject is given to itself as the self, as the ego. Hence “ suppositum” abstracts from that aspect of consciousness owing to which the concrete man – the object being the subject – has the experience of himself as the subject and thus of his subjectivity. It is this experience that allows him to designate himself by means of the pronoun “I.” We know “I” to be a personal pronoun, always designating a concrete person. However, the denotation of this personal pronoun, thus….

    Hence not only am I conscious of my ego (on the ground of self-knowledge) but owing to my consciousness in its reflexive function I also experience my ego. I have the experience of myself as the concrete subject of the ego’s very subjectiveness. Consciousness is not just an aspect but also an essential dimension or an actual moment [but not the “I” itself] of the reality of the being that I am, since it constitutes its subjectiveness in the experiential sense.”[5]

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[1] Redemptor Hominis, 13,14.

[2] Andre Frossard, Be Not Afraid, St. Martin’s Press (1984) 95.

[3] “Subjectivity and the Irreducible in the Human Being” in Person and Community, Lang (1993) 212-213.

[4] “Subjectivity and the Irreducible in the Human Being,” Person and Community Lang (1993) 214.

[5] The Acting Person, D. Reidel Publishing Co. (1979) 42-46.