per Studi su Matrimonio e Famiglia
presso la Pontificia Università Lateranense
Convegno Internazionale
Giovanni Paolo II: Il Papa della Famiglia
Roma, 20-21 marzo 2014
John Paul II, Pope of the Family: Person and Ministry
Prof. Carl A. Anderson
In Evangelii Gaudium,[1] Pope Francis presents a comprehensive context for the New Evangelization—one which he describes as “a new chapter” of the Church’s evangelization “marked” by the joy of the Gospel. (1) This “new chapter” the pope tells us is founded upon “a renewed personal encounter with Jesus Christ.” (3)
At the outset of the apostolic exhortation, the pope warns us against the temptation that is omnipresent in secular society, that is, the temptation to reduce Christianity to merely an ethical system or a lifestyle. He writes: “I never tire of repeating those words of Benedict XVI which take us to the very heart of the Gospel: ‘Being a Christian is not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea, but the encounter with an event, a person, which gives life a new horizon’.”(7)
Pope Francis has observed that the tendency of secular society to reduce Christianity to merely an ethical system with unpopular moral rules has too often resulted in a situation in which the Gospel message is hidden from public view. Blessed John Paul II had raised a similar issue in his 1995 encyclical, Evangelium Vitae when he wrote: “The Gospel of Life is not simply a reflection, however new and profound, on human life. Nor is it merely a commandment aimed at raising awareness and bringing about significant changes in society. Still less is it an illusory promise of a better future. The Gospel of Life is something concrete and personal, for it consists in the proclamation of the very person of Jesus.” (29) Moreover, Blessed John Paul II continues, “In Christ, the Gospel of Life is definitively proclaimed and fully given.” (29)
Thus, we need to avoid the trap which secularism places in the Church’s path of evangelization—which is to portray Christians as those seeking to “impose new obligations” on those around them rather than to “appear as a people who wish to share their joy.” (15) Again, quoting Pope-emeritus Benedict, the Holy Father writes, “It is not by proselytizing that the Church grows, but ‘by attraction’.” (18)
Such a need for evangelization is especially important regarding the profound beauty of the family revealed in the person of Christ and through the Church. In Evangelii Gaudium, Pope Francis observes that “The family is experiencing a profound cultural crisis.” (66) Although this crisis is complex as it is experienced in each culture and as it is affected by globalization, there is one aspect in Western societies, which I think is especially appropriate to consider in the context of the Holy Father’s call for Catholics to proclaim “the joy of the Gospel.”
This aspect is the legacy of the culture suspicion, which attacks not only religion in general, but also the Church’s specific teaching, including its teaching on the family.
On other occasions I have discussed Paul Ricoeur’s hermeneutic of suspicion as applied to Christianity and the way in which the theories of Marx, Freud and Nietzsche, although appearing mutually exclusive, nonetheless have combined to influence Western culture in a way decidedly contrary to Christianity. Ricoeur described Marx, Freud and Nietzsche as “Masters of Suspicion” for the way each of them was able to cast doubt on Christianity.
In his Wednesday Catechesis on Human Love, Blessed John Paul II discussed one important influence of the “Masters of Suspicion.” He assessed these “masters” in terms of the Johannine language of the threefold concupiscence. He writes:
“In Nietzschean hermeneutics, the judgment and the accusation of the human heart correspond in some way to what biblical language calls ‘pride of life’; in Marxist hermeneutics to what it calls ‘concupiscence of the eyes’; in Freudian hermeneutics, by contrast, to what it calls ‘concupiscence of the flesh.’ The convergence of these conceptions with the hermeneutics of man based on the Bible consists in the fact that when we uncovered the threefold concupiscence in the human heart, we too could have limited ourselves to putting this heart in a state of continual suspicion.”
But — as he continues to point out — we are not allowed to cast the human heart into “a state of continual suspicion.” Instead, the human heart is called to be open to the mystery of redemption.[2]
Today, we find a new cultural paradigm dramatically influenced by this threefold concupiscence. We may describe it as a culture of materialism, of radical individualism, of consumerism, of hedonism, of selfishness or as a combination of one or more of these. But the effect is the same: a culture in which hearts are in a state of continual suspicion while at the same time hungry for authentic love.
Whether we consider Christianity to be the opium of the people (Marx), a delusion (Freud) or a slave religion (Nietzsche) we see in the work of each a view of Christianity contrary to the good of the person, his freedom and his happiness. In other words, within the “hermeneutic of suspicion” it is impossible to see Christians as a people whose hearts and lives are, as Pope Francis suggests, to be “filled with joy” or to be “an evangelizing community … filled with joy.” (24) Instead, secular critiques of Christianity are more likely to see “Christians whose lives seem like Lent without Easter.” (6)
Another aspect of this cultural crisis is the emergence of a post-Christian culture in the West. This culture not only rejects the influence of Christianity but it now influences the ways in which Christians think about their own religion—in these societies there is a process of what we might consider a reverse evangelization.
This “reverse evangelization” is distinctly different from what Jacques Maritain observed in 1949, when he spoke of what he called the “evangelical inspiration” of secular consciousness. He said, “Under the inspiration of the Gospel, the secular consciousness has understood the dignity of the human person and has understood that the person, while being a part of the State, yet transcends the State, because of the inviolable mystery of his spiritual freedom.”[3]
Today, we might consider that the contrary phenomenon is occurring: the Christian vision of the human person and his dignity is being undermined by secular concepts.
Pope Francis observed this as well in Evangelii Gaudium, writing: “New cultures are constantly being born in these vast new expanses where Christians are no longer the customary interpreters or generators of meaning. Instead, they themselves take from these cultures new languages, symbols, messages and paradigms which propose new approaches to life, approaches often in contrast with the Gospel.” (73)
Moreover, the pope continues, “In some places, a spiritual ‘desertification’ has evidently come about as a result of attempts by some societies to build without God or to eliminate their Christian roots.” (86)
It is important to also be aware of those instances where the poetic language of spiritual writings, aimed at expressing fervor, are now open to misunderstanding and misinterpretation due to a modern lack of context.
For example, St. Ignatius of Loyola concludes his Spiritual Exercises with a series of “Rules for Thinking with the Church.” Number 13 states, “We should always be ready to accept this principle: I will believe that the white that I see is black, if the hierarchical Church so defines it.”[4] Thankfully, the hierarchical Church does not ask this of us. But, we might do well to consider that this is precisely what secular society believes that the Church requires: that what secular society promotes as “good” in regard to freedom of choice in marriage or the transmission of human life the Church teaches to be evil. This too is part of the cultural context in which the Church must confront the challenge of evangelization of marriage and family life: faithful Catholics must dedicate their lives to moral values which many of their neighbors not only see as irrational, but as contrary to the good of the person and of society.
In this cultural context, the writings and personal witness of Blessed John Paul is both inspirational and instructive.
But it should be remembered that his belief in the beauty of the family did not come from some blindness to the times but a profoundly deep experience of the challenges of modernity, and experienced deeply the beautiful and powerful truth about man and the family as revealed by Christ. In Familiaris Consortio, Blessed John Paul II recognizes this fundamental divergence between secular culture and Christian family culture when he spoke of the “anthropological and moral” difference in the Church’s integral vision of the person (32). From this vision arises a positive and life affirming message in response to the fear and anxiety so often present in contemporary society. He writes in Familiaris Consortio: “Against the pessimism and selfishness which cast a shadow over the world, the Church stands for life: in each human life she sees the splendor of that ‘Yes,’ that ‘Amen,’ who is Christ Himself. To the ‘No’ which assails and afflicts the world, she replies with this living ‘Yes,’ thus defending the human person and the world from all who plot against and harm life” (30).
More than two decades before Familiaris Consortio, Karol Wojtyła presented reflections upon marriage published recently in Italian under the title, Bellezza e Spiritualita dell’Amore Coniugale. In those reflections he warnedthat society was approaching a “dead-end” regarding marriage and family.[5] Years before he became pope, Karol Wojtyła understood that the Church would only be capable of successfully defending the family if it was able theologically and pastorally to support families by showing the beauty of family life and of demonstrating the possibility of actually living in this way.
It was this pastoral attitude—reflected in the pages of Bellezza e Spiritualita dell’Amore Coniugale—which would later also guide the approach of Familiaris Consortio. As Blessed John Paul II notes in Familiaris Consortio, at a time when “the modern Christian family is often tempted to be discouraged and is distressed at the growth of its difficulties, it is an eminent form of love to give it back its reasons for confidence in itself, in the riches that it possesses by nature and grace, and in the mission that God has entrusted to it.”[6]
But how are we to approach the “riches” that the Christian family “possesses” by grace? How are we to approach the “mission that God has entrusted to it” and at the same time restore “confidence” that such a way of life is possible? How are we to approach the richness of sacramental marriage, as a gift received expressly through the Bride of Christ and an unparalleled elevation of spouses’ gift of themselves to one another? How can we—as individuals and as a Church of many vocations—experience it more deeply, communicate it more joyfully, and awaken a deeper desire for its profound beauty?
In Bellezza e Spiritualita dell’Amore Coniugale, Wojtyła notes that the Church must move beyond the impression that its view of the family is essentially legalistic.
“It will not succeed,” he writes, “if right from the start it supports a negative norm, that is a certain ‘one must not’.” He also recognizes that in the past, a negative view of the sacrament of marriage has prevailed in which marriage was viewed as a “thing of the flesh” in opposition to the things of the spirit.
The negative, or “glass half-empty” view of marriage, he suggests, probably comes from one of several tendencies. One tendency is that the sinfulness of spouses overwhelms our sense of the beauty of marriage. In this view, marriage is still viewed as a path of salvation for the spouses—but in a profoundly negative sense since the spouses are fundamentally a “cross” for one another to bear in this vale of tears.
Another tendency, he suggests, is this: “Probably there is a certain prejudice against the body within us, a trace of Manichaeism such that we fail to imagine the achievement of perfection (spiritual and supernatural) in a state of life in which body issues are presented as a factor so important and essential of the life of two people.”
This tendency also leads to a way of looking at marriage that is essentially negative. He writes that “the suggestion that marriage should be treated from ‘the sin point of view’ is so strong and overpowering that very few people consider it ‘in a dimension of perfection.’”
But if we are to defend marriage and family, we must first ask: “What concept of marriage and family are we defending?” Are we capable of defending an institution which is perceived by both its defenders and its critics in essentially a legalistic, “negative” way? Are we capable of defending the institution of marriage today from “the sin point of view?”
If the task seems daunting, one should remember that Pope John Paul undertook this task with enthusiasm long before became pope, as a parish priest. During the 1958-1959 academic year Karol Wojtyla delivered a series of lectures on Catholic sexual morality at the Catholic University of Lublin. A year later they were published under the title, Love and Responsibility.[7]
In his introduction to the first edition, Wojtyla presents the challenge confronting the spiritual advisor to Catholic married couples as “an incessant confrontation of doctrine and life.” In order to help these married couples he maintains that the advisor’s “task is not only to command or forbid but to justify, to interpret, to explain … to put the norms of Catholic sexual morality on a firm basis.”[8]
Wojtyla sees the issue as “a problem which can be described as that of ‘introducing love into love’” and more specifically of the “problem of changing the second type of love (sexual love) into the first, the love of which the New Testament speaks.”[9] According to Wojtyla, this problem of “introducing love into love” presents the fundamental question of “integration”—meaning the “incorporation” of love “in the value of the person, or indeed its subordination to the value of the person.”[10]
What is required is “the integration of love ‘within’ the person and ‘between’ persons.”[11] Obviously, what Wojtyla describes as the “education of love” is not something that happens automatically. It is the subject of a careful and determined pastoral ministry.
This pastoral challenge of “introducing love into love” in its positive dimension remained a central theme of the entire pastoral approach to marriage and family of Karol Wojtyla as Archbishop of Krakow and it continued to inform his pastoral ministry of the universal Church throughout his pontificate. And it is essential to understand that this pastoral approach arose out of the concrete practical experiences and concerns of the young married couples with whom Father and then Bishop Wojtyla interacted during the 1950s and 1960s as well as from his philosophical and theological reflections.
In the development of pastoral approaches to marriage and family, one can be heartened as well about the benefits of the Christian view of marriage and family, beyond the vocation to holiness, especially regarding poverty. Indeed, Evangelii Gaudium calls for a heightened awareness of the social dimension of evangelization. It reminds us that “The need to resolve the structural causes of poverty cannot be delayed” (202) and that while “structural transformations” are necessary “Changing structures without generating new convictions and attitudes will only ensure that those same structures will become, sooner or later, corrupt, oppressive and ineffectual.” (189) While this challenge has many dimensions in both law and the economy, it has enormous consequences in regard to family policies and the “corruption” of marriage and family structures which today has become a major structural cause of poverty in Western affluent societies.
The United States is a case in point. According to a 2010 study of the United States Census Bureau, the percentage of married couple families living below the poverty level was 6.2 percent. For single mother households, the poverty rate was 31.6 percent.[12] Children raised in married couple families are 82 percent less likely to be poor than those living with single parent and this disparity remains even among those of the same race and educational level. Approximately 75 percent of welfare assistance going to families with children in the United States goes to single parent families. In 2011, government assistance provided approximately $330 billion in cash, food, housing, medical care, and social services to poor single parent families.[13]
Today in the United States, seven out of ten poor families with children are those headed by a single parent—the vast majority of which are headed by single mothers. The economic realities faced by these families are often devastating.
But the emotional, psychological and spiritual pathologies can be even more devastating. Compared to children living in intact married families, the children of single parents “are more likely to have emotional and behavioral problems; be physically abused; smoke, drink, and use drugs; be aggressive; engage in violent, delinquent, and criminal behavior, have poor school performance; and drop out of high school.”[14]
At the same time, the religious element must not be lost or seen as subordinate to so-called “practical” solutions. Evangelii Gaudium reminds us that “Our preferential option for the poor must mainly translate into a privileged and preferential religious care.” (200) In this regard, priority must be given to a renewal of catechesis of marriage and family as well as a new awareness among those in government that not all family “structures” equally serve the emotional, developmental and financial interests of women and children.