"The Maid is the unfading Passion flower" -- Bloy on Joan of Arc

St Joan, martyred May 30, 1431

"The historical figure of the Maid is like some stained-glass Annunciation, boundlessly tender and pure, which time and the Barbarians have by chance respected. Here is the azure of France and the fiery color of her torment, gently filtered around this face. As the result of a sublime confusion she seems to be at once the angel of the Annunciation and the most obedient Virgin, humbly receiving the dread sword that in the future is to replace her pretty spinner's distaff. At first she does not understand what is asked of her. She does not know the history of France, she does not know war or fearsome politics. She knows nothing, unless it be that God suffers in his people, and that He has great pity for the Kingdom which he so long ago chose for Himself, even during his dolorous Passion, in the Paschal night, when the cock began to crow. So she quietly, resolutely arises, like a good daughter of God, and, guided by her voices, instantly becomes an invincible strategist, tutor of th highest princes and their faultless counsellor. When she has freed France, she lacks nothing but to be freed herself of her mission; and because she is of the Holy Ghost, this other more glorious freedom cannot be accomplished except through fire, after the horrors of the vilest trial that ever appalled men since the unspeakable trial of Our Lord Jesus Christ." .  .  .

The Maid is the unfading Passion flower, and she will no more pass away than the Word of God. . . . Time is an imposture of the Enemy of mankind, who despairs at the immortality of souls. We are forever in the fifteenth century, as we are in the Tenth, , as we are in the central  hour of the Immolation of Cavalry, as we are in times before the coming of Christ. In all truth we lie in each of the folds of ancient History's multicolored apron. In spite of death, we are eternal in a fashion, being Gods, as it has been said: Ego dix: Dii esti (I say unto thee: ye are Gods)."

found in Pilgrim of the Absolute, pp. 322- 324

"Holiness lies in the space of three fingers" - Neri

In 1979, on the feast day of St Philip Neri, Pope John Paul II visited the Church of CHIESA NUOVA and made some very insightful remarks about the great saint. Consider that this was John Paul II's first opportunity as Pope to celebrate the feast of St Philip Neri at the place of his burial (he was elected in 1978). Three paragraphs really jump out at me as pertinent to academia and the cultural malaise of our day.

In fact, a fundamental danger is the pride of intelligence. St Philip saw it flourishing in a frightful way in that independent and rebellious age, and therefore he laid particular stress on the humility of reason and on interior penitence. Intelligence is a gift from God which makes man similar to Him; but intelligence must accept its limits.

Intelligence must reach the necessary and absolute Principle which governs the universe; recognize the historical proofs which show the divinity of Jesus Christ and the divine mission of the Church; and then stop before the mystery of God, who, being infinite, always remains obscure in his nature and in his operations. Intelligence must accept his law, which is a law of love and salvation and abandon itself trustfully to his plan, which, being eternal, transcends every human perspective ontologically.

St Philip emphasized this sense of humility before God. Putting his hand to his forehead, he was accustomed to say: "Holiness lies in the space of three fingers!", meaning that it depends essentially on the humility of the intelligence. [The entire message may be found here.]

The "three finger" remark was a fitting challenge to renaissance Rome and continues to challenge the intellectual arrogance of our day. Mystery is banished, God's existence denied, the life and message of Christ disdained. We have made our cranium the measure of all that is. A mere three fingers. Perhaps we could turn this in to a "three finger" test; it could be done at home, in the laboratory, or in the office. Hold three fingers up to ones forehead. Ask oneself, within this span of my cranium can I claim to have mastered and exhausted the entirety of reality?  It is as preposterous as it is arrogant. In a way, we could say Nietzsche used a version of the three finger test as a criticism of the bloated claims of the Hegelians. He mocked Hegel's claim to have brought together all of reality in his little skull and to possess a total mastery of the very idea of God:

History understood in this Hegelian way has been contemptuously called God's sojourn upon earth,--though the God was first created by the history. He [God], at any rate, became transparent and intelligible inside Hegelian skulls, and has risen through all the dialectically possible steps in his being up to the manifestation of the Self: so that for Hegel the highest and final stage of the world-process came together in his own Berlin existence. (from On The Use and Abuse of History)

Conveniently, all of the world's processes and evolutionary developments culminate in the life of the  professor from Berlin (or fill in the blank with Cambridge, Oxford, Austin, Boston et al). Neri and Nietzsche beheld the pitiful pride of the professor. So perhaps our present day deniers of God could apply the test, either the Neri version or the Nietzsche version. Get a grip, Dawkins, Hawking and all ye rationalists. Reality is bigger than your skulls, your words, your methods. 

John Paul II forgave Mehmet Ali Agca

On May 13, 1981, Pope John Paul II was shot and seriously wounded in St. Peter's Square by Turkish assailant Mehmet Ali Agca. Blessed John Paul II forgave his would be assassin, providing a model for forgiveness. He visited Mehmet Ali Agca on December 27, 1983. An account follows:


Mehmet Ali Agca greeted the Pope by bowing deeply -- in a manner nearly resembling a genuflection-- before John Paul II. The Pope offered his right hand; Ali Agca took it and bent over to kiss it. Then, in an Islamic gesture signifying respect and trust, Ali Agca pressed his forehead against the back of the Pope's hand. During the brief meeting the two men sat closely together. At the beginning of the vist, John Paul lightly tapped Ali Agca's knee with his right hand and nodded as if to say: "Now let's talk." The guard left them alone for twenty minutes, signaling the visit's end. When journalists later questioned him about the meeting, the Pope replied: "What we spoke about is a secret between us. I spoke to him as I would to a brother whom I have pardoned and who enjoys my trust." Luigi Accattoli, John Paul II: Man of the Millennium, p. 98


Blessed John Paul II credits the mercy of God and the Blessed Virgin Mary for his life:


"My personal experiences this year, together with the events on May 13, make me cry out: We owe it to the mercy of God that we are not dead."


and "When I was wounded by gunshots fired in St Peter's Square, at first I did not pay attention to the fact that the assassination attempt had occurred on the exact anniversary of the day Mary appeared to the three children at Fatima . . . and spoke to them words that now, at the end of the century, seem to be close to their fulfillment." Ibid. p. 99

"A Symphony for the Mind"-- Pontifical Academy of the Social Sciences on Pacem in terris

Professors Pierre Manent and F. R. Hittinger
at Palazzo Colonna, Palace of Commander of
Papal Fleet at Lepanto, Marc Antonio II Colonna

The following is a report by Elizabeth Lev, for Zenit, on The Pontifical Academy of the Social Sciences annual meeting devoted to John XXIII's Pacem in Terris.  The entire story may be found here

I attended as an observer and I will make some of the papers available through this blog and subsequent blogs (see links)

ROME, MAY 7, 2012 (Zenit.org).- An archbishop, a British peer, and a cyber-mogul all walk into a Renaissance papal palace and start talking about world peace … sounds like the beginning of a joke doesn’t it? And yet last week that’s exactly what happened. This eclectic trio met at the beautiful Pio IV villa in the Vatican Gardens with some of the world’s most prominent social scientists for the plenary session of the Pontifical Academy for the Social Sciences, and fruitfully engaged with the most serious of business: Peace on Earth. Commemorating the 50th anniversary of Blessed John XXIII’s encyclical Pacem in Terris, the Academy, established by Blessed John Paul II in 1990, focused its formidable intellectual energy on the application of Catholic social doctrine in the modern age. Aiding the academy in its reflections were the archbishops of Madrid, Munich and Dijon, the Right Honorable Lord David Alton, economists, experts on Catholic social thought and even Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia.

Orchestrating the massive endeavor to examine the role of the Church’s social doctrine in the face of the modern challenges of globalization, secularism and the great strides forward in technology, was Dr. Russell Hittinger, William K. Warren Professor of Catholic Studies of the University of Tulsa, Oklahoma. The Riccardo Muti of philosophy, Hittinger drew together the lyrical strings of speculative thought, the steady percussion of empirical data and the coloratura bursts of theology, providing the academy with a symphony for the mind. I asked Hittinger about the conference from its overture to the grand finale. What was the leitmotif of the conference that drew the whole orchestra together? Hittinger replied that the plenary was organized around St. Augustine’s famous dictum that “peace is the tranquility of order” -- tranquillitas ordinis, which Blessed John XXIII told his drafting team to use as the framework for Pacem in Terris. “Thus,” he noted, “the PASS 2012 plenary wanted to be faithful to the original intent and to the actual expository structure of the encyclical.” Hittinger observed that Pacem in Terris was a multi-layered encyclical, laying out different levels of order: 1) Order in the universe 2) Order in freedom and conscience, and 3) Order among individual human persons. Moving on to the social order, Pacem in Terris recognized the need for: 1) Order among members of a political community and its authorities, 2) Order among political communities, 3) Order that ought to obtain among individuals, social groups, and states, to a world-wide community. This underlying structure gave a coherent theme to the paper prepared by the academy members and their illustrious guest speakers. When Pacem in Terris was published in 1963, the world had already borne the tremendous weight of the World Wars, and the Cuban Missile Crisis and its corresponding threat of nuclear disaster was still hot, sending the planet into uncharted waters of relations among men. Today, the PASS speakers noted, new challenges face the same desire for Peace on Earth, with distinctly modern notes. Where once the world was convinced that religion helped foster order and civility, the historical narrative rewritten in the Enlightenment has slowly convinced the world differently, making religion out to be the world’s villain and scapegoat, rather than its salvation. (For Hittinger's paper click here)

Professor Mary Ann Glendon, president of the academy, reflected on this theme in her paper, found here. As Glendon noted, the 19th century opened with the belief that religion would decline with the advance of science and education. “The demise of religion was supposed to be accompanied by the diminution, if not disappearance, of all the ills that proponents of secularization believed to be associated with religion -- intolerance, the stifling of individual freedom, and, of course, violence.” This ill omen voiced by the Enlightenment has been turned into a war cry by many secularists and prophets of the modern era. In 1968, sociologist Peter Berger expressed the expectation that by the 21st century, “religious believers are likely to be found only in small sects, huddled together to resist a worldwide secular culture.” More recently, neo-atheist Christopher Hitchens upped the ante, writing that organized religion was "the main source of hatred in the world.” Yet despite such doomsaying, religion seems as healthy as ever, though viewed with greater skepticism than before. The really interesting question, according to Glendon, becomes: How and under what circumstances does religion foster peace and progress rather than strife and decline? And how can religious actors help to shift probabilities toward “peace on earth”? Pacem in Terris offered its own analysis and remedies for the world’s ills, some of which proved prescient and others that have required modification. “Fifty years later, Pacem in Terris is still a work in progress,” Hittinger realistically observed. “In the encyclical, John XXIII warned that peace in its manifold senses cannot be achieved at warp speed.” It is the law of nature that all things must be of gradual growth. If there is to be any improvement in human institutions, the work must be done slowly and deliberately from within.

This point was driven home by Archbishop Minnerath in his keynote address, where he made the memorable remark that prospects for concretely realizing the principles of order must be discerned “à travers l’épaisseur de l’histoire humaine” (through the thickness of human history). (Paper in translation found here) According to Hittinger, Archbishop Minnerath captured the spirit of Pacem in Terris correctly. “PT cannot and should not be read as an ideological gesture toward certain policies -- rather it summoned the hard work of the Church and of all men of good will.’” “Difficulty achieving such a grand and complex tranquility of order is quite apparent to social scientists,” Hittinger declared. He highlighted a paper by Professor Paul Zulu of South Africa, which presented “a sober view of the almost chronic political instability of sub-Saharan nations.” Zulu, professor at the University of Kwazulu Natal and a member of the academy for almost 20 years, presented three case studies, packed with statistics, data and historical examples of violence in Africa over the transfer of power. Zulu further offered the academy an up-to-the-minute view of the dramatic situation in Cote D’Ivoire, Kenya and Zimbabwe. (paper found here)

Dr Phil Sutton on Forgiveness and the Sex Abuse Crisis

Philip Sutton, PhD

The following statement is an excerpt from a paper by my friend and colleague, Dr Philip Sutton, a psychologist in the diocese of Fort Wayne-South Bend and member of NARTH. The use of the thought of Blessed John Paul II and its application to the contemporary issue of homosexuality and gay marriage, is noteworthy for this Forum. The full paper may be found here. 

“Let us forgive and ask forgiveness!” During his homily on the First Sunday of Lent in the year 2000, the year of the Great Jubilee of the beginning of the third millennium of human history in Christ, Pope John Paul II implored “divine forgiveness for the sins of all believers,” both past and present. Twice he exhorted: “Let us forgive and ask forgiveness!” His exhortation on this “Day of Pardon” was the culmination of efforts toward reconciliation within the Church and between those within and outside the Church throughout his pontificate. 

In particular, John Paul II’s request: “Let us forgive and ask forgiveness!” was the fruit of six years of “a profound examination of conscience…before Christ” to achieve  a "purification of memory," resulting hopefully in the Church’s being reconciled among her own Catholic and Christian members and with the rest of the world. Quoting his own Bull Incarnationis mysterium, John Paul II reminded his listeners that he had “asked that ‘in this year of mercy the Church, strong in the holiness which she receives from her Lord, should kneel before God and implore forgiveness for the past and present sins of her sons and daughters’…. The recognition of past wrongs serves to reawaken our consciences to the compromises of the present, opening the way to conversion for everyone.”  . . .

John Paul II reminds us that the root cause of the rifts, divisions and alienations in families, relationships, the Church and the world is “a wound in man’s inmost self” called “sin: beginning with the original sin, which all of us bear from birth as an inheritance from our first parents, to the sin which each of us commits when we abuse our own freedom.” Therefore, “the longing for reconciliation and reconciliation itself will be complete and effective only to the extent that they reach- in order to heal- that original wound which is the root of all other wounds: namely sin.”
 

Blessed John Paul II challenged the Church as a whole and each individual son and daughter of the Church to seek forgiveness: “Ask for forgiveness from all whom you have offended, give forgiveness to all who have offended you, and seek reconciliation with all from whom you are estranged. Seek first to be forgiven by and to be reconciled with God, and then it will be possible to seek forgiveness from, and hopefully to be reconciled with, whomever you have offended.”

John Paul II’s general challenge to the Church and its members, as well as the psychology of forgiveness, have particular relevance in responding to the present clerical sexual abuse crisis. Suggestions for seeking and giving forgiveness and for achieving reconciliation in this crisis now will be discussed in light of the work of Catholic psychiatrist Richard Fitzgibbons and his colleagues of the Catholic Medical Association. Fitzgibbons, et al., have theoretical, empirical and clinical expertise on the causes, treatment and prevention of homosexual attractions and behaviors in general, and on the current clerical abuse crisis in particular. (See  Richard Fitzgibbons, “The Origins and Healing of Homosexual Attractions and Behaviors” in Fr. John Harvey, OSFS, The Truth About Homosexuality: The Cry of the Faithful (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1996), p. 307-343; and the Catholic Medical Association, Homosexuality and Hope:  Statement of the Catholic Medical Association, 2000, (http://www.cathmed.org/issues_resources/publications/position_papers/homosexuality_and_hope/ ) for which Fitzgibbons was a primary author.) The psychology of forgiveness and the Church’s magisterium on forgiveness and reconciliation each emphasize the need to identify accurately who, did what, to whom. Enright asserts that in order to give or receive forgiveness, it must be clear what offense was received or given. Also, offenders and offended must be understood in their humanity, especially in terms of the external causes and consequences of their having received or given offense. Similarly, when the Church seeks pardon for the sins of its members, an accurate historical study must be done “of the events, of the customs, of the mentality of the time, in the light of historical context of the epoch.” An objective historical analysis of the “offense” would avoid justifying every action by Church authorities as well as “an unwarranted laying of blame, based on historically untenable attributions of responsibility.” Proper discernment should be given to “images of the past steered by public opinion, since these are frequently highly charged with passionate emotion which impedes serene and objective diagnosis.” . . .
 

We must confront the loss of a sense of sin. As Fitzgibbons et al. observe: “In treating priests who have engaged in pedophilia and ephebophilia (homosexual relations with teenage boys) we have observed that these men almost without exception suffered from a denial of sin in their lives.” Such priests typically rejected: the Church’s teachings on sexual morality, …consistently refused to examine their consciences, to accept the Church's teachings on moral issues as a guide for their personal actions, or regularly avail themselves of the sacrament of reconciliation. These priests either refused to seek spiritual direction or choose a spiritual director or confessor who openly rebelled against Church teachings on sexuality.  Tragically, these mistakes allowed these men to justify their behaviors.

Enright’s psychology of forgiveness has demonstrated that one cannot (or at least will not) give or seek forgiveness if one does not admit that a serious wrong has been done to oneself, or by oneself. Similarly, a sin may not be “confessed” or “repented of” unless one recognizes that what one has done is a sin. Anecdotal and autobiographical reports of persons who have overcome post abortion distress as well as homosexual feelings and behaviors illustrate the importance of calling wrongdoing “wrong,” or calling a sin, “a sin.”  Unfortunately, there has been much misinformation about the nature of homosexual sin in particular. As Fitzgibbons et al. report:

One of the major problems we have discovered in discussing this issue with the clergy and the laity is the enormous amount of misinformation about the nature, origins, and treatment of homosexuality/SSA (same-sex attraction). This is not accidental. For over twenty years, activists, intent on changing the laws on sexual orientation, have put forward a massive public relations campaign specifically designed to spread misinformation that will change the social acceptance of homosexuality.

Misinformation about homosexuality has contributed not only to the current clerical sexual abuse crisis in the Church but also to a more general “moral atmosphere” that exists within secular culture- and sadly at times in the Church- in which the “sense of sin”- particularly sexual sin- has been lost. For Natural (moral) Law, sacred Scripture and Catholic Tradition teach that sexual activity is intended only for a man and a woman within the covenant of permanent, faithful marriage. All unchaste behavior is wrong, including fornication, contraception, adultery, masturbation, pornography and homosexual behavior. But our culture accepts and encourages any kind of sexual activity. In particular, the secular culture promotes the belief that homosexual activity is natural and good for those who experience same sex attractions.

These developments are part of what John Paul II describes as the loss or weakening of the sense of sin rooted in the serious “clouding,” “eclipsing,” “deforming,” “numbing” or “deadening of conscience.” He quotes Pius XI who declared that “the sin of the (20th) century is the loss of the “sense of sin.” The Holy Father continues:

 To acknowledge one's sin, indeed…to recognize oneself as being a sinner, capable of sin and inclined to commit sin, is the essential first step in returning to God. …In effect, to become reconciled with God presupposes and includes detaching oneself consciously and with determination from the sin into which one has fallen. It presupposes and includes…repenting, showing this repentance, adopting a real attitude of repentance- which is the attitude of the person who starts out on the road of return to the Father. This is a general law and one which each individual must follow in his or her particular situation. For it is not possible to deal with sin and conversion only in abstract terms. In the concrete circumstances of sinful humanity, …there can be no conversion without the acknowledgment of one's own sin.” (Reconciliation and Penance §13)

And if this is true for the “sense of sin” in general, it is certainly true for the “sense of sexual sin” and “the sense of homosexual sin” in particular.   John Paul II asserts that restoring a healthy sense of sin involves confronting the influences, especially those within the Church, which have enabled the sense of sin to be weakened or lost. This has occurred partially due to unwise responses by her pastors to the unavoidable tension between two coexisting and mutually influential principles of pastoral counsel. The first principle is that of compassion and mercy, whereby the church, as the continuer in history of Christ's presence and work, not wishing the death of the sinner but that the sinner should be converted and live (cf. Ez 18:23), and careful not to break the bruised reed or to quench the dimly burning wick (cf. Is 42:3; Mt 12:20), ever seeks to offer, as far as possible, the path of return to God and of reconciliation with him. The other principle is that of truth and consistency, whereby the church does not agree to call good evil and evil good. (Reconciliation and Penance §34)
 Assuming the good will of bishops, priests, and other teachers of the Church, the failure to confront directly the “objective disorder” of same-sex attractions and the objective immorality of homosexual behaviors may be attributed to a “misguided mercy.” Such an approach sacrifices “moral truth and consistency” to “pastoral compassion and mercy.” Presumably, pastors and teachers of the Church have tried correctly to avoid the unjust condemnation of persons just because they feel same gender sexual attractions (SSA) or experience temptations to homosexual or other unchaste behaviors. But in so doing, the same pastors and teachers may have failed to teach the truth about the objective wrong of such acts. . . .

In Reconciliation and Penance, John Paul II recommends catechesis on a number of topics, including: a healthy sense of sin, the nature and means of contrition and penance, conscience formation, resisting temptations (as  “an opportunity for growing in fidelity and consistency through humility and watchfulness”) avoiding occasions of sin, and “the four last things of man: death, judgment (universal and particular), hell and heaven.” For “only in this eschatological vision can one realize the exact nature of sin and feel decisively moved to penance and reconciliation.” Of course, catechesis on the nature and causes of homosexual temptations and on ways to prevent, avoid gratifying and even “outgrowing” the experience of such temptations would be timely in addressing the current crisis.

Blessed Angela Maria Truszkowska

Angela Maria Truszkowska, d 1899
"Mother Angela, pray for me,
assist me, guide me, sustain me."

On Sunday, May 6, my daughter graduated from Madonna University, a Felician school in Livonia, Michigan. The University celebrated its 75th anniversary. The school is  founded and sponsored by the Felician Sisters. In recognition of the Felician tradition the university awarded an honorary Sister Mary Barbara Ann Bosch, minister general of the Felician Congregation. In accepting her award “gratefully . . . on behalf of Felician Sisters throughout the world,” Sister Barbara Ann said it “affirms all our Felician Sisters . . who carry on in the spirit of our Foundress, Blessed Mary Angela.” She congratulated President S Rose Marie Kujawa and all at Madonna on the occasion of the school’s 75th anniversary. Addressing the graduates, she said, “May the Felician Franciscan values you learned here provide you with the strength needed” for your future. The Felicians are a remarkable order and they deserve recognition and gratitude for their work.

The order of Felicians were founded by Angela Maria Truszkowska. John Paul II beatified Angela on April 18, 1993.He said of her: "Christ led Mother Angela on a truly exceptional path, causing her to share intimately in the mystery of his Cross. He formed her spirit by means of numerous sufferings, which she accepted with faith and a truly heroic submission to his will: in seclusion and solitude, in a long and trying illness and in dark night of the soul. Her greatest desire was to become a 'victim of love.'" (See John Paul II's Book of Saints, by Matthew Bunson et al, OSV 1999.)

She was born in 1825 in Kalisz, Poland; she was born premature; her parents prayed to Our Lady of Czestochowa to save the infant. Despite her physical ailments she worked constantly for the poor and sick. She became a Franciscan tertiary and in 1857 founded a Franciscan congregation, called Felicians because the convent was near the Church of St Felix of Cantalice, a Franciscan saint of the 16th century who was a close to St Philip Neri and a great evangelizer. From her childhood , she offered money and service to the starving and those people in need of a good heart and home. She founded a small home for orphans; she cared for abandoned elderly women and this work was expanded. The date of the foundation of the Convent of the Felician Sisters is adopted as the day on which Angela commenced her life in the convent (21st November 1855). The life of Mother Angela was characterised by adopting the Franciscan's love of people: Nothing for oneself, everything for the others.


Within a span of four years Mother Angela opened 27 schools. These schools were lost when the Russians occupied Poland in 1864. In 1874 Mother Angela sent the Felician Sisters to the United States, to Livonia, Michigan; it was her second foundation, after the first foundation in Warsaw. Their educational apostolate was the backbone of Catholic education throughout Detroit and the midwest. Father Josef Dabrowski, founder of the Polish seminary (1885), now Orchard Lake Schools, served as their spiritual director. Today the Felician Congregation has nearly 1,800 Sisters on five continents. They continue to live and teach a Franciscan approach to service and love of neighbor and they offer an excellent education to the students at Madonna University. Mother Angela left a motto to her sisters: "All through the heart of the Virgin Mary, to the honour of the Holy Sacrament". She is buried in the Felician Church in Krakow. In the Church, the Holy Sacrament is adored throughout the day.

When She died, many believed her to be a saint. After the death of Sister Angela, people began praying through her to the Lord and were granted many graces, and favors both spiritual and temporal. She was beatified by Pope John Paul II, as mentioned above, and it was Cardinal Wojtyla who opened the cause for her canonization. Join me in asking her intercession for the recent graduates of Madonna University (including my daughter) that they may find employment and live a life inspired by her charity.

Sister Mary Barbara Ann spoke about the passage found in Luke 6:38 as a theme for the graduation ceremony: ""Give, and it will be given to you. They will pour into your lap a good measure-- pressed down, shaken together, and running over. For by your standard of measure it will be measured to you in return." It was a day to be thankful for God's many blessings. His goodness always exceeds our measure and expectation. Graduation day is a sign of his grace.


[note: the photo was found in profkaren, Flikr photostream of Karen Majewski, former mayor of Hamtramck and professor at St Mary's College, Orchard Lake -- see it here; the holy card collections are noteworthy (see very last collection) as are pictures of Poland]

Peace on Earth

Beneath the bust of their founder, Blessed John Paul II, the members of the Pontifical Academy of the Social Sciences (PASS) presented four days of papers on Blessed Pope John XXIII's encyclical Pacem in Terris. Next year will mark the fiftieth anniversary of the encyclical. For the forty year anniversary John Paul II said

 Looking at the present and into the future with the eyes of faith and reason, Blessed John XXIII discerned deeper historical currents at work. Things were not always what they seemed on the surface. Despite wars and rumours of wars, something more was at work in human affairs, something that to the Pope looked like the promising beginning of a spiritual revolution. (See entire speech here)

They key to peace is respect for the dignity of the person, as John Paul II explained in that message:

The road to peace, he taught in the Encyclical, lay in the defence and promotion of basic human rights, which every human being enjoys, not as a benefit given by a different social class or conceded by the State but simply because of our humanity: “Any human society, if it is to be well-ordered and productive, must lay down as a foundation this principle, namely, that every human being is a person, that is, his nature is endowed with intelligence and free will. Indeed, precisely because he is a person he has rights and obligations, flowing directly and simultaneously from his very nature. And as these rights and obligations are universal and inviolable so they cannot in any way be surrendered” 

 The proper understanding of rights continues to be a matter of controversy, in society at large, and in the Church itself. Some Catholics thinkers today actually want to abandon the use of "rights discourse" because it capitulates, supposedly, to liberalism. But this is absurd. John XXIII and John Paul II provided us with a clear guide to understanding the nature of rights and their importance in our world today. The hermeneutic of continuity places rights on the side of Leo XIII, Pius XI, Pius XII et al. The Church teaching on rights is not a new fangled invention of Vatican II.

Benedict XVI on forgiveness

Professors Glendon and Hittinger, 
Pontifical Academy of Social Science

Pope Benedict XVI in his message to Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences (found here) stated that forgiveness is an important aspect of peace on earth:

"In that same spirit, after the terrorist attacks that shook the world in September 2001, Blessed John Paul II insisted that there can be “no peace without justice, no justice without forgiveness” (Message for the 2002 World Day of Peace). The notion of forgiveness needs to find its way into international discourse on conflict resolution, so as to transform the sterile language of mutual recrimination which leads nowhere. If the human creature is made in the image of God, a God of justice who is “rich in mercy” (Eph 2:4), then these qualities need to be reflected in the conduct of human affairs. It is the combination of justice and forgiveness, of justice and grace, which lies at the heart of the divine response to human wrong-doing (cf. Spe Salvi, 44), at the heart, in other words, of the “divinely established order” (Pacem in Terris, 1). Forgiveness is not a denial of wrong-doing, but a participation in the healing and transforming love of God which reconciles and restores."