No gathering of Catholic social activists would be complete without rows of cars outside with bumper stickers containing the famous words of Pope Paul VI: \u201cIf you want peace, work for justice.\u201d<\/p>\n\n
To which Pope John Paul II would add a hearty \u201cAmen.\u201d<\/p>\n\n
But that\u2019s just once thread in a larger garment. During this recent American tour, the pope again stressed that it\u2019s impossible to talk about peace, justice and freedom without raising other issues that make many people, including some Catholics, very nervous. How can a society do what is good, he asked time after time, when few can agree on what is right and what is wrong, what is true and what is false?<\/p>\n\n
\u201cAmerica first proclaimed its independence on the basis of self-evident moral truths,\u201d noted the pope, during an evening prayer service in St. Louis. \u201cAmerica will remain a beacon of freedom for the world as long as it stands by those moral truths which are the very heart of its historical experience.<\/p>\n\n
\u201cAnd so America: If you want peace, work for justice. If you want justice, defend life. If you want life, embrace truth \u2014 truth revealed by God.\u201d<\/p>\n\n
This one statement captures the big ideas of John Paul\u2019s pontificate. However, this ethic remains hard to fit into bumper stickers, T-shirts and headlines.<\/p>\n\n
Thus, the pope\u2019s words will once again cause cheers and moans on both sides of the political aisle and in many Catholic and Protestant sanctuaries, said Mennonite theologian Ron Sider, president of Evangelicals for Social Action. Nevertheless, it\u2019s obvious that John Paul\u2019s goal is to defend the sanctity of life by attacking what he calls a \u201cculture of death\u201d that kills human dignity and hope. This is the overarching issue.<\/p>\n\n
\u201cPeople on the left will love what he had to say about the death penalty and racism and caring for the poor,\u201d noted Sider, a veteran coalition-builder among evangelicals and Catholics of varying political views. \u201cBut many liberals are going to squirm because he ties these issues directly to traditional Christian teachings on abortion and euthanasia and family life. Meanwhile, some people on the right will squirm because the pope made it very clear that he links these pro-life issues to the death penalty and poverty, sickness, hunger and even the environment.\u201d<\/p>\n\n
In the statement that drew the most media attention, John Paul said that \u201cthe Gospel of God\u2019s love for man, the Gospel of the dignity of the person and the Gospel of life are a single and indivisible Gospel.\u201d Thus, the church needs more believers who are \u201cunconditionally pro-life,\u201d even when this stance seems to be harder to defend, he said.<\/p>\n\n
\u201cA sign of hope is the increasing recognition that the dignity of human life must never be taken away, even in the case of someone who has done great evil,\u201d said the pope, during the St. Louis Mass. \u201cModern society has the means of protecting itself, without definitively denying criminals the chance to reform. \u2026I renew the appeal I made most recently at Christmas for a consensus to end the death penalty, which is both cruel and unnecessary.\u201d<\/p>\n\n
While exchanging greetings with President Clinton \u2014 who backs both the death penalty and abortion rights \u2014 John Paul stressed that he believes America is undergoing a \u201ctime of testing\u201d that will profoundly impact the rest of the world in the coming century. This can be seen, he said, in America\u2019s bitter conflicts about whether to declare \u201centire groups of human beings \u2014 the unborn, the terminally ill, the handicapped and others considered \u2018unuseful\u2019 \u2013 to be outside the boundaries of legal protection.\u201d<\/p>\n\n
And again, the pope added: \u201cOnly a higher moral vision can motivate the choice for life.\u201d<\/p>\n\n
\u201cThe pope is dead on target by returning to the larger issue of today\u2019s debates over the reality of truth,\u201d said Sider. \u201cWe live in an age of incredible relativism in this society and even in the church. We live in a land that seems to have lost its way. \u2026 So the pope isn\u2019t backing down on any of this. Those of us who really care about these issues can only hope that people are still listening.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
No gathering of Catholic social activists would be complete without rows of cars outside with bumper stickers containing the famous words of Pope Paul VI: \u201cIf you want peace, work for justice.\u201d To which Pope John Paul II would add a hearty \u201cAmen.\u201d But that\u2019s just once thread in a larger garment. During this recent […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":610,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1064","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n