Denver, Colo., Jan 30, 2019 / 04:05 am (CNA).- Pope John Paul II was born Karol Wojtyla, a man from a small town in Poland who lost all of his immediate family – mom, older brother, an infant sister, and father – by the time he was 20 years old. Shortly thereafter, he vowed a life of celibacy as a Catholic priest. And yet, Wojtyla would go on to be remembered as “Pope of the Family.”
25 years ago next week, on Feb. 2, 1994, Pope John Paul II penned his “Letter to Families,” the subject of which was spurred by the United Nations’ declaration that 1994 would be the “Year of the Family.”
At the time, U.S. divorce rates were higher – about 4.6 per 1,000 people, compared with 2.9 in 2017. But marriage rates were also higher – 9.1 compared with 6.9 for those same years. Legalized same-sex marriage was still considered a taboo political idea, and would remain so for more than a decade. And Bruce Jenner still went by Bruce Jenner.
But even though it was written 25 years ago, many Catholics in family life ministries believe that the Church is only beginning to see the fruits of John Paul II’s message to families.
Although he was a celibate priest, Wojtyla became very close to a circle of young people whom he pastored while serving as chaplain to university students in Krakow. As they married and had children, Fr. Wojtyla offered spiritual and pastoral guidance to their families that would inform his work well into his years as Pope John Paul II.
“He was able to support these young families, to help them live the faith at a time when Communist society was really trying to undermine the family,” said Jared Staudt, who is the director of formation for the Archdiocese of Denver, where he also leads Building Family Culture retreats for families.
When the Communist Party ruled Poland, family’s work and school schedules were arranged in such a way that they spent as little time together as possible. The state, and not the family, was, according to the government, the ultimate good and end of society.
“So he was in this battle for family life very directly in Communist Poland,” he said of Wojtyla.
Much of what Wojtyla came to know about the sanctity and importance of marriage and family life can be found in his 1994 “Letter to Families.”
Man, woman and child – the family as vocation
John Paul II wrote prolifically on the family, but this letter is one of his more personal and concise works detailing much of his thought on marriage and family.
He was known for elevating the idea of the vocation of marriage and family life to a level that had not yet been articulated in the Catholic Church.
“John Paul literally started a revolution when it comes to the Catholic Church and family,” said Steve Bollman, founder of family ministry Paradisus Dei.
“What John Paul did is he truly identified the family as the pathway to holiness,” Bollman said. “In this letter, it’s the family that’s placed at the heart of the great struggle between good and evil, between life and death, between love and all that’s opposed to love.”
In his letter, John Paul II wrote that men and women, particularly in their roles as fathers and mothers in the family, are key to building up a “civilization of love,” in which families are able to give and receive love at individual and societal levels.
“If the first ‘way of the Church’ is the family, it should also be said that the civilization of love is also the ‘way of the Church’, which journeys through the world and summons families to this way; it summons also other social, national and international institutions, because of families and through families. The family in fact depends for several reasons on the civilization of love, and finds therein the reasons for its existence as family. And at the same time the family is the centre and the heart of the civilization of love,” John Paul II wrote (LTF 13).
Bollman said that by telling families that they were at the heart of the Church, it called them to holiness in a way that hadn’t yet been articulated.
“The vast majority of people become holy as a husband and father and wife and mother, not in spite of that,” Bollman said. John Paul II’s teachings on the family are at the foundation of Bollman’s work at Paradisus Dei, which includes a couple’s ministry, and That Man is You, a ministry for men that particularly focuses on their roles as husbands and fathers.
“Our tagline is, “Helping families discover the superabundance of God.” That’s what we are is we’re all about family and finding God within the family,” he said.
The family in crisis
Staudt called John Paul II’s letter “prophetic”, because it addresses not only the crucial importance of the family’s place in society, but some of the key ways it is under attack.
And if attacks on the family were urgent in 1994, they are all the more so today, Staudt said.
“John Paul’s famous line from the letter: ‘The history of mankind, the history of salvation, passes by way of the family,’ is actually chilling at this point,” Staudt noted, “because what we’re seeing is that we don’t have hope for the future, we’re not investing for the future of society or for the Church. We’re just living for the present moment for our own selfish desires. So I think John Paul was already recognizing that the foundation of society itself is already in jeopardy, if people are not getting married, if they’re not having kids, they’re saying no to the future.”
According to Pew Research, the marriage rate in the United States is currently hovering at around 50 percent, meaning half of U.S. adults aged 18 and older are married, a steep decline compared to the peak rate of 72 percent in 1960. The fertility rate is also at a 30-year low in the United States, and sits below replacement levels. As of 2014, less than half of children were living in a traditional nuclear home with their married mother and father.
By many measures, marriage and family life today are in crisis, in ways that are perhaps even more pronounced than when John Paul II wrote this letter.
“I think the ‘crisis of concepts’ that John Paul II speaks of is an enormous challenge for the family today,” Sr. John Mary, S.V., of the Sisters of Life, told CNA.
“Who can deny that our age is one marked by a great crisis, which appears above all as a profound ‘crisis of truth?’” John Paul II wrote. “A crisis of truth means, in the first place, a crisis of concepts. Do the words ‘love’, ‘freedom’, ‘sincere gift’, and even ‘person’ and ‘rights of the person’, really convey their essential meaning?” This crisis now seems to be even more profound than when the Pope first wrote these words, Sr. John Mary, S.V., a Sister of Life, told CNA.
“Even more so today than when the Letter to Families was written, modern culture does not recognize the truth of who the human person is, what we are made for, what constitutes a family, what freedom and human rights are,” she said. “So to truly live Christian family life becomes more and more radically countercultural. John Paul II addresses this in the letter by proposing the anthropology that corrects this crisis of concepts and allows for a civilization of love to grow by way of marriage and family,” she noted.
Another major challenge faced by families is the “radical individualism” present in current culture, Sr. John Mary said, which is something else John Paul II addressed in the letter.
According to John Paul II, radical individualism is “based on a faulty notion of freedom and proposes personalism as the antidote,” Sr. John Mary said. “The family is the first place where love is given and received. But if parents do not model authentic, self-giving love to their children, families become groups of persons pursuing their own selfish ends,” she said.
The ‘antidote’: John Paul II’s cure for a sick society
Though John Paul II’s descriptions of these crises and the current state of affairs of marriage and family in the world paint a dark picture, John Paul also provides for families and the Church a way out.
Bill Donaghy is a senior lecturer and content specialist with the Theology of the Body Institute. The mission of the Institute is to educate and train men and women to understand, live, and promote John Paul II’s teachings in his Theology of the Body.
Donaghy told CNA that not only does he consider John Paul II’s Letter to Families the blueprint to how to live a holy life personally as a husband and father, he also considers it the “antidote” to everything that goes against a “civilization of love.”
“Without a doubt in my mind, in the providence of God Who could foresee today’s crisis in marriage and the family, the attempt to redefine marriage and the explosion of gender ideologies that detach our identity from our humanity, St. John Paul II’s thought is the antidote, the cure, the clear truth of who we are and how we are to live as human persons made by Love,” he said.
“I think the vision presented in this letter is actually more relevant now than it was 25 years ago,” he said. “It contains the secret for our joy, the mystical meaning of marriage, the way home for the prodigal sons and daughters who’ve tried everything else to bring us joy and failed to find it.”
For himself, Donaghy said building the “civilization of love” starts in his own home – by treating his wife with love and respect, by spending time with and listening to his children, by modeling sacrificial love. At the parish level, he said the Church must help families by creating space for “real human interaction, conversation, and formation.”
“Again, the ‘Letter to Families’ is a goldmine of a teaching, a school of love for humanity. But we’ve got to make time and space for it to enter into the everyday dynamics of our own family,” he said.
Staudt too told CNA that the words and teachings of Pope John Paul II on the family have deeply inspired his work in family ministry.
“It really is through John Paul’s teachings, the letter and his other teachings…that I’ve discerned that the way to build Christian culture is through family life,” Staudt, who is also the father of 6, told CNA.
For the Building Family Culture retreats that he leads, Staudt said that he focuses on teaching families how to pray, the importance of which is heavily emphasized by John Paul II in his letter.
“Prayer must become the dominant element of the Year of the Family in the Church: prayer by the family, prayer for the family, and prayer with the family,” John Paul II wrote. “Prayer increases the strength and spiritual unity of the family, helping the family to partake of God’s own ‘strength.’”
“I think we take that for granted, that families know how to pray, and I don’t think they do. So I think that’s the foundation, that’s the core, and John Paul does talk a lot about that,” he said. After prayer, he also focuses on how to build a family culture, which includes doing things that form children’s imagination in positive and beautiful ways.
Staudt said he hopes that more in family ministry “wake up” to the urgency of helping families become what John Paul II has called them to be.
“I don’t think enough people have woken up to the urgency in supporting family life and really making that a priority in their parishes, their dioceses, in catechesis, in evangelization,” he said.
“John Paul I think is truly prophetic in pointing us to the fundamental realities of man, woman, human love, family life as crucial for the Church and society at this time, that these are the key issues that we need to face.”
Sr. John Mary and the Sisters of Life say they help build a “civilization of love” through the women they help in crisis pregnancies, the women they counsel after abortions, or the young people who are early on in their journey of faith.
Sr. John May said that because John Paul II was speaking about universal truths of the human person, his words will continue to be relevant for families and the Church throughout time. “John Paul’s Letter to Families explores universal truths: the goodness of the human person, the dignity of marriage, and the very real challenges facing families today,” she said. “Marriage and family are God’s plan to satisfy the universal longings of the human heart, so speaking of them is always timely.”
“We are all called to do something great with our life and our love,” she added. “We are made for love and communion with God and others. John Paul II reminds us of this lofty call, and encourages us that true love is possible.”
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In a civilized world, economy needs to be at the service of human beings and not the other way around.
Long before Aquinas, Saint Augustine also said this: “[The passions] are more easily mortified finally in those who love God, than satisfied, even for a time, in those who love the world.”
Aye, and here’s the rub. . . In our entrenched, economically-structured and Consumerist Lifestyle where exactly—today, both personally and systemically—is the line to be drawn between real “needs” and superfluous “abundance”? Who on the production lines are to be the first cut loose and sent forth to find or invent new work? And, in the cause of inter-generational solidarity, in addition to an atmospheric national debt, what other kinds of debt are being shoveled over the fence into the future?
Or, are technology (Technocracy?) and human ingenuity permanent and reliable jokers in the deck of modern economics—-the reverenced cornucopia called GNP?
Pope St. John Paul II explicitly called for “important changes in established lifestyles, in order to limit the waste of environmental and human resources, thus enabling every individual and all the peoples of the earth to have a sufficient share of those resources” (Centesiumus Annus, CA, 54).
What does this one-liner really mean? A prominent abbreviation of CA chose to edit-out this balancing (yes?) perspective, entirely, as simply an inadvertent anomaly, a throw-away.
Charitably, I hope the author of this article simply misunderstands Dr. Hirschfield’s work. Aquinas might be paraphrased as saying “private property is fitting because it channels our propensity to work for ourselves in socially useful ways,” but I do not think he says “we are also to hold private property as if it is in common, that is ready to share with others the fruits of our labors.” He says we are to act as “stewards” of what we have been given and use it for the “common good”. And respectfully, these are simply the difference between is-statements and ought-statements. He’s explaining the way human’s actually do function and then he enters morality in saying how we can be our best.
Second, the author of the article states “Economists … see happiness as acquiring wealth and goods.” This again is either the article author completely misunderstanding or Dr Hirschfield saying something that no economist thinks. Economists never talk about happiness coming from wealth and goods – ever. It’s a matter of satisfaction of preferences AS A PERSON SEES THEM NOW.
My biggest beef however is with the conflation of economics with the outcomes of markets and the general undertone of the article. The undertone is that it’s all so unsavory. Frankly it smacks of gnosticism. Economics, by telling us how preferences are going to be satisfied under a given set of rules – a market – is somehow unsavory. Just by telling us how people will respond to incentives, the science of economics itself is unsavory? Would you yell at a rock because it drops on your foot when you let go? Nonsense.
Economics is an area of study – how people with given preferences respond under a certain set of rules in the face of uncertainty and scarcity – that field of interaction between preferences, rules and resources is called a market. Economics is not about getting rich or materialism or anything like that except in the sense that if you value certain things then it can definitely tell you what path to follow to get more of it or less of it. It doesn’t say “go out and rip and tear and to hell with everyone.” That is an ethic – an ought – and economists do not talk like that. It’s a science about what we fallen creatures do given certain very specific conditions. As I said in the review of her book if you don’t like the outcome of a market, then you can always change the rules which almost always means police and guns and violence. But better yet, how about if, as disciples of Christ, we work to change human preferences. I really do not get what is so hard here. Stop blaming economics or the market when it’s really our sin hardened preferences that deserve the blame.
If Dr. Hirschfield wants to discuss what we should do with wealth – well and good. That is called morality and we have been working on that for about 10,000 years. Christ has shown us a new way – self emptying love as a way of true happiness. And that is wonderful. It is life itself. But it doesn’t change the existence of markets just like it doesn’t change the existence of gravity or the strong force. Given people’s preferences whether they are angelic or demonic, economics is the study of how those preferences will actually work out.
Superb insights and analysis, Tim H. I also noticed what appears to be some significant misunderstandings and jumping to false conclusions by either the article author or Dr. Hirschfield or probably both. For example, note the following excerpt from the article summarizing one of Hirschfield’s positions:
“On one hand, Aquinas seemed to say that ‘private property is fitting because it channels our propensity to work for ourselves in socially useful ways,’ Hirschfeld said. This aligned perfectly with what she believed as an economist.
‘But then [Aquinas] said we are also to hold private property as if it is in common, that is ready to share with others the fruits of our labors. That read to me, as an economist, as a pure contradiction. On the one hand, private property is good because it gives us an incentive to work hard. On the other hand, we are supposed to turn around and give it all away. What sort of incentive is that?”
Taking into consideration what you have written about Hirschfield’s misconception in the use of private property, she also leaps to an egregious false conclusion that “we are supposed to turn around and give it all away. What sort of incentive is that?” Aquinas never said to give it all away, but indeed as you rightly point out, to use private property to benefit the common good, and for anyone who is truly objective in this regard, the legal and moral use of private property always contributes to the common good in a variety of ways.
And of course, whether people like it or not, the always operative invisible hand concept of Adam Smith demonstrates how the pursuit of productive efforts and wealth leads to many others benefiting in the process since nobody can simply produce X goods and accumulate X wealth unless things produced are also desired and purchased by others.
And to be sure, the accumulation of wealth and the pursuit of wealth in and of itself is not an evil as suggested by Hirschfield if she or others determine that the pursuit is for “too much wealth accumulation,” but again as you rightly point out, the morality aspect applies to what and how we do anything, so if a person pursues X to the extent that he or she shirks other responsibilities to God and others, then that person has failed a basic aspect of morality, but if other responsibilities to God and others are not being shirked in the pursuit of wealth, then such pursuit is moral…even if it brings about massive wealth accumulation in the process.
You know, the pursuit of knowledge is a wonderful thing, but taking part of Hirschfield’s attitude into consideration for a moment, did she really need 2 PhDs? Imagine what other things she could have done for others with the time it took to acquire the other PhD, which is clearly an excess since the vast majority of those who possess a PhD only have 1? Did she need twice as many PhDs as most other possessors of PhDs?
The questions above are silly, of course, but they do reflect an underlying attitude in Hirschfield’s approach. Pursuing ever more knowledge can be just as easily abused as pursuing ever more wealth, so once again it always comes down to what people do with their extra amount of whatever it is they have; not simply that they have it or pursue more of it.
Also note one more excerpt from the article to further demonstrate more misconceptions and false conclusions of Hirschfield along the same lines mentioned above:
“‘However much we have, we think a bit more would be helpful and so we work hard.”’
‘“But that same logic means we would not experience our wealth as abundance, and so we would find it hard to give to others,’ she said.”
This false conclusion is what one would expect to hear from yahoos like Socialists Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. Once more it betrays a significant misunderstanding of what people do with their wealth and how they must serve others’ needs to accumulate it, and it also falsely stereotypes people who accumulate lots of wealth as being hoarders of their wealth, and that almost all of them are unwilling to share their wealth with others. If this conclusion was really true, numerous charities throughout the world would not exist since many receive their greatest contributions and financial capacity to continue their work by those people Hirschfield claims don’t view their wealth as an abundance to share with others. Indeed, these “hoarders” are the same people who have founded many charities throughout the world, and they can do this because of the abundance of wealth they have accumulated.
Docent writes: “Aquinas never said to give it all away, but indeed as you [Tim H.] rightly point out, to use private property to benefit the common good…”–and on this point there can be today something more capacious and perceptive, and more forward-looking and intentional in play than any mechanistic solidarity found in Adam Smith’s “hidden hand.”
From Centesimus Annus: “Whereas at one time the decisive factor of production was the land [13th century?], and later capital [19th century?]–understood as a total complex of the instruments of production–today the decisive factor is increasingly man himself, that is, his knowledge, especially his scientific knowledge, his capacity for interrelated and compact organization, as well as his ability to perceive the needs of others and to satisfy them” (n. 32).
P. Beaulieu: “…and on this point there can be today something more capacious and perceptive, and more forward-looking and intentional in play than any mechanistic solidarity found in Adam Smith’s ‘hidden hand.'”
Remarkable misunderstanding here. First of all, “more capacious and perceptive” is just a bogus claim without any substance, but even worse is the complete lack of perception regarding the reality of the “invisible hand.”
Indeed the “invisible hand” is as forward looking as it gets. In fact, it is a timeless reality of economic life that describes how a free people naturally (never mechanistically; that pertains to directed economic actions by governments that disrespect basic human freedom granted by God) interact with each other to produce many goods/services for the benefit of themselves as well as others. These interactions are voluntary and completely free, and they fully respect the natural order established by God. There is a famous short essay entitled “I, Pencil” that provides a good explanation of the “invisible hand” in action, and in this explanation is a most capacious and perceptive appreciation of serving God’s creative order as free people endowed with gifts given to them by God. A copy of “I, Pencil” can be found at the following website:
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/I,_Pencil
Enjoy the wisdom contained in the essay.
Ships passing in the night…
I actually recall well reading “I, Pencil” after it was published, and recall a similar and later tale, equally instructive, about the weighty National Geographic Magazine–that if the government were in charge of the economy all used copies would end up in one place and Manhattan would sink into the Hudson River.
No endorsement here of “yahoos like the Socialist Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren”, rather simply attention to the fact that such innovations as the more deliberate and explicit, corporate-boardroom “triple bottom line” do not show up yet in Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations.
From Centesimus Annus (n. 36), we have this: “I am referring to the fact that even the decision to invest in one place rather than another, in one productive sector rather than another, is always a moral and cultural choice” (last five words in italics) and surely a conundrum, too, for finite minds–hence, “the market”.
But, then, as for the market, this on the added defense (yes?) of collective goods: “Here we find a new limit on the market: There are collective and qualitative needs which cannot be satisfied by market mechanisms. There are important human needs which escape its logic” (CA 40).
NOT a license here for Socialism, but perhaps an admonition that the buffalo hunters needed to be reined in a bit, and that the Dust Bowl was not entirely climatic in origin, and that overnight digital currency mobility might have had something to do with the aggravated global market collapse of 2008.
Regarding CA and the meaning of “capitalism”, then–and a very difficult vocation for well-formed laity today–we have this:
“The answer is obviously complex. If by ‘capitalism’ is meant an economic system which recognizes the fundamental and positive role of business, the market, private property and the resulting responsibility for the means of production, as well as free human creativity in the economic sector, then the answer is certainly in the affirmative, even though it would perhaps be more appropriate to speak of the ‘business economy,’ ‘market economy’ or simply ‘free economy.’ But if by ‘capitalism’ is meant a system in which freedom in the economic sector is not circumscribed within a strong juridical framework which places it at the service of human freedom in its totality, and which sees it as a particular aspect of that freedom, the core of which is ethical and religious, then the reply is certainly negative” (CA 42). (partial translation: abortion clinics don’t cut it, so to speak).
Moreover, reining in the occasionally unhelpful pronouncements from chancery offices: “The Church has no models to present, models that are real and truly effective can only arise within the framework of different historical situations, through the efforts of all those who responsibly confront concrete problems in all their social, economic, political and cultural aspects, as these interact with one another” (CA n. 43).
I see no real contradiction in our above comments, but do propose that neither Aquinas nor even Adam Smith nor (ADMITTEDLY, above) red hats have the silver bullet for human flourishing in the 21st century. Yes, of course: no silver bullet anywhere, ergo, the “free economy”.
So, I propose, a VOCATION for the laity, and one that (as I have said elsewhere in CWR) would be better served if much of “autonomous” Catholic higher education had not derailed itself with the 1967 Land o’ Lakes Declaration. Woodstock in cap and gown.
Centesimus Annus and all of the Catholic Social Teaching (a misnomer addressing the societal: economics, culture, and politics)add up to less than a feared economic stencil, and yet more.
Okay, Peter.
I am glad you do not endorse the yahoos, but something is still very much amiss when you write “…rather simply attention to the fact that such innovations as the more deliberate and explicit, corporate-boardroom ‘triple bottom line’ do not show up yet in Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations.”
They had certainly showed up by the time of “I, Pencil,” and even with such bottom line thinking, it doesn’t matter, because the “invisible hand” is timeless and always operative insofar as people are free to pursue their economic well-being.
Now of course, some or even many boardrooms, CEOs, managers, owners, and so on can be the greediest people of all time in pursuit of ever more wealth, but they can only accumulate more wealth by providing goods and services for others, which opens up more employment opportunities for others as well.
Also somewhat problematic is your “…that overnight digital currency mobility might have had something to do with the aggravated global market collapse of 2008.”
This looks like at least partly blaming the market or perhaps capitalism in general for something that, if true as suggested, may very well have simply been an abuse of capitalism via inappropriate interventions fostered by governments and/or central banks.
Lastly, I also find much wisdom in Centesimus Annus. I only wish that the insights the saintly Pope John Paul II gained from his experience living under the yoke of socialism/communism would be better understood and appreciated by Pope Francis whose unfortunate experience living at times under various forms of “cowboy or gangster capitalism” apparently prevents him from seeing the goodness in capitalism in general, and it also makes him lean toward socialism despite the terrible track record of this system in his native country and South America in general. Pope St. John Paul II provides an intelligent and indeed measured endorsement of capitalism while pointing out the need for it (like anything else) to have a strong moral compass operating at all time, but for Pope Francis, he seems only capable of ignorantly criticizing capitalism and the United States’ practice of same while simultaneously endorsing more people illegally trying to enter this country that promotes ‘greed’. These migrants aren’t fleeing to socialism; they are seeking more economic opportunities and freedom offered by the US, but this basic reality of human nature eludes Francis.