With just a few words in § 13 of his first encyclical,
Redemptor Hominis (1979), Pope John Paul II changed
the perennial Catholic teaching on the nature of man
and his relation to the Creator.
When
we penetrate by means of the continually and rapidly
increasing experience of 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
[emphasis in original]....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. Every man comes into the world through
being conceived in his mother's womb and being
born of his mother, and precisely on account of
the mystery of the Redemption is entrusted to
the solicitude of the Church. Her solicitude is
about the whole man and is focused on Him in an
altogether special manner. The object of her care
is man in his unique unrepeatable human reality,
which
keeps intact the image and likeness of God Himself
[emphasis is mine].
This is not a casual insertion. On the contrary, the
encyclical coherently develops the consequences of this
claim, which the Pope articulates with no uncertainty.
But where is the change, if it is undeniable that man
was created in the image and likeness of God? The innovation
consists in the implicit negation of the principal consequence
of original sin, that is, the hereditary corruption
of human nature by which man has lost his resemblance
to God.
To
clarify this point let us cite a text written just before
the Second Vatican Council:
The
Christian conception holds that man has been assigned
an end beyond his own nature. This end is the
beatitude of the vision of God, which is superior
to all knowledge. In order to attain this end,
God, in creating man, gave man the supernatural
vision of grace. From the time when Adam lost
this gift through original sin, all his descendants
enter the world lacking this grace: they find
themselves in the state of original sin. Following
on the loss of man's lofty, supernatural end arose
a confusion in the hierarchical order of the various
faculties of the soul, the intelligence and the
will, natural appetite and sensibility, which,
now morbidly degenerated, tend to their own particular
ends and subject man to an internal division in
his nature. It is true that baptism cancels original
sin, but the tendency to disorder (concupiscence)
is not thus removed, just as the inclination to
evil remains an object of moral struggle, through
which the Christian must show himself a miles
Christi, a soldier of Christ. With the help
of the supernatural gift of grace it is possible
to attain a state of complete moral order, even
if only a very few-the saints in their perfection-attain
this state. In this struggle the "old man"
must be crucified with Christ, so as to die to
sin, to be resurrected as a new man, a new creature.1
If the image and likeness to God remained intact in
man still today, human nature would not be corrupted
and disposed towards sin—the intervention of grace would
not be indispensable. The human will would be sufficiently
strong by itself to conquer temptations and sanctify
man, leading him to Paradise.2
The
novelty introduced into the theological Tradition by
the Pope contradicts a fundamental premise of the Faith,
that is, the fragility of human nature and its tendency
towards sin, which is confirmed by the entire history
of mankind and everyone's individual experience. The
Catholic Church considers man as he is, and not as he
would like to be. It is therefore impossible that this
sinful man could have conserved intact in himself his
"likeness" to God, which would make fallen
man akin to God. Furthermore, if sinful man were still
like unto God, then God would also resemble fallen man
and sin would be in God as in man. And thus, since God
is the first cause and origin of everything, evil would
have to be eternally in the nature of God. One might
then deduce a Manichean dualism of good and evil within
the divinity.
The
book of Genesis, however, gives no support to this interpretation.
Adam and Eve disobey an explicit command of God, and
the sin of the progenitors begets sinful humanity. Yahweh-Elohim
had warned Adam: "You may eat of all the trees
of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good
and evil you must not eat, because on the day when you
shall eat of it, you will surely die." In acquiring
knowledge of good and evil man wanted to make himself
autonomous of his Creator, and "to determine, by
virtue of his own nature, what is good and bad"
(St. Thomas). This sin of "ethical autonomy"
is at the origin of all future sins and errors, because
man, apart from being subject to temptations of the
flesh and the spirit, is not omniscient and learns only
a little and with great effort. As St. Augustine says,
"we try to find, but we find only the possibility
of searching without end." It is not necessary
that one be a Catholic in order to recognize the consequences
of an absolute humanism, in which man is a "principle
in himself" and considers himself the infallible
source of law. However, the punishment of our ancestors
was to leave them to the consequences of their free
choice. Having chosen ethical autonomy, they are independent
of God and cannot remain in His company in the garden
of Eden.
Why
did Yahweh, knowing that man would disobey him, leave
him free to choose? Because He had created man in His
image and likeness, that is to say free and responsible.
Not, however, autonomous- man would have to show
that he deserved liberty, making good use of it by obeying
the Father, who is the Good in Himself, the perfect
Good. In so doing man would never have erred. But, despite
the warning and the prohibition of Yahweh, man chose
himself.
Judaism
Is Resolute in Its Error of Denying Original Sin
Judaism
lacks full comprehension of the problem and limits itself
to a literal interpretation of the words of Yahweh on
the punishment of the progenitors. Evicted from the
earthly Paradise and cast into a world into which death
has entered because of their sin, Adam was obliged to
win his bread with the sweat of his brow while Eve gave
birth with hardship and was subject to her husband.
In recompense, in view of the errors of all humanity,
Yahweh gave Moses an eternal law, valid and obligatory
for everyone. According to the Jews, the just man, by
scrupulously following the Torah, will receive his recompense
in this life and beyond. In other words, the just man
finds sufficient strength in his own nature to obey
the Law and to save himself. Grace is not indispensable,
and thus the mystery of the Redemption in its Catholic
sense is inconceivable for the Jews.
Thus
Jewish anthropology is optimistic with regard to the
nature of man: sin has not corrupted the nature of Yahweh's
creature, and the Law saves. After 19 centuries of Catholic
theology, the "New Theology" of Pope John
Paul II has made an about-face and has in fact aligned
itself with the Jews, without any concern about the
consequences deriving from renouncing the point of departure
of the story of humanity. The Jews, on the contrary,
renounce nothing. They remain decided to follow the
Torah and not to follow Christ, whose necessity they
do not recognize. For them the covenant between Yahweh
and Israel-the one and only people of God-is still valid,
because nothing has changed. They notice with satisfaction
that the Catholic Church, by contrast, has "changed,"
and has now embraced their point of view.
Judaism
thus maintains its internal coherence by rejecting Jesus
Christ. "Christian interpreters, allying themselves
with the literal sense of the story of the garden of
Eden," as Ben Zion Bokser writes,
generally
find there a doctrine indicative of a fatalistic
depravation. The sin of Adam in eating the fruit
of the tree of knowledge is understood as a contamination
of the entire human race after him, for all generations
to follow. This fatalism is absent from the Jewish
view....Man has the strength to fight and conquer
temptation and to become always more acceptable
to God....According to the biblical narration,
the sin of Adam does not derive from a substantial
impulse of his own nature, but from accidental
causes, from a conspiracy against him on the part
of an eternal tempter. As Rabbi Kook explains,
"It is in accord with reason that a mistake
caused by accidental circumstances be susceptible
of reparation, by virtue of which man can definitively
re-attain his elevated position." The story
of the fall of Adam expresses in allegorical form
the constant necessity that man be vigilant against
temptation.3
And further:
Since
the crucifixion of Jesus happened at the same time
as the destruction of the Temple, Christian theologians
slowly elaborated the theory that Jesus was the new
and most perfect sacrifice, capable of obtaining the
grace of God. This interpretation found its most radical
expression in the Catholic Mass, the central meaning
of which is the renewal of the sacrifice of Jesus.
The priest offers the body and the blood of Jesus,
miraculously transformed from water and wine: this
sacrifice is repeated daily and represents the one
and only means by which man can attain the grace of
God.4
According to Ben Zion Bokser and every Jew, the Catholic
faith in the God-Man is particularly repugnant from
the point of view of someone who believes in a single
God, and the death of Jesus Christ cannot be invoked
or offered as an expiatory sacrifice for attaining the
salvation of humanity. It is rather evidence of a failure
of nerve among many Jews-principally the disciples of
Jesus-after the destruction of the Temple. In his introduction
to Ben Zion Bokser's book, Paul Sacchi notes that, according
to the Catholic interpretation which, he says, "must
have originated in some Jewish circle," by his
sin Adam corrupted his own nature and, in his own, the
nature of all his descendants, who thus are collectively
damned. Judaism rejected this interpretation since the
first centuries after Christ. The problem was probably
never posed with precision before the Christian position
was taken.5
A
Judaizing Church?
The
Jewish awareness of the importance of an exact valuation
of the consequences of original sin is of great importance.
If human nature is uncorrupted and the Law saves, no
further extraordinary intervention of Yahweh in history
is necessary-the Incarnation, the Passion, the Church,
the daily renewal of the unique sacrifice of Christ,
sanctifying grace, all are superfluous, and, today as
yesterday, there is no need of a pope. Ben Zion Bokser
understands the necessary and unchangeable logic of
the Catholic belief in the corruption of human nature
because of original sin. How can a pope excuse himself
from this logic of the Faith which even the Jews understand
perfectly? Has the Church somehow been converted to
Judaism? Are the Jews thus ''our elder brothers"
(the title the Pope applies to them) in the specific
sense that their election remains efficacious, placing
them in a position of superiority and responsibility
before God for the guidance of all humanity? Let us
examine the encyclical to determine whether and how
this brief but weighty passage is theologically justified.
In
fact, Pope John Paul II does not explicitly deny that
original sin has corrupted human nature, making the
Incarnation of the Word indispensable. Rather he announces
a new doctrine of the mystery of the Redemption, albeit
one without Scriptural foundation, and even less founded
on Catholic theology. The encyclical cites only Genesis
1:28, which pertains to Adam and Eve before the Fall.
St. Paul is not cited and the "authoritative"
source for John Paul II is the Vatican II's Pastoral
Constitution on the Modern World, Gaudium et Spes
[i.e., henceforth GS].
Pope
John Paul II in Line with the Council
The
Pope does in fact rely on the Second Vatican Council
in order to develop its premises in his own peculiar
conception of the Redemption which, changing the relationship
between man and God, alters the meaning of history.6
In § 13 of Redemptor Hominis [henceforth RH\
he cites §22 of GS: "For, by his incarnation,
he, the son of God, has in a certain way united himself
with each man"
[Emphasis
is in original of RH, though not in GS.-Ed.]
It is noteworthy that the Council expressed itself
without dogmatic precision, introducing a factor of
indeterminacy and uncertainty. The union was achieved
"in a certain way," but in what way and with
what consequences? It is precisely this indeterminacy
which permitted Pope John Paul II to define his personal
conception of the Redemption in these terms, which we
transcribe in their entirety:
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. Every man comes into the world through
being conceived in his mother's womb and being born
of his mother, and precisely on account of the mystery
of the Redemption is entrusted to the solicitude of
the Church. Her solicitude is about the whole man
and is focused on him in an altogether special manner.
The object of her care is man
in his unique unrepeatable human reality, which keeps
intact the image and likeness of God Himself [emphasis
mine]. The Council points out this very fact when,
speaking of that likeness, it recalls that "man
is the only creature on earth that God has willed
for itself"7
[i.e., not for Himself-Ed].
According to the Council, therefore, God desired that
this exceptional creature-man-have his reason for being
not in the Creator, but in himself. God created man
not only free, but autonomous.
The
statement is manifestly absurd and incompatible with
the very notion of a divine creation out of nothing,
which is a dogma of the Faith. It contains a patent
theological error, since God has created all things,
as it has always been taught, for Himself, for His
own glory, and not because of some value that His
creation would possess intrinsically and thus independently
of the God who created it.8
In keeping with the Council, for which man is a creature
having his end in himself and not in God, Pope John
Paul II affirms that man remains in the image and likeness
of God. Indeed, if man has been created for himself,
why should he not act in accord with his own nature
and make himself autonomous, determining for himself
what is good and what is evil? From this perspective
the serpent did not deceive Adam and Eve when he tempted
them, saying, "Elohim knows that on the day when
you shall eat of it, your eyes will then be opened and
you will become like Elohim, knowing good and evil"
(Gen. 3:5). The eating of the forbidden fruit, in fact,
would correspond to the finality and the possibility
of the creature, and could not have constituted a perversion
of its nature. In conclusion, the consequences of sin
for the nature of the human race would be insubstantial.
The
Absurdity of an Unconscious Redemption
Following
the teaching of the Second Vatican Council, Pope John
Paul II can safely proceed to clarify in his own way
that there is no contradiction between the Christian
conception of hereditary original sin and the affirmation
of its non-existence in the man of today:
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 of
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...."
The following Section 14, titled "For the Church
All Ways Lead to Man," reaches the climactic conclusion:
This
man is the way for the Church-a way that, in a sense,
is the basis of all other ways that the Church must
walk-because man-every man without any exception whatever-has
been redeemed by Christ, and because with man-with
each man without any exception whatever-Christ is
in a way united, even when man is unaware of it: "Christ,
who died and was raised up for all, provides man"-each
man and every man-"with the light and strength
to measure up to his supreme calling."
This
seems to be a condensation of the meaning of an encyclical
which subverts the logic of Catholicism and dissolves
the meaning of the Catholic Church.
Diverse
concepts follow one another, become entangled and confused
in these few words:
1)
the man of today is man as he was originally willed
by God, original sin notwithstanding;
2)
this is possible because every man, without any exception,
has been redeemed by Christ;
3)
the Redemption took place because
Christ has united himself "in a certain way"
to every man;
4)
every man is redeemed from the moment of
conception, even when he is unconscious of this fact.
With this chain of statements (without reference to
Sacred Scripture, Tradition, dogma, doctrine, or common
sense) Pope John Paul II supposes that he has explained
why it is that the image and likeness with God Himself
has remained intact in man.
The
redemption of every man is thus accomplished from the
moment of his conception, even when man is not conscious
of it because Christ has united himself and continues
to unite himself "in a certain way" to every
man. This general statement does not in fact explain
the manner of union between Jesus Christ and man, and
thus it does not explain the Redemption. What does "redeemed"
mean for the 'Holy Father? The word is synonymous for
"saved"; thus every man is guaranteed eternal
salvation and the beatific vision of God in Paradise
already from the moment of his conception, for the sole
merit of having been conceived. Man is conceived and
redeemed at the same time, without any participation
of his own.
Given
the indeterminacy of the concepts of His Holiness, it
is difficult to understand what he means by "redemption"
and the "certain way" of union between the
Son of God and man. The only possible explanation of
the Pope's thinking is that Christ unites himself to
every man and redeems him because with the Incarnation
He received a human nature from the Virgin Mary, the
Mother of God, and that this event, making Him enter
into human history, united all humanity to Him until
the end of time. No other interpretation seems possible.9
If
this is the fundamental presupposition of the Pope's
thinking (and other hypotheses seem impossible), it
runs into insurmountable logical difficulties. While
the conception of a man is a natural fact, the conception
of Jesus of Nazareth was supernatural. The Word assumed
flesh through a woman, the Virgin Mary, and became a
true man through the work of the Holy Ghost. Joseph
was the putative father, God the Father the true father.
The Word entered history as the son of Mary, a Hebrew
descended from David, all the while remaining the natural
Son of God. In order for man to become, in his turn,
the adoptive son of God, he undergoes a second,
supernatural birth through baptism.
Jesus
answered, and said to him: Amen, amen I way to thee,
unless a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom
of God. Nicodemus saith to him: How can a man be born
when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his
mother's womb and be born again? Jesus answered: Amen,
amen I say to thee, unless a man be born again of
water and the Holy Ghost, he cannot enter into the
kingdom of God. (Jn. 3:3-5)
Furthermore, the Incarnation, which is the abasement
and the humiliation of the Word in flesh, does not automatically
entail universal redemption. It was further necessary
that He accept death on the Cross at the hands of men.
Even
as the Son of man is not come to be ministered unto,
but to minister, and to give his life a redemption
for many. (Mt. 20:28; Denzinger §790)
Likewise we shall not rise with Christ if we do not
accept to suffer with Christ.
And
if sons, heirs also; heirs indeed of God, and joint
heirs with Christ; yet so, if we suffer with him,
that we may be also glorified with him. (Rom. 8:17)
Finally, universality applies to objective redemption,
not to subjective redemption. The Redemption,
which cannot be reduced to the Incarnation alone, is
indeed by itself sufficient to save all men, but for
each individual man to be saved [i.e., subjective
efficacy -Ed.], it is necessary that he cooperate
with grace. St. Augustine says: "Although God made
you without your knowledge, he does not save you against
your will" (Serm. 169.3).
If
the union of Christ with men had come about on the natural
level, it would only have determined a generic link
of biological parenthood, in the same way that one can
say that all men are brothers by nature and make up
a single family. Even in the so-called "human family,"
natural union alone is not sufficient to make
fraternal communion possible because no individual man
is the human species himself. Though it is the materialistic
presupposition of modern democracies, men are
not a product of the material evolution
of the human species itself,
that is why they are not
equal as individuals. On the contrary, living humanity
is fractured into billions of individuals who do not
make up a collective nature nor naturally unite among
themselves, but who have associated with one another
throughout history on the basis of values, principles,
and mutual interests in states, civil societies, religions,
etc. History records as many conflicts as fraternal
collaborations. Every individual of the human species
is a fractionary unity, and a part that cannot be the
whole. Man does not find unity simply in the flesh,
least of all in the Church. Union
with Jesus Christ and with the other members of the
Catholic Church is a supernatural communion of divine
life, and a commonality of supernatural goods.
The mission of the Catholic Church is to conduct all
men in the way of conversion and communion in God. To
presume that every man-just because he is human-has
already been redeemed, without his awareness, without
grace and without the Catholic Church, is to deny the
Catholic Church's reason for being. It is to desire
the suicide of the Church.
The
Orthodox Doctrine of the Church
The
Incarnation, that is, the association to divine nature
of an individual human nature in the unique Person of
the Word, does not determine the automatic communion
of every human nature with that divine nature. No man
is redeemed by virtue of mere biological parentage.
To the abasement and humiliation of the Son of God in
the flesh should correspond each man's voluntary ascent
to God through following of Christ. The Incarnation
was only the beginning of a process [the life and death
of Jesus Christ -Ed.] which permits every man
through conscious docility to grace to divinize himself
through participation in baptism, taking up his own
cross, and following Christ. The Catholic Church is
a community of baptized persons. She re-presents every
day the Eucharistic sacrifice through which each baptized
grows in union with Christ, eating His Flesh and drinking
His Blood, to daily remediate the consequences of original
sin. This was the Catholic belief until the Novus
Ordo Missae of Pope Paul VI decreed that "the
celebration of the Lord, or the Mass, is the holy assembly
or meeting of the people of God under the presidency
of the priest in order to celebrate the memorial of
the Lord." The Mass of the Second Vatican Council,
therefore, according to its definition in §7 [of the
original Instruction], does not renew the sacrifice
of the Lord, but limits itself to celebrating its memory.
Was it intended to signify the uselessness of the renewal
of the sacrifice of the Lord in the face of the universal
redemption already taken place?
From
Bad Theology to a New Ecumenism
The
"New Theology" of Pope John Paul II has determined
his political action in the contemporary world. The
unity of the human race can no longer be attained merely
through the Catholic Church, the Mystical Body of Christ,
because a greater, natural unity exists: that of the
human race, in which are present the semina Verbi
[i.e., the seeds of the Word] which fertilize
all religions and make them valid instruments of salvation.
RH(§12] opportunely recalls that
[t]hanks
to this unity we can together come close to the magnificent
heritage of the human spirit that has been manifested
in all religions, as the Second Vatican Council's
Declaration Nostra Aetate says.
Baptism is no longer a necessary condition for eliminating
the blot of original sin, because Jesus Christ has achieved
the redemption of every man a priori, already
from conception in the womb. Whence arises the "faith"
in dialogue, through which all Christians—even those
who may be anonymous Christians—know and recognize themselves,
and all are saved.10
This confusing, universalistic dream brings to mind
the Tower of Babel. More simply put, this is the aggiornamento
or updating of the Church, "renewed" by
the humanitarian philanthropy shared by Illuminism,
Masonry, Wilson's League of Nations, the United Nations.11
This is the spirit of the age. To renew and "update"
herself, the Catholic Church has plunged into the past,
the worst of the past, the most bygone past.
Translated
exclusively for Angelus Press from SiSiNoNo (March
15, 2004).
1.From
La Religione Cristiana, edited by Oskar Simmel;
Encyclopedia Feltrinelli Fischer (1962), under the heading
"Uomd" ["Man"], p.377.
2.
The error of Pelagius is of a similar character.
3.
Ben Zion Bokser, Il Giudaismo (Ed. II
Mulino, 1969), pp. 167-68.
4.
Ibid., p.233.
5.
Ibid., p.xv.
6.
Likewise in the declaration Dominus Jesus of
2001, Pope John Paul II relies on a conciliar text in
order to deviate from the correct teaching on original
sin and to uphold the heterodox teaching of "universal
redemption," as Fr. Johannes Dormann explains in
SiSiNoNo (Italian edition, p.4) of March 15,
2001:
The
text of Vatican II adduced as support for the Declaration
(GS §22) does not teach Catholic doctrine. The text
is cited as follows: the Second Vatican Council affirms
that Christ, the "new Adam," "image of
the invisible God" (Col. 1:15) "is the perfect
man, who has restored to the sons of Adam that likeness
to God that was made deformed already in the beginning
because of sin." Now, according to the doctrine
of the Church, the supernatural likeness of Adam to
God was not "made deformed" by the first sin
but was lost to the descendants of Adam because of original
sin. If, on the contrary, this resemblance with God
was not lost after the first sin, but was merely "made
deformed," then the likeness with God would have
remained in man even after original sin, albeit in a
diminished manner. But this doctrine is not Catholic;
it is merely a variant of the heterodox theory by which
grace is given a priori to all men.
7.
Gaudium et Spes (§24).
In this encyclical the Pope in fact gives the authentic
interpretation of the conciliar statement.
8.
Paolo Pasqualucci, Politico e Religione (Rome:
Antonio Pellicani Editore, 2001), p.59. See also Romano
Amerio, Iota Unum (Italian edition, Milan: Napoli,
1987), pp.205-7.
9.
Fr. Johannes Dormann has analyzed the axiom of universal
redemption, which is the foundation of the theology
and political action of Pope John Paul II. He cites
§14 of Redemptor Hominis in his study of that
encyclical: "This man is the first road that the
Church must cross in the completion of her mission,
a path traced out by Christ himself, a path that immutably
passes through the mysteries of the Incarnation and
the Redemption." Since the Holy Father had previously
affirmed that "Jesus Christ is the principal way
of the Church," Fr. Dormann asks which is the unique
way of the Church-Christ or man? The solution is in
the union of the two ways through the effect of the
union of the Son of God with every man, without specifying
the relation of the two parts through the Incarnation.
Fr. Dormann writes that, for the Pope,
this
union is the a priori revelation by which every
man possesses "existence in Christ" a
priori together with his specific and integral
humanity. This is so because the redeemed man is "the
first road and the fundamental road of the Church,"
and the foundation of all her activity. To this a
priori revelation corresponds the a posteriori
historical revelation in Christ. This consists
in the fact that Christ "fully reveals man to
himself," which is to say that he makes him conscious
of his true and profound humanity. "He does it
through the revelation of the Father and of his love."
Fr. Dörmann concludes by asking what is left for the
Church to do, "If Redemptor Hominis has
already, essentially and ontologically, completed his
supernatural work in every man?" To us it seems
that Pope John Paul II has united the mysteries of
the Incarnation and the Redemption in a single action
of God so that the life, teaching, and Passion of the
Incarnate Son of God constitute a teaching, an example
to imitate, with an ultimately pedagogical function.
This study is thus not an original one; it seeks only
to illuminate the special importance of those words
on the "image of God" which Dörmann has cited
in their context without dwelling on them.
10.
Paulo Pasqualucci, op cit. p.56:
The
first article of Lumen Gentium attributes to
the "Church of Christ" the universal mission
of being a "sign and instrument of the intimate
union with God and of the unity of the whole human
race." The Church can make its own contribution
to the process of [exterior] unification of the world,
considered in the course of its actuation, by helping
the world attain "full unity in Christ"
(see GS §42: promotion of the unity of the
human race "corresponds to the intimate mission
of the Church").
11. The radical attack on Christianity
begins in fact with Rousseau, who denied the depravity
of man. For him human nature was fundamentally good,
and had been corrupted only by civilization, which removed
man from an original state of natural plenitude. Pope
John Paul II and the post-conciliar Church are influenced
by the false and sentimental humanitarian philosophy
of Jean Jacques Rousseau.
Courtesy of the Angelus
Press, Kansas City, MO 64109
translated from the Italian
Fr. Du Chalard
Via Madonna degli Angeli, 14
Italia 00049 Velletri (Roma)
August
2004 Volume XXVII, Number 8 |
