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It has become commonplace to observe that one of the hazards of living in the modern world is that the modern world, for all the very real benefits it offers those of us who inhabit it, divides and scatters us. The circumstances of modernity disconnect us, not simply from the past, from the earth, and from each other, but also from ourselves. The philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre, who is certainly one of modernity's most insightful critics, has referred to this series of disconnections as fragmentation, and has gone so far as to say that fragmentation is a predominant characteristic of life in modern societies. As the breadth and depth of human knowledge and technological capability have increased, enquiry has necessarily become more specialized. The great success of the physical and natural sciences have made them the paradigm for all human knowing, and the so-called "social sciences" have imitated their methods and aspired to equal their public status. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As John Paul II was recovering in the hospital in Rome following the attempt that was made on his life in May of 1981, he spoke with his doctors about the dangers that go with being a patient. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to one commentator, the fundamental theme that hallmarks the thought and writings of John Paul II is "the indwelling of God in each human being and consequently in human society" (Donders, 1996, p. ix). The sequential ordering of that indwelling is decidedly important. John Paul's philosophical approach is characteristically phenomenological and personalist, as a matter of his own history and educational influences. Given his experience as a Polish citizen and churchman, John Paul was well acquainted with the dangers of communism as a collectivist ideology that usurped the central functions of individual freedom and responsibility. John Paul's advanced education combined Neo-Scholastic methods in moral theology with the philosophical phenomenology associated primarily with Max Scheler. From these influences, he developed a robust ethical vision with the concrete reality of persons at the heart of all deliberations. While John Paul, then, reiterates a characteristically Catholic emphasis on persons as necessarily in community (indeed, sociality is a constitutive dimension of personhood), his own discussion has stressed the concrete requirements of human dignity. Indeed, in his very first encyclical, Redemptor Hominis, John Paul enunciates the foundational commitment of his pastoral and theological worldview: "that the human being is the primary and fundamental way for the Church" (quoted in Curran, 2002, p. 62). In his first social encyclical, Laborem Exercens, his emphasis on the priority of labor over capital is best viewed as the practical corollary of his personalist approach: labor, unlike capital, is not merely instrumental, but a reality that expresses the status of the laborer as a free subject, as one made in the image and likeness of God, and therefore as one who bears "an incomparable dignity and the rights that flow from that dignity" (O'Brien and Shannon, 1992, p. 447). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is little doubt that the life and work of John Paul II has been more intensely watched and appreciated by Protestant thinkers than that of any other Pope since the Reformation. One would hardly have expected this to be the case back in the fall of 1978 when Cardinal Karol Jozef Wojtyla was elevated the chair of Saint Peter. With the influence of the Roman Catholic Church apparently on the wane in the West, none could have anticipated that John Paul II would become not only one of the most important world leaders of the twentieth century, but also one of the leading theological, philosophical, political, and social theorists of our time. His teaching in these areas has deserves sustained and careful reflection by all Christians. In this essay I would like to offer some distinctively Protestant reflections on the essays by Laura Garcia and Patrick Lee in which they aim to tie together some of the important teaching of John Paul II on the topics of marriage, sexuality, and reproduction. I begin with some general remarks on the stance of Protestants on the natural law tradition that underlies John Paul II's teaching and, more broadly, Catholic moral theology. I then consider some of the arguments offered by Garcia and Lee that might be less readily received by Protestants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is well known that at times some Christian thinkers have adopted implicitly a very dualistic view of the human person - dualistic in the sense of viewing the self as something which has or inhabits a body, rather than being a living, bodily entity. For example, some have thought of heaven, or the completed kingdom of God, as something purely spiritual, with no thought given to the role of the body. On that view, bodily goods, including biological life, turn out to be nothing but mere means, or perhaps temporary vessels, for what alone is intrinsically valuable (Gaudium et Spes, no. 34). Recently some Christian thinkers have adopted a basically Kantian view of human action, downgrading conscious choices bearing on limited goods??"categorial choices"??as quite secondary or peripheral to a mysterious, subconscious "transcendental," fundamental option toward or away from the Absolute, God (Rahner, 1986, pp. 24-44, 90-106). On that view, once again, bodily goods, being the objects of mere "categorial choices," are demoted to the level of mere external signs of what is truly important, and purely spiritual. Such views lend credence to the widely held secular view of Christianity that it has a dim view of the human body and matter. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the most original contributions of Pope John Paul II to philosophy and theology is his emphasis on the moral ultimacy of persons. This moral significance is grounded in ontological truths about the nature of human beings. These truths find philosophical support in the Pope's writings, though he carefully develops their scriptural and theological foundations as well. The teaching of the Catholic Church on marriage and sexuality profits enormously from this reformulation within John Paul II's unique blend of personalism, pastoral expertise, and the perennial philosophy of Aristotle and St. Thomas Aquinas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

William May's and Gavin Colvert's and rich and insightful essays on the moral theology of John Paul II critically diagnose a profound shift in moral commitments within the dominant intellectual culture of western Europe and the United States. As each notes, these changes have been especially prominent in medicine and medical morality. Where abortion had once been forbidden, it is now widely practiced. Where the destruction of human embryos had once been understood as equivalent to murder, it has become more or less routine. Third-party assisted reproduction, such as in vitro fertilization, frequently results in both embryo wastage and elective abortion for fetal reduction. Such practices enjoy legal protection as part of a tradition of procreative liberty and for all practical purposes no longer appear outside of the social norm. Moreover, there exists the expectation that significant medical developments will follow from basic research on human embryos. The dominant secular bioethics simply fails to comprehend the destruction of embryos or fetuses as homicide. Indeed, as May and Colvert are aware, the bioethics dominant in the United States and western Europe frequently lays claim to a universal account of proper moral deportment, including the foundations of law and public policy to guide healthcare decisions and medical research, divorced from traditional Christian moral and religious commitments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

John Paul II is an enigma to many of his contemporaries, who have received their intellectual formation from the Western liberal tradition. On the one hand, he is an ardent supporter of the religious, political and economic freedoms championed by liberal democracies, and a vigorous opponent of communism and socialism. Recent papal documents celebrate democracy's role in protecting human rights, limited government, and the institution of private property. Prior to his election as Pope, he was instrumental in producing important Vatican II documents, including declarations concerning the right to religious freedom and the essential dignity of the human person. Over the years he has also been a supporter of ecumenism and a patron of the sciences. Under his direction, the Vatican has sponsored dialogues between theologians and scientists, revisiting the question of the Church's handling of the Galileo affair, and even acknowledging evidence for the theory of evolution. Without a doubt, he has sought to bring the Church into a vigorous dialogue with modern science and culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In an article in the inaugural issue of the National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly, Romanus Cessario, O.P., asserted: "This short essay on method in Catholic bioethics assumes that the development of Catholic bioethics must proceed from the principles embodied in Veritatis Splendor"(2001, pp. 53-54). Cessario's own essay focused on the encyclical's emphasis on the complementarity between divine law and human freedom, contrasting this with the understanding of freedom found in proportionalist writers. It did not, however, seek to show how the teaching of this encyclical can and should inwardly shape "Catholic" bioethics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The first and larger part of this paper is expository: it aims to bring together the various elements comprising Pope John Paul II's papal teaching on human dignity. In doing so it seeks to remain close to the textual evidence, principally in the papal encyclicals. The second part of the paper discusses in a selective fashion some of the intellectual challenges the papal teaching on human dignity poses for those seeking to develop an adequate bioethic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Any list of the most influential figures of the second half of the twentieth century would arguably have to begin with the name of Pope John Paul II. From 1978, when he was inaugurated, to the present, over a quarter of a century later, the Pope has been a dominant force in the world, both within the Catholic and Christian Church, and in the larger international community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]