The Parting Gift: A Review of JPII’s Last Book

From Catholic Exchange.

G. Tracy Mehan III presents a compelling review of the Pope John Paul the Great's last book. He calls it a "powerful book synthesizing reason and revelation, philosophy and theology, memory and identity."

Memory and Identity focuses on the mysterium iniquitatis as manifested in the monstrous ideologies of the 20th century, Nazism and communism. The discussion turns on the problem of evil that, according to the teachings of Augustine and Thomas Aquinas, is always the absence of some good that ought to be present in a given being. It is a privation, never a total absence, of good. Good and evil are grounded in the same soil: human nature.

Central to the Holy Father's reflections on the mystery of good and evil is the Enlightenment that, at least in France, attacked the Church as l'infâme. This leader of the institution most abhorred by the philosophes allows that the Enlightenment “has yielded many positive fruits” despite giving rise to “the ideologies of evil” in the history of European philosophical thought. John Paul II recognizes the varieties of Enlightenment thinking in different countries. He would probably concur with Gertrude Himmelfarb and others who have described the positive aspects of the Scottish, English, and American Enlightenments as recognizing the role of virtue and religion in a liberal social order. He describes “a stimulating synthesis of the relation between Christianity and the Enlightenment” in the documents of the Second Vatican Council.

The Cartesian Turning Point

The pope reconstructs the “philosophy of evil” in Europe in the last century. He identifies mankind's desire to be like God (Gn 3:5) and take upon itself the right to decide what is good and what is evil as the key element in this turn of thought. The only way to overcome this error is through a corresponding love for God to the point of contempt of self. John Paul II believes man overcomes this propensity only with the help of the Holy Spirit. Refusing this aid would constitute what Christ called “the blasphemy against the Spirit,” the sin that “will not be forgiven” (Mt 12:31), since there is no desire for pardon. “Man refuses the love and mercy of God, since he believes himself to be God. He believes himself to be capable of self-sufficiency,” says the pontiff.

The pope pinpoints the pre-Enlightenment thought of Descartes as a revolutionary turning point in European thinking. Cogito, ergo sum (I think, therefore I am) signifies the subordination of existence (esse) to subjective consciousness. He claims that “after Descartes, philosophy became a science of pure thought: all esse — both the created world and the Creator — remained within the ambit of the cogito as the content of human consciousness.” God has been reduced to an element of human consciousness, no longer considered the ultimate explanation of the human being. All that remains is the idea of God.

“If man can decide by himself, without God, what is good and what is bad, he can also determine that a group of people is to be annihilated. Decisions of this kind were taken, for example, by those who came to power in the Third Reich by democratic means, only to misuse their power in order to implement the wicked programs of National Socialist ideology based on racist principles,” says the late Holy Father. Indeed, a similar pattern emerged in the Soviet Union and other countries subject to Marxist ideology. As famously articulated by Dostoyevsky's Ivan Karamazov, if God does not exist, everything is permitted.

The Pope traces the fundamental history of all things Reasonable. After all, if human consciousness is the be-all/end-all, then who needs God? Descartes' postulate allows such a fundamental error in philosophy to be taken seriously. Thus, without realizing it, Descartes became the father of totalitarian atrocity. Unfortunately, he had help: human nature and the fallen state of humanity.

Pope John Paul the Great sets the record straight for all societies.