Online Symposium: Philpott on Reconciliation

Notre Dame's Dan Philpott, professor of Political Science, contributes these thoughts (taken from an essay recently published in America magazine), on John Paul II and reconciliation, to the online symposium on the Pope's legacy in the legal context:

In his message for the 2002 World Day of Peace, Pope John Paul II affirmed “the right to defend oneself against terrorism,” but made forgiveness and reconciliation his central theme. In the Old and New Testaments, reconciliation means “restoration of right relationship.” The Christian tradition emphasizes restorative practices of healing, repentance and forgiveness between individuals. Now John Paul II is advocating these for collectivities: nations, civilizations and the church itself.

In a quarter-century of statements and speeches, the pope has taught reconciliation under three headings: apology, forgiveness and dialogue.  By his own example he has shown the importance of apology. According to the Italian journalist Luigi Accatoli, John Paul has led the Catholic Church in apologizing for its own members past sins at least 94 times for 21 categories of historical offenses, including hostility toward Jews, slavery, denials of religious freedom, the Crusades and the Inquisition.

He has taught also forgiveness as a practice for nations and states, beginning with his second encyclical, Dives in Misericordia (“Rich in Mercy,” 1980) and repeating the theme in several later messages, including his post-Sept. 11 message for the World Day of Peace in 2002, in which he appended to Paul VI s famous “no peace without justice” the phrase “no justice without forgiveness.”

Finally, the pope has led the church in dialogue, which, he explains, involves the charitable uttering and hearing of disagreement in the hope of a deepened understanding. Besides urging dialogue between Christian churches and world religions, John Paul II has called for a “dialogue between civilizations,” an invitation to which Muslim leaders . . . have responded warmly. 

A social ethic of reconciliation is an important development in Catholic social thought. . . .  What [the Pope and other thinkers] suppose is that a Christian social ethic, like the Gospel in the life of an individual person, is incomplete if it consists solely of a set of norms prescribing what is good, just, right and consonant with natural law—the logic of most Christian political thought since the Middle Ages. A new social ethic must also teach how a society ought to proceed when everything has gone wrong, and how it can realize healing, forgiveness and restoration as social processes grounded in the Cross and the Eucharist, a logic that dates back to the Gospel itself.

Ethicists must now translate these theological concepts into an applied political ethic, specifying how and by what moral criteria reconciliation might take place. . . .

Rick