Totalitarianism and Democracy

This past weekend I had the opportunity to view the film “John Paul II” starring Cary Elwes (as a young JPII) and Jon Voight (as an older JPII). There were a number of scenes particularly in the first half of the film in which the Polish faithful are seen attending religious gatherings, while government officials or their collaborators are present photographing those attending the Mass or other liturgical celebration. Recently I was talking with someone who mentioned to me that at some of the various pro-life marches that coincide with the anniversary of Roe v. Wade those participating in these marches have also been photographed by persons not participants in the march. I suppose that it is possible that these photographers desired keepsakes that would record an important event, but I suppose it is also possible that the pictures could have been taken for other reasons similar to those depicted in the film on John Paul II.

I was then reminded of something Christopher Dawson said back in the 1930s: “The sphere of action of the State has grown steadily larger until it now threatens to embrace the whole of human life and to leave nothing whatsoever outside its competence.” Perhaps the photographers seen at the pro-life marchers were not agents of the state but simply citizens of a democracy keeping tabs on their fellow citizens with whom they disagreed on the abortion question.

And then I came back to John Paul II who in Evangelium Vitae had this to say: “the value of democracy stands or falls with the values which it embodies and promotes.” Perhaps being mindful of the two totalitarian systems under which he lived and that were portrayed in the film I recently viewed, he also said: “In this way democracy, contradicting its own principles, effectively moves towards a form of totalitarianism” and “when freedom is detached from objective truth it becomes impossible to establish personal rights on a firm rational basis; and the ground is laid for society to be at the mercy of the unrestrained will of individuals or the oppressive totalitarianism of public authority.”

As in the film on John Paul II, there is much to celebrate about the witness of those participating in the pro-life marches. And, as was the case of the photographers depicted in film, there is much to lament in the motivations of some of the photographers whose pictorial skills have been noticed at the pro-life marches.    RJA sj