In their view, the popes had lost the reasonable debate – which they identified with the debate within prestigious circles in academic moral theology, narrowly defined. ![]() After all, these dissenters never could make sense of Love and Responsibility 0r Theology of the Body. But foundational for what? Looked at superficially, the encyclical identified, refuted, and ruled out certain ideas that had dominated academic moral theology: “proportionalism,” the “fundamental option,” and a mistaken view of conscience as personal autonomy.Īs these misguided views were mainly used by dissenting moral theologians to articulate their dissent from Humanae vitae, it was easy for these dissenters to look upon VS simply as a power play. When Veritatis splendor ( VS) was published in 1993, the most astute commentators received it as the most foundational of all of John Paul II’s teachings. ![]() A wise steward in the Kingdom of God will inevitably bring forth something new if he aims above all to illumine the old. In fact, all of the creative power of John Paul II’s teaching seems to have been the fruit of his deliberate intention, reflected in the name he took, of making himself a servant of his predecessors and of the tradition. Likewise, Fides et ratio (1998), “Faith and Reason,” proved to be more fundamental than Leo XIII’s Aeterni patris (1879) on the recovery of Thomism, not because JPII disparaged Thomism, but rather by his re-affirming the spirit of St. Similarly, his charter of a free society, Centesimus annus (1991), was arguably more fundamental than the first modern social encyclical, Rerum novarum (1891), precisely through its intention to be thoroughly faithful to that preceding document. Rather, as John Paul II could see, better than anyone, the “culture of death” sprang from ideologies of class, race, and self-invention, which are the offspring of late 19 thcentury materialism. ![]() His Evangelium vitae (1995) reaches even further back, setting out the basis for the Church’s longstanding resistance to the “culture of death.” That struggle was not some momentary “rigidity” in the face of the sexual revolution. His first, Redemptor hominis (1979) explains the anthropological foundations for the Second Vatican Council, which took place almost two decades prior. John Paul II had the penchant, not really surprising in someone of great holiness and intellectual stature, of articulating the foundations for matters that actually came before him in time.
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