Founded in 1992 and run since 2000 by the Ethics and Public Policy
Center, the Tertio Millennio Seminar on the Free Society brings two dozen young people from central and eastern Europe together with twelve or so of their American counterparts to explore the principles and prospects of building free and virtuous societies. Pope John Paul II’s social encyclical Centesimus Annus serves as the intellectual scaffolding for the seminar’s work. Late this June, less than two months after his beatification in Rome, we will gather once again in his city, Kraków, for the twentieth meeting of TMS.
The world stage has seen more drama in the last two decades than many anticipated. History has not been idle. The problems of two decades ago seem almost worthy of nostalgia, while the crises of today seem ever more daunting. Yet it would be a serious mistake to regard the Polish Pope’s 1991 encyclical as a relic of naďve, post-Cold War enthusiasm.
Centesimus Annus, like all Catholic social teaching, presents man in the light of the Incarnation; the only light, the Church insists, in which man really makes sense. In Centesimus Annus (and quoting from Gaudium et Spes) John Paul II reminds us that “the guiding principle of . . . all of the Church's social doctrine, is a correct view of the human person and of his unique value, inasmuch as ‘man . . . is the only creature on earth which God willed for itself.’”
As Gaudium et Spes puts it, Christ “fully reveals man to man himself and makes his supreme calling clear”: To bring Christ to the World. The Church’s social teaching is in no way secondary to this fundamental mission. The Church may claim no “expertise” in economics or politics. But the Church does claim to bear the fullness of the truth about man himself. Catholic social teaching presents this truth to all men and women of good will in terms accessible to reason.
The work of the Tertio Millennio Seminar is to equip our participants with the rich resources of Catholic social teaching, and to do so in a setting that underscores both how high the stakes are (one would be hard pressed to find anywhere a more poignant reminder of man’s horrific capacity to abuse himself than in the rubble of the Birkenau crematoria, which our students visit), and, more importantly, the realistic hope that mankind can, and must, do much better.
The heroic struggle of the Polish nation against totalitarianism, St. Faustina Kowalska’s remarkable message of Divine Mercy, and of course, the life of Pope John Paul II himself—reminders such as these fill the city of Kraków and its environs. This sense of place and of history, saturated by grace, gives the eighteen days of the seminar a distinctly sacramental context.
Take, for example, the house at 10 Tyniecka Street in Kraków. The three-storey building is a dirty grey color—the roof, the deep eaves, the grimy walls, the irregular chimney. Like almost everything its age in Poland, it bears the dreary stains of an exhausting century. But there is more to this place—this most ordinary house—than first meets the eye. It was to the basement apartment of this house that a young Karol Wojtya ran when the skies over Kraków darkened with German warplanes.
It was while living here that he answered God’s call to the priesthood. Here he discovered the Carmelite spirituality that would form him so deeply. It was here that God moved in the heart of a young Pole—in this place, in this house, hidden from the rest of the world as though in the womb—and through him, changed the world dramatically. Standing before this house, one is compelled to wonder: Is there anything more astonishing? Or more ordinary?
A few hundred yards from the house at Tyniecka 10, stands the Royal Castle of Wawel—a much less ordinary looking place. Above the main gate to the palace, there is simple inscription which dates back to the glorious days of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, when Polish kings ruled almost a third of Europe. It reads: SI DEUS NOBISCUM QUIS CONTRANOS. If God is with us who can be against us?
What pain must those words have conveyed when, late in the eighteenth century, the Commonwealth crumbled, and Poland was partitioned by its neighbors, vanishing from the map of Europe for more than a century? What sneering irony must have been read in those words when the Nazi Governor-General, Hans Frank, took Wawel as his residence and began his ruthless program to eliminate Polish intellectuals and dismantle Polish culture?
How empty must those words have seemed when just a few years later, Poland slipped inexorably into the orbit of the atheist Soviet juggernaut? Yet those words were still there when a Polish Pope came home to this “far country,” and gave hope to the free-souled men and women who would topple the Empire of the Lie. If God is with us, who can be against? What could be more foolish? What could be more true?
Adjacent to the Castle is the Wawel Cathedral with its gothic arches and golden dome. There, in the small crypt chapel of St. Leonard, is the place where Karol Wojtya celebrated his first Mass as a priest. At the back of that chapel, in a black and gold sarcophagus, lie the mortal remains of the great Polish king, Jan III Sobieski.
In 1683, having dedicated his army to the Blessed Virgin, Sobieski personally led what was perhaps the greatest cavalry charge in history, driving a vast Turkish army from the gates of a beleaguered Vienna. His decisive victory halted Ottoman expansion into Europe. Pope Innocent XI was so grateful to hear that Christian Europe had been spared that he declared a new universal feast: the Feast of the Holy Name of Mary.
After his beatification this May, the mortal remains of Karol Wojtya will be moved to the St. Sebastian Chapel in St. Peter’s Basilica, and laid to rest in the spot where Pope Innocent XI (himself beatified) now lies. It seems fitting to us, that a great man be buried in place of honor, among other great men.
But standing in that crypt chapel in Kraków, one is reminded that the young priest saying his first Mass in that same dimly lit chapel back in November, 1946 was not Blessed John Paul II, the Pope who saved Poland and led the charge of human conscience that vanquished communism. He was a young priest called “Lolek” who came from a small town, and who would have seemed very out of place indeed in the company kings and pontiffs. What could be more ordinary? What could be more extraordinary?
Surrounded by such places, and steeped in the principles of Catholic social teaching, the participants of the Seminar grapple with the monumental questions of our day: How, after a half-century of degradation, can the institution of the family, the bedrock of civil society, possibly bear the weight it must bear if freedom is to serve the common good?
How best can a society dedicated to religious freedom address the rise of radicalized Islam? How can generations of men and women, malformed by the sexual revolution and the cult of “I,” find the kind of human solidarity without which new found freedom dissolves rapidly into self-canibalizing license?
How can a society devoted to strict secularism hope to ensure the conditions sufficient for the continuation of its own existence while offering citizens only two options: relativism or radicalization? How can a civilization that fails to make provision for the next generation—or even to bring about the next generation at all—hope to give a compelling account of itself before a world of competing visions of the human future?
How long can a society remain free when the lives of entire classes of human beings are, because of age or frailty, deemed by law to be Lebensunwertes Leben, just as they once were so deemed because of race or creed? What is true freedom? How can we spread real prosperity? These are no trivial questions. They are not asked in the abstract. Prosperity and freedom are better understood as human activities than as things, as verbs rather than nouns—prospering and being free, which always entails virtue.
Being free. Living virtuously. These are at the heart of Catholic social teaching. Together they constitute the sine qua non of any political and economic system worthy of man. Afterall, the Church and her teaching are for man. It reminds us who we really are.
George Weigel, who has been part of the TMS faculty since the very beginning and who has directed the seminar since 2000 , often says that the great message of Pope John Paul II to the Polish nation during his 1979 visit was, “You are not who they, the Communists, say you are.” In other words, the true horizon of human goods extends far, far beyond material concerns and worldly power. It is a message that resonates in every time and every place. This truth, revealed fully in the Incarnation, imbues every human activity—including political and economic activity—with profound new significance. Ours is a sacramental world, indeed.
Stephen White works for George Weigel at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, DC. He has been the coordinator of the Tertio Millennio Seminar on the Free Society since 2005. The 2011 Seminar will run from June 27th through July 14th. For more information, visit www.eppc.org/tms.
Comments:
Yet , the urge to share the joy in may be the providential coincidences that have been brought to light through the above article -
Starting with Pope Innocent XI ..there is that number 11..and words Innocent ...this year, 2011, Easter and Divine Mercy Sunday also known as St.Thomas Sunday , ( St.Thomas - also known as The Twin !:) are on the same dates for the twins of East and West ..and same won't be for few more years ..
The Mercy Feast that promises special indulgences - making one even as innocent as a newly baptised ..with the conditions for same to be met - reminding one how merciful God is who wills and yearns our holiness..
April 30 , the The Eve of The Feast is the II th anniv . of the canonisation of St.Faustina - who had a 3rd grade education ..and who reveals what God can accomplish ,when we trust and cooperate , as in the case of Pope John Paul 11 also ..
and we have the twin celebrations of his beatification too , someone who carried the twin names of saints John and Paul ..
In 2 more days , many at parish or individual level would start a 40 day preparation for The Feast ...with the seamless themes of this Great Season - acts of charity , focus on mercy , trusting that same would help many , to be freed from what holds us in bondage ..to become tender and compassionate themselves , in a world where evil is not lacking and can make many skeptical, lukewarm, hardened ..
The Novena for The Feast consist of great ecumenical prayersand can even be an occasion for neighboring churches to be invited , to join in ..
may be many churches would have processions with bands and banners of the Icon - THE ORIGINAL can be downloaded from this site - http://www.faustina-message.com/index.htm
words 'Yeshua , I trust in Thee ' ( Jesus , I trust in You' ) - can be added at the bottom and families that do not have the Image can keep the banners at home !
Thus , instead of having to charge on horses , we can bring many , peacefully , trustingly , to His Great Mercy !
May the powerful prayers of the great and holy persons of East and West help us all, in this II th hour !
For this reason also, the ridiculing attitude directed toward Protestants who take eschatology seriously in another blog post that appeared late last week is thoroughly unhelpful. Quite the opposite, the current signs of the times clearly require sober-minded attentiveness to the imminence of Christ's return. Only this return offers any hope of a solution to the increasingly intractable problems and crises currently faced by world civilization.
Thank you for your courteous reply. I think you are wrong, however, to ascribe an implicit adhesion to the idea of progress exclusively to the various political ideologies on the left-hand side of the political spectrum. I think that the sort of Christianized democratic capitalism (for want of a better term) that is espoused by the interpretation of Centessimus Annus advanced by George Weigel and others of like mind also implies an adhesion to this ideology. Essentially, the ideology of democratic capitalism has traditionally offered humanity the hope of an increasingly prosperous future predicated upon scientific and technological advance, free trade, and openness in the marketplace of ideas. In other words, it offers humanity much the same hope as the various political ideologies of the left, but without even the need for the moral and spiritual progress that ideologies of the left make central to their agenda as a necessary condition for progress of a material sort. Rather, the benevolent hand of the market place, combined with the ineluctible conquest of nature by science and technology, are by themselves seen as sufficient for precisely the role in propelling societal advance for which ideologies of the left regard moral and spiritual progress as requisite.
I respectfully submit that, if the political ideologies of the left are naďve in supposing that the moral and spiritual progress they hope will propel positive societal change will ever be given, the political ideologies of the right are even more naďve than this in supposing that genuine progress in society can ever even possibly be effected entirely by agencies of an entirely non-moral sort.
When pressed, proponents of democratic capitalism tend to deny that they espouse any notion of progress in the first place, as you yourself have also done. However, I think this denial involves a certain measure of self-delusion. The fact is that any political program advocating societally-embracing change for the better OF ANY KIND involves the hope for progress by definition. More particularly, the hope that you yourself express for "prospects of building free and virtuous societies" is most definitely an expression of the ideology of progress. Furthermore, the question you pose about how the institution of the family can possibly bear the weight it must bear if freedom is to serve the common good also implies an allegiance to the ideology of progress. The very notion that the common good as it presently stands can possibly be bettered in any societally-encompassing sense, a notion the question you pose clearly presupposes, is most definitely an integral element of the ideology of progress. Additionally, the role you assign to increasing measures of prosperity and freedom as something to be striven for by Christian democratic capitalists on behalf of society as a whole in society’s marketplace of ideas is likewise a manifestation of an implicit adhesion to the classical ideology of progress that pervades your thinking.
The subtle yet profound allegiance to the ideology of progress that is as implicit to current ideologies of the right as it is to ideologies of the left can be clearly seen for what it is when compared to Christian political ideologies of the middle ages. These tended to view the current order of things as divinely ordained in their imperfection, and to place implicit faith in the stability arising from their essentially static nature. Serfdom, for example, tended to be taken for granted as part of the natural order of things, rather than as something that society’s reformers ought to agitate to change. By contrast, your own political ideology advocates a dynamic movement of change for the better with regard to many societally-encompassing realities, as I have shown on the basis of examples above. As such, I think the views you have expressed in your blog post fall as much under the purview of the criticisms I made in my first post as the political ideologies of the left that you disclaim.
History demonstrates neither unalloyed progress nor an inexorable degradation of society, but rather a more or less cyclic pattern of decay and renewal. Interestingly, the seeds of renewal are often planted when society is at its worst. Thus one usually sees an overlap between decay and renewal. The clearest example is probably the growth of the early Church during the worst days of the Roman Empire, but many other examples have occurred.
To deny that human progress is possible or that Christians should participate in the struggle for it is essentially to equate all societies and historical periods. I, for one, deny that Nazi Germany and Medieval Europe, or Pol Pot's Cambodia and Colonial America, are morally equivalent.
Concerning the alleged equivalence of the political Left and the political Right, yes both are political, and, I suppose, to a quietist, to whom any political engagement is futile, would appear equivalent. However, to one who accepts the Church's social teaching that participation in society is a worthy, necessary and realistically hopeful endeavor, the difference is stark. The Left relies on centralized dirigism to force desired outcomes. The right, aware of man's freedom and dignity, relies upon structures of justice (e.g. private property, sound currency, free enterprise, etc.) to allow citizens to establish a just and free society. Yes, without virtue the Right's project will fail, and without perfect virtue the project will succeed only imperfectly. The Left's project, depending not on virtue but on centralized, coercive power, is contrary to human nature and must inevitably fail.
No political project will bring salvation; only the conversion of minds and hearts to Our Lord Jesus Christ will accomplish that blessed and final end.
Undeniably every society is flawed, but seeds of grace are always available. To despair of this fallen, wounded, bleeding world is contrary to Christian truth. "For God so loved the world..."
Do you both believe in the Second Coming? If so, then what are your views as to the conditions that will prevail on earth prior to its occurrence? Do you see evidence in the Scriptures indicating that the hope for gradual improvement in the state of civilization in the time leading up to it is warranted?
Yes, it is true that despairing of this wounded, fallen world is contrary to the Christian faith. However, the Scriptures also make clear that in its current condition, the whole world "lieth in the evil one" - including its political structures, which are ultimately under satanic control. Near the end of history, these structures will come to be completely dominated by a personal Antichrist; and they have contained within themselves the fabric of corruption and criminality that will facilitate his rise to power since the very beginning of human government at the tower of Babel.
As such, the Christian hope for the world lies in Christ's return, not in any earthly political agency. Both history and contemporary affairs demonstrate in abundance that involvement with the world's political powers invariably corrupts and pollutes the Church (by which I mean organized Christianity broadly understood, not merely the Catholic Church).
Some would dismiss my position as quietism, and point out that this is not the Catholic position. In response, I would point out that I myself am not a Catholic, but a member of the Assyrian Church of the East, and that I believe the Catholic position is profoundly mistaken on this point. The repeated lapses of organized Christianity into profound corruption on account of involvement with earthly political agencies are simply far too high a price to pay for adopting a non-quietist stance in practice, and these lapses also effectively negate many of the ostensible gains resulting from such involvement.
I find it very ironic that the very same Catholics who hold out so much hope for political agency in the present are also the ones who fault the Jews of Jesus' time for placing their faith in Him as a political messiah destined to liberate them from Roman rule, rather than as the universal Savior from death. If hopes for political betterment are so noble, then what exactly was wrong in the Jews placing precisely these kinds of hopes in Jesus at His First coming? Actually, the two messianic missions are not at all incompatible, and the Scriptures indicate clearly that the political aspect of Christ's mission is destined to be fulfilled at His Second coming, and that the Jews were simply mistaken as to the timing of this fulfillment. Precisely this constitutes the true political hope not only of the Jewish people, but of all followers of Christ.
You make some valid points regarding the "gradual improvement in the state of civilization", but it seems to me that at the same time you get carried away with generalizations. Please come down from this Mount Olympus, and take a look at the subject at hand, which is the Tertio Millennio Seminar on the Free Society.
We all know that earthly utopias are unachievable, and I don't think that anyone in the Church hierarchy is seriously pursuing one. On the other hand, the Church is in the business of leading us closer to God, and protecting us from evil. Let me illustrate with an example related to this article, and then ask you a question:
As communists tightened their grip on the captive societies in the years following World War II, it became increasingly clear that the physical living space allowed for each family will be minimal in the extreme. Individual family homes will not be allowed to be built on a large scale - the norm will the cubicle sized apartments, well under 1000 square feet maximum, crammed into large and anonymous blocks.
Seeing this, the young people approached the Church with a dilemma: given this physical living space reality, how do we remain faithful to the teachings of the Church in the area of sexual morality?
Now look at this problem from Bishop Wojtyla's perspective:
If you allow even the slightest hint that, given these conditions, the teachings on contraception can be relaxed, you'll lead these young people astray, and also create a breech for the communists to exploit. Hoping for a strong correction from Rome, they would then agitate among the clergy and the faithful for the creation of a "national", "patriotic" church, and a break with Rome;
On the other hand, if you just simply repeat the traditional Church teachings on contraception, and leave it at that, the communists will claim that these celibate men are completely divorced from the daily reality of ordinary people, and don't care to "comfort" them with even a slightest relaxation of the rules. In this case, they would agitate for a greater distance between the people and the clergy.
It would seem that the devil has manoeuvred his opponents into a check mate. How would you resolve this engineered situation?
Thank you for your reply. I will address the specific conundrum you raise in a moment, but before I do so, I want to make some points about your assertion that no one in the Church hierarchy is seriously pursuing an earthly utopia. Here again, there is a certain measure of self-delusion going on in many cases. If one were to closely analyze the articulated hopes for the future of many of these hierarchs closely, it would quickly become evident that these hopes are in fact rooted in classical progress ideology to a very substantial degree, their disclaimers in this regard notwithstanding.
One may begin by discussing the articulated hopes of Pope John Paul II in this vein. They involve the idea of a “spring-time for the church” and of a worldwide revival of the Christian faith having its wellspring in the “Third World,” all of which he hopes will eventually exert a positive leavening effect on world civilization more broadly speaking, and especially on the societies of Western Europe.
I submit that this line of thinking constitutes an especially robust form of progress ideology. I further submit that these ideas are entirely without basis in Scripture, and run completely afoul of the signs of the times, which indicate a precipitous ongoing decline in world civilization across the board. (Granted, some of these signs of the times indicating that world civilization is lurching toward collapse were much less evident in the early to mid 90s, when the late Pope conceived these ideas, than they are now; but I think it is fair to say that they were apparent even then to prescient observers of the world scene, whose gloomy prognostications at the time are now being vindicated in spades.)
The fact is that the very name of the Tertio Millenio seminar is richly resonant with these very sorts of hopes for progress. The name of the seminar was clearly chosen with the implicit hope that conducting it would help plant seeds to help make the third millenium of Church and world history substantially better than the second millennium. In light of this, denials by Church hierarchs and Christian intellectuals like George Weigel that they themselves indulge in the kind of progress ideology that they are quick to condemn in the political ideologies of the left ring very hollow indeed.
Getting back to the specific pastoral question you raise, it is not at all obvious that the kind of democratic capitalism championed by the Tertio Millenio seminar would do any better in creating livable spaces for young families in Russia than communism did. In fact, the Russian experience with democratic capitalism under Vladimir Putin in the 1990s rendered the prospects of young families in this and other relevant regards considerably worse than had been the case under communism, where at least the basic needs of young families for food and shelter were guaranteed, even if quarters were tight. Under democratic capitalism, Russians were completely bereft of any basic material security, and the country as a whole is still reeling badly from this experience now.
Going forward, with Peak Oil and other resource constraints putting a permanent halt to world economic growth, I think the problem of young families having to make do with increasingly materially insecure situations in which to raise their families will only get worse. Personally, I think the solution to this problem is to limit family size, which can very easily be done in a way that satisfies the moral constraints of the Catholic Church concerning reproduction and artificial birth control. This is not to say that it would be easy for young families to live this way, but only that I do not really see any moral, intellectual, or pastoral difficulty in counseling young families to accept the economically harsh realities that increasingly prevail for what they are, and to counsel them to limit family size accordingly using methods of natural family planning.
As you yourself confirmed using my little example, resources and solutions to strengthen our faith always become available to the Church (as promised), especially when the situation is dire. Have you ever traced the historical roots of natural family planning, and the theology of the body?
I think you misread the meaning of the phrase "spring-time for the church". I'm not convinced that an equal sign can be placed between this "spring-time for the church" and a pursuit of an earthly utopia. I read this "springtime" as a hoped for turning away from sin, resisting temptation (as illustrated by my example), and a time of mutual forgiveness. Any progress here, is progress toward God.
I detect more than a justified measure of pessimism and suspicion in your posts, Church of the East member. Looking for solutions to pressing problems is not the same as lusting for earthly power.
You write that "resources and solutions to strengthen our faith always become available to the Church (as promised), especially when the situation is dire." I do not know how the history of Catholic family planning teachings exemplifies this statement, but I do know that this is precisely the purpose of the prophetic Scriptures. Their principal purpose is to strengthen the faith of the generation of Christians alive on earth prior to Our Lord's return, a time that will be one of unprecedented tribulation.
Whether my pessimism is more than justified would have to be a matter of a lengthy discussion going beyond the limits of what is possible in blog posts. Clearly, though, there have been many events in recent years both on the national and the world stage that legitimately contribute to the sense that the world is currently in the process of going off the rails.
I have offered on a number of occasions to write about the topic of Peak Oil for FIRST THINGS over the years, and have been politely turned down each time. I have detected an element of psychological denial in the turn-downs, a denial rooted in the conviction that the premise of continued economic growth stretching into the indefinite future is simply beyond question. That kind of blind faith is also an expression of a commitment to the religion of progress, one that seems to be firmly entrenched among members of the FIRST THINGS editorial staff.
Finally, regarding the phrase "spring-time for the church," it is clearly a hope for a moral and spiritual renovation of wide scope taking place in an earthly (as opposed to a heavenly) setting. That is enough to render it a species of progress ideology, and one that is quite similar to hopes of moral and spiritual regeneration voiced by such venerable champions of progress ideology as Martin Luther King. That is what his famous "I have a dream..." speech was all about. In the case of the late Pope's vision, it does not have to be a vision of a utopia to qualify as a species of progress ideology, but merely of a future in which certain circumstances and characteristics prevail that fly in the face of the reality of original sin. It is in fact precisely that feature of the Pope's vision that renders it essentially utopian.
Pope John Paul's vision of a "springtime for the Church" and Martin Luther King's vision are thus essentially similar, both being predicated on a movement of widespread moral and spiritual renovation. Both dreams are bereft of scriptural support, however, as well as of a sufficient explanation for what constitutes the agency and power behind the renovation. I wish it were not so, since I find both dreams, with their underlying promise of widespread moral and spiritual renovation, very appealing. But it simply is not what the Scriptures teach; rather, they teach the opposite, and that only Christ can offer a self-destructing world the salvation it needs.
Congratulations, Steve, and everyone involved. God bless you.