Values, Virtues, and John Paul II - the St. Paul Center for Biblical ...

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same could be applied to John Paul, though his purpose is radically at odds with that ofthe German philosopher. Pope John Paul does not leave his understanding of values opento misinterpretation. In his many addresses and writings he takes care to define exactlywhat he means by values, specifying their relationship to unchanging and objective truth.In the encyclical Evangelium Vitae, the Pope expressed this relationship within theframework of the common good: "It is urgently necessary, for the future of society andthe development of a sound democracy, to rediscover those essential and innate humanand moral values which flow from the very truth of the human being and express andsafeguard the dignity of the person: values which no individual, no majority, and no Statecan ever create, modify, or destroy, but must only acknowledge, respect, and promote."Besides specifying the relation of human and moral values to the truth of the humanperson, John Paul also makes clear that in the final analysis, values are grounded in GodHimself. In March 1985 the Pope wrote a letter to young people in which he stated,"Only God is the ultimate basis of all values; only He gives the definitive meaning to ourhuman existence." He added that "in Him and Him alone all values have their first sourceand final completion. . . . Without Him-without the reference to God-the whole world ofcreated values remains as it were suspended in an absolute vacuum."Along with allusions to values throughout John Paul's writings, we find the term in othermagisterial documents as well. Nowhere is this more evident than in the Catechism of theCatholic Church, which contains numerous references to values, especially in the contextof marriage, the family, and Christian social doctrine. In the chapter on the humancommunity, for example, we read: "Society is essential to the fulfillment of the humanvocation. To attain this aim, respect must be accorded to the just hierarchy of values,which subordinates physical and instinctual dimensions to interior and spiritual ones."Those who feel uncomfortable with John Paul's use of "values" have done their best tominimize or nullify its importance. Some have denied the fact outright, such as theCatholic League's well-intentioned ad in the October 2, 1995 edition of the New YorkTimes, which stated that "they speak about values, you speak about virtues." While JohnPaul does speak abundantly about virtues, to say he doesn't speak of values is patentlyuntrue.Others have accused the Pope of superficiality, of not thinking through the consequencesof what he is saying. This is apparent in Allan Bloom's remark: "After Hitler, everybodyscurried back under the protective cover of morality, but practically no one turned toserious thought about good and evil. Otherwise our President, or the Pope, for that matter,would not be talking about values." But the insinuation that John Paul does not engage in"serious thought about good and evil" falls by its own weight. It is difficult, if notimpossible, to come up with anyone who thinks more seriously about these topics thanthe present pontiff. His vigorous and cogent apology for the objectivity of the moral lawhas set the tone for Catholic moral theology for the close of this millennium and the birthof the next.
Others have seen in the Pope's continuous use of "values" an inadvertence, a mereoversight to which no weight should be given. Thus the term slips into his addresses andwritings without his realizing it, as could any other word, and he doesn't really knowwhat he is saying. The frequency of John Paul's references to values, however, rendersthis thesis improbable. Long before becoming pope, Karol Wojtyla wrote his doctoralthesis on Max Scheler's Ethics of Values. In his classic work, The Acting Person, Wojtylaexamines the cognitive experience of values, which he equates with the apprehension ofthe good of a specific object, and the relation between knowledge of values and the will.Pope John Paul is indeed a philosopher of values. If he insists on speaking of values, it isclear that he does so deliberately, with a most precise meaning in mind.A still more novel explanation for the Pope's use of "values" has been offered by Iain T.Benson of British Columbia, head of the Centre for Renewal in Public Policy (See"Against Values" in First Things, January 1996). According to Benson's theory, whichsucceeds in safeguarding John Paul's moral and philosophical credibility whilemaintaining the undesirability of "values," the Pope's apparent use of the word "values" isnothing more than an error in translation. Whereas the Latin speaks of "goods" (bona)-forexample in the encyclicals Veritatis Splendor and Evangelium Vitae- the Englishtranslation yields "values."Unfortunately this hypothesis doesn't take into account the genesis of Pope John Paul'sencyclicals. In drafting his encyclicals, the Pope first produces copious notes in Polish.These are subsequently translated into Italian and the Italian draft becomes hisinstrumentum laboris, to be worked on together with a team of experts. The approvedItalian text is finally translated into many other languages, including Latin. The Latin is,therefore, the official version, but not the original version. Where the English reads"values" we find "warto sci" in the Polish edition (not dobra, goods) and "valori" in theItalian. The problem, then, is not the translation from Latin to English, but the translationfrom Italian to Latin.To understand John Paul's attitude toward values-and toward modern culture in general,with its concrete concerns and characteristic preoccupations-it is necessary to understandthe Pope's view of the human person and the Church's pressing task of the newevangelization.Vatican II's Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, a document the Pope helpedwrite, offers a description of the Catholic attitude towards the modern world as one ofsolidarity with the whole human family. The Council speaks of the Church'sresponsibility to read the signs of the times and interpret them in the light of the gospel."In language intelligible to every generation," we read, "she should be able to answer theever-recurring questions which men ask about the meaning of this pres ent life and of thelife to come, and how one is related to the other."John Paul's style of preaching the gospel to contemporary society is indeed anything butdefensive and is succinctly captured in his well- known saying, "Proclaim the truth andlet error destroy itself." Keenly aware of his role as guardian of the deposit of faith, the
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