“We must overcome our fear of the future. But we will not be able to overcome it completely unless we do so together. The ‘answer’ to that fear is neither coercion nor repression, nor the imposition of one social ‘model’ on the entire world. The answer to the fear which darkens human existence at the end of the 20th century is the common effort to build the civilization of love, founded on the universal values of peace, solidarity, justice, and liberty. And the ‘soul’ of the civilization of love is the culture of freedom: the freedom of individuals and the freedom of nations, lived in self-giving solidarity and responsibility.
“We must not be afraid of the future. We must not be afraid of man. It is no accident that we are here. Each and every human person has been created in the ‘image and likeness’ of the One who is the origin of all that is. We have within us the capacities for wisdom and virtue. With these gifts, and with the help of God’s grace, we can build in the next century and the next millennium a civilization worthy of the human person, a true culture of freedom. We can and must do so! And in doing so, we shall see that the tears of this century have prepared the ground for a new springtime of the human spirit.”
Thank you, Kendall, for this encouraging post. You are Barnabas for me today.
Ditto. This is the kind of inspiring stuff that makes many of us think of JPII as John Paul [b]”the Great.”[/b] As in Leo the Great and Gregory the Great. Namely, one of the greatest popes of all time.
Alas, the ABoC’s recent harangue of Parliament can’t begin to compare with this. No one is ever going to call ++Rowan Williams “the Great.” He may be a brilliant theologian in many ways. But he’s a terrible Archbishop of Canterbury.
David Handy+