Our culture is devastatingly sick. The symptoms are clear: the breakdown of the family, the ridicule of virtue and the widespread embrace of relativism only scratch the surface. We’ve tried for decades to find easy fixes or to comfort ourselves by embracing the symptoms as “progress,” yet these band-aid solutions fail to address the root cause as our deeply dissatisfied society spirals toward despair.
But there is an answer.
Karol Wojtyla, an unassuming Polish boy with a sharp wit and a quick laugh, identified the deepest source of our cultural decay: disregard for the dignity of the human person.
There are moments in history in which this rot is particularly clear. The Sexual Revolution promised freedom but only delivered a selfish individualism that disadvantages women. Our fascination with productivity and profit treats people as valuable only insofar as they are useful. Even today’s “woke” culture reduces complex people to a single objectionable attribute and then stops at nothing to destroy them.
But the man who would become St. Pope John Paul II also identified the cure: an approach to the human person that is founded in natural law and enhanced by divine revelation. In his characteristic boldness, John Paul II prescribed a Catholic anthropology to our jaded, post-Christian world.
It wasn’t a new understanding of the human person — this bitter elixir had been thoroughly rejected by modern, secular sensibilities — but JPII packaged it with the aroma of reason and the sweetness of hope, giving us his greatest gift: The Theology of the Body.
The fulfillment that cannot be found in Sexual Revolution lies in a proper understanding of human sexuality.
The antidote to the poison of ableist hyper-productivity can be found in the Church’s teaching on human value.
The mercy that foils the fury of cancel culture is illustrated by the virtuous lives of the Saints.
All this and more are wrapped neatly in the rich depths of JPII’s writings.
We have the medicine our dying world craves. We have the power to tend to the sick and free those our culture has imprisoned.
Be inspired and learn all about it in a new magazine that promises to deliver the good, the true and the beautiful — Embodied Magazine, coming January 2022. If you don’t already, follow us now to get news of our subscription drive that kicks off on October 22, the feast day of this great saint.
Header Photo by White House – https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/history-presidential-visits-pope, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=97327724
Not much here about JP II playing softball when priestly sexual abuse became an obvious problem. Is that not an issue involving human dignity?
You’re right, Edwin, the sexual abuse crisis is horrible and has caused unspeakable pain! That said, the abuse scandal is not within the scope of this blog post. At some point Embodied will have articles that address sexual abuse of all kinds, so I encourage you to subscribe.