A Personalist Vision
A SOCIAL PERSPECTIVE BASED ON THE TRANSCENDENT DIGNITY OF THE HUMAN PERSON
Are those of us gathered round the NOR personalists? It seems to me that we are — or ought to be — personalists, and that the NOR would do well to declare itself such. This journal’s Editor finds this suggestion of mine a “brave” one, given the NOR’s aversion to labels (see the Nov. 1987 editoriab~ Indeed, he invites a full discussion of this very proposal.
There is, of course, no question that the NOR, in addition to being ecumenical in spirit, is also firmly Catholic. So the issue of personalism is one that we need to explore from the heart of the Church.
Broadly taken, personalism is a social vision based on the transcendent dignity of the human person. A rough statement of such a vision is easy enough: persons flourish only in community, and community exists only insofar as it reverences persons. There is no finer expression of the Church’s presence in the struggle for authentic community than Vatican II’s pledge:
The joys and hopes, the griefs and the anxieties of the men of this age, especially those who are poor or in any way afflicted, these too are the joys and hopes, the griefs and anxieties of the followers of Christ. Indeed, nothing genuinely human fails to raise an echo in their hearts (Gaudium et Spes, No. 1).
Nearly 25 years after Vatican II, these words have become familiar to us.
You May Also Enjoy
How can good-hearted people, whose hearts bleed for peace and for poor people, not feel the excruciating pain of the child who is destroyed in the womb?
Ultimate Jewish Mother... The Perfect Candidate... A Saving Vanguard... Hey, Guy, Here's Your Attack!... A Lutheran's View of the Mystery of Catholicism... The Hypocrisy of Homosexuals
The time is ripe to reconsider the trajectory of our nation, and how Catholics fit into it. To that end, we asked thinkers of different stripes four questions.