News
May 21
As the world absorbs the election of Benedict XVI as pope, pundits continue to ask whether the new pontiff will continue the message of his predecessor. But just what was the message of John Paul II to the world, if it can be summed up in a single theme? It is a mistake to think only in political terms of "conservative" or "liberal," weighing this or that policy. His message was at a much deeper level than policy. It was the undercurrent of his papacy, stretching from his first days confronting Communist Poland to his last days standing firm before the ravages of illness and death. It was a message deceptively simple but profoundly revolutionary. It was this: "Every. Person. Matters." There is a temptation to scoff at that message. It sounds too simplistic, even childish. How deep is it to say "everybody's special?" Not very, if all that is meant is some vapid sentimentality. Nor is the forced finding of "specialness" where there really is none - a practice so ruthlessly mocked by the satirists of South Park - worthy of attention. Yet that message, if maturely held and well-argued, is relevant to nearly every human conflict in which we find ourselves. Consider the questions it could address: Are workers to be considered mere faceless tokens in economic calculations, or do we protect each one from suffering too much at the cold hand of the market? Is the opposite sex to be treated as prey - stalked and captured for our personal pleasure - or do we respect each one and seek their good ahead of our own? Are children to be feared as intrusions and nuisances, extinguished like a disease, or do we welcome each one into life with love and care? In times of war, do our enemies become mere expendable animals to whom we can do whatever we wish, or does each one retain his human right to decency despite his crimes? Should our elderly, our disabled and our poor be told to fend for themselves or get out of the way, or should each one - each and every one - be given the chance to live his life to the fullest he is able? The answer all depends on what you make of the claim "every person matters." That claim touches nearly every area of human existence for it is not just about how a person should be treated, but what a human being is. Whenever you ask whether something "matters" you are asking what is its meaning - what is it for, what is its value? There are only two ways anything can possess value. It can either be valuable for some other purpose or it can be simply valuable in itself, valuable regardless of what comes of it. We call that which is valued for something else a "means." We call the thing for which a means is valued an "end." Money is the best example. We don't desire dollars for their own value, but for the things they can buy us. Money is just the means to the end of purchasing. Yet purchasing is not valued for itself either - we don't buy things for the sake of buying, but because they help us or make us happy. Purchasing is a means as well, a means to survival or happiness. Since we don't desire happiness for something else beyond it - we just want to be happy - happiness is not a means at all but is an end in itself. Money matters, ultimately, for happiness. Happiness simply matters for itself. What do humans matter for? Men, women, children - are they valuable only for something else (the state, the economy, scientific progress, etc.) or are they simply valuable in and of themselves? Are they a means or an ends? The old saying goes, "don't use people and love things, use things and love people." If people are means, we use them to get the things we value. If people are ends, we love each person for just what they are. John Paul II argued strongly that a human being, each and every one, was an end in himself. No one, poor or rich, could be considered a pawn, either of the State or the free market. No one, whether old or disabled, foreign or unborn, could be rejected as a "drain" on society. The Pope taught that every person has value that he could never lose and that no one could take away. Such a teaching is not unique, of course. Kant is famous for developing a religion-less ethics with the central axiom, "treat every person never simply as a means, but always at the same time as an end." The difference, however, between the pope and the philosopher arises when one asks, "Where did the inherent value of a human person come from?" Why does every person matter? Kant was unclear in answering this, but philosophers after him came to the conclusion that "value" is something people just will into existence. Money is again a useful example. A dollar bill is, essentially, a green scrap of paper with scribbles on it. What makes it so much more than that is our will, our decision to regard it as a means of currency. We've defined it to have value, and so it does. Lately, people have thought our human value has come about the same way. Creating our own value was an exciting new idea. People felt free to define themselves, free of old traditions and particularly free of religion. Yet for all the talk of freedom, trying to give ourselves value has given us burdens never dreamt of before. When one has to decide where one's value comes from, the whole meaning of life is at stake. There is tremendous pressure in coming up with what will let you say, "This is what makes me worth something." Students often use their grades as measures of their worth. We many times seek our value in being wanted and desired by a mate. Careers have become the most common definition - the more we succeed, the more we are worth. When times are good, that might work. But if good grades are what make me matter, what happens when I fail? If I have built my kingdom upon a job title, when I lose it I become a pauper. If you have based your self-worth in the love of a boyfriend, what happens when he leaves? By your own standard, you are literally worthless. Even if we are free to define our own value, when we fail to live up to it we are imprisoned by our own definition. To whom can we run when our own standard condemns us as failures, and the meaning we sought for our life has crumbled all around us? If we all define our own value, what stops someone from defining the value of others? Or a group of people from determining the value of another group? That is what men did under the banners of Nazism and Communism, determining the value of "undesirables" to be zero. John Paul II grew up in the shadow of those two horrors, which led him to seek the source of human value outside of ourselves. Inherent human dignity could not be built on the shifting sands of human opinion, but only on the solid rock of divine truth. Look again at money. To be more accurate, "we" do not define the value of money. The federal government, an entity existing outside us as citizens, has declared the greenback's value. Our opinion does not change that truth. We can crumple, spit on, even rip that dollar in half and its value cannot change. No matter what we think of it or do to it, as long as there is a Fed to recognize it, a dollar's worth remains $1. Yet the dollars do not define themselves. Human value, John Paul II taught, is rooted in God in an analogous way. Humans are inherently valuable not for what they can do but for what they are. Humans are, the Church teaches, "the only creature on earth that God willed for itself." God created men and women for no other purpose than to share his divine life. Not to fulfill some need of God's but to receive from God the gift of happiness he desired to give. Each person is not a tool, but an end. Each one is because God willed her to be. Because it is the infinite God who wants each person to exist, each one's value is infinite. No matter who they are or what they have done, no matter what any earthly power may say, each man, women, and child is infinitely valuable for as long as there is a God to recognize them - that is, forever. That is the heart of the message John Paul II proclaimed to a world that had forgotten it. When his words failed him, he spoke with his own body, showing that even great sickness cannot steal the worth from a life God has created. Pope Benedict is already adding words of his own: "Only when we meet the living God in Christ do we know what life is. We are not some casual and meaningless product of evolution. Each of us is the result of a thought of God. Each of us is willed, each of us is loved, each of us is necessary." I think he will continue that message. He will continue to address us, we who live in an age where at both ends of life, human worth is being forgotten. And he will continue to make us wonder, "Is it true?" Jack Grimes LA '04 is currently working on the New Jersey gubernatorial campaign of Bret Schundler.
