The Evangelical Pope | East versus West

Each week we let Saint Pope John Paul II share meaningful signposts to spark socio-economic resolves through justice and righteousness combined with mercy and compassion; in short, love.

¹⁰ Many are the woes of the wicked,
but the Lord’s unfailing love
Surrounds the one who trusts in him.

__ Psalm 32:10 (New International Version – NIV)

Saint Peter’s Basilica, The Vatican, 30 December 1987 |

               It is timely to mention - with no exaggeration – that a leadership role among nations can only be justified by the possibility and willingness to contribute widely and generously to the common good.

If a nation were to succumb more or less deliberately to the temptation to close in upon itself and fail to meet the responsibilities following from its superior position in the community of nations, it would fall seriously short of its clear ethical duty. This is readily apparent in the circumstances of history, where believers discern the dispositions of Divine Providence, ready to use the nations to realize its plans to render “vain the designs of the peoples” (cf. Psalm 33: 10).

               When the West gives the impression of abandoning itself to forms of growing and selfish isolation, the East, in its turn, seems to ignore, for questionable reasons, its duty to cooperate in alleviating human misery.

               We are up against not only a betrayal of humanity’s legitimate expectations - a betrayal that is a harbinger of unforeseeable consequences - but also an absolute desertion of a moral obligation.

24. If arms production is a severe disorder in the present world concerning actual human needs and the employment of the means capable of satisfying those needs, the arms trade is equally to blame.

               Indeed, regarding the latter, it must be added that moral judgment is even more severe. As we all know, this is a trade without frontiers capable of crossing even the barriers of the blocs.

               It knows how to overcome the division between East and West. Above all, the one between North and South pushes its way into the different sections of the southern hemisphere.

               We are thus confronted with a strange phenomenon: while economic aid and development plans meet with the obstacle of insuperable ideological barriers and with tariff and trade barriers, arms of whatever origin circulate with almost total freedom worldwide.

And as the recent document of the Pontifical Commission Iustitia et Pax on international debt points out,⁴² everyone knows that in some instances, the capital lent by the developed world has been used in the underdeveloped world to buy weapons.

If to all this, we add the tremendous and universally acknowledged danger represented by atomic weapons stockpiled on an incredible scale. The logical conclusion seems to be this: in today’s world, including the world of economics, the prevailing picture is one destined to lead us more quickly towards death rather than one of concern for actual development which would lead all towards a “more human” life, as envisaged by the Encyclical Populorum Progressio.⁴³

               The consequences of this state of affairs fester a wound that typifies and reveals the imbalances and conflicts of the modern world.

               The millions of refugees who have war, natural calamities, persecution, and discrimination have been deprived of home, employment, family, and homeland.

               The tragedy of these multitudes is reflected in the hopeless faces of men, women, and children who can no longer find a home in a divided and inhospitable world.

Nor may we close our eyes to another painful wound in today’s world: the phenomenon of terrorism, understood as the intention to kill people and destroy property indiscriminately and to create a climate of terror and insecurity, often including the taking of hostages.

Even when some ideology or the desire to create a better society is adduced as the motivation for this inhuman behavior, acts of terrorism are never justifiable. Even less so when, as happens today, such decisions and actions, which sometimes lead to real massacres, and to the abduction of innocent people who have nothing to do with the conflicts, claim to have a propaganda purpose for furthering a cause.

It is still worse when they are an end in themselves so that murder is committed merely for the sake of killing. In the face of such horror and suffering, the words I spoke some years ago are still valid, and I wish to repeat them:

               “What Christianity forbids is to seek solutions...by the ways of hatred, by the murdering of defenseless people, by the methods of terrorism.” ⁴⁴

Excerpted from:

IOANNES PAULUS PP. II, SOLLICITUDO REI SOCIALIS, To the Bishops, Priests, Religious Families, sons and daughters of the Church, and all people of goodwill for the twentieth anniversary, Populorum Progressio, Given in Rome, at St. Peter’s, on 30 December 1987