Pope John Paul II - Catholic Social Doctrine - "Natural" Familes - Nation

[Ederico]

As expressed by Pope John Paul II in the book Memory & Identity on the subject of "Patriotism":

"Every danger that threatens the overall good of our native land becomes an occasion to demonstrate this love. Our history teaches us that Poles have always been willing to make great sacrifices to preserve this good, or to regain it. The many toms of Poland on different fronts around the world testify to this: they are widely dispersed, both at home and abroad. Yet I believe that the same could be said of every country and every nation in Europe and throughout the world.

The native land is the common good of all citizens and as such it imposes a serious duty."

And most importantly:

"Catholic social doctrine speaks of 'natural' societies, indicating that both the family and the nation have a particular bond with human nature, which has a social dimension."

[Perun]

Yes as is commonly been argued, JPII was a staunch Polish nationalist and George Wiegel notes in his biography of the man that the defense of the cultural identities of nations was a major issue of his pontificate.


http://www.catholicculture.org/docs/...fm?recnum=1003

If Chesterton's thought on true nationalism has been largely ignored in the modern era, it should be noted that it does harmonize nicely with the teaching of the Second Vatican Council on patriotism. The Council, too, recognized the virtue of local and national loyalties and the fact that these loyalties need not conflict with more universal sentiments: "Citizens should cultivate a generous and loyal spirit of patriotism, but without narrow-mindedness, so that they will always keep in mind the welfare of the whole human family which is formed into one by various kinds of links between races, peoples, and nations." [49] It is especially providential, then, in this time of fear of "nationalism" to have the first Polish pope, himself one of the authors of Gaudium et Spes, on the throne of St. Peter. As a Pole and a Polonist, John Paul II knows that the nation and the State are two distinct entities. As a result of the triple Partitions of Poland in the eighteenth century ("the worst insult to that European equality" of nations [50]), he is the heir to nineteenth-century Polonia, the Stateless limbo of the Polish nation, and was indeed an actual victim of the new Partition under Molotov and Ribbentrop during the Second World War. If anyone alive today[Perun: well....at the time this article was written] understands the true nature of nationalism, its religious basis, and its modern counterfeits, it is the current occupant of the See of Peter. [51]