John Paul II Research Paper

Topic:
Name:
Institution:
Date:
Introduction
Pope John Paul II wrote his encyclical (Centesimus Annus) in 1991 that became part of catholic social teaching. It was one of the 14 encyclicals that John Paul II wrote to Christians. The document was written during the final period of the Cold War and particularly talked about economic and political issues. In the encyclical, Pope John Paul II condemned communist ideology and refuted its dictatorial regimes. In the specific historical context in which John Paul II wrote the encyclical, he criticized against the evils of the communist regimes across the world. The pope supported economic and social justice since many people experience suffering and persecution under communist regimes. In his encyclical, the pope supported the issue of the right of forming private associations, labor unions, and private property rights. Pope John Paul condemned socialism and compared it to consumerism. He identified atheism as the cause of social evils promoted by socialism and communism. This paper aims to discuss John Paul II’s criticism of capitalism and socialism in his Centesimus Annus.
Defense of the human person
In Centesimus Annus (1991), Pope John Paul presents his reflection against socialism and capitalism and their dominance in the world economic stage. It is important to understand that much of his life, John Paul as a cleric lived under communist governance in Poland. As he rose in the Catholic hierarchy; he refused to accommodate the demands by the communist government. Mannion presents that John Paul’s early life was practically dominated by a culture of communism and later during his pontificate period was dominated by liberal capitalism (23). Though, he had a strong opposition against communism; he could not engage in anti-government acts. He resorted to a more subtle path of encouraging greater loyalty to the Catholic Church and his teachings as an alternative to the government.
According to Mannion, Pope John Paul’s fight against socialism and communism was in the defense of personalism, which he (John Paul) felt was more favorable to the market behavior (33). In reminiscence of Pope Leo XIII, John Paul argued that some of his predecessors foresaw the negative social and political impact of the social order as was proposed by the socialism, some of which include suppression of private property ownership (Massaro 136). John Paul II argued that the fundamental error of socialism is much anthropological in nature. This is because according to him, socialism simply regarded the individual person simply as an element, or what he would refer to as a molecule within the social organism.
This kind of system he observed subordinated a human person completely to the functioning of the socio-economic mechanism in the economic market. Based on this ground, Massaro opines that John Paul II proposed personalism as a new market behavior (8). The main features of what Paul referred to as personalism were the individual dignity and worth of the person which are somehow washed away under socialism administration. It also included the nature of the person as subject in the course of action, the need for the person to participate in the life of the society and...