John Paul II and the right of nations to be themselves
by Fady Noun
John Paul II’s teachings on the right of peoples and nations to exist and shape their future still matter for Lebanon today, a time when there is an attempt “to erase the consciousness of the Lebanese, as well as their memory and identity”.
Beirut (AsiaNews) – We might think that all has been said about John Paul II, but we would be wrong. There still is a lot to say about him, especially in relation to his defence of the right of nations to be free, however small they may be.
No one knew the world better than this man did. No one or nothing intimidated him when it came to defending human and national rights. His many trips put him in the centre of the biggest problems humanity faced in every continent. However, all his actions in this field were inspired by a very elaborate theology, directly tied to the dogma of the incarnation, the person of Christ himself. “Man is the way of the Church,” he said, “and Christ is the way of man.”
For John Paul II, as he put it so well in his book, Memory and Identity, the nation, like the family, is a natural society and not the fruit of conventions. Such natural societies possess, in his opinion, inalienable rights like those human beings enjoy. “Like individuals, nations have an historical memory,” he wrote.
John Paul II placed ethics above politics. He viewed the many problems the Church faced in the world in moral terms. His private secretary, Card Stanislaw Dziwisz, in his book, A life with Karol, that John Paul II, wrote that on his way back from Thailand, he was “very upset” when a journalist complimented him on making an appeal to the international community to do something for the terrible problem of refugee camps in Southeast Asia. “You raised the political problem of the refugees . . .,” the journalist dared to say. In an almost irritated voice, the pope said, “It is human, a human, not a political problem. To reduce this to politics is a false idea. Man’s fundamental nature is moral.” He would have done the same if he had been confronted with the situation of our prisons, camps and the poverty of our suburbs and rural areas, which are so far from the luxury paraded by some social classes.
Speaking about nations, John Paul II was also conscious of peoples’ different levels of maturity. He knew that a gap of two or three centuries existed between the rise of national consciousness in France and the United States, in the 18th century, and the same process among the young nations of Asia, Africa and the Middle East, as evinced by all the movements of national liberation in the 20th century and today’s popular uprisings in the Arab world.
Today in some parts of the world, the right of some nations to exist, to have their culture and political sovereignty is an uphill battle. In the case of Lebanon, this consciousness must impose itself on a daily basis on a political power that denies it and tries instead to erase the consciousness of the Lebanese people, as well as their memory and identity, especially by ignoring their institutions and decision-making autonomy.
For his part, John Paul II publicly addressed this crisis from an ethical perspective. Hence, in 1989 he launched a desperate appeal for an end to Syrian shelling of Beirut, directly citing the Bible. “In the name of God, in the name of God,” he wrote, “I call on Syrian authorities to put an end to the shelling that is destroying the Lebanese capital and the whole of Lebanon. Let no one follow Cain and become guilty of killing his brother,” he wrote on 15 May 1989 during the “War of Liberation”.
As A life with Karol points out, under the impulse of John Paul II, the diplomatic approach of the past, which aimed at gaining spaces of freedom for the Church, was replaced by a new strategy, one that privileged dialogue among peoples, who are the custodians of their cultural heritage, and with nations, who guarantee their national identity, in lieu of the exclusive dialogue with states and governments.
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