On April 11, 1963, John XXIII issued the encyclical Pacem in Terris, a powerful call for a world in which there were neither victims nor executioners that cemented the pontiff’s reputation as “Good Pope John.” With the world having teetered on the brink of nuclear war during the October 1962 Cuban missile crisis, a papal appeal for “peace on earth” was well received everywhere, including the Soviet Union — although the view in some Vatican quarters that the masters of the Kremlin took the encyclical’s message to heart was rather naive.
What, then, did Pacem in Terris teach? And how does its analysis of world affairs look, six decades later?
John XXIII taught that the world had entered a new historical moment, characterized by the widespread conviction that “all men are equal by reason of their natural dignity.” That conviction implied that the classic Catholic social doctrine principle of the common good had a global, not only national, dimension — which in turn meant that “peace on earth” had to be pursued through the establishment of a “worldwide public authority.” That global authority ought to make the protection and promotion of human rights — which Pope John defined expansively — its fundamental objective.
As for communist states, they, too, ought to be enfolded within the global political community, for communist movements, whatever their “false philosophical teachings,” might nonetheless “contain elements that are positive and deserving of approval.” Finally, Pacem in Terris taught that the arms race was a snare and a delusion; universal disarmament was a moral imperative demanded by right reason, for, “in an age such as ours, which prides itself on its atomic energy, it is contrary to reason to hold that war is now a suitable way to restore rights which have been violated.”
For all that John XXIII’s grand vision inspired hope that the world could find its way beyond the knife’s-edge stalemate of the Cold War, the lacunae in the encyclical that friendly critics pointed out after it was issued — its lack of attention to the realities of power in world politics, its misreading of the intrinsic linkage between Marxist ideas and totalitarian politics, its seeming indifference to the enduring effects of original sin in the political sphere — were, in the retrospect of 60 years, deficiencies indeed.
The Cold War ended, not because “trust” (another key theme in the encyclical) had been established between imperfect democracies and pluperfect tyrannies; it ended thanks to what William Imboden (in The Peacemaker: Ronald Reagan, The Cold War, and the World on the Brink) describes as the strategy of “negotiated surrender” devised by the United States and supported by its western allies. And while an arms race did, in the 1980s, intensify the dangers of nuclear war at several moments, it also broke the capacity (and will) of the Soviet Union to continue the competition.
As for the encyclical’s proposal for the development of a “universal public authority” capable of addressing issues of global import, the incapacities and corruptions displayed by the United Nations since Pacem in Terris was issued, not least in the defense of basic human rights, have raised serious questions about both the feasibility (even desirability) of any such enterprise.
John XXIII’s welcome stress on human rights as an important issue in international public life was validated by the revolution of conscience — the human rights revolution — that his third successor, John Paul II, ignited in east central Europe in 1979: a revolution that was another key factor in the nonviolent collapse of European communism. But neither the Church nor world politics has been well-served by the tendency in Pacem in Terris to label as a “human right” virtually every political, social and economic desirable; a tendency that has subsequently become an irresistible temptation for the Holy See in its address to world politics.
In his commentary on the encyclical, the great Jesuit theologian John Courtney Murray argued that John XXIII’s notion of the ideal political community — what Murray described as “the free man under a limited government” — was drawn from Thomas Aquinas. Yet if Pacem in Terris drew part of its inspiration from the Angelic Doctor, where in the encyclical did one find echoes of Augustine, that other great master of classic Catholic political theory? Was the pope, some asked, sufficiently aware of the expansiveness of human political folly, and the dangers of tyranny embedded in utopian visions of human perfectibility, as Augustine surely was?
An inspiring and noble vision, an inadequate analysis of the obstacles to that vision’s realization: that seems a reasonable judgment on Pacem in Terris at its 60th anniversary.
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Another Monday morning quarterback? We must not forget that this great pope survived the second world war and was very much aware of the consequences of extreme right ( Fascism ) and extreme left
(Communism).He was looking ahead while we are looking back. Perhaps hope and optimism is not a bad thing.
Maybe not quite a Monday morning quarterback?
Yours truly recalls very early consternation over “false philosophical teachings,” [which] might nonetheless “contain elements that are positive and deserving of approval”—and even our own novice kitchen table debates back in the early 1970s.
A constant perplexity for expounding the Catholic Social Teaching on solidarity and subsidiarity—both at the same time and place—is the wording for a single “public authority” rather than, say, some kind of more artful ecology of “governance.”
Most recently, we have Centesimus Annus (1991), Laudato Si (2015) (“Let us keep in mind the principle of subsidiarity […], n. 196), and, a bit earlier, Benedict XVI in Deus Caritas Est (2006) (“We do not need a State which regulates and controls everything, but a State which in accordance with the principle of subsidiarity, generously acknowledges and supports initiatives arising from the different social forces and combines spontaneity with closeness to those in need. The Church is one of those living forces [….], n. 28).
One would think that since 1963 Catholic academia would have specialized in articulating how solidarity and subsidiarity mutually work together and never separated—at all levels and not confined to “levels”—toward the Common Good. Instead, the adolescent Land O’ Lakes Declaration (1967) and now the spreading death rattle of woke “intersectionality” and “diversity/inclusiveness/equity.”
Plus the noisy, big-tent—and some fear: “plebiscite”—called Synodality. At best, the Church as a needed but blundering counterpoint to the one-world big-State; and at worst a Trojan Horse for all the neo-Marxist/radical Secularism has to offer!
Weigel’s analysis is excellent (not to be shuffled off as Monday morning stuff). The arms race was foisted on the West and the Cold War was won (perhaps temporarily) by the realistic efforts of Reagan and John Paul II.
The current pope’s support for the UN is naive at best. Original sin leads to the grasp for power, thus war—always to be with us; national sovereignty and balance of power are common sensical.
Right on!
‘Pacem in Terris’ is an oxymoron. The Third Secret of Fatima is the key, which, once deciphered, ushers in Messianic Reign on earth, and thus, Peace on Earth . The Third Secret of Fatima was supposed to be released upon Str. Lucia’s death, or no later than 1960. The Blessed Mother had told Str. Lucia that God would choose the person to decipher the Third Secret of Fatima. Pope John XXIII was Pope during 1960. Pope John XXIII had the Third Secret of Fatima brought to him to examine. Then Pope John XXIII buried the Third Secret of Fatima back in the Vatican archives where it remained unrevealed, and unable to have God choose someone to decipher it, for another 40 years. Finally the Third Secret of Fatima was revealed by Pope John Paul II in the year 2000, enabling God to now choose someone to decipher the message.
The Third Secret of Fatima is the key which guides Christ’s Church into Messianic Reign on free-willed earth. With Jesus as King and Ruler of the earth, there will be true Justice and Peace on Earth.
The forty years, from 1960 to 2000, is already reflected very badly by God, through mirrored scriptures of God’s punishment of Israel’s 40 year punishment in the desert. Israel was posed to enter into the Promised Land, however, due to the fearful lies of the scouts Moses sent to reconnoiter the Promised Land, Israel fell into distrust that God could deliver Israel into the Promised Land. Due to Israel’s mistrust in God, God punished Israel with 40 years in the desert, outside the Promised Land. Now, due to Catholic Leader’s mistrust in God, through not revealing the Third Secret of Fatima so God Himself could choose someone to decipher it, we have our own 40 year delay in our Reentry into Jesus’ Restoration of Israel, aka Revelation’s ‘The New Jerusalem’.
Tens of billions of Catholics, of our future Catholic generations, living in Jesus’ future ‘New Jerusalem’, post Apocalyptic Catholic Church, for tens of thousands of years forward, are going to study in horror and disbelief that Popes from 1960 – 2000, refused to allow us to enter into Jesus’ Beautiful, New Jerusalem, but instead chose Vatican II.
Numbers 28:31
Your little ones, however, who you said would be taken as spoil, I will bring in, and they shall know the land you rejected.
Reentering the Garden of Eden Upon Jesus’ Kingdom Come
http://www.apocalypseangel.com/eden.html
https://www.lifesitenews.com/episodes/prophet-priest-the-truth-of-fr-malachi-martin-revealed/
Hello JP,
Your video clearly alines Popes (1960-2000) with Moses scouts, as intentionally baffling God’s Plan, of God taking His people to the next level, out of fear of temporal tribulation when doing so. The video shows that 1960-2000 Popes intentionally decided Not to release the Third Secret of Fatima to be deciphered by the one of God’s choosing, out of fear for the calamities which come to the earth when doing so. In both Old Testament and New Testament, God’s People have now been punished with a forty year delay in God’s Plan to take, us into God’s glorious Restored Kingdom of Israel, the Revelation 21 New Jerusalem post apocalyptic Catholic Church, and Israel of Old Testament into the Promised Land. This is the cost of faithlessness to God.
(Sigh) We’re the Fathers of the Counsel he would convene only a short little while later willing to condemn communism in their formal teaching . . .
Opening the church toward the new world order pope we got now to fulfill Catechism 675.