When John Paul II Speaks, Does the Church Listen?

When the Holy Father speaks to nations, organizations, or public leaders the world seems more interested in speculating on the political implications and consequences of the encounter than in the ideas he has expressed. When he speaks primarily to the Church through his encyclicals, does the Church — either the ecclesiastical institutions or the ‘people of God’ (take your choice!) do any better in hearing and trying to understand his message?

War and peace and social justice — topics to which he often addresses himself — are issues of great current concern to the faithful in every nation. But why, in the Church in the U.S., do the discussions of these issues so often become passionate attacks and counterattacks that contribute nothing to the unity in thought and action that is so desperately needed?

The protracted work of our bishops to produce the pastoral letter on peace and war which was finally published in May is, and will hereafter be, the backdrop against which we can look for an answer to our questions. Will the outbursts of bitter passion that have so far generated more heat than light continue in the future?

Two developments — the open letter “Moral Clarity in the Nuclear Age” and the final text of the Pastoral itself offer hope for a change. In both there is a strong appeal for a new style of discourse. What else is needed to bring it about?

When we look at Church factions confronting each other defiantly, we might profitably recall Christ’s rueful words in Luke 7:31-32: “What comparison can I use for the men of today? They are like children squatting in the city squares and calling to their playmates, ‘We piped you a tune but you did not dance; we sang you a dirge but you did not wail!’” One wonders if the Holy Father does not at times feel the same frustration. It is most likely he does when he contemplates the lack of impact of his encyclical Dives In Misericordia (“Rich in Mercy”).

Dives In Misericordia is a message urgently called for in today’s world. Its central idea is that the precious idea of mercy, as a divine attribute and as an indispensable virtue required of everyone in their relationships with one another urgently requires revitalization. As he says, it “tends to be excluded from the present day mentality.” The truth of that assessment is evident when we review the actions of many governments, institutions, and political forces. It even manifests itself among those in the West who sincerely clamor for peace and justice.

Though in the last analysis we are called to be merciful to enemies, for most of us the need for mercy is less easily recognizable as it reveals itself in our everyday relationships with our brothers and neighbors. This is not a new problem. Christ himself called our attention to it in his words exhorting us to stop judging our brother (Matthew 7:1-5). The magisterium has never neglected reiterating its commitment to faith and commitment to divine mercy. In its long history it has at times devoted considerable energy to exhorting its children, great and small, to make the virtue of mercy their own.

When Christian humanism flourished during the Renaissance in Europe, the call to put on mercy was vigorous. Today the Holy Father addresses his plea to the whole of mankind, to brother and enemy alike.

The problem, today as in the past, is that all too few respond to Christ’s — and the Church’s — pleas for attention. We “listen” — but we don’t hear! Can we deny, for example, that, for almost 400 years, the deeply moving homily on mercy embodied by William Shakespeare in The Merchant of Venice has been presented to millions, in its original words and countless translations, time after time, but never “heard”? Even as Shakespeare was writing, the Church’s century-long plea that justice be tempered with mercy was fast losing its audience. To label the law courts of Christian kingdoms at that time “Ministries of Grace and Justice” was rapidly becoming an Orwellian hypocrisy, even though the title has, in a few instances, persisted to this day.

At first glance, it may seem ridiculous to give credit for a homily on mercy to Shakespeare, a man of his time who lived and wrote when Europe — his “world” — was being torn apart by merciless monarchs and other leaders of men. He may well have done the right thing for the wrong reason. The drama in which he gave us his homily was, like many of his plots, an old and borrowed one. In fact, his play, taken as a whole, tends to obscure the homily. For its original audiences the play’s denouement — the discomfiture of the Jew Shylock — was in fact enjoyable, and Shakespeare wrote what he thought would please. In fact, then as now the play owes its durability to the fact that it satisfied rather than edified. We, like those Englishmen, enjoy seeing the speck in our brother’s eye while we miss the plank in our own.

Still, even if we dismiss the thought that Shakespeare intended to edify his audience, the evidence is compelling that what he wrote in Portia’s speech on mercy was not original and had its origins in Matthew’s Gospel. In its ideas and its language, it is a powerful homily — when we “hear” it. And John Paul has repeated it!

What are its central ideas? There are two. Fist, that mercy is a divine attribute and a virtue when practiced by men. Second, that justice without mercy may destroy the one who demands justice, if he in turn is judged without mercy. What are its most revealing words, used to express those ideas? First, there is the simile likening mercy to rain, falling from heaven. Second, there is the final warning to Shylock, that if he persists in his demand for strict justice the trial will end in a judgment based strictly on the law. Without questioning what inspired him to use these words to express these ideas, we can clearly identify the source — the origin — of both. They are found — both ideas and words — in Matthew’s Gospel.

In the first instance, when we turn to Matthew 5:44¬45, we find that Christ is quoted as calling us to “love our enemies” — and our errant brothers — in imitation of God, whose mercy is like “God’s rain” that falls equally upon the just and unjust. In the second case (Matthew 5:25-26), Christ uses the same context, the same advice, and the same warning. “Settle with your opponent on your way to the judge. Otherwise your opponent may hand you over to the judge—” Shakespeare not only repeats context, advice, and warning in Portia’s speech. He goes on, in his denouement, to describe how the rest of Christ’s prophetic warning: “— who will hand you over to the guard, who will hand you over to the jailer,” was fulfilled in Shylock’s case.

There is other evidence of inspiration by Matthew’s Gospel in Portia’s speech. Matthew 6:9-15, which gives us the text of the Lord’s Prayer and Christ’s warning of the consequence we can expect if we do not show mercy, is succinctly paraphrased — “we do pray for mercy and that same prayer doth teach us all to render the deeds of mercy.”

What of the rest of the speech? It too is part of the “homily,” although here it is Shakespeare the man himself who speaks. He comments cautiously, as befitted a writer under immediate surveillance and dependent on the patronage of the Chamberlain of England’s monarch — a ruler whose devotion to mercy was as unreliable as that of her father. When rulers show mercy, he says, they are virtuous. Without it, their authority depends on dread and fear. The statement “it is enthroned in the hearts of kings” is Shakespeare “bowing down in the House of Elizabeth.” Satire, as every jester in hazard knows, operates here. Any ingenuous attempt to treat the line as serious would have been greeted by both Shakespeare and the gentry in his audience with derision. It was, at best, a “consummation devoutly to be wished”!

Like some of his contemporaries, Shakespeare may well have been reminded, as he wrote, of the prophetic words spoken not too many years before by Thomas More to Cromwell during his trial for treason — “It is a long road you have opened. For first men will disclaim their hearts and presently they will have no hearts. God help the people whose statesmen walk your road.”

The road has indeed been long — and its end is not yet in sight. The “jesters” of the East at least still risk the same fate that befell Thomas More. John Paul’s encyclical echoes Matthew’s Gospel, Shakespeare’s homily — and Thomas More’s prophecy. It is a call for all people to reaffirm that men have hearts and for all, including rulers and other leaders of men, to listen, with God’s help, to their hearts by showing mercy to each other.

The prophetic warning too is echoed by today’s leader of Christendom. If we demand justice of our brothers — if not of our “enemies” — those who disagree with what we call justice, even when they share our hope that justice will be done — if we do not “settle with our opponent on the way to the court,” we too may be judged strictly — and be handed over to jailers — our real enemies. As the Holy Father expresses it, we may be faced with “a world of cold and unfeeling justice; the various kinds of selfishness latent in man would transform life and human society into a system of oppression of the weak by the strong, or into an arena of permanent strife between one group and another.” Our real enemies (mercifully few in spite of the power they may wield at the moment) are those who can contemplate both of these alternative ends with equanimity. How succinctly John Paul’s words encompass both specific national situations and the global condition of our days!

We may pray and work for peace and pray and work for justice, but if we fail to put on mercy, above all in our dealings with our brothers who seek both peace and justice, albeit in other terms, the outcome may not be what we hope for.

All else that John Paul has said on the wide variety of pressing issues and concerns of today’s world must be related, in the final analysis, to this simple, heartfelt, and inspired plea — and warning.

American Catholics must add mercy in debate, to the confidence and hope in the ultimate victory of good over evil that the bishops try to evoke and support in their pastoral, and to the humility and intellectual discipline for which the “Moral Clarity” letter appeals. We can create a new environment in the Church, within which the “process of sharing and learning, pondering and praying about a most complicated but must crucial aspect of modern life” called for in the Pastoral Letter will be carried forward hereafter in Church schools, institutions, press, and parishes.

Author

  • John Hanson

    When he wrote this article in 1983, John L. Hanson was living in Westminster, Maryland.

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