Are you looking for hope in the troubled times in which we live?
“I expect to die in bed, my successor will die in prison and his successor will die a martyr in the public square. His successor will pick up the shards of a ruined society and slowly help rebuild civilization, as the Church has done so often in human history.”[1]
The above quotation from Francis Cardinal George helps us to understand the rapid decline of society in America, and indeed, Western Civilization, over the past several years. The end of the quotation, however, is frequently not cited. At the Image of God Institute, we are blessed to receive and unpack the teachings and works of Pope St. John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI on the identity of the human person, made in the image and likeness of the Trinity. Cardinal George was a man who knew and loved St. John Paul and Benedict and tried to pass on what they gave us. How far down the road are we? Because Cardinal George’s successors are not yet in prison and have not been martyred, one can argue that we have not exactly moved in that direction at this time.
I would argue that the last line of the quotation is underway in a certain sense. The Image of God Institute, along with other apostolates, is helping to receive and live Pope St. John Paul II’s Man and Woman He Created Them: A Theology of the Body so that this “ruined society” will be rebuilt from the foundation up.
Our foundations are clearly damaged and cracked. Because the dignity of the human person, made in the image and likeness of the Trinity, has been trampled by competing, contradictory ideologies and practices, we are living in a “culture of death.” The “pulverization, of the fundamental uniqueness of each human person”[2] that St. John Paul wrote about to Henri de Lubac, has been going on for decades.
How do we rebuild society at the foundational level? Pope St. John Paul II recognized that we need a massive restoration project for the human person and provided it to us in his Theology of the Body (TOB). In this project that he delivered in Wednesday Audiences as a teaching for the entire Church from 1979 through 1984, we have deep and abiding answers about what it means to be human as male and female made in the image of the Trinity, vocations to marriage and celibacy, and as a consequence, ethical questions that have troubled the Church in the 20th century are now addressed with great joy and confidence in the Lord.
George Weigel, in his biography of St. John Paul II titled Witness to Hope, said that the Theology of the Body is a “theological timebomb set to go off, with dramatic consequences, sometime in the third millennium of the Church.”[3] My wife Heather and I have experienced this explosion in our own lives in the early 2000’s and it has been going off until the present day, especially with our friends who are witnesses to the life changing impact of TOB and so many young adults that we are blessed to know, who are deeply involved with the Image of God Institute.
Are you looking for hope in the troubled times in which we live? Are you searching for ways to build up the Church and support strong vocations to marriage and celibacy? Are you looking to rebuild the foundation of society? I would like to invite you to be involved in the Image of God Institute and join us in the restoration project!
[1] Francis Cardinal George from Tim Drake, “The Myth and Reality of ‘I’ll Die in My Bed,’” National Catholic Register, Oct. 24, 2012
[2] George Weigel, “John Paul II and the Crisis of Humanism” First Things, December 1999. https://www.firstthings.com/article/1999/12/john-paul-ii-and-the-crisis-of-humanism
[3] George Weigel, Witness to Hope, Harper Perennial, 2001. p. 343