The mystery of Paul VI"The pontificate of Paul VI has already been defined before History, whatever its final results, whether it fails or triumphs, since, in any case, it will be the pontificate of a Pope who truly tried to dialogue with all men.". These words were written by the philosopher and friend of Paul VI, Jean Guitton, in his book Dialogues with Paul VIpublished in 1967.
It was the first time that a Pope had openly dialogued with a layman. And, in this case, with a layperson to whom he L'Osservatore RomanoThe Pope's newspaper, the Pope's newspaper, had reproached him for daring to write a book about the Virgin Mary. But the Pope did not mind. He had taken seriously the Church-world dialogue and the role of the laity within the Church.
Biographical sketch
Born on September 26, 1897, Giovani Battista Montini grew up in the heat of journalistic and political battles. His father, Giorgio Montini, a journalist and lawyer, was also a member of parliament for the Popular Party founded by Dom Sturzo and president of Catholic Action. At the age of 23, Montini was ordained a priest; at 25 he joined the Secretariat of State and only a year later was assigned to Poland. On his return to Rome, and from his work in the Secretariat of State, he developed a close and trusting relationship with Cardinal Pacelli. When Pacelli became Pope in 1939, Montini became, together with Cardinal Tardini, one of Pius XII's closest collaborators.
In 1954, Pius XII appointed Montini archbishop of Milan. From this archdiocese, he engaged in numerous meetings with workers and trade unions, politicians, artists and intellectuals, which earned him the first criticisms of those who always looked at him with suspicion for being liberal and progressive. It was John XXIII who named him cardinal in December 1958, which took him on several occasions to Africa and the United States. In 1961, when John XXIII had already announced the convocation of the Second Vatican Council, he was appointed to the Central Preparatory Commission, as well as a member of the Commission for Extraordinary Affairs. Only two years later, in 1963, he was elected Pope.
Renovation and refurbishment
They say that when John XXIII announced the convocation of the Second Vatican Council, Montini, then Archbishop of Milan, exclaimed: "This boy doesn't know what a hornet's nest he's stirring up.". It was up to Paul VI, beginning in June 1963, to make it possible for the convocation made four years earlier by John XXIII to bear fruit, and fruit that would last. And so it was Paul VI who made possible the culmination of the Second Vatican Council and its closure in December 1965. And if this task was arduous, the task of accompanying, encouraging and guiding the enormous work that was the post-conciliar period would be no less so.
To Paul VI we owe the ecumenical impulse and the pastoral renewal of Vatican II, the ecclesial reforms in the area of synodality, the creation of the Episcopal Conferences, as well as the reforms of papal elections and the definitive liturgical reform encouraged by the Council. The reforms that Paul VI was orienting towards the interior of the Catholic Church were accompanied by very important reforms also with regard to Church-world relations according to the teachings of the pastoral constitution Gaudium et Spes.
Paul VI was the Pope of dialogue, as his first Encyclical testifies Ecclesiam Suam (1964). He was the first Pope to make international trips. Let us recall his visit to the United Nations Organization on the 20th anniversary of its foundation, his speech at the ILO headquarters during his trip to Switzerland, as well as his trips to Bombay, on the occasion of the International Eucharistic Congress, and to Medellin to celebrate the II General Assembly of the EC. We cannot forget his transcendental trip to the Holy Land in which he met with the Patriarch of Constantinople Athenagoras I and with whom he expressed his firm commitment to the path of ecumenism, or his trips to Uganda, Iran, Hong Kong, Sri Lanka, the Philippines and Indonesia, among others.
Paul VI instituted the World Day of Peace, created the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, redirected the Social Doctrine of the Church along the lines initiated by the Second Vatican Council, reformed Vatican Diplomacy, deepened the Ostpolitik The first of his six cardinal consistories was held during the pontificate of John XXIII, in which he deepened the internationalization of the cardinalate, just as his predecessors had done.
The Pope's presence and encouragement at the III World Congress of the Secular Apostolate, a meeting of great value for the Spanish laity, which was plunged into a deep crisis as a result of episcopal resistance to deepen the autonomy of the laity, or the convening of the first Vatican Commission for the study of women in the early seventies, should be taken into account.
Paul VI was a reforming Pope who in fifteen years of Pontificate published six encyclicals, fourteen apostolic exhortations, and more than one hundred apostolic letters. Among all his magisterial documents, his first encyclical stands out, Ecclesiam Suampublished on August 6, 1964; Populorum Progressiopublished on March 26, 1967 and, most certainly, Humanae Vitaepublished on July 25, 1968.
In addition to these three major documents, there are two others that have had a significant impact on the general public: the apostolic exhortation Evangeli Nuntiandipublished on December 8, 1975, and the apostolic letter Octogesima Adveniens which, in commemoration of the encyclical Rerum Novarum of Leo XIII, was published on May 14, 1971.
A look at his Magisterium
Ecclesiam Suamknown as the encyclical of dialogue, is, in a way, the one that marks the pontificate of Paul VI, if we follow, among others, the words of the philosopher Jean Guitton that appear at the beginning of these pages. Paul VI believed and worked from the Papacy so that the encounter between the Church and the world, in the theological-doctrinal wake of Vatican II, would allow a reciprocal knowledge from which sincere relations of friendship could spring.
Paul VI firmly believed in dialogue as a way and a style that allows us to seek the truth in others and in ourselves. Clarity, gentleness, trust and prudence are the characteristics of a colloquy that allows one to make oneself understood from humility and that is only possible if one trusts fully in one's own word and in the acceptance of the other in order to advance on the path of truth.
It is from the logic of dialogue that Paul VI advanced in his social Magisterium. Dialogue with the world requires being attentive to the signs of the times and to the injustices that compromise human dignity. Populorum Progressio, the "magna carta del desarrollo".is a response to the appeal that the Second Vatican Council makes to the whole Church, especially in its pastoral constitution Gaudium et Spes (GS), so that he may respond to the joys and hopes, the sorrows and anxieties of the men and women of his time.
The decade of the 1960s, rich in contrasts and paradoxes, made the world aware of the profound imbalances and inequalities between a rich world of stability and wealth and an impoverished world in which human beings lacked the most basic goods for their survival. In a world in which the logic of economic growth prevailed, Populorum Progressio dared to question the new developmentalist gospel. If economic growth is necessary, wrote the Pope, recalling GS, if our world needs technicians, he added, it needs even more men of profound reflection who seek a new humanism. Development, true development for all human beings and for all peoples, is the passage from less human conditions of life to more human conditions of life. For the raison d'être of development does not lie in having, but in being and, therefore, in the full development of the vocation to which each and every one of us is called.
And Christianity serves this task, the task of full humanization. As the Exhortation states Evangelii Nuntiandi, "(...) between Evangelization and human promotion (development, liberation) there are indeed very strong links. Links of an anthropological order, because the man to be evangelized is not an abstract being, but a being subject to social and economic problems. Links of a theological order, because the plan of creation cannot be dissociated from the plan of redemption that reaches very concrete situations of injustice to be fought and justice to be restored".. Because salvation and sanctification, let us not forget, also involve freeing ourselves from those situations of injustice that impede the full development of our humanity or, which is the same thing, the full development of our vocation which, in the last analysis, is the call to sanctification.
The good press enjoyed by the three documents mentioned above seemed to be overshadowed by the publication of the Encyclical Humanae Vitae. Historical and cultural reasons explain why all the focus on this document was on the question of the morality or immorality of artificial means for making responsible decisions on the issue of parenthood. I sincerely believe that this is unfair. And that the injustice was committed and continues to be committed, in equal parts, by those who continue to insist on reducing this document to this issue when, in fact, it deals with preliminary questions.
Paul VI spoke of conjugal love, the transmission of life and the care of life. Humanae Vitae was a document sequestered for decades that deeply marked Pope Paul VI and that has also profoundly marked the Catholic Church inwardly. The question deserves, after the attention that Pope Francis has devoted to it on its 50th anniversary, a new look in a world in which human life risks being reduced to a force whose value resides in its productivity and, therefore, in the benefits and profitability that it can produce.
Friendships and dialogue
Perhaps it would be worthwhile to reread Humanae Vitae in the light of what only three years later Paul VI published in Octogesima Adveniens with regard to the technocratic paradigm and the invasive mode that scientific-technical reason deploys on human existence. In essence, this same critique was the underlying one in Populorum Progressio in denouncing developmentalism based on technical mastery and economic growth. Approaching the question of human life from these perspectives would help us today to link human life and social justice in order to better respond to the anxieties and sorrows, the joys and joys of the women and men of our time.
Paul VI, as some have maliciously maintained, was not a Hamlettian Pope, but a man of deep prayer and serene reflection, who cultivated the friendship of philosophers and intellectuals. He was a friend who wept and pleaded at the kidnapping and assassination of Aldo Moro, who knew how to meet and dialogue with those who, apparently or avowedly, were far from the Christian faith and the Catholic Church, a man of deep Marian devotion who liked to recite the beautiful verses of Canto XXXIII of the Divine Comedy and who say thus: "Vergine Madre, figlia del tuo figlio, umile e alta più che creatura, termine fisso d'etterno consiglio, Donna, se' tanto grande e tanto vali, che qual qual vuol grazia e a te non ricorre, sua disïanza vuol volar sanz' ali. In te misericordia, in te pietate, in te magnificenza, in te s'aduna quantunque in creatura è di bontate". (Dante, Divine Comedy, Canto XXXIII): "Virgin Mother, daughter of your Son, humble and loftier than any other creature, fixed term of the eternal counsel. Lady, you are so great and worth so much, that he who desires graces and does not accept you, his desire wants him to fly without wings. In you mercy, in you pity, in you magnificence, in you all that is good in the creature is united". (Dante, Divine Comedy, Canto XXXIII).
Paul VI Foundation
The mystery of Paul VI
