Tuesday, April 05, 2005

John Paul the Great and the Engine of History

Memorial of St. Vincent Ferrer

George Weigel is why EPPC is no. 1 on my link list. He's been busy of late, so you may want to bookmark his recent pub list. The truffle quote gives some back-up for the prime theme of The Troglodyte's origin essays:
One variant form of debased humanism was the notion that "history" is driven by the politics of willfulness (the Jacobin heresy) or by economics (the Marxist heresy). During his epic pilgrimage to Poland in June 1979, at a moment when "history" seemed frozen and Europe permanently divided into hostile camps, John Paul II demonstrated that "history" worked differently, because human beings aren't just the by-products of politics or economics. He gave back to his people their authentic history and culture--their identity; and in doing so, he gave them tools of resistance that communist truncheons could not reach. Fourteen months after teaching that great lesson in dignity, the Pope watched and guided the emergence of Solidarity. And then the entire world began to see the communist tide recede, like the slow retreat of a plague.

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