Pope Benedict XVI's Dream and the Natural Thirst for Justice

4/24/2012

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netherworld, to a sort of purgatory. The good done on earth is repaid ten-fold, and the evil punished ten-fold. And there are some evildoers--such as the tyrant Ardiaeus the Great--who are incurable, and for whom heaven is forever foreclosed. They are damned.

Belief in this myth, Socrates says, allows us to "hold fast ever to the heavenly way and follow after justice and virtue always, considering that the soul is immortal." (Republic 621d) Eternal life and judgment must be created--even if it be in myth--for the world to have been well-made and our thirst for justice quenched.

In his version of Plato's Republic, Cicero concludes with his own "Myth of Er," the so-called "Dream of Scipio." Here, Cicero describes the dream of the Roman general Scipio Aemilianus. He is visited by his dead adoptive grandfather, Scipio Africanus, who comes to him from heaven as in a vision or dream. The younger Scipio is enjoined to do justice. It is the life of justice that leads to heaven, the heaven from whence the elder Scipio comes, a heaven as resplendent as the beauty of the Milky Way. Life on earth is fleeting, the elder Scipio reminds the younger, but we are promised a life hereafter. Before he wakes up, the younger Scipio is admonished to contemplate the heavens and eternal life so that he may act rightly on earth.

Again, eternal life and judgment must be dreamed--even if it be in specters and visions--for the world to have been well-made and for our yearning for justice to be met.

The Good News of Easter is that the puzzle which Plato and Cicero struggled to solve is resolved for us, in fact has been revealed to us.

Not, however, by myth, and not by dream. But by a brute historical reality that happened once in history, but which Catholics repeat anew at every Mass, and which the Christ's faithful announce at the Memorial Acclamation: Christ has died. Christ is risen. Christ will come again.

"The justice of God," St. Paul tells the Romans, "has been manifested through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe." (Rom. 3:21-22). Christ is God's justice. This Christ, who is God's justice, we say will come again. When Christ comes again, it will be to judge the living and the dead, scriptural words which we repeat in our Creed. (cf. 2 Tim. 4:1) It is also our belief that when Our Lord returns to judge in the Last Judgment, our bodies shall rise again, like Christ the firsfruits, rose from the grave. (1 Cor. 15:23)

This means that Moses Roper, Sadako Sasaki, Ludwig Br�gel, Brandon Buchanan, and all those who did them wrong will rise again. And all will be judged in the Judgment, a judgment required so "that the providence of God, which, on earth often permits the good to suffer and the wicked to prosper, may in the end appear just before all men," as the Baltimore Catechism succinctly explains.

Here we get to Benedict XVI's "dream." In Jesus we learn that "there is a God, and God can create justice in a way that we cannot conceive, yet we can begin to grasp it through faith," writes Pope Benedict XVI in his encyclical Spe salvi. "Yes," he continues, "there is a resurrection of the flesh. There is justice. There is an 'undoing' of past suffering, a reparation that sets things aright." (Spe salvi, 43)

Injustice does not have the last word. Justice has the last word. "God is justice and creates justice. This is our consolation and our hope. And in his justice there is also grace. This we know by turning our gaze to the crucified and risen Christ." (Spe salvi, 43, 44)

The reality of the revelation--proof that it is not a myth and not a dream--is confirmed for us in the historical fact of Christ's Resurrection: Christ's empty tomb.

"He is not here; he has risen, just as he said." (Matt. 28:6)

That is why in his encyclical Spe salvi Benedict XVI tells those who yearn for justice but see it unfulfilled in this world, and who do not know Christ the following personal words. He speaks not here not so much as Pope, but as a man to men without faith, without hope, but who yearn for justice. "I am convinced," Pope Benedict XVI says, "that the question of justice constitutes the essential argument, or in any case the strongest argument, in favor of faith in eternal life."

Here is Pope Benedict XVI's "Dream." There is, the Pope says, a "purely individual need for a fulfillment," a need for justice "that is denied to us in this life." It was denied to Moses Roper, to Sadako Sasaki, to Ludwig Br�gel, to Brandon Buchanan, to hundreds of millions more. Nothing they could do, nothing we can do, can give them justice. ...
- - -

Pope Benedict XVI's Prayer Intentions for January 2013
General Intention: The Faith of Christians. That in this Year of Faith Christians may deepen their knowledge of the mystery of Christ and witness joyfully to the gift of faith in him.
Missionary Intention: Middle Eastern Christians. That the Christian communities of the Middle East, often discriminated against, may receive from the Holy Spirit the strength of fidelity and perseverance.

Keywords: Justice, resurrection, Pope Benedict, death to life, Andrew M Greenwell

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1 - 7 of 7 Comments

Mike Chapman
1 year ago
Justice for the little girl, and all of those killed in Hiroshima? That lies at the feet of the Japanese leaders who attacked the U.S. without a declaration of war and committed atrocity after atrocity upon captured soldiers (Bataan Death March) and entire societies (such as the Chinese). It's a deep injustice that this was included in your list of injustices! How bizzarre! How could you misunderstand injustice so badly? At the Hiroshima memorial where there is a book to sign, one American once wrote, "Remember Pearl Harbor." Where's the justice for all those men and women entombed in the USS Arizona? You had so many other much more relevant and true choices. Millions upon millions of civilians were killed by Germans and Nazis in that war. You also could have chosen any number of Christian martyrs from just the past year (including Yousef imprisoned in Iran right now), and you choose someone killed in our successful attempt to end the war to avoid further lives lost? Wow. Those bombs saved lives. Truman had to drop the second one because their leaders still refused to surrender. There is tragedy and misfortune (such as what we, in law enforcement, are forced to do in ending the life of someone posing a threat, and innocent lives are sometimes lost in the process of being forced to do just that), and there is true injustice. No good person wanted to kill the little girl in Hiroshima (except those such as Muslim extremists and Palestinian terrorists who regularly kill children in Israel and elsewhere). But lives are lost when decent and righteous societies are forced to defend themselves or stop the slaughter of innocent people. Do you not understand Just War? For example, read the Old Testament where entire cities were wiped out by God's holy people , including children and every living thing. It was a tragedy, but the necessary and right thing to do. There is a huge difference between loss of life by murder and deceit, and loss of life in responding in order to stop it.You've confused the two and tried to equate them, like so many in our politically correct culture do. That in itself, is a grave injustice.
DENISE M. SHARAR
1 year ago
I HOPE AND PRAY SOMEDAY LOVE WILL STOP ALL THE ACTS OF INJUSTICE WE SEE IN THE WORLD. LOVE AND PRAYER IS OUR HOPE. I ESPECIALLY PRAY FOR FATHER PFLEGER IN CHICAGO WHO IS IN THE MIDST OF ACTS OF INJUSTICE AND MAY GET ANGRY AND LOSE HOPE NOW AND THEN. WE MUST ALWAYS FIND SACRED SPACE TO PRAY AND MEDITATE SO WE CAN FEEL GOD'S PRESENCE AND NEVER LOSE HOPE.
Geoff
1 year ago
It would seem that the root of injustice is "want". What is it that we may "want" at the expense of another? I was just crossing the road this evening at a cross walk and was almost hit by a fast moving car ignoring the pedestrian (me) on the cross walk. He simply appeared to accelerate and honked his horn. His objective would not account for anything other than his "want" to get to his objective as quickly and effortlessly as possible. He was in fact an agent of chaos. His rule was simple, he had power and was isolated in the comfortable cabin of his Land Cruiser with his music. Isn't this the case with most injustice? That the operatives of a system designed to promote the commom good become the very vehicle to remove the common good for privilege? It is an interesting notion that perhaps injustice can be found in the word itself: res publica versus leggio privatus (excuse the latin).
JoAnn
1 year ago
The greatest evil ever perpetrated was the crucifixion of Our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ and what incredibly awesome GOOD came from it. God bless.
Andrew M.Greenwell
1 year ago
@Edwin:
Thanks for your comments, and I appreciate your argument, but I will have to disagree, and quite vehemently. What both Harry and Mohamed did was the same thing in their minds: they did evil so that good may come out of it. This is an immoral principle, though it is the basis of a cost/benefit analysis so typical of utilitarianism or consequentialism. (Here, strangely, both traditional Islam and modern utilitarianism share a way of thinking.)

That is in fact how you justify Harry Truman's use of nuclear weapons not against military targets but against whole cities and civilian populations. The civilian casualties In Hiroshima and Nagasaki (and Dresden and other German cities, for that matter) were not "collateral damage," but were the intended target. Though I'm sure Truman did not know her, he intended to kill Sadako Sasaki as sure as he intended to kill her fellow civilians. This was evil, an absolute evil, one without exception, however you dress it.

Pope Pius XII condemned the bombings of Nagasaki and Hiroshima when he expressed the traditional Catholic teaching on just war that "every act of war directed to the indiscriminate destruction of whole cities or vast areas with their inhabitants is a crime against God and man." In the words of Admiral Leahy, Chief of Staff to presidents Roosevelt and Truman. a well-seasoned warrior if there ever was one: "It is my opinion that the use of the barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan ... The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender because of the effective sea blockade and the successful bombing with conventional weapons ... My own feeling was that in being the first to use it, we had adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages. I was not taught to make war in that fashion, and wars cannot be won by destroying women and children."

In your analysis, you also neglect to mention that part of the Japanese intransigence which caused Truman's seeming choice was our own decision to seek "unconditional surrender." Why I would expect any people, especially a proud people like the Japanese, to fight to death if the condition for life is unconditional surrender to the enemy. A change in our stance would have made a difference.

Now let me ask it this way: If Mohammed Atta under orders from Bin Laden had used an atomic bomb instead of a plane to bomb the Twin Towers, how would Atta's act be different than Paul Tibbet's acting under Truman's? Other than State action, I see no difference. And being head of state does not authorize the intentional taking of innocent human life. Ever. We can't do evil so that good may come.
Edwin Concepcion
1 year ago
Harry Truman's inclusion in the list of deviants that includes the likes of Atta IS an injustice in itself. Truman's decision to drop the A-bomb arguably foreshortened an ongoing, red hot world war that is an immoral event, and thereby saved millions of lives, which is a morally laudable outcome. The Japanese establishment in 1945 is to blame for their persistence in the war, in spite of ample American warning, which resulted in thousands of nuclear blast victims. This Japanese establishment, Emperor Hirohito for one, should have been on that Atta list. Not Harry Truman, no sir...
abey
1 year ago
Injustices happen when man takes Justice upon his own hand. Vengeance is mine says the Lord . In the Lord's prayer we ask " Forgive our debts as we forgive our debtors" which is to Forgiveness, no doubt easy said than done, but is to be done , for it amounts to a sacrifice, to taking our own cross to His sharing. Jesus never said it would be easy, contrary to ear pleasing to appeasing words of many a preachers, they who preach the truth but the truth turns to a lie to the hearer, cause it was meant to appease, to the likeness of Obama & gangs, the very people who cry Blood for Blood not knowing the truth in mans eternity. On the contrary if man does not learn to forgive but to develop hatred in the name of Justice how can He stand before the love of God, it is to this that God says of the manner "Let me handle it"..Moreover what is the Justice of man to backdoor peddlers who cause murder & mayhem coming in all shapes & sizes, even as echelons of society where the law cannot reach them or unknown to the law, who escape this world but then they see the Christ, for a sure they will as the judge to "Game Over" with no place or way to hide or run, again to His words " Vengeance is mine", which is to the truth of "Justice is in Him. The Characteristics of the serpent & its seeds is to hatred & revenge in the pride, fall not in to become it.

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