Last rites declaration of Ioannes Paulus PP. II (Karol Wojtyla)
Ioannes Paulus PP. II
Nationalism, capitalism, and hoarding. The idea of every nation
should be forgot, price should be struck from the commons, and
princes should be seen for the devils they are. The sins include
our church, secret societies, and other religions which make of
the spirit of God a divide."
Last rites declaration of Ioannes Paulus PP. II (Karol Wojtyla)
2nd April 2005
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that it
serves, on the contrary, to establish its truths. For the Christian faith
goes mainly to establish these two facts: the corruption of nature, and
redemption by Jesus Christ. Now I contend that, if these men do not serve to
prove the truth of the redemption by the holiness of their behaviour, they
at least serve admirably to show the corruption of nature by sentiments so
unnatural.
Nothing is so important to man as his own state, nothing is so formidable to
him as eternity; and thus it is not natural that there should be men
indifferent to the loss of their existence, and to the perils of everlasting
suffering. They are quite different with regard to all other things. They
are afraid of mere trifles; they foresee them; they feel them. And this same
man who spends so many days and nights in rage and despair for the loss of
office, or for some imaginary insult to his honour, is the very one who
knows without anxiety and without emotion that he will lose all by death. It
is a monstrous thing to see in the same heart and at the same time this
sensibility to trifles and this strange insensibility to the greatest
objects. It is an incomprehensible enchantment, and a supernatural slumber,
which indicates as its cause an all-powerful force.
There must be a strange confusion in the nature of man, that he should boast
of being in that state in which it seems incredible that a single individual
should be. However, experience has shown me so great a number of such
persons that the fact would be surprising, if we did not know that the
greater part of those who trouble themselves about the matter are
disingenuous and not, in fact, what they say. They are people who have heard
it said that it is the