A Dispute about Man [Volume: 7(1988), pp. 29-46]

A DISPUTE ABOUT MAN
39
than we suppose. Christian faith brings a deepening of the sense of owning;
it does not cross out this experience but deepens it. It gives man the awareness that he can own and really does own God Himself. God gives Himself
to man. Man has the right to say my God. Having God who gave Himself
to him, man has in God the entire world. This most profound religious
experience entails far-reaching consequences. Man may feel as if he is at
home in the world. He can accept responsibility for all the values of this
world-social, economic, and individual. He can discover that he has been
sent to this world, which is the sphere of his apostolic mission. Thanks
to this he can become engaged in the world as a legal owner of the world.
This experience requires concretization. The concretization consists
in discovering each time a particular sphere of property-a sphere of
responsibility in which one can and should become engaged. The pastoral
function of the Church, among other things, is to identify these spheres.
Each identification entails a new experience of "I have." Here are some
of them: I have a country (especially during the period of the so-called
millenium), I have a Church (especially after the election of John-Paul II),
I have a job (the period of Solidarity and after), I have a family (the great
pastoral action concerning the family), and I have a community (pastoral
communities of youth and various professional groups). At the basis of
all of this is: I have myself.
The Ethical Plane
The dispute on the ethical plane between the "new" and "old
morality" was treated as a dispute between what is ethical and what is
a-ethical, a-moral (sometimes even immoral), rather than as a dispute between two currents of ethics, "the new and the old law." In the eyes of
the huge mass of the faithful, the alternative to Christian ethics was not
some other variant of ethics but its absence. For in communism basic ethical
values lost their absolute quality, undergoing relativization because of class
interest. It was possible to see this in practice. In dramatic situations whenever the interest of the authorities was at stake, political thinking and its
arguments were put above ethical arguments. It has happened so often that
the contrary declarations of certain Marxists received no social credibility.
But this is precisely why ethics-universal, absolute ethics that do not
allow any exceptions-became a great social need during the entire period
of the communization of the country. This is understandable. When power
becomes absolute and law serves only a single social group, the mainstay
of those who are threatened is the call from the depths of ethical conscience.
In such moments the threatened look in their memory for eternal laws,
universal principles, and self-evident values in order to find justification
for their own resistance. The character of Antigone is evoked as well as