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by Josef Maria Seifert (Author)
This Book, dedicated in memoriam to Pope John Paul II (1920-2020), presents the cornerstone of John Paul II's ethics and magisterial exposition of the moral doctrine of the Church. Permeated by the vision of the splendor, beauty and highest goodness of moral values, Karol Wojtyìa's personalism provides likewise a lucid exposition of the existence of intrinsically evil acts. The present work also extracts from John Paul II's works the unambiguous answer to the questions raised by the famous four "dubia-Cardinals" Intrinsically wrong actions exist and cannot be justified by any situation, consequences, or effects of human actions. That there are such actions is not only a matter of faith, but also result of purely philosophical analysis.The perfect harmony between Socrates, one of the greatest teachers and witnesses of moral truth, and John Paul II/Karol Wojtyìa's ethics and moral teachings, is shown in Chapter 3 of the book. The Socratic insights that (intrinsically) immoral acts must not be committed in any situation and that suffering injustice, torture and death are an incomparably lesser evil for man than committing evil acts, moves the author in view of the identity of this teaching of theirs to call John Paul II "the Socrates among the Popes". Karol Wojtyìa is likewise very close to the methods and ethics of realist phenomenologists and explains in a uniquely fresh way, based on his profound moral experience, the splendor of moral values and the intrinsic evils of contraception, abortion and other assaults against human life and dignity. The philosopher-Pope's ethics and personalism are very close to Saint Edith Stein's, Dietrich von Hildebrand's, John Crosby's and other contemporary thinkers' anthropological and ethical writings and add a fresh and timely tone to timeless truths.The author of the present book was not only personally close to John Paul II (the Pope baptized one of his sons and one of his daughter's life was miraculously saved at his intercession) but also philosophically deeply united with him. Their relation started when Pope John Paul II read Seifert's extensive article about his philosophy and "school" written in 1979, one year after his election to the Papacy. Pope John Paul II invited Seifert to join the faculty of the John Paul II Institute for the Studies of Marriage and the Family (a task Seifert fulfilled as regular visiting Professor during a decade), as a regular member of the Pontifical Academy for Life and as an active member of the working and study group of philosophers and theologians he gathered around himself, prior to publishing his three magisterial ethical Encyclicals Veritatis Splendor, Evangelium Vitae, and Familiaris Consortio. Seifert's own original contribution, expounded in six chapters of this book, a philosophical defense of eternal ethical truth (the "natural law") that is also a backbone of Catholic moral teaching, is both in its content and history connected with the penetrating contribution of Karol Wojtyìa to understanding moral values and love. Seifert adds to the Pope' teachings his own concise and very subtle critique of a variety of those moral theories that, starting from their fight against the new declaration of the intrinsic wrongness of contraception in the Encyclical of Paul VI Humanae Vitae, soon had developed into a general critique of the core-truths of all ethics and of all Biblical and Church moral teachings. Seifert's book offers a splendid refutation of many attempts, dominating ethics and moral theology for over half a century, at knocking down the column of all ethics and Christian moral teaching: intrinsically good attitudes and acts and the uncompromising rejection of intrinsically evil actions. Against the darkness of those intrinsically evil actions, whose defense by some theologians and philosophers in some situations constitutes a fatal assault against true morality, the splendor of truth and of the good shines forth all the br
