on the church, which, in the closing decades of the twentieth century, situated the
church from quite different angles of vision. Unlike earlier councils it did not
issue a catechism to summarize its decrees and canons.
Bishops and theologians disagreed about the spirit and the letter of docu-
ments. The Declaration on Religious Liberty (Dignitatis humanae) was widely
considered discontinuous with church teaching, and that was deemed good by
some and treasonous by others. The encyclicalHumanae vitaeon contracep-
tion (three years later) was widely regarded as too consistent with tradition,
which, once again, was deemed good by some and retrograde by others.
Important and influential theologians made the Dogmatic Constitution on
the Church (Lumen gentium) a transitional note en route to the Pastoral
Constitution on the Church in the Modern World (Gaudium et spes), thus
suggesting that the historical method of the latter—reading the‘signs of the
times’—constitutes an adequate or even a superior norm for interpreting
doctrine. Indeed, throughout the documents, many principles and perspec-
tives were juxtaposed without decisive synthesis.^6
After his election, John Paul set out quickly to clarify at least one synthetic
angle that promises to reconcile both the dogmatic and the cultural-historical
(situational) perspectives. And this was theological anthropology—a theme
that was both explicit and latent in the conciliar documents. Themysterium
hominisrequires us to not only understand what man says about himself in his
own personal and historical existence, but also God revealing man to man
himself.^7 Hence, hisfirst encyclical,Redemptor hominis(1979), thefirst of a
trilogy of encyclicals on the Divine Trinity. Throughout this trilogy, John Paul II
made the same anthropological move: the question what does it mean‘to rule’
is turned back to the question‘what is man’, and the anthropological question
is then developed in the light of things revealed: by the Son, then about the
Father, andfinally through the Spirit. More about this later.
Besides their common role as conciliar popes, the two men also shared an
interest in the work of Thomas Aquinas and the importance of philosophy.
Leo was the founder of the Roman Academy of St Thomas Aquinas, and John
Paul II was the re-founder of that academy, now called the Pontifical Academy
of St Thomas Aquinas. And they did so under similar circumstances. One year
after issuingAeterni Patris, his encyclical on faith and reason, Leo brought his
Perugian Academy of St Thomas to Rome. It was more than a think tank; it
became virtually a writing factory. At his election in 1878, no one expected
that the sixty-eight-year-old Leo XIII would write some 110 teaching letters. It
(^6) On juxtaposition and synthesis, see Hermann Pottmeyer,‘A New Phase in the Reception of
Vatican II: Twenty Years of Interpretation of the Council’, in G. Albhergio, J.-P. Jossua, and
J. A. Komonchak (eds),Reception of Vatican II(Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of
America Press, 1987), 27–43.
(^7) ParaphrasingGaudium et spes§22:‘Hence under the light of Christ, the image of the unseen
God, thefirstborn of every creature, the council wishes to speak to all men in order to shed light
on the mystery of man’(Guadium et spes§11).
242 F. Russell Hittinger