are necessary for humaneudaimonia: marriage–family, polity, and church.
The human being is a matrimonial, political, and ecclesial animal. These three
theatres or seats ofeudaimoniaare interrelated, and in the case of sacramental
marriage, overlapping. And therefore the institutional and moral decline of
one inevitably affects the fortunes of the other two.
Leo’s magisterial effort was to defend the great or necessary institutions for
man as an image bearer, and what’s more to propose how the institutions
stand one to the other in a tranquillity of order. This was the great Leonine
response tohis‘modern times’. Institutional repair proved to be a long,
zigzagging process. Beginning in the wake of the Revolution, it would continue
through the Great Depression, and two world wars, and to the effort to rebuild
Europe after 1945.
Our brief sketch of Leo’s historical and political situation will help us
discern the novelty of John Paul II’s reaction. Leo’s older‘modern times’
were marked by the primacy of the social-institutional questions. The inaug-
ural encyclical of every pope from Pius VI to Paul VI dealt with one or another
aspect of the theologico-political problem. Had John Paul II started his
pontificate in this mould, hisfirst encyclical would have addressed the political
situation in Poland and Eastern Europe. Surely, a pope from the most polit-
ically fraught sector of Europe would have something to say right away about
the ruling powers out along the Vistula.
Instead, he issuedRedemptor hominis(1979): not on the problem of the
state, Hobbes’sdeus mortalis, but rather on Jesus Christ assalvator hominis.
Where his predecessors askedQuid est Caesar(what is Caesar),Redemptor
hominisbegins with the question posed by Psalm 8:‘what is man [quid est
homo] that you should be mindful of him, or the son of man that you should
care for him? You have made him a little less than the angels, and crowned
him with glory and honour. You have given him rule over the works of your
hands.’^14 To the question,‘What is man?’, he answers, participated royalty. In
hisfirst trip to Poland after being elected pope—a trip that would forever
change the history of central Europe—he called the Polespiasts, sovereigns, or
those who are crowned.^15 So, too, in his trip to Cameroon, he referred to the
African youth as‘being crowned’according to Ps. 8.4–6.^16
As John Paul appropriated the Leonine tradition, the principles of human
action are still quite evident, but he shifted the focus from institutions to
anthropology. If the principal theme of political order is governance, he would
put the issue one step deeper: what does it mean for a human person to rule his
(^14) Redemptor hominis§8.
(^15) Address at Gniezno (3 June 1979). See L’OR Eng. edn, 11 June 1979, 7–9. GHW 41.Piast
was the name of the Polish dynasty that converted to Catholicism in 966.
(^16) Given at Yaoundé, Cameroon, on 14 September 1995 on the Feast of the Triumph of the
Cross. SeeEcclesia in Africa§82. For his use of Ps. 8.4–6, seeEvangelium vitae§35, §82, §84;
Letter to Families§10;Mulieris§§10–11.
246 F. Russell Hittinger