SOURCE: “The Prophetic Humanism of John Paul II,” in America, October 23, 1993, pp. 6-11.

In the following essay, Dulles examines John Paul's humanist view of individual conscience, communalism, political participation, and transcendent order. According to Dulles, “John Paul II evidently sees himself and the church as divinely commissioned to be the advocates of authentic humanity.”

For some time I have been asking myself whether there is a single rubric under which it might be possible to summarize the message of the present pontificate. I have thought about the Pope's concern for the inner unity of the Catholic Church, the new evangelization, the dialogue between faith and culture, and reconstruction of the economic order. All these themes are clearly important to John Paul II, but no one of them permeates his teaching as a whole. In seeking a more comprehensive theme, I have hit upon the idea of prophetic humanism...