H.H. Pope John-Paul II
Vatican City
Tuesday, 21 October 2003
Most Holy Father,
Two days ago, during Holy Mass in both the Cathedral-Basilica of Ciutadella (Menorca) and the neighbouring Church of St Francis of Assisi, in loving communion with Mary the most holy Mother of G-d and with all the Angels and Saints, I gave thanks for all the graces of your first twenty-five years as Pope - including that of the beatification of Mother Teresa of Calcutta."I sometimes feel appalled at the thought of the sum total of human misery all over the world at the present moment. The millions parted, fretting, wasting in unprofitable days - quite apart from torture, pain, death, bereavement, injustice. If anguish were visible, almost the whole of this benighted planet would be enveloped in a dense dark vapour, shrouded from the amazed vision of the heavens! And the products of it all will be mainly evil - historically considered. But the historic version is, of course, not the only one. All things and all deeds have a value in themselves, apart from their 'causes' and 'effects'. No man can estimate what is really happening sub specie æternitatis. All we do know, and that to a large extent by direct experience, is that evil labours with vast power and perpetual success - in vain: preparing always the soil for unexpected good to sprout in."J.R.R. Tolkien, Letters (Houghton Mifflin, 2000)
You have frequently referred to that great human evil which goes by the name of "structural sin", and on several occasions you have publicly apologised and asked pardon for the many ways in which, during the course of the last two thousand years, evil has been done in the name of Jesus Christ and of His Church. More than once, too, you have acknowledged that, in today's world, the papacy itself sometimes appears to be more of a problem than it is a solution to our present difficulties.
As a television-documentary broadcast on BBC-4 reminded me yesterday evening, Thursday 11 September 2003 was the thirtieth anniversary of General Pinochet's military coup in Chile and of the sad death within his presidential palace of that long-suffering country's courageous, far-sighted and truly democratic leader, Dr Salvador Allende.
I visited Menorca last week mainly in order to compare its many surviving prehistoric remains with those in Malta and Gozo but, while I was there, I also made time to re-read the whole of one of President Allende's closest collaborators and friends, the cybernetician and operational researcher, Stafford Beer's thoughtful and illuminating Platform for Change (ISBN 0 471 06189 1; John Wiley & Sons Ltd, 1975), the initiating, rather than concluding, final two sections of which can help us to understand some of the ways in which both structural sin and individual limitations conspired - internationally perhaps even more notably than within the republic of Chile itself, to put back the clock on the still necessary work of peace and reconciliation everywhere, Vatican City not excluded.
Your creation of thirty more Cardinals today should not, I think, be your own final contribution to the vital process of providing the One Church of Jesus Christ with its next Pope. Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger's recent letter to certain members of the Anglican Communion was, clearly, an expression of that apostolic concern for "all the churches" which the Apostle St Paul so notably exemplified, and of which our common Baptism is both a symbol and a fruit.
If it is true, as I have previously claimed, that "schism" is, in fact, a greater "evil" than "heresy" and if it is true, as Your Holiness has noted, that the "papacy" in its present form can be an obstacle to Christian Unity, surely now is the time, while you still have both authority and opportunity, to provide the One Church over which you for the time being providentially preside with whatever means are required to ensure that the next Pope be chosen not merely by members of the Church of Rome, as institutionally understood, but also by an appropriate majority of other Christian leaders.
Given the present contents of the several websites for which I am currently responsible, and this letter being no more than one small addition to the many impulses of the Holy Spirit which come to you by virtue of your Office, I need not here and now elaborate on the actual contents of my preceding paragraph.
This, briefly, is their immediate context.
Not one of us is free from blame. Valid criticisms can be made of this or that aspect of the life and behaviour of Princess Diana (one of whose letters was published in yesterday's Daily Mirror), of Blessed Teresa of Calcutta, of Sts Augustine of Hippo, Boniface of Crediton and Thomas More but, like Miguel de Unamuno - and like J.R.R. Tolkien whom I quoted above, I do not think, Holy Father, that you mistake history for metahistory. Moreover, as a good philosophy, you already know that metahermeneutics is, humanly speaking, nowadays increasingly important and, therefore, its study every day more urgent.
Please bless and pray for me.
Shalom!
Dei gratia si quid est:
Col+in
Colin James Hamer, DCH, MRP, STL, PhD, AFPhys (ITEC), DSc (hc)
otherwise known as Shivananda
Salesian Cooperator, Master I†N The Sacred Page, Preliminary LibrArian emeritus I†N The Neith Network
Mission Statement Website Contents Home Page 
© The Neith Network Library 2003
Webmaster (in retirement): H.B. ExtraReverendDoctorColinJames Hamer, The Rainbow Programme
Creativity House, 9 Oxford Street, St. Thomas, EXETER, Devon EX2 9AG, U.K.
11:08 Tuesday 21/10/2003