Gaudium Et Spes Comentarios

THE SUBJECT OF GAUDIUM ET SPES
RECLAIMING A CHRISTOCENTRIC ANTHROPOLOGY OF THE
HUMAN PERSON
Gil Bailie
The Cornerstone Forum
gil@cornerstone-forum.org

ABSTRACT:
Beneath thesurface of many of the disturbing moral, political, cultural problems now looming is
the growing incidence of what Henri de Lubac called the diminution of “ontological density,” a
spiritual distressthat Hans Urs von Balthasar characterized as the “loss of ontological moorings.”
The modern self, fashioned according to Cartesian presuppositions which vastly inflated its
capacity for socialautonomy, is succumbing to pathologies intrinsic to the anthropological
fallacies upon which it was premised. The attenuation of the Christian revelation that gave
personal existence itstheological underpinnings and cultural sustenance is having a devastating
effect, especially on the young. No response to the political, cultural, and moral confusions of
our time will succeed if it doesnot address this underlying problem.
Indeed, the Lord Jesus, when He prayed to the Father, "that all may be one. . . as
we are one" (John 17:21-22) opened up vistas closed to human reason, for Heimplied a certain likeness between the union of the divine Persons, and the unity
of God's sons in truth and charity. This likeness reveals that man, who is the only
creature on earth which Godwilled for itself, cannot fully find himself except
through a sincere gift of himself. – Gaudium et spes, 24
Even though Vatican II emphasized – in Gaudium et spes and elsewhere – the centralityof the
person in Catholic social teaching and in the Church’s engagement with contemporary culture,
the anthropological preparation for the defense of that position was presupposed rather thanactually accomplished.
The word “person” assumed its prominence in the vocabulary of Western culture only after
Christian theologians, in speaking of the three Persons of the Trinity, gave the...