CONTEMPORARY SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC ISSUES FROM JOHN PAUL II'S TEACHING PERSPECTIVE

ISBN: 978-83-8030-700-1

stron: 153

format: B5

oprawa: twarda

rok wydania: 2024

The late 20th and early 21st century, the period of John Paul II and his successors’ activity, was a time of remarkable and significant social and political transformations.
From the end of World War II until the end of the 1980s, we witnessed the world divided into a communist, totalitarian East, and a democratic and marketoriented West. Finally, the Iron Curtain separated them. Fortunately, this division was never complete, it evolved to some extent, but still, it was a serious challenge for all. In political terms, the division of the world gave rise to the emergence of a bloc of USSR-dependent communist states on the one hand and of multi-party Western democracies on the other hand. In the latter countries, various socioeconomic models invoked liberal, conservative, Christian democratic, and social democratic ideas. The United States was the explicit political and economic leader in the Western world. The post-war period was also a time of a dispute over visions and a model of economic development between advocates of free-market neoclassical economics and Keynesian economists oriented towards interventionism and the construction of a social welfare and welfare state. Simultaneously, the post-war period was a worldwide process of decolonization and developing countries regaining independence. At the same time, competition between the two blocs for influence in Africa, Asia, and Latin America on the one
hand, and the desire of these countries to build their socio-economic model on the other, became a global problem. The post-war changes and phenomena also impacted the realm of religion. All in all, communism (guided by Marxist-Leninist teachings) was reluctant and hostile towards religion, although it sometimes tried, in its way, to infiltrate the Catholic Church and other religious communities. In the West, the Catholic Church was a major patron of Christian democratic movements that invoked personalist philosophy, flourishing in many countries. Finally, the Church supported initiatives for European integration, which, however, was confined to Western Europe at that time. An important breakthrough moment for the Catholic Church was the Second Vatican Council, initiated and held during the papacy of John XXIII and Paul VI, aiming at the renewal of the Church and dialogue with the modern world. This text will focus on the legacy of the thought of St. John Paul II, especially for social, economic, and, more broadly, modern world issues. The 1978 election
of the Polish cardinal Karol Wojtyla as pope, who took the name John Paul II, came as a great and unexpected shock for many. A man who became a pope came “from a distant country” ruled by the communists, even if it can be assumed that in the 1970s this system was no longer as restrictive in Poland as it was in the USSR or the GDR. “From a distant country”, where his older friend, Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński had in fact been at the time the national spiritual leader. This fact certainly spurred and deepened social and political change in Central and Eastern Europe. His pilgrimage to Poland in June 1979 proved to be an event of great spiritual and intellectual significance. The communists were losing people’s hearts and minds. A new intellectual and spiritual atmosphere on the one hand, and the growing economic and social problems on the other contributed to the strikes of August 1980 and the launch of “Solidarity”, a social and trade union movement. Much as this movement was temporarily quenched by the introduction of martial law in December 1981, the dynamics of change could not be stopped. Over time, a growing weakness of the economic and political system provoked changes initiated in the USSR by Mikhail Gorbachev in the late 1980s, which also began to spread to other countries.

(Excerpt from the introduction)

SPIS TREŚCI

FOREWORD

Simona Beretta
JOHN PAUL II’S TEACHINGS AND THE ROOTS OF INTEGRAL DEVELOPMENT: THE PERSON IN ACTION, THE PERSON IN RELATION

Stefano Zamagni
BUSINESS LEADERSHIP IN THE LIGHT OF JOHN PAUL II’S TEACHINGS

Łukasz Hardt
ECONOMY AS A DRAMA OF HUMAN PERSONS. REFLECTIONS BASED ON ST. JOHN PAUL II’S VISION OF THEATRE

Michał Łuczewski
THE SOUND SOURCES OF THE “MORAL ECONOMY” OF JOHN PAUL II

Ewa Baranowska-Prokop
MODERN MARKETING CONCEPTS PERCEIVED FROM JOHN PAUL II’S TEACHING PERSPECTIVE

Aleksander Sulejewicz
REMEMBERING TADEUSZ L. PŁUŻAŃSKI: FROM PASCAL TO JOHN PAUL II IN THE SHADOW OF HEGEL AND MARX

Tomasz Dołęgowski
BETWEEN THE ECONOMY AND THE ETHICS OF ECONOMIC LIFE. THE LEGACY OF THE THOUGHT OF JOHN PAUL II

Ewa Baranowska-Prokop and Tomasz Dołęgowski
DISCUSSION AND GENERAL REFLECTIONS

AFTERWORD

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS