The Spirituality of Philosophy II

The Lublin Synthesis: The Search for Truth in the Face of Death.

Introduction

(Extract from The Spirituality of Philosophy: Lublin Synthesis) 

This is man’s response to horror. Nazi, then Communist, persecution wracked Poland. Nazis exterminated thousands of Catholics there for two years before they began to slaughter Jews. Catholic leaders of all sorts died, but particularly cultural innovators and intellectuals. Those who escaped the Nazi onslaught went underground to escape the Gestapo. They kept the ideal of Christian humanism alive, nurtured students who also risked their lives to learn what a real human is like, and fed humanism with their very blood. When the Russian Communists replaced the Nazis, they continued the destruction of Catholic leaders. Yet from underground thinkers surviving came the newest synthesis of all available thought. They united the Thomistic synthesis with the thought of the 700 years that followed Saint Thomas Aquinas. 

This new synthesis of philosophy and theology is not yet published entirely in English: of some twenty volumes in Polish, only four have been translated. This integration of all positive advances in thought since Saint Thomas Aquinas is a philosophical explosion. It is the most complete an dynamic express of human ingenuity to ever appear. Practically, it is the answer to our most devastating problem: why do some men devalue others. Knowing the cause, we can apply the cure.

Pope John Paul II

Saint John Paul II The Great