THE LASTING VISION OF POPE JOHN

"THE document that inspired the convocation is one of the great encyclicals of the century. Unusually long for a papal pronouncement--more than 15,000 words--Pacem in Terris was issued by John XXIII on April 11, 1963, less than two months before his death. It was the last of his eight encyclicals, the first in history addressed not only to the bishops and laity of the Roman Catholic Church but to "all men of good will."

What the Pope said to the world is not in itself radical or revolution ary; many of the ideas put forward by John had been articulated by his predecessor Pius XII. What gave these ideas freshness and new life is the warm, open Johannine spirit--the willingness to reach beyond the frontiers of Catholic doctrine and bring the church into dialogue with the modern world. Perhaps more important, they were ideas whose time had come round at last. The encyclical appeared in a season of relaxing world tensions and at the moment in history when the Christian churches had entered an era of good will--the ecumenical century.

Rights & Duties. Pacem in Terris methodically progressed from a discussion of the rights and duties of individual men to the relations of state with state. These relations, argued the Pope, must be based on truth, justice, love and, above all, freedom. Specifically, he condemned racial discrimination, strongly affirmed the right of religious liberty, and passionately deplored the arms race.

Pope John addressed atheists as well as believers; yet Pacem in Terris is an unmistakably theistic work. This is hardly surprising in a papal pronouncement, but it clearly sets the encyclical apart from such purely secular documents as the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Time and again, Pope John argues that the rights of men and governments stem not solely from human consent but from the design of the Creator.

How is God's design to be known? In answer, Pope John turned to a cherished concept of Catholic philosophy: natural law--man's instinctive but God-given knowledge of right and wrong. It is the law of nature, he argued, that man has the right to life, education, private property and has the duty to cooperate with others in building an orderly world. Today, said the Pope, the moral order demanded by natural law also requires a supranational public authority--a world government.

Concise & Limpid. Natural law dictates the relationship between men and nations. But these relation ships must be ratified and established by human law, and Pope John applauded that fundamental of Western democracy, government by constitution. Rejecting government by coercion, the Pope endorsed the explicit definition of the rights and duties of governments and citizens in every nation's basic law, including a charter of fundamental human rights written "in concise and limpid phraseology."

When Pacem in Terris was published, the immediate response was an astonishingly broad chorus of praise. Grateful for John's favorable comments on the U.N., Secretary-General U Thant hailed the Pope's "wisdom, vision and courage." Abandoning its traditional policy of nonresponse to papal words, the U.S. State Department heralded Pacem in Terris' emphasis on human liberty. Equally delighted by the encyclical's denunciation of colonialism, Europe's Communist press crowed so loudly about John's "opening to the left" that the Vatican was forced to re-emphasize the church's unaltered rejection of Communism.

But there were critics. Social Philosopher Will Herberg noted that the Pope's sketch of 20th century trends inexplicably ignored the spread of totalitarianism. And a number of Christian thinkers have noted that in dealing with the crucial issue of disarmament and world peace, Pope John said little more than "ban the bomb." An American Jesuit de scribes John's vague generalities on coexistence as "a lump of suet in a pudding."

Nonetheless, as the convocation made clear, Pacem in Terris remains--in the words of Robert Hutchins--"one of the most profound and significant documents of our age." What it offers to men facing contemporary risks and realities, said Economist Barbara Ward, is "a glimpse of how the world might look under the governance of love."

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