This is the section I keep coming back to, over and over again. The entire argument about AI actually hinges on this understanding of who is human, and how and why, and what it means to be human, and what is and is not part of the human experience. I've read these few paragraphs a half dozen times already. Most of what makes us MOST human can never be optimized.
There won't be suffering in heaven, but that doesn't mean all our infirmities and wounds will disappear. Jesus was resurrected with all His wounds. What if heaven just means those infirmities and wounds aren't limiting anymore—that they aren't inextricably linked to suffering?
"Even when limitations are experienced as inner suffering, human wisdom teaches us not to deny or suppress it, but to integrate it. To eliminate suffering entirely would mean, in the end, extinguishing love and desire as well. Those who love and desire cannot avoid passing through trial and suffering; and over the years, we carry within us lessons that leave their mark like scars, the memories of a journey shaped by freedom and failure, dreams and disappointments. It is only thanks to the interplay of these elements that the wonders of the soul occur within us, allowing us to sense the richness of our humanity. [132] To renounce this adventure, both tragic and splendid, in the name of a presumed transcendence of all limits, could mean many things, but it would no longer be human."
Coming from my self-imposed world of Protestant/evangelical ethics of the body and fertility, this seems absolutely spot on. I've been wrestling with what feels off when we approach the (even potential) hardships associated with all things childbearing in a way that comes eerily close to a secular view of it. This is a hard needle to thread, without sounding callous or glorifying of suffering. But when we resort to, say, sterilization at every potential risk of anything (or in another sense, IVF), we are losing something profound about not just human existence--but a *Christian* one--in many areas. And it's a loss.
I have not finished it, either, but 124-125 is striking to me as a very Leonine* move towards reconciliation and unity. As examples, he raises up both darlings of the American left like Dorothy Day, who worked against systemic injustice; alongside favorite saints of the American right like St Maximilian Kolbe, remembered for their individual heroism. I am very grateful for the Holy Father's gentle insistence that, in everything to come, the lives of the saints are a tapestry of both/and exemplars, not either/or's.
This is the section I keep coming back to, over and over again. The entire argument about AI actually hinges on this understanding of who is human, and how and why, and what it means to be human, and what is and is not part of the human experience. I've read these few paragraphs a half dozen times already. Most of what makes us MOST human can never be optimized.
And in Heaven there won't be suffering... but we will still be finite, created beings, living in full communion with the Infinite God.
There won't be suffering in heaven, but that doesn't mean all our infirmities and wounds will disappear. Jesus was resurrected with all His wounds. What if heaven just means those infirmities and wounds aren't limiting anymore—that they aren't inextricably linked to suffering?
Thanks for drawing out these passages, Leah. I hadn't read them yet and love them.
This is so beautifully articulated:
"Even when limitations are experienced as inner suffering, human wisdom teaches us not to deny or suppress it, but to integrate it. To eliminate suffering entirely would mean, in the end, extinguishing love and desire as well. Those who love and desire cannot avoid passing through trial and suffering; and over the years, we carry within us lessons that leave their mark like scars, the memories of a journey shaped by freedom and failure, dreams and disappointments. It is only thanks to the interplay of these elements that the wonders of the soul occur within us, allowing us to sense the richness of our humanity. [132] To renounce this adventure, both tragic and splendid, in the name of a presumed transcendence of all limits, could mean many things, but it would no longer be human."
Coming from my self-imposed world of Protestant/evangelical ethics of the body and fertility, this seems absolutely spot on. I've been wrestling with what feels off when we approach the (even potential) hardships associated with all things childbearing in a way that comes eerily close to a secular view of it. This is a hard needle to thread, without sounding callous or glorifying of suffering. But when we resort to, say, sterilization at every potential risk of anything (or in another sense, IVF), we are losing something profound about not just human existence--but a *Christian* one--in many areas. And it's a loss.
I have not finished it, either, but 124-125 is striking to me as a very Leonine* move towards reconciliation and unity. As examples, he raises up both darlings of the American left like Dorothy Day, who worked against systemic injustice; alongside favorite saints of the American right like St Maximilian Kolbe, remembered for their individual heroism. I am very grateful for the Holy Father's gentle insistence that, in everything to come, the lives of the saints are a tapestry of both/and exemplars, not either/or's.
*Can we just start using this?