The Politics of Hope

Extract

Looking over the list of speakers scheduled for the International Convocation on Pacem in Terris, a Catholic economist remarked, I'm afraid it is going to be an international name-dropping jamboree.’ Another reaction was that the gathering would represent no more than the attempt of a feuding family to ‘bury the hatchet’ long enough to pay respects to a deceased and much loved grandfather. As I looked over the massive gatherings at the United Nations and in the grand ballroom of the New York Hilton, I experienced something much more hopeful. For the four days of February 17-20,1965, less than two years after Pope John XXIII addressed his letter to all humanity, 2,300 persons from 20 countries concentrated on that letter. The over-riding impact of the International Convocation was the intensity with which humanity was combing Pacem in Terris for guidance, and yes, for hope.

Paul G. Hoffman, Director of the United Nations Special Fund, in introducing Vice-President Hubert Humphrey at the opening ceremony, stated: ‘When Pope John renewed our awareness that war and peace are not only political matters but moral matters, when he reminded us that a cynical divorcement of the moral from the political has historically been the prelude to disaster, he gave us a message that we need and must not fail to heed.’ This was indeed the theme of the Convocation. ‘Peace is a process, not a miracle', said Vice-President Humphrey, and added that the encyclical offered a basis for a ‘politics of hope'. ‘In the encyclical, John XXIII presented to the world a public philosophy for a nuclear era', Humphrey pointed out in his prepared text.