Whether you’re religious or not, believe in the Pope or not, no matter what background you come from, the concepts of love and compassion are as universal as the concept of dignity.
On May 13, 1981, Pope John Paul II was making his usual trip through the crowds in Vatican Square when four shots rang out through the crowd, each of them hitting the Pope. The crowd watched in horror as their beloved Pontiff collapsed, bleeding heavily. He was rushed to the hospital, where he underwent a 6-hour long surgery that he barely survived. There were also two bystanders that were injured in the attack.
The almost-assassin was 23-year-old Turkish terrorist Mehmet Ali Agca. Without delving too much into politics, Agca was part of a political group who hated the Pope and all of his ideals. He had recently escaped from prison, where he was being held for murdering a prominent Turkish newspaper editor. So he was a bad guy… and the world was happy to see him sentenced to life in an Italian prison for attempted murder.
The Pope made a full recovery, to the relief of many (yes, yes, especially Catholics). Of course, the knee-jerk reaction to an act of terror is exactly that—terror. Terror brings anger, hate, prejudice, misunderstanding, and all manner of negative feelings and emotions. Look at Americans’ reactions to the September 11th attacks. The last thing that anyone wanted to do was forgive the people that caused those emotions.
Pope John Paul II taught the whole world a lesson in 1984 when he visited Agca in prison. In an intensely hushed meeting, with only the Pope’s press secretary and photographer in attendance, John Paul II managed to make a global proclamation of forgiveness. He reconciled with his attempted killer, saying later that the teachings of Christ spurred him to do so.
Even when you take the religion out of it and you still have a dramatic story showing an act of dignity upheld. The Pope put aside all differences between him and Agca, and out of a love for his fellow human exemplified the true meaning of “love thy neighbor”. He upheld the dignity of one who the majority of people were ready to condemn immediately, demonstrating the overreaching and non-judgmental power of love.
This is an excerpt from the Social Doctrine of the Church. It applies to everyone…not just those who follow a Christian God:
Discovering that they are loved by God, people come to understand their own transcendent dignity, they learn not to be satisfied with only themselves but to encounter their neighbour in a network of relationships that are ever more authentically human. Men and women who are made “new” by the love of God are able to change the rules and the quality of relationships, transforming even social structures. They are people capable of bringing peace where there is conflict, of building and nurturing fraternal relationships where there is hatred, of seeking justice where there prevails the exploitation of man by man. Only love is capable of radically transforming the relationships that men maintain among themselves. This is the perspective that allows every person of good will to perceive the broad horizons of justice and human development in truth and goodness.
If you still think I’m a religious whacko because I chose this as my example of dignity upheld, just remember the other philosophies operating in this story. It contains elements of Kant’s Categorical Imperative, Kateb’s ideas on dignity as a universally human attribute, Rawls on self-respect, and even, somehow, Singer’s ideas about relationships and human worth. Not so mainstream religion, now, is it?
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