POPE JOHN PAUL, MARXISM AND CATHOLIC CHINTHANAYA
Pope John Paul II is dead. It fell on him to help and see that the Catholic Chinthanaya died with the fall of the Berlin wall. Today it lives only as an "avatar". Before anybody cross swords with me, on behalf of Catholic Religion as many have done since the third century, I must emphasise that I am referring to Catholic Chinthanaya and not the Catholic Religion. Pope John Paul II became the first Pole to become a Pope, and it is very likely that there would not be a second Pope from Poland, unless the cardinals want to prove to the world that there was no special reason to chose a Cardinal from Poland as the Pope, when they elected Pope John Paul II. Jozef Wojtyla who was born less than three years after the Russian revolution lived to see not only the rise and fall of the Communist Poland but the fall of the Soviet Russia and the entire communist Eastern Europe that formerly were countries mainly of the Greek Orthodox Church.
The Catholic Chinthanaya, as an "avatar", will live among that category of people who call themselves the Post Marxists, for some more time. It will continue to challenge Greek Judaic Christian (GJC) Chinthanaya without the vast majority of the people not knowing that a group called Post Marxists exist. It is very likely that of all the people the Sinhalas, especially the Sinhala Buddhists, as a percentage, would know of the Post Marxists than any other nation or community in the world. It speaks volumes for the toleration of the Sinhala society as the Sinhala people are open to any ideas coming from abroad as they are confident that nothing could destroy the Sinhala Bauddha Chinthanaya. After all if one were to find out which nation or community had most members that had heard of Postmodernism, as a percentage, it is very likely that the Sinhalas would be in the top league. It is not only the academics and the so called intelligentsia among the Sinhalas that had heard of Postmodernism, and further they were not worried about the Postmodernists as it was not a threat to the Sinhala Bauddha Chinthanaya. In Sri Lanka there were more articles on Postmodernism in Sinhala than in English.
Now what has all this got to do with Pope John Paul II ? Papacy is identified with the Catholic Chinthanaya just as much American Presidency is identified with GJC Chinthanaya. The former Chinthanaya was the dominant chinthanaya in Europe in the fourteenth century. However, the fifteenth century initiated a change that began to challenge the Catholic Chinthanaya. Incidentally Chinthanaya is a concept that enables us to think of a society as a whole. It is holistic concept and it can be said that Catholic Chinthanaya is more holistic than the GJC Chinthanaya. For the uninitiated Chinthanaya could be considered as the thread that binds everything that a society has produced, in essence the culture that has been produced by the relevant society. Those who claim that they cannot understand the concept chinthanaya are advised to read more and more on paradigm by Thomas Kuhn. Paradigm is the base on which various western scientific theories are constructed. Thus there is a Newtonian paradigm and an Einsteinian paradigm according to Kuhn. I would like to add two more paradigms namely the Thermodynamical paradigm and the Quantum Mechanical paradigm. Though Kuhn is more concerned with paradigm shifts, various paradigms could co-exist and it is common practice for different western scientists to base themselves on different paradigms. Though Einsteinian paradigm is different from Newtonian paradigm the former did not displace the latter. Western medicine, hundred years after the Einstein revolution has not shifted itself from the Newtonian paradigm. Chinthanaya is a more fundamental concept than paradigm and one could find number of paradigms within a particular Chinthanaya. Both Newtonian and Einstein paradigms operate within the GJC Chinthanaya. This coexistence is against the spirit of both GJC and the Catholic Chinthanaya which insists on one Truth. Though a paradigm is not a truth the GJC will have to resolve the paradox of how truth could be derived from different bases or paradigms.
The so called renaissance and then the Copernican and Galilean revolution that heralded the beginning of western science was essentially based on the incipient GJC Chinthanaya. The GJC Chinthanaya emphasised on the individual and not on the society. The western society that thinks in terms of dichotomies in which one of the pairs is the dominant shifted from society to individual with the renaissance. The individual became the dominant concept in the individual - society dichotomy. Similarly abstract thinking displaced concrete thinking in the Catholic Chinthanaya. These two changes marked the essential difference between the Catholic Chinthanaya and the GJC Chinthanaya.
After the fifteenth century in Europe the TRUTH had to be formulated in terms of abstract concepts as there was no other way the Europeans could formulate knowledge that they had received from the eastern countries. Though Copernicus is credited with "discovering" the heliocentric motion of the earth and the other planets, it was known to the ancient Bharaths. As far as Bharath was concerned it was only a relative motion and they dod not give up the motion of the sun conceived as a motion relative to the earth. As the Bharaths were not pre occupied with the TRUTH or the absolute truth at the expense of the other truths they had no difficulty in believing in both types of relative motion and they knew which relative motion they had to use in any given situation. It is not known how the Bharaths cognised the motion of the earth relative to the sun but it could be a result of a developed mind through "dhyana". It would have been an experience for at least some of the Rishis.
When Copernicus and later Galileo championed the heliocentric motion of the earth, the Catholic Chinthanaya and the western system had to face different problems. Unlike the Bharaths they were not used to "yoga" and "dhyana". Though the motion of the sun round the earth could be experienced, as any normal person could see sun rising in the east and setting in the west, the motion of the earth round the sun could not be seen by any sensible person. The educated people in Italy asked Galileo to prove that the earth went round the sun. Galileo had no proof, however, he had an answer to an interesting question raised by his countrymen. The Italians had asked him why a person who jump upwards falls back to the same point on the earth from where he (those days Italians would not have worried of women either liberated or otherwise jumping to disprove that the earth went round the sun) jumped? They had argued that if the earth moved then by the time the person fell back to the earth, the latter would have moved some distance and the person would have landed at some point other than the point from where he jumped. Galileo said that the person moved "horizontally" with the earth and thus the only motion of the person relative to the earth was the vertical motion. He had also said that the only motion observable was relative motion and thus with respect to the earth only the relative vertical motion could be observed.
However this was not a proof as such and it was nothing but a statement on relative motion and observability of relative motion only. Copernicus and especially Galileo who had no "dhyanic" or any other experience of the earth moving round the sun had to introduce such motion as an abstract "truth" and not as a concrete experience. The Catholic Church, and the Pope who was based on Catholic Chinthanaya, were not prepared to accept Galileo without any concrete proof. Galileo had to "temporarily" withdraw his words. However, centuries later Pope John Paul II apologized to Galileo on behalf of the Catholic Church symbolising the final defeat of that Chinthanaya by the GJC Chinthanaya.
It is ironical that Pope John Paul II who was behind the Polish uprising against the communist regime had to finally concede defeat to GJC Chinthanaya. Western Christian modernity, western Christian culture and its economic arm, the capitalist mode, western science and technology are all results of the new GJC Chinthanaya. With the GJC Chinthanaya the absolute truth was presented as abstract statements, and not in concrete terms as it was the case in Catholic Chinthanaya. Western science, especially its role model Physics has come up with abstract concepts and theories from Newtonian absolute space to string theory. The change from society to the individual has given rise to private property, freedom of the individual, human rights etc., at the expense of the welfare of the society as a whole. The western Christian culture and western science may talk of protection of the environment without realising that as long as the individual is the dominant part of the dichotomy, or the binary opposition as Derrida and the so called postmodernists would like to formulate, individual - society , it remains a dream in the minds of the individuals. Freedom of gays and lesbians, which Pope John Paul II opposed, also stem from the individual becoming the dominant part of the above dichotomy. As far as the Catholic Chinthanaya is concerned marriage and sex are for procreation and bringing up of children for the society and would see no benefit from marriages among homosexuals.
The abstract theorising and the prominence given to the individual distinguished GJC Chinthanaya from the Catholic Chinthanaya. In the nineteenth century the prominence given to the individual was challenged by some intellectuals in Germany a Catholic country unlike England that became the most representative of the GJC Chinthanaya. This challenge was however partial as it neglected the abstract theorising in the GJC Chinthanaya. People such as Hegel and Marx were in the forefront of this movement. In Marxism it appeared as a challenge to capitalism, the economic mode of the GJC Chinthanaya, with its emphasis on private property and capital. However Marx did not challenge abstract theorising and he himself went on constructing abstract models in the name of a science that revealed the Truth.
It is ironical that Marxism was partially based on Catholic Chinthanaya which neither the Catholic Church nor Marxism was able to understand. Even today the so called Post Marxists, including many German intellectuals of the critical social theory school partially base themselves on the Catholic Chinthanaya. On the other hand French intellectuals such as Derrida, Foucault and others before them were the flag bearers of the GJC Chinthanaya. It has to be mentioned that though these intellectuals were born in Catholic France or French colonies such as Algeria, they were based on the GJC Chinthanaya. It comes as no surprise to find that they are more popular in the English speaking world of GJC Chinthanaya than in France itself.
In any event GJC Chinthanaya and capitalism were challenged by the socialist countries led by Soviet Russia, and capitalism had to defeat Marxist socialism for its survival. The irony of the ironies was that this task was finally accomplished by a Pope who was born in a Marxist socialist country. As the newspaper Guardian in England has put it, from the point of view of GJC chinthanaya,Pope John Paul II was a mixture of good times and bad times. The Catholic Church unfortunately has to serve GJC chinthanaya in order to survive and most probably elected the first Pope from Poland in order to carry out the historical necessity of defeating (Marxist terminology) the Soviet block from the point of view of capitalism. Pope John Paul II and Walensa were unfortunately mere pawns in the hands of capitalism and the GJC Chinthanaya. Once Poland was defeated it was a (reverse) domino action, which the Americans had feared sometime ago, dismantling the rest of the Marxist socialist countries.
Pope John Paul II though helped the GJC Chinthanaya in dismantling the Soviet block countries could not agree with all the freedom given to the individual at the expense of the society. Catholism is after all about the whole and synthesis and not on dissection into parts what the God has synthesised. From the point of view of GJC chinthanaya it is wrong to oppose the freedom of the individual to experience any type of sexual pleasure in particular and pleasure in general. Thus Pope John Paul is in the bad books of GJC chinthanaya in respect of his attitudes towards marriage and sex. It is interesting to remember that the breakaway of England from the Papacy took place during the time of Henry VIII over a question of marriage, and England went on to become the dominant country representing the GJC chinthanaya. Charles Windsor on the eighth of April would be taking a step, however meek it may be, in the same direction as his ancestor did. However, Charles Windsor would not be creating a new church, as the present GJC chinthanaya of the English looks after his freedom to marry a divorcee, unlike in the days of his grand uncle.
If Marx and the Popes had realised that they were closer to each other than they had thought there would not have been a Pope John Paul II. Does the history of Marx (Historical Materialism) works in more mysterious ways than the God himself?
Professor Nalin de Silva
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