Memory and Identity

Reflecting on the most challenging issues and events of his turbulent times, Pope John Paul II reveals his personal thoughts in a truly historic document.

A historical and philosophical meditation on freedom and its limits, as well as on ideas of Homeland and Nation, and on the Christian roots of Europe, it offers an extraordinary message of peace and hope in the salvation of humankind.

The world's greatest communicator offers a moving insight into his intellectual and spiritual journey and pastoral experience. Each chapter suggests the answer to a question which either exercised his mind or which he provoked in discussion with laymen and priests. Using the encounters at his summer residence of Castel Gandolfo where conversations took place with leading intellectuals - philosophers as well as theologians - Pope John Paul II addresses in his book many of the questions which arose from these discussions. Here he leaves for posterity an intellectual and spiritual testament in an attempt to seek the answer to defining problems that vex our lives.

The book ends with the Pope's first ever published comments on the assassination attempt upon his life in 1981. The conversational tone and form of this book indicates to the reader that this is not an academic thesis, more of a friendly talk. Each chapter is, as it were, the answer to a question which many of us carry in our heads or hearts.

See also: Memoria e Identidad (Memory and Identity - Spanish)

Table of Contents

THE LIMIT IMPOSED UPON EVIL
Mysterium Iniquitatis:The Coexistence of Good and Evil
Ideologies of Evil The Limit Imposed Upon Evil in European History
Redemption as the Divine Limit Imposed Upon Evil
The Mystery of Redemption
Redemption: Victory Given as a Task to Man

FREEDOM AND RESPONSIBILITY
Toward a Just Use of Freedom
Freedom is For Love
The Lessons of Recent History
The Mystery of Mercy

THINKING "MY COUNTRY' (NATIVE LAND - NATION - STATE)
On the Concept of Patria (Native Land)
Patriotism
The Concept of Nation
History
Nation and Culture

THINKING "EUROPE" (POLAND - EUROPE - CHURCH)
Europe as "Native Land"
The Evangelization of Central and Eastern Europe
The Positive Fruits of the Enlightenment
The Mission of the Church
The Relationship Between Church and State
Europe in the Context of Other Continents

DEMOCRACY: POSSIBILITIES AND RISKS
Modern Democracy
Back to Europe?
The Maternal Memory of the Church
The Vertical Dimension of European History

EPILOGUE
"Someone Must Have Guided That Bullet"