What Can Wojtyla’s Ethics Speak to the Abuse Crisis?

Abstract

In the face of the reality of myriad abuses that place the Church today in a deep moral and credibility crisis, we are not focused on what John Paul II may have done, by action or omission, in the exercise of the power he carried out in his ecclesiastical functions as a bishop, or even as pope. In this article, we focus only on Wojtyła, as a philosopher. We will examine how his phenomenology—if we can call it that—provides an ethics capable of making an important contribution to understanding that which constitutes abuse of a person, thus helping to define and prevent forms of exploitation and abuse. Taking Wojtyła’s notion of the person seriously will ground preventative practices in an approach which more fully corresponds to human maturation.