At the beginning of the third Christian millennium, the human race stands poised between two “paths”: the progressive deterioration of “postmodernism,” and the “New Springtime” of grace proclaimed by Pope John Paul II and the Catholic Church. Ted Papa offers reflections on the New Springtime of grace, and the pivotal moment in history that we can sense, even as we live through it. The bi-weekly column, to be entitled “On Being Human,” begins with a thoughtful comparison of humanity’s predicament with the nursery rhyme we heard as children.

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall.
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.
All the king’s horses and all the king’s men couldn’t put Humpty Dumpty together again.

I remember being five years old and hearing about Humpty Dumpty.

I probably was not alone in my reaction to the poem. There is something a bit cruel about it—and my response was something very akin to grief. That unfortunate egg brings youngsters face to face with irrevocable loss; perhaps in the same way that, for a six-year-old, each day’s setting sun whispers that there is one less day to life.

In the century just completed, the human race found itself in a position not unlike the scrambled mess at the base of an imaginary English wall. Despite obvious advances, the century brought one storm after another: WWI, WWII, Holocaust, Cold War, poverty—each with a seemingly greater propensity to extinguish humanity, or at least anything worthwhile in the human race … and each accompanied by a sense of loss.

In some sense, we live in “milder” times. At the same time, we can sense that the “irrevocable loss” once displayed by worldwide crises has settled into the lives of individuals. Psychology, movies, divorce rates, Columbine Highs tell us that we are heirs to a humanity that is broken, fractured, confused, unsure of what to make of itself.

We’ve probably all heard of postmodern philosophy—which sounds neat, because modern was neat, and whatever comes after modern must be neater still. But “postmodernism” is merely the articulation of the fractured, dissipated state of the human being. The being whom Sacred Scripture describes as the image of God, “a little lower than an angel,” is reduced in postmodern philosophy to little more than the thoughts he is conscious of at a given moment.

And don’t even ask me about postmodern society …

Without relating a history of modern philosophy, our unfortunate human shell has suffered a continual fragmentation for a period of roughly 500 years. (You philosophers out there will recognize immediately that I am referring to the legacy of Rene Descartes.) And this fragmentation has been a one-way street: one assault after another on the integrity and dignity of the human person until you have, well, the 20th Century.

But now it’s the 21st Century.

The beauty … the marvel … the miracle of our time is the possibility that gravity will reverse itself: Humpty Dumpty may be able, once again, to assume his perch. What do I mean by this? Am I an optimist, or a fool? How can I propose something that all the king’s men, to say nothing of all his horses, couldn’t pull off?

Catholics know that there is something called a New Springtime in the air … and did you know that it is more often than not called “a new Springtime for the Church and for the world?” For some reason, at the end of a century of mind-numbing violence, hatred and fear (if you don’t see the 20th Century this way, then you weren’t alive during the Cold War with its constant, and real, threat of nuclear annihilation); at the end of such a century, God has seen fit to grant a New Springtime to humanity, and the possibility exists—if we play our cards right—that the human race is going to come out more healthy, more whole, more human and, yes, sitting on top of that wall with Humpty Dumpty and a whole host of other friends, talking or playing cards or doing whatever else we like.

This column will be about the New Springtime. It will be about what it means to be a human being—about what has been lost in the centuries of attack on the human person since Descartes, and what we must struggle for, indeed insist upon to develop a new humanity worthy of New Springtime grace. It will be about Pope John Paul II—architect, prophet, personal exemplar of what the New Springtime is all about. And it will be about the qualities—the foremost of which is love—that must, and we can confidently say will, infuse the human race in this century—and centuries—to come.

Copyright © 2000 Ted Papa