Love, Mercy and Social Justice in the Context of Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński’s Personalist Concept of Social Life

Abstract

The article’s subject discusses love, mercy, and social justice from the perspective of Christian personalism presented by Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński. The author’s interpretation of source materials aims to present the above values as fundamental Christian virtues of a complementary nature, shaping the good of the human person’s goodness, both in the individual and social dimension. In the personalist-praxeological sense, both love, mercy, and social justice, understood as attitudes that which mean commitment and fidelity, are formed primarily in the Christian reality of everyday life, particularly with regard to one’s family and nation. The author of this article asks whether the aretology of Cardinal Wyszyński’s personalist concept of social life can be applied to the specific realities of the contemporary social life. The answer to such questions is extremely important, especially in the context of the currently proclaimed “ideological pluralism,” characteristic of present-day postmodern culture, which emphasizes the moral ambivalence of “liquid” postmodernity.

Keywords

• love
• mercy
• social justice
• personalism
• postmodernity
• Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński