John Paul knows these arguments inside out, but he is not buying. The human person, he contends, truly is free. He is created for freedom and, although hindered by the wound of sin, he is capable of freedom. That is the truth about the human person without which all talk about morality makes no sense. That, says the Pope, is the question of everyman, no matter how tentatively or confusedly it is asked.
Life is to know the truth and do the truth.
But, it may be objected, this is impossibly ethereal and offputtingly religious. Just so, says John Paul, and that is precisely why we need so urgently to engage in argument about the truth that undergirds human freedom and dignity. Our differences notwithstanding, we can make sense to one another because we have in common our human nature and the capacity to reason, and these are universal. The Pope is keenly aware that in contending for universal nature and reason he is going up against regnant views in many of our elite institutions views that have metastasized with remarkable virulence in popular culture. As freedom has turned against itself, so also reason has turned against itself, with the result that confidence in what is distinctively human has been severely undermined.