“Our children need our help to deal with tough issues, like violence. Please, talk with your kids,” said President Clinton in a recent TV spot. But what are the parents supposed to say?

Why have we had spectacular violence at Columbine High School and other places? Many say the solution is more than gun control. But the answer is deeper.

For a hint, let us consider “a tale of two cities.” That was how Cardinal Francis George described the contrast between the pope’s visits last January to Mexico City and St. Louis.

In Mexico City, young volunteers handled crowd control, police presence was unobtrusive and the pope was able “to visit the city itself, to greet hundreds of thousands of people, to be among them.”

In St. Louis, the Secret Service chose to “eliminate ... as much contact between pope and people as possible ... For every ... person on the sidewalks, there were, it seemed, two police officers ... Everything was secure; but contact, human relationship, was kept to a minimum.”

It was “a contrast between a culture of relationship and one of autonomy, a culture of communion to one of control ... Perhaps the ... violence and sociopathy are so high in our country that the precautions were necessary ... [I]n the United States today relationships are suspect because they threaten control; relationships will be sacrificed for the sake of control,” (Origins, Feb 18, 1999, 609).

The Cardinal was neither idealizing Mexico City nor disparaging St. Louis and those who participated in the papal events there. But his comments may help us understand how our culture can spawn an Eric Harris and a Dylan Klebold, who killed 13 others and themselves at Columbine.

What the Cardinal was hinting at was described by John Paul II as an “[i]ndividualism ... in which the subject does what he wants, in which he himself is the one to ‘establish the truth’ of whatever he finds pleasing or useful ... Individualism thus remains egocentric and selfish,” (Letter to Families, no. 14). This “notion of freedom ... exalts the isolated individual in an absolute way and gives no place to solidarity, to openness to others and service of them,” (Evangelium Vitae, No. 19).

This individualism arises from secularism and relativism. In truth, you are your brother’s keeper because you are both children of God made in his image and likeness. But “when the sense of God is lost, there is also a tendency to lose the sense of man, of his dignity and his life,” (E.V., No. 21). Other people are seen as objects for use and possible disposal. When objective truth is denied through relativism, each person claims “the prerogative of independently determining the criteria of good and evil and then acting accordingly. Such an outlook is congenial to an individualist ethic,” (Faith and Reason, No. 98). “If the promotion of the self is understood in terms of absolute autonomy,” said John Paul II, “people inevitably reach the point of rejecting one another. Everyone else is considered an enemy from whom one has to defend oneself. Thus society becomes a mass of individuals placed side by side, but without any mutual bonds. Each one wishes to make his own interests prevail,” (EV, Nos. 19-20). As the sense of God, of an objective moral law and of one’s inherent relation to others, diminishes, only force can keep the peace in the absence of those inner restrains. And even in a police state, forcible restraint cannot be fully effective.

So what is to be done? Let me pass on an invitation from John Paul II. While acknowledging differences among countries, he spoke in Mexico City of “America” in the singular, as “a human and geographical unity from the North to the South Pole” with a “unity of destiny unique in the world.” In Ecclesia in America (EA), he charted a program for “the new evangelization of America.” EA shows that the moral teaching of the Church is an integrated whole. “[I]f we accept,” said Mother Teresa, “that a mother can kill even her own child, how can we tell other people not to kill one another?” The errors that can lead us to regard the unborn, or fellow students, as disposable objects, can foster an objectification of employees, immigrants and others. “[I]n America,” according to EA, “a model of society [is] emerging in which the powerful predominate even eliminating the powerless: I am thinking of victims of abortion [and] euthanasia; and the many other people relegated to the margins of society by consumerism and materialism. Nor can I fail to mention the unnecessary recourse to the death penalty,” (EA, No. 63).

Ideas have consequences. In abortion, euthanasia and the death penalty, we use the intentional infliction of death as a problem-solving technique. In the pursuit of global free trade, employees on both sides of the border are treated, not as persons, but as interchangeable objects. The Illinois worker loses his job because the corporation can pay a 15-year-old girl in a maquiladora in Tijuana 16 cents to make the shirt it will sell for $25. “In the absence of moral points of reference,” says EA, “an unbridled greed for wealth and power takes over. [I]n many countries of America, a system known as “neoliberalism” prevails; based on a purely economic conception of man, this system considers profit and the law of the market as its only parameters, to the detriment of the dignity of individuals and people. [T]he poor are becoming ever more numerous, victims of policies and structures which are often unjust.”

EA invites the nations of America to learn from one another. “One of the great blessings to the North,” said Archbishop Charles Chaput of Denver, “is the immigration of so many people from the South [T]hey may be the salvation of the Church in the United States, because they bring with them a spirit and ... a deep kind of faith that will rekindle and re-enliven the faith of the North.”

“On a continent marked by competition and aggressiveness consumerism and corruption,” John Paul urges lay people “to embody values such as mercy, forgiveness, honesty, transparency of heart and patience,” (EA, No. 44). He invites “[y]oung Christians trained to have a mature missionary consciousness” to “become apostles to young people wherever they are found: in schools, universities, the workplace, the countryside,” (EA, No. 47). He calls on Catholic universities to preserve their Catholic orientation. The education they impart should make constant reference to Jesus Christ and his message as the Church presents it in her dogmatic and moral teaching. Only in this way will they train truly Christian leaders,” (No. 71).

EA shows that the answer to violence lies in a conversion of mind and heart. “At a time when É there is a disturbing spread of relativism and subjectivism, the Church in America is called to proclaim that conversion consists in commitment to the person of Jesus Christ, with all the theological and moral implications taught by the Magisterium of the Church,” (No. 53). John Paul II cannot be dismissed as if he were some Polish tourist living in Rome. Rather “[t]he Vicar of Christ is “the enduring principle of unity and the visible foundation of the Church,” (No. 33). We ought to follow him.

I hope Notre Dame students will read Ecclesia in America. It puts a lot of things, including violence, in context. And it may be the lowest-priced item you will ever buy in the Bookstore.

Professor Rice is on the Law School faculty. His column appears every other Friday.

The views expressed in this column are those of the author and not necessarily those of The Observer.

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