In a recent interview with Rolling Stone magazine, Justin Bieber, Canada’s teenage heartthrob, was reported as saying that since he has some First Nation heritage he should be entitled to free gas. The multimillionaire may have made this comment in jest. Nonetheless, the Canadian Congress of Aboriginal People did not find any humor in the remark, and it sparked an online backlash. Gas is not free to aboriginal people in Canada, although in Ontario, Bieber’s birthplace, they do not pay the tax if they have a gas card.
My immediate thought was, “I’m glad I am not in the public eye.” Then, I thought, “upon further review,” as they say in sports when referees re-examine a play, I am in the public eye. Well, sort of. I recalled a comment someone made recently about an article I had posted online: “A person, therefore, is not merely an individual . . . Really?”
The inveterate teacher in me wants people to understand what I say. What went wrong to occasion such a terse and negative response? It was like saying that two is more than one and someone responds with incredulity. What does one do next? Are there basics that lie below the basics? My anonymous critic apparently felt that he had reduced my contention to an absurdity. Therefore, he felt that no additional explanation was warranted.
I take great consolation in the fact that if one does not see things properly when he first views them, he has a second chance. “Upon further review,” the grace of the second look oftentimes opens to a more correct appreciation of what had transpired.
In 1967, a rookie by the name of Billy Rohr came within one strike of no-hitting the New York Yankees in their own ballpark on opening day. After Carl Yastrzemski made perhaps the greatest catch I have ever seen, to keep the no-hitter alive in the ninth inning, Elston Howard looped a two-out single over the second baseman’s head. Rohr had to settle for a one-hit victory. Nonetheless, he became an instant celebrity. Jacqueline Kennedy, who was in attendance at the game, had Rohr autograph a baseball for her son, John-John. The 21-year-old pitcher made a brief appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show, along with Nancy Sinatra, Tony Bennett and Count Basie. He was the talk of the town, but upon further review, apparently one needs more than a single quality pitch to survive in the big leagues. The Red Sox young sensation won exactly one more game for Boston and just one more with the Cleveland Indians. He completed his 14 month career in the Major Leagues with a less than heroic 3-3 won/lost record. He did not stand up well under further review. This is not to diminish the significance of his initial victory, but to place it in the perspective of his career.
I would like to place the distinction between individual and person under further review. Blessed John Paul II spent the entire career as a writer delineating this distinction and expatiating on how important it is. In his most intensely philosophical work, The Acting Person, he develops the notion of person as a synthesis of individual uniqueness and communal responsibility. In this work, which is admittedly not easy to read, he avoids the extremes of the individualism of René Descartes and the collectivist mentality of Karl Marx.
Descartes’ celebrated phrase, “I think therefore I am,” has fascinated many. But upon further review, it offers too limited a notion of the human being. A human being is more than an individual who thinks; he is a person who acts. At the same time, the author of the Acting Person opposed the Marxist notion that individuality counts for nothing and that only the communist collective is worth writing about. Blessed John Paul is neither an individualist nor a collectivist. He reasons that the human being is an integrated person, that is, a dynamic unity of a unique individual and a responsible, loving member of society. It is by virtue of the human being’s participating in the community that he transcends mere individuality.
Thus, Pope John Paul II writes: “Individualism limits participation, since it isolates the person from others by conceiving him solely as an individual who concentrates on himself and on his own good; this latter is also regarded in isolation from the good of others and of the community.”
I believe that Blessed John Paul’s grasp of the person is sound. The virtue of “docility,” another word for teachable, is indispensable if the student is to learn anything. The willingness to put things under review is a species of this important virtue.
It may sometimes be uncomfortable and disconcerting to be in the public eye. We are not always judged fairly by our fellow citizens. But we are always in God’s eye. We hope the day will come when God says to us, “Upon further review, you were a good a faithful servant. Now enter into Paradise.”
Dr. Donald DeMarco is a Senior Fellow of Human Life International. Doctor DeMarco is a member of the Pontifical Academy for Life and he is Professor Emeritus at St. Jerome’s University in Waterloo, Ontario and an adjunct professor at Holy Apostles College & Seminary in Cromwell, CT.
He is the author of 22 books, including; Architects of the Culture of Death, The Many Faces of Virtue, The Heart of Virtue, and New Perspectives on Contraception. He has authored several hundred articles in scholarly journals and in anthologies, and articles and essays appearing in other journals and magazines and in newspapers; and innumerable book reviews in a variety of publications.
His education includes: B.S. Stonehill College, North Easton, MA 1959 (General Science); A.B. Stonehill College, 1961 (Philosophy); Gregorian University, Rome, Italy, 1961-2 (Theology); M.A. St. John’s University, Jamaica, NY, 1965 (Philosophy); and Ph.D. At. John’s Univ., 1969 (Philosophy). His Master’s dissertation was “The Basic Concept in Hegel’s Dialectical Method” and his Doctor’s dissertation was “The Nature of the Relationship between the Mathematical and the Beautiful in Music”.
He is married to Mary Arendt DeMarco and they have five children.
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