- Feb 5, 2002
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COMMENTARY: ‘Man alone is called to share, by knowledge and love, in God’s own life ... This is the fundamental reason for his dignity. Being in the image of God, the human individual possesses the dignity of a person, who is not just something, but someone.” (CCC 356)
Ranking people according to their relative “importance” may be more invidious than racism. Nonetheless, the urge to rank people in this fashion seems to be irresistible for those who are inveterate list-makers.
According to one list of “The Hundred Most Important People in History,” Oscar Wilde and Richard Nixon are more important than Dante, Michelangelo, St. Thomas Aquinas and Pope St. John Paul II. Elvis Presley is deemed more important than all of them. And Sts. Augustine, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John are omitted from the list entirely.
While this particular ranking may suffer from extreme subjectivity as well as ignorance of history, it is the idea that one person can be more important than another that should come under scrutiny.
Continued below.
“It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or other of these destinations. ... There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilization—these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit — immortal horrors or everlasting splendors.”
— C.S. Lewis' Weight of Glory
Ranking people according to their relative “importance” may be more invidious than racism. Nonetheless, the urge to rank people in this fashion seems to be irresistible for those who are inveterate list-makers.
According to one list of “The Hundred Most Important People in History,” Oscar Wilde and Richard Nixon are more important than Dante, Michelangelo, St. Thomas Aquinas and Pope St. John Paul II. Elvis Presley is deemed more important than all of them. And Sts. Augustine, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John are omitted from the list entirely.
While this particular ranking may suffer from extreme subjectivity as well as ignorance of history, it is the idea that one person can be more important than another that should come under scrutiny.
Continued below.
You Are More Important Than You Think
COMMENTARY: ‘Man alone is called to share, by knowledge and love, in God’s own life ... This is the fundamental reason for his dignity. Being in the image of God, the human individual possesses the dignity of a person, who is not just something, but someone.” (CCC 356)
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