So much of our public life feels locked in contradiction: left vs. right, local vs. global, tradition vs. progress. The instinct is to pick a side, double down, and treat the other as wrong. Pope Francis, in Let Us Dream, offers a different lens. He calls us to see many of these tensions not as contradictions but as contrapositions—pairs of truths held in dynamic relationship.
Contradictions vs. Contrapositions
Francis draws on the wisdom of Romano Guardini, who described creation as full of polarities: horizon/limit, whole/part, local/global. These are not forces to be resolved by choosing one over the other, but creative tensions that make life dynamic.
- Contradictions demand a choice: good vs. evil, truth vs. falsehood.
- Contrapositions invite discernment: they hold different poles in fruitful tension, creating the space for something new to emerge.
The danger comes when we confuse the two. Ideologies and politicians thrive on flattening contrapositions into contradictions—reducing the complex reality of life to simplistic binaries.
The Two Temptations
Francis points to two false responses:
- Exacerbating conflict: Wrapping ourselves in the flag of one side and escalating the fight.
- Avoiding conflict altogether: Choosing “peace at any price,” denying the tension, and refusing to wrestle with reality.
Both of these shortcuts block the possibility of transformation.
Contrapositions are opposites that nonetheless interact in a fruitful, creative tension.
The Call of the Reconciler
Instead, Francis insists, the reconciler is called to endure the conflict. That doesn’t mean getting stuck in endless stalemate. It means holding the tension long enough for something new to break through. This requires trust, dialogue, and humility—the willingness to recognize the partial truth in the other’s position and allow it to reshape our own.
This process often surprises us. The new path forward doesn’t come from one side “winning.” It comes as a gift—what Francis calls overflow.
Overflow: When the Spirit Breaks Through
Overflow is the breakthrough that happens when contrapositions generate unexpected creativity. It is when we suddenly see beyond the binary, when new solutions emerge that neither side could have produced alone.
Francis describes overflow as “an overflowing fountain” that breaks the banks of our limited schemes. For him, it is nothing less than the work of the Spirit in our time.
Why This Matters Today
In polarized societies and divided communities, we need this wisdom more than ever. The path forward will not come from doubling down on contradictions or pretending tensions don’t exist. It will come from learning to hold contrapositions well—to resist the bad spirit of reduction and instead make space for overflow.
That means practicing:
- Patient listening, even when it feels unproductive.
- Courage to name conflict without inflaming it.
- Trust in the Spirit’s capacity to create what we cannot yet see.
Reflection
What might it look like to practice this in our own divided world? Sometimes it begins simply by holding both poles with empathy. Recently I found myself moved by a perspective David Brooks shared that helped me feel the weight of an experience far from my own. It invited me to sit, not in agreement or denial, but in empathy—for those who feel our cultural institutions have long been dominated by voices they don’t recognize as their own.
Perhaps the invitation is to pause before choosing sides, and instead try to hold both poles of the contraposition. Not to resolve them too quickly. Not to pretend the tension doesn’t hurt. But to stay with it, trusting that in time, the Spirit can bring forth an overflow that we could not imagine on our own.
Appendix: Full Excerpt from Let Us Dream
Let Us Dream: The Path to a Better Future, pages 79-80. The book was published by Pope Francis, in collaboration with his biographer, in December 2020.
One of the effects of conflict is to see as contradictions what are in fact contrapositions, as I like to call them. A contraposition involves two poles in tension, pulling away from each other: horizon/limit, local/global, whole/part, and so on. These are contrapositions because they are opposites that nonetheless interact in a fruitful, creative tension. As Guardini taught me, creation is full of these living polarities, or Gegensätze; they are what make us alive and dynamic. Contradictions (Widersprüche) on the other hand demand that we choose, between right and wrong. (Good and evil can never be a contraposition, because it is not the counterpart of good but its negation.)
To see contrapositions as contradictions is the result of mediocre thinking that takes us away from reality. The bad spirit—the spirit of conflict, which undermines dialogue and fraternity—turns contrapositions into contradictions, demanding we choose, and reducing reality to simple binaries. This is what ideologies and unscrupulous politicians do. So when we run up against a contradiction that does not allow us to advance to a real solution, we know we are faced with a reductive, partial mental scheme that we must try to move beyond.
But the bad spirit can also deny the tension between two poles in a contraposition, opting instead for a kind of static coexistence. This is the danger of relativism or false irenicism, an attitude of “peace at any price” in which the goal is to avoid conflict altogether. In this case, there can be no solution, because the tension has been denied, and abandoned. This is the refusal to accept reality.
So we have two temptations: on the one hand, to wrap ourselves in the banner of one side or the other, exacerbating the conflict; on the other, to avoid engaging in conflict altogether, denying the tension involved and washing our hands of it.
The task of the reconciler is instead to “endure” the conflict, facing it head-on, and by discerning see beyond the surface reasons for disagreement, opening those involved to the possibility of a new synthesis, one that does not destroy either pole, but preserves what is good and valid in both in a new perspective.
This breakthrough comes about as a gift in dialogue, when people trust each other and humbly seek the good together, and are willing to learn from each other in a mutual exchange of gifts. At such moments, the solution to an intractable problem comes in ways that are unexpected and unforeseen, the result of a new and greater creativity released, as it were, from the outside. This is what I mean by “overflow” because it breaks the banks that confined our thinking, and causes to pour forth, as if from an overflowing fountain, the answers that formerly the contraposition didn’t let us see. We recognize this process as a gift from God because it is the same action of the Spirit described in Scripture and evident in history.