The third so-called Universalist quote is from Centesimus annus:
53.
Faced with the poverty of the working class, Pope Leo XIII wrote: "We approach
this subject with confidence and in the exercise of the rights which manifestly
pertain to us ... By keeping silence we would seem to neglect the duty
incumbent on us".107 During the last hundred years the Church has
repeatedly expressed her thinking, while closely following the continuing
development of the social question. She has certainly not done this in order to
recover former privileges or to impose her own vision. Her sole purpose has
been care and responsibility for man, who has been entrusted to her by
Christ himself: for this man, whom, as the Second Vatican Council
recalls, is the only creature on earth which God willed for its own sake, and
for which God has his plan, that is, a share in eternal salvation. We are not dealing here with man in the
"abstract", but with the real, "concrete",
"historical" man. We are dealing with each individual, since each
one is included in the mystery of Redemption, and through this mystery Christ
has united himself with each one for ever.108
[Note: quote from RH 13] It follows that the Church cannot abandon man,
and that "this man is the primary route that the Church must travel
in fulfilling her mission ... the way traced out by Christ himself, the way
that leads invariably through the mystery of the Incarnation and the
Redemption".109
This, and this alone, is the principle which inspires the Church's
social doctrine. The Church has gradually developed that doctrine in a
systematic way, above all in the century that has followed the date we are
commemorating, precisely because the horizon of the Church's whole wealth of
doctrine is man in his concrete reality as sinful and righteous.[i]
This Encyclical is a Letter on the Rerum novarum by Pope Leo XIII on its hundredth
anniversary. Centisimus annus was Pope John Paul’s way of “re-reading” Pope Leo’s
encyclical by inviting a “look back at the text itself in order to discover
anew the richness of the fundamental principles which it formulated for dealing
with the question of the condition of workers.”[ii] Rerum novarum was a very important document in its day and continues to be, in
the Church, a good reference point for many worker’s rights and social justice
issues that crop up in modern society and how the Church should face these
problems in the light of the Gospel.
Here again, Bl. John Paul II refers to the Incarnation,
quoting his own Redemptor Hominis. The Incarnation dignified man because of
Christ's Redemption. We, people of the Body of Christ, need to look on every man as
part of Christ’s mystery of Redemption, so that we treat all workers fairly and
within the dictates of Christ’s Gospel.
Bl. John Paul, again, does not want his readers to see “man” as an abstract
mass, but, seen through the lens of the Incarnation, as individuals, each
reflecting to us the image of God. Here,
again, Bl. John Paul II is not stating that all men will be saved, but that through
the Incarnation each and every man has a special connection with Christ. We should see all man that way. It should spark the missionary mandate in the
Church; it dictates the principles of the Church’s social doctrine.
[i] Encyclical Letter
Centesimus annus, 53. Footnotes: 107. Encyclical Letter Rerum Novarum: loc. cit.,
107. 108. Cf. Encyclical Letter RedemptorHominis, 13. 109. Ibid., 14.
[ii] Ibid. 3.
To be honest here, I see your words as more clear than JPII's words. You explain it well, and IF we consider the context of the OTHER things HH said, then we can come to the same conclusion you have - but in their own context, those words can be seen in a Universalist interpretation. As faithful Catholics, we should not be assuming heresy for our pope - and again, based on his OTHER writings - I agree with you. I also have not read the whole Redemptor Hominis, so in THAT context - perhaps it is clearer too.
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