The Beauty of Man a Synopsis of St

The Beauty of Man A Synopsis of St. John Paul II's Theology of the Body

by Rev. Benjamin P.Bradshaw, STL The Beauty of Man: A Synopsis of St. Pope John Paul II’s Theology of the Body

Rev. Benjamin P. Bradshaw, STL

1 For Joseph Ratzinger (Pope Emeritus)

2 Preface: Pope Francis has noted that too often there exists an inappropriate rift between the realm of theology and that of the lived realities of the lay faithful in the pews:

Not infrequently an opposition between theology and pastoral ministry emerges, as if they were two opposite, separate realities that had nothing to do with each other. We not infrequently identify doctrine with conservatism and antiquity; and on the contrary, we tend to think of pastoral ministry in terms of adaptation, reduction, accommodation. As if they had nothing to do with each other. A false opposition is generated between theology and pastoral ministry, between Christian reflection and Christian life. … The attempt to overcome this divorce between theology and pastoral ministry, between faith and life, was indeed one of the main contributions of Vatican Council II.1

For his part, Joseph Ratzinger has noted that there is clearly an “ecclesial vocation” by which theologians, in the dedication of their work, partake.2 If theology is truly to be “done on one’s knees,” at some point it must make the leap from the classroom to the pew and from the pew to lived realities of those sitting in the pews on any given Sunday.3 The argument could be made that few transitions are more needed in our own time than for St. John Paul II’s Theology of the Body to become a lived reality in the culture. While many Catholics, including clergy, have at this point heard of the Theology of the Body, few have likely taken the time to actually read it or meditate on its cultural implications. This text aims to bridge part of this gap and serve as a possible medium between the Theology of the Body corpus and the Christian faithful. If Tertullian (d.225 AD) was correct that, “The body is the hinge of salvation” (caro cardis salutis) then man’s corporality really does mean something and what we do with our bodies really does matter, both for us and the culture in which we find ourselves. As Stanisław Grygiel has noted, there is a language spoken in-and-through the body which communicates the love which is the source of its origin: “The human body speaks with a language proper to beauty. Only po- ets, whose language is song, comprehend it.”4 Karol Wojtyla’s catechesis on the human body, at times poetically mystical, communicates this song spoken in the body as it relates to man’s great vocation. I want to thank the faculty of the Pontifical John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and the Family for their integral, and much needed, work for the Church surrounding the issues of marriage and family. I also thank the staff at the parishes where I have served as pastor for patiently allowing me the time I needed to write this. Going through John Paul II’s general audi-

1 Pope Francis. Pope's video message to the Second International Congress of Theology in Buenos Aires: overcome the divorce between theology and pastoral ministry. Friday, September 04, 2015

2 Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger. Instruction on the Ecclesial Vocation of the Theologian. Congregation for the Doc- trine of the Faith. May 24, 1990.

3 Pope Francis. Pope's video message to the Second International Congress of Theology in Buenos Aires: overcome the divorce between theology and pastoral ministry. Friday, September 04, 2015.

4 Stanisław Griegel. Discovering the Human Person (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2014): 95.

3 ences is both beautiful and, at times, daunting, as it takes no shortage of time to spiritually digest. I started writing this in 2013, and, over the years, in between funerals, weddings, quinceañeras, and marriage counseling sessions, I would rob a few minutes here and there to work on it. Thanks to my parish staff for their great patience as I stole away from time-to-time to cocoon into the text. A sincere thanks as well to my dear friends who offered their humble and honest suggestions and corrections. This work is not meant to be a theological think-piece, but a compendium for those who may be seeking to hear St. John Paul II in his own voice, though perhaps do not have the time to appropriate the entirety of his Wednesday general audiences on the body. The following is a humble attempt to communicate this song of the body, as he understood it. Hopefully, I can get out of the way and allow the Holy Father’s words to speak for themselves.

4 Table of Contents:

I.) Groundwork for the Theology of the Body Catechesis 10 a.) Karol Wojtyla’s Correction of Modern Philosophy 12 b.) St. Thomas Aquinas on the Holy Trinity 22 c.) St. John of the Cross and the “Law of the Gift” 24 d.) Sexual Anthropology and the Person in Love and Responsibility 27 e.) Christian Personalism and the Second Vatican Council 33 f.) Pope St. Paul VI and Humanae Vitae 38 g.) Secular Feminism v. John Paul II’s New Feminism 48 II.) Introduction to John Paul II’s Catechesis on the Body 51 III.) Outline of the Theology of the Body Catechesis 58 IV.) A Synopsis of John Paul II’s Theology of the Body 61 V.) Conclusion and Implications for the Culture 137 VI.) A Word from the Author 141

5 Introduction:

The fundamental linchpin of the entirety of Catholic life, doctrine, and liturgy is the In- carnate Logos: Jesus Christ. As the second person in the Holy Trinity, Jesus Christ is fully God and fully human. The kairos (Greek “right time”) of the Son has penetrated the chronos (time) of human history and has sanctified this time and therefore set humanity on a course for its eschatological end (telos) in Him, to be fully manifest at the second coming (Gal. 4:4). Catholics profess this reality every Sunday in the Nicene Creed: “I look forward to the resurrection of the dead and the life in the world to come. Amen.” All of the cosmos and time finds its beginning and end in Him, as the Apostle Paul has noted: “He is the image of the invisible God, the first- born of all creation. For in him were created all things in heaven and on earth, the visible and the invisible…all things were created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together” (Col 1:15-17). This point is emphasized by the Second Vatican Council: “The Lord is the goal of human history, the focal point of the longings of history and of civilization, the center of the human race, the joy of every human heart and the answer to all its yearn- ings.”5 John Paul II himself underscores this reality as well in his first encyclical: “The Re- deemer of Man, Jesus Christ, is the center of the universe and of history.”6 As the Second person in the Trinity, Jesus possesses a human soul, a human and divine will, and becomes fully manifest in the Eucharist at every Holy Mass. Yet as pure spirit, God is neither male nor female, though he created man and woman in his image and likeness (Gn 1:27) and their gendered sexu- alities reflect the love of God.7 God is also omnipresent (everywhere), omniscient (all-knowing), and omnipotent (all powerful), while simultaneously being immutable (unchangeable), ineffable (utterly indescribable), and immanent in his creation, though not in a neo-pantheistic manner. In spite of this grandeur, God is also extraordinary in his humility and his infinite love of each human person, and he has joined our own dignity with giving to others as he has given to us (Mt 25:40). Thats a lot to take in. It is at times vexing to ponder that God would become man who actually walked the earth, lived among us, and then redeemed the human condition. In Genesis and the Old Testament (Gn 1:31; Ws 11:20), God has set a particular order in his creation which reflects the divine goodness.8 While itself not divine, creation is not only good, it is also gifted to man (man and woman) whom God presents as its proper steward (Gn 1:26). From the very beginning, the Catholic Church has understood the created world, and in particular the human body (soma), as both good and reflective of God’s goodness and beauty; a teaching which the Church has had to actively protect over the years.9 With the creation of man, a new event takes place in time. Up until this point, creation is repeatedly declared to be “good.” Each creature; therefore, “Possesses its own particular good-

5 Second Vatican Council. Gaudium et Spes, no. 45.

6 John Paul II, Redemptor Hominis, no. 1.

7 Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 369-370.

8 Ibid., no. 339.

9 Ibid., no. 299.

6 ness and perfection.”10 There is also an evident beauty to creation which is iconic of the source of that beauty, the Holy Trinity.11 Catholic tradition has consistently understood that deep within creation there dwells an echo of the Creator, and a thing’s particular beauty points to that creative Source. The encounter with this beauty leads one to a wonder, or mystical awe, of the creative love within the Trinity, in a similar way that exquisite Church architecture or sacred polyphony points to the Creator. To arrive at a fuller understanding of the “goodness” of creation is to have a deeper sense of the sacramentality of the Church, appreciating the invisible present in the visible. The capacity to see this spiritual depth present in creation is to foster what Kenneth L. Schmitz has termed simply a “thick” perception of God’s beauty.12 This takes work in guarding against the subtle nature of sin which ultimately robs one of the ability to see authentic beauty in creation and in others. When this ability is absent in man due to sin, he tends to substitute the joy of wonder with the drug of narcissism. The cosmos is permeated with meaning. Its beauty points to the divine Source of its own beauty, as Michelangelo’s pieta points to the exquisite skill of the artist. There is an order and a natural law embedded in the order of universe, and especially man. This natural law writ into creation and in the heart of every man and woman likewise participates in the divine law of God and emanates from Him. Having created man in his image and likeness, the Holy Trinity declares man and woman to be “very good”: “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them” (Gen 1:27, 31). While Catholic tradition also asserts that the angels were similarly created in God’s image and likeness s possessing both an intellect and will, as pure spirits, they are not embodied souls as is man.13 While “angel” is mentioned in Scripture 207 times respectively, we hear virtually nothing about them also being made in God’s image and likeness. As a historical point, it is worth pointing out that shortly after having completed his Theology of the Body catecheses (1984), John Paul II almost immediately began his catecheses on angels and demons (1986). The two overlap organically, and when read together, lead one to a more textured understanding of creation in both the natural and preternatural spheres. Having his nature as a body and soul composite (corpore et anima unus), man is the “summit of the Creator’s work” and has been specifically willed by God into being “out of nothing” (ex nihilo).14 When man creates, for instance music, food, or poetry, he creates something out of something else (e.g. a meal is created out of food products, a chair is created from wood). God; however, creates something from nothing, as he does with man. Thus, at the moment of conception a new human soul, fully immortal from that moment on, has now been brought into being which never existed prior and yet will never go out of existence, though the body will one

10 Ibid., no. 339.

11 Ibid., no. 341.

12 Kenneth L. Schmitz, The Recovery of Wonder (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2005): 48.

13 Pope John Paul II, General Audience: “Angels Participate in the History of Salvation,” August 6, 1986.

14 Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 369, 371, 327; Lateran IV (1215), DS 800.

7 day die. As John Paul II points out, “Being man” and “being woman” are two ways of being human (“unity of the two”), as they both share in the same nature and become fully masculine and fully feminine at the same time.15 This “asymmetrical reciprocity,” or two ways of being human, creates what he refers to as a “communion of persons” (communio personarum), which later gives life to a “community of persons” in the family.16 The homogeneity between them is not at odds with one another, but rather complementary. In Caritas in Veritate, Benedict XVI likewise points to the communal nature of man which is so important for his maturity and spiritual growth:

As a spiritual being, the human creature is defined through interpersonal relations. The more authentically he or she lives these relations, the more his or her own personal identity matures. It is not by isolation that man establishes his worth, but by placing himself in relation with others and with God. Hence these relations take on a fundamental importance.17

We repeatedly hear in Genesis “it is good,” though later the audience finally hears God say something different: “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suited to him” (Gen 2:18). Hans Urs von Balthasar contends that we should not understand the man alone in the Garden at this point as being some kind of androgynous being, apathetic to the rest of creation.18 Rather as we will see, it is only by experiencing this solitude (double-solitude) that both man and woman come to the mutual realization that they were “created for their own sake” and for the other as gift.19 It is important that both of them come to this realization because if only one of them encounters this there fails to be a mutual complementarity and reciprocity. In this mutuality for the other, man encounters a self-discovery in the other having previously realized his need for the other, something which is ontologically possible only for human beings. For this reason, the Catechism of the Catholic Church underscores that “God created man and woman together and willed each for the other.”20 It is important to realize here that God did not leave man and woman somehow “half-made,” or two-halves which come together to form a whole.21 Rather, as we hear in Genesis 1 and 2, God has created man and woman to live in “communion” with each other as “helpmates” (Gn 2:18) for one another. They are fully equal (Gn 2:23) and yet fully complementary. Much of the cultural tendency in the secular West tends to deny sexual

15 Ibid., no. 369; Pope John Paul II, Mulieris Dignitatem, no. 7.

16 Ibid., no. 7; Angelo Scola, “The Nuptial Mystery at the Heart of the Church,” Communio 25 (Winter 1998): 643.

17 Pope Benedict XVI, Caritas in Veritate, no. 55.

18 Hans Urs von Balthasar, Theo-Drama II (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1982): 373.

19 Second Vatican Council, Gaudium et Spes, no. 24.

20 Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 371-372.

21 Ibid., no. 372.

8 differentiation in an effort to assert equality at all costs. Such a movement, however, is ultimately injurious to authentic sexual complementarity and human dignity. This denial of sexual differentiation leads to an egalitarian androgyny which erases the beauty of sexual complementarity. As John Paul II often highlights in his writings, this design by God for man to be a gift for another is writ into the human body (“nuptial meaning of the body”). In other words, it is apparent from looking at the human body that both man and woman have received their creation as gift and are ordered towards self-donation to another as well. This is practically manifest in the vocations of marriage, single life in service to others, religious life, and the priesthood. Man is unique from all creation in that having been made in God’s image and likeness, he finds his teleological meaning in relation with another; that is, he is ultimately meant to be a gift for another and to receive that giftedness from the other.22 Just as Jesus Christ (Bridegroom) gave his life completely for the Church (Bride), so too does man find the textured depth of his meaning in making a gift of himself to another.23 This intimate love of Christ for his Church, for instance, is seen in the erotic prose used in the Song of Songs, about which Joseph Ratzinger has noted that this “audacious conjunction of language…cannot be said to be mistaken.”24 St. John the Baptist attests to this nuptial reality in John’s gospel as he refers to himself simply as the “friend of the Bridegroom,” while it is the Bridegroom himself who “has the bride,” and this bride “rejoices greatly at the bridegroom’s voice” (Jn 3:29). The Apostle Paul later develops this nuptial characteristic of Christ and the Church in his letter to the church in Ephesus: “Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her” (Eph. 5:25). John Paul II devotes a significant portion of his Wednesday audiences unpacking this Pauline text. The Apostle goes on to note that this “Mys- tery is a profound one, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the Church” (Eph. 5:32). As Joseph Ratzinger (Benedict XVI) has noted: “The love of a man and a woman, lived out in the power of baptismal life, now becomes the sacrament of love between Christ and his Church,” a point often underscored by John Paul II.25 The day-to-day fidelity and self-donation of the couple has a direct impact on the lives and sanctity of the couple; while also bearing long-term ramifications for the life of the Church. Simply put, when the “domestic church” of the family is lived out in Christian faithfulness each day, the Universal Church, as the bride of Christ, benefits.26 Because the Church is brought into being by Christ, not only is she his bride but is also a community of love, united in the depth of spousal love seen in his total self-gift on the Cross, the summit of nuptial consummation: “It is finished” (Jn. 19:30). Ratzinger further notes

22 Ibid., no. 24.

23 Eph. 5:20-33.

24 Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, On the Collaboration of Men and Women in the Church and in the World, no. 9.

25 Ibid., no. 10; John Paul II, Familiaris Consortio, no. 13.

26 John Paul II, Gratissimam Sane, no. 3.

9 that Mary is the perfect model for the Church in her fidelity at the foot of the Cross, and “it is from Mary that the Church learns the intimacy of Christ.”27 In this study of Pope St. John Paul II’s Theology of the Body, we will briefly unpack each of the Holy Father’s Wednesday Catechesis on the human body, given from 1979-1984. When these 133 audiences are understood within a correct hermeneutic, we come to a more precise understanding of who man is and, likewise, who God is.

I) Groundwork for the Theology of the Body Catechesis: Much has been written on the personal biography of Pope John Paul II; therefore, we will avoid doing so here. Assuming the papacy in October of 1978, at the age of fifty-seven, the roots of the Theology of the Body were embedded in the heart of the Pontiff prior to assuming the Of- fice of Peter. John Paul II later confessed that he had been preparing aspects of the TOB addresses during the conclave which elected Albino Luciani (John Paul I) on August 26, 1978. Cardinal Wojtyla wrote the original text of the Theology of the Body in Italian (though parts of it in Polish) and initially entitled it “Man and Woman He Created Them” (Gen.1:27). What is the Theology of the Body? At his weekly Wednesday audiences, from Sep- tember 1979 to November 1984 (the Holy Year of the Redemption in 1983 briefly interrupted the talks), John Paul II delivered 129 (of 133 total) individual addresses in what has come to be known simply as the Theology of the Body, or some claim the Theology of the Human Body. As he originally penned the talks, they were entitled, “Man and Woman He Created Them” (Gen.1:27) or “Human Love in the Divine Plan.” Karol Wojtyla once remarked that the collection of audiences could be entitled: “The Redemption of the Body and the Sacramentality of Marriage.” Traditionally, the Wednesday audience addresses by the Popes were used in a way whereby the Pontiffs could address the faithful of the Church on a particular topic of interest and greet them personally. Historically, each week’s topic stood on its own and was generally not connected to a larger corpus of teaching. John Paul II was the first Pope to actually develop an ongoing series of catecheses using the audiences much like a large classroom, though several popes, including Paul VI and John Paul I, catechized using the Wednesday audiences, with the former occasionally teaching about spiritual warfare and the latter catechizing on the theological virtues. For his part, Pope Benedict XVI utilized the same format for his catecheses on the Church Fathers and prayer. After the conclusion of the TOB addresses, John Paul II would go on to deliver other catechetical series’ via the General Audiences on topics such as creation and evolution, the Holy Trinity, Mary as the Theotokos (“God-Bearer”), and the nature of angels and demons (1986). John Paul II’s Wednesday audience talks concern the male and female bodies as a revelation of human personhood in his spiritual and physical nature. The body, John Paul II points out, “reveals the person” in that man becomes, in many ways, sacramental. The traditional definition of a sacrament according to the Catechism of the Catholic Church is: “An efficacious sign of grace, instituted by Christ and entrusted to the Church, by which divine life is dispensed to us through the work of the Holy Spirit” (CCC#774, 1131). The sacraments have a physical and

27 Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, On the Collaboration of Men and Women in the Church and in the World, no. 15.

10 spiritual reality and actually convey and bring about what they physically signify (ex opere oper- ato, “by the work done”). The body becomes sacramental, then, communicating outwardly what one has spiritually committed herself to within (e.g. wedding promises, vows). For his part, St. Paul tells us: “Ever since the creation of the world His invisible nature, namely, His eternal power and deity, has been clearly perceived in the things that have been made” (Rom 1:20). There- fore, just as one discovers something of the artist in the artist’s work, so too does man discover something of the beauty of God in the sacramentality of the human body. Understood within the revelation that the body discloses human personhood, we discover something both of who we are as persons and our vocations, and of who God is. The body cannot be understood in a Cartesian paradigm of mere matter (physical) detached from its metaphysical depth, but rather the body actually has a meaning intrinsic to it and is the manner through which man communicates to the other. As with any communication and language, it is possible both to lie and to communicate truth, and the “language of the body” is no exception. In the conjugal acts proper to sacramental marriage, which are both “noble and worthy,” man and woman speak a language of giftedness to the other in self-donation and reciprocity.28 Simply put, the conjugal acts shared within the indissoluble bonds of marriage speak a language of truth and life-long commitment, whereas sexual acts committed outside of a sacramental union communicate a falsehood because there can be no possibility of genuine self-donation and reciprocity, openness to human life, or ordered finality. This is obviously at odds with a culture that tends to perceive happiness in terms of sexual gratification and “rights” conjoined to personal desires. Pregnant within this logic, one assumes that if I “want” something, I have a “right” to it, regardless of the impact on others or the common good. This understanding of “rights,” largely borrowed from the Enlightenment thinkers (e.g. Thomas Hobbes), ironically leads one to greater internal misery, while contributing to a cultural phenomenon of “structures of sin,” the group-think whereby an entire culture rationalizes an intrinsic evil.29 Because man is by his nature ordered towards a supernatural end in God, the issue of God cannot be avoided forever by him. As Joseph Ratzinger has noted, “We are not allowed neutrality when faced with the question of God. We can only say yes or no, and this with all the consequences extending right down to the smallest details of life”30 When God extends to our understanding of “rights” we tend to perceive them not in terms of freedom from, but rather freedom for the truth. John Paul II repeatedly underscores this point in the documents of his Pontificate and within his Wednesday catecheses on the human body. Prior to entering into the actual Theology of the Body corpus of the John Paul II’s Wednesday catecheses on the body, we will briefly address some of the philosophical and theological bases needed in order to understand the text in a proper anthropological hermeneutic.

a) Karol Wojtyla’s Correction of Modern Philosophy:

28 Pope Paul VI, Humanae Vitae, no. 11; Gaudium et Spes, no. 50, 51.

29 Pope John Paul II, Solicitudo rei Socialis, no. 36.

30 Pope Benedict XVI, The Yes of Jesus Christ (New York: Crossroad, 1991): 13.

11 While many have heard something of John Paul II’s Theology of the Body, few have actually taken the time to familiarize themselves with either his own philosophy or the philosophical thought of others which shaped his own. To side-step this element in understanding the The- ology of the Body is theologically akin to assuming an iceberg is only what can be seen at the surface of the water. In recent years there have been a number of theories proposed as to why the Pontiff’s philosophy has been so often ignored, or perhaps more practically, simply relegated to the academy. John Paul II has often been described as a “philosophical realist” who reads morality through the lens of phenomenology and theological personalism. While largely true, he was profoundly interested in the human person (anthropology) and how the choices of man both impact him personally and the common good. The following is a brief outline of Karol Wojtyla’s own philosophical and theological works published prior to his election as Pontiff (1978):31

• 1948: Faith According to St. John of the Cross - Doctoral dissertation in theology delivered at the Angelicum in Rome under Fr. Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, O.P. • 1953: Evaluation of the Possibility of Constructing a Christian Ethics on the Assumptions of Max Scheler’s System of Philosophy – Habilitation thesis (second doctorate) in moral theology. Delivered at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków, Poland. • 1954-57: Lublin Lectures – Philosophical lectures delivered on Plato, Aristotle, Augus- tine, Thomas Aquinas, Immanuel Kant, and Max Scheler. Some of which were later published as Person and Community: Selected Essays. • 1957-1959: Love and Responsibility – A philosophical account of conjugal love between man and woman, sexual chastity, and the personalistic norm. • 1969: Person and Act – A philosophical assessment of man (anthropology) and the impact of action within him. Wojtyla’s most demanding body of philosophical work. • 1972: Sources of Renewal: Karol Wojtyla’s assessment of the proper implementation of the teachings of the Second Vatican Council. • 1972: Man in the Field of Responsibility – Written prior to his election as Pontiff, the text is often assessed as a pre-Pontificate work though not officially published until 1991. It was a follow-up work to Person and Act, wherein Wojtyla addresses the nature of morality itself within human anthropology.

In his last published book prior to his death on April 2, 2005, Memory and Identity, John Paul II underscores the philosophical rupture which occurred within philosophy between the middle-ages and Rene Descartes (d.1650). He argues that the Cartesian dictum Cogito, ergo sum severed philosophy from the metaphysical depth to which it was tethered prior to the En- lightenment era. Before this, philosophy was understood largely within the paradigm of esse (being) as united to reason. Now there is a dualism by which the person is understood as separated from the body, as the body is essentially inert “stuff” or matter, segregated from the authentic person. Descartes rejected the principally Scholastic argument that a human has a supernatural end, or telos. For him, reason alone yields personhood, and the body is, to some extent, irrele- vant. What one does with his body, or for that matter someone else’s, becomes similarly irrele-

31 Michael Waldstein, Man and Woman He Created Them (Boston: Pauline, 2006): 77.

12 vant. John Paul II notes that this Cartesian optic by which reality was now perceived “not only changed the direction of philosophizing, but it marked the decisive abandonment of what philosophy had been hitherto, particularly the philosophy of Saint Thomas Aquinas, and the philosophy of esse.”32 At this point reason dictates personhood, thus if one fails to reason one fails to be a person. This strain of thought is seen in secular philosophers such as Michael Tooley (University of Colorado) and Peter Singer (Princeton University) in their outspoken support of infanticide and abortion. Singer likewise argues that those who cannot function at a higher rational level (e.g. unborn, those with Downs Syndrome) are far less valuable than those who can function as “normal” persons in society or, in some cases, even animals.33 Karol Wojtyla, conversely, would argue a philosophical position opposed to that of Descartes, asserting that love and human freedom are always united and facilitate an ordered gift of self to another, whereby “freedom is the means and love the end.”34 In brief, then, Wojtyla reintroduces ontological depth back into the person after Descartes had previously amputated it. The philosophical influence of the Greek philosophers on the thought of Karol Wojtyla is often overlooked. Not infrequently commentaries and biographies of the late Pontiff tend to gloss over the impact of the philosophical realism of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle (4th Century BC) on Wojtyla. While Socrates generally concerned himself with the argument of objective truth, Plato and Aristotle largely focused their attention on the person as it pertains to his rational soul. The Platonic argument of the body as matter to be disposed of in order to release the immortal soul is at odds with the Catholic notion of the intrinsic goodness of the body; however, Plato’s insistence on the immortality of the soul is also seen in the Aristotelian notion of the anima. Aristotle underscores the rational and immortal nature of the human soul, to be distin- guished from the souls of animals (animative), and plants (vegetative). The Platonic soul is one which existed prior to birth and continues after death, whereas Catholic tradition argues for the unique creation of each soul ex nihilo at conception. The soul; therefore, is not pre-existent to the body; it did not evolve from pre-existent matter, as some Christian evolutionists assert, nor is it somehow created by the biological parents. Aristotle consistently argued that body and soul are two properties of the individual person. For him, the soul is the form of the body (matter), a concept Thomas Aquinas would later build on the 13th century, later formally affirmed at the Council of Vienne in 1312. Aristotle’s teaching that matter (body) becomes actualized by the form (soul) has been understood as hylomorphism (Gr: “matter,” “form”). Catholics understand the soul, then, as animating the living body whereas a body without a soul is understood to be simply a corpse, though certainly still honored as holy within the Christian Funeral Rite. The book of Genesis refers to this spiritual principle as the soul which is breathed into the life of Adam (Gn. 2:7; Heb: nephesh, or “breath of life”). Because the soul is the form of the body, it brings unity to its many elements.35 The Second Vatican Council fathers affirm this as well:

32 Pope John Paul II, Memory and Identity (New York: Rizzoli): 8.

33 Janet Smith, The Right to Privacy (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2008): 3.

34 Karol Wojtyla, Love and Responsibility (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1993): 135-136.

35 Kleetus K. Varghese, Personalism in John Paul II (Bangalore: Asian Trading Corporation, 2005): 23-25.

13 “Man, though made of body and soul, is a unity.”36 Thus, while Christian tradition draws from the Greeks, as did Augustine and Thomas Aquinas, we firmly adhere to the goodness of the human soul and the body. The particular powers of the rational soul in man are encountered in his intellect and will, an intellect to know God and free will to choose to accept or reject him. The soul, as rational in nature, refers to the “innermost aspect of man, that which is of the greatest value to him.”37 The spiritual characteristic of the soul is ordered towards a supernatural end in God and is in an incomplete state apart from the body.38 In his nature as a body-soul composite (corpore et anima unus) man is deliberately willed by God and created in his image and likeness with an intellect and free will. While the Platonic influence on Christianity should not be dis- missed, especially in Augustinian thought, Aristotle’s understanding of man was more richly textured than that of Plato. Thomas Aquinas would add to this, adopting the Boethian (5th c.) argument of personhood as “an individual substance of a rational nature.” The human person for Aquinas is one who subsists in his own rational nature, is part of the human species, and “is most perfect in the whole of nature.”39 As we have pointed out, John Paul II argues that, following the impact of Greek and me- dieval thought, a metaphysical rupture was introduced into the understanding of man with the Enlightenment era (17th-18th c). Later, the dawn of post-modernism brought with it the insistence on deconstructing everything, radical skepticism, and psuedo-worship of the individual, traces much of its fruit to the amputation of faith in Enlightenment thought, and to some extent, the denial of authentic reason in the name of “reason.” With the nominalism of William of Ock- ham (d.1349) there enters the rejection of any concept of universals (knowing something’s genuine nature) as argued by the Greeks and Aquinas. Ockham further rejected that man could truly know God, leading to what is sometimes referred to as the “freedom of indifference,” or the nominalist argument that will is contingent on nothing other than itself.40 Likewise, according to Ockham, each human act is completely independent of a connection with other acts or other people, thereby leading to an elevated form of individualism. As a result, nominalists rejected any notion of ordered finality (telos) to human acts and the Thomistic argument of unity between faith and reason. The influence of nominalism can be seen today in what is frequently termed voluntarism, or the modern sentiment that the human will and ego is sacrosanct above all else. The later Cartesian influence removed all ontological depth from the human person, though Ockhamist thought certainly led to much of this. Descartes did not deny the human soul; he simply rejected it as the fundamental principle of man’s life.41 For Descartes, the soul and

36 Second Vatican Council, Gaudium et Spes, no. 14.

37 Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 363.

38 Ibid., no. 367.

39 Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, 3a, 16.12, ad.2; I, 29, 3.

40 James Hitchcock, The History of the Catholic Church (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2012): 230-231; Servais Pinck- aers, O.P., The Sources of Christian Ethics (Washington: CUA Press, 1995): 242-243.

41 Kleetus K. Varghese, Personalism in John Paul II (Bangalore: Asian Trading Corporation, 2005): 31.

14 body were understood as two entirely different substances, and thus were distinct realities completely unconnected. This is at odds, of course, with the Aristotelian notion of hylomorphism of matter and form whereby the soul is the active principal of the body. The impact of nominalism and Cartesian dualism is commonplace today with the secular understanding of sexual acts, largely concerned with pleasure only detached from any real meaning. This Cartesian dualism is also customary in the field of bioethics and medicine whereby the body is often understood as simply “matter” or a “lump of cells,” frequently leading to the termination of life in the process. It was this rupture in the understanding of anthropology that John Paul II underscores in Memory and Identity. The influence of other Enlightenment thinkers should be briefly examined here in understanding the culture in which the Theology of the Body is addressed. Francis Bacon (d.1626) argued that something can only be real and be known to the extent that it can be made, produced, or used. It is from this Baconian reasoning we have received the dictum, “knowledge is power” (scientia potentia est). Bacon’s judgment and emphasis on reason amputated from faith is seen in much of the scientific community and in higher education. In this understanding, faith is perceived as altogether naïve and impractical. Joseph Ratzinger notes here that the influence of the Cartesian and Baconian thought has fundamentally altered the method of “doing” philosophy. He notes that by this logic, “All we can truly know is what we have made ourselves. It seems that this formula denotes the real end of the old metaphysics and the beginning of the specifically modern attitude of mind.”42 Assuming Bacon is correct, things and people really have no intrinsic dignity in and of themselves; rather, it must be given to them by man in his producing of them. A person has value, then, to the extent that it is bestowed upon him by another or a polity, or for that matter, later removed when one’s usefulness is outlived. This mechanistic understanding of human nature is contrary to the point we have made earlier noting the emphasis that God makes when he creates in Genesis: “It was very good” (1:31). Likewise, it presents the individual person as existing apart from others and any spiritual depth whatsoever. It is important to keep this in balance with the Church’s social doctrine that clearly honors the dignity of human work and industry, a point often referenced by John Paul II in his encyclical on human work, Laborem Excercens (1981). In Bacon’s model, human freedom is not bound by nature law but instead autonomy, which, John Paul II would say, is ultimately a reductive understanding of freedom grounded in ego rather than moral truth. The primary danger in the Baconian account of the person is that it assumes a position of anthropological positivism whereby man becomes reduced to scientific and technological studies and progress. Bacon argued that the goal of science was to improve the human condition. At first glance this sounds sanitary enough, until we realize that some people have their condition “improved” at the lethal expense of others. This is the same contention, for instance, of some who justify the practices of somatic cell nuclear transfer (cloning), embryonic stem cell research, sex selection and termination, and in vitro fertilization on the grounds that it will “better” humanity or enable a couple to have the children they actually want. In spite of the fact that a child is often terminated and excess embryos are either frozen or discarded, the “betterment of humanity” is a social pleasantry which apparently outweighs the justice due the unborn. The result of which is ultimately a further cultural loss of another human being, having been made in God’s

42 Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Introduction to Christianity (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1990): 31.

15 image and likeness. John Paul II, and Joseph Ratzinger with his approval, addressed this Bacon- ian logic as it specifically pertains to bioethics in Donum Vitae (1987), which underscored the intrinsic dignity of the human person, a point often reiterated in his Theology of the Body. Special attention should be paid to in the influence of Niccoló Machiavelli (d.1527). In his seminal work, The Prince, he rejects moral reasoning according to natural law ethics and argues instead that the “ends justify the means” of any act. In other words, from the standpoint of state rulers or the prince, one does whatever one needs to do to maintain power, regardless of the moral consequences. As will be seen later in the arguments of Rene Descartes, within this logic there is an amputation of the soul or the spiritual depth attached to the objective nature of human acts. From this logic we borrow the term “Machiavellian” in describing an unjust heteronomous act or law attacking another. If the moral trajectory of Machiavellian reasoning is followed to its end, there can be no ethical accountability for leaders or citizens, nor spiritual consequences for evil deliberately willed by a person because all “ends justify the means.” Thus, there is similarly no immorality in using a person as a means to one’s end either (e.g. embryonic stem cell research, sexual utilitarianism). It is not difficult to see the influence of Machiavelli, for instance, on the evolutionary reasoning of Charles Darwin in his argument for the “survival of the fittest.” Still another political philosopher whose thought has greatly impacted Western reasoning is Thomas Hobbes (d. 1679). In his primary work Leviathan, Hobbes called for the radical secu- larization and subordination of all religion to the state. He rejected all references to spiritual or ontological categories. Contrary to what is sometimes asserted by his defenders, he advocated a totalitarian rule and his “religion” was largely moral relativism as he rejected any definitive notion of good and evil. Hobbes further rejected any notion of sin attached to evil acts, thereby also rejecting any eternal accountability for such acts. As equally insidious, Hobbes famously argued that, “Each individual had a right to anything and everything that he desired.”43 In what he termed the “right of nature,” he conjoined personal desires with civil “rights,” essentially arguing that society protect one’s “right” to destroy itself if it wished to do so. As Janet Smith has noted, “The lifestyles enabled by these new ‘rights’ to previously illegal actions have led to demands for ever greater opportunities to exercise autonomous decision making over areas traditionally subject to legislative proscriptions and government regulations.”44 In this “tyranny of rights,” the logical result is an increase in cultural chaos, thereby simultaneously increasing the need for greater governmental control in order to maintain cultural stability. Few would argue that the Hobbesian principle of “rights,” as tethered to personal desires, is not readily apparent in society today, in particular that of Western Europe and the United States. His notion of “rights” rapidly leads a culture into state-sanctioned totalitarianism, albeit outwardly claiming to be de- mocratic. When this happens, democracy easily morphs into what Joseph Ratzinger terms a “dictatorship of relativism,” void of any notion of moral truth.45 When this amputation of religious freedom occurs, the actual enforcement of this “rule of relativism” often comes “not by

43 Benjamin Wiker, Worshipping the State (Washington: Regnery, 2013): 128-129.

44 Janet E. Smith, The Right to Privacy (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2008: 8.

45 Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Misa Pro Eligendo Romano Pontifice (Vatican City State): April 18, 2005.

16 tanks, but by lawyers: by those whose responsibility it is to protect the equal right of all citizens to the exercise of freedom and intelligence.”46 The residue of Hobbesian reasoning now perme- ates so much of Western thought that we often do not even question it, even if it happens to deny or infringe on another’s intrinsic rights, as with abortion and euthanasia. In his pivotal social encyclical Centessimus Annus (1991), John Paul II underscores that even a democracy can easily morph into totalitarianism when is fails to protect the dignity of the human person.47 Still another Enlightenment thinker whose ideas are ever-present in Western thought is Jean-Jacques Rousseau (d. 1778), a man who actively pushed for the silencing of all religion to the state power. Rousseau understood the human person as an animal and argued that all sexual fidelity between spouses and partners should be abandoned for sexual permissiveness and libido. Within this logic, any children that happen to be born as a result of this sexual liberality were left to fend for themselves, but as soon as they were old enough to reason and be sexual enlightened they too would understand better. As Benjamin Wiker has noted, “Morality is not just missing from Rousseau’s account, it is explicitly denied.”48 Rousseau himself lived what he preached, fathering five children out of wedlock and refusing to even nominally care for them or their mother. They were eventually abandoned altogether. The results are not difficult to imagine. Rousseau’s thought has deeply influenced the secular “hook-up” culture witnessed today and the transformation of the separation of Church and state into the submission of the Church to the state, in largely Orwellian terms. Rousseau is the father of “private religion,” that is, the secular dictum whereby religion is fine “but don’t impose your beliefs on me!” Often one hears “I’m spiritual but not religious,” yet another axiom of Western culture which traces much of its genesis to Rousseau. He argued that religion should be permitted on some level, though strictly maintained within the private lives of adherents only, thus never actually made public.49 While John Locke’s A Letter Concerning Toleration (1689) was a foundational text codifying this logic in Europe, especially given its borderline abhorrence of Catholicism’s influence in England, it was Rousseau’s thought which sought to amputate public displays of faith. Ironically, the secularist mantra of “Don’t impose your faith on me” frequently leads to the imposition of practical atheism on morality itself, again, thereby exacerbating societal chaos. The ethical Achilles-heal of both Hobbes and Rousseau is an entirely misunderstood concept of human freedom as equated with human autonomy, which pivots towards greater misery because man is ultimately ordered towards the truth that is Jesus Christ. Within their anthropological paradigm, freedom is detached from moral truth and results in cultural bedlam of moral relativism, the tacit denial of any objective truth. When an entire culture, such as the liberal societies of the West, embraces relativism as the norm by which morality is perceived, the teleolog-

46 David L. Schindler, “Civil Community Inside the Liberal State: Truth, Freedom, and Human Dignity,” Ordering Love: Liberal Societies and the Memory of God (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2011): 106.

47 John Paul II, Centessimus Annus, nos. 45-46.

48 Benjamin Wiker, Worshipping the State (Washington: Regnery, 2013): 168.

49 Mary Ann Glendon, “Rousseau and the Revolt Against Reason,” Traditions in Turmoil (Ann Arbor: Sapientia, 2006): 41.

17 ical endgame is totalitarianism. As we have noted, while many of the proponents of moral relativism and liberalism advocate less governmental control, this logic carried to its end necessitates greater governmental interference in order to maintain a basic level of cultural peace. Philoso- pher Josef Tischner insists that, “The totalitarian mentality must…be overcome in each human being.”50 His point being that faulty anthropologies point towards defective concepts of human freedom as disconnected from moral truth. It was largely to this cultural notion of freedom equated with autonomy that John Paul II addressed his encyclical on the reform of moral theology: Veritatis Splendor (1993). In what Joseph Ratzinger once referred to simply as “The most theologically elaborative text of the entire Pontificate,” Veritatis Splendor became a type of theological anti-venom to the moral relativism and proportionalism embraced by western thinkers.51 Arguably the most celebrated of the post-Enlightenment thinkers was Charles Darwin (d. 1882). Born in England the same day as Abraham Lincoln (February 12, 1809), Darwin’s theory of biological evolution argued that life was dictated by a process of natural selection, a theory later shown to be incorrect (towards the end of his life Darwin privately backed off this theory realizing its own scientific inaccuracies). Contrary to popular belief, Darwin did not invent the theory of evolution, though he often assumed credit for it, this credit goes to the Greek philosopher Epicurus (d. 270 BC). While the Catholic Church does oppose Darwinism, it does not reject the possibility of a theistic notion of evolution, though Catholics must hold that all of humanity had the same original parents (monogenism), that the human soul is not a product of evolution (God alone as Creator), and that man did not evolve from dead matter (possibly only “pre-existent and living matter”).52 With regards to the theory of evolution, Pope Benedict XVI has noted:

The theory of evolution does not invalidate the faith, nor does it corroborate it. But it does challenge the faith to understand itself more profoundly and thus to help man to understand himself and to become increasingly what he is: the being who is supposed to say Thou to God in eternity.53

Simply put, then, the sweeping changes Darwin argued would occur biologically, whereby one species becomes another, simply does not occur. While there are slight variations in elements of the same species (e.g. humans are generally taller than they used to be), this clearly does not account for Darwin’s theory of natural selection (Origin of Species, 1859). Stephan Jay Gould of Harvard University refers to this lack of change proposed by Darwin as “the trade secret” of

50 Josef Tischner, “A View from the Ruins,” George Weigel, ed. A New Wordly Order: John Paul II and Human Freedom (Washington: Ethics and Public Policy Center, 1991): 166.

51 George Weigel, God’s Choice (New York: Harper, 2005): 182.

52 Pope Pius XII, Humani Generis, no. 36.

53 Pope Benedict XVI, Creation and Evolution (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2008): 16; Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 283.

18 much of modern science.54 Biologist John Bonner of Princeton University argues that most text- book descriptions of Darwinian evolutionary descent are “a festering mass of unsupported con- clusions.”55 All but canonized in much of higher education in the West, the Darwinian rationale of man as nothing more than an animal, and the further “survival of the fittest” logic (Descent of Man, 1871), has greatly influenced some of the eugenic thinkers in the 20th century, including Margaret Sanger of Planned Parenthood (Pivot of Civilization, 1922) and Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf, 1925). This Darwinian praxis is largely prevalent today in many of the policies of bioethical research, fertility treatments, obstetrics-gynecology, and medical higher education. John Paul II was at pains to correct this flawed model throughout his Pontificate, as with his pivotal encyclical on life, Evangelium Vitae (1995). Special attention should be paid here to Immanuel Kant (d. 1804), given his influence on Karol Wojtyla’s thought. Though Wojtyla did not agree with all of Kant’s moral reasoning, he did adopt Kant’s argument for the categorical imperative which largely framed his own argument for his “personalistic norm.” Kant asserts that a human being is always an end in himself and that a person is “not merely as a means for the discretionary use for this or that will, but must in all its actions…always be considered at the same time an end” (second Categorical imperative).56 It is within this anthropological paradigm that man is always as an end in himself, thus never to be used by another in a utilitarian way. Wojtyla adopts, therefore, a Kantian personalistic norm: “A person is an entity of a sort to which the only proper and adequate way to relate is love.”57 This point is later reiterated as well by the Second Vatican Council in noting that man “is the only creature on earth which God willed for itself.”58 Kant was approaching moral ethics largely from the standpoint of deontology (Gr: deon = “duty,” “binding”), or the argument that some moral decisions should simply be made by the person regardless of particular circumstances or consequences that happen to occur. Kant does accentuate the importance of ethics, but primarily within the sphere of reason and will exclusively; therefore, his philosophy is largely detached from experience and teleology, as witnessed, to some extent, in the phenomenology of Max Scheler.59 Kant’s understanding of human dignity; therefore, is tethered to fulfilling one’s duty in acting in accord with reason. Wojtyla later built on this Kantian logic and Christianized it, so as to apply to it a hermeneutic of charity and ontological depth. The vacuum of a proper concept of conjugal love within Kant’s personalism is filled by Wojtyla’s work Love and Responsibility,

54 George Sim Johnston, Russell Shaw, ed. Encyclopedia of Catholic Doctrine (Huntington: Our Sunday Visitor, 1997): 220.

55 Ibid., 221.

56 Immanuel Kant, Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals (Cambridge: Cambridge Press, 2012): 40.

57 Karol Wojtyla, Love and Responsibility (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1993): 41.

58 Second Vatican Council, Gaudium et Spes, no. 24.

59 Kenneth L. Schmitz, At the Center of the Human Drama (Washington: CUA Press, 1993): 46-47.

19 which laid the anthropological groundwork for his Wednesday Catecheses on the Body.60 The Kantian sexual ethic is one wholly absent of a concept of unitive love between spouses and, as we will see, Wojtyla does not leave this vacancy unfilled. Finally, brief attention should be given to the influence of the phenomenologist Max Scheler on the thought of Karol Wojtyla. Scheler (d. 1928) was a German philosopher and disciple of Edmund Husserl (d. 1938). Scheler would later have a considerable impact on other phe- nomenologists such as Adolf Reinach, Dietrich von Hildebrand, and St. Edith Stein (Teresa Benedicta a Cruce). Scheler was an active catalyst in propelling the phenomenological school of Western Europe forward in the years prior to World War II. Most tend to understand phenomenology (“study of appearances”) in philosophy, as the study of things as they genuinely are, and not simply as they appear to be. Husserl’s understanding of it was more historically textured and he insisted that phenomenology was a getting “back to the things themselves” as they authentically are.61 The principal here of phenomenology is often overlooked in its simplicity, namely, that one asks what something actually is rather than superimposing upon it what one may think it is or should be. Though deeply influenced by Husserl, the phenomenology of Max Scheler, was unique from that of his teacher by its development of greater metaphysical complexity, especially as it pertains to feelings, emotions, and the person. While having abandoned his Catholic faith as a child, Scheler brought in a number of Christian thinkers into his work, including Augustine. From a Catholic perspective, Scheler’s emphasis on subjectivity and feelings were at times ex- treme, perhaps to the extent that the objectivity of things becomes occasionally blurred. None- theless, his work had a significant impact on Karol Wojtyla, especially with regards to his emphasis on love as the feeling most indicative of the deepest core of man. Wojtyla often underscored the value of love within human relationships and the need for philosophy, more specifically phenomenology, to honor that dynamic within the lived experience of man.62 This is at great variance with Kant who tended to emphasize reason and duty alone, thereby ascribing feelings to the irrational sphere of man, concluding; therefore, that emotion is untrustworthy. For his part, Wojtyla sought to inject greater reason into Scheler’s phenomenology and greater depth into Kant’s personalism; the result of which was something altogether unique. In his intensely philosophical work Person and Act, published nine years after Love and Responsibility (1969), Wojtyla acknowledges the influences that both Scheler and Kant play within his account of Christian personalism.63 While Kant drew from Bacon and Descartes, he nonetheless defended morality and religion, albeit from a different perspective than Christianity to be sure. Kant aggressively rejects the utilitarianism prevalent in the arguments of Jeremy

60 Michael Waldstein, Introduction to Man and Woman He Created Them: A Theology of the Body (Boston: Pauline, 2005): 59.

61 John F. Crosby and Russell Shaw, ed. Encyclopedia of Catholic Doctrine (Huntington: Our Sunday Visitor, 1997): 499.

62 Pope John Paul II, “Address to the World Institute of Phenomenology” (March 22, 2003).

63 Karol Wojtyla, The Acting Person (London: D. Reidel, 1979): 22, no.8, 302.

20 Bentham (d.1832) and later John Stuart Mill (d. 1873); and does so on the basis that to judge an act solely on its outcome of either “pleasure” or “pain” rejects the integrity of the law and the “categorical imperative.” Utilitarianism is largely understood as the position whereby human value and acts are judged according to their utility worth to me or society, as opposed to their intrinsic value in and of themselves. This strain of thought is prevalent in multiple aspects of secular West, as with the moral justification of euthanasia of the elderly under the premise of “mercy” killing or expense of care. Wojtyla attacks this utilitarian mindset in Love and Respon- sibility specifically as it pertains to sexual utility. By contrast, for Kant a moral act is one that is reasoned and that is done in accord with one’s duty to do it. As Michael Waldstein notes of Kant’s morality, “The moral law does not suggest or propose a good; it demands obedience.”64 Having written his second doctorate (Habilitationsschrift) on Scheler’s influence on ethical phenomenology, Karol Wojtyla was well versed in his logic.65 He had written his first dissertation on St. John of the Cross five years prior (1948), and in it he sought to evaluate the possibility of introducing a Christian personalism within the thought of Max Scheler. While Wojyla referred to Scheler as an essentialist and Kant as a formalist, ultimately he recognizes that neither one fully accounts for the impact of morality within the person; rather, he notes that divine revelation must be introduced into this account of man in order to approach an “adequate anthropology” of the human person. Throughout his writings, for instance, Wojtyla is clear in underscoring that the “perfection of the human person rests upon the will, which alone is – in the strict meaning of the word – decisive.”66 Arguing against Scheler’s at times exaggerated emphasis on feeling in action, Wojtyla insists that reason and truth are instead the compass by which man should act, and in doing so he acts in accord with his created nature and ordered end (telos). While each act includes the dynamics of reason and will, it is in choosing the good of what is in accord with his nature that man encounters self-discovery. Likewise, for Wojtyla, while Kant’s personalism lacks a proper understanding of conjugal love and the impact of human love, his emphasis on duty is an important point for the Christian in particular, that is, the Christian is to do good and avoid evil according to the natural moral law. Inasmuch as Wojtyla critiqued Scheler for his emphasis on objects largely in subjective terms, he also drew from him the value of appreciating subjectivity as well.67 Wojtyla also critiques Scheler’s thought for its lack of a proper Christian ethic, as it fails to take into account the impact of the Incarnation in human history (i.e. Jesus was not simply a good example to follow) and because it cannot adequately address the importance of human acts as they pertain to good and evil specifically. As a result, Scheler’s account of

64 Michael Waldstein, Introduction to Man and Woman He Created Them: A Theology of the Body (Boston: Pauline, 2005): 48.

65 Karol Wojtyla, Habilitation Thesis (1953): Evaluation of the Possibility of Constructing a Christian Ethics on the Assumptions of Max Scheler’s System of Philosophy (Stuttgart-Degerloch: Seewald, 1980).

66 Kenneth L. Schmitz, At the Center of the Human Drama (Washington: CUA Press, 1993): 52.

67 Avery Cardinal Dulles, S.J., “John Paul II and the Renewal of Thomism,” John Paul II and St. Thomas Aquinas, Michael Dauphinais and Matthew Levering, eds. (Ave Maria: Sapientia Press, 2006): 18.

21 man fails to properly account for the whole of man in his subjective being and a proper understanding of his ordered end to be with God.68 No doubt some would argue that the philosophers we have briefly examined are superflu- ous to understanding John Paul II’s personalism and especially his Theology of the Body; therefore, leading us to question as to why they are included in this study? The answer to this question is found in man himself. The Church must, as Benedict XVI has noted, protect the “human ecology” of man in the world and therefore “protect mankind from self-destruction” by faulty anthropologies.69 Similarly, the common thread woven throughout the pre and post Pontifical election writings of Karol Wojtyla is undoubtedly the dignity of the human person. A number of the philosophers we have examined, such as Hobbes and Rousseau, have proposed theories which have both radically reshaped Western culture and assailed human dignity on various fronts. Karol Wojtyla’s work has aimed to reestablish that dignity in light of the Incarnation and divine revelation, or more plainly, it is in some ways the anthropological corrective to much of the philosophical attacks on man, many of which find their origins in the Enlightenment thinkers. John Paul II’s Theology of the Body is an anthropological response to the sexual revolution of the last century and much of the Enlightenment itself. In their steady amputation of faith and reason and the soul from the body, a number of the thinkers we have examined have shaped Western thought to such an extent that few people are consciously aware of it, or if they are, they often fail to see why this ideology could possibly be morally injurious. b) Thomas Aquinas on the Holy Trinity: We have previously noted the importance of Aristotelian reasoning with regards to the teachings of Thomas Aquinas and, thereafter, on Pope John Paul II. The Thomistic emphasis on matter and form bears repeating, given its impact on our understanding of human nature as a body-soul composite (corpore et anima unus), and its ramifications for the Theology of the Body. For Aristotle, the form is the pattern or blueprint by which a particular thing follows, and the matter is organized according to that blueprint (e.g. oak tree follows the form of an oak tree). Potency is the possibility by which the matter itself can be actualized and become what it was designed to be. The matter of something receives the form, and later seeks to actualize it. When we speak of the human person, then, Thomas Aquinas argued that the soul is the form of the body, and the entire person seeks to actualize himself by acting in accord with his own nature, which is to reason. The form of a thing gives it its particular nature or essence, though they are not equivalent. Man receives his form from God, who is understood as simply the Subsistent Act of Existing (ipsum esse subsistens).70 Aquinas understood God’s revelation to Moses as a confirmation of his self-referential name: “I am who am” (Ex 3:14). In giving a thing its form, then, God likewise gives a thing its nature and its very being. As we have discussed, this nature given

68 Karol Wojtyla, Person and Community: Selected Essays (New York: Peter Lang, 1993): 83.

69 Pope Benedict XVI, Caritas in Veritate, no. 51.

70 Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, 1a 13:4; Ralph McInery, Aquinas (Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2004): 89- 92.

22 by God to man is pure gift, as man is created ex nihilo, that is “out of nothing.” Aquinas notes that man receives his nature in receiving his existence from God. He similarly underscores that man’s nature is ordered towards the supernatural end which is God. In short, man is created out of nothing as gift, and is then designed to return to the source from which he originally came. With man, both his body and soul compose his nature, as opposed to angels which are non-corporeal spirits, thus both body and soul will return to God. Aquinas argued that man can primarily know God by two ways: grace and reason.71 He argued, and Catholic tradition affirms, that man can come to know that God exists by reason alone, though in order to have a relationship with God faith is needed, which goes beyond reason.72 Because man receives his existence from the Holy Trinity, there is an analogy between man and God. Man is made in God’s image and likeness and therefore called to love as God loves. God loves by a total self-donation of one member of the Trinity to another, and analogously, man and woman are called to make a self-gift of oneself to the other as well. In the gospels, Jesus often makes references to the self-discovery which accompanies self-giftedness: “Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it” (Mt 10:39). This will be a theme oft repeatedly in John Paul II’s theology of the body catecheses. Aquinas notes that God himself is the source of all perfections; thus he is not simply another being in the universe since he is, in fact, the source of everything that exists in the cosmos, and the source to which all will one day return. Though we do not know what precisely God is, we can know something of what he is by his creation. As St. John the Evangelist asserts, “God is love” (1 Jn 4:8) and he who knows God allows this love to be seen in his acts. The good acts and beauty in man point to the source of that beauty: God. While Wojtyla takes much of his argument for the “law of the gift” (the vocation of each person towards giftedness to another), from the mystical writings of St. John of the Cross, this total gift of self is seen in the Trinitarian writings of Aquinas also. Because Wojtyla was trained in the Thomistic tradition at the An- gelicum in Rome, this school of Scholasticism profoundly shaped his thought and is critical for a proper hermeneutic of the Theology of the Body. Similarly, this lends a more textured understanding of Christian anthropology prior to discussing how man and woman live out their vocations in the world. Aristotle and Aquinas, though not agreeing on everything, were both emphatic that there is a divine order to the cosmos and to man (telos). Aquinas argues that for man, this is a supernatural end (desiderium naturale) to be with God in heaven. This Thomistic argument, underscored by the Catholic Church in her tradition, is clearly evident in John Paul II’s analysis of human love and vocation. This notion of a supernatural end is a common theme running through the Theology of the Body, especially in John Paul II’s teachings on man in his eschatological state after the resurrection. While Thomistic metaphysics are not always easy to process, the Theology of the Body in inconceivable without this ontological groundwork. Though often overlooked, the influence of Thomas Aquinas on Karol Wojtyla’s major philosophical work, Person and Act, deserves brief attention. The work was, as Rocco But-

71 Thomas Aquinas, De Div. Nom., c.1. Lecture 1(7-9).

72 Ibid.; Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 50.

23 tliglione asserts, “The homecoming of his [Wojtyla’s] philosophical journey.”73 Within the text, Wojtyla repeatedly underscores his own philosophical indebtedness to Thomistic morality; specifically the delineation of “human act” (actus humanus) and the “act of man” (actus hominis). For Aquinas, human will guides human action, and Wojtyla builds on Aquinas’ ideas in accessing man as the concrete being who manifests himself in his own acts and is, then, changed by them, following the principal of “action follows being” (operari sequitur esse). This principal is encountered frequently in John Paul II’s Theology of the Body, for instance, in audience 105 (January 19, 1983), wherein he notes: “Man is the causal origin of actions that have through themselves (per se) clearcut meanings. He is the thus the causal origin of actions and at the same time the author of their meanings.” Buttiglione insists that man is the “philosophical point of departure” for Wojtyla. Within man’s experience of himself he encounters a reality, and this reality includes man as both a subject and object. In other words, man has an encounter of himself within his subjective experience, juxtaposed to his experiences or encounters with other people. For Karol Wojtyla, the many different experiences in life coalesce within the person; therefore, there is a unity of the experiences which he is able to communicate with others. Within this densely philosophical text, Wojtyla analyzes the how of how man actually is a person in the world, and thus not if man is a person acting in the world.74 Similarly, he addresses to what extent man relates what and who he is in his action to others, considering that he must somehow act in the world in which he resides. Karol Wojtyla’s inquiry here of how man is man and how man’s actions impact himself and others, is eminently practical in evaluating the authentic message of his Wednesday Catech- eses on the body. As we will see, even in his first general audience addresses, John Paul II often approaches the experience of man from both an objective and subjective perspective; later inves- tigating how this impacts male and female reciprocity. This will have ramifications for his later audiences wherein John Paul II examines the vocational call of man and how this manifests itself in his choices. c) St. John of the Cross and the “Law of the Gift”: Rocco Buttiglione has noted that for Karol Wojtyla, “Faith is not given an intellectual grasp of what God is…Faith is given a personal encounter with God which is real but, in this life, always remains in an obscurity (‘the night of faith’)”.75 This is a fundamentally Carmelite perception which Wojtyla then applies to the concept of self-giving love, or the “law of the gift.” While there is not a spousal love between the persons in the Trinity, there is a total self-donating love by which each is completely receptive and completely generous in his giving. It is difficult to properly grasp Karol Wojtyla’s thought apart from its Carmelite character. Regarding the spe-

73 Rocco Buttiglione, Karol Wojtyla: The Thought of the Man Who Became Pope John Paul II (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997): 117.

74 Ibid., 125.

75 Rocco Buttiglione, Karol Wojtyla: The Thought of the Man who Became Pope John Paul II (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997): 51.

24 cific influence of St. John of the Cross on his writings, John Paul II noted the following during the years of the Theology of the Body addresses:

To him I owe so much in my spiritual formation. I came to know him in my youth and I entered into an intimate dialogue with this master of faith, with his language and his thought, culminating in the writing of my doctoral dissertation on ‘Faith in John of the Cross.’ Ever since then I have found in him a master who has shown me the light that shines in the darkness for walking always towards God.76

The concept of self-donation to another, and self-emptying on behalf of the other, is rich within the Carmelite tradition. Aquinas had previously argued that to truly love is to “will the good of the other,” yet John of the Cross often speaks of kenosis, or self-emptying, within the Christian disciple which must happen both as a purification and in order that Christ may later enter the soul more fully.77 John of the Cross speaks of the grace given by God as a “gift of self” made in love for man.78 If freedom is an encounter with Truth as Jesus informs us in John’s gospel (Jn 8:32), and to which John Paul II reasserts in Veritatis Splendor (1993), then authentic freedom is an encounter with Christ and living in accord with one’s rational nature. The beauty of man, within his body-soul composition, is discovered by him in a total bodily and ontological self-gift to another. While such a complete self-emptying inevitably requires a risk on the part of the giv- er, as there is a real possibility of initial or delayed rejection by the recipient, the freedom encountered and exercised in this self-donation eventually leads man to self-discovery and happiness. Karol Wojtyla builds on this in underscoring that God seeks an abiding filial and nuptial relationship with the soul of man, as the erotic poetry of the Song of Songs attests. As one of the principal authors of Gaudium et Spes (Schema 13) during the Second Vatican Council, Karol Wojtyla often noted that the document highlights the “law of the gift,” which is to say that human fulfillment always follows self-donation made in love to another: “Man, who is the only creature on earth which God willed for himself, cannot fully find himself except through a sincere gift of himself (Lk 17:33).” 79 For his part, John of the Cross often described the human soul as encountering self-discovery as a gift to God, just as Christ has given himself completely to his Bride the Church.80 As we have noted, the Trinity is the archetype of self-donating love from which man and woman take their example. As John Paul II will later point out, the self-

76 John Paul II, homily at Segovia, Spain (November 4, 1982).

77 Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, I-II, 26, 4.; John of the Cross, Ascent of Mount Carmel, Henry L. Carrigan Jr. ed. (Brewster: Paraclete Press, 2002): 20, 48.

78 John of the Cross, The Living Flame of Love, commentary on St. B3, par. 78-80, in the Collected Works, Ed. Kieren Kavanaugh. Ed (Washington: ICS Publications, 1991): 705-706.

79 Second Vatican Council, Gaudium et Spes, no. 24.

80 Michael Waldstein, Introduction to Man and Woman He Created Them: A Theology of the Body (Boston: Pauline, 2005): 29.

25 giving love of the communion of persons (couple), ultimately leads to the love encountered in the community of persons (family).81 Within the “unity of the two” there is encountered two ways of being human, while sharing the same nature.82 Though others have expanded upon the spousal imagery used in Scripture to describe God and the Church, John Paul II’s unique contri- bution is found in the experience of man in the world and then lived out in his vocation.83 St. John of the Cross’ nuptial imagery is deeply Scriptural, prevalent in all the Gospels though especially in John. Similar to Dante Alighieri’s subtle draw of the reader into the heart of God within the Divine Comedy, so also does the “Disciple whom Jesus loved” steadily draw his audience into an intimate experience of Jesus’ love for man. It is worth pointing out that Pope Benedict XVI stresses that John, the son of Zebedee, and the “Disciple whom Jesus Loved” in John’s account were in fact the same man.84 This disciple was not “loved” by Jesus any more than the other disciples, though at times undoubtedly given a privileged place; rather, the author here wishes to deliberately hide his identity in order to draw his audience into a more textured encounter with Jesus, the incarnate Logos. This progressive funneling-effect, which draws the reader in, underscores primarily two points: Jesus is the Christ and the Christian should believe this. In the gradual unfolding of what is revealed in the Prologue regarding the eternal Logos becoming flesh (Jn 1:14), the text accentuates in the testimony of John the Baptist (Jn 3:29) that Jesus is the Bridegroom giving his life completely for the Bride. The eschatological fulfillment of this self-donation finds its ultimate culmination at the Cross. The spousal love and glory of this “king” (Jn 19:14) is in direct contrast with the temporal claims of power and glory witnessed in Pilate (19:10). The blood and water flowing from Jesus’ side further testify to his spousal love for the Church in the same way that the rib from the side of Adam gave life to his bride Eve. We accentuate again here the analogy of faith. An analogy is something that points towards and is in some ways similar to something greater than itself. To claim that Christ’s love for his Church is itself a spousal love, and total gift of self, is not to argue that God is somehow sexual. Neither are St. John of the Cross or John Paul II somehow claiming that the love between the persons of the Trinity is somehow nuptial in a conjugal sense, while it is, in fact, that of Father and Son in self-donation. Rather, as John of the Cross notes, the Church is “spiritually betrothed” to the Bridegroom as Jesus Christ, which requires a total self-giving on his part and ours as well:

This spiritual marriage is incomparably greater than the spiritual betrothal, for it is a total transformation in the Beloved, in which each surrenders the entire possession of self to

81 John Paul II, Mulieris Dignitatem, no. 6-7.

82 Ibid.

83 see: Henri de Lubac, Hans Urs von Balthasar, Dietrich von Hildebrand, Joseph Ratzinger.

84 Pope Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth, vol.I (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2007): 224.

26 the other with a certain consummation of the union of love…Whoever is joined to the Lord becomes one spirit with him (1 Cor. 6:17).85

Here, John of the Cross, and later John Paul II, will use the analogy of spousal love to underscore the nuptial love of man and woman in marriage. The critical point of love in marriage for John Paul II is the willed total self-donation of the spouses to each other following St. Paul in Eph- esians: “Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ loved the Church and handed himself over for her” (Eph 5:25). Though analogous to the spousal love of Christ and his Church, the conjugal love of man and woman in marriage is likewise a total self-donation made within the bond of an indissoluble union. Jesus made frequent reference to the fact the reality of total self-donation to another as the most complete form of love which can be given: “Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends” (Jn 15:1). Joseph Ratzinger (Benedict XVI) also emphasizes the necessity of this total self-donation which leads to self-discovery:

The real God is by his very nature entirely being-for (Father), being-from (Son), and being-with (Holy Spirit). Man, for his part, is in God's image precisely insofar as the ‘from,’ ‘with,’ and ‘for’ constitute the fundamental anthropological pattern.86

This total surrender of oneself to the other presupposes both self-possession and integrity on the part of the person, which John Paul II will later underscore within his Wednesday audiences. There must be self-possession if there is to be a full self-donation to another. As the Catechism of the Catholic Church notes, there is a real self-possession that accompanies sexual chastity which leads one to integrity, as opposed to carnal duplicity.87 d) Sexual Anthropology and the Person in Love and Responsibility: In John’s gospel, Jesus is not timid in his forceful attack on the Pharisee’s spiritual blindness, a result of their own hardness of heart and sin. The word “blind” appears in the ninth chapter of John a total of 13 times, usually in conjunction with the matter of sin. Within this chapter, we hear of the man born blind who was later healed by Jesus in the temple, at which point the Pharisees aggressively attack the now-healed man, his parents, and of course, Jesus, claiming that all are sinners though they themselves are righteous. After justifying themselves, Jesus responds in a frank manner: “Jesus said to them, ‘If you were blind, you would have no sin; but now you are saying, 'We see,' so your sin remains’” (Jn 9:41). Spiritual blindness because of sin is likewise attested to in the Psalms (36:2), and by the Apostle Paul (Rm 1:21). Lust blinds us. Once steeped in lust, man becomes blinded to the dignity of everyone around him, especially the one to which he has attached his sexual appetite. Much of Karol Wo- jtyla’s writings address this phenomenon, especially Love and Responsibility. Drawing largely

85 Michael Waldstein, Introduction to Man and Woman He Created Them: A Theology of the Body (Boston: Pauline, 2005): 31.

86 Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, “Truth and Freedom.” Communio (Spring, 1996).

87 Catechism of the Catholic Church, nos. 2337-2339.

27 from the Thomistic emphasis on the passions of the soul and the effects of concupiscence, Wojty- la emphasized the intrinsic order of love towards that which is in accord with his nature.88 With- in a man inebriated with the narcissism of lust, there is the inability to recognize authentic beauty. The recognition and attraction to authentic beauty is a common theme in Karol Wojtyla’s writings and the Theology of the Body. As his emotional (affective) maturity and ability to relate with others steadily declines, he “cocoons” himself within a solipsistic room that blinds him from recognizing genuine beauty inasmuch as the Pharisees in John’s gospel. Ironically, in his quest for beauty, frequently acquiring an insatiable appetite for pornography, man begins to fear authentic beauty when he encounters it in one who is grounded in truth. Simply put, the mere presence of legitimate beauty in another often exposes a concentration of shame dormant within the lustful man, which frequently results in a further cocooning himself with his “drug.” As our culture continues in its thorough going addiction with sexual gratification “on demand” and the adulation of youth, conversely it has blinded itself to the capacity to recognize genuine beauty in the other and in oneself: beauty in the elderly, beauty in a newborn child, beauty in one who may be obese, or the beauty that accompanies human suffering. The reductive fruit of a cultural “blindness to beauty” often equates into the deaths of those in whom we can see nothing beautiful.89 When lust impairs the spiritual vision of man, he ultimately finds himself sprinting through the tar of shame, anger, and a dysfunctional love-hate relationship with his chosen “drug.” One who is inebriated with lust is incapable of experiencing a holy sexual desire and an authentic sexual joy as intended by God for his children. This is primarily because in such an instance the conjugal act morphs into an entirely self-focused experience and the other becomes a means to an end (utilitarianism). This diet of carnal emptiness ultimately “imprisons him in [the] hopeless boredom” of sexual narcissism, seemingly unable to notice anyone outside of himself.90 This loss of the capacity to see authentic beauty in others is likewise the loss of the capacity for contemplation of truth. For instance, as with the case of pornography, there is a deficit of “modesty in the mind” to the extent that the other becomes a potential means to gratify one’s sexual needs, as there is clearly an inability to see her as a person rather than an object of enjoyment.91 Conversely, when beauty is encountered in all its splendor, it leads to what John Paul II has termed the “threshold of pure wonder,” or rather a sense of wonder wherein one is lifted out of oneself and brought towards the ontological source of such beauty.92 Philosopher Josef Pieper describes this capacity to contemplate true beauty as the ability to “open one’s eyes receptively to whatever offers itself to one’s vision, and the things seen enter into us, so to speak, without

88 Avery Cardinal Dulles, S.J., “John Paul II and the Renewal of Thomism,” John Paul II and St. Thomas Aquinas, Michael Dauphinais and Matthew Levering, eds. (Ave Maria: Sapientia Press, 2006): 20.

89 Maura Butler, “90% of Down Syndrome Children Aborted, Survivors Bring Joy,” Lifenews (April 19, 2011).

90 Dietrich von Hildebrand, Man, Woman, and the Meaning of Love (Manchester: Sophia, 2002), 95.

91 William M. Struthers, Wired for Intimacy: How Pornography Hijacks the Male Brain (Madison: IVP Books, 2009): 20, 44-47.

92 John Paul II, Roman Triptych, 8.

28 calling for any effort or strain on our part to possess them.”93 As Karol Wojtyla underscores in Love and Responsibility, this capacity to truly encounter the dignity of another is absent in the blinding nature of utilitarian lust. He refers to this ability to chastely perceive the other as an “interior transparency” whereby only the good of the other is willed. Later in his Wednesday catechesis’ on the body, the theme of this inner-transparency will develop into his argument for the “peace of the interior gaze,” a phenomenon which highlights Jesus’ words on the Sermon on the Mount: “Blessed are the pure of heart for they shall see God” (Mt 5:8).94 The theological virtue of chastity, taking its genesis from the cardinal virtue of temperance, is given great emphasis by Wojtyla within the text. In Thomas Aquinas’ assertion that charity is the form of all the virtues, chastity itself follows the form of benevolent love for the other by perceiving in the other a gift, rather than simply a means to a sexualized end. Any sense of disordered lust or prudishness is absent in this authentic chastity. To chastely perceive the other is to will in accord with what is both reasonable and aligned with one’s nature. Wojtyla, then, highlights the personalistic norm borrowed from Kant’s categorical imperative, namely that love is the only proper end properly due to a person.95 Thus, the person exists for his own sake, and in his own beauty and goodness. While not intended as a spiritual text per se, Love and Responsibility bears a number of ramifications for the spiritual life, especially in relation to sexual ethics and chastity. In Person and Act, published some nine years later in 1969, Wojtyla expounds upon the metaphysical premise that the activity of a person follows from the actual being of the person. The action of the person, therefore, follows from what the person actually is; namely, a being with a rational nature.96 In both Person and Act and Love and Responsibility, as its precursor, Wojyla places a strong emphasis on human acts actually meaning something, thereby rejecting any Cartesian optic for perceiving man as somehow segregated from the body in his personhood. John Paul II’s emphasis here on act will later take precedence in his pivotal encyclical Veritatis Splendor (1993) on the reform of moral theology. In terms of sexual ethics, he accentuates in Love and Responsi- bility that man acts in response to the sexual urge within him, and this acting, which may include not physically responding to an attraction, ultimately shapes the person he becomes. Likewise, if the body does have ontological meaning, as Christians believe it does, then there is an integrity both of the body and of the conjugal act that must be preserved and protected. Much of the philosophical essence of the Theology of the Body addresses can be found in the work John Paul II wrote in 1960, while still a young bishop. The same year he published a remarkable, yet dis- armingly simple, play entitled The Jeweler’s Shop, wherein he addresses some of the practical beauties and challenges of love and marriage. Within Love and Responsibility, Karol Wojtyla lays the anthropological groundwork by which the Theology of the Body would later take shape.

93 Josef Pieper, Leisure: The Basis of Culture (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2009): 26, 82.

94 Karol Wojtyla, Love and Responsibility (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1993): 169-173; Man and Woman He Created Them: A Theology of the Body, 13:1.

95 Karol Wojtyla, Love and Responsibility (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1993): 41.

96 Peter Simpson, On Karol Wojtyla (Belmont: Wadsworth, 2001): 23.

29 While Wojtyla does draw largely from Thomas Aquinas, Augustine, Max Scheler, Immanuel Kant, and the Second Vatican Council in framing the ethics of the Theology of the Body corpus, it is primarily Love and Responsibility which established the moral infrastructure of sexual ethics and personhood found in it. For instance in his categorical imperative, as we have noted, Kant argues that one may never use another as a means to an end, primarily from the standpoint of reason and duty.97 Wojtyla however, adopts this principal as the personalistic norm within Love and Responsibility, though he argues against the utilitarian use of another on the principal that a person always has an “inviolable intrinsic dignity.”98 While the Theology of the Body addresses are, unfortunately, often equated almost entirely with chastity and sexuality issues, in reality this is only one characteristic intrinsic to his Wednesday catechesis’. Nonetheless, the importance of a proper sexual hermeneutic is paramount when diagnosing the ontological depth of the Wednes- day addresses. Wojtyla seeks to restore the splendor of sight contained within chastity to the blindness of utilitarian lust. As we have noted, consistently throughout his writings, Karol Wojtyla understood action as the lens through which one came to understand the person. As morality and action are forever intertwined, it is by the actions of the person that morality is understood. As Mary Shivanandan has observed, in the thought of Wojtyla “the person becomes good or evil by his actions” and thus act becomes the point-of-contact for properly perceiving man by way of an “adequate anthropology.”99 Establishing this ethical groundwork is essential in properly assessing conjugal love between man and woman. While sin originates in the will, it is often influenced by man’s fallen nature in concupiscence. This phenomenon continually pulls man to cross a line of temptation to actually will an evil, and as Catholic tradition holds, there is a moral difference between passively experiencing temptation and actively willing it. While Wojtyla underscores the beauty that emotions inevitably play within the subjective experience of love, he notes that misguided emotions can likewise amplify the propensity to will what is evil. Man has a rational nature, becoming the good or evil by which he wills. Apart from this reasoning in accord with truth, then, man has a great capacity to lean towards self-deception in sin.100 He has the power of self-determination, though once evil is continually chosen, his will and capacity to resist evil are progressively anesthetized in egoism. Virtue must be brought in to the fuller picture of human action, so as to gradually hone it in personal sanctity. In his plays, The Jeweler’s Shop (1960) and Radiation of Fatherhood (1964), Karol Wo- jtyla approaches the phenomenon of love from the perspective of spouses, young and old, and parenthood. Within Love and Responsibility, he analyzes the encounter of conjugal love from the perspective of a proper order according to man’s nature. As we will see, this will later impact

97 Immanuel Kant, Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals, Mary Gregor and Jens Timmermann, eds., (Cam- bridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012): 40-41.

98 Avery Cardinal Dulles, S.J., “John Paul II and the Renewal of Thomism,” John Paul II and St. Thomas Aquinas, Michael Dauphinais and Matthew Levering, eds. (Ave Maria: Sapientia Press, 2006): 20; John Paul II, Love and Responsibility (San Francisco, 1993): 41.

99 Mary Shivanandan, Crossing the Threshold of Love (Washington: CUA Press, 1999): 55.

100 Karol Wojtyla, Love and Responsibility (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1993): 159-164.

30 his understanding of love within the sphere of original solitude and original unity in the Theolo- gy of the Body. As a body and soul composite, created in God’s image and likeness with a rational nature (“somatic homogeneity”), man is both ordered towards giftedness to another (nuptial meaning of the body) and a supernatural end.101 Wojtyla argues that while man and woman share a common nature ordered towards a specific end in self-donation, namely a procreative end in this life and supernatural one for the next, the pleasure which accompanies sexual sharing in marriage must always be subordinated to love, thereby avoiding either a utilitarian use of the other or a rigorist using of the other solely for offspring.102 In other words, if the sexual desire (what he terms “urge” or “fondness”) is exclusively directed towards the sexual attributes of the other it becomes easily corrupted and morally “impoverished.”103 Rather, the sexual “urge” within each must be subordinated to the good of the other person, which ultimately allows for the authentic possibility of love. While there certainly are somatic and emotional aspects to this attraction, love itself resides in the will and thus true love is always accompanied by a responsibility for the other as well. Wojtyla devotes a considerable portion of time in the text both to utilitarianism and rig- orism. As we have noted, within the utilitarian paradigm, man perceives the sexual characteristics of the other as an end; therefore, the person herself becomes a means to that narcissistic end. Within Wojtyla’s assessment of the rigorist account, he confronts the puritanical mindset whereby intercourse is tolerated solely for procreation. Eight years after Wojtyla penned the work, Pope Paul VI would argue in Humanae Vitae (1968) for the necessity of maintaining both the unitive and procreative aspects of the conjugal act within marriage, which can never be justly separated.104 It is worth noting that the emphasis placed by Paul VI and John Paul II on the vitality of community within the life of man, and especially the couple as a communion of persons (communio personarum) bringing forth a community of persons (family), is not only an indispensable anthropological point, rather, it is also a matter pertaining to natural law and thus accessible by human reason. As Jacques Maritain contends, man is an “open whole” who absolutely “cannot be alone.”105 Maritain’s neo-Thomism opened the way for a new found respect for Catholic social doctrine, and its emphasis on man’s need for community. Furthermore, society itself finds its genesis “as something required by nature and (because this nature is a human nature) as something accomplished through a work of reason and will and freely consented to.”106 Wojtyla’s communitarian emphasis within his sexual ethic, then, is one not only for Catholics, but is also available to all via the natural moral law. This stress on communion and community

101 Michael Waldstein, Introduction to Man and Woman He Created Them: A Theology of the Body (Boston: Pauline, 2005):8:4.

102 Ibid., 42, 43, 57-66.

103 Mary Shivanandan, Crossing the Threshold of Love (Washington: CUA Press, 1999): 34.

104 Pope Paul VI, Humanae Vitae (1968), no. 12.

105 Jacques Maritain, Christianity and Democracy (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2011): 68.

106 Ibid.

31 would shape several of the key documents of his Pontificate, including his Letter to Families (Gratissimam Sane, 1994) wherein he underscores that the “communion of persons” of spousal love is ordered towards the “community of persons” within the beauty of family life; the “first and basic expression of man’s social nature.”107 Though often overlooked in much of Catholic sexual ethics, because man and woman have a body as part of their personhood, their encounter with the other is a sensual one and is revealed in the body. Wojtyla argues that while man has a body as animals do, he wills either love or sin, and in doing so, enters into a deeper communion with the other or he uses her.108 While the attraction to another may not be directly willed, the response to this attraction bears with it a responsibility for man which is larger than himself; namely, a responsibility to the person and to love itself. The results of what is eventually willed by man, namely either charity or sin, has further implications for the common good. The moral demands placed on the person as part of this responsibility cannot be abrogated and still maintain authentic love among spouses. The gen- uineness which accompanies this benevolence for Wojtyla similarly involves a being something for the other, rather than a doing something. The total self-donation of being to another is a phenomenon which takes place in the will, as an act, whereby the person “gives his inalienable I to be the property of his beloved” and in the process attains an ontological and vocational self-realization.109 This gift of self likewise involves a risk on the part of both man and woman, which ultimately implies the possibility of rejection of the gift. On June 21, 1978, roughly four months prior to his election as Pontiff, Cardinal Wojtyla of Krakow arrived in Milan for the International Congress on “Fruitful and Responsible Love: Ten Years after Humanae Vitae.” The Congress members addressed the document from a scientific and ecumenical perspective and Wojtyla’s address genuinely resonated with the attendees. Within the text, Wojtyla tethers Humanae Vitae to the anthropological vision of man as presented by the Second Vatican Council fathers in Gaudium et Spes. He notes that Paul VI’s document builds on this vision, particularly in its analysis of the character of giftedness as it concerns conjugal love: “The responsibility for the gift of love finds its expression in an abiding consciousness of having received that gift and at the same time in discerning and appreciating the tasks which accompany the gift.”110 Clearly, Wojtyla here is highlighting the themes he earlier accentuated in Love and Responsibility regarding man’s being as pure gift, created ex nihilo, his vocation towards nuptial giftedness, and the responsibility which accompanies this generosity of self. As we have noted, within the secular West, sexual attraction to another is generally understood within a Darwinistic paradigm; namely, that man acts sexually out of instinct rather than as an act of the will rooted in the immortal soul. Wojtyla is clear in delineating here between the “order of nature” and the “biological order.” The “order of nature” is the order by which God has ordered man in his body and soul unity towards giftedness to another; conversely,

107 John Paul II, Grattisimam Sane (1994), no. 7.

108 Karol Wojtyla, Love and Responsibility (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1993): 95-98, 107-109.

109 Mary Shivanandan, Crossing the Threshold of Love (Washington: CUA Press, 1999): 36.

110 Karol Wojtyla, Fruitful and Responsible Love (New York: Crossroad, 1979): no.3.

32 the “biological order” is a method of scientific analysis designed by man for empirical study. Therefore, biology “has man for its immediate author,” whereas God is the author of the “order of nature” as the First Cause.111 One of the theological fallacies endemic in some of those who dissented from Humanae Vitae in the past fifty years has included great confusion on this point, namely a misunderstanding of the body within a largely Cartesian biologism, though often outwardly denying as much. As Michael Waldstein points out, “If one replaces the order of nature with the biological order, the consequences are devastating.”112 As pure gift, man finds his authentic nature within the “order of nature” designed by God, which includes a body as part of that nature. As we will see in his Theology of the Body addresses, John Paul II emphasizes that it is both the body and the soul that compose the essence of man in his personhood, and in this unity he is ordered towards human giftedness. Wojtyla notes that the sexual attraction between man and woman can take the form of sensuality, being attracted to the physiological qualities of the other, or sentimentality, an emotional desire for nearness to the other. Each of these characteristics include a danger. While sensual attraction can easily morph into lust which seeks the sexual characteristics of the other as an end, sentimental attraction, left unchecked by reason and truth can deteriorate into subjectivism whereby an idealized perception of the other is projected, frequently leading man into self-deception.113 If the conjugal love of man and woman is to be genuine, it must be grounded in the freedom derived from moral truth. Truly belonging to another as gift, then, presupposes this freedom. Just as love resides in the will, it is likewise freedom which belongs to the will.114

e) Christian Personalism and the Second Vatican Council: Those familiar with John Paul II’s writings and the Theology of the Body are often aware of the great value with which Karol Wojtyla held Gaudium et Spes in particular. Having worked diligently on the draft during the Conciliar years, then known simply as Schema 13, the document’s emphasis on Christian anthropology deeply resonated with Wojtyla who had spent the majority of his life living under totalitarian rule. When Pope John XXIII announced his plans to summon the 21st Ecumenical Council in 1958, only 3 months after his election as Pontiff, he sent a letter to the world’s roughly 2900 bishops asking them what the Council should address. While past Ecumenical Council’s had focused largely on dealing with a particular issue or crisis at hand, John XXIII wished this Council to be “pastoral” in its nature, meaning he wished it to both be practical in the lives of the Christian faithful and to reignite the Holy Spirit within the life of

111 Karol Wojtyla, Love and Responsibility (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1993): 56-57.

112 Michael Waldstein, Introduction to Man and Woman He Created Them: A Theology of the Body (Boston: Pauline, 2005): xxiv.

113Ibid., 109-114.

114 Ibid., 114-118.

33 the Church on the parochial level. As John O’Malley contends, “Vatican II was about interiority. It was about holiness in a way and in a style different from previous councils.”115 An accurate hermeneutic of the term “pastoral,” with regards to the Second Vatican Council intentions, is vital for our purposes given the misinformation that has surrounded the term, largely from the followers of the late schismatic Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre (d. 1991) on the one hand, and from those who sought to amputate Catholic tradition from the deposit of faith on the other. Further amplifying the post-Conciliar confusion surrounding what was “pastoral” and “doctrinal,” was witnessed in the efforts of some pastors to relativize Catholic teachings on such issues as artificial contraception and homosexual acts, arguing that to teach them is theologically bombastic and “not pastoral.” Joseph Ratzinger frequently criticized this misapplied sense of the term, seeking to draw pastors back to the realty that authentic love is always tethered to moral truth. As Eduardo J. Echeverria has noted commenting on this point, “In an effort to show compassion [one should] take care not to dilute the truth of the Gospel regarding the meaning of man’s body.”116 Ratzinger reiterates this point while serving as Prefect for the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, insisting that authentically “pastoral” efforts to assist homosexuals cannot neglect or side-step the reality that homosexual acts are “intrinsically disordered” and “under no circumstances can they be approved.”117 He further insists that “special concern and pastoral attention” should be shown to homosexuals in accepting them with compassion, but instructing them in truth “lest they be led to believe that the living out of this orientation in homosexual activity in a morally acceptable option. It is not.”118 Both John Paul II and Benedict XVI repeatedly articulated the importance of understanding the Second Vatican Council in terms of continuity, not of rupture, with the past, especially the past Ecumenical Councils. For instance, while the followers of Marcel Lefevbvre (Society of St. Pius X) would assert that Vatican II was heresy, and ipso facto doctrinally null and void, many in within the progressive wing of Catholicism would equally fail to appreciate the Second Vatican Council’s continuity with the previous twenty councils. As Joseph Ratzinger has noted, “It must be stated that Vatican II is upheld by the same authority as Vatican I and the Council of Trent,” and to reject Vatican II is similarly to deny the authority of the previous councils and; therefore, “detaches them from their foundation.”119 In the first year of his Pontificate, Benedict XVI again reiterated this point: “If this [Council] is to accurately proceed in the life of the Church there must be, then, an authentic interpretation and implementation of the Council itself and what it

115 Raymond F. Bulman, Frederick J. Parrella, eds. From Trent to Vatican II: Historical and Theological Investiga- tions, John W. O’Malley, “Trent and Vatican II: Two Styles of Church,” (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2006): 317.

116 Eduardo J. Echeverria, In the Beginning: A Theology of the Body (Eugene: Pickwick, 2011): 307.

117 Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 2357.

118 Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on the Pastoral Care of Homosexual Persons (1986), no. 3.

119 Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, The Ratzinger Report (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1985): 28.

34 legitimately taught.”120 In what he terms a “hermeneutic of discontinuity and rupture” which frequently led to a perceived “spirit” of the Council, often seen on the theological left, the sixteen Council documents were only loosely referred to and therefore they became subjugated to the “spirit” of the subjective interpretation.121 As Pontiff, John Paul II evidently understood the perils endemic in this strain of thought and prudently appointed Joseph Ratzinger as Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in 1981, with the intention that a proper post-Con- ciliar hermeneutic is needed to govern the life of the Church. Following the request from Pope St. John XXIII for the bishop’s suggestions regarding the focus of the 21st Ecumenical Council, known as the Acta, Karol Wojtyla, a newly ordained bishop, sent his thoughts as well. Given the carnage that had followed the totalitarian regimes and the conflict of the twentieth century, Wojtyla insisted that the Council should focus principally on the dignity of the human person in light of Christian revelation, which it ultimately did; primarily with Gaudium et Spes and Dignitatis Humanae; two texts which Wojtyla himself actively participated in crafting. It is said that Ecumenical Councils are often “convoked when they are provoked,” which is to say they have historically been summoned when the Church has faced some pressing crisis, dictator, heresy, theological dispute, or even anti-popes, as with the Council of Constance in 1414. The First Vatican Council (1869-1870) had a number of its tentative issues to be addressed cut short by the advent of the Franco-Prussian war, though in spite of the external pressure the fathers somehow managed to address the organic cohesion of faith and reason (Dei Filius) and the nature of Papal infallibility (Pastor Aeternus). Active in all four sessions of the Second Vati- can Council (1962-1965), both Karol Wojtyla (John Paul II) and Joseph Ratzinger (Benedict XVI) were men of the Council and understood their respective papacies in light of its authentic Conciliar teachings, in continuity with the other twenty councils. Jarosɫaw Kupczak, O.P. has noted of John Paul II’s hermeneutic of the Council: “Wojtyla has been consistent in his belief that Vatican II was an immense grace and marks out God’s will for the Church in our time.” In commenting on faulty interpretations of the Council he argues, “He [John Paul II] rejects projec- tive readings of the Council, however, by which some read into it their own wishes or even fan- tasies.”122 In approaching the Theology of the Body text, John Paul II makes frequent reference to the anthropological underpinnings of Gaudium et Spes, and as a result, exegetes of the Theol- ogy of the Body corpus have not infrequently overlooked the Pontiff’s other writings pertaining to the incorporation and importance of the other fifteen Council documents. Properly understood, then, the Theology of the Body text speaks to the other Council documents in profound ways, yet this analysis remains largely unpacked. For our purposes, we wish only to underscore that while Karol Wojtyla often referred to Gaudium et Spes within his magisterial teachings, a proper interpretation of the man as a whole cannot be understood as amputated from the other Council documents.

120 Pope Benedict XVI, Angelus Message (December 8, 2005).

121 Pope Benedict XVI, Address to the Roman Curia (December 22, 2005).

122 Jarosɫaw Kupczak, O.P., Destined for Liberty (Washington: CUA Press, 2000): Introduction, xix.

35 One of the preeminent battles of the post-Conciliar Church, was the gradual emergence of those who understood the updating of the Church (aggiornamento) that Pope John XXIII had called for as largely severed from the sources of Catholic tradition (ressourcement). These thinkers, such as Hans Küng and Karl Rahner, founded the theological journal Concilium (1965), which as George Weigel has noted, operated “within rather narrow ideological boundaries, [and] according to a kind of theological party line,” not infrequently at odds with authentic Catholic thought.123 By contrast, Communio, founded in 1972 by Joseph Ratzinger, Hans Urs von Balthasar, Henri De Lubac, and Louis Bouyer, attempted to bridge the gap between a proper updating of the Church while simultaneously remaining grounded in its rich tradition, honoring sentire cum ecclesia (thinking with the mind of the Church). While the former claimed to be true herald of the “spirit of Vatican II,” the latter actually embodied far more of what the Council actually taught and what Catholicism itself held to be true. For his part, Karol Wojtyla clearly drew from the theological school affiliated with the Communio alliance, often reiterating his admiration for De Lubac, Balthasar, and Ratzinger, who would later serve him as Prefect for the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith from 1981-2005. The consistent efforts of Communio, to articulate a genuine anthropology rooted in Christian metaphysics have profoundly aided in the understanding of John Paul II’s thought throughout the world. Published in fifteen languages worldwide, the journal allows for a healthy dissemination of theological discourse while simultaneously honoring what is, in fact, legitimately Catholic. As we have noted, it is simply not possible to understand the life and thought of John Paul II apart from the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965). The event forever changed him, as he often stated, and was continually the guiding light for much of his decision making and direc- tives as Pontiff, in particular his focus of leading the Church into the third millennium with the Jubilee year of 2000. In actively and, perhaps more importantly, accurately, implementing the authentic teachings of the Council both in Poland and later in the universal Church, John Paul II “helped rescue the genuine teachings of Vatican II from the slippery hermeneutic of the ‘Spirit of Vatican II’ and from the crossfire of the ecclesiastical tong-wars.”124 Much of the actual cleansing of the blurred theological optic in the post-Conciliar years; however, would be due to the efforts of Joseph Ratzinger. The target of media acrimony, Ratzinger was often forced to deal with the “theological debris” local bishops frequently side-stepped out of fear. For instance, at the twentieth anniversary of the closing of the Second Vatican Council in 1985, John Paul II summoned the bishops from all parts of the world an Extraordinary Synod to assess how the implementation of the Council’s resolutions had been proceeding following its conclusion. Ratzinger had recently published his work, The Ratzinger Report, wherein he critiqued some of the misguided interpretations of the Council that had taken place on both the far left and the far right.125 Acknowledging many of the practical difficulties that resulted from following some the faulty

123 George Weigel, God’s Choice (New York: Harper, 2005): 175.

124 Ibid., 33.

125 Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, The Ratzinger Report (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1985): 27-37.

36 misinterpretations of the Conciliar texts, the Synod fathers decided upon the compilation of a universal Catechism of the Catholic Church to help clarify what precisely the faith does, in fact, teach. An example of this post-Conciliar misinformation was seen in the frequent misreadings of Perfectae Caritatis (1965), the Decree on the Adaptation and Renewal of Religious Life. The theological spin within some religious communities surrounding the document’s accurate interpretation augmented the defection within the U.S. of more than 125,000 religious sisters between the years of 1965 and 2012.126 Under the supervision of Ratzinger at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Catechism of the Catholic Church was promulgated in 1992, first in French and later in Latin (editio typica), from which other translations were made. Both John Paul II and Benedict XVI devoted considerable energies of their respective papacies to underscoring the continuity of the Second Vatican Council, rather than its rupture, from tradition. Those unfamiliar with Church history or the deep ideological divisions which occurred in the post-Conciliar years of the Church may wonder, “Why all the fuss over the Council?” or “What’s the big deal with this thing?” These are important questions that are often overlooked and deserve an apt response in properly assessing John Paul II’s Theology of the Body. In its seasoned history, the Catholic Church has not only witnessed epochs of post-Conciliar confusion, but also eras of apathy on the part of bishops to properly implement the actual teachings of a particular Council, witnessed for instance at Lateran Council V (1517), which called for the reform of clerical abuses taking place but which were essentially ignored. In the months following Lat- eran V, Martin Luther initiated the Protestant Reformation on October 31st of that year, largely in response to these egregious abuses, a tragedy which Catholicism now accepts partial responsibility.127 Given the lamentable level of catechesis among most Catholics on a parochial level for the past fifty years, it should come as no surprise that many are unaware that there were faulty interpretations of the Second Vatican Council, or for that matter that there ever was one to begin with. As we prepare to unpack the corpus of John Paul II’s Theology of the Body, the Council’s authentic teachings are a mandatory premise in approaching the text with a healthy hermeneutic. The proper implementation of the Second Vatican Council practically meant also a proper interpretation of human anthropology in God’s revelation to man. For instance, if an “updating” of the Church is amputated from the body of Catholic sources and Scripture, as some post-Conciliar theologians have done, then the deleterious fruit of this will be an ethically blurred understanding of man, Christian marriage, human sexuality, and ontology in general.128 A brief overview of the efforts of John Paul II in confronting the post-Conciliar confusion within the Church is helpful to this understanding. The following is a precursory look at some of these problems and the documents promulgated under his Pontificate to address them:

• Problem: Identity confusion between the clerical and lay states of life.

126 Ann Carey, Sisters in Crisis (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2013): 13, 241.

127 Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 817.

128 As an example of this misguided hermeneutic of man see The Sexual Person by Todd A. Salzman and Michael G. Lawler (Washington: Georgetown, 2008) and the doctrinal critique of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops Committee on Doctrine (September 15, 2010).

37 Documents: Christfidelis Laici (1988), Pastores Dabo Vobis (1992), Vita Consecrata (1996). • Problem: Doctrinal confusion in Moral Theology. Document: Veritatis Splendor (1993). • Problem: Doctrinal and identity confusion among Catholic universities/colleges. Documents: Sapientia Christiana (1979), Ex Corde Ecclesia (1990). • Problem: Liberation Theology. Documents (from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith): Instruction on Certain Aspects of the Theology of Liberation (1984), Instruction on Christian Freedom and Lib- eration (1986). • Problem: Misguided Feminism. Documents: Mulieris Dignitatem (1988), Letter to Women (1995). • Problem: Cultural attacks on the Family. Documents: Familiaris Consortio (1981), Gratissimam Sane (1994). • Problem: Attacks on Human Life. Documents: Evangelium Vitae (1995). • Problem: Misapplied Social Doctrine. Documents: Laborem Excercens (1981), Solicitudo rei Socialis (1987), Centessimus An- nus (1991).

While the list could be expanded, our point here is simply to underscore that much of Karol Wo- jtyla’s pontificate was guided by the loadstar of the Second Vatican Council and its proper implementation; much of which converged around the dignity of the human person. f) Pope St. Paul VI and Humanae Vitae: Among the divisive issues between twentieth century Catholicism and the secular culture, undoubtedly artificial contraception takes a formidable place. The issue was transformed culturally from one of sexual ethics to one of personal “rights” once understood within the paradigm of the three-fold American optic, which tends to pervade much of Western thought in the post-Con- ciliar years: 1) Desires = “rights.” As we have alluded to, following the Hobbesian account of “everyone having a right to everything,” Western society steadily came to the realization that they ascribed to Margaret Sanger’s insistence on birth control as a fundamental human “right.” This realization was largely ratified by the Griswold v. Connecticut (1965) Supreme Court decision, wherein birth control made the societal leap from being an issue of morality to an issue of “rights.” Buttressed by many Catholic clergy who argued for the permissibility of artificial means of contraception based on “permission of conscience,” legions of Catholic couples slept with the peace of mind of having further received “church endorsement” for using contraception.129 Still other clerics simply avoided addressing the issue altogether in Sunday homilies, and have continued to do throughout the course of their priesthood, a position theologically akin to sticking one’s head in sand in the hopes of avoiding conflict. This parochial dys-

129 D. Vincent Twomey, SVD, Moral Theology After Humanae Vitae (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2010): 11.

38 function led to the phenomenon whereby most knew that the Church opposed contraception though almost no one understood why or wished to bring it up publicly. This is ironic given Pope Pius XI’s paternal warning to Catholic clergy who shrink from preaching on this issue out of fear or the immaturity which often accompanies an addiction to homiletic praise from the laity:

Any confessor or pastor of souls, which may God forbid, lead the faithful entrusted to him into these errors [contraception] or should at least confirm them by approval or by guilty silence, let him be mindful of the fact that he must render a strict account to God, the Supreme Judge, for the betrayal of his sacred trust, and let him take to himself the words of Christ: ‘They are blind and the leaders of the blind: and if the blind lead the blind, both fall into the pit’” (Mt 15:14).130

In what George Weigel has termed “the Pearl Harbor of the American culture war,” Gris- wold laid the legal underpinnings for several generations of court decisions justifying willed immortality on the basis of “privacy” and “rights.”131 While Catholic social doctrine has long supported authentic rights tethered to the natural moral law and the dignity of the human person, it recognizes that if “rights” are to ethically substantive they must be based in the truth of the imago dei, rather than ego or desires. 2) Voting on Truth: In her very thorough investigations of Western culture, Mary Eber- stadt has noted that progressive deterioration of the natural family directly coincides with the diminution of faith in society as whole. Eberstadt documents the social and academic naiveté with which Christians are frequently labeled, based largely on traditional beliefs on marriage and family. 132 The labeling of “outdated” ignorance often morphs into brazen anti-Christian persecu- tion for upholding these social norms. Evangelical Christian D.A. Carson has termed this simply the “intolerance of tolerance,” or the social rejection of Christian values in the name of “tolerance”; a phenomenon Pope Benedict XVI has likewise underscored.”133 If desires equal “rights,” eventually there arises the need to evaluate moral truths understood in primarily two ways: legal action (e.g. courts) and subjective will (e.g. opinion polls). For example, if the court rules that a particular moral decision, say same-sex “marriage,” is in fact legal, then it must likewise be moral, and; therefore, socially acceptable. This not only allows one to assuage one’s conscience for possible evil committed, it likewise green-lights one to apply public pressure to those who may disagree with him on moral grounds as “intolerant.” The “desires = rights” reality, then, leads to the “legality = morality” culture as well. Ignoring the historical fact that many egregiously immoral decisions were often legally permitted (e.g. Dred Scott v. Sandford, 1857),

130 Pope Pius XI, Casti Canubii, no. 4.

131 George Weigel, Practicing Catholic (New York: Crossroad, 2012): 9.

132 Mary Eberstadt, How the West Really Lost God (West Conshohocken: Templeton Press, 2013): 28, 68-72.

133 D.A. Carson, The Intolerance of Tolerance (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2012): 1; Pope Benedict XVI, Light of the World (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2010): 52-53.

39 Americans once again sleep with clarity of mind that a tough moral dilemma has been handled by someone else, and are thus safely at bay from one’s own conscience. 3) Liberal-Conservative taxonomy: The vast majority of Western culture and Catholics, often find it simply inconceivable not to ascribe other persons, clerics, or politics with either “liberal” or “conservative” taxonomy; the result of which is a severely stunted capacity for reasoned discourse. Having largely amputated logic and rhetoric completely from the liberal arts education, few students in higher education or even post-graduate studies are actually taught how to think, as opposed to reasoning based on relativism and subjectivity. When the means for mature discourse among adults is eliminated, including those who may strongly disagree on an issue, the cultural result is to tag the opposing position with a label: “liberal,” “progressive,” “conservative,” etc. Authentic Catholic thought; however, has never “thought” this way. As Alcuin of York (d.804) insisted at the height of the Carolingian Renaissance, the instruction of grammar, logic, rhetoric (trivium), and dialectics was vital for authentic Catholic reasoning. Thus, while one may indeed be zealous on a particular issue, one needed to learn to “think” the issue and lis- ten dispassionately to the other as well, humbly acknowledging the truth which may be prevalent in her argument. In brief, then, we need to think about how we are thinking. To do so is an act of charity, which often includes active listening. For his part, Joseph Ratzinger frequently referred to the Western tendency of using liberal-conservative taxonomy as simply “cliché” and “inadequate.”134 For our purposes we will avoid evaluating this phenomenon from the standpoint of political science; however, it is worth pointing out that with regards to Roman Catholicism to profess what the Catholic Church believes to actually be true often means that one will be labeled as a “conservative” Catholic, not infrequently from Catholics themselves. This propensity of theological classification is also not uncommon among Catholic clergy in describing other clergy. Such left-right taxonomy has both plagued and polarized many Dioceses, both among laity and clergy, to the extent that to even propose a third option, namely “orthodox Catholicism,” or what Weigel has termed “Evangelical Catholicism,” is inevitably vexing for those on all sides.135 The pontificate of John Paul II gave many Catholic clergy formal permission to publicly realign themselves with moral teaching they may have privately believed, but were hesitant to avow. John Paul II himself often defied the tired left-right labels in his theological positions, not infrequently leaving the secular press befuddled as to just how to describe him. He not only addressed these moral issues head-on, he did it in such a way that the term “pastoral” could properly be understood again in terms of spiritual paternity and truth, rather than side-stepping tense moral issues under the guise of being “unrealistic” or “divisive.” His courage, and just good leadership, inspired several generations to likewise follow suit. This three-fold American optic is arguably nowhere more distorted in Western culture than with sexual ethics. Within this minefield, the issue of artificial contraception inevitably takes precedence over others, and from a standpoint of moral theology many of the sexual “disorders” commonplace in the culture find their roots with the advent of artificial contraception. In

134 Joseph Ratzinger, Theological Highlights of Vatican II (New York: Paulist Press, 2009): ix.

135 George Weigel, Evangelical Catholicism (New York: Basic, 2013): 17-18.

40 Humanae Vitae (1968), Pope Paul VI warned of the proliferation of sexual and cultural dysfunc- tion which would accompany the contraceptive mentality, as numerous studies have since confirmed.136 That Americans have fully embraced the Sangarian eugenics formulated in contraception is hard to dispute, and to question this publicly is largely akin to questioning the air we breathe. In a culture that tends to assimilate freedom with autonomy, and sexual rights as equated exclusively “within the privacy of one’s home” and “between consenting adults,” to speak of a negative impact of sexual acts is taboo to the extent that it is considered bigotry; ultimately leading to a situation which Patrick J. Deneen once termed “the one unacceptable ‘choice’ of restricted choices.”137 For his part, John Paul II took aim at this denial of the social impact of sin, underscoring the obvious point that “man is a common good” in himself; therefore, his actions actually mean something both for himself and society.138 To the degree that man’s collective sins contribute to a larger societal body of rationalized evil, there becomes an increase in the “structures of sin” prevalent in this culture.139 Over fifty years since its release, Humanae Vitae continues to be a bone of contention for many Catholics, and it is sometimes described as the tip of the arrow for those who claim to be authentically Catholic and those only nominally so, or better, morally apathetic. Considering the vast majority of Western culture tends to identify happiness in general through the filter of sexual gratification, it should not be surprising that we still experience what Cardinal Marc Ouellet once referred to as a “persistent malaise” surrounding the cultural assimilation of Humanae Vitae.140 While Gaudium et Spes (1965) had briefly underscored the Church’s prohibition against contraception, referred to simply as “blameworthy” by the Council fathers, Humanae Vitae was understood by many, such as Charles Curran, as a rejection of the personalism articulated by the Council.141 In reality however, Humanae Vitae built on the Christian anthropology intrinsic to Gaudium et Spes, as it is directly referenced by Pope St. Paul VI a total of seven times in the text. Still, as Ouellet has noted, the “fragility of the Magisterium” vis-à-vis the secular culture “pointed for the need for further theological depth in explaining why contraception is morally unacceptable.”142 Paul VI underscored this point within the document in calling for “an integral vision of man” as understood in light of his anthropological grounding in the person of Jesus

136 Mary Eberstadt, Adam and Even after the Pill (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2012): 134-138.

137 Patrick J. Deneen, “Unsustainable Liberalism,” First Things (August/September 2012): 25-31.

138 John Paul II, Gratissimam Sane, no. 11.

139 Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 1869; John Paul II, Solicitudo rei Socialis, no. 36.

140 Marc Cardinal Quellet, Divine Likeness: Toward a Trinitarian Anthropology of the Family (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2006): 10.

141 Second Vatican Council, Gaudium et Spes, no. 51; Charles E. Curran, Loyal Dissent (Washington: Georgetown, 2006): 143-149.

142 Marc Cardinal Quellet, Divine Likeness: Toward a Trinitarian Anthropology of the Family (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2006): 9.

41 Christ.143 As we have noted, the Incarnation is the anthropological linchpin for understanding the whole of Catholic life, worship, and belief. Pope Paul VI and the Second Vatican Council made every possible effort to renew this understanding within their insegnamenti. While many assumed that Paul VI would overturn the Catholic prohibition against artificial contraception, as the Pontifical Council of the Family has noted, this teaching now lies within the purview of consistent and irreformable Catholic doctrine.144 More than forty-five years prior to the advent of the birth control pill (1960), Margaret Sanger (d.1966) had actively worked for the expansion of women’s access to artificial contraception. Sanger had come from a large family whose mother had lost seven children at birth and evidently the experience forever brandished the “problem of overpopulation” in her mind. All but canonized on the Planned Parenthood Federation website, the entity she founded in 1942 following the American Birth Control League (c.1921), the organization ignores Sanger’s eugenic efforts entirely, dismissing them as right-wing rhetoric. In spite of the fact that Sanger’s eugenic efforts, in particular against African-Americans, are well documented by Sanger herself, the silencing of this reality by much of the secular press often continues unabated. From the inception of Sanger’s work, contraception was generally understood as the universal panacea for much of the world’s problems; a reality generally accepted as fact in much of the medical community today and witnessed, for instance, in the social policies of the United Nations.145 In her largely paranoiac attempts to curb what she understood as a population explosion, especially among the “half-witted” and “imbeciles,” she often waged a moral war against the Catholic Church, an institution she termed simply a “dictatorship of celibates.”146 In the years following the Comstock laws (1873), which had criminalized the use of contraception, much of Sanger’s linguistic gym- nastics in changing American attitudes on contraception came with reframing the argument according to her own terms.147 It is believed that Sanger was the first to coin the term “birth control,” again with a eugenic preoccupation with purity of race.148 Both Sanger, in her work The Pivot of Civilization (1922), and Adolf Hitler in Mein Kampf (1925), drew largely on Darwinian eugenics in advocating racial purity and a ‘survival of the fittest’ among humanity. To this day much of the sterilized language adopted by Planned Parenthood to justify institutional killing, with roughly 300,000 abortions annually, includes such terms as “embryonic reduction,” “selec- tive termination,” “pregnancy reduction,” “fetus,” “reproductive health,” and “interruption of

143 Pope Paul VI, Humanae Vitae (1968), no. 7.

144 Pontifical Council for the Family, Vademecum for Confessors Concerning Some Aspects of the Morality of Con- jugal Life (1997): no.4: “The Church has always taught the intrinsic evil of contraception, that is, of every marital act intentionally rendered unfruitful. This teaching is to be held as definitive and irreformable. Contraception is gravely opposed to marital chastity; it is contrary to the good or the transmission of life.”

145 Mary Eberstadt, Adam and Eve after the Pill (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2012): 141-145.

146 Leslie Woodcock Tentler, An American History: Catholics and Contraception (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2004): 53.

147 Ibid., 53-54.

148 Ibid., 48.

42 pregnancy.” Culturally, one begins to see the terms “abortion” and “euthanasia” replaced with more user-friendly verbiage such as “painless,” “gentle,” “humane,” “healing,” “dignity,” “release,” and “caring.”149 An example of this is the Death with Dignity Act (1997) in Oregon which has precipitated the legal deaths of thousands by physician-assisted suicide. Often precipitated by the denial of truth endemic to American higher education, this rationalizing of the extermination of others has led to what Mary Ann Glendon has dubbed “the killing fields of ni- hilism,” whereby reason and ethics are sacrificed to moral relativism.150 It is interesting to note that when Sanger was eighteen and living in New York City, another feminist activist, Dorothy Day (b.1897), was born in that city. Ironically, although Sanger was raised Catholic, she spent much of her life attacking the faith of her youth, whereas Day, a convert to Catholicism, embraced the social and life ethics she encountered in the teachings of the faith, especially in Leo XIII’s foundational encyclical Rerum Novarum (May 15, 1891), promulgated six years before her birth. In 1924, Day procured an abortion, which was to later be one of the moral catalysts which set her on an opposing feminist trajectory as that of Margaret Sanger.151 Day was ultimately forced to confront the “God issue,” morality, and what she actually believed with regards to human dignity. The very divergent feminisms of these two public women from roughly the same social paradigm is instructive on several levels. Inasmuch as Sanger understood her Catholic upbringing in terms of Vatican imperialism mandating fertility at all costs, Day steadily came to a richly textured understanding of human dignity and its intrinsic value, especially regarding femininity and the poor. Currently a Servant of God, Dorothy Day’s cause is under review by the Holy See for possible canonization. Sanger’s impact on the thought of Western culture is vast, and to some degree largely un- questioned within the political, medical, and academic circles. The sexual and life ethics of Karol Wojtyla has been said to be the anti-venom to much of the Sangarian ethics which permeate cultural norms in North America. An example of these norms is the drastic increase in steril- ization as a form of birth control by men and women in the United States, a statistic that has shown to consistently double itself in numbers as time progresses.152 A brief analysis of Sanger’s logic, along with the Enlightenment thinkers we have previously examined, is vital for our purposes in discussing John Paul II’s Theology of the Body, as not infrequently the TOB message is either relegated to the realm of the purely academic or anesthetized to the degree that its anthropological principles are largely watered-down. It is meant to be a lived reality, yet much of this reality within the Western world thinks in terms of Sangarian ethics and Enlightenment reasoning, almost entirely amputated from metaphysics or any intrinsic meaning to the human body.

149 William Brennan, Confronting the Language Empowering the Culture of Death (Ave Maria: Sapientia Press, 2008): 3, 12.

150 Mary Ann Glendon, “A Challenge to the Human Sciences,” George Weigel, ed. A New Worldly Order: John Paul II and Human Freedom (Washington: Ethics and Public Policy Center: 1991): 80.

151 Patrick Allitt, Catholic Converts: British and American Intellectuals Turn to Rome (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1997): 322.

152 Elizabeth Siegel Watkins, On the Pill: A Social History of Oral Contraceptives, 1950-1970 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1998): 132-133.

43 It is at this point that John Paul II’s personalism begins to underscore the obvious, but often ignored point; namely, that the body actually means something and is a constitutive element in the life of man. Man is, in fact, a body, and the body “reveals” man’s personhood.153 The Pontiff constructed much of the Theology of the Body around this clarion call of Paul VI for an “integral vision of man,” and Humanae Vitae takes pride of place within the latter half of the TOB corpus. This “rich personalism” of Karol Wojtyla encountered in his Theology of the Body audiences becomes a “prism” by which the Church’s ministry, anthropology, and sacramental life are seen with fresh eyes in light of the Incarnation.154 It is, however, impossible to ignore the cultural antagonism that followed the release of Humanae Vitae, a situation often described as simply “like a brick through a glass house.” Eberstadt refers to the cultural situation in the post-Humanae Vitae years of the late sixties with the following description:

The church paid dearly – and pays dearly still – for its theological fealty in the face of pressure across the West to repeal that ban. Indeed, it is hard to think of any other document in modern times that has been the object of as much enduring and even enthusiastic revilement as that one.155

The Pontifical Commission on Population, Family, and Birthrate was originally established by Pope John XXIII as a largely private entity, with the purpose of advising the Holy See on the contentious issue of artificial contraception. Established in 1963, three years after the advent of the birth control pill, the original six members were expanded to more than seventy- two with Cardinal Alfredo Ottaviani (d.1979) serving as president. The Commission spent roughly five years reviewing the issue prior to finally presenting the results to Pope John’s successor, Paul VI (Giovanni Battista Montini). Arguing from a largely Cartesian model, the majority report of the Commission overwhelming advocated for the permissibility of artificial contraception on the grounds that it was not at odds with the female fertility cycle, and therefore proposing a formal change in Catholic teaching. Paul VI rejected this suggestion of the Com- mission on the grounds that there was not a consensus among members and that Catholic doctrine regarding the immorality of contraception has been consistently clear throughout the history of the Catholic Church. Following a leak of the majority decision to the French and English press, much of the world anticipated a formal change in Catholic thought regarding contraception, which ultimately trickled down to the parochial level wherein priests were advising peni- tents in confession that contraception was morally licit and that the teaching was about to be forever altered. Theologians such as Charles Curran and Bernard Häring argued that the teachings of Humanae Vitae, prohibiting the use of artificial contraception as morally illicit, were essentially null and void because, as they put it, if personal conscience dictated permissibility of contraceptives then it was fine. Likewise, Curran insisted the Church’s teaching on against artificial

153 Michael Waldstein, Man and Woman He created Them (Boston: Pauline Press, 2006): 161-164.

154 George Weigel, Evangelical Catholicism (New York: Basic, 2013): 212.

155 Mary Eberstadt, How the West Rally Lost God (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2013): 151.

44 contraception was not infallible, and thus open to debate and, or his case, blatant rejection, what he termed, “responsible dissent.”156 When the moral permissibility of contraception failed to materialize following the release of Humanae Vitae, much of the cultural vitriol against the Pontiff was primarily instigated by Catholic clergy themselves, including entire Bishops’ conferences, as with the case of the Cana- dian Bishops.157 Nonetheless, the scandal caused by clerical disunity is often far more damaging to the lay faithful than the shock of a difficult teaching. As John Finnis contends, today all theologians and clergy who dissent from Catholic thought on contraception almost never dissent only on contraception; rather, this propensity often escalates to include other moral categories as well.158 It is sometimes difficult for the generations which followed the baby-boomers (70 mil- lion) to understand why the Catholic Church maintained its long-standing prohibition against artificial contraception; much of which dates to the story of Onan (Onanism) in Genesis.159 Add to this, the post-Conciliar years were generally not favorable for the Church in many ways, as Joseph Ratzinger himself has noted.160 The era of the mid-sixties was rife with political fears of the Cold War following the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962, and the escalation of the sexual revolution. Population fears were similarly augmented by the marginal scholarship of Stan- ford biologist Paul Ehrlich and his work The Population Bomb (1968). To this mindset, the Church’s prohibition against contraception in Humanae Vitae not only smacked of misogynistic moralism from celibate men in Rome, but also appeared to be a flagrant denial of social progress and demography. As we have noted with much of the Baconian reasoning in Western culture which seeks to unnaturally manipulate the forces of nature, the Pontiff’s position was a further indication for many that, “The Vatican” was definitively anti-modern in its reasoning. Neverthe- less, Pope Paul VI’s contraceptive prohibition maintains a firm grounding in natural law ethics and is thus well grounded in reality. There is an internal logic of sexual narcissism in artificial contraception as with other sexual disorders such as masturbation, same-sex unions, and adultery. From the Catholic perspective, the sexual union of spouses is “ordered,” or designed by God, towards the union and bonding of the couple and the possibility of offspring (HV, 12). These two ends can never be morally justifiable once separated, though contraception seeks sexual union without children, and conversely in vitro (Latin: “in glass”) seeks children without sexual union. Paul VI had argued that when ordered sexual love between spouses maintains both the unitive and procreative ends of marriage, it is ontologically grounded in reason and will, enabling the conjugal act to

156 Charles E. Curran, Loyal Dissent (Washington: Georgetown, 2006): 56-63.

157 Canadian Bishop Conference: Winnipeg Statement in Response to Humanae Vitae (September 27, 1968).

158 John Finnis, Moral Absolutes: Tradition, Revision, and Truth (Washington: CUA Press, 1991): 89-90.

159 “Onan, however, knew that the offspring would not be his; so whenever he had intercourse with his brother's wife, he wasted his seed on the ground, to avoid giving offspring to his brother” (Gn 38:9).

160 Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, The Ratzinger Report (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1985): 29: “It is incontestable that the last ten years [1965-1975] have been decidedly unfavorable for the Catholic Church.”

45 maintain its faithful and exclusive character (HV, 9-10). D. Vincent Twomey observes the following regarding the cultural embrace of contraception and the Church’s opposition to it in Hu- manae Vitae:

The rejection of Humanae Vitae amounted to the acceptance that the conjugal act could be decoupled from the transmission of life. This in turn led to a new examination of the meaning of sexuality, now that it was no longer understood as having procreation as its primary ‘end’ or purpose. Once procreation and intercourse were separated, then intercourse could be more easily separated from the context of marriage.161

Though he served as a member of the Pontifical Commission on Population, Archbishop Karol Wojtyla was prevented from attending the meetings due to refusal on the part of Commu- nist authorities in Poland. Nonetheless, Wojtyla’s rejection of artificial contraception as morally viable was well known among Commission members and they often looked to him for guidance with issues of sexual ethics. As pope, John Paul II never forgot the frigidity with which much of the world rejected Humanae Vitae, and consequently he assumed Paul VI’s call for a “total vision of man” as a personal duty. He would later reaffirm the Church’s prohibition against artificial means of contraception in both Familiaris Consortio (no. 32) and Evangelium Vitae (no. 13) respectively. Having spent much of his own priesthood working with youth and young couples, he was convinced that the Church’s sexual ethic needed to be re-presented in a more practical and cogent manner.162 For Wojtyla, the anthropological linchpin whereby sexual ethics, bioethics, social ethics, and life ethics coalesced was in the dignity of the human person made in God’s image and likeness. This is the consistent thread of thought which is woven into the fabric of his magisterial insegnamenti, especially his Wednesday catechesis on the human body. Bene- dict XVI likewise took up the active defense of Humanae Vitae during his own Pontificate, noting the following: “The encyclical Humanae Viate emphasizes both the unitive and procreative meaning of sexuality, thereby locating at the foundation of society the married couple, man and woman, who accept one another mutually, in distinction and in complementarity: a couple therefore that is open to life.”163 Similar to Paul VI, John Paul II encountered no small share of secular opprobrium regarding his endorsement of Humanae Vitae. In his work Contraception: A His- tory, for instance, Robert Jütte decries John Paul II as a Pontiff “well known for his moral severity” on this issue.164 Still, it is within the larger paradigm of his anthropological image of man, rooted in metaphysics, that the Pontiff forged ahead, even to the frequent admiration of his most zealous critics. The media hysteria surrounding these issues over the past fifty years has legitimately raised a question in the mind of most church-going Catholics: Why is sexuality such a big deal

161 D. Vincent Twomey, SVD, Moral Theology After Humanae Vitae (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2010): 12.

162 Pope Paul VI, Humanae Vitae, no. 7.

163 Pope Benedict XVI, Caritas in Veritate, no. 15.

164 Robert Jütte, Contraception: A History (Cambridge: Polity, 2003): 189.

46 for the Church? In a supreme ecclesial irony, while most Catholics and non-Catholics alike know the Church’s prohibition against contraception, very few understand why, or for that matter the Church’s defense of the beauty of sexuality and conjugal love in marriage. Furthermore, virtually no Sabbath-honoring Catholics have ever heard the issue actually preached in a homily. Answering this cultural paradox was certainly a motivating factor for John Paul II in his Theolo- gy of the Body addresses. The Catholic Church has consistently underscored the beauty of sexual distinction between man and woman, as they are different but equal. As Joseph Ratzinger has noted, much of the current cultural milieu is rampant with misconceptions of sexual complementarity, especially within the sphere of higher education. Not infrequently here a radical feminism is pushed to the extent that it either denies sexual differentiation or it seeks to suppress the masculine altogether.165 Ironically, with the Catholic priesthood, many secular feminists seek to join the very institution they actively attack. Within the biological determinism of their logic, gender becomes simply a social construct, thereby having no God-given nature and open to the manipulation of will; the cultural results of which are nothing short of catastrophic. When sexual duality is stripped, “freedom to be creative becomes the freedom to create oneself,” and as a result the sovereignty of the Creator is denied and so is one’s own dignity.166 Both in Deus Caritas Est (n.5-6) and in Caritas in Veritate (n.44), Benedict XVI defends sexuality against the biological reductionism often encountered in secular feminism and those who approach sexual value solely in terms of the physiology of gender open to cultural manipulation. St. Paul himself is clear in accentuating that there is a moral order to human sexuality that must be followed. In Romans, for instance, he underscores the darkening of the intellect that accompanies deliberately willed sin: “For although they knew God they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking and their senseless minds were darkened” (Rom 1:21). In this instance Paul is referring specifically to the moral depravity of sexual sins. For St. Paul there is a dignity and power which accompany human sexuality and thus it must be used in accord with how God himself has ordered it. Here he is unambiguous in his condemnation of the unnatural- ness and immortality attached to homosexual unions (Rm 1:21-28). For his part, John Paul II consistently accentuated the objective moral order as intended by God regarding human sexuality and how it is to be shared with another. To ignore this and to act in contradiction to it ultimately has deleterious effects on the persons themselves and the common good as a whole. Within the splendor of male and female complementarity, their conjugal union in marriage becomes a sacrosanct domain of self-donation and receptivity. Long before the two give themselves to each other physically in intercourse, the spiritual aspect of their sexuality has been ordered towards this giving as well. In the latter part of his Wednesday catecheses on the body, John Paul II highlights the spiritual depth of the marital promises exchanged, and how they take their form from Christ and the Church. As Livio Melina of the Pontifical John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family has noted, “The difference between the sexes…has a meaning that transcends mere physical being; it is ontological before it is physiological, it is in the

165 Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, On the Collaboration of Men and Women in the Church and in the World (2004), no. 2.

166 Pope Benedict XVI, Address to the Roman Curia (December 21, 2012).

47 soul before it is in the body.”167 Within the conjugal acts of marriage, the couple speaks a “language of the body” whereby they recommit themselves again to one another in this union. It is important to note here that while Catholicism in no way minimizes the pleasure which accompanies sexual union, sexual fulfillment should always accompany a gift of self as well.168 The conjugal enjoyment of couples is an integral aspect of this self-giving. When, however, sexual pleasure is sought by either as an end in itself apart from ordered self-donation, it becomes morally corrupted. As we have pointed out, Karol Wojtyla took aim within Love and Responsibility against the rigorist bent which has not infrequently accompanied some misguided interpretations of sexual love in marriage. St. Augustine of Hippo placed primary emphasis on conjugal love as the possibility of offspring and maintaining the fidelity of spouses (“conjugal debt”).169 While Augustine’s understanding of spousal unity and the enjoyment of mutual pleasure was, to some degree, underdeveloped, he was largely confronting the Manichean milieu of the time which understood sexuality and the body itself in gnostic terms. Wojtyla’s efforts to offer a more cogent analysis of sexual love, rather than simply a “remedy for concupiscence,” was not only a need he encountered firsthand in his pastoral work with couples; it was a catechesis he believed the Catholic faithful were entitled to receive.

g.) Secular Feminism v. John Paul II’s Few Feminism:

Brief attention should be paid towards John Paul II’s new feminism and his arguments for the feminine genius, as articulated in such documents as Evangelium Vitae (1995), his Letter to Women(1995), Mulieris Dignitatem (1988), and Ordinatio Sacerdotalis (1994). In the years following the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965), secular feminism gained momentum (“second wave” feminism) in the tumult of the sexual revolution. Much of the push of such feminists was witnessed in the rejection of masculinity, the blurring of lines between the sexes (currently witnessed in much of the transgender phenomenon), and an insistence on “doing” what males do (i.e. function). This deemphasis on ontology and primary emphasis on function as equated with equality, led many to assume that women now have a “right” to be priests. One sees here, again, the influence of a Hobbesian account of “rights” equated with “wants.” Joseph Ratzinger has noted that those most wounded by secular feminism are, in fact, women.170 The male hierarchy of the Catholic Church represents the embodiment of what many “second” and “third wave” feminists understand as an antiquarian patriarchy, holding on to the last semblance of power in a rapidly changing world. Feminists often perceive of the Catholic priesthood as an example of the androcentrism common in much of the western societies that

167 Livio Melina, “Homosexual Inclination as an ‘Objective Disorder’: Reflections of Theological Anthropology,” Communio 25 (Spring 1998): 64.

168 Michael Waldstein, Introduction to Man and Woman He Created Them: A Theology of the Body (Boston: Pauline, 2005): 125.

169 Augustine of Hippo, Marriage and Virginity (Hype Park: New York City Press, 1999): nos. 4, 11-12.

170 Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, The Ratzinger Report (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1985): 93.

48 represents another “glass ceiling” to overcome for women. They tend to view the office of priesthood in purely functionary terms and as a “right” that is due to them since they could, theoretically, perform the same priestly functions as a man. This demand of priestly ordination by many secular feminists is further aggravated by the implicit hostility towards men that many of them display, frequently as a reaction to the hyper-sexualizing of women witnessed within the culture. The efforts of many feminists associated with “second wave” feminism, that is feminism generally prevalent in the 60s, 70s, and 80s, was to define feminine progress largely in terms of shattering the ‘glass ceiling’ of patriarchy and gaining the “rights” they insisted were due them. Practically, this often included hostility towards men and other women who chose a life of marriage and family. This strain of negativity in feminism is frequently attacked by “third-wave” feminists as the residue of patriarchal influences on other women. In other words, the ‘second- wavers’ inadvertently permitted their self-fulfillment to still be dictated by men, all the while outwardly rejecting it. Though claiming to shed much of this negativity, “third wave” feminists nonetheless retain much of it in their “rights”-centered emphasis on reproductive health, functional equality, push towards sexual androgyny, and redefinitions of what constitutes a family. As Mary Eberstadt has noted, this feminist negativity has shaped much of western thought in the past forty years:

If feminists married and had children, they lamented it. If they failed to marry or have children, they lamented that, too. If they worked outside the home and also tended their children, they complained about how hard it was. If they worked outside the home and didn’t tend to their children, they excoriated anyone who thought they should. And running through all this literature is more or less constant invective about the unreliability and disrespect of men.171

As a result, many of those in the “third wave” of feminism, which gained cultural momentum largely in the 90s, critiqued their maternal elders for being excessively negative, while acknowledging that a number of the “rights” they inherited were due to the work of their fore- mothers. Within this “third wave” push there is an emphasis on post-modern concepts of truth, largely in terms of moral relativism, of sex as “empowering” women to commitment-free relationships, and a sexual “liberation” understood in terms of options or choices. For its part, progressive feminists have understood their drive towards being ordained to the ministerial priesthood as a career “option” which is being denied them by men, and men of the Church no less. Part of this ‘liberation’ sought by “second wave” feminists, is the understanding of equality in terms of functionality, which is to say that one is equal to a man to the degree that she can do the same things as him. While rejecting much of the “second wave” negativity, the threads of its thought nonetheless permeate much of “third wave” argumentation, which includes the understanding of sexual equality in terms of functionality, and when women are prohibited from func- tioning as a man this is akin to unjust discrimination against them. From the perspective of “sec-

171 Mary Eberstadt, Adam and Eve After the Pill (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2012): 146.

49 ond” and “third wave” feminism, then, any institution which prohibits the admission of a person on the grounds of gender is both “sexist” and, more likely, sexually “racist.” As Sr. Sara Butler has noted: “The feminist strategy for gaining equal access to employment and higher education and for promoting ‘affirmative action’ on behalf of women involved insisting on the ‘sameness’ of the sexes.”172 Butler contends that it became apparent to many feminists of the 70s and 80s in particular, that the push for women’s ordination was an issue of “justice” since there are numerous women who could, theoretically, assume the duties a parish priest assumes on a daily basis. Under this model, Holy Orders departs from the realm of ontological vocation and enters one of pure function. The refusal, therefore, of the Catholic Church to call women to Holy Orders is understood by feminists as “sexist” and in need of reform. To reiterate, for many western feminists, the issue of women’s ordination is primarily one of justice they insist is “due” to women. The refusal of the Catholic Church to ordain women, then, has led many feminists to make the charge that they have hit the “stained-glass ceiling” of Catholicism.173 If the Catholic priesthood is merely a matter of functions performed on a day-to-day basis (e.g. marrying, baptizing, and burying people), then the sacerdotal office of priesthood would not require the male character of a person, thus, anyone could “do” it. If this is the case, to deny women the opportunity to assume Holy Orders within the Church would be akin to claiming that women lack the capacity to perform the day-to-day tasks most parish priests can perform. From the feminist perspective, it appears as if the Catholic Church is claiming that they lack the practical competence to perform these functions that their male counterparts can do. Added to this frustration, for western feminists, is the fact that they are told this from an all-male hierarchy. From their assessment, therefore, the justice due to women in being ordained to the Catholic priesthood is no different than their “right” to receive other sacraments such as baptism, confirmation, reconciliation, marriage, and Eucharist; and if a female can perform these liturgical functions then she should be permitted to do so. In response to the feminist claim of injustice on the part of the Catholic Church in refusing to ordain women to the ministerial priesthood, the Church argues that sexual difference is both ontological and physiological, and while there is equality among the sexes, there is a bodily- spiritual difference as well. This difference of being, then, precedes any notion of functionality on the part of the Catholic priest. Though different, this obvious distinction cannot be understood as somehow “discrimination” against women. Pope Benedict XVI (Joseph Ratzinger) has noted that, “Women have so many great and meaningful functions in the Church that there can be no question of discrimination,” and that “The point is not we are saying that we don’t want to [ordain women], but that we can’t.”174 For his part, John Paul II repeatedly takes up theme of sexual differentiation, equality, and complementarity in his writings, and in particular, his catechesis on the Theology of the Body. He highlights the shared humanity and equality of the man

172 Sara Butler, The Catholic Priesthood and Women (Chicago: Hillenbrand, 2006): 40.

173 Ibid, 6.

174 Benedict XVI, Light of the World (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2010): 150.

50 and woman, and yet their clear and immutable differences. Years later, in Ordinatio Sacerdotal- is, he highlighted the simple fact that this matter was, in essence, resolved and completely unchangeable: “Wherefore, in order that all doubt may be removed regarding a matter of great importance, a matter which pertains to the Church's divine constitution itself, in virtue of my ministry of confirming the brethren (cf. Lk 22:32) I declare that the Church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women and that this judgment is to be definitively held by all the Church's faithful” (no.4). In brief, while Holy Orders does include a function rendered by the priest on behalf of the Church for the Church, as John Paul II notes, it does not include “only a function” but also one of being within the priest himself. The maleness of the priest is necessary for the validity of the sacrament but likewise for its liceity, as the sacerdotal change within him occurs on an ontological level at ordination. For reasons largely unknown to us, Jesus Christ chose only men to serve in a sacerdotal capacity, and, as John Paul II noted, the Church “no authority” change this. From the Catholic perspective, the requirement of only men to be priests is a matter of ontology rather than simply function or duties belonging to the priestly office itself. The Theology of Body itself is an exploration on the sexual complementarity and vocational calls of man and woman, in the beauty of their differences and unity, which has much to say in answering the question of women’s ordination. Nonetheless, the very fact that this issue even arose in the befuddlement of the post-Concililar years and has not yet abated, was another testament for need for John Paul II’s Theology of the Body.

II) Introduction to John Paul II’s Catechesis on the Human Body: Only a few months after his election as Pontiff, John Paul II declared the following of love in Redemptor Hominis: “Man cannot live without love. He remains a being that is incomprehensible to himself, his life is senseless, if love is not revealed to him, if he does not encounter love, if he does not experience it and make it his own, if he does not participate intimate- ly in love.”175 As Karol Wojtyla has noted, while love may begin with sensuality and sentimentality as its “raw material” in the subjective sphere of man, as it grows it becomes other oriented and ultimately leads to self-fulfillment in the communion of persons.176 The maturing of love occurs over time on a daily basis within the life of man, whatever his particular vocation happens to be. Livio Melina notes that this purification and maturation of love towards its teleological end of holiness “is rooted in the truth about the good that guarantees its authenticity,” meaning that while it encompasses the entirety of the person it must always be subordinated to reason. 177 In his Theology of the Body addresses delivered from 1979-1984, John Paul II draws his audience back to the consistent theme of love for the other grounded in truth. Because of man’s fallen nature and the effects of concupiscence within his decision making, he has a great capacity of self-deception and rationalizing evil. As Melina notes, when love is authenticated in truth and is

175 John Paul II, Redemptor Hominis (1979), no. 10.

176 Karol Wojtyla, Love and Responsibility (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1993): 159-160.

177 Livio Melina, “Love: The Encounter with an Event,” The Way of Love: Reflections on Pope Benedict XVI’s En- cyclical Deus Caritas Est, Livio Melina and Carl A. Anderson, eds. (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2006): 24.

51 purified by the continual gift of self over time, man encounters a maturing of love that often elicits within him an extraordinary wonder, or awe, in its beauty. As we have noted, John Paul II referred to the Theology of the Body audiences under different names: “Reflections” (used 146 times), “Meditations” (used 21 times) and of course “Theology of the Body.” John Paul II delivered a total of 129 catecheses on the body, with 133 actually written in Polish, later translated into Italian. In Karol Wojtyla’s original thought, the working title Male and Female He Created Them (Gn 1:27) was used, in addition to Human Love in the Divine Plan.178 He eventually gravitated to “the Theology of the Body” as a system- atic working title which he would frequently use as well. Because he understood the Wednesday audiences as primarily a form of catechesis for the faithful, the audiences are a form of catechetical addresses to the Church regarding the dignity of human personhood and human sexuality in the Redeeming plan of God. By catechesis (teaching), the Church implies simply an instruction presented to the faithful in order to educate them and deepen their experience of the faith. Cate- chesis was apparently on the Pope’s mind as he began his Pontificate, as only 1 month after beginning the TOB audiences he published the Apostolic Exhortation Catechesi Tradendae (Octo- ber 16, 1979), which was also the one-year anniversary of his Pontifical election. These efforts to catechize the Church likewise extended to his efforts to reshape the understanding of Paul VI’s Humanae Vitae within the Theology of the Body audiences. John Paul II deliberately postponed much of his reflections on Humanae Vitae until the latter part of the TOB corpus so as to lay a greater anthropological groundwork for its reception. The defense and reexamination of the encyclical is so primary to the general audiences that it could be said that John Paul II slowly leads his audience to the ontological depth contained within it, as if avoiding initially thrusting it upon them. Of the 133 general audiences on the Theology of the Body, only 129 were actually delivered by the Pontiff between the years 1979 and 1984. John Paul II has said that “the original text of the catechesis is Italian,” which Michael Waldstein notes “should be understood in the sense that the Italian text is the authentic or authoritative text.”179 It is not uncommon for some to read John Paul II’s Theology of the Body “within a silo,” which is to say that they unintentionally understand it as somehow amputated from the larger body of Catholic thought. Unfortunately, the Theology of the Body teachings are often relegated almost entirely to chastity and sexuality issues on the parochial level. While the general audiences certainly do address this, to limit TOB corpus solely to this attribute is somewhat akin to claiming that one finger equals the whole of a hand. As J. Brian Bransfield has noted, “The teaching… is not an island that can be separated from the wider teaching of John Paul and the teaching of the Church in general. In fact, the theology of the body is adequately understood only within that wider orbit of teaching.”180 The arduous task remains then for the pastors and theologians of the Church to arrive at a proper hermeneutic of the Theology of the Body as centered within the larger body of Catholic thought.

178 Michael Waldstein, Introduction to Man and Woman He Created Them: A Theology of the Body (Boston: Pauline, 2005): xxiii.

179 Ibid., 7.

180 J. Brian Bransfield, The Human Person (Boston: Pauline, 2010): 2.

52 From the standpoint of most Catholics in the pews, there are four primary reasons why the Theology of the Body has yet to significantly impact their lives as Catholics: 1.) Bishops: While many bishops recognize that John Paul II’s Theology of the Body is generally a “good thing” and thus not somehow a threat to their Dioceses, few have taken active steps to educate themselves or their local clergy on even basic precepts of its teachings. When this happens the logical result is that the implementation of its ethics within primary and secondary education and parish catechetical programs will take a permanent backseat to other issues. The Second Vatican Council underscored the three-fold mission of the local bishop in guiding his Diocese; namely to teach, govern, and sanctify the faithful.181 While a local bishop certainly does not need to be a theologian, this three-fold mission cannot effectively be carried out in the culture in which we live without a basic sense of human anthropology and family life, preeminently addressed in John Paul’s Wednesday Catechesis on the Body. 2.) Priests: The majority of Catholic priests are genuinely given to their people and are truly happy being priests. They are often very hard working, dealing with stretched budgets, multiple parishes, juggling multiple demographics (among their parishioners and parochial vic- ars), and yet still finding time to make hospital and home visits to the sick. Recent studies clearly indicate that the vast majority of Catholic priests enjoy being priests and are “very satisfied” in their ministries. These studies have shown that Catholic clergy rate higher job satisfaction rates than virtually any other “occupation.”182 Simply put, most priests love being priests. Unfortu- nately; however, most priests are also tired. They tend to work long hours, frequently live alone, and not often find themselves the pastor of two or more parishes only a few years post-ordination. In light of this, the opportunities for ongoing catechesis and study can be limited, largely due to time constraints, the inability to find replacements for out-of-town conferences or classes, or simply being exhausted at the end of the day. While many younger priests may have studied the Theology of the Body in seminary courses, it may have been years since they “cracked the book” or reacquainted themselves with it. Many priests ordained for over 20 years may have heard of the Theology of the Body, and may even own a copy of the text, though remain, for all intents and purposes, largely unfamiliar with what it authentically teaches. As a result, while most pastors would concede that John Paul II’s Theology of the Body is a “beautiful teaching,” few have taken steps to further educate themselves on it or catechize their staffs. This is, thank- fully, changing. 3.) Presenters/Catechists: The relative youth of the Theology of the Body teachings creates two interesting paradigms among some its presenters: a.) Great vigor and excitement with regards to the Holy Father’s “fresh” take on anthropology, sexuality, and marriage. This is of course true on some level, as most people who have encountered the beauty of the Theology of the Body corpus will attest. While the text can at times be theologically daunting, most would concur that it is packed with profound insights into the experience of man in the world today. Understandably, it elicits excitement when one, a Pope no less, is able to put his finger one what

181 Second Vatican Council, Christus Dominus, no.11.

182 Mary L. Gauthier, Paul M. Perl, and Stephen J. Fichter, Same Call, Different Men: The Evolution of the Priest- hood since Vatican II (Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 2012): 20-22, 225.

53 one has always somehow known but has been unable to verbalize himself. b.) There are however, vast possibilities of misinformation regarding the Theology of the Body’s authentic teachings to be disseminated. Over fifty years after the opening of the Second Vatican Council, greater numbers of Catholics and non-Catholics alike have been exposed to sixteen Council documents and have been able to read them first-hand, online or in a compilation format. The unwillingness of many to adequately interpret Vatican II led to great confusion and misinformation on both the far left and far right in the years following the close of the Council. Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI spent much of their Pontificates seeking to clarify the misinformation perpetuated on both sides. Philosopher Josef Pieper underscores that contemporary authors not infrequently rely almost entirely on commentaries on Thomas Aquinas rather than actually reading the original text, thereby falling prey to a presumed “spirit of Saint Thomas” wherein one can easily take the Doctor Communis out of context.183 By way of analogy, then, the theological climate surrounding the Theology of the Body continues to harbor a certain element of tension as the “new- ness wears off” in the sense of time, not of message. On the one hand, John Paul II intended the Theology of the Body to be a lived reality, and therefore not simply a matter of academic discourse among theologians. On the other hand, given the breadth of the TOB corpus, not unlike the sixteen Council documents, and its frequently challenging vocabulary, it is easy for the original intent of its author to become blurred by well-meaning, though perhaps misinformed, presenters. Add to this that some who have studied the text for years may understand the “Theology of the Body lingo,” be able to present the material using that vernacular, yet still be unable to actually translate it into more appropriate vocabulary for audiences of varied demographics; with the result being that many assume that it is a teaching which pertains solely to teens and young couples; thus having nothing to say to other demographics (e.g. elderly, single, divorcees, etc.). While the Pontiff’s teaching is exquisite in its ability to address the heart of man, the current status quo of its originally intended message reaching the pews is still somewhat delicate given that one could easily misinterpret or deliberately misrepresent it. While a particular presenter or cat- echist does not need to be a theologian, she does need seek out doctrinally sound commentaries and draw from the actual audiences themselves as a first source of reference. Likewise, as we have noted, the effort needs to be made at least on a base level to relate the Theology of the Body to the larger Deposit of Faith (Fidei Depositum) within the Catholic Church. In other words, to accentuate how the Theology of the Body relates to liturgy, Mariology, Scripture, morality, the Creed, etc. The Second Vatican Council had underscored that Sacred Tradition, Sacred Scrip- ture, and the teaching authority of the Church are united and cannot be separated; and are furthermore given for the “salvation of souls.”184 Most Catholics would appreciate a fresh re-presenting of certain aspects of the faith in light of the Christian anthropology intrinsic to the Theol- ogy of the Body message. 4.) Secularist Culture: In the 1960s, roughly 70% of Catholics attended mass on Sun- days. By 2010 only 22% Catholics regularly attended mass on any given Sunday, with less gen-

183 Josef Pieper, The Christian Idea of Man (South Bend: St. Augustine’s Press, 2011): 3-4.

184 Second Vatican Council, Dei Verbum, no. 10.

54 erally in attendance for Holy Days of obligation.185 The last fifty years, then, have brought a complete reversal of those attending mass to those who do not. Similarly, only 3 out of every 10 Catholic Americans frequent the sacrament of reconciliation at least once a year, with studies showing a similar trend in Christian marriages as well.186 Few Catholics, church-going or not, would deny the culture in which we live is aggressively anti-religious. John Paul II lived under the premise that “culture drives history,” which impacts sociology, human history, family, and anthropology altogether. When the culture, literally “cultivation,” driving history, then, is a “culture of death” it follows that history will be rife with necros (Greek “death), or the active “culti- vating” of death.187 The societal adoption of much of a “culture of death” or cultural “structures of sin” is often subtle to the extent that it frequently goes completely unnoticed, even by those who work in the institutional Church. Furthermore, those who do notice it are often reluctant to speak under the guise of appearing to be “preachy” or “finger-wagging.” John Paul II, however, never backed away from confronting the deception of rationalizing evil as a “good.” The Theol- ogy of the Body is in some ways the agenda notes of this Pontiff in his efforts to help restore human dignity to a people who often deny that such dignity even exists. From a historical perspective, the year 1981 was a key year for the family within the Pon- tificate of John Paul II. In this year he formally established the Pontifical Council for the Family with the motu proprio Familia a Deo Instituta (May 9, 1981). The Council was specifically sanctioned for the protection of familial rights, the dissemination of Catholic thought on the family, and aiding in the pastoral care of families around the world. Likewise, 1981 witnessed the founding of the Pontifical John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family. The Insti- tute’s mission, established and governed by the Apostolic Constitution Magnum Matrimonii Sacramentum, is to provide a thorough understanding of marriage and family according to the mind of the Second Vatican Council and tradition. With currently eight sessions around the world, the Institute confers Pontifical degrees with studies on marriage, family, bioethics, and the human person. Likewise, the Feast of Christ the King (November 22nd) of this year brought the official promulgation of the Apostolic Exhortation Familaris Consortio, the impact of which cannot be overstated. Its forthright analysis on the family, femininity, anthropology, sexuality, artificial contraception, and divorce have had an extraordinary impact of modern Catholic thought in the field of moral theology, systematics, and even spirituality. It is appropriate, therefore, that the Pontiff continued his Theology of the Body addresses within this year dedicated to family on multiple fronts. The general audiences were interrupted by the assassination attempt on his life on May 13, 1981, which he later resumed again on November 11th noting simply: “Today we take up again, after a rather long pause, the meditations we have been presenting for quite a while, which we have defined as reflections on the theology of the body.”188

185 Russell Shaw, American Church (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2013): 180-181.

186 Ibid., 181-182.

187 John Pau II, Evangelium Vitae (1995), no. 64.

188 Michael Waldstein, Man and Woman He Created Them: A Theology of the Body (Boston: Pauline, 2005): 64:1.

55 Much of the Theology of the Body addresses the most basic questions within man; namely, “What does it mean to be a human being?” “How do I discover meaning in my life and vocation?” The human person does not “have” a body, the person himself is a body and soul composite within his nature (corpore et anima unus). As we have noted, John Paul II’s Theology of the Body was taken up as largely a defense of the body against the Cartesian perceptions imposed upon it within the culture and a defense of Pope Paul VI’s Humanae Vitae. We have already looked at these points and we will not reexamine them in detail here, though it bears mentioning that these two points lay much of the moral trajectory the Holy Father takes within his Wednes- day catechesis’ on the human body. As the Second Vatican Council had emphasized in Gaudium et Spes, the Incarnation as the “Word became flesh” (Jn 1:14) and the eternal Logos, has altogether changed human history and man’s place in it. The Council noted that “Jesus Christ fully reveals man to himself,” and likewise underscored that Trinitarian example of self-donation which man is likewise ordered to as well; leading ultimately to self-fulfillment.189 The sacramental character of the body reveals the nature of the person and thus rejects any gnostic under- standings of the body as somehow evil, or even simply “tolerated.” We see then two key features that will permeate much of the TOB message in light of the Incarnation and man’s being ex nihilo: the revelation of Christ to man and the self-discovery which accompanies self-donation. Nei- ther of these two are ancillary points or simply “pet themes” of Karol Wojtyla, as has been asserted; rather, these are intrinsic claims to the Christian message delineated numerous times in the Gospel itself: “Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it” (Mt 10:39). As the ad extra work of God’s ad intra love, the Creator has made him out of nothing as a gift under absolutely no compulsion from any source. Nor for that matter was there a substance which beckoned God to create man. As Kenneth L. Schmitz has noted, there is an ontological privation for man prior to being created, therefore a total absence of being and thus a vacuum of the having received the giftedness of existence:

Certainly, before I have received a gift, I am without a gift; I simply do not have one. But I do not lack something due to me…The gift is not as such a remedy for some lack, but is rather an unexpected surplus that comes without prior conditions set by the recipient. The element of gratuity indicates that there is no ground in the recipient for this gift, so that the gift is strictly uncalled for…Creation is to be understood as the reception of a good not due in any way, so that there cannot be even a subject of that reception. It is absolute reception; there is not something which receives, but rather sheer receiving.190

Understood within the lens of the Incarnation, the self-emptying gift of Jesus on the Cross is the aspiration of every Christian, regardless of what his particular vocation may be. Drawing from the Trinitarian model of generous self-donation, John Paul II argues for a proper “hermeneutic of the gift,” or giftedness according to the spousal donation of Christ to his Church

189 Second Vatican Council, Gaudium et Spes, nos. 22, 24.

190 Kenneth L. Schmitz, The Gift: Creation (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1982): 32-33.

56 that Paul underlines in Ephesians 5.191 Manifest at every holy liturgy, the Council of Trent accentuated that the Holy Eucharist is not a “representation” of Christ on the Cross, but is rather the “un-bloody” re-presenting of the bloody “altar of the cross.”192 Catholics therefore believe that Jesus is not re-sacrificed again and again at every mass, but that we become present at the “one sacrifice” (Hb. 10:12) of Christ’s self-gift for humanity. Jesus Christ, therefore, was not simply a “great leader” among many having left the world a better place prior to his departure. Or as Richard John Neuhaus has argued, Jesus Christ is not simply “one way among other ways or one truth among other truths,” as it if Christianity is another flavor of religion on the menu of devotional options.193 Rather, the Apostle Paul has noted, “For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them” (Eph 2:10). Jesus Christ is the focal point and model, then, of self-donation because it is only in him that man attains self-discovery and authentic freedom in truth. Simply put, then, the body itself actually means something precious and communicates a beauty which is beyond human imagining. The persistent theme of John Paul II in his Wednes- day catecheses on the human body is that the body itself “speaks a language” of love to another. Within this anthropological dialogue of corporeality and spirituality, a communication of love takes place in the self-donation and reciprocity to the other. Within this bodily communication there is the substance of what is communicated (message of discourse) and the vitality of the actual language used to communicate (manner of discourse). John Paul II insists then that within this “language of the body” there is a message of love communicated in a manner of “loving.” In this sense the body becomes ‘sacramental’ in physically conveying an ontological mystery. God is himself made flesh (Jn. 1:14) within human time, and man has a union with God within his Incarnate flesh: Jesus Christ. John Paul II notes in his audience on January 2, 1980 that there is a “spousal meaning to the body,” which is to say, there is a nuptial love communicated in a manner of love within the body itself. This is a deeply familiar concept to Catholics given the proclamation made by the priest at mass as he elevates the Eucharist: “Take this, all of you, and eat of it, for this is my body, which will be given up for you. Do this in memory of me.” (Eu- charistic Prayer II, Roman Missal). Just as Catholicism cannot be understood apart from its sacramentality, neither can man properly understand himself apart from self-donation and reciprocity. The corporeality of man’s body is forever hinged to the corporate body of the Church. In the figure of Abraham the entirety of the people of Israel are present. Each is connected physiologically and spiritually to the entire body of believers. Man is, by his very nature, a social being, though secularist thought tends to exult the individual over ‘the other,’ and in the process increasing the progressive cocooning into oneself so endemic to the West. While Catholicism has much to say on this point, this communitarian reality has been accentuated by many non- Christians alike including Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and innumerable studies conducted by the

191 Michael Waldstein, Man and Woman He Created Them: A Theology of the Body (Boston: Pauline, 2005): 13:2; 16:1.

192 Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 1367.

193 Richard John Neuhaus, “To Say Jesus is Lord,” First Things 107 (November, 2000): 69.

57 social sciences respectively. Within his body, therefore, man communicates a message of love in the manner of loving directed towards communion with another. This social character of man is writ into his ontological depths, and in spite of his incessant attempts at denying this fact, it often directs his desires. St. Paul underscores the corporate dimension of Christianity many times within his epistles, most notably in connection with baptism and sexual purity:

Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own? For you have been purchased at a price. Therefore, glorify God in your body (1Co 6:19-20).

Paul is explicitly rejecting the argument of “private sin,” as is commonplace within the Western assertion of “What I do in the privacy of my own him is my business.” Likewise, within the larger context of Pauline thought he repeatedly emphasizes the corporate character of the body of Christ not as a corporation, but as an organism conjoined to Christ its head. The choices one makes then “in and through” one’s body acutely impact the corporate body of the Church as well.

III) Outline of the Theology of the Body Catechesis: While aspects of the Theology of the Body audiences were written long before Karol Wo- jtyla assumed the Papacy in 1978, they were delivered as part of the ordinary teaching authority of the Church. Though not presented; therefore, as de fide (“of the faith”) belonging to the infallible teachings of the Church, the faithful nonetheless assume that the Holy Spirit has both guided the Pontiff in his assessment of the faith within them and continues to do so with his successors.194 John Paul II presents the catechesis’ on the human body as a Successor to the Apostle Peter communicating to the entire Church. From a subjective standpoint, it is worth recalling that the Holy Father dedicated an extraordinary amount of personal time and effort into praying over the themes (often penning them often in the presence of the Blessed Sacrament), and the editing of them. There was obviously a message contained therein that he deemed necessary for the life of the Church. Catholicism assumes, then, the moral correctness of teachings and the guidance of the Holy Spirit within a Pontiff’s general audiences, even though not openly pro- claimed as infallible per se.195 In his defense of Humanae Vitae and the intrinsic meaning of the body against the Carte- sian model of bodily dualism, so commonplace in Western culture, John Paul II organizes the TOB corpus into first understanding man (“adequate anthropology”) and then understanding man’s vocation towards giftedness. The “integral vision of man” which Paul VI called for and which is delivered in John Paul’s Wednesday catechesis’ on the body, answers the “Cartesian vision of man” understood by much of the secularist culture. While Benedict XVI likewise took a defense of Humanae Vitae in his third encyclical Caritas in Veritate (n.15), in Wojtyla’s analyses of human love Humanae Vitae is taken as a focal point. The emphasis placed on Humanae Vitae

194 Pope Benedict XVI has often referred to John Paul II’s Theology of the Body audiences in his own teachings.

195 Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 892.

58 is not done simply to clarify the Catholic understanding of artificial contraception as a misuse of sexual love, rather, the Holy Father presents the encyclical in fortifying the understanding of “the redemption of the body” as noted by the Apostle Paul: “Not only that, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, we also groan within ourselves as we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies” (Rom 8:23). The eschatological end of man within the redemption of the body is something Catholics profess every Sunday in the Nicene Creed: “I look forward to the resurrection of the dead and the life in the world to come. Amen.” In accessing John Paul II’s Theology of the Body we will be working from Michael Waldstein’s translation (2006) of the TOB corpus published by Pauline Press under the title Man and Woman He created Them: A Theology of the Body. The following is an outline of the TOB text according to Waldstein’s translation:196

I) Part I: THE WORDS OF CHRIST Chapter 1: Christ Appeals to the “Beginning” (audiences 1-23) 1. What is Meant by “Beginning”? 2. The Meaning of Original Solitude 3. The Meaning of Original Unity 4. The Meaning of Original Nakedness 5. Man in the Dimension of Gift 6. “Knowledge” and Procreation (Gen. 4:1) 7. [Conclusion: An Integral Vision]

Chapter 2: Christ Appeals to the Human Heart (audiences 24-63) 1. In the Light of the Sermon on the Mount 2. The Man of Concupiscence 3. Commandment and Ethos 4. The “Heart” – Accused or Called? 5. The Ethos of the Redemption of the Body 6. Purity as “Life according to the Spirit.” 7. The Gospel of the Purity of Heart – Yesterday and Today 8. Appendix: The Ethos of the Body in Art and Media

Chapter 3: Christ Appeals to the Resurrection (audiences 64-86) 1. The Resurrection of the Body as a Reality of the “Future World” 2. Continence for the Kingdom of Heaven [Conclusion of Part 1: The Redemption of the Body]

II) PART 2: THE SACRAMENT Chapter 1: The Dimension of Covenant and Grace (audiences 87-102) 1. Ephesians 5:21-33 2. Sacrament and Mystery

196 Michael Waldstein, Introduction to Man and Woman He created Them (Boston: Pauline, 2006): 106.

59 3. Sacrament and “Redemption of the Body”

Chapter 2: The Dimension of Sign (audiences 103-117) 1. “Language of the Body” and the Reality of the Sign 2. The Song of Songs 3. When the “Language of the Body” Becomes Language of the Liturgy (Reflections on Tobit)

Chapter 3: He Gave them the Law of Life as Their Inheritance (audiences 118-133) 1. The Ethical Problem 2. Outline of Conjugal Spirituality [Conclusion]

Some may be more familiar with outline of the Theology of the Body text as segregated within six consecutive cycles as delineated in the originally translated text from Italian. As Waldstein notes, the six cycles vary from the current delineation of two chapters largely because the analysis of virginity in the one-volume Italian text is segregated into a different cycle as opposed to its current unity as part of chapter 3. John Paul II himself uses the term “cycle” within the audiences to draw attention to his plan for an ingoing catechetical program, though the two chapter form is more in keeping with the original intent of the author.

IV.) A Synopsis of Pope John Paul II’s Theology of the Body

Authors Note: The attempt has been made with the following to offer a one-paragraph summary of each of the 133 general audience addresses that compose the Theology of the Body corpus. We have made every attempt to be faithful to intent of the author, though we encourage readers to appeal to John Paul II’s the original text.

I. CHAPTER ONE: CHRIST APPEALS TO THE “BEGINNING”

What is Meant by “Beginning”? Audience 1: September 5, 1979

60 John Paul II begins his catechesis on the body with a reference to the upcoming Synod of the Bishops on the Christian Family (September 26-October 25, 1980), which would eventually lead to fruition in John Paul II’s Apostolic Exhortation Familiaris Consortio on the family (1981). Within the Exhortation, the Pope concedes that it was written largely at the behest of the bishop’s request (no. 2). He devotes much of this audience to an anthropological hermeneutic of the term “beginning,” specifically as it relates to the words of Christ to the Pharisees in Matthew’s gospel: “Because of the hardness of your heart Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so” (Mt 19:8). Within the entire Mt 19:3-8 text, Jesus refers to “the beginning” twice, as if to signify “what Genesis speaks about.” John Paul accentuates here that in bringing his interlocutors back to Genesis and in noting “what God has joined man must not separate,” Jesus is underscoring the unitive and indissoluble aspects of Christian marriage. Stating then his further intentions on unpacking the term “beginning” in future audiences, the Holy Father accentuates that attention will be given to the “deep roots from which this topic springs” in the future. These “deep roots” will include developing a Christian anthropology and metaphysics to answer the Cartesian dualism largely prevalent in Western culture.

Audience 2: September 12, 1979

In this audience John Paul II wastes no time in attempting to lay the groundwork for an “adequate anthropology,” though that phrase is not yet applied by the Pontiff. Instead, his intention here is to use the first (Priestly/Elohist) and second (Yahwist) accounts of creation to underscore the Christian anthropology and metaphysics present in Genesis. Noting that the second creation account is chronologically older than the first, it also depicts man from his subjective perspective. The first account, which he argues is “much more mature” in its depictions of God and the “essential truths of man” (e.g. “likeness” to God), and it is therefore more “objective.” Likewise, from a chronological standpoint, he contends that in the first account, man “in not created according to a natural succession”; rather, the Creator took pause prior to creating man “as if he entered back into himself to make a decision.” According to John Paul, the “theological character” of the first account is two-fold: man in his relation to God (“in the image of God he created him”) and the fact that man cannot be properly understood with categories taken from other creation or the world. The “likeness” of man to God in the first account accentuates man’s intrinsic dignity. This ‘theological character’ within the first account “contains within itself a powerful metaphysical content,” thus it addresses man’s ontological depth. John Paul II states clearly here that “man too is a body,” and this metaphysical character of man is tethered to his bodiless as well. He therefore notes, the first account becomes the “incontrovertible point of reference” for man’s metaphysical and anthropological nature. He summarizes then by using the phrase “theology of the body” twice in accentuating the theological character of the human body.

Audience 3: September 19, 1979

Following on his assessment of the first creation account (Priestly) in last week’s audience, in this address John Paul II focuses on the second creation account (Yahwist), which he insists apprehends man from the subjective much more that the first. This subjectivity indicative to

61 the account is also “in some way psychological” as well. This is important because the subjective nature of chapter 2 directly corresponds with the objective nature of chapter 1, wherein man is created “in the image of God” (Gn 1:27). John Paul underscores the clear choice of Jesus to first quote Genesis 1 followed by Genesis 2 in his discourse with the Pharisees in Matthew’s gospel account (Mt 19:3-9). He does this to accentuate the unity and indissolubility of marriage as encountered in the second creation account. Thus, although man loses his innocence with the advent of sin, the moral force of unity and indissolubility in marriage are still in place. Likewise, John Paul emphasizes here that Genesis refers to the human being as simply “man” (mankind) until the precise moment when the “woman” was created wherein he is now “male”. Similarly, Jesus brings the Pharisees back to the “beginning” prior to the fall (prelapsarian state), wherein man and woman encounter the “boundary line” between original innocence and original sin. The “tree of the knowledge of good and evil” (Gn 2:17) accentuates this line of demarcation between these two states. In the state of original innocence man finds himself “outside” of the understanding of good and evil, whereas after having “transgressed the Creator’s plan” he now finds himself “within” the knowledge of good and evil. John Paul notes then that the second creation is unique in its “contrasting of these two original situations.”

Audience 4: September 26, 1979

Taking up again the discussion of the variances encountered in the Priestly (Elohist) account of creation in Genesis 1 and the Yahwist account in chapter 2, John Paul underscores again the subjective character of chapter two, which relates directly the words of Jesus in his discourse with the Pharisees in Matthew 19. Here Jesus refers his interlocutors to the “beginning” (Mt 19:4,8), which John Paul again insists refers man to the “boundary” between the state of original innocence prior to the fall, signified by the “tree of the knowledge of good and evil,” and historical man in his postlapsarian state after the fall. The states of original innocence and the advent of sin in man touch man’s deepest core in his “innermost being, knowledge, consciousness, choice, and decision.” The state of “historical man,” as mankind currently experiences in his inclination towards sin, is linked primordially to man’s original state of innocence as having been created “in the image of God.” John Paul II refers to this tether of historical man (fallen) to original innocence as his “theological prehistory,” which impacts man on a bodily and spiritual level. From a practical perspective, when Christ refers the Pharisees back to the “beginning” (twice) he accentuates not just the state of original innocence forever lost to sin, but rather his own redemption as foreshadowed in what the Church has come to know as the Protoevangelium, or “first Gospel” of Genesis 3:15: “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.” This passage speaks of the future victory of Christ over Satan, which the Church fathers likewise attested to. Man now takes part not only in the hereditary character of human sinfulness, but also in the redemption wrought by Christ as St. Paul accentuates in Romans 8:23: “We ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies.” The experience of man’s present existence is one which he encounters in the body, and this experience is both a “legitimate means of theological interpretation” and an “indispensable point of reference” in properly understanding Christ’s appeal the “beginning.”

62 The Meaning of Original Solitude Audience 5: October 10, 1979

Within this audience, John Paul II uses Genesis 2:18 as his catechetical point of departure: “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.” Having already noted that “man” indicates “mankind” as such, and not simply a male in the Garden. Rather, the first man (Adam) is defined as “male” specifically “only after the creation of the first woman,” thereby noting that both sexes come into full being at precisely the same time. The state of original solitude experienced by man (male and female) refers “not only to that of the male.” John Paul emphasizes this point several times in the audience as if to continually draw attention to it. The dual-solitude of man (male and female) further underscores two key points: 1.) In his nature man is different from the animals he has named, and therefore alone. 2.) He is ordered towards self-donation towards the other in communion. The “fundamental anthropological issue” of man’s solitude (“alone”) seen in Genesis 2 impacts the man and woman on ontological level within his very nature as well. Having named the animals (Gn 2:19) man discovered himself to be alone in the garden (Gn 2:19-20). Therefore, this self-knowledge acquired by man (mankind) within the experience of solitude was “undoubtedly a preparation for the account of the creation of woman.” John Paul notes that within the solitude man found himself before God in search of his identity and own being. This searching has a positive meaning in the sense of that he probes him to encounter the other and yet a negative sense because before this he has to encounter first what he is not, that is simply another animal. John Paul accentuates that with this self-knowledge that man now has, he now desires to “go in some way outside of his own being” and as a result “reveals himself to himself” in the process of this discovery.

Audience 6: October 24, 1979 (Solitude and Subjectivity)

Today again the Holy Father takes up the anthropological implications of man in his subjective element in Genesis 2. In properly understanding man (mankind) in the garden there is seen the phenomenon of the “tree of the knowledge of good and evil” among other trees, of which man is not to disrespect. Clearly, John Paul notes, one sees the subjective dimension of free will which God has given to man to use in accord with what he has asked of man: “But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die" (Gen 2:17). Here man is “a subject of the covenant” of God, namely a “subject constituted as a person.” In his solitude in the garden man has encountered the self-knowledge which has accompanied self-consciousness and self-determination of will. John Paul specifics notes that the fact that man is “alone” in the garden “contains within itself this ontological structure,” meaning that the solitude was an anthropological prerequisite for this self-awareness. It is by way of man’s body that he becomes aware of his solitude in the world. John Paul contends that without his body man would never have been capable of arriving at an awareness of his ontological difference from the animals. Here then, man not only becomes aware of his bodily difference, he similarly becomes aware of the “meaning of his own body” and that he in fact a person. Furthermore, it is by the charge to “cultivate” the earth (Gn 2:15) that man matures in his realiza-

63 tion that he is “in the visible world as a body among bodies and discovers the meaning of his own bodiliness.”

Audience 7: October 31, 1979

In this audience John Paul II further elaborates both on man’s consciousness of his bodily difference but also his awareness of its intrinsic meaning. In what he describes simply as the “central problem of anthropology,” the Holy Father underscores in the discovery of his nature as a body and soul composite, based on Gn 2:7, the man realizes that only he can “cultivate the earth” (Gn 2:5) and “subdue it” (Gn 1:28).197 This realization would simply not have been possible apart from the self-knowledge which accompanied man’s awareness of his own body and difference in the world. In his subjective cognizance of his own bodiliness, there is likewise the realization within him that his body “permits him to be the author of genuinely human activity” in the sense that he has free will (self-determination). John Paul is clear in insisting that the meaning of man’s original solitude “rests on the experience of the existence he obtained from the Creator.” This existence is seen specifically in man’s subjectivity and the intrinsic meaning of the body, which does therefore mean something. When God informs the man for the first time that disrespecting of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil will ultimately mean death (“You shall die” (Gn 2:17)), John Paul asks the practical question as to whether or not the man would have understood what “dying” actually meant? He answers yes in the sense that he would have known that it is the antithesis of the “life he had enjoyed up until that point.” Here the Creator permits man to exercise free will and self-determination in choosing what is good for him. John Paul accentuates here that the tree of the knowledge had roots then not only in the Garden of Eden but also deep within humanity itself. In other words, what man would ultimately choose to do with this tree would have profoundly ontological and somatic consequences for all of humanity in the years to come. Original solitude then has implications for man’s choice between death and immortality, yet also “for the whole of the theology of the body” as well.

1) The Meaning of Original Unity Audience 8: November 7, 1979

Following from his analysis of original solitude, John Paul II highlights the expression of the Creator indicating the need divine order towards communion: “It is not good that the man should be alone” (Gn. 2:18). This expression he notes, acts as a “prelude” for the creation of woman. From the phenomenon of solitude then, original unity of man and woman takes its form. With Christ’s words to the Pharisees in Mt 19:5, this is definitively reiterated: “A man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife and the two shall become one flesh.” The original unity, or duality of sex, is ontologically rooted in the creation of man in both the male and female sexes (Michael Waldstein notes that John Paul II uses the term “sex” in refer-

197 Gn 2:7: “The Lord God formed the man with dust from the ground and blew into his nostrils the breath of life and man became a living being.”

64 ence to the male “sex” and female “sex,” though not the particular act of sexual intercourse).198 John Paul here emphasizes that man himself is a body this “belongs more deeply to the structure of the personal subject than the fact that in his somatic constitution he is also male and female.” Thus, original solitude occurs prior to original unity because both man and woman experience it, which then shapes their later discovery of the other. The male and female then are “two ways in which the same human being, created “in the image of God’ (Gn. 1:27), ‘is a body.’” He notes that the creation of man and woman by God actually occurs simultaneously with the progressive unfolding of human consciousness as well. In his the great sleep (“torpor”) which is cast on him, John Paul notes here that this should not be understood as a passing from simply consciousness to unconsciousness per se, but rather a “specific return to non-being…or to the moment before creation,” from which will reemerge man in a “double unity as male and female.” The Holy Fa- ther accentuates that prior to falling into this sleep (“torpor”) man hopes to find a being compa- rable to himself (“second I”). Having been made “with the rib” there is a homogeneity between the man and woman on both a somatic and ontological level. Formed with the intent of being a “help” to the man, he exults in his discovery of this “second I” as well: “Then the man said, ‘This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man’" (Gn. 2:23).

Audience 9: November 14, 1979

In underscoring the significance of original unity grounded in original solitude, John Paul accentuates that unity itself “denotes above all the unity of human nature” whereas duality indicates the what of masculinity and femininity in created man. Man has a “particular value” both before God and man himself because the masculine is for the feminine and vice versa. Having encountered original solitude, man (male and female) now experiences an “opening toward and waiting for ‘communion of persons’” with the other. Borrowing the phrase “communion of persons” from the Second Vatican Council, John Paul accentuates that the solitude becomes “the way that leads to the unity” among the two.199 In describing this dual-unity of the sexes, he prefers the term communio (communion) to community on the grounds that communio is meaning is more precise in underscoring the “help” given to man by the woman (vice versa) as one existing “beside” the other. This communion of persons forms a “double-solitude” whereby both sexes experience a distinction of self from all other creation and a mutual searching for the other; within which there is a “particular reciprocity.” In unpacking the meaning of man having been made in “the image of God,” John Paul highlights a pivotal point of Catholic doctrine, namely that in this “mirroring of the one who is the model” man is created with an intellect and free will but also in his communion with another.200 As God is a divine communion of persons, so too is man ordered towards communio in following the “prototype.” Finally, in addressing

198 Michael Waldstein, Man and Woman He created Them: A Theology of the Body (Boston: Pauline, 2006): 157.

199 Second Vatican Council, Gaudium et Spes, no. 12.

200 John Paul II will again take up “imaging” as it pertains to the angels in his General Audience addresses of Au- gust, 1986 (Angels Participate in the History of Salvation: August 6, 1986).

65 Genesis 2:23, “bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh,” three times he notes that the human body touches on the very “bone marrow of the anthropological reality” of man. Simply put, “the body reveals man.” There is a “reciprocal enrichment” for man and woman in the realization and self-knowledge which accompanies the revelation of one for the other and the “deeper” consciousness of being ordered towards the other as well.

Audience 10: November 21, 1979

In this audience John Paul II expands on his understanding of original unity as seen through the lens of original solitude. He contends that original unity understood by way of the dual-unity of a communion between the man and woman brings authentic meaning to anthropology. There are two ways of being human. Masculinity and femininity are two “incarnations” of being man in his metaphysical and somatic reciprocity, or rather two ways of “being a body” as man (mankind). In this original unity man and woman are not as it were, two halves which combine to form a whole, nor are the male and female sexes simply gendered attributes of the persons. Rather, John Paul notes, sex [being male or female] is “constitutive for the person” and they are “two complementary ways of being conscious of the meaning of the body.” In this sense then, sex conveys a moving beyond the limits of original solitude for both. This personifi- cation of this original unity occurs in the conjugal act of marriage, whereby the two “become one flesh” open to fecund fruitfulness. In this act, man specifically chooses a physical unity with the “second I,” whereas he “belongs by nature to his father and mother” whom he did not choose. In the conjugal act, man and woman choose self-donation out of love, thus not instinct. In this “reciprocal choice” of each to become one flesh they consciously act out of self-determination and in doing so there is a rediscovery of original meaning of their bodies and union. The procreation of man and woman then takes root in creation and “every time it reproduces in some way its mystery” again.

1.) The Meaning of Original Nakedness Audience 11: December 12, 1979.

In this audience John Paul further addresses the “revelation of the body” and shame as a “boundary,” or “threshold” experience. He makes note of a point that is some ways obvious though often overlooked within the daily life of man; namely, that there is an “ontological depth” within him that is tied to every human encounter. This “extraordinary character” in man is revealed in the body and this enable man to “discover the extraordinary nature of what is ordinary” to him. In the sphere then of original nakedness we are told in Genesis 2:25, “The man and his wife were both naked, yet they felt no shame,” and still later in Gn. 3:7 one hears something very different, “Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves aprons.” This “key element” of original nakedness then cannot be understood as something accidental or ancillary. Rather , John Paul notes, the nakedness of the man and woman while not encountering shame clearly indicates their “reciprocal experience of the body,” that is, the woman’s encounter with masculinity and the man’s encounter with the femininity of the woman. The adverb heard in Gn. 3:7, “then,” now “indi-

66 cates a new moment and a new situation that followed the breaking of the first covenant” and the advent of sin in historical man. John Paul highlights then that shame is not only something which prelapsarian man (male and female) “did not feel” but it is likewise a “boundary” experience between these two states. The change that occurred within them after sin and the encounter with shame is much deeper than simply seeing the other now naked. It is a change that which “directly concerns the experience of the meaning of one’s own body before the Creator and creatures.”

Audience 12: December 19, 1979

Taking up again his discourse on shame, John Paul II contends that there is a complex character to shame that is in some ways contradictory. On the one hand, the “human being experiences fear in the face of the ‘second I’ (thus, for example, woman before man), and this is sub- stantially fear for one’s own ‘I.’” On the other hand, “the human being manifests ‘instinctively,’ as it were, the need for affirmation and acceptance of this ‘I.’” Thus, while seeking distance from the other, one also seeks affirmation from the other as well. In a rare emphatic note, John Paul II insists that shame is a very deep experience within man and likewise deeply forms his ethos as a person. Returning to the Gn. 2:25 text, he argues that for the man and woman before sin there is a “true non-presence of shame,” but that this is not to be misunderstood as merely a “lack of shame” (e.g. shamelessness). Again he insists that the words “they did not feel shame” should not be misunderstood as a lack of shame but rather as a “fullness of consciousness and experience” in grasping the meaning of the body in connection with their own nakedness. The anthropology of the man and woman therefore should be understood accurately in its connectedness to the phenomenon of original solitude and the desire for the other, original unity in its reciprocal duality in the “second I,” and original nakedness which leads to the “consciousness of the meaning of the body” that comes via the senses. Original nakedness then touches “man’s innermost [being]” in its communication with the other in the revelation of the body. In this way the body “expresses the person in his or her ontological and essential concreteness, which is something more than ‘individual,’ and thus expresses the human, personal ‘I.’” It therefore reveals a deep communication with the other, which is ordered toward communion with that other.

2) Man in the Dimension of Gift A. The Spousal Meaning of the Body: Audience 13: January 2, 1980

In this audience John Paul II introduces several new concepts which will be important in later grasping the fuller context and vision of the Theology of the Body, among these are the “spousal meaning of the body,” the “peace of the interior gaze,” an “adequate anthropology,” and self-giftedness. Taking up his earlier point of original nakedness of man and woman in the garden, he highlights the fact that in their “reciprocal vision of each other” there is both an external and internal encounter which takes place within them. Therefore, in the external recognition that the body of the other reveals the personhood of the other, each “also has an inner dimension of a share in the vision of the Creator himself” in seeing that man is “very good” (Gn 1:31). Like-

67 wise, John Paul takes direct aim here at the Cartesian dualism endemic in much of secular thought, whereby the body is amputated from any intrinsic meaning or depth. He specifics notes that an authentic anthropology “does not contain an inner break and antithesis between what is spiritual and what is sensible.” In the “peace of the interior gaze,” that is seeing the other in their nakedness with the fuller vision as God sees them, there is an intimacy of communication between them. This communication is “based on the communion of persons in which they become a mutual gift for each other.” Within the original nakedness of the body and the “community-communion” which is beckons of the other, there is revealed what he terms a “spousal meaning of the body,” that is an orientation of the body, and thus the person, towards total self- giftedness towards the other (“hermeneutics of the gift”). Within his person then, “man, whom God created ‘male and female,’ bears the divine image impressed in the body” and therefore “man and woman constitute…two diverse ways of ‘being a body’ that are proper to human nature in the unity of this image.” This original solitude, original unity, and original nakedness within man and woman then form an “adequate anthropology,” or an understanding of “what is essentially human.”

Audience 14: January 9, 1980

In this audience, John Paul II underscores a very common theme in Catholic thought, and especially that of St. Thomas Aquinas, namely that man and man’s giftedness to the other is “ordered to an end,” a point he reiterates several times. He underscores that in the “one flesh” union of man and woman in Gn. 2:24, Scripture clearly “speaks about the ordering of man’s masculinity and femininity to an end, in the life of the spouse-parents.”201 In accentuating this point, John Paul notes that in entering into full communion with the other, as only one man and one woman can do, this self-giftedness includes all of “his own masculinity-femininity, that is, his own sexuality” as well. In speaking of an “order” to man’s sexuality in terms of Genesis, he is highlighting the fact that the “order” of man’s sexuality is neither arbitrary nor ‘ordered’ by man himself, but rather the Creator. The masculine and feminine sex within the male and female bodies of man “is the original sign of the creative donation and at the same time man, male-female, becomes aware of as a gift lived so to speak in an original way,” and it by this anthropological character that, “sex enters into the theology of the body.” John Paul accentuates here that having declared his Creation “very good,” there is heard for the first time the declara- tion by him of something which is itself “not good”: “Then the Lord God said, ‘It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him’" (Gn 2:18). Drawing on this passage, he argues then that the adjective “alone” and the noun “help” are the keys for understanding the essence of human giftedness in its ontological depth.

Audience 15: January 16, 1980

201 This point is essential in properly understanding the Catholic Church’s teaching on the objective “disorder” of homosexual inclinations (CCC, no. 2357-2358). Among other points, with homosexual acts there can no ordered teleological end, nor total giftedness of self; which Scripture itself attests to (Rm 1:26-27; 1 Cor. 6:9-11; 1 Tim 1:8-10).

68 In this audience, John Paul II continues his reflections on the spousal meaning of the body, human giftedness, and freedom. As noted prior, the Holy Father tethers human freedom with truth, and with the man and woman in the garden their “both are ‘naked’ because they are free with the very freedom of the gift.” They are fully aware of the truth of the spousal meaning of the body and their mutual orientation towards giftedness to the other; as the body “contains ‘from the beginning’ the ‘spousal’ attribute.” In order to fully become a “sincere gift” for the other, freedom requires self-mastery (self-dominion), in order that it may be total.202 Free from the “constraint of their bodies and of sex,” man and woman were both able to understand that the other is to be loved and welcomed “for its own sake” and the each is ordered towards giftedness.203 Here John Paul accentuates the ontological and somatic beauty of the person as ordered towards giftedness in the spousal meaning of the body. He notes that “the human body, oriented from within by the ‘sincere gift’ of the person, reveals not only its masculinity and femininity of the physical level, but reveals also such a value and such a beauty that it goes beyond the simply physical level of ‘sexuality.’” Therefore, human bodiliness, and especially man’s sexuality, has an ontological depth that transcends the body, but is in union with it. There is then an ontological connection in the spousal meaning of the body and man’s original happiness. The spousal meaning of the body is “beatifying” in the sense that “it shows the whole reality of the act of giving about which the first pages of Genesis speak to us.”

B. The Mystery of Original Innocence Audience 16: January 30, 1980

In taking up the issue of original happiness within man and woman in the garden, John Paul II underscores its spiritual and physical connectedness to love. He insists that “only love creates the good,” and that it can be perceived in all created things, especially in man. It is the “final result” of the “hermeneutics of the gift” of the spousal meaning of the body. This original happiness of man in the garden and the spousal meaning of the body rooted in original nakedness are grounded above all in love. The Holy Father reiterates this point several times in the text, that authentic human happiness is “rooted in love.” The original innocence of the man and woman prior to the advent of original sin, was a “participation in the inner life of God himself” by grace; and this state of holiness within man is actually the source of original innocence itself. John Paul looks to Gn 2:25 to indicate this point: “The man and his wife were both naked, yet they felt no shame.” This innocence belongs to the grace within the man and woman which is “contained in the mystery of creation.” Original innocence “at its very roots” excludes any possibility of shame in the body. The original innocence and original happiness are then “two con- verging lines of man’s existence” as having been created out of love. This mutual revelation of the man and woman in innocence reveals to each the deeper sense of the spousal meaning of the body.

202 Gaudium et Spes, no. 24:3.

203 Ibid., no. 24.4.

69 Audience 17: February 6, 1980

In this audience the Holy Father takes up again his discussion of original innocence as rooted in original nakedness. Reiterating the call of Jesus in Matthew’s gospel for the Pharisees to return to the “beginning” (Mt 19:3-9), John Paul likewise accentuates the “interior freedom of the gift” of man to woman and vice versa which is rooted in original innocence. This innocence that Jesus refers to in Gn 2:25 “can be defined as the innocence of the reciprocal experience of the body.” Their innocence “inspired” a reciprocal exchange of one another as total gift, and in this process each achieves self-discovery, as the Second Vatican Council noted: “Man, who is the only creature on earth which God willed for itself, cannot fully find himself except through a sincere gift of himself.”204 The mutual exchange of the gift of self to each other also includes a “reciprocal acceptance” of the other completely, thereby forming a communion of persons between them. John Paul notes here that this mutual self-donation included “the whole of humanity, soul and body,” and therefore it cannot be said to be simply corporeal or somehow a spiritually symbolic giving. The giving and receiving of the whole person of both man and woman “interpenetrate” in a way that the act itself become the acceptance of the other as well. In this inter- penetrating giving and receiving then, within both the man and the woman there is a self-discovery whereby each come into the “innermost depth” of themselves as a body and soul composite. One can see that John Paul II anthropological analysis is antithetical to the largely Cartesian model of man understood within culture today.

Audience 18: February 13, 1980

In this audience John Paul II again brings us back to the “beginning” as Jesus beckons (Mt 19:3-9), highlighting the “theological prehistory” of man (man and woman) within his prelapsarian state prior to original sin. As man and woman were completely permeated by the grace of original innocence, this return to the beginning enables us to properly apprehend the “theological aspect of the ethos of the body.” It is by original innocence then that John Paul will later address the human ethos which will guide much of the theology of the body analysis. For instance, by grasping an understanding of how the spousal meaning of the body is rooted in the mystery of creation, we can come to know “who man is and who he ought to be, and therefore how he should shape his own activity.”205 Drawing from Gn 2:24, John Paul highlights the beauty of marriage, noting that prior to entering into marriage, the man and the woman must come from creation “First of all as brother and sister in the same humanity.” The spousal meaning of the body within each “reveals the innermost point of their freedom,” which is ultimately the freedom to become a total gift to the other.

Audience 19: February 20, 1980

204 Gaudium et Spes, no. 24.

205 Here we see the influence of Karol Wojtyla’s earlier analysis of human action as it pertains to man in The Acting Person, whereas much of his thoughts of self-gift are drawn largely from the Second Vatican Council and St. John of the Cross.

70 In further elaborating on the concept of the ethos of the gift, John Paul II underscores the difference between the “object” and the “objective” as they pertain to human anthropology. Again, by ethos of the gift he is referring to the subjective nature of man (man and woman) as having been made in God’s image and likeness. Prior to the entry of original sin within human history, the man and woman never perceived the other as a mere “object” of use, but rather viewed the other with the “peace of the interior gaze” and in the “fullness of their objectivity as creatures, as ‘bone from my bones, and fresh from my flesh.’” Yet even after the advent of sin, in all its tragic consequences, there remains a “distant echo” in the human heart of the ethos of the gift deep with him. Here John Paul II accentuates a point which has important implications for the Theology of the Body, namely the sacramentality of the body: “Man appears in the visible world as the highest expression of the divine gift, because he bears within himself the inner dimension of the gift.” In his visible and somatic body, conjoined to an immortal soul, man bears the deepest character of the gift within him and is thus ordered towards human giftedness as well. He further notes that the “sacrament, as a visible sign, is constituted with man, inasmuch as he is a ‘body,’ through his visible masculinity and femininity.” Man is therefore the sacramentality of God’s creation, having been created in his image and likeness.

Audience 20: March 5, 1980

It is at this point, in his Wednesday audiences on the body, that John Paul II gradually begins to highlight the impact of sin in human history and in particular on the man and woman. Referring again to Jesus’ words to the Pharisees to return to the “beginning,” John Paul notes that “Christ leads us in some way beyond the limits of human hereditary sinfulness to his original innocence.” The advent of sin in human history brought with it the mysterium iniquitatis (mystery of iniquity) and the mysterium mortis (mystery of death), both of which have entered into the human heart; though he will address these points in greater detail in later audiences. Likewise, he highlights the biblical understanding of conjugal union as a type of “knowledge” of the other, such as with Gn 4:1: “Now Adam knew Eve his wife, and she conceived and bore Cain, saying, ‘I have gotten a man with the help of the Lord.’” He notes that this level of intimacy shared among spouses in sexual union is so profound it is a type of “knowledge” or knowing of the other. By this “knowing” in conjugal union there is a “reciprocity of ‘knowledge’” whereby each “participate through their body and their sex” with the other as well. John Paul accentuates that this “knowledge” of the other in conjugal union is the “deepest essence of the reality of shared married life” whereby both grow closer to the Creator. In this union the body with its sexuality enters into the “very structure and content of this knowledge.”

Audience 21: March 12, 1980

In this general audience John Paul II accentuates again that the Biblical meaning of the term “knew” is at the heart of human anthropology and “stands at the very basis of the theology of the body.” In this meaning man is both a person and a subject. In Gn 4:1, the one who “knows” is the man whereas the “one who is known is the woman, the wife.” And he therefore

71 comes to “know” her entire femininity. Likewise, John Paul notes, after the advent of sin into human history, it is the man who was the first to feel shame in his nakedness: “I was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid myself” (Gn 3:10). It is in the depth of motherhood that femininity fully manifests and reveals itself. In her capacity to bring forth new life (Gn 4:1), the woman is the “subject of the new human life” within her and the man’s masculinity, by contrast, is revealed in the full generative and “paternal” meaning of the male body. John Paul acknowledges both that every human being experience to some degree that human “knowledge” of the other which impacts man on a somatic and ontological level, yet also the apparent reality that men and women are in fact different “even in the deepest bio-physiological determinants” within them. Within the particular “knowledge” of the other that man and woman gain in the consummation of marriage, the couple acquires a “grasp of the objectivity of the body” which are present in the physical powers of the body to bring forth new life, and they likewise “grasp the objectivity of man” (the other), who is a body. Therefore, “knowledge” in the biblical sense, signifies both the self-conscious and self-determining powers in man (man and woman) to understand the meaning of the body in leading to fatherhood and motherhood. John Paul further notes that the entire constitution of a woman’s body itself, “are in strict union with motherhood.”

Audience 22: March 26, 1980

Here John Paul II underscores the biblical cycle of “knowledge-generation” that he has unfolded, drawing from Jesus’ discourse with the Pharisees in Matthew 19:3-9 and Mark 10:1-12: “Have you not read that from the beginning the Creator created them male and female and said: ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and unite with his wife, and the two will be one flesh?” (Mt 19:4-5). In the conceiving and generating of new life which comes by way of the mutual “knowing” of the man and woman, man “takes possession…of humanity itself, or even better, retakes it into possession.” This “retaking” of humanity by way of generation is very different from the taking possession and “subduing” of the earth and the animals in the garden that the man had previously done (Gn 1:28). Rather, John Paul contends, that this “taking possession” of humanity by way of conjugal “knowing” involves a desire to “express anew” the humanity that lies within them within the beauty of the masculinity and femininity in their bodies. In this sense, he equates biblical “knowledge” with “possession” of the other. This “knowledge-generation” of man in the body has likewise been subjected to death and suffering after the entry of human sin. After sin, man now “knows” death and so the man now “gives to his wife the name Eve, ‘because she was the mother of all the living’” (Gn 3:20). This knowledge of death likewise impacts the depth of his being and thus he hears from the Creator: “In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; you are dust, and to dust you shall return” (Gn 3:19). After sin, man’s life is not taken from him “but restricted by limit of conceptions, of births, and of death, and further worsened by the perspective of hereditary sinfulness.” Yet even after the advent of sin, John Paul insists that masculinity still contains within it the meaning of fatherhood and femininity contains within it the authentic meaning of motherhood.

[Conclusion: An Integral Vision]

72 Audience 23: April 2, 1980

In drawing this section of his Theology of the Body corpus to a close, John Paul II reaffirms the centrality of the Incarnation as the foundation from which human anthropology takes its stand. He notes: “The fact that theology also includes the body should not astonish or surprise anyone who is conscious of the mystery and reality of the Incarnation. Through the fact that the Word became flesh, the body entered theology, that it…through the main door. The In- carnation, and the redemption that flows from it, has also become the definitive source of the sacramentality of marriage.” In Christ’s repeated appeals to “the beginning” with his interlocutors in the Matthean and Marcan texts (Mt 19:3-8; Mt 12:2-9), he appeals to every human being in history in underscoring their anthropological dignity as having been made in God’s image and likeness. John Paul insists that without this realization “one cannot build a theological anthropology and, in its context, a ‘theology of the body’” from which also give rise to a proper understanding of marriage and family. The “integral vision of man” which Pope Paul VI called for in Humanae Vitae (no.7), is this same “vision” that man was given in “the beginning” and within the redemption wrought by Jesus Christ. In the culture in which we live, often antithetical to the sanctity of marriage, family, human sexuality, and dignity, he reaffirms the “how necessary is an accurate consciousness of the spousal meaning of the body.” Finally, he lays out his intention at this point to later take up other key texts of Christ as they pertain to this “integral vision of man”; namely, the Sermon on the Mount (Mt 5:8); and Jesus’ appeal to the resurrection (Mt 22:24-30; Mk 12:18-27; Lk 20:27-36).

II. CHAPTER TWO: CHRIST APPEALS TO THE HUMAN HEART

1) In the Light of the Sermon on the Mount Audience 24: April 16, 1980

In beginning his reflections on man in his historical state, John Paul II accentuates that his intention is to draw largely from Jesus’ words in the Sermon on the Mount regarding purity: “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I say to you: Whoever looks at a woman to desire her has already committed adultery with her in his heart” (Mt 5:27-28). Here the pope insists that Jesus is beckoning us to a fuller interpretation of these words, rather than simply a prohibition of the law. This fuller understanding to which Christ is leading us is likewise the “key to the theology of the body.” This profoundly textured understanding of man leads us to the “heart of ethos,” or the inner form (soul) of human morality, which is at the heart of what it actually means to be human. Ethos enables us to enter into the ontological depth of man, which includes not only his actions but his heart as well. Within the words of Christ, “Whoever looks at a woman to desire her [lust] has already committed adultery with her in his heart,” John Paul contends here that Jesus points us not simply to the exterior act of adultery with another, but likewise to the “dimension of interior action” within the human heart, whereby one wills the evil. For this reason then, “Christ appeals to the inner man,” not only for ethical but for anthropological reasons as well.

73 Audience 25: April 23, 1980

Returning again to his reflections on the Sermon on the Mount (Mt 5:27-28), John Paul II highlights that Jesus appeals to the “inner man” in the prohibition against adultery of the heart. The Holy Father underscores here that Jesus is speaking precisely to “historical man,” which is all of humanity in its present state after the advent of original sin. On can say therefore that “this man is in some way ‘each’ man, ‘every one’ of us.” This “historical man” is the same man who once knew original innocence and encountered the “earthly drama” of the knowledge of good and evil in the breaking of the covenant with the Creator. He is also the same man who “knew” his wife and she likewise “knew” him as well. Jesus’ words then appeal to this “inner man” in each person, as “all human beings belonging to the same human history.” For this reason, the words of Christ not only have an ethical import, but likewise impact his very anthropology. It is in the heart that the depth of the meaning of the body is encountered in its fullest. In appealing to the “inner man” then, Christ underscores that interior act of lust prior to the exterior willing of adultery. John Paul emphasizes that as an interior act, lustful desire “expresses itself through the sense of sight,” as with the case of David and Bathsheba (2 Sam 11:2). 206 John Paul II likewise insists here that lustful look can equally accompany a woman inasmuch as a man as the particular agent. Finally, he notes that Jesus’ intends here, in Mt 5:27-28, that we “not dwell on the example itself, but also enter into the statement’s full ethical and anthropological sense” as well.

2) The Man of Concupiscence A. The Meaning of Original Shame Audience 26: April 30, 1980 Addressing again the words of Christ in the Sermon on the Mount (Mt 5:27-28), John Paul II accentuates the reductive character of the “inner man” who lusts in his heart. The pope tethers this “desire” to the three-fold concupiscence which St. John speaks of in his epistle: “All that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the pride of life, is not of the Father but is of the world. And the world passes away, and the lust of it; but he who does the will of God abides forever” (1Jn 2:16-17). This three-fold concupiscence is “in the world” and comes “from the world” not as a fruit of God’s creation but rather as the fruit of man’s fracturing of the covenant with the Creator. The “world” then as willed by man, John Paul notes, is the “place and source of concupiscence.” It is at this point that he introduces the analysis of shame in the experience of “historical man.” Shame, he notes, is the “first source of the manifestation in man” that he has chosen “the world” rather than God. This is the result both of man who “turns his back” on God, but likewise of his rejection of the gift of his being, what John Paul II terms the “doubt [which] is cast on the Gift.” In turning his back on the Creator, man likewise “detaches his heart and cuts it off” from the Creator, and thereby wills the fruit of “the world”

206 Michael Waldstein underscores the following with regards to John Paul II’s hermeneutic of sexual desire: “Ac- cording to John Paul II, sexual desire and sexual pleasure are in themselves good. “Desire” in a negative sense arises when a man or a woman fails to see this full attractiveness of the other person and reduces it to the attractiveness to the sexual pleasure alone. It is the isolation of sexual desire which gives rise to the vice of lust. In lustful or concupiscent desire one sees the other person in a reductive way as a mere means for sexual pleasure.”

74 instead. It is at this point that Genesis informs us that “The eyes of both were opened, and they realized that they were naked; they sewed fig leaves together and made loincloths” (Gn 3:6). It is at this “boundary” point in his history that there is a “new state of human nature.”

Audience 27: May 14, 1980

Expanding on his analysis of original shame, John Paul II notes that in Gn 3:7 we see the depths to which shame impacts man in his fallen state (status naturae lapse): “Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made loincloths for themselves.” John Paul points out here that the shame encountered by both the man and the woman before each other was a result the “immediate fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.” Likewise, each now experienced the phenomenon of fear before God, “a fear previously unknown” by them. Here man begins to sense that his shame runs far deeper than simply bodily shame, but rather touches the deepest core of his ontological personhood. In a key passage, John Paul comments on the now fallen man’s attempt to cover his nakedness. He notes: “With his shame about his own nakedness, the man seeks to cover the true origin of fear by indicating the effect so as not to name the cause.” In other words, man here realizes the gravity of his own nakedness and culpability for breaking the covenant with God. The “nakedness” the man and the woman experience here is very different than the nakedness they previously knew. In this postlapsarian state, “nakedness” indicates that “man is deprived of participation in the Gift” of God, and that he is now “alienated from the Love that was the source of the original gift.” John Paul underscores that while man lost the supernatural and preternatural gifts (e.g. immortality, lack of concupiscence, supernatural knowledge of God) his nature itself is likewise “damaged,” and as a result concupiscence enters into human experience. In the expression, “I was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid myself,” (Gn 3:10), man becomes aware now that that he has lost “the original certainty of the ‘image of God’ expressed in his body.” Likewise, the earth to which he was given dominion in Gn 1:28, now will ultimately gain possession of his body in death as well: “Dust you are, and to dust you shall return” (Gn 3:19). All of this leads to what John Paul II refers to as the “cosmic” nature of shame.

Audience 28: May 28, 1980

John Paul II immediately begins this audience in noting that following the entry of sin into this human experience, the “man of concupiscence” has replaced the “man of original innocence.” With the entry of sin into man’s experience he enters what the Pope refers to as the state of “historical man,” which is likewise the present state of mankind. Within the “cosmic” nature of shame, there is a “shame produced in humanity itself” which then inflicts an “innermost disorder” upon man. There is a dual-shame experienced by the man and the woman which bears an explicitly sexual character, which is seen in Gn 3:7: “Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made loincloths for themselves.” John Paul II accentuates the fact that this shame is experienced “without any doubt in the ‘sexual’ order” of man’s experience. The previous state of somatic and spiritual unity has now been fractured, as “the body has ceased drawing on the spirit.” At this point then there is a

75 “fundamental disquiet in the whole of human existence.” This palpable rupture of the body and spirit indicates to man that his reality is now very different. Whereas before the body easily coalesced with the spirit and was subject to it, man now experiences within his body a “constant hotbed of resistance against the spirit.” Much of this encounter with shame is manifested in man’s sexuality precisely because it is here that the “imbalance springing from concupiscence” particularly manifests itself. John Paul II is clear in noting then that “man has shame in the body because of concupiscence” as a result of his sin.

B. Instability of the Union Audience 29: June 4, 1980

In his continuing discourse on shame, John Paul II highlights how it has ontologically and physiologically warped the relationship between man and woman, man and God, and the inner phenomenon of man himself. He notes: “Genesis 3 shows without an doubt that shame appeared in the reciprocal relationship between man and woman, and that this relationship underwent a radical transformation due to shame in particular.” This new phenomenon of shame within man similarly accompanies a concupiscence of the body as well. This has warped, then, the power of man and woman to properly communicate themselves via the body. John Paul II notes that this “original power of communicating” now “has been shattered.” Likewise, the communion between man and woman has now “overturned” due to sin, and their simplicity and purity has also been deformed. He notes that while bodily communication between our first parents still continued, “what disappeared was the simple and direct self-communion” associated with original nakedness. As a result, this greatly limits the full self-donation associated with trusting the other within their own sexual difference. This sexual difference, therefore, is now understood by both as an obstacle and a “mutual opposition of persons” rather than a communion. This “ending of the power of a full reciprocal union” has long term consequences on the “one flesh” union (Gn 2:24) of man and woman, but also on their own “communion of persons.” John Paul II notes that within the interpersonal dynamics of man and woman, “it is as if sexuality became an ‘obstacle’” between them. He refers to this as a “second discovery of sex,” with this one being radically different than the first, and forming much of the boundary experience between man’s original and historical states.

Audience 30: June 18, 1980

Underscoring again the impact of shame on man’s historical experience, John Paul II specifically notes the impact that it had on the woman; highlighting the fact that Yahweh speaks directly to her following the advent of sin: “I will multiply your pangs in childbearing” (Gn 3:16), and “Your desire shall be for your husband, but he will dominate you” (Gn 3:16). He notes that both of these statements have a “future oriented character” and will thus deeply impact human history. The Pope accentuates that this statements underscores St. John’s later three-fold delineation of concupiscence of the flesh, “of the eyes and of the pride of life” (1 Jn 2:16). They similarly accentuate two facets of this altered state of femininity and masculinity: the one flesh union between them and “wide context of relations of conjugal union as a whole.” As a result, he notes,

76 there is a fundamental “breach” in the “fundamental loss of the primeval community-communion of persons.” The original state of full giftedness of one with the other in body and soul in masculinity and femininity (“flesh of my flesh,” Gn 2:23) has now been altered to such a degree that man is now at odds with the other, with God, and with his very self as he is now “estranged from the body as a source of original union.” There is, then, a “deeper echo of shame” which seems to permeate man’s historical experience in human history which “confers” on him a “new direction” apart from his original state. To be clear, then, John Paul II understands sexual shame itself to be “the failure to satisfy the aspiration to realize in the ‘conjugal union of the body’ (Gen 2:24) the reciprocal communion of persons.”

C. The Corruption of the Spousal Meaning of the Body. Audience 31: June 25, 1980

Here John Paul II, drawing on his previous catechesis’ on the impact of sin on fallen man, elaborates on character of concupiscence. He notes that the shame encountered by man and woman after the advent of sin is not simply a somatic, or physical, phenomenon, but rather “goes back to the deepest transformations suffered by the human spirit,” and is thus metaphysical as well. This shame becomes a “secondary experience” as it “takes from the body the simplicity and purity of meaning connected with the original innocence” of man in his prelapsarian state prior to the fall. He likewise notes that the movement of man to “leave his father and mother” and then “unite with his wife” that the two become one flesh (Gen 2:24) is a clear choice made within man, and can “reconstruct” the imbalance of sin with in the “interpersonal relationship of communion” between them. Concupiscence, then, redirects the good desires writ into man for unity with the other into the direction solely of the “appeasement of the body,” and this “often at the cost of an authentic full communion of persons.” The communal mutuality of man and woman has been replaced, he notes, “by a relationship of possession of the other as an object of one’s own desire.” Herein often the man seeks to “dominate” the woman and, similarly, she can attempt to arouse man’s desire or “give it impetus.” It is at this point that John Paul II gives an analysis of his entire corpus on the Theology of the Body. He gives, as it were, a type of thesis statement of his understanding of the body itself: “When we speak about the meaning of the body, we refer above all to the full consciousness of the human being, but we also include every effective experience of the body in its masculinity and femininity…The ‘meaning of the body’ is at the same time what shapes the attitude, it is the way of living the body. It is the measure that the inner man – that is, the heart, to which Christ appeals in the Sermon on the Mount – applies to the human body with regard to its masculinity and femininity (and thus with regard to its sexuality).” He notes, then, that man’s subjective understanding of his experience of his body does not alter its objective character. Man’s theological prehistory, or man’s original innocence, and the detrimental impact of concupiscence continue to shape much of man’s attitude towards the body. The theological and anthropological impact of concupiscence, then, has led to a “limitation, violation, and complete deformation of the spousal meaning of the body,” and at the same time, has not completely destroyed it.

Threat Against the Expression of the Spirt in the Body

77 Audience 32: July 23, 1980

Continuing his catechesis on the impact of concupiscence on the experience of man within his body, John Paul II elaborates on the character of shame. He notes that concupiscence within man “deforms the objective mode of existing in the body,” as the human heart now experiences, to a great degree, the “limitation or deformation” of man’s desires, which is seen “above all in the sphere of the reciprocal relations between man and woman.” He notes that within man’s postlapsarian state the “sexual substratum of that attraction” between man and woman has grown “weak and dark…as if it had been driven back to another level.” This “constraint” within the body had almost, though not entirely, led to a loss of the power to express human love by way of bodily giftedness to another. The Pontiff understands the character of human giving as “the power to express the love by which man, through his femininity or masculinity, becomes a gift for another.” The capacity of man to become a sincere gift of love to and for the other, has now become further challenged by concupiscence, which has led to heart to become a “battlefield” between the two. John Paul II, however, is firm in his assertion that we should not distrust the heart, only “remain in control of it.” This concupiscence, then, both “deprives [him] of the dignity of the gift” and “depersonalizes” him, “making him an object ‘for the other’”. There is a conflict, therefore, between the two and the objectification of each. In brief, he notes that that concupiscence, “brings with it the loss of the interior freedom of the gift” within man. Further- more, it “limits and restricts self-mastery from within,” thereby making a proper self-giving far more difficult. At this point, the body is left as a “terrain of appropriation” whereby one seeks control of, not communion with, the other.

Audience 33: July 30, 1980

Drawing largely on the words of Jesus on the Sermon on the Mount (Mt 5:27-28), John Paul II accentuates his particular reading of Christ’s words as it pertains to concupiscence. He notes: “If a man relates to a woman in such a way that he considers only as an object to appropriate and not as a gift, he condemns himself at the same time to become, on his part too, only as an object of appropriation for her and not as a gift.” John Paul insists that the words of Genesis “he will dominate you,” apply to both man and woman, and that this point can be paralleled with the words of Christ in Matthew’s gospel: “Whoever looks at a woman to desire her…” While both can equally participate, then, in the objectification of the other, he argues that the man bears a “special responsibility, as if it depended more on him on whether the balance is kept or violated or even – if it has already been violated – reestablished.” It is, therefore, his particular responsibility to be the guardian of the woman’s femininity “as a gift.” The “terrain of appropriation” indicative of the concupiscence between them, again, bears within it the loss of the spousal meaning of the body. When one seeks to possess the other, the next step is the “enjoyment” of the other as object. This appropriation is “decidedly opposed” to the nuptial meaning of the body. John Paul II notes that the pronoun “my” bears within it a textured understanding of the “one flesh” union lived out between the two. “My” indicates the total “reciprocity of giving,” and the “equilibrium of the gift,” by which the communio personarum is encountered in mas-

78 culinity and femininity. Within this understanding the spousal meaning of the body, contrary to the objectification of it, can be reestablished.

3) Commandment and Ethos Audience 34: August 6, 1980

In this audience, focusing largely on the delineation between ethic and ethos, John Paul II again uses the words of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount as his point of departure: “Whoever looks at a woman to desire her [lustfully] has already committed adultery with her in his heart” (Mt 5:28). When this passage is understood in conjunction with the words of Jesus to the Pharisees regarding divorce, “because of the hardness of your heart” Moses permitted divorce, the two coalesce perfectly. John Paul II notes that in the accusation “hardness of heart” Jesus accentuates the spiritual stubbornness indicative of the ethos of the times of Moses. Such a situation “had given rise to the situation contrary to the original design of God-Yahweh” and thus a course correction was needed. He notes that this accusation of Christ towards the Pharisees he accuses “the entire ‘interior subject’” of the person, therefore, it is not a purely physical lusting. The “ethos of the Gospel,” however, that is the ethos of the “inner experience of man” which Je- sus alludes to “in the beginning,” is one in which man conforms his heart to the inner love to which he has been originally formed, albeit wounded by sin is man’s historical state. Christ, then, appeals to the historical man to reexamine and rediscover, in as much as is possible, his original state found “in the beginning.” John Paul II notes that it is precisely within the human heart that man “is defined in his humanity ‘from within,’” and that it is here that he chooses good or evil. This “innermost aspect” of man’s being is likewise “proper to man’s inner image” as having been made in God’s image and likeness. He notes that the conversion to, or away from, this image ultimately has ramifications on the larger “structures and institutions” one encounters within society itself.

A. It Was Said, “Do Not Commit Adultery” (Mt 5:27). The History of a People Audience 35: August 13, 1980

In this audience, John Paul II continues his previous reflection regarding the connection on the inner experience of man (ethos). He notes that when Christ uses the phrase, “adultery committed in the heart” (Mt 5:27), he also “has in mind the commandment of God, the sixth in the Decalogue.” With this statement Christ is referring to the “right meaning of good and evil specifically willed by the Divine Legislator.” John Paul II notes that this divine impetus towards purity of heart is a matter of justice due to God and others as well. For this reason Christ “does not accept the interpretation they [Pharisees] had given in the course of the centuries to the authentic content of the law.” The Pharisees had, John Paul notes, “superimposed” a faulty interpretation on the “original vision” set out by God in accord with the Decalogue. He notes that this inner transformation against adultery intended by God was especially paramount during the time of Christ when polygamy was frequently used as a solution for the desire for offspring (per- petuating children of Abraham). Taking the examples of kings David and Solomon in the Old

79 Testament, he notes that “the description of their lives attests to the effective polygamy” practiced by them, and that “it did so undoubtedly for reasons of concupiscence.” Thus, within this historical time frame, “by adultery one understood only the possession of another’s wife, but not the possession of other women as wives next to the first one.” Within this narrow context, then, adultery was understood “as the violation of man’s property right regarding every woman who was his legal wife (usually one among many).” It is, therefore, “not understood, by contrast, as it appears from the point of view the monogamy established by the Creator.” For this reason, Christ appeals back “to the beginning.” Finally, in his defense of the woman caught in adultery (Jn 8:11), Christ does not deny the sin attached to her act or that she actually committed the act she was accused of. John Paul notes that “Christ, therefore, clearly identifies adultery as a sin.” However, in his rebuke of the those prepared to stone her, he turns their hearts to their innermost being, “where the discernment of good and evil inscribed in human conscience can turn out to be deeper and more correct than the content of a legal norm.”

Legislation Audience 36: August 20, 1980

Again drawing on Christ’s words in the Sermon on the Mount (Mt 5:27), John Paul II notes that the Jesus’ audience “knew perfectly well” the commandment against adultery to which the law and the prophets attested. He notes, however, that the ancient use of polygamy as a method of combating adultery and remaining faithful to one’s spouse “contained in itself the ‘social structures of sin’” and “in fact, it protected and legalized them.” In the Sermon on the Mount, then, Christ discloses this faulty rationale and “thus passes beyond its traditional and legal restrictions.” The opposition, he notes, against sexual deviation within its original frame- work is “clearly defined,” though its ethos needed a fuller anthropological development. He uses as an example here the story of Onan, whose name gave rise to the term “onanism,” a form of artificial contraception). John Paul II points out here that with regards to the Old Testament evaluation of the body and sex, it is important that it be evaluated correctly. The Sacred Writers understood these “not in primarily ‘negative’ or even severe [terms], but rather marked by an ob- jectivism motivated by the intention of setting this area of human life in order.” In other words, there tended to be less of an emphasis with the intentions of the heart and more of a focus on the good of the social order; most notably marriage and family. Again articulating the words of Christ, John Paul notes that Our Lord is attempting to “rebuild in the consciousness of his audience” the ethical meaning of “But I say to you…” following the words “You shall not commit adultery.” Finally, he accentuates again the Biblical notion of adultery itself as understood by the prophets as the infidelity of Israel to Yahweh, drawing on the words of Isaiah, Hosea, and Ezekiel. In this “desertion” of God, “Israel commits a betrayal before him that can be compared to that of a woman in relation to her husband: it commits, in fact, ‘adultery.’” The prophets attest to all the “ugliness and moral evil of the adultery committed by the Bride, Israel.”

Audience 37: August 27, 1980

80 In this audience John Paul II again examines the words of Christ in the Sermon on the Mount: “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law and the Prophets; I have not come to abolish but to fulfill” (Mt 5:17). He accentuates that adultery, in Old Testament thought, was often used as a metaphor of the infidelity of Israel to Yahweh and to the promises that she had earlier made to him. Hosea, John Paul notes, “seeks to reveal to us (Hos 1-3) that the peoples betrayal is similar to betrayal in marriage, or even to adultery practiced in the form of prostitution.” Nonetheless, in spite of the infidelity of Israel to the Lord, he is always merciful and welcoming the return of his people. John Paul accentuates, however, the warning noted by Hosea of the results of a lack of conversion: “Let her remove from her face the signs of prostitution and the signs of adultery from between her breasts, or I will strip her all naked and expose her as on the day she was born” (Hos 2:4-5). For his part, Ezekiel repeated underscores how “shameless” are these works of infidelity towards the Creator (Ez 12-15). In spite of this rejection of the Bride- groom by the Bride, John Paul II notes that in “an act of sheer mercy” the Bridegroom welcomes her back yet again in spite of her worship of foreign gods. Adultery is a sin, therefore, “because it is the breaking of the personal covenant between the man and the woman” and between the people and God. He further notes that adultery “is the antithesis of this spousal relation and the opposite of marriage.” By adultery, John Paul II means “the act by which man and woman who are not husband and wife form ‘one flesh,’” which he clearly argues to be a “sin of the body.” Monogamy, then, is understood to coalesce with faithful monotheism. Because the one flesh union (Gen 2:24) is the bodily sign of the nuptial unity of spouses, adultery, then, “is not only a violation of this right, which belongs exclusively to the other spouse, but at the same time a radical falsification of the sign.” The authentic communion of spousal, conversely, is what gives the marital covenant its “essential meaning.”

B. “Whoever Looks to Desire…” Shift in the Center of Gravity Audience 38: September 3, 1980

In this audience, John Paul II reiterates the appeal of Christ to “the beginning” in his discourse with the Pharisees (Mt 19:8; Mk 10:6). He underscores that when Jesus’ states, “But I say to you…” he is confronting the Pharisees with “more than polemics” with regards to their evaluation of the Law, but rather “it is a direct transition to the new ethos on inner conversion. Jesus says, “But I say to you: Whoever looks at a woman to desire her has already committed adultery with her in his heart” (Mt 5:28). John Paul notes, then, that “adultery committed with the heart’ is in some sense set over against ‘adultery committed in the body.’” In other words, Jesus highlights the fact that one need not actually commit the act in order that one is guilty of it. The words of Jesus “lays the foundation of the new ethos” which is “deeply rooted in anthropology.” John Paul II goes on to note that the man of concupiscence is also a man consumed by desire (i.e. lust): “Because he shares in the concupiscence of the body, he ‘desires’ and ‘looks’ to desire.” The psychological and theological ramifications of the new direction in which Christ leads his interlocutors is vast. John Paul notes here “Christ speaks in the context of human experience and at the same time in the context of the work of salvation,” both of which seem to “superimpose themselves on each other and interpenetrate.” It thus impacts the “whole ethos of the Gospel.”

81 As surprising as this more textured ethos of Christ with regards to adultery may have appeared to his audience, John Paul points out that the Wisdom books of the Old Testament (e.g. Proverbs, Sirach, Ecclesiastes) likewise “are in some way close to Christ’s appeal to the heart” as well. They were “in some sense prepared for understanding the concept of ‘adultery’ correctly…in virtue of the Wisdom tradition.” Nonetheless, the full “transformation of ethos had to await the Sermon on Mount” given by Jesus.

The Inner State of the Man of Concupiscence Audience 39: September 10, 1980

In further commenting on the man of concupiscence, John Paul II notes that the Wisdom literature of the Old Testament “in some way prepared” the people of Israel “for understanding the meaning of a look born of concupiscence.” He quotes the Book of Sirach in stating the following: “The man who is shameless in his body will not stop until the fire devours him; to the impure man, all bread is sweet, he will not grow tired until he dies” (Sir 23: 17-22). He draws the comparison, for instance, between concupiscence and fire, noting that both flare up within him and “invades his senses, arouses his body, draws the feelings along with itself, and in some way takes possession of the ‘heart.’” This passion, then, “suffocates the deepest voice of conscience in the ‘heart,’” and one’s “sense of responsibility before God.” As this ‘suffocation of conscience’ increases, there grows a “restlessness of body and of the senses” which cannot be satiated, at which point one’s passion “manifests itself in an incessant tendency towards satisfy- ing the sense and the body.” John Paul repeatedly notes here that it is impossible for the man of concupiscence to gain peace as this quest for greater passion ultimately consumes him. He underscores that the interior desire of man, even if “not yet transformed…into an external act,” is nonetheless “still an interior act of the heart” which “expresses itself in the look.” It is in the look, then, that the concupiscent desires of the heart are expressed, and he insists that the look further “expresses man as a whole.” Looking, therefore, follows man’s inner being and the man he has chosen to be. The look, John Paul insists, becomes a “threshold…of the interior truth” taught to us by Christ. Intrinsic to the character of this lust is a total lack of the procreative meaning of conjugal love and “detachment from that meaning of the body which stands of the communion of persons.” Conversely, the spousal meaning of the body is “characteristic of the freedom of the gift” writ into man’s very being.

Concupiscence – Reduction of a Perennial Call Audience 40: September 17, 1980

Drawing again on the Sermon on the Mount, John Paul II here underscores that disordered “desiring” (lust) is akin to the “adultery of the heart” (Mt 5:27-28) to which Jesus refers. This “desiring” in man leads to a “detachment from the spousal meaning of the body” as man “gives into the concupiscence of the flesh.” The transformation of the inner man (ethos) restores this authentic spousal meaning of the body as God intended it. John Paul notes that when this inner transformation fails to occur, and when another person fails to be understood as a subject but rather as an object, there occurs “an authentic conflict of conscience” in man, to the degree

82 that the objective meaning of the body is grossly obscured. The “perennial call” of man to woman and woman to man, that is, their “reciprocal attraction” as writ into them by God, “is not the desire [lust] signified by the words of Matthew 5:27-28.” Rather, the lust to which Jesus speaks here, as a “realization of concupiscence of the flesh,” attacks and “diminishes” this reciprocal attraction as God intended it. He notes that as man yields to this sexual utilitarianism of the other, it ultimately has a detrimental impact on the common good as well. As lust “obscures” the beauty of the original attraction of man and woman, sex is understood solely as “the satisfaction of one’s own sexuality” via the other, and masculinity and femininity “ceases to be a specific language of the spirit” as “it loses its character as a sign.” Desire (lust), then, “tramples on the ruins of the spousal meaning of the body” as the other is perceived in entirely utilitarian terms. John Paul notes that the “looking,” of which Jesus speaks, is likewise a cognitive act whereby man “makes use of” the other as a means (object) rather than an end (subject).

Audience 41: September 24, 1980

Acknowledging the time already dedicated in the course of the Wednesday catechesis’ to Jesus’ words on the Sermon on the Mount, John Paul II here elaborates more on what he understands to be the “intentionality of knowledge” and the “intentionality of existence” itself. He notes that “when Christ speaks about the man who ‘looks to desire,’ he points not only to the dimension of the intentionality of ‘looking,’ that is, of concupiscent knowledge…but he points also to the dimension of the intentionality of man’s very existence.” He points out, then, that the intentionality of knowledge (concupiscent knowledge) “determines and defines the intentionality of existence itself” in man. John Paul notes that is concupiscent knowledge can, of course, be encountered by both the man and the woman, though Jesus focuses largely on the man. This “purely interior” objectification of the other outlines by Christ and “hidden in the heart,” is, John Paul notes, “standing still on the threshold of the look.” This concupiscent change within him, then, runs very deep as Jesus himself notes: “has already committed adultery with her in his heart” (Mt 5:28). At this point, lust “comes to be in the ‘heart’ to the degree in which it has come to be in the will.” As this occurs within man, then, the “intentional reduction…drags the will into its narrow horizon” and the spousal meaning of the body is disfigured. John Paul notes that as this intentionality and concupiscence gain mastery over will does it largely “dominate the subjectivity of the person” and thereby deeply impact the will of the agent in choosing and deciding good and evil. There is, here, a “complete constraint” of one by concupiscence which further “brings with it the loss of the ‘freedom of the gift.’” John Paul again reiterates that the concupiscent look of the “desire” is altogether different from the “sexual urge” writ into man’s nature which “serve the building of the unity ‘of communion’ in their [man and woman] reciprocal relations.” The Sermon on the Mount, he notes, serves to help man apply the inner “transformation of ethos” to which he is called.

C. “Has Committed Adultery in the Heart…” A “Key” Change of Direction Audience 42: October 1, 1980

83 In this audience, John Paul II underscores the three distinctive, though interrelated, parts of the words of Christ in the Sermon on the Mount: 1.) “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’” 2.) “But I say to you: Whoever looks at a woman to desire her…” 3.) And finally, “Has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” John Paul notes that the elements at work here include committing adultery (bodily act), desire (lust), and committing adultery in the heart (internally). He insists that in order to “build a new ethos” of man, as Chris- tian intended with these words, “the road of this aim passes through the discovery of the values that had been lost in the general understanding of the Old Testament and in the application of this commandment” by the people. The direct prohibition against adultery, for instance, remains as a line of demarcation which “categorically excludes a certain moral evil.” When Christ, then, speaks about desire, “he aims at a deeper clarification of ‘adultery,’” as it is understood in the transformation of the inner man. Jesus’ insistence that adultery of the heart is akin to adultery of the body is “an inner fact,” which should not be denied. The new ethos intrinsic to the Sermon on the Mount calls for the realization that lusting (desire) involves the whole man in turning away from his anthropological dignity. John Paul notes that “only the man who is the potential subject of ‘adultery in the flesh’ can commit ‘adultery in the heart.’” While a married man ‘unites with his wife’ so that the “two become one flesh,” he does so out of love and because he also has the “right” to do so. However, the “adultery in the flesh” of which the Decalogue speaks and to which Jesus refers can easily become a “one-sided interpretation of adultery.” Je- sus, therefore, “makes the moral evaluation of ‘desire’ depend above all on the personal dignity of the man and the woman.” John Paul notes here that it is even possible for man to commit adultery with his own wife “if he treats her only as an object for the satisfaction of instinct.”

Audience 43: October 8, 1980

In this audience, John Paul II draws to a close his reflections on Historical man as it pertains to the words of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount. He notes: “Today I want to complete the analysis of the words Christ spoke in the Sermon on the Mount about ‘adultery’ and ‘concupiscence...’” He notes that the moral evaluation of the words of Christ addressing the inner character of desire (i.e. lust) “depends above all on the personal dignity of the man and the woman.” In other words, for man to act in contradiction to his dignity as man by looking at the woman with desire, runs contrary to his very nature and the dignity to which he has been given. John Paul underscores the “casuistry” as understood by much of the Old Testament interpretation of the Law, which “was marked by many compromises with the concupiscence of the flesh.” Christ, however, “teaches that one fulfills the commandment by ‘purity of heart,’” which “is gained by the one who knows how to be consistently demanding toward his ‘heart’” and “toward his body.” He notes here that the commandment “You shall not commit adultery” finds much of its meaning in the indissolubility of marriage, whereby “the two become one flesh” (Gen 2:24). Adultery, then, directly “conflicts with this unity,” to the extent that it attacks the dignity of the persons themselves. Christ, however, intends to “anchor” the ethical meaning of this commandment “firmly in the very depth of the human person.” Once “freed from the constraint and disability of the spirit” intrinsic to the desire of the ‘heart,’ the man and woman “find themselves again in the freedom of the gift, which is the condition of all life together in the truth, and likewise the

84 “freedom of the reciprocal self-gift” between them. The demand of Christ of his listeners, John Paul notes, beckons man to rediscover the fullness of his humanity having been previously lost by sin. In accentuating the importance of the masculine and feminine encounter for humanity as a whole, John Paul notes the following: “Human life is by its nature ‘co-educational’ and its dignity as well as its balance depend at every moment of history and in eveyr place of geographic longitude and latitude on ‘who’ she [woman] shall be for him [man] and he for her.” He insists, therefore, that the words spoken by Jesus on the Sermon on the Mount “without any doubt” have a “universal and deep reach” within all of humanity.

4) The “Heart” – Accused or Called? Audience 44: October 15, 1980

In this audience, John Paul II acknowledges, referring to the words of Christ at the Ser- mon on the Mount, that “his words are demanding.” He again quotes the words of Christ “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I say to you: Whoever looks at a woman to desire her [in a seductive way] has already committed adultery with her in his heart” (Mt 5:27-28). Here, John Paul notes, the message of Christ “throws light on the dimension of human interiority,” and “the dimension of the inner man proper to ethics and even more to the theology of the body.” In light of these words of Christ, he accentuates two pivotal questions which elicit a response: “Is the heart accused or called to the good?” and “How ‘can’ and ‘should’ someone act who accepts Christ’s words in the Sermon on the Mount, someone who accepts the ethos of the Gospel and who accepts it particularly in this area?” John Paul notes that in every human heart there remains an “echo” of the words of Christ in the Sermon on the Mount. This ‘echo’ is “always a transformation of the voice and of the words expressed by the voice” of Christ. The words of Christ reaffirm the beauty of man’s nature and of his bodiliness, which runs contrary to a Manichean notion of evil associated with it. The words of Christ, he notes, lend an “affirmation of the human being’s femininity and masculinity as a personal dimension of ‘being a body,’ and give “a particular dimension of ethos in order to impress this dimension also within human life.”

The Correct Understanding Audience 45: October 22, 1980

In this audience, John Paul II acknowledges the fact that “for quite a long time” we have been examining the words of Christ in the Sermon on the Mount, yet he insists that they “have an essential meaning for the entire theology of the body contained in Christ’s teaching.” He underscores that fact that Christ does not condemn the body, as if in a Manichean fashion, only that he draws us to the inner man within the accusation (Mt 5:27-28) and call to the reexamination and redemption of heart (ethos). John Paul accentuates that the body has real ontological depth, which runs deeper than man’s inclination towards concupiscence. The body, then, together with the spirit, “determines man’s ontological subjectivity and participates in his dignity as a person.” The body, as the “manifestation of the spirit,” also manifests love when shared within the bodily union of man and woman in the “one flesh union” in marriage. Similarly, as a “sacramental

85 sign” of the spirit, marked in its masculinity and femininity, there is an ethical meaning within the body that is conjoined with its redemption in Christ. John Paul insists here that this “redemption of the body” in Christ, of which St. Paul speaks (Rom 8:23), “does not…indicate ontological evil as a constitutive attribute of the human body, but points only to man’s sinfulness.” It is within this inclination towards sin that man loses a proper understanding of the spousal meaning of the human body. To reiterate, then, John Paul argues that the body is not only not evil, but neither is it simply “tolerated” in a Manichean way. Rather, the Christian ethos to which man is called is one which understands the body and sex within the Creator’s original plan, which is ultimately “placed as they are at the service of the ‘communion of persons,’ which is the deepest substratum of human ethics and culture.” The condemnation of Christ against “desire” in the Sermon on the Mount (Mt 5:27-28) is also a “call to overcome this evil” by an inner transformation, in addition to an appeal and “call to discover this value and this dignity [of man] and to affirm them.”

Audience 46: October 29, 1980

In this audience, John Paul II accentuates that the words of Christ in the Sermon on the Mount (Mt 5:27-28) are important not only to draw man towards the original plan of the Creator for him, but also to practically address “some of the contemporary positions that interpret the meaning and man and morality” in a faulty way. Here he specifically mentions three by name as the “masters of suspicion,” quoting Paul Ricoeur: Freud, Marx, and Nietzsche. He notes that these thinkers “have exercised and still exercise a great influence on the way of thinking and evaluating of people of our time,” and yet continue who writings continue to “judge and accuse the human heart” in a faulty anthropology. Conversely, the words of Christ in the Sermon on the Mount “refer not only to the concrete act of ‘concupiscence,’ but indirectly to the ‘man of concupiscence’” as well. John Paul rejects these anthropologies of these three, and in this audience particularly that of Freud, as one by which “man cannot stop at casting the heart into a state of continual and irreversible suspicion due to the manifestations of the concupiscence of the flesh and of the libido.” This vision of man, as understood largely within Freud’s “Id,” tends to perceive man as frozen within a state of immutable sexual drive, and thus allows no room for bodily or spiritual redemption. Nonetheless, John Paul insists this redemption is possible and is likewise a redemption in the truth of Christ. Within the words of Christ in the Sermon on the Mount, then, “man must feel himself called to rediscover, or even better, to realize the spousal meaning of the body and to express in this way interior freedom of the gift, that is, the freedom of that spiritual state and power that drive from mastery over the concupiscence of the flesh.” He notes that man, then, is called to this “rediscovery” of his original state, as articulated by Christ, from both the “outside” and the “inside.” The appeal to the “heart” of man by Christ allows him to “hear in his innermost [being] the echo” of his origins and of the original intent of the Creator. The echo of this original state of man, John Paul notes, “concerns the very ‘nature’” and “sub- strate of the humanity of the person,” and “the deepest impulses of the ‘heart.’” This ‘rediscovery’ of the spousal meaning of the body impacts “the whole of existence, of the meaning of life, which includes also the meaning of the body.” John Paul insists here that this authentic meaning of the body is the “antithesis of the Freudian libido” and of the bodily hermeneutic of suspicion.

86 The words of Christ, therefore, have the capacity to “re-activate that deepest inheritance” within man and give “real power in human life.”

C. Eros and Ethos Eros and the Source of the “Erotic” Audience 47: November 5, 1980

In this audience, John Paul II reiterates the fundamental question to which we have attempted to answer: “Do these words [Sermon on the Mount] only accuse the human ‘heart’ or are they before all else an appeal addressed to it?” He answers firmly that they are an appeal towards the transformation of the inner man in his redemption in Christ. While he does not deny that the words of Christ bear an accusation (“the concupiscent look”), he insists that they are more of an ‘appeal’ to the ‘heart.’ Drawing on Plato’s understanding of eros, which bears both a possessive character and a movement towards the Divine (Symposium 211, Republic 514), John Paul notes that authentic eros points, then, towards all that is true, good, and beautiful. Similarly, it “arouses a reciprocal tendency in both the man and the woman to draw near to each other, to the union of their bodies, the union about which Genesis 2:24 speaks.” This eros, properly understood, attests to the “perennial call of the human person – through masculinity and femininity – to that ‘union of flesh,’” which likewise pertains to their mutual communion of persons. He notes that within much of the scientific hermeneutic in contemporary culture there tends to be a reductive understanding of concupiscence as pertaining almost entirely to psychological and “sexological” categories, whereby one is another is understood only their his/her sexual value. Within the Sermon of the Mount, however, Christ appeals to a more textured understanding of eros which “refers above all to ways of acting and reciprocal behavior by man and woman that are an external manifestation proper to such interior acts.” John Paul notes that in authentic eros “one can find room for that ethos” of which Christ appeals to the human heart within the Sermon on the Mount. If this is true, and John Paul believes it is, then the words of Christ in Matthew’s gospel (Mt 5:27-28) “means that the erotic sphere, ‘eros’ and ‘ethos’ do not diverge, are not opposed to each other, but are called to meet in the human heart and to bear fruit in this meeting.” These words of Christ, then, “unveil” the true meaning of eros and “liberate” it.

The Problem of Erotic Spontaneity Audience 48: November 12, 1980

In this audience, John Paul II again takes up his analysis of the interconnection between the “ethical” and the “erotic” as it pertains to the spousal meaning of the body. Following the words of Christ in the Sermon on the Mount in which he refers to the commandment, “You shall not commit adultery,” and likewise equates concupiscence with “adultery of the heart,” John Paul notes that ethos is “connected with a new order of values” which enables one to “rediscover the spousal meaning of the body and the true dignity of the gift in what is ‘erotic.’” In other words, by the inner transformation towards this new ethos to which Christ leads, that is, towards the body’s original meaning, man can encounter the fuller vision of eros as it points him to the

87 divine. If the “body stops at mere concupiscence” man cannot experience the fullness of this eros, “which implies the upward impulse of the human spirit towards what is true, good, and beautiful, so that what is ‘erotic’ also becomes true, good, and beautiful.” John Paul insists, then, that “ethos becomes the constitutive form of eros.” Here he addresses the argument of some that sexual spontaneity is hindered by any attachment to ethos, as some claim with regards to the Sermon on the Mount. Nonetheless, he insists that “this opinion is mistaken” and “superficial,” and accept it means that one will never know the fullness of eros as God intended it. In fact, John Paul argues, it is only when one accepts the ethos of the Sermon on the Mount that “he or she is also called to full and mature spontaneity in relationships that are born from the perennial attraction of masculinity and femininity.” As man grows in the fuller realization of the inner transformation to which Christ beckons in Matthew 5:27-28, he more aware of the severity of Christ’s words, but also gains a “deeper consciousness of his own acts” and the “inner impulses of his own ‘heart.’” The growth in self-knowledge helps him to master his impulses and rediscover the fuller depth of the spousal meaning of the body. John Paul notes that this deeper awareness allows man to “learn…what the meaning of the body is, the meaning of masculinity and femininity.” This inner maturity enables him to “distinguish and judge the various move- ments of his own heart,” thereby guiding much of his actions as well. This growth in self-mastery, then, further leads to reach a “deeper and more mature spontaneity with which his heart, by mastering the instincts, rediscovers the spiritual beauty of the sign constituted by the human body.”

5) The Ethos of the Redemption of the Body Audience 49: December 3, 1980

In this audience, John Paul II underscores again the ethical and anthropological meaning of the words of Christ in the Sermon on the Mount (Mt 5:27-28). There is a connection here primarily between the new ethos to which Christ draws man and the state in which man now finds himself, that is, his historical state. John Paul notes that the “inner man is the subject of the ethos of the body,” and it is precisely with this new ethos that “Christ wants to impregnate the consciousness [or conscience] and will of his audience and his disciples.” He underscores four primary reasons that this ethos of Christ is, in fact, a “new” ethos: 1.) “In comparison with the ethos of the men of the Old Testament.” 2.) “In comparison with the state of ‘historical’ man after original sin” (“man of concupiscence”). 3.) “In relation to every human being” that has existed and will exist, regardless of “geographical longitude and latitude and form any historical situation.” 4.) It is “new” in its presentation of the redemption of the body, to which, as St. Paul notes, “historical” man sincerely longs for in this life (Rom 8:20-21). The teachings of Christ in the Sermon on the Mount, then, appeals again to the “beginning” and the original meaning of the body. Here John Paul notes that it is only the redemption in Christ that “justifies an appeal to the ‘beginning.’” While it is not possible for man to return to his original state in the Garden, which has been left “irrevocably behind,” it is by the “ethos of the redemption of the body” that “the original ethos of creation was to be taken up anew” in Christ. This “new man,” formed by a interior vision ‘of the heart’, gradually gains mastery of desires by growth in temperance and continence. John Paul underscores the “power” that comes to man via this ethos of redemption and

88 growth in self-mastery. This capacity, then, confirms this inner value of the spousal meaning of the body. Similarly, he several times accentuates growth in the virtue of temperance enables one to probe “the deepest layers of his potentiality” as a person, which then “acquire a voice” within him; a voice which “concupiscence of the flesh would not allow to show themselves.” Human potential, then, is realized by growth in self-mastery and temperance. This purity, John Paul insists, is “a requirement of love,” and “is the dimension of the inner truth of love in man’s ‘heart.’”

6) Purity as “Life according to the Spirit.” “Purity” and “Heart” Audience 50: December 10, 1980

In this audience, John Paul II takes up again the matter of “purity” as it pertains to the words of Christ in the Sermon on the Mount (Mt 5:27-28) and his discourse with the Pharisees on inner purification (Mt 15:18-20). He notes that in the words of Christ, “Whoever looks at a woman to desire her has already committed adultery with her in his heart,” here Jesus “appeals” to the heart. Jesus, then, “invites” his audience towards the inner purity of heart, though he “does not accuse it [heart].” Christ sees within man’s heart his “innermost being” and, therefore, his state of moral “purity” as well. He notes that it is not the external state of impurity that makes one impure, but rather his inner heart: “For out of the heart come evil intentions, murder, adultery, prostitution, theft, false witness, blasphemy. These make a man unclean, but to eat with unwashed hands does not make a man unclean” (Mt 15:18-20; Mk 7:20-23). John Paul notes, then, that it was Christ’s intent to fix the “wrong way of understanding moral purity” which had developed within the Old Testament mindset of ritual washings. No amount of ritual washings could cleanse more impurity within, as “moral purity has its wellspring exclusively in man’s interior: it comes from the heart.” Christ equates sin with moral impurity and thus with the acts which flow from this inner impurity as well. Therefore, John Paul insists, “every moral good is a manifestation of purity and every moral evil is a manifestation of impurity.” Both St. John and St. Paul address the issue of inner moral purity and impurity as well. John Paul highlights the words of Paul in Galatians: “I say to you, live by the spirit and do not satisfy the desires of the flesh; for the flesh has desires contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit has desires contrary to the flesh; for these are opposed to each other, so that you do not do what you want” (Gal 5:16-17). For his part, John likewise highlights this fact in commenting on the three-fold concupiscence: “concupiscence of the eyes, concupiscence of the flesh, and the pride of life” (1 Jn 2:16-17). John notes that these are “not from the Father but…from the world. (1Jn 2:16).

Audience 51: December 17, 1980

In this audience, John Paul II again takes up the matter of “flesh” and “spirit” according to St. Paul in Galatians: “The flesh has desires contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit has desires contrary to the flesh” (Gal 5:17). John Paul highlights the “tension: that exists between the “flesh” (sarx) and the “spirit” within the thought of Paul, and in particular their the anthropological impact on man. He notes that for Paul, the “flesh,” as he speaks of it in Galatians, “indicates

89 not only the ‘outer’ man, but also the man ‘interiorly’ subjected to the ‘world.’” The man who lives “according to the flesh” who is lives and acts according to the precepts of the world, and, therefore, contrary to the fruits of the Spirit. John Paul repeatedly notes here that by “flesh,” Paul here understands the term to imply the inclination towards sin (sarx) and the three-fold concupiscence, of which John makes note of. Such a man is disposed “only to that which comes from the world.” There is, however, a battle or “combat,” between good and evil within the heart of man, and, as St. Paul notes, he often does the evil he does not wish and does not do the good he hopes to live out (Rom 7:7:19). John Paul refers to this contrast of “flesh” and “spirit” within man as an “antithesis” of sorts by which man “life ‘according to the flesh’ is opposed to ‘life according to the Spirit.’” Paul likewise accentuates the vital importance of the justification of man in the Person of Jesus Christ as it concerns his eschatological destiny. As John Paul notes, “He [Paul] looks ahead toward the final victory over sin and death” which includes the redemption of the body. He notes that “this justification by faith does constitute simply a dimension of the divine plan of salvation and of man’s sanctification,” but also “is a real power at work in man that reveals and affirms itself in his actions.” While ‘life according to the flesh” and life “according to the Spirit” are “opposed,” then, there is the redemptive power of the Spirit at work within him, which enables him to will the good. In which John Paul understands as the “structure of the ethos,” man gains a “mastery over the three-fold concupiscence” by which he is inclined by “choosing the good” to which he is called.

Audience 52: January 7, 1981

In this audience, John Paul II probes the deeper meaning of the statement from St. Paul, “The flesh has desires contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit has desires contrary to the flesh” (Gal 5:17). He relates this statement of Paul to the “redemption of the body” which Paul speaks of in Romans 8:23, noting that this bodily ‘redemption’ carries with it a “cosmic dimension” as well, as it further impacts all of creation. In his nature as a body and soul union (corpore et anima unus), this redemption deeply impacts the heart of man, “and thus in all his behavior,” so that “the powers of the Spirit bring about ‘justification’” within him. As Paul speaks, then, of the “sins of the flesh” (Gal 5:20-21), he understands them to be, John Paul notes, as the “antithesis not only of the human spirit, but also of the Holy Spirit, who works in man’s soul (in his spirit).” John Paul underscores that Christ places emphasis on the fact that both “purity” and “impurity” flow from the human heart (Mt 15:2-20), and the “Christ uses the general, as well as the specific sense of ‘impurity’ (and thus indirectly also of ‘purity’).” All sins, he notes, are “expressions” of a life lived ‘according to the flesh,’ whereas all virtue is lived ‘according to the Spirit.’ Similarly, “death” for Paul (Rm 8:12-13), “does not signify bodily death, but also the sin that theology was to call mortal.” Paul, John Paul notes, draws largely on the words of Christ in the Sermon on the Mount in delineating the importance of self-mastery and “putting to death the deeds of the body by the Spirit.” To yield to the inclinations of the flesh one surrenders to the “sin-death” which prohibits entry into heaven (Gal 5:21). John Paul notes that “the antithesis between ‘body’ and ‘Spirit,’ between life ‘according to the flesh’ and life ‘according to the Spirit,” profoundly per- meates the whole Pauline doctrine of justification,” and is “achieved in Christ and for Christ.” It

90 is by this justification in Christ, then, that one gains the evangelical purity to find genuine freedom.

Audience 53: January 14, 1981

In this audience, John Paul II again takes up the words of St. Paul in Galatians: “For you were called to freedom, brothers; only do not use your freedom as a pretext for living according to the flesh, but through love serve one another. For the whole law finds its fullness in a single commandment, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself’” (Gal 5:13-14). Within this commandment to love, Paul underscores the “new ethos” delineated by Christ, which “appeals to human freedom.” This ‘appeal’ is one which beckons man towards the full realization and “fullest ‘use’ of the powers of the human spirit.” Paul notes in Galatians the need to place ones freedom at the service of love, what John Paul refers to as the “ethical subordination” of freedom to this “new ethos” of Christ. In this way, “life according to the ‘Spirit’ is realized” and fully takes root in man as he makes proper use of his freedom. The man who makes improper use of his freedom, following the life ‘according to the Flesh,’ “ceases to be capable of this freedom for which ‘Christ has set us free’” and thus “ceases to be suitable for the true gift of self, which is the fruit and expression of such freedom.” John Paul notes that within the Pauline doctrine of purity “we find the faithful and authentic echo of the Sermon on the Mount,” which enables one to see and live the inner purity to which Christ has placed before man. For Paul, to “live” according to the ‘flesh’ or ‘Spirit” means to behave according to either good or evil, which includes choosing to live or ignore the purity to which one is called. Living according to this “new ethos” of the Gospel and growing in the self-mastery, of which Paul speaks, means that one similarly experiences growth in sanctification. For his part, John Paul II understands purity “as the right way of treating the sexual sphere,” which does not necessitate an abstinence from conjugal love, depending upon one’s vocational state in life.

Audience 54: January 28, 1981

In this audience, John Paul II takes up again his analysis on purity in the writings of St. Paul. Drawing on 1 Thessalonians 4:3-8, John Paul notes that purity, as Paul understands it, “is an ‘ability’ or, in the traditional language of anthropology and ethics, an attitude,” in addition to being a virtue. He highlights the fact that in purity one gains a “practical ability that enables man to act in a definite way and at the same time not to act in a contrary way.” This inner purity is rooted in the will and conscience, and relies upon the self-mastery of man in avoiding ‘lustful passions,’ but also in “keeping one’s body, and indirectly that of the other, in ‘holiness and reverence.’” John Paul notes, then, that the Pauline view of purity likewise includes a positive character (i.e. “keeping”) in addition to the abstinence associated with it. These two functions “are strictly connected and dependent on each other.” The abstinence requires that man overcome the sin he in inclined towards and to the degree that he fails in this regards, there are repercussions for his affective maturity and the culture at large. The temperance by which St. Paul ties to sexual purity is, John Paul insists, “deeply right, complete, and adequate.” This purity is clearly a “fruit of the Spirit” (Gal 5:22), and “turns out to be the most essential power for keeping the

91 body ‘with holiness.’” In spite of the “interior power” associated with purity, John Paul acknowledges that at times “for various reasons, [man] surrenders” to the “lustful passions” of which Paul speaks. Within his letters to the community in Corinth, Paul lays out his understanding of the Church as the body of Christ (1 Cor 12:18; 22-25). He notes that “God has so arranged the body, giving greater honor to the member that lacked it, so that there may be no disunion within the body, but the members may have care for one another.” Here, John Paul notes, the Apostle “wants to teach the recipients of his letter the right understanding of the human body” and “contributes at the same time to a deeper understanding of the theology of the body.”

Audience 55: February 4, 1981

In this audience, John Paul II addresses in greater detail the Pauline understanding of disunity and unity within the body, drawing largely from 1 Corinthians, wherein the Apostle notes: “God has so arranged the body, giving the greater honor to the member that lacked it, that there may be no disunion within the body, but the members may have care for one another.” John Paul notes that this Pauline description of the body is indeed a “realistic” one, and that it cannot be understood in a purely somatic, or biological, sense. Rather, man “expresses himself by means of that body” and thus “is” a body. Furthermore, the body of man, and his understanding of it, has vast implications for culture and daily life, both private and social. John Paul highlights the three primary characteristics of St. Paul’s understanding of the body: 1.) Paul’s description of body “would not be possible without the whole truth of creation,” that is, the story of man as having been created in God’s image and likeness. 2.) Paul’s description of the body cannot be understood apart from the “redemption of the body” in Christ. 3.) The Pauline description of the body “corresponds precisely to the spiritual attitude of ‘reverence’ for the human body that is due to the ‘holiness’” (1 Thes 4:3-5, 7-8). John Paul notes that the Pauline concept of the body is “permeated” with dignity, and in spite of the effects of sin on man’s historical state, it nonetheless maintains and “echo” of its state of original innocence in man’s prelapsarian era. As Paul notes that there are certain “unpresentable members” of the body which God has protected, he likewise accentuates that the shame with which these members are protected leads ultimately to a “reverence” due to them as well. According to Paul, then, the “disunion within the body,” encountered in man’s historical state, brought with it a disharmony within him as well. John Paul insists that the inner harmony by which man is possible via grace is the result of “purity of heart.” This purity leads to a “gradual victory over this ‘disunion in the body’” which is the result of sin.

Audience 56: February 11, 1981

In this audience, John Paul II reiterates the points addressed previously on the Pauline concept of the body and purity, again drawing largely from 1 Thessalonians (4:3-5) and 1 Corinthians (12:18-25). Purity for Paul, he notes, consists in both in temperance and in reverence for the body, especially within the “unpresentable members” which the Creator saw fit to protect (1 Cor 12:32). John Paul notes, drawing on the Apostle, that purity gives one the “ability” to realize his dignity: “Understood as ‘ability,’ purity is precisely an expression and fruit of

92 life ‘according to the Spirit’…[or] as a new ability of the human being in whom the gift of the Holy Spirit bears fruit.” There are, then, two dimensions of this purity: the moral (virtue) and the charismatic, that is, a gift of the Holy Spirit. Paul notes that when one yields to fornication, one “sins against his own body” (1Cor 6:18),which is the “antithesis,” says John Paul, “of the virtue by the power” which sustains man in holiness. This profanation of the body likewise deprives one of dignity. For Paul, human dignity within the body is understood as “not only in the human spirit,” but more so for the supernatural indwelling of the Holy Spirit within the “temple” of man’s body. For this reason, man’s body is “no longer ‘his own,’” but rather, is a “temple of the Holy Spirit” (1 Cor 6:19). John Paul further notes that this dignity within man was “bought” by the Redemption of Christ and by it “every human being has received himself and his own body anew” from the Creator. The reception of this gift, then, bears with it an “obligation” towards reverence of the body. He notes: “The redemption of the body brings with it the establishment in Christ and for Christ of a new measure of the holiness of the body.” The fact that man was “bought at a price” (1 Cor 6:20), therefore, brings with it a “special commitment” of honoring his body in purity and reverence.

Audience 57: March 18, 1981

In this audience, John Paul II again takes up the issue of purity as a glorification of God within the body. He notes that St. Paul highlights the ‘redemption of the body’ achieved in Christ as “the source of a particular moral duty that commits Christians to purity,” which Paul understands to be the need to “keep one’s own body with holiness and reverence” (1 Thess 4:4). John Paul underscores that the fruit of purity likewise includes a charismatic dimension as well, namely, that of understanding the body as a “temple of the Holy Spirit” (1 Cor 6:19-20). The gift of the Holy Spirit known as piety, ultimately leads to greater sensitivity to the dignity attached to the body, in particular the spousal meaning of the body. This also includes, John Paul notes, a deeper awareness of the freedom of the gift attached to the spousal meaning of the body. John Paul insists that “God himself is thereby glorified” in the body because it is a ‘temple of the Holy Spirit’ made to glorify him, and to communicate love to another. Purity bears with it a fruit whereby one grows in an awareness of having been made in Gods image and likeness. Drawing on the Old Testament notion of wisdom, found largely in the Wisdom books, John Paul suggests that “it is not so much purity that is a condition for wisdom, but wisdom that is a condition for purity as a particular gift from God.” In other words, purity “stands at the service of wisdom, and wisdom disposes one to receive the gift [purity] that comes from God.” The fruit of this purity received from God is an eschatological perspective, whereby one is more aware of his anthropology rooted in the redemption of the body in Christ.

7) The Gospel of Purity of Heart- Yesterday and Today Theology of the Body Audience 58: April 1, 1981

In this audience, John Paul II forms a review of sorts of some of the key points he drew out in his discourse on man’s historical state following the advent of original sin. He notes that,

93 following Christ’s appeal to the beginning in Matthew 19:3-6, “Have you not read that from the beginning the Creator made them male and female,” there is both a “an image of the situation of man” (man and woman), but also truth which is found in man’s vocation as bodily either male and female. This is “a truth which plunges its roots deeply into the state of original innocence,” and one “that must be understood in the context of that situation before sin” as well. This was, of course, his objective in examining the state of historical man in past audiences. He later goes on to note that this truth of man’s theological anthropology possesses an ethical character as well, in that evil should be avoided and good should be done. The good which is sought, then, is the “purity of heart” of which Christ speaks in the Sermon on the Mount. This inner purity, he notes, brings with it an inner freedom “from every kind of sin or guilt,” and not simply sins concerned with the ‘concupiscence of the flesh.’ In addition to this ethical truth tethered to man’s redemption in Christ, there is, he notes, an anthropological truth which draws man back ‘to the beginning,’ or to his original state. John Paul II is quick to note here that the words of Christ are “realistic” in the sense that he knows well that man has definitively left his original state at the moment he sinned. Rather, the words of Christ on the Sermon on the Mount point out to man “the path toward a purity of heart that is possible and accessible for him even in a state of hereditary sinfulness.” This inner purity “matures in the heart of the human being who cultivates it and who seeks to discover the spousal meaning of the body in its integral truth.” As this inner purity it is gradually attained, one acquires self-possession and joy, which only then enable one to “become more fully a true gift for another person.”

Audience 59: April 8, 1981

In this audience, John Paul II continues the gradual trajectory of drawing to a close his reflection on man in his historical and postlapsarian state after the fall. He notes that decisions of man in his heart are, in some ways, the “guiding thread of human history,” leading to cultural good or evil. He notes that a proper catechesis on the “theology of the body” leads also to a “pedagogy of the body” which “seeks to educate man by setting the requirements before him, giving reasons for them, and indicating the ways that lead to their fulfillment.” The statements of Christ in the Sermon on the Mount “contain a pedagogy of the body” whereby one attains mastery over the concupiscent look and a fuller realization of the dignity of man in his interpersonal communion. This ‘pedagogy of the body’ can be understood within the context of a “spirituality of the body” as well, which includes the masculinity and femininity particular to man’s nature. This communion, then, is realized in the full giftedness of man to another. John Paul II notes that when we realize the fuller meaning of man laid out in the Bible, “we discover the precisely the anthropology that can be called ‘theology of the body.’” Truly understanding man, similarly, cannot simply be a one-sided perspective of him which is purely biological or scientific, as he is much more than this. He notes that biological knowledge “can help to discover the authentic spousal meaning of the body only if it goes hand in hand with an adequate spiritual maturity of the human person.” Here John Paul underscores the proper anthropology articulated by Paul VI in Humanae Vitae and the Second Vatican Council in Gaudium et Spes (Part 2, Ch.1), both of which he will return to at a later point. He concludes by noting that a theology of the

94 body, rooted in the words of Christ, is “quite indispensable for an adequate understanding of the magisterial teaching of the contemporary Church.”

Appendix: The Ethos of the Body in Art and Media Audience 60: April 15, 1981

In this audience, John Paul II underscores that a proper theological hermeneutic must include the objective reality of the body and the subjective ‘experience’ of it. In other words, the objective character of the human body cannot be amputated from the personal subjectivity of the one connected to it. He lays out his catechesis on the proper and improper depiction of man in art forms of different kids. He notes that “man encounters the ‘reality of the body’ and ‘experiences the body’…when it becomes the subject of creative activity, a work of art, a content of culture.” The “look” of man upon different types of art can either be a look directed towards beauty of one of concupiscence, of which Christ speaks in the Sermon on the Mount. The realm of aesthetic experiences, under which he places that of art, encompasses the sphere of the ethos of the body, which he will later elaborate upon. He notes that the body, depicted in either beautiful or demeaning ways, ultimately has a positive or deleterious impact on culture, because the “human body is a perennial object of culture in the widest sense of the term.” Man, then, uses his humanity to creative and shape culture, which naturally includes his own body to execute his activity. It is here that John Paul further delineates between some specific forms of artistic expression, namely, modeling arts, sculpture, painting, film, and photography. He notes that in film and photography, “there is no transfiguration of the model,” and thus the human body is “not a model for the work of art,” but rather “the object of a reproduction achieved by appropriate technologies.” In other words, television and cinema, for instance, “loses in some way its fundamental contact with man/body,” and man can easily become objectified. John Paul II refers to this objectification, as different from the “transfiguration” of man as presented by the artist in the figurative arts, as a “specific problem” given the possibility of misrepresenting the dignity of man on a large scale within the culture.

Audience 61: April 22, 1981

In this audience, John Paul II notes that the words of Christ in the Sermon on the Mount have particularly profound implications for the ethos of the body as it is encountered in the works of art. He understands this “ethos of the body” to mean “the ethical order of its nakedness…as a spousal system” ordered towards giftedness to another. The human body, he notes, “has the meaning of a gift of the person to a person,” and if this is not properly honored in art it can easily have negative effects on culture. The deleterious objectification of the body in art leads to a hermeneutic of the body as an object rather than as gift. Regarding this bodily objectification in art he notes the following: “The human body loses that deeply subjective meaning of the gift and becomes an object destined for the knowledge of many, by which those who look will assimilate or even take possession of something that evidently exists (or rather should exist) by its very essence on the level of gift – of gift by the person to the person, no longer of course in the image, but in the living man.” John Paul, however, does concede that the naked body can be

95 presented in positive ways in art, though doing so is “neither merely aesthetic, nor morally indif- ferent.” There is, then, within man a “need for intimacy” whereby he seeks to be gift and to receive the gift of another. Likewise, he bears within him a “need for shame,” which seeks to protect the gift of one’s sexual dignity and that of the other. John Paul underscores that this dignity in man hides an inner norm within him which is “that of the gift oriented towards the very depths of the personal subject or toward the other person,” especially in the male-female mutual reciprocity. This original shame is tied to the very origins of the ethos of the human body. He uses as examples of sexual shame the undressing at a doctor’s office during a bodily exam and the violations of bodily shame enacted on prisoners in concentration camps. Finally, he notes that in such an audiovisual medium as pornography, “one violates the body’s right to intimacy in its masculinity and femininity,” in addition to “that deep order of the gift and of the reciprocal self- giving, which is inscribed in femininity and masculinity.”

Audience 62: April 29, 1981

Drawing on the aforementioned general audience, John Paul II elaborates on his understanding of authenticated intimacy and giftedness. Because within man there is a “need for intimacy,” whereby man seeks to be gift and to receive the gift of another, this gift of self must be protected, and thereby not exploited; for instance via social communication or pornography. Such abuses, which exploit the nuptial meaning of the body, “violate the body’s right to intimacy in its masculinity and femininity,” and “intimate and constant order of the gift and of reciprocal self-giving.” The pubic exploitation assaults the “deep inscription – or rather incision” writ into the spousal meaning of the body. When such expliotation is shared - say via social media or pornography – one herself becomes a “public property,” to be further exploited. The truth about man, then, must also be considered in the artistic order if man is to be properly respected. In highlighting one of the fundamental premises of the Theology of the Body, John Paul II underscores that the body itself, in its nakedness, “becomes a source of particular interpersonal ‘communication.’” This ‘communication’ “penetrates deeply” into the core of the human person in his communion with another. This truth about man, in the nuptial meaning of his body, does, then, create limits “that one must not overstep.”

Audience 63: May 6, 1981

Drawing again on the Sermon on the Mount (Mt 5:28), John Paul II notes that the teaching of Christ to avoid adultery of the heart is especially pertinent with regards to art in the “ethics of the image” itself and the “ethics of the viewing” the image. He underscores that the artist should not only be aware of the ethical impact of his art “in its full truth” and the “scale of values connected with it,” but likewise he must first try to live it out in his own life first. If the artist communicates an objectification of the person in her body, the viewer then condones this objectification if he participates in it. This is contrasted with a “suprasensual” and just depiction of man in art, such as in classical Greek art, whereby “the whole truth of man, on the dignity and beauty…of his masculinity and femininity” is seen. Thus, the intentionality of both the art and the artist are on display in how the human body is depicted, especially in the public forum. In dele-

96 terious depictions of the body one sees the “simultaneous reduction of the human person to the rank of an object…for ‘enjoyment’ intended for the satisfaction of mere concupiscence.” Here John Paul II highlights Paul VI’s call in Humanae Vitae for “creating a climate favorable to education in chastity.” Creating this ‘climate’ of chastity, therefore, requires two components: 1.) A “reciprocal circuit” which is formed between the image itself and the ‘act of seeing’ it. 2.) the moral obligations imposed upon the one viewing the work. Herein, John Paul officially concludes his reflections on the Sermon on the Mount.

CHAPTER THREE 1. The Resurrection of the Body and a Reality of the “Future World.” A. The Synoptics: “He is not God of the dead but of the living.” The Third Part of the Triptych Audience 64: November 11, 1981

Author’s note: Herein John Paul II resumes his Wednesday catechesis’ on the Theology of the Body, following the assassination attempt on his life (May 13, 1981), noting simply: “To- day we take up again, after a rather long pause, the meditations we have been presenting for quite a while, which we have defined as reflections on the theology of the body.” The Holy Fa- ther now takes up the appeal of Christ to the ‘beginning’ in the synoptic Gospels, specifically, Mt 19:3-9, Mk 10:2-12, and Mt 5:27-32 and Mt 22:23. For instance, in his dialogue with the Sad- ducees, who claim there is no resurrection of the body, Jesus responds: “Is not this the reason you are wrong, that you know either the Scriptures, nor the power of God? For when they rise from the dead, they take neither wife, nor husband, but are like the angels in heaven” (Mk 12: 24-25). Christ then goes on to note: “And as for the dead being raised, have you not read in the book of Moses, in the story about the bush, how God said to him ‘I am the god of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob?’ He is not God of the dead but of the living” (Mk 12:26-27). John Paul II highlights that in the text, Jesus notes twice that the Sadducees where “wrong” in their assumptions regarding the non-resurrection of the body. Thus, says John Paul, “When he [Christ] speaks about the future resurrection of the body, Christ appeals to the very power of the living God.”

Audience 65: November 18, 1981

Taking up again the dialogue between Christ and the Sadducees in Mark 22:9, John Paul II notes that “without a doubt, the Sadducees treat the question of the resurrection as a type of theory or hypothesis that can be refuted. The Sadducees largely adopted this view from the argument that the Pentateuch says very little regarding the resurrection of the body. Herein Christ shows the double-error of their reasoning: they ‘do not know the scriptures’ and they ‘do not know the power of God.’ John Paul II underscores the impetus of Christ to the Sadducees that Scripture is not understood by a “mere literal knowledge,” but rather it is a “means for knowing the power of God, who reveals himself in it.” The Holy Father notes that one should understand the reference of Christ to the resurrection as only if “one admits the reality of a life that does not

97 end with death.” Though Christ would one day bear witness to this resurrection of the body by his own resurrection of his body, meanwhile, he appeals to the Old Testament, then, to emphasize the truth of the eschatological meaning of the body. John Paul II notes that the reality of the resurrection, then, “in some way opens up again the access [of man] to the tree to the tree of life.” The Pascal Mystery, according to God’s covenant with man, “is revealed to every man in its definitive fullness.” The power of Christ; therefore, “has come to bear witness to the God of life in the whole truth of is power that unfolds over man’s life.”

Audience 66: December 2, 1981

Drawing from Mark’s gospel, John Paul II again takes up the eschatological character of man in his resurrected state: “When they rise from the dead, they take neither wife nor husband” (Mk 12:25). John Paul notes that the synopics all report that, following the resurrection, man and woman will “regain” their bodies in the fullness of their masculinity and femininity. Within this eschatological state; however, they “will take neither wife nor husband,” and thus will be in a vastly fuller state of humanity than before. Marriage, then, “belongs exclusively ‘to this world,’ and does “not constitute man’s eschatological future.’” Referencing Romans 6:5-11, John Paul notes that the resurrection of the body also means the fullness of the state of the soul and a “wholly new state of human life itself.” This dimension of man’s eschatological character will be “new constituted in the resurrection of the body.” The body, then, will not be transformed into an angelic state, nor will it include a return to man’s original state in the Garden of Eden, but rather a “restoration to the true life of human bodiliness.” The resurrection likewise will “signify a new submission of the body to the spirit” and a “spiritualization of his somatic nature.” Here John Paul II rejects the Platonic notion of a disembodied state of the soul separated from the body, but instead draws on the Thomistic insistence of soul as “it constitutes the unity and integrity of the human being” within his body.

Audience 67: December 9, 1981

In this audience, John Paul II draws on the Gospels of Matthew and Luke as they reference man in his eschatological state: “In the resurrection they take neither wife nor husband, but are like the angels in heaven” (Mt 22:30). “They are equal to the angels, and, being sons of the resurrection, they are sons of God” (Lk 20:36). The Holy Father notes that “Eschatological man will be free from this ‘opposition’” between body and soul which plagued historical man in his post-lapsarian state, that is, after in the introduction of original sin. This “spiritualiation” of the body means that the “spirit will master the body” and “will also fully permeate the body and the powers of the spirit will permeate the energies of the body” itself. This state will similarly include the “simultaneous subordination of the body to the spirit.” Likewise, this will be neither a “disincarnation” nor a “dehumanization” of the body and soul, but rather the fullest realization of both in man. In underscoring this point, John Paul II notes that “The resurrection consist in the perfect participation of all that is bodily in man in all that is spiritual in him,” which will be “incomparably superior” to what man has experienced in this life, in his historical state. Similarly, John Paul notes, man will not be simply ‘absorbed’ in God, but instead will “emerge in an in-

98 comparably greater and fuller measure” than he was before. Man’s eschatological state, then, will both indicate an “end of earthly history,” but likewise an unveiling of the “new meaning of the body” in its spousal and virginal dimension. This “divinization” of man in his eschatological state will constitute the original and fullest meaning of the body in Christ.

Audience 68: December 16, 1981

Continuing his catechesis’ on eschatological man, John Paul II again draws from the synoptic gospels in highlighting that man will be in an altogether new state, rather than simply returning to his original state in the Garden. He notes that “those who participate in the ‘other world’ [beatific vision in heaven]” will maintain their own “authentic subjectivity, but will also acquire it in a much more perfect measure than in earthly life.” This will be, then, a “perfectly mature subjectivity” as experienced in Christ. Likewise, this “eschatological authenticity” will include the fullness of one’s masculinity and femininity. This giftedness of God to man will also include the “reciprocal gift of oneself to God” in the fulfillment of the spousal meaning of the body ordered towards self-donation. This virginal state, to which Christ refers in the synoptic gospels, will be a “sign and authentic expression of personal subjectivity.” In this self-donation, man will experience a further “concentration of knowledge and love on God himself,” and in doing so will then further experience a “rediscovery of himself…in the depths of his own person.” John Paul II notes that “the words with which Christ appeals to the future resurrection…complete what in the present reflections we are used to calling the ‘revelation of the body.’” This points towards what he refers to as a “reconstruction” of the body, wherein “what might have been the experience of the body on the basis of man’s revealed ‘beginning’ and also what it will be in the dimension of the other world.” All of which “come together in constituting the theology of the body.”

Audience 69: January 13, 1982

In this audience, John Paul II again draws on the synoptic gospels in his teaching on the eschatological state of man in the resurrection (Mk 12:25; Mt 22:30; Lk 20:36). He notes that in the Nicene Creed, we profess, “I believe in the resurrection of the body,” which refers to our conviction in this eschatological unity with Christ. There is, then, the acute “awareness that there is a connection between earthly experience and the whole dimension of man’s biblical ‘beginning’ in the world.” Here John Paul II notes that while man’s identity will be realized in a “different way in the eschatological experience,” he nonetheless “will always be the same, just as he came forth from the hand of his Creator and Father.” From his beginning, man is both a “body among bodies and in the unity of the two” [male and female], while understanding that the spousal meaning of the body itself is “linked with marriage and procreation” (fatherhood and motherhood). John Paul II highlights that while marriage and procreation “do not definitively determine the original fundamental meaning of the body nor of being,” they do, however, “give concrete reality to that meaning” in human history. In his eschatological state, the spousal meaning of the body will be fully realized as both a personal and communitarian experience. It will be, he notes, both a new experience and also bear a connection to man’s historical state. Finally,

99 he notes that “everyone who shares in the ‘other world’ [heaven] will find in his glorified body the fountain for the freedom of the gift.”

B. Pauline Interpretation of the Resurrection in 1 Corinthians 15:42-49 Final Victory over Death Audience 70: January 27, 1982

In this general audience, John Paul II draws on St. Paul to underscore the words of Christ in the synoptic gospels, that God “is not a God of the dead but of the living” (Mk 12:27). He quotes St. Paul’s own assessment of the importance of the resurrection in human history: “If Christ has not been raised, our preaching is in vain and also your faith is in vain…But now Christ has been raised from the dead” (1 Cor 15:14, 20). He notes that “the resurrection of Christ is the final and fullest word of the self-revelation of the living God as ‘God not of the dead but of the living’” (Mk 12:27). Paul further notes that death itself will be vanquished (1 Cor 15:26-28) and, says John Paul II, “in this context one finds words that can be considered a synthesis of Pauline anthropology concerning the resurrection.” The Pauline notion that “what is sown perishable is raised imperishable,” is key for John Paul’s understanding, then, of eschatological man. The Holy Father notes, then, that there is “consistency in essentials” between the Pauline anthropology and the synoptics “except that the text of 1 Corinthians is more developed.” Paul understands the body to be both perishable and one day imperishable as he connects man’s historical state (post-lapsarian) to his eschatological state in the resurrection. He further underscores this point in noting the connection between the “first Adam” and the “last Adam” (1 Cor 15:45). The current state of Pauline anthropology also lives under a “slavery of corruption” (Rm 8:21) because of sin, which bears within it “not only an interior but also a ‘cosmic’ dimension.” It is, then, for this reason that the whole creation “waits with eager longing for the revelation of the sons of God…and cherishes the hope that it itself will be set free from the slavery of corruption to enter into the freedom of the glory of the children of God” (Rm 8:19-21).

Audience 71: February 3, 1982

Drawing again from both the synoptic gospels and St. Paul teachings on the resurrection, in this audience John Paul II notes that this eschatological state of man will be simply “a final return…to the Tree of Life,” but rather “a revelation of man’s destiny in all the fullness of his psychosomatic nature and his personal subjectivity.” To underscore this point he notes that in Romans 8:23, St. Paul announces “the redemption of the body,” whereas in 1 Corinthians 15:42- 49 he emphasizes the “completion of this redemption in the future of the resurrection.” There- fore, just as the “first Adam” is taken from the earth , the “second Adam” draws us to heaven (1 Cor 15:27), and as historical man has “borne the image of the man of earth,” so too will he “bear the image of the heavenly man” (1 Cor 15:49). John Paul II, drawing on St. Paul, understands Christ as being the “prototype” of this “heavenly man”, while not negating the “man of earth,” but instead serving as his “fulfillment and confirmation.” John Paul notes that the “earthly man,” then, “carries within itself…a particular potentiality (which is capacity and readiness) for receiv-

100 ing all that the ‘second Adam’ became, the ‘heavenly Adam,’ namely, Christ.” The Holy Father underscores that, for St. Paul’s anthropology, “what is at issue for him is not only the body, but the whole man in his bodiliness, therefore also in his ontological complexity.” Finally, John Paul II notes that while the Pauline sketch of eschatological man “more detailed than the one that emerges from the text of the synoptic gospels,” it is also “in some way more one-sided.” For instance, while the synoptic gospels tend to highlight man more in his eschatological bodiliness, St. Paul emphasizes more the glorified body in the “sphere of the same inner-structure of the man-person.” John Paul II notes; however, that St. Paul’s words cannot “be understood and interpreted in the spirit of a dualist anthropology.”

Audience 72: February 10, 1982

In this general audience address, John Paul II again takes up the analysis of eschatological man as understood by the synoptic authors (Matthew, Mark, Luke) and St. Paul. John Paul highlights the difference between the “natural body,” that is man in his historical state after introduction of original sin, and man in his “spiritual body,” or after the resurrection. In Paul’s “anthropology of the resurrection” he notes that the man “of earth” is fundamentally different than “spiritual man.” The former suffers from a “weak” body, whereas the latter, fully as he was intended to be, is “full of power”: “What is sown is perishable, what is raided is imperishable. It is sown in dishonor, it is raised glorious. It is sown in weakness, it is raised full of power” (1 Cor 15:42-43). John Paul notes that the body “full of power,” at the resurrection, will be, then, a “spiritual” body, and “this spiritualization of the body will be the source of its power and imper- ishability (or immortality).” He notes that this state will not be a return to man’s original state, nor simply a “restitution” of this state, but rather a new “reintegration” in the “fullness of humanity” in Christ. In this state man “will gain a just supremacy over the body, spirituality over sensuality.” The spiritual body will be, then, in “perfect harmonization with the activity of the human spirit in truth and in freedom.” John Paul II underscores that man’s “natural body” often urges or pushes him towards evil. He notes that here man is not dealing with an anthropological dualism, but rather a “basic antimony,” wherein the body is working in opposition to the spirit, and therefore, the good of man. Finally, he notes, “St. Paul’s entire anthropology (and ethics) are permeated by the mystery of the resurrection.”

2. Continence for the Kingdom of Heaven A. The Words of Christ in Matthew 19:11-12 Christ’s Word and the Rule for Understanding Audience 73: March 10, 1982

Here John Paul II takes up the topic of celibacy and virginity for the “sake of the kingdom of heaven.” He notes that the “question of the call to an exclusive gift of self to God in virginity and celibacy plunges its roots deeply into the evangelical soil of the theology of the body.” John Paul reiterates that “Christ did not speak about this particular vocation in…his dialogue with the Sadducees,” but rather in his “dialogue with the Pharisees about marriage and its indissolubility” (Mt 19:3-9). Jesus says that, “Because of the hardness of your heart Moses allowed

101 you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so. Therefore, I say to you, Whomever divorces his wife…and marries another commits adultery” (Mt 19:8-9). The disciples, then, say to him, “If this is the condition of man in relation to woman, it is not advantageous to marry” (Mt 19:8-9). Jesus responds: “Not all can understand it, but only those to whom it has been granted. For there are eunuchs who were born this way from their mother’s womb; there were some who were made eunuchs by men, and there are others who made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven. Let anyone understand this who can” (Mt 19:11-12). John Paul II notes that here Jesus did not directly answer the question posed to him by the disciples, “Is it not advantageous to marry?” Rather, he responds simply by noting that continence for the sake of the kingdom is both a choice, for those for whom can accept it, and grace given them. The Church, the Holy Father points out, understands celibacy for the kingdom not as a commandment but instead as a counsel, that is, a grace given to them whereby they may more fully dedicate themselves to the work of the mission of the Church. John Paul II does note that there is “an essential difference” between man’s eschatological state; however, and celibacy now embraced for the sake of the kingdom. This state of life is “a kind of exception to what is…a general rule of life [marriage].” Furthermore, it is “not a question of continence in the kingdom of heaven, but of continence for the kingdom of heaven.”

Audience 74: March 17, 1982

In this general audience address, John Paul II continues his reflections on virginity and celibacy for the sake of the kingdom of heaven, drawing upon the words of Christ in Matthew 19:12: “some who made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven.” He notes that the issue of celibacy for the sake of the kingdom is an “important topic for a complete theology of the body,” precisely because Christ speaks of the two characteristics of it: voluntary and supernatural. He notes: “Voluntary, because those who belong to this category ‘made themselves eunuchs,’ and supernatural, because they did it ‘for the sake of the kingdom of heaven.’” Jesus herein leads the disciples in a new way which was clearly contrary to what they had known and “in some way to the whole Old Testament tradition.” Marriage, then, was “not only a common state,” but was mandated by the promise of God to Abraham: “As for me, my covenant is with you, and you will be the father of a multitude of nations…” (Gen 17:4). For this reason, notes John Paul II, “The words of Christ bring about a decisive change of direction,” for the disciples. Still again, John Paul notes that these words as a “turning point,” from the Old Testament tradition. Here the Holy Father, presupposing a conversation among Jesus and his disciples, notes that it as it Jesus where saying to them: “I know that what I am going to tell you now will raise great difficulties in your consciousness, in your way of understanding the meaning of the body… I want to tell you, by contrast, that continence can also be voluntary and chosen by man ‘for the kingdom of heaven.’” Christ emphasizes, then, that the choice of celibacy for the kingdom “is connected with renunciation and also with a determined spiritual effort,” which ultimately bears much fruit for the Church.

Audience 75: March 24, 1982

102 In this audience, John Paul II takes up the connection between supernatural fruitfulness, which finds its genesis in the Holy Spirit, and continence “for the Kingdom of God.” He immediately draws attention to the synoptic gospels references to this spiritual continence: “They take neither wife nor husband” (Mt 22:30; Lk 20:34). He notes that this state of life is freely chosen “for” the kingdom of heaven, to be lived “in” the kingdom of heaven. Within this “eschatological virginity,” as he understands it, “the absolute and eternal spousal meaning of the glorified body will be revealed in union with God himself.” In continence for the kingdom, the body itself, then, “tends toward glorification” now as it “anticipates the future resurrection.” It is important to recall, John Paul underscores, that Jesus was himself celibate, which is not simply happenstance: “Continence ‘for the sake of the kingdom of heaven’ carries above all the imprint of likeness to Christ who himself…made this choice ‘for the kingdom of heaven.’” For their part, “the disciples were able to understand it [celibacy] only on the basis of his [Christ’s] personal example.” Similarly, the Virgin Mary and St. Joseph had both embrace this spiritual virginity, which at the time, was clearly “incomprehensible and socially unacceptable.” Joseph and Mary ultimately “became the first witnesses of the fruitfulness different from that of the flesh, that is, fruitfulness of the spirit.” This union between them “conceals within itself…the mystery of the perfect communion of persons,” out of which Jesus Christ was revealed to the world. Fur- thermore, John Paul notes, the grace of hypostatic union in Christ is connected “precisely with this absolute fullness of spiritual fruitfulness.” This spiritual fruitfulness also includes the Mary’s divine motherhood, which is a “superabundant revelation of that fruitfulness in the Holy Spirit.”

Audience 76: March 31, 1982

In this general audience address, John Paul II notes two primary points: continence for the “sake of the kingdom” (Mt 19:10-12) is a choice and marriage and celibacy mutually com- pliment each other. Continence for the “kingdom” should be understood, Jesus insists, in relation to the kingdom he came to establish on earth as well. Several times John Paul II uses the word “valid” in underscoring the words of Christ to the apostles regarding celibacy: “It is a particularly valid and privileged way.” He states that this “preference given to celibacy and virginity ‘for the kingdom’ was an absolute novelty in comparison with the tradition of the Old Testa- ment.” It has; therefore, “A decisive importance both for the ethos and the theology of the body.” Continence, then, “possesses a ‘particular and exceptional’ value for this kingdom.” This is a choice chosen by man with a supernatural character attached to it. This “supernatural finality” with which Christ refers to “continence for the kingdom” has both an objective and subjective sense attached to it; namely, the motivation of the one freely choosing it and the “objective finality” of it. John Paul notes that it must, in fact, be freely chosen for the “sake of the kingdom”: “To discover in continence that particular spiritual fruitfulness that comes from the Holy Spirit – one must will it and choose it in the power of a deep faith.” This choice likewise bears within it the “inner dynamism of the mystery of the redemption of the body.” This free choice, then, is a “participation” in this bodily redemption. The Holy Father notes that Christ did not mandate this continence on man, but allows him a “motivation of choice,” whereby he freely chooses it on his own. There is an “understanding” (“Not all can understand it, but only those to

103 whom it has been granted,” Mt 19:11) that “influences the decision” towards the kingdom, which is “motivated” towards a higher good. John Paul further notes that Christ “does not even attempt to hide the travail that such a decision and its long-lasting consequences can have for man.” Fi- nally, he highlights the fact that the vocation to marriage and that of celibacy and virginity “for the kingdom” do not negate each other, but are mutually complimentary of the other.

Audience 77: April 7, 1982

In his general audience address, John Paul II takes up again his reflections on continence for the “sake of the kingdom of heaven,” according to the words of Christ in Matthew’s gospel (Mt 19:10-12). He notes that this way of life, freely chosen, does not negate marriage in any way, but rather “respects at the same time both the ‘dual nature of humanity’ (that is, its masculinity and femininity) and also that dimension of the communion of existence that is proper to the person.” One chooses continence for the “sake of the kingdom,” then, “not to diminish the value of marriage,” but rather as a ‘breaking away from’ the good of marriage to direct one’s life to a higher good. This “call and gift of particular eloquence” is also made from man’s original solitude, directing him towards “a new and even fuller form of intersubjective communion with others.” Man can; therefore, become a real and “sincere gift” (Gaudium et Spes, no. 24) for others by choosing this continence for the “sake of the kingdom.” For his part, then, John Paul II understands continence as a “conscious and voluntary renunciation of this union [marriage] and all that is connected with it in the full dimension of human life and the sharing of life.” Similar- ly, within the words of Christ on the Sermon on the Mount (Mt 5:27-28), “one finds the same anthropology and the same ethos” within historical man and eschatological man, though the latter is now “irradiated...by the future anthropology of the resurrection.” This “anthropology of the resurrection,” then, “does not replace” that of historical man, but instead leads him to a higher state. Finally, John Paul II notes, that Christ understood celibacy as a “exceptional” vocation, and therefore, not an “ordinary” one. St. Paul later echoed this point, noting that those who choose continence over marriage, do “better” (1 Cor 7:38). The Holy Father notes that this is “also the opinion of the whole tradition, both doctrinal and pastoral,” namely that of the “superiority of continence to marriage,” while never negating it or “sliding” into a Manichean understanding of the body.

Audience 78: April 14, 1982

In this general audience address, John Paul II take us again the theme of continence for the “sake of the kingdom” and marriage; namely, their complementarity. He points out that continence can never be understood in a Manichean context, whereby one rejects the body as intrinsically evil. The implications of celibacy freely chosen are “both doctrinal and pastoral in nature.” Three times John Paul notes that marriage is somehow “inferior,” but instead is complementary towards continence for the :sake of the kingdom” of heaven: “Christ’s words in Matthew 19:11-12 given no reason for holding either the ‘interiority’ of marriage or the ‘superiority’ of virginity or celibacy.” Jesus proposes the ideal of continence “only for the sake of the “kingdom of heaven.” Marriage and continence, therefore, “are neither opposed to each other,

104 nor do they divide the human community into two camps.” John Paul II notes that there is “no basis,” then, for any notion whereby celibates somehow “constitute the class of the ‘perfect,’” while those called to marriage would constitute the “imperfect.’” Rather, holiness is a vocation and calling which is open to all. Both vocations, that is of marriage and celibacy, “complete each other and in some sense interpenetrate.” Both are, then, directed towards Christ, the “one and only Bridegroom.” Finally, he notes that spousal love lived out in continence “for the kingdom,” should always be ordered towards spiritual maternity and paternity, which is “in a way analogous to conjugal love, which matures in physical fatherhood and motherhood.”

Continence for the Kingdom – Between Renunciation and Love Audience 79: April 21, 1982

In this audience, John Paul II continues his catechesis on continence for the “sake of the kingdom” in his analysis of self-gift for those who freely choose celibacy. He notes that “It is impossible to understand fully the meaning and character of continence [‘for the kingdom] without the appropriate, concrete and objective content” of Christ’s intent.” There is both the “subjective finality” of the call of Christ to continence, though likewise the “objective reality” of it as well. The “kingdom of heaven” signifies this “kingdom of God,” of which Christ speaks, which is its “eschatological fulfillment.” The “kingdom of heaven,” likewise, is the “definitive fulfillment of the aspirations of all human beings.” The call to continence “for the kingdom,” likewise carries within it “the particular sign of the dynamism proper to the mystery of the redemption of the body,” that is, “denying oneself, taking up one’s cross every day, and following Christ” (Lk 9:23). While Christ does not specify what concrete tasks continence “for the kingdom” requires, it is nonetheless “called for, if not indispensable, for the kingdom of God.” John Paul underscores that both marriage and celibacy should both be followed according to the original intent of Christ “from the beginning.” He notes that Ephesians 5:25-33 is both equally valid for both marriage and celibacy, given its call for self-donation for a higher purpose. In celibacy, this is understood as “love as the readiness to make the exclusive gift of self for the ‘kingdom of God.’” Fur- thermore, this continence for the “sake of the kingdom,” is also a renunciation of self which is a response to the call of the Divine Bridegroom. This gift of self is, then, “realized above all out of love.”

Audience 80: April 28, 1982

In this general audience, John Paul II continues his catechesis on continence for the “sake of the kingdom.” He draws on the words of Christ that “There are others who made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven” (Mt 19:12). Because love is “oriented by its very nature toward the person,” the love of Christ the Bridegroom towards his Bride the Church also beckons a similar self-donation among the disciples and their successors. This spousal gift of self is “understood as a renunciation, but [is] realized above all out of love.” This divine call to continence “for the kingdom,” similarly, “allows us to recall the profound truth about the spousal meaning of the human body in its masculinity and femininity.” Furthermore, John Paul insists that while

105 we may understand man as a “rational animal,” we should avoid the reductive tendency to understand him alongside other animals, acting simply out of “sexual instinct.” In the spousal meaning of the body, to which Christ refers us “in the beginning,” there is an awareness of the “freedom of the gift” as well. This is, then, a continence freely chosen “for” the “kingdom of heaven” in order that man may fully give himself completely to Christ. Continence for the sake of the “kingdom of heaven” is, therefore, a choice made “in relation to the masculinity and femininity proper to the person” inscribed in the spousal meaning of his body.

Audience 81: May 5, 1982

In this general audience address, John Paul II resumes his catechesis on continence for the sake of the “kingdom of heaven” (Mt 19:10-12). After the disciples approach Jesus, following the dialogue with the Pharisees, they insist: “If this is the condition of man in relation to woman, it is not advantageous to marry.” Wherein Christ responds: “Not all can understand it, but only those for whom it has been granted.” He notes that there are some who were both born eunuchs and were made eunuchs and still others “who made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven.” John Paul II notes that “In order for man to be fully aware of what he is choosing (continence for the kingdom) he must also be fully aware of what he is renouncing.” A truly “mature choice” must be one made on the part of man if it is to bear fruit. Continence for the kingdom, then, is both a renunciation and an affirmation, “from which the unmarried person consistently abstains by following the evangelical counsel.” This renunciation similarly “highlights” the spousal meaning of the body as seen in both masculinity and femininity. This understanding is “indispensable for the clearer recognition…for the whole ethos of the human life and above all in the ethos of conjugal and family life.” John Paul also underscores the fact that Christ was himself born of a Virgin and lived as a virgin, for the sake of the “kingdom of heaven.” In concluding, the Holy Father repeats two earlier points as if to reemphasize their importance: continence “for the kingdom” involves a renunciation of self whereby one becomes a “sincere gift” for another (Gaudium et Spes, no. 24:3), and continence is “in no way” a negation of marriage, but rather serves to “highlight what is most lasting and most profoundly person in the conjugal vocation.”

B. Paul’s Understanding of the Relation between Virginity and Marriage (1 Cor 7) Christ’s Statement and the Teaching of the Apostles Audience 82: June 23, 1982

In this audience, John Paul II now shifts from the synoptic gospels to St. Paul, specifically in his letter to the church in Corinth. The Holy Father notes that in St. Paul’s teachings can “we can see a correlation of the Teacher’s words,” Likewise, the “greatness of Paul’s teachings consists in the fact” that he “gives it his own tone, in some sense his own ‘personal’ interpretation.” The Apostle is clear in underscoring that voluntary continence “flows only from a counsel and not a commandment”: “Now concerning virgins, I have no commandment of the Lord, but I give my counsel as one who by the Lord’s mercy is trustworthy” (1 Cor 7:25). John Paul II notes that Paul likewise understands “counsel” in two ways: his own counsel he wishes to give to those

106 seeking clarity on the issue of continence and the counsel of evangelical virginity itself. While St. Paul is clear in noting that marriage is not a sin, he similarly notes that he who choses virginity for the kingdom chooses something higher: “He who marries his virgin does well, and he who refrains from marrying her does better” (1 Cor 7:36-38). Here John Paul II notes that Paul’s expressions about the higher calling of continence in “does well” and “does better” are “completely unambiguous.” St. Paul likewise notes the following regarding continence and marriage: “Are you bound to a wife? Do not seek to be free. Are you free from a wife? Do not seek a wife. But if you marry, you do not sin, and if the young one marries, she does not sin (1 Cor 7:27-28). Thus, while Paul is clear in noting that there is no sin attached to marriage, the voluntary renunciation of the good of marriage is likewise a higher calling.

Audience 83: June 30, 1982

In this general audience, John Paul II takes us again the words of the apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians regarding continence for the kingdom of God: “From now on, let those who have wives live as though they had none.” In the Corinthians text, Paul appeals to his own lived experience in highlighting the value of this choice: “I wish that all were as I myself am” (1 Cor 7:7). Here, John Paul II notes that the Apostles draws attention to his own experience, not only to make it more personal, but also to “formulate the principal itself and to try to explain it.” Paul goes on to note that “Those who marry will have troubles in the flesh, and I would spare you that” (1 Cor 7:28). By “troubles,” John Paul II says that here “One should see a justified warning for those who think – as at times young people do – that conjugal union and life should bring them only happiness and joy.” He notes that, “Experience of life shows that spouses are not sel- dom left disappointed in what they expected most.” While Christ, for his part, “does not attempt in any way to direct his listeners to celibacy or virginity,” for John Paul, what “stands out…is the greatness and exceptional character of this decision.” The Apostle again highlights the fact that the “unmarried” person will be “anxious” about “how to please the Lord” (1 Cor 7:32). Here, John Paul II notes that one can be “anxious’ only about what is truly close to his heart,” and with continence one, therefore, has a divine anxiety of sorts. By “Lord,” then, the Apostle is referring to Jesus Christ, and he is intent on “pleasing” God alone. Thus, when one freely chooses this noble calling, that is continence for the “kingdom,” he seeks to “please the Lord” by living as the Lord himself did.

Audience 84: July 7, 1982

In this general audience address, John Paul II again takes up the words of St. Paul, in 1 Corinthians 7, as they pertain to marriage and continence for the kingdom of heaven. St. Paul notes that “The unmarried man is anxious about…how to please the Lord” (1 Cor 7:32). To this point, John Paul notes that, “Man always tries to please the person he loves,” and, in marriage, this “pleasing,” then, “is not without that which is distinctive of the interpersonal relationship of spouses.” This “pleasing” is an “effort on man’s part” as to how bests to “express love in an active way” to the other. The Holy Father underscores here that the unmarried person, of which Paul speaks, is “characterized by an inner integration” which, in turn, “allows him to devote him-

107 self completely to the service of the kingdom of God.” This unmarried person further unites his own weaknesses and sufferings with those of Christ, as “we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses (Heb 4:15). John Paul notes that both married persons and the celibate is called to holiness and that personal holiness is “a state rather than an action,” which likewise has “an ontological character and then also a moral one.” Finally, John Paul Ii notes that Paul’s vision for marriage is not simply a “remedium concupiscentiae” (remedy for concupiscence), but rather it is a “gift” given by God. Similarly, with continence, it is also

108 “nevertheless…a true gift from God” as well, to be loved in its fullness according to one’s particular vocation in life. St. Paul sees the grace of Christ clearly active in both.

Audience 85: July 14, 1982

In this general audience address, John Paul II draws to a close much of his reflections on 1 Corinthians 7, wherein the Apostle Paul speaks to marriage and continence. As we have discussed, Paul argues that one who chooses marriage “does well,” though one who chooses virginity “does better.” Here John Paul II notes that the Pauline understanding of marriage and virginity is “not so much the metaphysics of accidental (and thus fleeting) being, but rather the theology of great expectation,” meaning that of the resurrection. Because “marriage is passing,” it is a transitory reality for Paul, and likewise “imposes in some way the necessity of ‘closing oneself’ in this transitoriness,” whereas abstaining from marriage “liberates from such necessity,” and thus one “does better.” John Paul notes that in 1 Corinthians 7 one sees the “whole realism of the Pauline theology of the body.” While one sees a clear teaching in Paul regarding the “better” path of virginity, likewise there is neither “any foundation for considering those who live in marriage ‘carnal.’” In both vocations, one’s life is lived as a gift towards another. Furthermore, Paul notes that if a couple does abstain from conjugal relations for some time, they should at some point come back together: “Do not abstain from each other except by common agreement for a set time, to devote yourselves to prayer, and then come together again, so that Satan may not tempt you through lack of self-control. I say this by way of concession, not of command (1 Cor 7:5-7). John Paul notes that by “concession,” the apostle is referring to “all that in some way corresponds to the subjectivity…of man and woman.” Finally, John Paul highlights that, according to Paul, “these two dimensions [marriage and virginity] of the human person are not opposed to each other, but [are] complementary.”

[Conclusion of Part One] [The Redemption of the Body] Audience 86: July 21, 1982

In this general audience, John Paul II draws to a close his reflections on the redemption of the body, according to St. Paul and the Synoptic Gospels. St. Paul notes in Romans: “We ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for…the redemption of our bodies” (Rom 8:23). John Paul notes that Paul understands this “redemption” from both an anthropological and cosmic perspective, with ramifications for both. Man, therefore, has an inward hope, based in the redemption of Christ, as he “awaits” his full eschatological state. John Paul notes that the redemption of the body is “tied” to this hope (Rom 8:24). When Paul refers to the cosmic ramifications of the redemption of the body he likewise places man “at its very center,” as one who possesses “the first fruits of the Spirit” (Rom 8:23). In the redemption of the Body, Christ has “re-opened anew” the full eschatological fulfillment of man, and thereby given him hope. John Paul II notes that in order to fully understand the Pauline anthropology of redemption, “an authentic theology of the body is necessary,” which he has “attempted to build.”

109 As a point of review, the Holy Father points out that this theology of the body draws from its constitutive parts: Christ’s appeal to the “beginning” (Mt 19:8), his teachings on concupiscence of the heart (Mt 5:28), and his appeal to the resurrection (Mt 22:30). Because man “is a ‘body,’” created male and female in God’s image and likeness, the body “signifies (according to Genesis) the visible aspect of man and his belonging to the visible world.” Thus, while the redemption of the body is expressed in the resurrection of Christ in his victory over death, is also present in the indissolubility of marriage “as a principal coming from the Creator himself.” This is lived out in the daily struggle of man over sin, in the “normal tasks and difficulties of human life.”

Part II: The Sacrament Chapter One The Dimension of Covenant and of Grace 1. Ephesians 5:21-33 A. Introduction and Connection The Text of Ephesians 5:21-33

Audience 87: July 28, 1982

In this general audience address, John Paul II begins his analysis of the Ephesians 5:22-33, wherein the Apostle Paul underscores several pertinent points for the theology of the body: “Wives be subject to your husbands as you are to the Lord…And husbands love your wives, as Christ loved the Church and gave himself for her…” John Paul II twice mentions that this text can be considered the “crowning” of the previous Scriptural texts used in his theology of the body. He notes: “If one wishes to interpret this passage, one must do so in the light of what Christ has told us about the human body,” that is, man in his original condition, his historical state, and his eschatological destiny. The Holy Father highlights two primary meanings in the Ephesians 5 text, which he will take up in greater detail again later: the metaphorical meaning and the concrete meaning. This text has profound implications for the theology of the body as a whole and for the relationship of man to Christ, drawing on the analogy Paul uses for the Church as the bride of Christ: “As Christ loved the Church and gave himself for her…” Here we witness the “well-known analogy of spousal love between God and his Chosen people.” John Paul II here, underscoring a key premise of his catechesis’ on the theology of the body, notes that “the body enters into the definition of a sacrament, which is a ‘visible sign of an invisible reality,’” and it thereby points to this “spiritual, transcendent, and divine reality.” Finally, drawing on Gaudium et Spes (no. 22:1), John Paul II notes that “one can say that the passage we chose from Ephesians ‘reveals in a particular way man to himself and makes his supreme vocation clear.”

B. Detailed Analysis Ephesians 5:21-33 in the Context of Ephesians as a Whole Audience 88:August 4, 1982

In this catechesis, John Paul II takes up the letter to the Ephesians, in highlighting a number of its key points, setting the stage for a deeper analysis of marriage. He notes that its author

110 addresses some of the following in the text: man’s salvation, the Church with Christ as its head, the family, a definitive call for unity, avoidance of pagan practices, the overcoming of vices, spiritual battle between good and evil, and the proper respect given to the family and lived within the family. The first part of the letter to the Ephesians is centered on the salvific plan of God for man: “The God and Father of Our Lord Jesus Christ…chose us in Christ…to be holy and immaculate before him in love, predestining us to be his adoptive sons through Jesus Christ” (Eph 1:3-7). The second part; however, gives us “more detailed instructions that are intended to define Christian life as a vocation flowing from the divine plan…from the mystery of Christ and the Church.” John Paul II underscores what he considers the “two main guiding lines of the whole letter to the Ephesians”: 1.) The mystery of Christ, present in the Church, as “an expression of the divine plan for man’s salvation.” 2.) The Christian vocation as the “model” of life for baptized persons. Finally, he notes that the author of the letter to the Ephesians takes us the issue of the family in its proper ordering in the Church: “Children obey your parents in the Lord, for this is just. Honor your father and mother…And you fathers, do not embitter your children, but bring them up in the education and discipline of the Lord (Eph 6:1-4). At this point, John Paul notes that he is ready to take up, in the following catechesis,’ his reflections on marriage as it pertains to the Ephesians 5:22-33 text.

Audience 89: August 11, 1982

Today, John Paul II continues his catechesis on the text of Ephesians 5:21-33, in what he refers to as simply a “more detailed analysis” of its implications for marriage. He notes that the author of Ephesians speaks of 2 dimensions, or levels, within Christian marriage: 1.) A profound reverence or piety (pietas) for Christ, which should not be equated with a “fright” or “defensive attitude” of Christ, bur rather a reverence “which springs from the profound consciousness of the mystery of Christ,” and is the “basis for the reciprocal relations between spouses.” 2.) The moral implications for marriage, or what John Paul II refers to (3 times) as the “parenetic” character of the text. Here the Holy Father underscores the “mutual submission” of husband and wife, that should not be understood as a one-sided, or “master” relationship of husband over the wife. When the author of Ephesians, then, teaches that “Wives, be subject to your husbands as you are to the Lord” (Eph 5:22), thus should not be misinterpreted in a manner whereby the wife would be a “servant or slave of the husband,” but rather a “mutual submission,” whereby one becomes a “reciprocal gift” for the other. In doing so there arrives a “just balance” between the spouses in reverence (pietas) to Christ. This “reciprocal submission” of one towards the other is where a genuine “community of persons” is both formed and realized. Finally, John Paul II makes note of the 2 components of the “great analogy” found in the Ephesians 5 text: 1.) “Wives, be subject to your husbands as you are to the Lord. And as the Church is subject to Christ, so wives ought to be subject their husband.” 2.) “And you, husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the Church and gave himself for her.” In both these texts, John Paul II draws attention to the word “as,” as if to highlight that this analogy has profound ontological implications.

Audience 90: August 18, 1982

111 Today, John Paul II again examines the relationships, as taught in the Ephesians 5:21-33 text, between Christ and the Church and husband and wife, especially by way of analogy. Three times he notes that the relationship between Christ and the Church is both a “revelation and realization” of the mystery of salvation. This analogy, that is between man as head of his wife and Christ as head of the Church, likewise points to “the mystery of God’s eternal love for man.” John Paul II highlights that while this analogy of husband and wife “clarifies” the relationship between Christ and the Church, it likewise “reveals the essential truth about marriage,” namely that, “marriage corresponds to the vocation of Christians only when it mirrors the love that Christ, the Bridegroom, gives to the Church, his Bride, and which the Church…seeks to give back to Christ in return.” Further, the exhortation of the author of Ephesians towards husbands and wives, “Wives, be submissive to your husbands,” and “Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the Church,” is a “moral obligation” that stands at the heart of the vocation to marriage. The Holy Father notes that the “essence” of marriage contains within it a “particle of the same mystery,” then, of Christ and the Church, “otherwise the whole analogy would hang in the void.” There are two directions in which this analogy points: a deeper understanding of the Church and a deeper understanding of marriage. Finally, John Paul II notes that, with Christ as her Head, the Church receives from Christ salvation in a total gift of self. Here, the “the whole salvific gift of redemption penetrates the Church as the body of that Head.”

Audience 91: August 25, 1982

In this general audience address, John Paul II takes up again the Ephesians 5:21-33 text, in highlighting the “great analogy” found therein between Christ and the Church and husband and wife. He notes that, in addition, there is a “supplemental analogy” found within the text, when the author speaks of head and the body, and “it is precisely this analogy that gives a chiefly ecclesiological” to the Church as being constituted, as body, with Christ as the Head. Similarly, this “supplementary analogy” is witnessed in marriage with man as the head and his wife as the body. This “organic union” within the two, forming one, points towards the “one flesh” encountered in Genesis (2:24). There is, then, a “two-fold analogy” within the Ephesians text: head- body and husband-wife. While the two become, in some sense, a single subject as one organism, John Paul II notes that they likewise maintain a “bi-subjectivity” that is never lost; that is, this union between them “does not blur the individuality of the subjects.” He notes that the essential goal of the union of Christ and the Church is her growth in holiness and sanctification via baptism. The one who receives baptism becomes, therefore, “A participant in his [Christ’s] spousal love for the Church.” Baptism presents the Christian as ready to meet the Bridegroom who, in turn, receives her with a profound spousal love.

Audience 92: September 1, 1982

In this general audience address, John Paul II resumes his catechesis on the vocation of marriage as it pertains to ecclesiology. The author of Ephesians notes the following: And you, husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the Church and gave himself for her, in order to make her holy and by cleansing her with the washing of water accompanied by the word, so as to

112 present his church before himself all glorious, with spot or wrinkle or anything of the kind, but holy and immaculate” (Eph 5:25-27). Here the author depicts the Church as a “bride” whole and beautiful. John Paul II notes that this metaphor is “very eloquent” and “testifies how deeply important the body is in the analogy of spousal love.” Furthermore, “in the metaphorical sense,” by “spot” or “wrinkle,” the author here is referring to the “moral defects of sin,” which the Church is preserved from. The Holy Father notes that there is a “bi-subjectivity” here between Christ and the Church, and Bridegroom and Bride, which has ramifications in moral, spiritual, and supernatural order. Likewise, there is a “uni-subjectivity” which forms the basis of the “b-subjectivity” between Christ and Church and husband and wife. This is a “unity through love,” of one for the other which “not only unites the two subjects, but allows them to interpenetrate each other.” The “mutual submission” encountered between husband and wives points towards the submission of the Church to Christ and the self-gift of Christ to the Church. In the “mutual submission” of husband and wife, the body of the other becomes, in some way, “one’s own” in the sense that “one is moved by concern for the good of the body of the other as for one’s own.” John Paul II notes that such love speaks “above all with the language of ‘agape.’”

Audience 93: September 8, 1982

In this general audience address, John Paul II again takes up the deeper meaning inscribed in the Ephesians 5:22-33 text, more specifically the proper hermeneutic of “mystery.” The Holy Father notes that Genesis 2:24 itself could be “considered the fundamental text on marriage in the whole Bible”: “For this reason a man will leave his father and his mother and unite with his wife, and the two will form one flesh.” The author of Ephesians quotes this text in highlighting both the unity of spouses but also “to present the mystery of Christ with the Church.” For his part, John Paul II refers to this text as the “keystone” and most important part of the text. He is clear in underscoring that the unity of man and woman are analogous to the unity of Christ and the Church. While John Paul II understands marriage as “the most ancient sacrament” in the Church, he also underscores that this union of Christ and the Church is a “great mystery.” The fact that Christ “loved the Church and gave himself for her” marks this love with a redemptive and self-donating character. The mystery attached to this relationship, that is Christ and the Church, is “in some sense the central theme of the whole of revelation, its central reality.” This mystery, then, not only transmits the good news of salvation, it also begins the work of salvation itself. John Paul II, while noting the profound connection between “sacrament” and “mystery,” also notes that a sacrament is “not synonymous” with mystery, as a sacrament “presupposes the revelation of the mystery” and that “man also accepts it by faith.” Thus, says John Paul II, when we speak of the Church as being “like” a sacrament (Lumen Gentium, 1), we speak analogously, so as to not confuse this with the sacraments administered by the Church “on the basis of their institution by Christ.”

2. Sacrament and Mystery

The Mystery Hidden from Ages Revealed and Active in Christ

113 Audience 94: September 15, 1982

In this general audience address, as with the next several to come, John Paul II again takes up the topic of marriage and salvation as it pertains to the Ephesians 5:21-33 text. He notes that in Christ, the “eternal mystery has passed from the state of ‘hiddenness in God’ to the phase of revelation and realization,” whereby the eternal mystery of God’s salvation for man is unveiled. The author of Ephesians further highlights the importance of the moral life in living in accord with this divine plan, as man and woman are to “model their lives in the spirit of truth they have come to know.” This moral character of the Christian vocation, therefore, “remain linked not only with the revelation of the eternal divine mystery in Christ…but also with the sacramental order.” The author, John Paul II notes, understands there to be an intrinsic connection between this mystery in Christ and the sacramentality of marriage. The author is clear in noting that Christ himself is “at the center of the mystery” and in him, “humanity has been eter- nally blessed ‘with every spiritual blessing.’” Through Christ, and in him, the mystery of the divine love is revealed. In this supernatural gift of self, Christ not only gives himself but also the fruits of redemption. Here John Paul II draws from the Old Testament prophets, and in particular Isaiah, in highlighting the analogy of spousal love shown by Yahweh to the people of Israel as a chosen people, special to him. He notes that one could draw from Hosea, Ezekiel, and the Song of Songs, though here he limits himself to the prophet Isaiah in accentuating the analogy of Yah- weh as Bridegroom and the people as Bride: “For your Creator is your husband…For like a wife forsaken and grieved in the Spirit, the Lord has called you” (Isa 54:4-10). This analogy borrowed by the author of Ephesians, then, “has a rich tradition in the books of the Old Testament.”

Audience 95: September 22, 1982

In this general audience address, John Paul II renews his analysis of the Ephesians 5:21-33 text by again noting that the analogy of spousal relationship between Christ and the Church with husband and wife has a long tradition in the Old Testament. For instance, in Isaiah 54:4-10, we do not hear any of the standard reproaches against Israel often witnessed in the writings of the prophets, but instead one sees the love of God-Yahweh for his people expressed in covenantal love. Yahweh, as Bridegroom, has chosen Israel as his chosen Bride because she is special to him. John Paul II points out here that, “being chosen by a man takes away a woman’s dishonor,” as per custom of the time, “seemed to be connected with the single state” or indicative of widowhood, divorce, or “in some cases and unfaithful wife.” This text accentuates the social and spiritual importance of marriage, though also highlights the “true character of the gift that God’s love is for Israel,” which comes entirely from his initiative and grace. John Paul II is clear in noting that this spousal love of Yahweh for the people is not a conjugal love, but rather a fa- therly love. For his part, the authors of Isaiah and Ephesians both note that God is “Redeemer” (Isa 54:5; Eph 1:7). This same Son, as Messiah and loved by the Father, brought redemption for the people and “gave himself for her” (Eph 5:25). The Ephesians author notes that this same Son, who is “the beloved of the Father,” makes himself a gift for the Church as a “spousal love by which he marries the Church and makes her his own Body.” John Paul II notes

114 here that while Isaiah does address this spousal character of Yahweh for the people, this mystery is left only “half-opened” in an “embryonic form,” whereas in Ephesians it is “fully unveiled.”

The Reality of the Gift, The Meaning of Grace Audience 95: September 29, 1982

In this general audience, John Paul II continues his reflections on the “great analogy” of the marriage of the spousal love of Christ for the Church. Again, he is at pains to underscore that we spoke only of this love as an analogy, given that there is no conjugal love in Christ for the Church. Nonetheless, this “analogy of conjugal or spousal love helps us to penetrate into there very essence of the mystery,” and “helps to understand the mystery up to a certain point.” While this analogy “cannot offer an adequate and complete understanding of that transcendent Reality,” that is the Divine mystery, still “we try to express it in human language.” Within this analogy, Israel and the Church are understood as Bride-person by Yahweh (Christ) as Bridegroom-person. This analogy, John Paul II, notes “allows us to understand to a certain degree the revealed mystery of the living God, who is Creator and Redeemer.” Furthermore, it emphasizes the aspect of God’s self-gift to the Church, a gift that is both “total (or rather ‘radical’) and irrevocable.” This gift is all that God could possibly give to man, given his finite nature. Furthermore, this analogy also helps us understand the sacramental character of marriage as the primordial sacrament. The author of Ephesians also underscores that in the revelation of Christ to his Bride (Church), “mystery has expressed itself in the visible order” as a sign. John Paul II further clarifies by noting that by “sign” we mean simply the “visibility of the Invisible.” The visible sign of marriage, he insists, “transposes the eternal plan of love into the ‘historical’ dimension and makes it the foundation of the whole sacramental order.”

Marriage as the Primordial Sacrament Audience 96: October 6, 1982

In this general audience, John Paul II takes up his earlier catechesis of marriage as the primordial sacrament, drawing on the Ephesians 5:21-33 text. By “primordial,” John Paul II understands marriage to “constituted,” and “understood as a sign that efficaciously transmits in the visible world the invisible mystery hidden in God from eternity.” He notes that the Ephesians text “opens before us the supernatural world of the eternal mystery of the eternal plans of God the Father in regard to man.” This “primordial gift” given to humanity by God contains within it the “fruit of election,” as we hear in the text: “He has chosen us…to be holy and immaculate before him” (Eph 1:4). In his prelapsarian state, before sin, “man carried in his should the fruit of eternal election in Christ,” and this primordial (original) holiness was witnessed in the fact that the man and woman were “naked” though did not experience shame (Gen 2:25). John Paul II underscores that this primordial holiness is deeply interconnected with man’s election in Christ through adoption: “predestining us to be his adopted sons through Jesus Christ” (Eph 1:5). The redemption of man in Christ “was to become the source of man’s supernatural endowment after sin and, in a certain sense, despite sin.” It is here that John Paul II highlights one of the key premises of his catechesis on the body: “The body, in fact, and only the body, is capable of mak-

115 ing visible what is invisible: the spiritual and the divine.” Marriage, then, is primordial to the extent that it is the “central point of the sacrament of creation.” This sacrament of creation is meant to be spread to further generations, sharing with them the “supernatural fruits of man’s enteral election by the Father in the eternal son.”

Audience 97: October 13, 1982

In this general audience address, John Paul II takes up again his reflections on the Eph- esians 5:21-33, in particular its emphasis on grace and mysterium magnum, or great mystery. Herein, John Paul emphasizes the two heritages which have formed human history: The heritage of original grace which was “driven out of the human heart when man broke the first covenant with the Creator,” and the heritage or original sin which darkened the rational soul as it was intended by God. As a result marriage, as the “primordial sacrament,” was in turn “deprived of the supernatural efficaciousness it drew at the moment of its institution from the sacrament of creation in its totality.” There is also, he notes, a new “gracing” by which man receives in this primordial sacrament via the sacrament of redemption, and this redemptive gift of self by Christ is both to and for the Church. Within this covenantal “gracing” Christ now renews in fallen man a capacity for vocational holiness. This new endowment in Christ in the gift of grace is “also a new realization of the Mystery hidden from eternity in God,” which is to say, “new in comparison with the sacrament of creation.” Within this “new gracing” man now receives adequate for- giveness of sins, and it now “becomes a permanent dimension of the life of the Church herself.” From this wellspring of grace, the Church likewise draws “her whole spiritual fruitfulness and motherhood.” John Paul II highlights that in Christ this “great mystery” has become “visible with the visibility of the sign.” Here then, “We are speaking about the sacramentality of the whole heritage of the sacrament of redemption,” which refers primarily to the marriage of Christ and his Bride the Church, in its “quasi-conjugal covenant” with him.

Marriage as Figure and as Sacrament of the New Covenant Audience 98: October 20, 1982

In this general audience address, John Paul II renews his reflections on Ephesians 5:21-33, especially as it pertains to the sacramentality of marriage. He again reiterates that, as the primordial sacrament, marriage was both instituted from the “beginning" and connected with the sacrament of creation. Similarly, marriage is also “assumed and inserted into the integral structure of the new sacramental economy, which has arisen from redemption in the form, I would say, of a ‘prototype.’” Furthermore, John Paul II notes, “All the sacraments of the New Covenant [Redemption], find their prototype in some way in marriage as the primordial sacrament.” This new sacramental economy “differs from the original economy” in that it is not directed towards man “of original justice and innocence,” but rather now towards man “burdened by heritage of original sin and the state of sinfulness (status naturae lapsae).” It is directed, then, towards post-lapsarian man in his state of concupiscence. Sacramental marriage; therefore, draws its strength from the sacrament of redemption in Christ. Here John Paul II acknowledges twice that “Up till now…we have been using the term ‘sacrament’…in a wider sense than the

116 one characteristic of traditional and contemporary theological terminology.” He notes; however, that the Ephesians text seems to “authorize us” to use the term in a more mystical sense as it refers to the “very mystery of God, which is hidden from eternity.” He notes that, “On the basis of the sacrament of creation one must understand the original sacramentality of marriage,” as the primordial sacrament; whereas, “on the basis of the sacrament of redemption, one can understand the sacramentality of the Church,” or even the sacramental character of Christ’s union with the Church.

3. Sacrament and “Redemption of the Body” A. The Gospel The Words of Christ and the Mystery of Redemption

Audience 99: October 27, 1982

In this general audience, John Paul II again takes up his reflections on Ephesians 5:22-33, especially as it refers to the marriage as the primordial sacrament, though briefly recalling his catechesis on Matthew 19 wherein the Pharisees question Jesus on the morality of divorce. He notes that while the Ephesians 5 text does refer to the sacraments, and in particular baptism and the Eucharist, it does so “only indirectly and in some sense by allusion.” Nonetheless, baptism is clearly highlighted in the Ephesians 5 text wherein the author notes that Christ “loved the Church and gave himself for her…in order to make her holy by cleansing her with the washing of water accompanied by the world” (Eph 5:25-26). John Paul II notes that, “This text without any doubt speaks about the sacrament of baptism.” Similarly, when the author notes that one cares for his own body just “as Christ does with the Church, because we are members of his body” (Eph 5:29- 30), John Paul II underscores that this reference should be understood as a reference to the Eu- charist: “Christ nourishes the Church with his Body precisely in the Eucharist.” While these two sacraments are “indirectly” discussed then, it is the primordial sacrament of marriage which “is realized in a new way in the ‘sacrament’ of Christ and the Church.” Thus, although the author of Ephesians “does not speak directly and immediately about marriage as one of the sacraments of the Church,” nonetheless the text “confirms and deeply explains the sacramentality of marriage.” It is within the “great sacrament” of Christ and the Christian that the Christian vocation takes shape and finds its fulfillment. The “redemption of the body” (Rom 8:23), of which St. Paul refers, has profound implications for both marriage, then, and for continence for the sake of the kingdom of heaven (Mt 19:12), about which John Paul II previously highlighted. Finally, John Paul II notes that by redemption we mean simply a “new creation” which implies “taking up all that is created to express in creation the fullness of justice, equity, and holiness planned for it by God and to express that fullness above all in man, created male and female ‘in the image of God.’”

Audience 100: November 24, 1982

In this general audience address, John Paul II continues his catechesis on marriage as the primordial sacrament, this time drawing largely from the synoptic gospels. Three times he men-

117 tions that it was in accord with God’s “salvific will and action” that he established marriage as the primordial sacrament, bringing the man and woman together in the “one flesh” union (Gen 2:24). Drawing on Matthew 19 and Mark 10, John Paul II notes that the words of Christ to his interlocutors “confirm marriage as a sacrament instituted by the Creator ‘at the beginning,’” at which point he required its indissolubility. The words of Christ in Matthew 19:3-9 establish what he earlier termed an “ethos of redemption,” or an “ethos of redemption of the body,” whereby the particular dignity of the body is rooted in the dignity of man and woman. This redemption of the body is given to man and woman as the “grace of the New Covenant with God in Christ.” Likewise, it is also an ethos of morality which “corresponds to the action of God in the mystery of redemption.” Here John Paul II highlights the words of Christ in the Sermon on the Mount (Mt 5:27-28), wherein Christ states: “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I say to you: Whoever looks at a woman to desire her has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” He notes that while these words “do not refer directly and immediately to marriage,” it is similarly “impossible to separate them from the whole sacramental substratum” by which the conjugal covenant of man and woman has been established. This “sacramental substratum” always relates to “concrete persons” and further “penetrates into what man and woman are…in their original dignity as image and likeness of God.” The words of Christ on the Sermon on the Mount, then, “assigns the dignity of every woman as a task to every man,” and “every man to every woman,” what John Paul II terms the “sacrum of the person.” The appeal of Christ, here, to the human heart, “Penetrates into the very depth of the human mystery.”

Audience 101: December 1, 1982

In this general audience address, John Paul II again takes up his reflections on the sacra- mentlity of marriage, this time drawing on St. Paul’s letters to the Corinthians and Romans. Here he addresses the fundamental question of what the sacrament of marriage actually is; namely, an “efficacious expression of the saving power of God,” while simultaneously “an exhortation to gain mastery over concupiscence (as Christ speaks about in the Sermon on the Mount).” For his part, St. Paul highlights in 1 Corinthians 7 that there is a “superiority” of virginity over marriage, though “each has his own gift from God, one in one way and another in another” (1 Cor 7:7). He further notes that it is better to marry than “to be aflame” (1 Cor 7:9), which “signifies the disorder of the passions springing from concupiscence of the flesh,” thus a remedium concupiscentiae. Marriage, likewise, “signifies an ethical order,” by which there is an encounter of eros and an ethos in their “reciprocal interpenetration in the human ‘heart’ of man and woman.” Marriage is given by God to “historical” man for this life as both an ethos and a grace. It is an indissoluble bond which constantly beckons man and woman towards the chastity made possible to them in the “redemption of the body.” John Paul II notes that “just as concupiscence darkens the horizon of interior vision and deprives hearts of the lucid clarity of desires and aspirations,” so too does “life according to the Spirit…allows man and woman the true freedom of the gift together with the spousal meaning of the body in its masculinity and femininity.” This life “according to the spirit,” further “expresses itself in an awareness of the gratuitous gift,” which corresponds to their vocation as spouses and parents. Marriage; therefore, “comes from the Father,”

118 and thus not the world, and “constitutes the basis for hope” for the couple. Drawing on the synoptic gospels (Mt 22:23-32; Mk 12:18-27; Lk 20:34-39), John Paul II affirms that marriage “does not belong to the eschatological reality of the ‘future world,’” and is thus only for “historical” man in this life. He notes that marriage, “Does not belong to the ‘redemption of the body’ in the dimension of eschatological hope” (see Rom 8:23). Nonetheless, the sacrament of marriage is “fulfilled and realized” in this eschatological hope, as it “bears within itself the germ of man’s eschatological future.”

B. Ephesians The Spousal and Redemptive Meaning of Love

Audience 102: December 15, 1982

In this general audience address, John Paul II takes up again the text of Ephesians in highlighting its catechesis on marriage. He notes that the “great analogy” of which the author speaks regarding Christ and the Church (Eph 5:32) points towards sacramental marriage as both “presupposed” and “rediscovered.” “Presupposed” as the sacrament of the “human beginning” in man’s creation, and “rediscovered” then “as the fruit of the spousal love of Christ and the Church,” within the mystery of the Redemption. The author of Ephesians later exhorts Christian spouses to “shape their reciprocal relationship on the model of the spousal union of Christ and the Church.” By “learning this sacrament anew,” both “participate in the salvific love of Christ” and form a communio personarum. John Paul II here twice mentions the “original and stable” form of marriage that spouses receive in the sacrament with Christ. This sacramental union unites both a redemptive dimension with the spousal dimension into one, as they “penetrate together with the grace of the sacrament into the life of the spouses.” The “great mystery” of which the author of Ephesians speaks, that is the union of Christ and the Church, “obliges us to link the spousal meaning of the body with its redemptive meaning” in marriage. John Paul II also notes here that while the Ephesians text only “indirectly” and not “explicitly,” speaks of “continence for the sake of the kingdom,” here there is also great fruit, as with marriage, in the “grace of the mystery of redemption.” Finally, he addresses the vocational call of man, within his particular vocation to seek God: “Man, who is ‘from the beginning’ male and female, must seek the meaning of his existence and the meaning of his humanity by reaching all the way to the mystery of creation through the reality of redemption. There he finds the essential answer to the question about the meaning of the human body, about the meaning of the masculinity and femininity of the human person.”

Chapter Two The Dimension of Sign 1. “Language of the Body” and the Reality of the Sign The Marital Promise

Audience 103: January 5, 1983

119 In this general audience address, John Paul II examines the efficacy of the marital promises made by spouses in the sacrament. With the words, “I…take you…as my wife,” and “I…take you…as my husband,” these promises “stand at the center of the liturgy of marriage as a sacrament of the Church.” John Paul II notes that it is with these words that the engaged couple not only contract marriage, they likewise “administer the sacrament,” which is later sealed in consumption. Without this covenantal consumption, the marriage “is not yet constituted in its full reality.” Both the words, that is the promises, and the consummation of the sacrament are important in order to emphasize the sacramental sign of the covenant in Christ. While marriage, then, is contracted with the words of the spouses, these words “signify and indicate in the intentional order what (or rather who) both have decided to be from now on.” These words, John Paul II notes, “Are part of the integral structure of the sacramental sign,” not only “by what” they signify yet also “with what they signify and determine.” Both of the spouses, as ministers of the sacrament, “Constitute the full and real visible sign of the sacrament itself.” As the man and woman become “one flesh” in marriage in their conjugal union, there is spoken, then, a “language of the body” by which both participate in Christ. The words spoken by the spouses in their promises “take up again” this “language of the body” as a “concrete and unrepeatable expression” of their love. Both the man and woman become for one another a “reciprocal gift” for the other. These words also “confer a new aspect on their life in the strictly personal (and interpersonal, communio personarum) dimension.” The promises made also bear within them a “future-oriented meaning,” as they state “All the days of my life,” that is, until death. Finally, John Paul II notes, with the exchange of promises and in the consumption of them, a “conjugal contract is stipulated” whereby both “have become spouses in a socially recognized way.”

“Prophetism of the Body.” Audience 104: January 12, 1983

In this general audience, John Paul II renews his catechesis on the sacramentality of marriage under the aspect of sign. He notes that in the long biblical tradition of the prophets, such as Hosea, Ezekiel, and Isaiah, it becomes possible to speak of a “prophetism of the body,” which signifies a “language of the body.” This yields a two-level analogy: 1.) The first level, the fundamental level, here the prophets portray the covenant of marriage as being established between God and Israel, wherein God initiates this covenant. Here, John Paul II notes, the prophets understood this relationship as “incomparably deeper” than a mere contract. Rather, “by choosing Israel, God united himself with his people through love and grace,” and thus Israel is understood to be for him both “Bride” and “wife.” Yahweh, then, is both “Lord” and “Bridegroom” to the people. 2.) The second level, as the “language of the body,” indicates both objective and subjective meanings. The objective meaning is witnessed in the prophets comparison of the covenant with Yahweh to marriage, and the “one flesh” union (Gen 2:24). Subjectively, the body itself speaks a meaning by its particular masculinity and femininity, specifically in the “mysterious language of the personal gift.” When the people are unfaithful to this covenant they, in turn, commit “conjugal unfaithfulness” or “adultery.” Both Hosea (1:2) and Ezekiel (16) make enu- merate the many infidelities of Israel in disregarding this covenant with Yahweh. John Paul II

120 notes here that, “The human body speaks a ‘language’ of which it is not the author.” The prophets insist, then, that this is a “language of the body,” or a language spoken with the body. They “attempt to express both the spousal depth of that covenant and all that contradict it.” This “language of the body,” referred to by the prophets, “is not only a language of ethos,” but also a praise of fidelity when lived, and one of condemnation of infidelity when committed. The body, therefore, can speak of truth “through faithfulness and conjugal love,” yet also a lie when “it commits falsehood.”

“Language of the Body” Reread in the Truth Audience 105: January 19, 1983

In this general audience address, John Paul II continues his reflections on the “prophetism of the body,” as understood between marital spouses. He connects the covenant bond between Yahweh and Israel in the Old Testament, as attested to by the prophets, with the “sacramental covenant of man and woman in the dimension of sign,” with the words of the conjugal consent which actually “constitute this sign.” The body, he notes, can speak both a truth and an untruth, which is to say, it bespeaks either conjugal faithfulness and love or falsity. For this reason, when the couple states the words of conjugal consent “the new spouses set themselves on the line of the same prophetism of the body, whose spokesmen were the ancient prophets.” Furthermore, he defines a prophet as “one who expresses with human words the truth that comes from God.” As- suming this is true, then the spoken promises of the new spouses likewise express this “prophetism” as well in their conjugal consent. This consent bears within it the “character of a reciprocal profession of the new spouses before God.” The human body, then, speaks a language, “of which it is not the author.” The author, John Paul II twice insists, is man himself, as male or female and bridegroom or bride. This “spousal meaning of the body” is; therefore, “inscribed in the structure of the masculinity or femininity of the personal subject.” Several times in this audience, John Paul II notes that the “spousal meaning of the Body” must be reread in truth, which is to the say, the truth of masculinity and femininity writ into the body. When this “rereading” is done by the spouses, their conjugal consent, in its “subjective fullness,” draws its sacramental strength from God. Finally, he notes that the words of conjugal consent contain within themselves 3 meanings: the intention, the decision, and the choice. All of these make present the covenant with the spouses and God, but also “look toward the future” of their life together.

“Language of the Body” and the Concupiscence of the Flesh Audience 106: January 26, 1983

In this general audience catechesis, John Paul II again takes up his reflections on marriage as a sacrament, drawing of the spousal love of Christ and the Church. As he has previously noted several times, man must “reread” the language of the body in truth, that is the truth inscribed within him. John Paul II notes that here man, that is male and female, “Does not merely speak with the language of the body, but in some sense he allows the body to speak ‘for him’ and ‘on his behalf’: I would say, in his name and with his personal authority.” In contracting mar-

121 riage, the spouses constitute a visible sign of their covenant bond with God, with their bodies speaking “in the name and with the authority of the person,” that is, each of them. Furthermore, he notes, there is an “organic link” between “rereading the integral meaning of the language of the body in the truth” and also the “use of that language in conjugal life.” As he has previously noted, it is possible here for the couple to speak either truth or falsehood. John Paul II points out here: “If the human being - male and female - in marriage…gives to his behavior a meaning in conformity with the fundamental truth of the language of the body, then he too ‘is in the truth.’ In the opposite case, he commits lies and falsifies the language of the body.” He compares this truth or falsehood with the “true prophets” and “false prophets” of the Old Testament in noting that some testified to the truth of God and some testified to a lie. Finally, John Paul II underscores a basic premise of his Wednesday audience catechesis’ in underscoring the anthropological character of the sacramental sign of marriage: “We build it on the basis of theological anthropology and in particular on what from the beginning of the present considerations we have defined as ‘theology of the body.’”

Audience 107: February 9, 1983

In this audience, John Paul II addresses what he terms the “man of concupiscence,” that is, man is his fallen, postlapsarian, state (“historical man”). Drawing of his previous points accentuated from the Sermon on the Mount (Mt 5:28), he notes that the human heart, while impacted by concupiscence, is not “accused and condemned by Christ,” but rather is “called” to conversion. He is the man of the “call,” who is called “in and for” Christ. Concupiscence, then, “does not destroy the capacity to reread the ‘language of the body’ in truth,” though it does incline one to sin and error. “Nevertheless,” John Paul II notes, “in the sphere of the ethos of redemption there is always the possibility of passing from ‘error’ to the ‘truth’ as well as the possibility of return, or of conversion, from sin to chastity as an expression of life according to the Spirit” (Gal 5:16). After having reread the body in the spirit of truth, even the man of concupiscent then, is capable of living out this moral truth in the conjugal and familial communion of persons. While man is, then, a “man of concupiscence,” he is not simply a man guided by “libido.” Likewise, he is also “able to distinguish the truth from falsity in the language of the body and can be the author of the true (or false) meanings of that language.” The proper “hermeneutics of the sacrament”; therefore, help us to understand that man is called to a deeper conversion and “not merely ‘accused.’”

2. The Song of Songs Resuming Genesis: Wonder

Audience 108: May 23, 1984 - Not Delivered207

207 John Paul II delivered a total of 129 catecheses on the body, with 135 actually written in Polish, later translated into Italian. Michael Waldstein notes the following: “John Paul II did not deliver TOB 117, perhaps for scheduling reasons…The archival materials show that 117 (which has no delivery date) comes before 117b.

122 In the following general audience addresses, some of which were not actually delivered, John Paul II takes up the book of Song of Songs, specifically as it relates to the spousal love and man and woman.208 He notes that the Song of Songs “demonstrates the richness of this language” of the body, which “is the visible sign of man and woman’s participation in the covenant of grace.” In reading the text, John Paul II notes of the language used, that the “words, move- ments, and gestures of the spouses, their whole behavior, correspond to the inner movement of their hearts.” Furthermore, it is via this “prism of this movement” that we understand the "language of the body.” There is here, he notes, a “duet” of language shared between bride and bridegroom (John Paul II uses “duet” here twice to underscore the significance). Just as in Gen- esis 2, there is a “fascination” and “wonder” on the part of man in his experience of seeing the woman, he notes that this “runs in fuller form through the verses of the Song of Songs.” There becomes a “reciprocal wonder and admiration” on the part of each for the other’s masculinity and femininity, as they are visibly experienced. John Paul II notes here that, “The words of love spoken by both of them are therefore concentrated on the ‘body.’” This “attraction toward the other person” is encountered in both, and this “experience of beauty gives rise to pleasure, which is reciprocal.” We hear in the text: “O most beautiful among women” (1:8), and “How beautiful you are, my beloved, how beautiful you are!” (1:15). The femininity admired by the bridegroom, and which attracts the him to her, is “without a doubt a ‘language’ reread at one and the same time with the heart and the eyes” of the bridegroom.

Audience 109-110: May 30, 1984 - Not Delivered

In this general audience, that is two combined (109-110), John Paul II takes up again his reflections on the Song of Songs. He notes that among the bride and bridegroom, within the text, there is a “language of the body” spoken, which is a “language without words,” namely, one of wonder and amazement in the other. The poetic metaphors used by the author highlight the “language of the body” of each which “is interpreted as a language of the heart” of each. Each sees with the “eyes of the heart” as one encountered mutual “wonder and amazement” in beholding the other. John Paul II notes the the words of each express, “A particular experience of values that irradiates over everything that stands in relation to the beloved person.” There is, then, a “duet of love between the bridegroom and bride” which is a dialogue of love. We hear in the text: “You have ravished my heart, my sister, my bride” (Song 4:9). He notes here that the bridegroom “does not call her [bride] by her proper name,” but instead uses expressions “to say more than the proper name.” She is both “sister” and bride for him, indicating a shared humanity between them and the fact that she is “sister” also “in some sense helps the man to define and conceive himself.” The term also underscores a “specific rereading of the ‘language of the body’” between them. John Paul notes that the term “sister” bespeaks also of a “common past” together whereby “they descended from the same family cycle” and “common hearth.” Further-

208 Waldstein notes that Jewish exegetes have traditionally understood the Song of Songs as “an allegory of Yah- weh’s love for Israel, or an allegory of the history of the Chosen People.” Likewise, Christian exegetes “extended such an idea to Christ and the Church…or of the individual soul of the Christian…or to Mary.”

123 more, as they feel like brother and sister in humanity this “allows them to live their reciprocal closeness in security and to manifest it.” In this term, there is similarly a “disinterested tender- ness” between the two, with the Creator as their common Father. In their shared humanity, John Paul II notes, there remains a “reciprocal destiny” between them. He refers to the bride four times as a “master of her own mystery,” meaning there is an aspect of her which remains hidden to the bridegroom. He also refers to her as a “Garden enclosed,” and a “fountain sealed,” thereby underscoring the aspect of mystery within his bride. Both of these expression present the “whole personal dignity of the sex” of the bride as well. Finally, he notes, that the “freedom of the gift is the response to the deep consciousness of the gift expressed in the bridegrooms words.

Audiences 111-113: June 6, 1984 - Not Delivered

In these general audiences, John Paul II takes up again his reflections on the book of the Song of Songs and its implications for spousal love. He notes that the truth of love both “enables the same ‘language of the body’ to be reread in truth,” and “develops the subjective dimension of the heart” in each. Herein, there is a “discovery within oneself of the gift of the other.” There is a “reciprocal closeness” of each expressed within the body. Within the text we hear the love of the bridegroom for the bride: “O love, daughter of delights! You are stately as a palm tree, and your breasts are like clusters” (Song 7:6-7). Likewise, we hear of the love of the bride for the bridegroom: “I am my beloved’s [or for my beloved], and his desire is for me.” Here John Paul II notes, “The bride knows that ‘his desire’ is for her. She goes to meet him with the readiness of the gift of self.” Both the man and the woman “constitute a sign of reciprocal gift of self” for the other. She is the “master of the intimate mystery of her own femininity,” whereas he “desires” her and his senses “dwell” only upon her. John Paul II notes that their mutually shared eros, in its “subjective dynamism,” leads them to a “new search, a continual search” beyond what they currently experience together. He notes that they share less of a “longing,” but instead a “affec- tionate concern” for the other. This likewise points us towards the text of Ephesians, wherein Christ, as the Bridegroom, “desires to see his Bride without ‘spot,’” and desires to see her “holy and immaculate” (Eph 5:27). John Paul II notes that this eros is “never satisfied” and points the two beyond their current state of love. He underscores that there is a jealously involved in love: “Jealousy confirms in a certain sense the exclusivity and indivisibility of love,” and “indicates at least indirectly the irreversibility and subjective depth of one’s spousal choice.” Desire itself, then, “is not able to pass beyond the threshold of jealousy.” Several times John Paul II mentions here the “reciprocal belonging” each share for the other, “which is the fruit of reciprocal aspiration and search.” Finally, he notes that there is the clear impossibility in love of “one person being appropriated and mastered by the other.” In such an instance, there would be no possibility of becoming a “reciprocal gift” for the other.

3. When the “Language of the Body” Becomes the Language of the Liturgy (Reflections on To- bit) The Marriage of Tobias and Sarah

Audiences 114-116: June 26, 1984 - Not Delivered

124 In these general audiences, John Paul II begins his reflections on the marital love of Tobi- ah and Sarah in the Book of Tobit. He points out that the Tobit “does not have features similar to the Song of Songs,” however, it lends more attention to the spiritual warfare encountered by the couple, whereas the relationship of the bride and bridegroom in the Song is generally more ab- stract and focused on eros. Likewise, Tobit focuses more on the actual prayer life and lived experiences of the couple. Similar to the Song of Songs, Tobiah refers to Sarah as his “sister,” and Sarah’s father Raquel notes that she is Tobiah’s “kinswoman,” underscoring their bloodline connection but also their unity in the Abrahamic covenant (Tob 5:9; 7:2; 7;11-12; 8;7). John Paul II notes that here the words from the Song of Songs, “my sister, my bride” (4:10), come to mind. In is, in fact, “through marriage,” he notes, that “man and woman become brother and sister in a special way,” and this fraternal character “seems to be rooted in spousal love.” Sarah had previously been given in marriage seven times to different men, all of whom died prior to the conjugal union with her, due to the influence of the demon Asmodeus. John Paul II notes that, “Young Tobiah had reasons to fear a similar death” for himself. The marriage of Tobiah and Sarah, he notes, “from the very first moment…had to face the test of life-or-death,” not only for Tobiah but also for his new bride. However, it is “during the test of the wedding night, love is revealed as stronger than death.” With the assistance of the angel Rafael, twice informing Tobiah not to fear (6:18), the couple is led into deeper prayer and trust in God. Prior their conjugal union, on their wedding night, Tobiah says to his new bride: “Sister…get up. Let us pray and ask the Lord to give us his mercy” (8:4). John Paul II notes: “One can say that in this prayer…the dimension of the liturgy proper to the sacrament is outlined against the horizon of the ‘language of the body.’” He notes that it is not eros that characterizes the relationship of Tobiah and Sarah, as with the Song of Songs, but rather ethos, that is “the will and the choice of values.” Furthermore, with Tobiah and Sarah “there is neither a dialogue nor a duet between spouses,” as with the Song, but instead a spoken prayer in unison on their wedding night. They realize the spiritual warfare which threatens them, a “test of good and evil,” and that “one must free oneself within oneself” from the evil by purification from lust. Their prayer together becomes a model of the liturgy, as it is a prayer of “praise and thanksgiving,” and petition. Finally, John Paul II notes that in this prayer between them, the “language of the body” becomes a “language of the liturgy,” which is “deeply moving.”

Audience 117: No Date - Not Delivered

In this general audience, John Paul II returns to his reflections on Ephesians 5, wherein St. Paul addresses the “great mystery” (magnum mysterium) of Christ and the Church as it relates to the sacrament of marriage. He notes that he wishes to return to Ephesians, having first examined the books of Song of Songs and Tobit, in order to better highlight the “dimension of covenant and of grace.” Whereas Tobit “obviously makes use of references to the Old Covenant,” Ephesians conversely “reveals the eternal sources of the covenant in the love of the Father and at the same time its new and definitive institution in Jesus Christ.” He notes that this connection to the Old Covenant better “explains the sacramentality of marriage to the disciples and the followers of Christ, who participate in the New Covenant.” Similarly, this “refers to

125 marriage also in the dimension of the sacramental sign” (Eph 5:29, 33). As opposed to the Song of Songs, the text from Ephesians 5 “does not…contain the ‘language of the body’ in all the richness of its subjective meaning,” rather it contains the “objective confirmation of this language in its entirety.” The text further highlights masculinity and femininity in a “fully personalistic way,” by accentuating the moral unity between husband and wife, a unity here which John Paul II insists is “not ontological but moral.” He notes: “Through love, the wife’s ‘I’ becomes, so to speak, the husband’s ‘I.’ The body is the expression of this ‘I.’” Their union. therefore, is expressed through their bodies. The “language of the body,” in this manner, “becomes a language of the liturgy,” or prayer to God. This is because in it “the sacramental sign of marriage is built.” The liturgy contained therein, indicates this further connection with the covenant and grace made available to the couple in the sacrament, and it “models itself for the most part on Ephesians.”

Audience 117b: July 4, 1984

In this general audience address, John Paul II takes up again his reflections on Eph- esians 5, in light of the contributions of the Song of Songs and the Book of Tobit. The Ephesians text, he notes, highlights principally two points: the Father’s covenant with the people of Israel and the sacrament of marriage in Christ. The “great mystery” (magnum mysterium), if which the author of Ephesians speaks, “does not hesitate to extend the analogy of Christ’s union with the Church in spousal love,” or more specifically, the “spousal covenant between man and woman” in Christ. He notes that within this covenantal union of spouses there is the “dimension of holiness” to which each is called and which “penetrate the soul and body, the femininity and masculinity of the personal subject.” As the spouses live out this conjugal covenant each day this occurs by way of the liturgy and the graces made available to them through it. In the sacramental sign of marriage, and the liturgical language with accompanies it, there is assigned to each unity and indissolubility. This “liturgical language,” of which John Paul II speaks, becomes a “language of the body” spoken and lived out by each in their day-to-day lives together. he notes: “In the daily life of the couple, these acts become tasks, and the tasks acts. These acts, likewise, also the obligations, are by nature spiritual, but they are still at the same time expressed in the ‘language of the body.’” In this gradual growth experienced by both there arises both a grow in spiritual maturity and a “reciprocal fascination” between them, which is, he notes, “nothing but the fruit born of the gift of fear, one of the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit” (1 Thes 4:4-7). This mutual reverence in conjugal relations leads one to a deeper awareness of chastity, which is in “keeping with the Pauline tradition.” As they mature, turn away from concupiscence, and avail themselves to the graces of the sacrament they discover the “proper dimension of the freedom of the gift” one for the other. Finally, John Paul II notes it is “on this road” then, that, “conjugal life in some sense becomes liturgy.”

Chapter Three He Gave Them the Law of Life as Their Inheritance 1. The Ethical Problem The Moral Norm and the Truth of the “Language of the Body”

126 Audience 118: July 11, 1984

In this general audience, John Paul II begins his reflections on on the encyclical Hu- manae Vitae (1968), by Pope Paul VI, reiterating the consistent teachings of the Church on the prohibition of artificial means of contraception. He notes, in fact, that these reflections “will bring us to the conclusion of our, by now, long journey” addressing the theology of the body. He quotes the text: “The Church…teaches that each and every marriage act (quilibet matrimonii usus) must remain through itself open to the transmission of life. That teaching, often set forth by the magisterium, is founded upon the inseparable connection, willed by God and unable to be broken by man on his own initiative between the two meanings of the conjugal act: the unitive meaning and the procreative meaning” (HV, nos. 11-12). He notes that this passage from Hu- manae Vitae fits “is strictly linked” with his earlier reflections about marriage as the sacramental sign. The couple, as they live out their sacramental union, continually “re-propose the sign they themselves gave” on the day of their wedding, especially in the conjugal act. John Paul II underscores that HV “does not merely recall this norm [teaching], but it also tries to give adequate foundation” as to why we believe what we believe, “in order to better clarify more deeply that ‘inseparable connection…between the two meanings of the conjugal act.’” He points out that the document leads one to investigate not only the nature of the conjugal act between spouses but also “the acting subjects themselves.” Thus, the “innermost structure” or nature of the act itself “constitutes the necessary basis for an adequate reading” of the decisions of the acting spouses. It cannot be forgotten that these two meanings of the conjugal act “deeply unite husband and wife” and together “makes them able to generate new lives,” and thus, as Paul VI notes, there is an “inseperable connection between the two meanings” of the act. Finally, John Paul II highlights the fact that this teaching is both “constantly taught by the Church” and that it impacts the “ontological dimension (‘innermost structure’)” of man.

Audience 119: July 18, 1984

In this audience, John Paul II again takes up his reflections on Pope Paul VI’s Humanae Vitae. Both Pontiffs underscore the fact that the Church’s teaching on the prohibition against artificial contraction, in the marital act, is clearly part of her “constant doctrine” (HV, no 11). John Paul II focuses much of his attention on the ontological ramifications of HV, specifically the “cognitive, that is, subjective and psychological dimension.” Borrowing the phrase from HV, “reasonable and human character,” John Paul II insists that understanding this teaching is clearly in accord with the natural law (which he references four times in this audience). Likewise, this teaching “concerns also the same truth in the subjective and psychological dimension, that is to say, the right understanding of the innermost structure of the conjugal act.” He notes that there is a “rereading of the meanings” which needs to take place with the couple in order for this “structure” to have depth. Again, John Paul II highlights that this teaching, contained in Humanae Vi- tae, is clearly “corresponds to revealed teaching as a whole as contained in the biblical sources” (HV, no 4). Similarly, John Paul II notes that this teaching corresponds to and is in “deep conformity” with the consistent teachings of the Church sound in tradition and by her

127 magisterium. Understanding this consistent teaching, available to human reason, leads one to a more profound awareness of the biblical anthropology contained therein. John Paul II indicates that it is in genuinely understanding Humanae Vitae that his refections on the “theology of the body” itself took shape, and “to which we earlier devoted many analyses.” He underscores that there are “all good reasons why every believer, and in particular every theologian, should reread and understand more deeply the moral teaching of the encyclical” Humanae Vitae. Finally, he concludes: “The reflections we have been carrying out for a long time constitute precisely at such a reading.”

Audience 120: July 25, 1984

In this audience, John Paul II clearly lays out his goal from the outset: “We take up again the reflections that had the purpose of linking Humanae Vitae with the theology of the body as a whole.” It could be said that is, in fact, the munus of the entirety of his efforts in his catecheses on the body. Here he highlights the importance and influence of Vatican II, and in particular Gaudium et Spes, on Pope Paul VI’s encyclical: “Not only is the encyclical [Humanae Vitae] aligned with the conciliar teaching, but it constitutes the development and completion of the issues raised there, particularly in regard to the question of the ‘harmony between human love and reverence for life’” (GS, no. 51). Furthermore, Gaudium et Spes, “excludes any ‘true contradiction’ in the normative order, which Paul VI confirms on his part” as well. HV underscores the “inseparable connection” between the transmission of human life and conjugal love. Several times here, John Paul II highlights the genuine meaning of the term “pastoral,” with regards to the teaching of HV, frequently misinterpreted in the post-Conciliar years. He notes that genuine “pastoral concern means seeking the true good of man, promoting the values impressed by God in the human person,” which means, “it signifies applying the ‘rule of understanding.’” The proper or improper living out of the teachings found in HV have profound implications for both the “practical and pastoral spheres” of the life of the family. He acknowledges, that the living out of these teachings in one’s family often require “heroic sacrifices,” not infrequently misunderstood by the culture. Furthermore, the living out of this message may even “appear to many to be difficult or even impossible.” Nonetheless, HV notes, “To anyone who reflects well, it cannot but be clear that such efforts enable man and are beneficial to the human community” (HV, no.20). Finally, John Paul II notes, “The whole biblical background called ‘theology of the body’ offers us…the confirmation of the truth of the meal norm contained in Humanae Vitae.”

Audience 121: August 1, 1984

In this general audience address, John Paul II takes up the issue of “responsible parenthood,” as formulated in Pope Paul VI’s encyclical Humanae Vitae. The Second Vatican Council itself makes note of the “objective standards” by which conjugal love should be morally evaluated (GS, no.51). It further calls on the couple to grow in mature chastity. The “docile” reverence and living out of these teachings by the couple is not easy, but, as John Paul II notes, in doing so they “fulfill their task with human and Christian responsibility.” For its part, Vatican II under-

128 scores here that the couple is morally responsible for forming their consciences in the objective moral truths contained in the biblical tradition and the teaching magisterium of the faith. Spous- es; therefore, “Should be aware that they cannot proceed at will, but must always be governed according to a conscience dutifully conformed to the divine law itself, and should be docile toward the Church’s teaching office, which authentically interprets that law in light of the Gospel” (GS, no.50). John Paul II reiterates this point from the Council as well: “The conciliar constitution highlighted…without any ambiguity…the mature judgement of personal conscience in its relation to divine law authentically interpreted by the magisterium of the Church.” He then notes that when Vatican II and Paul VI speak of “responsible parenthood” this, in turn, has ramifications in the social, economic, and spiritual realms. Finally, John Paul II again notes that Hu- manae Vitae, when properly lived, reinforces the “innermost structure of the conjugal act” and “on the inseparable connection between the two meanings” of that act.

Audience 122: August 8, 1984

In this audience, John Paul II builds on Pope Paul VI’s teaching regarding the morally licit and illicit forms of regulation of birth. He notes from the beginning: “We said earlier that the principal of conjugal morality taught by the Church (Vatican II, Paul VI) is the criterion of faithfulness to the divine plan.” With this in mind, John Paul II, quoting HV, underscores that “the direct interruption of the generative process already begun” and “every action which, either in anticipation of the conjugal act, or its accomplishment, or in the development of its natural consequences, proposes, whether as an end or as a means, to render procession impossible” is illicit. Likewise, “morally permitted, by contrast, is ‘recourse to the infertile periods’” (HV, no. 16). There is, then, “and essential difference of an ethical nature” between the two. There are “completely opposite ethical qualifications” between them because, simply put, “the natural regulation of fertility is morally right,” whereas “contraception is not morally right.” In a consistent theme found in the writings of John Paul II, he notes here that the act itself actually means something, and in this case, the conjugal act: “The mode expresses itself in an act that - according to the Church’s teaching transmitted in the encyclical - possesses its own moral qualification, positive or negative.” One of the primary points of Humanae Vitae, therefore, is simply “to specify and clarify the moral principals of action, in the pastoral dimension.” Finally, John Paul II underscores the mission of the theology of the body as it pertains to teaching found in Humanae Vitae: “The theology of the body is not merely a theory, but rather a specific evangelical, Christ- ian pedagogy of the body. This pedagogic character comes from the character of the Bible and above all the gospel…Humanae Vitae answers the question about man’s true good as a person, inasmuch as he is male and female, about what corresponds to the dignity of man and woman when one is dealing with the important problem of the transmission of life in conjugal life.”

Audience 123: August 22, 1984

In this general audience, John Paul II takes up again his reflections on Pope Paul VI’s Humanae Vitae and its implications for family life and the conjugal life of spouses. He notes that there is often a tension between “domination…of the forces of nature,” and underscored by

129 HV (no.2) and the “self-mastery” which is needed for the human person. The latter “corresponds in fact to the fundamental constitution of the person,” whereas the former “threatens the human person.” This is because artificial contraception “breaks the constitutive dimension of the person, [and] deprives man of the subjectivity proper to him, and turns him into an object of manipulation.” Here, John Paul II addresses the nature of the body in its ontological depth. He notes that the body itself “is not only a field of reactions of a sexual character,” but instead it is also “a means of expression of man as an integral whole of the person.” This, then, reveals itself in the ‘language of the body” spoken by the person. This language has a profound “interpersonal meaning” between spouses and, in turn, speaks of the “truth of the sacrament” of marriage. John Paul II notes here that Humanae Vitae “carries this truth about the human body in its masculinity and femininity to its final consequences,” and these consequences have logical, moral, practical, and pastoral implications for the spouses. He underscores again here, as he has noted in previous audiences, that this truth speaks to the natural moral law, accessible by reason. There is a truth of the body, encountered in masculinity and femininity, which is spoken through “gestures and reactions” and “through the whole reciprocally conditioned dynamism of tension and enjoyment.” Man is a person, then, and as such he is a being “precisely because he is master of himself and has dominion over himself.” Furthermore, because he is master of himself he can freely become a gift for another (“freedom of the gift”). In order for this giftedness to be possible; however, he must live in the “criterion of truth” whereby the “conjugal act ‘means’ not only love, but also potential fruitfulness,” and therefore “it cannot be deprived of its full and adequate meaning by means of artificial interventions.” When it is deprived, this, in turn, “ceases to be an act of love,” and becomes; instead, the “essential evil of the contraceptive act.”

Audience 124: August 29, 1984

In this general audience address, John Paul II examines the nature of conjugal chastity, as understood in Humanae Vitae. The encyclical, we recall, “shows the moral evil of contraception” and yet “approves the natural regulation of fertility” in an effort to promote responsible parenthood. This responsible parenthood, Paul VI notes, requires that spouses “acquire and possess solid convictions concerning the true values of life and of the family,” and that they “strive to acquire perfect self-mastery” or chastity. To do so further requires an ascesis or sacrificial love. HV notes that this discipline “demands continual effort,” yet enables them to “fully develop their personalities,” having been “enriched with spiritual values” (HV, no. 21). This spiritual maturity impacts not only the couple, but also the entire family as well, as a “communion of persons.” John Paul II notes here that this point was underscored in 1980 at the Synod of Bishops on the family, which rendered the post-synodal apostolic exhortation Familiaris Consortio (1981), and further highlighted this teaching from Humanae Vitae. He notes: “This pedagogy of the body [theology of the body], whose key today is Humanae Vitae, can be explained only in the full context of a correct vision of the values of life and the family.” The ascesis among spouses enables them to practice periodic continence, which is a “definite and moral attitude” and a virtue. It is a virtue (chastity) lived in the “morality of a certain behavior” for the good of the family. When a couple fails to live in this truth, and practices artificial means of contraception,

130 there is a “reduction to mere biological regularity” which is “detached from the ‘order of nature,’” and further “deforms the authentic thought of Humanae Vitae.”

Audience 125: September 5, 1984

In this general audience, John Paul II addresses the misunderstandings surrounding the body, and what qualifies as legitimate means for regulating births for the couple. When Hu- manane Vitae refers to the “natural” means of regulating births, it is to be understood as a “way of behaving” which “corresponds to the truth of the person and thus to the person’s dignity,” and this dignity “belongs ‘by nature’ to man as a rational and free being.” When the couple lives out a responsible parenthood, in accord with this nature, they live “according to the Creator’s plan in the natural order of human fruitfulness.” We recall, here, a point highlighted in previous audiences that the human body “speaks not only with the whole outer expression of masculinity and femininity, but also with the inner structures of the organism, or somatic and psychosomatic reactivity.” John Paul II notes that some mistakenly “biologize” the body, whereby the ‘language of the body’ is stripped and its deeper meaning is amputated. Furthermore, spacing births among spouses can itself become a “source of abuses if the couple thereby attempt to evade procreation without just reasons.” Some of the factors taken into account in determining the regulation of birth would be the overall good of one’s family, the health of spouses, the means of the couple, and the overall good for society and the Church. Both John Paul II and Humanae Vitae speak of this “responsible parenthood” as living in accord with the “objective moral order of God,” as taught by Scripture and the Church’s magisterium. When lived in accord with this “objective moral order,” there is clearly a “moral maturity” which fosters and grows among spouses. He notes that the choice for spouses, then, would be growth in temperance (chastity) or a life “detached from the ethical dimension” of marriage whereby conjugal relations become “merely functional and even utilitarian.” The “honorable practice of regulation of births,” as understood by Humanane Vitae, “is not only a ‘way of behaving,’” but also “an attitude that builds on the integral moral maturity of the persons.”

2. Outline of Conjugal Spirituality The Power that Flows from Sacramental “Consecration”

Audience 126: October 3, 1984

In this general audience address, John Paul II takes up the issue of the spirituality of the couple and the power which accompanies living in virtue. Quoting Pope Paul VI’s words in Humanae Vitae, he notes: “Christian married couples, then, docile to [Christ’s] voice, must re- member that their Christian vocation, which began at baptism, is further specified and reinforced by the sacrament of marriage” (HV, no. 25). This “docility” to Christ; therefore, allows the couple to “trace the main lines of the Christian spirituality of the conjugal life and vocation” made available to them by grace. Furthermore, he notes, “One can even say that the encyclical [HV] presupposes the whole tradition of this spirituality” grounded in the biblical tradition of the Church. Both Paul VI and John Paul II further highlight the “strengthening power” which ac-

131 companies the couple as they mature in “responsible parenthood” as it is intended by the Cre- ator’s plan. These “powers,” then, “allow for formation of the spirituality of spouses and parents in the spirit of an authentic pedagogy of the heart and body.” This “power,” he notes, is a love which has been “planted” in the human heart of spouses by the Holy Spirit himself. The spouses continually “implore” this power in their unitive prayer together. This said, John Paul II is clear that he does not wish to sidestep or “hide” the genuine sacrifices and “serious difficulties” living this “responsible parenthood” occasionally assumes within the culture today. Finally, he notes that it is with the sacraments, especially the Eucharist and the sacrament of Penance, that the couple the “humble perseverance” they need to continually live out this “responsible parenthood” in marriage.

Audience 127: October 10, 1984

In this general audience, John Paul II continues his reflections of the spirituality of married life in light of the teachings of Humanae Vitae. He notes that love “is a power” which “participates” in the love of God. Whereas the powers of concupiscence tend to “detach” the “language of the body” from moral truth, the “power of love, by contrast, strengthens it ever anew in that truth.” This “power of love” is a “capacity of a moral character,” which is ultimately “oriented toward the fullness of the good.” Its tasks; therefore, consist in protecting the “two meanings of the conjugal act” (HV, no.12), namely, the union of spouses and responsible parenthood. Vatican II (Gaudium et Spes) likewise highlights this “superior power” given to the spouses in the sacramental union which, in turn, “gives adequate content and value to conjugal acts according to the truth of the two meanings.” Love, then, “unites” these two meanings and gives form to them, not only in theory, but also in their practice within the marriage. John Paul II notes here that often one sees the “contradiction” presented to Humanae Vitae, by the skeptics of the encyclical, on the grounds that it is not possible to actually live this teaching. He notes; however, that, “One should not speak about ‘contradiction’ here, but only about ‘difficulty,’” which the encyclical itself makes note of. This “power of love,” made available to spouses, is threatened by the threefold concupiscence of the flesh (1 Jn 2:16). This love is forever “linked” to marital chastity, which “manifests itself as self-mastery or continence.” Finally, John Paul II notes that, “One can say that Humanae Vitae constitutes precisely the development of this biblical truth about Christian conjugal and familial spirituality.”

Audience 128: October 24, 1984

In this general audience address, John Paul II takes up the issue of continence, or chastity, within the life of the spouses. Continence, which he notes is connected to the cardinal virtue of temperance, “Consists in the ability to master control and orient the sexual desire.” In order for one to attain mastery over concupiscence of the flesh, he “must devote himself or herself to a progressive education in self-control and will, of sentiments, [and] of emotions.” Continence, then, is revealed as a “fundamental condition” for the spouses if they are to communicate in the “language of the body.” Here John Paul II highlights the fact that continence, as connected with temperance, does not act in separation from the other cardinal virtues, but instead is connected

132 also with prudence, justice, fortitude and “above all with love.” Furthermore, continence is not simply a form of “resistance” to concupiscence, but it also leads the spouses towards “deeper and more mature values” experienced in the conjugal together. This conjugal chastity lived out among spouses, also “reveals itself as a singular ability to perceive, love, and realize those meanings of the ‘language of the body’…and progressively enrich the spousal dialogue of the couple by purifying, deepening, and at the same time simplifying it.” The contradictions to Humanae Vitae, so often presented, disappear when conjugal morality is understood and lived in its fullness in this way. John Paul II notes again, quoting Paul VI, that there is no real contradiction in the teachings contained in Humanae Vitae, only “difficulty” in sometimes living it out (HV, no.25). Finally, he notes that there is a “subjective harmony” among the spouses when chastity is fully lived in responsible parenthood and mutual communion. “The task of chastity,” then, “lies not only in protecting the importance of the dignity of the conjugal act in relation to its procreative meaning,” but also in safeguarding the “interpersonal union” of spouses.

Audience 129: October 31, 1984

In this general audience, John Paul II takes up again his reflections on the virtue of continence as it pertains to Humanae Vitae. He points out that continence is “Nothing other than the spiritual effort aimed at expressing the ‘language of the body’ not only in the truth, but also in the authentic richness of the ‘manifestations of affection.’” The Church, he notes, “Is fully convinced” of the importance of “responsible parenthood” in the life of the family and that it “corresponds to the personal dignity of the spouses as parents, to the truth of their person, and of their conjugal act.” Highlighting the teachings found in Humane Vitae, John Paul II reiterates a common theme found in his own writings, namely, that a person is never a “means” to an end, but always an end in herself. Using another as a “means,” then, objectifies and “depersonalizes” him. Continence profoundly impacts the person in his or her masculinity and femininity, which touches upon the biological, psychological, conjugal, and spiritual aspects of the human person. He notes that when we speak of sexual “arousal,” this impacts the “interpersonal relations” on both a somatic and emotional level. The difference being that “arousal” occurs within the person on a “sexual” level, whereas emotion “refers above to the other person understood in his or her ‘wholeness.’” “Arousal” and “emotion,” then, are “not only two distinct experiences in the human ‘I’, but they also appear together within the same experience as two of its distinct components.” With arousal, John Paul II notes that it wants to express itself in both sexual and bodily pleasure, whereas emotion “limits itself to other ‘manifestations of affection.’” Finally, John Paul II underscores a point he previously made regarding continence, namely, that it is more than simply a “resistance” to concupiscence, but instead it also “orients” one towards self-mastery. By continence, one maintains an “equilibrium” between the communion of spouses and that of parenthood.

Audience 130: November 7, 1984

In this general audience address, John Paul II continues his reflections on the virtue of continence in light of the teachings of Humanae Vitae. Here he draws attention to both the pre-

133 Christian and Christian classics which touch upon ethical and anthropological thought, wherein continence (chastity) is highly valued as a guiding principal in the moral life, especially in the “sensual and emotive sphere.” In this case, it assists one in directing the “line of arousal towards its correct development,” and in directing emotion “by orienting it toward the deepening” of its “disinterested character.” Within the conjugal act itself, there is an “intensification of emotion” whereby a “deep emotional stirring” takes place among spouses. Within both the “arousal” and “emotion” encountered in conjugal relations there is a “reciprocal reactivity” in both masculinity and femininity. For its part, Humanae Vitae teaches “responsible parenthood” as the “verifica- tion of a mature conjugal love” and enables spiritual growth between them. John Paul II underscores here that simple knowledge of the “Rhythms of fertility” does not ensure continence or maturity, rather, genuine continence “presupposes that one his able to direct sensual and emotive reactions in order to allow the gift of self to the other.” One must, therefore, be in “mature possession” of oneself first in order for this self-giving to take place. Because the human body is “oriented from within” towards self-donation and the communion of persons (spousal meaning of the body), concupiscence has “deformed” man’s capacity to be in full possession of oneself. Nonetheless, continence “gradually reveals the ‘pure’ aspect of the spousal meaning of the body,” whereby this becomes possible. Finally, John Paul II notes that this personal communion between spouses has both personalistic and theological character.

Audience 131: November 14, 1984

In this general audience address, John Paul II again takes up his reflections on the virtue of continence, drawing upon the catechesis of Humanae Vitae. He notes that love is united with chastity, which it turn manifests itself as continence, and directs the “inner order of the conjugal life” of spouses. Chastity, he notes, “Means living in the order of the heart.” In turn, this order aids in the development and growth of “affective manifestations.” In this way, conjugal chastity is “also confirmed as “life by the Spirit” (Gal 5:25), according to St. Paul’s expression.” It stands, then, “at the center of conjugal spirituality” among spouses, and as such, it is not only a moral virtue, it is also a virtue connected with the gifts of the Holy Spirit, namely reverence (donum pietatis). By the “power of the Holy Spirit,” the man and woman, come to realize and live out the communion of persons (communio personarum) between them, “who purifies, en- livens, strengthens, and perfects the powers of the human spirit” within them. This is given life, of course, by their prayer and sacramental life in Christ. John Paul II notes that among the gifts of the Holy Spirit given to the spouses, the gift of reverence “seems to have a fundamental meaning.” Reverence, then, “Sustains and develops in the spouses a signal sensibility for all that in their vocation and shared life carries the sign of the mystery of creation and redemption.” This gift; therefore, brings man and woman “into reverence for the two inseparable meanings of the conjugal act.” The spouses bear within them, then, a “deep orientation to the personal dignity” of the other and for the two-fold meaning of the conjugal act. There is, here, what John Paul II refers to as a “salvific fear” which yields a “full veneration” for the beauty of the conjugal union. The gift of reverence among spouses gives them a deep appreciation and gratitude for “what God has created” and sustained.

134 Audience 132: November 21, 1984

In this general audience address, John Paul II takes up again his reflections on the gift of reverence in the conjugal life of the spouses. He notes that reverence, which is “united with love and chastity, helps to identify, in the whole of conjugal life, the act in which…the spousal meaning of the body is linked with the procreative meaning.” He notes that it guides one to a deeper understanding of the profundity of the conjugal act. Furthermore, reverence, “shapes” the spirituality of the spouses in order that it can protect the actual “dignity of the [conjugal] act.” As John Paul II as previously noted, responsible parenthood also implies the “spiritual appreciation - in conformity with the truth - of the conjugal act” itself. The virtue of reverence ensures that the conjugal act does not devolve into simply a mechanical or “habitual” occurence, as it enables the couple to possess a “veneration for the majesty of the Creator” present in their lives. John Paul II notes that the virtue of reverence creates the “interior space of the mutual freedom of the gift” by which the spousal meaning of the body cane “fully manifested.” This reverence also has “enormous significance” for the “affective manifestations” among spouses, which enables them to see both the visible and invisible beauty in the other. The “freedom of the gift,” encounters by each, “brings with it a deep and all-encompassing attention to the person in his or her masculinity or femininity.” Finally, John Paul II notes, Humanae Vitae allows the spouses to mature in their conjugal spirituality by fostering a deep reverence, both for the other and for God present in their lives (“supernatural climate”). Humanae Vitae, then, “proclaims the inseparability of the connection” between truth and love in their lives.

Audience 133: November 28, 1984

In this final audience, John Paul II begins by referring to himself in the first person (“I”), juxtaposed to his earlier reflections wherein he used the plural “we.” He notes: “The whole of the catecheses that I began more than four years ago and that I conclude today can be grasped under the title, ‘Human Love in the Divine Plan,’ or with greater precision, ‘The Redemption of the Body and the Sacramentality of Marriage.’” Here he presents a review of the corpus of his work, noting that there were two parts: the Words of Christ and the Sacrament. He recalls that in part one he analyzed the words of Christ “at length in the wholeness of the Gospel text,” wherein Christ appeals “to the beginning” in his dialogue with the Pharisees regarding both the unity and indissolubility of marriage (Mt 19:8; Km 10:6-9). John Paul II then takes up the issue of “adultery committed in the heart” (Mt 5:28), as seen in the Sermon on the Mount. Part two of his catecheses addresses the sacrament of marriage as seen in Ephesians 5:22-33. He notes here that the entirety of his catecheses can also be understood as simply the “theology of the body,” as perhaps more of a “working” term, though he also understood it as “The Redemption of the Body and the Sacramentality of Marriage.” John Paul II points out that these catecheses on the body, developed over four years, “Can be correctly developed by taking as one’s point of departure the moment at which the light of revelation touches the reality of the human body.” Fur- thermore, he acknowledges that the theology of the body does, “in some sense,” also “constitute

135 an extensive commentary on the doctrine contained precisely in Humanae Vitae.” He also underscores that in the Synod of Bishops (1980), which yielded the post-synodal apostolic exhortation Familiaris Consortio, the bishops themselves called for a deeper understanding of the “biblical and personalistic aspects of the doctrine contained in Humanae Vitae.” Familiaris Consor- tio, and his own catecheses on the body, are understood by John Paul II as assisting in this effort. Finally, he notes that true progress within culture always takes place in developing the dignity of the human person. In his catecheses on the body, John Paul II attempts to “find answers to the perennial questions in the conscience of men and women and also to the difficult questions of our contemporary world concerning marriage and procreation.”

136 V.) Conclusion and Implications for the Culture:

Pope St. John Paul II saw the world through a ‘culture-guides-history’ optic, that is, culture, and to some degree theology itself, shapes history for better or worse. Karol Wojtyla dedicated much of his priestly and pastoral ministry with the goal of forming culture with a more humane and anthropologically grounded direction, be it with his emphasis on the metaphysical role of art in his Letter to Artists (April 4, 1999), or, in perhaps the most undervalued encyclical of the Pontificate, Centessimus Annus (1991), wherein he argues for the free and virtuous society tethered to the dignity of the human person. Wojtyla’s “passion for man,” as Joseph Ratzinger coined it, was the consistent thread woven through the fabric of his insegnamenti, even prior to his election as Pontiff in October of 1978. Whether Karol Wojtyla’s ontological vision for man is gradually beginning to be understood and applied on the parochial level is a matter still debated, though realistically, it would vary geographically depending on the theological formation of one’s local bishop, clergy, and lay faithful. Still, the “John Paul II generation” of bishops has begun, as George Weigel aptly put it, to finally “come online” and, gradually apply his Theology of the Body within their particular Dioceses. How long it may take for this fruit to impact the wider culture, again, remains to be seen. The culture driven history of the 20th century in particular has shown how obtuse, and at times downright demonic, man can be without an “adequate anthropology” grounded in Christ’s vision for man. Within the group-think of utilitarianism witnessed in its tyrannical leaders, despotic governments, and the verdicts of a nation’s highest court, the 20th century provided no shortage of deficient anthropologies, as Karol Wojtyla highlighted in Memory and Identity (2005). As we have noted in the introduction, in the years leading up to and following virtually every ecumenical council (21 total) in Church history, there have been years of kinks for the Church to work through: heresies often instigated by clergy, faulty implementations of a particular council’s teaching, misrepresentation by theologians and the media, and, perhaps most insidious, the simple ignoring of its particular teaching altogether. The Second Vatican Council (1962- 1965) was no exception. While not summoned by St. John XXIII to address a particular heresy or crisis, as was historically the case, its proper implementation is only now beginning to see fruition, more than fifty years on. That Karol Wojtyla’s Theology of the Body draws much of its inspiration and anthropological cues from Vatican II, is impossible to deny. The documents Dig- nitatis Humanae and Gaudium et Spes in particular shaped his vision for man, and therefore, his catechesis on the human body. For this reason, one simply cannot understand the Theology of the Body apart from Vatican II, or for that matter, the Deposit of Faith. Though not delivered via an act of the solemn Papal magisterium, and not infallibly taught, the teachings of the Theology of Body coalesce organically with infallibly defined doctrine within the larger corpus of Catholic thought. The need for the Theology of the Body at all levels of the Church has never been greater. The privation of sound catechesis surrounding Amoris Laetitia (2016), for instance, and the syn- ods on the family of 2014 and 2015, highlight the greater necessity for theological formation in the Theology of the Body not only among the people of God but, similarly, with clergy and the-

137 ologians at high levels in the Church. Though mentioned by Pope Francis in the text (Chapter IV), the robust development and engaging of the Theology of the Body and Familiaris Consortio (1981) is altogether lacking in AL. Nonetheless, the vacuum left by its absence underscores the generally mundane state of catechesis surrounding the Theology of the Body today, and the need for its further development on the parochial level. The magnanimous efforts here of the Pontifi- cal John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and the Family should be noted. The faculty at the JPII Institute have done a yeoman’s job of respectfully correcting misguided interpretations of John Paul II’s catechesis and, more broadly, infallible Catholic doctrine, which has lately been ignored even among Church leaders.209 Recall that Joseph Ratzinger himself highlighted the need for this healthy accountability exhibited by theologians in The Ecclesial Role of the Theolo- gian (May 24, 1990). Still, there is hope. While in years past, when a particular teaching of a Pontiff or Council would be formed, it generally took many years for it to reach the lay faithful in the pews. Con- versely, with John Paul II’s Theology of the Body, it is the laity who are forming their Church leaders, not infrequently taking it upon themselves to both establish formation groups around TOB, pushing for greater catechesis by Church leaders, and going on to seek higher education surrounding it, so as to better apply it within their lives, families, and parishes. It is usually not that that Diocesan bishops are somehow opposed to the Theology of the Body, but rather that it is often just way down on the priority list of what a particular Ordinary is charged with tackling on a daily basis, and thus, ipso facto, forever “tabled.” Within the Catholic world, many of the lay faithful have taken it upon themselves to learn and apply John Paul II’s catechesis on the body, having witnessed firsthand the nuclear fallout of the sexual revolution and sappy catechesis with their own children, grandchildren, and marriages. In my own parish here in Memphis, lay groups have seized on the anthropological vision of John Paul II to such an extent that, as pastor, I feel deeply obligated to continue my own formation in the Theology of the Body and apply this in my preaching. It is both humbling and exciting. Karol Wojtyla’s catechesis on the human body, what he understood as “Human Love in the Divine Plan,” “The Redemption of the Body and the Sacramentality of Marriage,” and, of course, the Theology of the Body, was never meant to be interpreted as simply a theological exercise, debated solely in the world of academia. Rather, it was intended it to be a lived reality, thereby impacting real people in the pews, who then further transform culture and the common good by implementing its ethos. The need for unpacking and applying its truths to the current cultural climate has never been greater. The anthropological confusion wrought by same-sex marriage, transgenderism, and radical feminism, for instance, cry out for greater theological clarity and pastoral guidance from Church leaders. Given the reluctance of many Catholic leaders to publicly address the disorder of the homosexual inclination and the promotion of its cultural agenda, it should come as no surprise that some of the magisterial documents addressing homo-

209 Granados, Jose; Kampowski Stephan; Perez-Soba, Juan Jose; Accompanying, Discerning, Integrating: A Hand- book for the Pastoral Care of the Family According to Amoris Laetitia (Emmaus Road Publishing: 2017).

138 sexuality are largely ignored, or in some cases, silenced altogether.210 Add to this the further confusion surrounding this issue by clergy themselves, such as with Fr. James Martin, S.J., and the issue is saturated with confusion on all levels in the Church. In the post-Conciliar years, under the guise of being “pastoral” the topic of homosexuality, for instance, has been almost entirely ignored, largely because of cultural animus towards Catholic doctrine, though also because many of the Church’s pastors feel unequipped to address it, or simply lack the courage to do so. Similarly, from the standpoint of families, many parents of children who struggle with same-sex attraction tend to side-step confronting the issue with their children under the guise of “loving” them. “Love,” therefore, becomes amputated from any form of confrontation with one’s child and gives parents a pass for having difficult, and often heated, discussions. Both the absence of courageous leaders and parents runs contrary to settled Catholic doctrine which always unites two points when ministering to homosexuals: acceptance of the person coupled with the moral truth of homosexual acts.211 Keeping in mind, of course, that presenting the moral truth of homosexual acts to the homosexual must itself be done in a loving and non-caustic way, otherwise it is likely to further compound the problem and alienate the homosexual person from his family and the Church. A vigorous engaging of John Paul II’s Theology of the Body would, no doubt, help to bring clarity to both the people in the pews and clergy leading the people in the pews on this issue. For his part, John Paul II was convinced that a Pontiff could easily find himself in an ecclesial quagmire if he was not theologically well-grounded, or at least listened to the counsel of advisors who were. For this reason, shortly after his election as Pontiff, he made the well-reasoned decision to draft Joseph Ratzinger as his primary theological advisor, thereby making him the Prefect for the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF). Ratzinger had only briefly been made archbishop of Munich and Freising, and John Paul II had originally intended on making him Prefect for Catholic Education, though later choosing William Cardinal Baum at Ratzinger’s suggestion. Soon thereafter; however, Wojtyla named him as Prefect of CDF, a position Ratzinger would hold until 2005. In their weekly meetings each Friday, the two would ex- amine the landscape of theological issues and problems, and decide together how best to tackle them, given the rife misinterpretations of theology in the post-conciliar years, what Ratzinger later dubbed a “hermeneutic of discontinuity” (December 22, 2005). Ratzinger was at pains to highlight the anthropological and ontological vision of man presented by John Paul II, including in his own writings, such as with the Collaboration of Men and Women in the Church and in the World (July 31, 2004). Joseph Ratzinger never understood his role as Prefect of CDF apart from Karol Wojtyla’s particular vision of man, nor the man himself. In The Ratzinger Report (1985), for instance, he addresses some of the flawed ecclesiologies common in the post-conciliar years, such as the teachings of Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre against Vatican II on the far right, and the argument for conferring ordination upon women on the far left, a topic John Paul II insisted the

210 Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith: On the Pastoral Care of Homosexual Persons (1986); Some Consid- erations Concerning the Response to Legislative Proposals on the Non-Discrimination of Homosexual Persons (1992); Considerations Regarding Proposals to Give Legal Recognition to Unions Between Homosexual Persons (2003).

211 Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 2358.

139 Church had “no authority whatsoever” to change (Ordinatio Sacerdotalis, 1994). Both Karol Wojtyla and Joseph Ratzinger insisted that a proper hermeneutic of Vatican II could not include a reductionist liberal-conservative taxonomy, as some Catholic circles understood it, but rather one which understood the teachings of the Council consistently in accord with the twenty ecumenical councils before it. Later as Benedict XVI, Ratzinger continued his own catechesis on the person, drawing on the vision elucidated by John Paul II, such as with his address to the Roman Curia on December 21, 2012. One sees; therefore, an organic continuity between the teachings of John Paul II and Joseph Ratzinger (Benedict XVI), over thirty-five years collectively, especially as it pertains to the human person. Theological history aside, one is left to question: Now what? Given the current milieu of “discontinuity” and theological tumult within the Church, what can the average Catholic do to help steady the ship and perhaps bring more theological transparency to the Church in their local parishes? That there is theological ambiguity within the world presbyterate and the lay faithful is hard to deny, and often the situation seems to be worsening rather than improving. Progressive and Lefebvrist animus against John Paul II notwithstanding, both camps would be hard-pressed to at least acknowledge that Karol Wojtyla’s position on issues of morality and liturgy were, if nothing else, clearly stated and often repeated. When asking, then, ‘now what?’ it may be that John Paul II’s Theology of the Body is needed now more than ever. We don’t claim to propose that the Theology of the Body might serve as a sort of universal panacea for all Church woes and theological confusion, only that it may be a good place to start. It may be that now is the time to resurrect a newfound emphasis on the human person, sexuality, marriage, celibacy, and metaphysics encapsulated in Karol Wojtyla’s insegnamenti on the body. Assuming John Paul II is correct in his assertion that there is a “nuptial meaning” writ into the human body, perhaps the Church even has a moral responsibility to “inject into the veins” of the culture this teaching, to borrow a phrase from Martin Luther King Jr. The failure to do so could be nothing less than catastrophic. The medicine of metaphysics may not be enough to put the genie back in the bottle of regaining a cultural respect for the human person, but it would help. The cultural loss of metaphysics may well be the greatest tragedy that has accompanied the post-modern era. As John Paul II notes in Memory and Identity, the implications from En- lightenment era relativism continues to ripple through the halls of the academy, in particular to such an extent that it has become virtually impossible for contemporary man to claim that anything is, in fact, true. Karol Wojtyla proposed a more vigorous anthropology to the academy, and in particular to Catholic academics, in Ex Corde Ecclesia (1990) and Sapientia Christiana (1979), both of which highlight a truth-based reading of man grounded in his ontological depth. The Land O’Lakes conference of 1967, having previously rejected this deeper notion of man, left plenty of relativistic residue to be cleaned up, a task John Paul II did his very best to tackle. As- suming this deficit of metaphysics could be remedied, the Theology of the Body may be the best place to start.

140 VI.) Final Word from the Author:

I am a parish priest and a pastor, not a theologian. I compiled this work because, as a parish priest, I have witnessed the considerable need for healthy catechesis on marriage, family and human sexuality, that is spoken of so beautifully in John Paul II’s Theology of the Body. There are many vibrant and catechetically sound parishes in the Catholic Church around the globe, and it is wonderful to see them thriving. One can say; however, that there is no shortage of parishes with lackluster spiritual vibrancy and catechetical messages that are, to be generous, watered down and lacking in the Holy Spirit. We need help. In leading retreats around the coun- try for Dioceses and clergy, I find most priests to genuinely love their ministry, as I noted in the introduction, but many are either on spiritual auto-pilot or simply fatigued from age or work or both. Thus, adequately instructing their staff, D.R.Es, or parishioners on the Theology of the Body is often outside the realm of what they are either willing to do on a daily basis or could lo- gistically do given hours in the day. It is here, I believe, that our people need to step in to assimilate and teach more, and here that our clergy need to courageously preach more if John Paul II’s teachings are ever to make the leap from a classroom to the pew and from the pews to our families. How precisely this happens is a topic for another work.

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