Theology of the Body and the Need for Beauty in Catechesis

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Here is a talk that I gave not too long ago at a conference on catechesis in our diocese:

Since the beginnings of our Western intellectual tradition, philosophers, poets, and artists have expressed the universal human longing for beauty. Humans all desire beauty, long for it, and cannot live without it. An encounter with a beautiful landscape, piece of art, or person leads us to transcend ourselves, and carries us into the realm of the eternal, the unknown, the mysterious, and the sacred. Dostoevsky wrote that the “world will be saved by beauty.” How true it is that an encounter with a truly beautiful person (not necessarily only physical beauty), can carry us into a new dimension of existence, can bring joy into our day, and inspire us to do the good. This is because such a person lives out the truth of their humanity. We think of Mother Teresa serving the poorest of the poor, in spite of fifty years of spiritual darkness. We think of Maximilian Kolbe, sacrificing his life voluntarily for the life of a stranger, and thus living out the truth of his human person, to live as self-gift. The saints are beautiful people because they witness to us the truth about the human being.

True beauty is in reality authentic love, living out the call to holiness. “Man cannot live without love; he remains a being incomprehensible to himself,” wrote John Paul II in his inaugural encyclical, Redemptor hominis. “Beauty is the splendor of truth,” wrote Plato. It is this “splendor of truth” that John Paul II discussed throughout his life, in his academic works from the period before his papacy, and in his encyclicals and papal documents, even titling one of them with this very phrase.
Unfortunately, we live in a world often devoid of beauty, truth, and goodness. The walls of the dark halls through which our culture passes are plastered with images of the grotesque; the immoral and the evil is often presented as good; there is a contempt for truth, as expressed in the “dictatorship of relativism,” in which objective and transcendent truths about creation, and most especially, the human person, are presented as socially constructed, malleable norms which have changed and continue to change over time.

The dignity of the human person is trampled upon through wars, poverty, materialistic consumerism, and most especially through attacks on the dignity of men and women, and the gift of human sexuality. It is difficult to see how Saint Irenaeus could have said that the “glory of God is man fully alive.” What does it even mean for “the human person to be fully alive,” when even many members of our own Church pass through life apathetically, distracted by the pursuits and pleasures of this world, without placing their thoughts, hopes, and dreams in the world to come? How are we called to live beautiful lives, in conformity with the truth about our existence as human beings? How can the Church minister to its young faithful, who are often hopeless, disillusioned, or apathetic about their lives?

A calling to be “fully alive,” to live out the deepest and most authentic human vocation, seems difficult if not impossible. We have lost our vision of what it means to be “fully alive,” to possess life “abundantly” here on this earth, in anticipation of the world to come. Our world espouses an attitude that seeks to build a utopia on earth. Such an attitude, a lack of an eschatological perspective, is seen in a particular way in the prevalent attitude toward sexuality. Sexuality is seen as a commodity to trade, and the desire for “great sex” is an important part of many peoples’ lives. Just look around in the magazine stands in the grocery store. Though original sin is a reality in the course of human history since the Fall, in a particular way, the twentieth century was especially characterized by these attitudes towards sex and the human person, which we will call heresies.

The nature of a heresy, according to Chesterton, is that it is at best a half-truth, a fragment of the truth that is exaggerated at the expense of the rest of the truth. It is so insidious because it is so attractive. Many “heresies” have been spread about the nature and meaning of human beings and their gift of sexuality. One writer said, “I would go even so far to state that there is no other source of true contentment or understanding of life values than that which comes from the realization of love in marriage…” Pretty good words. These are from Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood. She goes on to say, “Through sex mankind may attain the great spiritual illumination which will transform the world, which will light up the only path to an earthly paradise.” Sanger recognizes the sacredness of sex, that sexuality has spiritual dimensions, that sex can be a great source of joy and fulfillment, and it is realized in the love of marriage. At the same time, she proposes that sex is a beautiful thing whose end is to build up a utopia on earth. Since she believes there is no eternal end for human beings, this great sacredness of sex can be the key to an earthly paradise. This leads her to conclude that sex is a primary end of human existence, and therefore unlimited access to this commodity, made possible through birth control, can “break women’s bonds…and free her to understand the cravings and soul-needs of herself and other women. It will enable her to develop her love-nature separate from and independent of her maternal nature.”

This author’s ideas are alive today in the spirit of the sexual revolution, which is built upon the heresy that sex is sacred and must therefore be used by an individual, and that an individual can use others to obtain it. If a woman espouses these views about herself and her sexuality, Sanger proposes, then she will come to see men as “veritable gods…worthy of the profoundest worship.” Michael Waldstein asks whether this attitude has truly turned men into “veritable gods,” or whether such a philosophy has developed a culture of “users and consumers,” who can dispense with their sexual objects once the thrill and “erotic excitement ebbs away?”
This example of a modern “heresy,” which reduces sexuality to a commodity to be traded and a means for using other people to gain one’s own satisfaction, lies at the foundation of many of the problems we face in our cultural edifice today, in which women especially have suffered greatly as a result of the confusion regarding sexuality. At a more fundamental level, this outlook contradicts the proper ordering within and meaning of a human person.

Sanger died just over forty years ago, and her ideas seem to have taken hold of a good portion of cultural attitudes. Thousands of miles away, behind the Iron Curtain, another contemporary philosopher reflected upon the meaning of human sexuality and human love. This man had suffered much in his early childhood, and lost his entire family by his mid twenties. Life brought him many challenges and tests of human love, but by the 1940’s, he wrote that he had “learned to fall in love with human love.” As a young priest, this philosopher was placed in a parish and his pastoral assignment was to minister to college students and young married couples, whose hopes, dreams, failures, and struggles under a communist regime he had quickly come to appreciate.

These experiences, the desire to help young families grow in love in the midst of anti-family pressure from the government, widespread encouragement of abortion, rampant alcoholism, and economic policies that sought to break down the family, led this man to compile a book that would encourage young people to live their humanity to its fullness. In this book, entitled Love and Responsibility, which our philosopher Karol Wojtyła published in 1959, he sought to discuss human love from a philosophical perspective. He asked, “What can we know of the human person and the universal phenomenon of love, based on experience, reason, psychology, and sexuality?” Drawing upon his discussions with philosophers, psychologists, and mostly his conversations with the young friends to whom he ministered, Wojtyła argued that the opposite of love is not hate, but “use”: using another person as an object, as a means to an end. The key to this authentic understanding of human dignity lies in Wojtyła’s personalisitc norm, which can either be presented in a negative or positive way. Fundamental to the protection of human dignity is the insight that a “person is the kind of good which does not admit of use and cannot be treated as an object of use and as such the means to an end.” Wojtyła reformulates this philosophical principle and points out, “the person is a good towards which the only proper and adequate attitude is love.”

Furthermore, this attitude of love must be understood in a personal way, taking into account that we are all sexual beings. Love itself, as Pope Benedict points out in Deus Caritas Est, can be a confusing term, especially for us anglophiles who only have one word for the concept. Wojtyła proposes four kinds of love. Love as attraction is a type of love, by which we are drawn to the sexual values of another person. These values reside in a specific person. “The attraction on which love is based must originate not just in a reaction to visible and physical beauty, but also in a full and deep appreciation of the beauty of the person.” So we arrive back at our universal longing for beauty. We are all attracted to beauty, and physical beauty is a valid and important attraction, but it is not enough. We must learn to desire a person.

Desire, the second type of love, is “of the essence of love” because we are all limited and finite human beings, who are not self-sufficient and therefore “need other beings.” This explains why we can all become lonely, and sometimes feel an inexplicable longing in our hearts. Augustine realized that this longing to “be with” another can only be fully satisfied by God, when he said, “My heart is restless until it rests in You.” Desiring after another person can be authentic when we realize that a person is a “good for me.” Thus, it is good for a husband to desire his wife, who brings the best qualities out in him. It is using her when he desires her simply because he wants to get his pleasure and satisfaction. Love as desire is therefore not complete. “It is not enough to love a person as a good for oneself, one must also, and above all, long for that person’s good.”
To truly love another person is to desire their good. For this reason, parents sacrifice their time, money, and leisure for the care of their children. A priest starts adoration at his parish for the spiritual good of his parishioners. Love as goodwill is therefore “selflessness.” In Wojtyła’s view, therefore, true and fully authentic love consists in the sacrificial and unselfish love in which a person makes a gift of his person to another. For a man and a woman, authentic love “cannot but be love as desire, but must as time goes by, move more and more in the direction of unqualified goodwill.”

Finally, “Love finds its full realization” not in the individual, but “in a relationship between…persons.” Betrothed love consists in self-giving, which differs from “desiring the good” for another. Death to self serves as the foundation of this highest form of love. Though a doctor, pastor, or teacher might give of herself, this might only be the result of circumstance, goodwill, or friendliness. Betrothed love, however, is self-surrender to a “chosen person.” This is the most perfect, sacrificial love that each human being is called to.

These key insights about human love and about a utilitarian mindset that entered into our cultural understanding of human relationships and sexuality, in a particular way, from the early days of the twentieth century, as seen in the writings of Margaret Sanger, form a foundation of Wojtyła’s thought. Love and Responsibility, became a “bestseller,” and Janet Smith has proposed that this work belongs on the list of the classic books of western civilization, alongside Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, and Dante: “The pope’s book belongs in this group, since I think generations to come will read his book — they certainly should do so, for if they do they will find that it boldly confronts questions we all have about life and offers a way of viewing human relationships which, if accepted, would radically alter the way in which we conduct our lives.” The book was so popular that the philosopher-priest (a bishop by this time), decided to write a sequel to this book, examining the human vocation to love from a theological perspective.
In a particular way, he sought to address some of the important developments in the Church and society since the publication of Love and Responsibility, especially the promulgation of Humanae Vitae and its aftermath. Karol Wojtyła desired to articulate clearly the “adequate biblical anthropology” necessary for a complete and comprehensive understanding of the encyclical and its implications. He thus wrote this book, largely a commentary on the Book of Genesis, the Gospels, and the Letters of Saint Paul, and titled it, “Man and Woman He Created Them,” a “theology of the body.” Before the volume was published, however, Wojtyła, as we all know, ascended the throne of St. Peter. Since at the time, it was not customary for a pontiff to publish a book, John Paul II decided to convert his work, written in Kraków, into a series of catecheses, given at the weekly Wednesday audiences. Thus, the first five years of his catechesis as pontiff was born.

This catechesis formed the foundation of his pontificate, and throughout his encyclicals, documents, speeches, homilies, letters, and other works, the pope referred to the concepts he had introduced in the theology of the body, as a result of his many years of pastoral experience and philosophical and theological training. Vatican II reminds us that, “Preaching and catechetical instruction…always hold the first place” in a bishop’s activity (Christus Dominus 13). In these catecheses, though written before he was elected pope, the pope speaks as (1) pastor of the universal Church; (2) in a form central to his office; (3) on a topic central to the faith (human and divine love). They can therefore be considered authoritative and to hold primacy of place in the ordinary Magisterium of the Bishop of Rome as pastor of the universal Church, to which the catecheses are addressed.[1]

These catecheses seek to provide a lens through which to view the Catholic Church’s teachings on morality, sexuality, the human person, nature, grace, and indeed, as George Weigel has written, theology of the body “will compel a dramatic development of thinking about virtually every major theme in the creed.” John Paul II re-orients us to the “beginning” of the Book of Genesis, and the “beginning” of human existence as created by the Trinitarian God. John Paul II himself points out that the themes in theology of the body, among others that we are created to dwell in communion with one another, as an image of the communion of Persons in the Trinity, and that true love consists in self-gift, the relationship that characterizes the Persons of the Trinity, are meant to remind us of “the final and grandiose goal of all evangelization.” (3/10/1987, Buenos Aires).

That human beings are beautiful, that we are created to love with a total self-surrender and in a gift of our whole selves to another, and that we can one day participate in the very life of the Trinity itself, a foretaste of which can be had here on earth, are central themes of this work. In a particular way “the Church addresses [these] to the young, who are beginning their journey towards marriage and family life, for the purpose of presenting them with new horizons, helping them to discover the beauty and grandeur of the vocation to love and the service of life.” (Familiaris Consortio 1)

Of course, the Church always recognizes that the domestic church is the primary place of catechesis of the young. “The Christian family, in fact, is the first community called to announce the Gospel to the human person during growth and to bring him or her, through a progressive education and catechesis, to full human and Christian maturity.” (FC, 2) The theology of the body is therefore fundamentally important for families, and the domestic church is to become a school of prayer, of love, and of primary education in the faith. However, the pope recognizes that “In so far as the ministry of evangelization and catechesis of the Church of the home is rooted in and derives from the one mission of the Church and is ordained to the upbuilding of the one Body of Christ,(128) it must remain in intimate communion and collaborate responsibly with all the other evangelizing and catechetical activities present and at work in the ecclesial community at the diocesan and parochial levels.” (FC, 53)

It is therefore not only the work of individual families to take seriously the pope’s teachings presented beautifully in the theology of the body, and in the accompanying papal documents, but it is a task of the entire ecclesial community. At World Youth Day in Toronto, the pope encouraged young people, and indeed all Catholics, to “not be content with anything less than the highest ideals! Do not let yourselves be dispirited by those who are disillusioned with life and have grown deaf to the deepest and most authentic desires of their heart…You are right to be disappointed with hollow entertainment and passing fads, and with aiming at too little in life. If you have an ardent desire for the Lord you will steer clear of the mediocrity and conformism so widespread in our society.” (Message for XVII World Youth Day)

It is time to once again re-propose wholeheartedly to those around us, in particularly the young, with whose spiritual formation we have been entrusted, to always strive for what is good, beautiful, and true. We have seen from the saints, human beings who have been fully alive, that the world will truly be saved by beauty, in the splendor of its truth.

[1] See Catechesi Tradendae, 7 for JPII’s understanding of catechesis. In the audiences, he is commenting on the Catechism, providing a lens through which to read it.