I found a section in TOB (I’m sorry for its length) that I would like to have explained. I understand it a certain way but I would like the opinion of those much more educated than I. The quote follows:
“Returning to the Pauline ‘description’ of the body in 1 Cor12:18-25, we wish to call attention to the fact that according to the author of the letter the particular effort to reach reverence for the human body and especially for its ‘weaker’ or ‘unpresentable’ members corresponds to the Creator’s original plan or to the vision about which Genesis speaks” ‘God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good’ (Gen 1:31). Paul writes, ‘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’(1Cor 12:24-25). ‘Disunion within the body,’ the result of which is that some members are considered ‘weaker,’ ‘less honorable,’ and thus ‘unpresentable,’ is a further expression of the vision of man’s—that is, historical man’s—interior state after original sin. The man of original innocence, male and female, about whom we read, ‘both were naked…but they did not feel shame’ (Gen 2:25), did not feel that ‘disunion within the body’ either. An analogous harmony in man’s innermost [being], the harmony of the ‘heart,’ correspon ded to the objective harmony that the Creator gave to the human body, which Paul explains as reciprocal care of the various members (1 Cor 12:25). This harmony, or precisely ‘purity of heart,’ allowed man and woman in the state of original innocence to experience in a simple way (in a way that made both of them originally happy) the unitive power of their bodies that was, so to speak, the ‘unsuspectable’ substratum of their personal union or communio personarum.
As one can see, in 1 Cor 12:18-25 the Apostle ties his description of the human body to the state of ‘historical’ man. At the threshold of the history of this man stands the experience of shame connected with ‘disunion in the body,’ with the sense of modesty for this body (and especially for those of its members that determine masculinity and femininity in somatic terms). Nevertheless, in the same ‘description,’ Paul also indicates the way that leads (precisely on the basis of the sense of shame) to the transformation of this state, to the gradual victory over this ‘disunion in the body,’ a victory that can and should be realized in the human heart. This is precisely the road of purity or of keeping the body ‘with holiness and reverence.’”
I am particularly interested in the last two sentences. Thanks for your help.
Katie, I remember several years ago, Cardinal George making the comment that we in the US all think like Protestants—even us Catholics. When reading Catholic authors like Graham Greene and Flannery O’Connor, I could really see that. And again, the literature of the Middle Ages—it is quite earthy compared to anything that we have today, it seems to me.
While I’m on the topic, of Protestantism, that is, I am going to make a bold statement that one of the major things TOB does is refute the errors of the heresy of Protestantism. It has seemed to me for quite some time that the main errors of Protestantism centered around the nature of man more than that of God.
Back to the article, yes, it was quite topical, wasn’t it? I find it sad that the Church had all of this understanding in the past and we seem to have buried it under…I’m not sure what. And, so sadly, we thought we were being fully Catholic by having these distorted ideas of holiness and purity and modesty.
Vatican plea to uncover Virgin Mary and show her breast-feeding baby Jesus
By Simon Caldwell
Last updated at 11:09 PM on 23rd June 2008
It might be enough to make Banksy drop his aerosol in the gutter in surprise or cause Lucien Freud to spill paint down his smock in shock.
But the Vatican yesterday said it wanted to see more paintings of a semi-nude Virgin Mary.
What Catholic leaders have in mind is more images of Mary breast-feeding baby Jesus.
The official newspaper of the Holy See has declared it is time to undo four centuries of church disapproval of traditional representations of Mary as an earthy, fleshy mother doting on her newborn son.
Virgin and Child, by Joovs van Cleve
Images like Virgin and Child, by Joovs van Cleve, painted in 1525, have fallen out of favour in recent centuries
The latest edition of L’Osservatore Romano ran two articles by respected art critics who said that for nearly 1,500 years the Madonna was portrayed partly clothed and shamelessly nursing the Christ child.
One of them blamed Protestant prudes for changing the trends in religious art that then led to the Virgin being covered up and left critics wondering if the infant Jesus was bottle-fed instead.
Such currents were so strong that even the nudes in Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel were covered up in fear of giving offence, and today the best places to see pictures of Mary nursing Jesus are not churches but major art galleries housing collections of Renaissance paintings.
But the hugely influential newspaper - which is often seen as having the support of the Pope - has now called for the “artistic and spiritual rehabilitation” of “loving and tender” images of Mary breast-feeding.
The intervention could inspire a revival in sacred art that would spell the end of 400 years of dressing up the Virgin to make her look “respectable”.
One article, written by Italian Church historian Lucetta Scaraffia, claimed a vast iconography of traditional Christian art had been “censored by the modern age” because images depicting Mary’s naked breast for her child were deemed too “unseemly”.
It said that artists later depicted the nursing Mary fully clothed because the Protestant reformers were generally critical of “the carnality and unbecoming nature of many sacred images”.
But Miss Scaraffia argued that later depictions had also diminished the Madonna’ s human side “that touches the hearts and faith of the devout”.
Miss Scaraffia said that when the early Christian artists represented the Virgin breast-feeding they had sought to reveal the reality of God’s incarnation.
A second piece, written by Father Enrico dal Covolo, a professor of classic and Christian literature in Rome, said: “The Virgin Mary who nurses her son Jesus is one of the most eloquent signs that the word of God truly and undoubtedly became flesh.”
Images of a semi-nude Mary breastfeeding can be traced back to early Christian times and were popular during the Renaissance period of the Middle Ages.
But they came to an abrupt end around the 16th or 17th century with the emergence of Calvinism and other dour Protestant faiths that viewed representations of ‘sexuality’ as essentially sinful.
Such ideas were resisted by Rome but they were accepted by Catholics particularly in France, Ireland and northern Europe.
The result is that very few, if any, Catholic churches or newspapers will dare to show such imagery even today.
Ah, a break for us women in the house-building project! I now have a few moments to correspond possibly a little more lucidly than my last several hastily drafted comments.
I need to apologize, Steve, if I sounded harsh in any way in my responses to you. I sometimes tend to be too direct and sound harsh when I don’t mean to. And, the last ten days or so I have not had time to sit back and critique my writing as I was trying to respond in very small open windows of time. I thoroughly enjoy discussing these subjects and appreciate challenges to learn how to express my thoughts more coherently about the beautiful subject of TOB.
I was talking with a friend who had just been to CW’s latest workshop in PA a few weeks ago, and in our conversation she mentioned a painting of the Blessed Mother that CW had displayed. It renewed my interest in this subject so I did a quick Google search. This is one site: http://www.darkfiber.com/pz/chapter4.... that came up that I found particularly interesting. I haven’t taken the time to look into what the focus of this website is because I was so excited to find the information and wanted to share it. It, I think, shows how much TOB was understood in past generations as shown by these depictions in art but we have lost this understanding somehow in the modern area. I would enjoy it very much if all of you had the time to read through this material and let me know what you think as it pertains to our discussion.
We have used CW’s tapes for both marriage prep and to teach people about TOB and, at times, I have mentioned CW’s earthiness to people before they have watched the tapes to give them a heads up about the material. We have almost never had anyone express dismay over his style and most people said they liked it. Some men don’t like his aggressive way of confronting the issue of lust but most women seem to respond quite well to his teaching.
One thing I think that happens for many people who have lived secular lives is that CW’s method makes them comfortable and they trust him because he seems like one of them. I worry that if we speak in too lofty a manner with terminology and content, it will cause those whose lives have not been at all holy to feel such shame that they cannot hear the message that is being delivered. CW is very honest about his life and people appreciate that since they have often been living lives worse than what CW describes.
Concerning goodness being everywhere, of course it is—God who is absolute goodness is everywhere even in the most difficult of scenarios. My husband had cancer at 24, went through 10 months of horrible chemo which caused him to become sterile causing us to be able to have only one child when all I ever wanted to do was to be a mother. Sounds pretty terrible doesn’t it? We wouldn’t trade any of it because we would not be where we are today in our faith without those challenges.
Some of the complaints about CW’s teaching which aren’t original with him are getting rather tedious. Here is a comment from Christopher Derrick in 1981:
And when it comes to our own spring-festival of resurrection and new life, we use a sexual symbolism as blatant as anything that ever featured in an archaic fertility-rite. (I wonder how many of us notice that we’re doing so, at however exalted a level of new meaning” It’s a shade less explicit than it used to be. We still have the cosmic marriage of male candle with female water. But the priest is no longer told to breathe upon the fruitful water in the form of the Greek letter psi, the archetypal yoni. The basic symbolism remains, even so, however piously we avert our attention from its natural meaning.)
The phallic imagery is not CW’s as this shows, nor are his explanations in Good News About Sex and Marriage of what is acceptable foreplay, at least according to Janet Smith.
It seems to me that much of what you are upset with is Catholic teaching when it is expressed in more depth. I don’t believe that TOB is really saying anything that has not been understood in the past. However, for whatever reason, we seem to have lost some of our understanding of these things in our Catholic culture and, I believe, that JPII is just bringing a lot of this understanding back to our awareness.
I do hope that you will read the book I recommended as well as the original text of TOB as written by JPII. I am so appreciative of this teaching and believe that it is going to be key in the future to help people stop participating in the many evils with which, you so rightly acknowledge, the world is filled.
I really don’t relish trying to answer your very valid and deep questions personally because I have not kept up with my study of TOB the last three years and so am a little rusty at the task right now. I would like to encourage you to read CW’s “Theology of the Body Explained” because the prologue has a beautiful in depth answer to your question about why a theology of the body. I will just give you a few comments that may be of some help.
JPII makes a statement that is kind of the core of his teaching. He states that: “The body, in fact, and it alone, is capable of making visible what is invisible: the spiritual and divine. It was created to transfer into the visible reality of the world, the mystery hidden since time immemorial in God, and thus to be a sign of it.”
This makes a lot of sense if one thinks about it. Everything that we know about God we have received through a human body. The Old Testament was given to us through human words, spoken and written. Then Christ came in a body to grace us with the fullness of revelation. God chose to redeem us using a human body and in that act showed us the fullness of His love for us.
Unfortunately, however, much of human history has had man distorting the understanding of the body. We have discounted it as useless, we have distorted its meaning and labelled it as evil as in Manicheism, we have misused it as a recreational toy, etc. Today we are in desperate need to understand the sacredness of the body and its importance in our lives as Christians.
Concerning CW’s lack of discussion about prayer, I don’t believe that prayer is a topic that is frequently brought up by JPII in this particular teaching. I just checked in the latest translation of TOB (that I am aware of) in its index of words and phrases and prayer is not listed. I agree that prayer is essential in the Christian life but I also know that we need to understand what we need to pray for and about. My husband is a deeply prayerful person and has even had a few mystical types of experiences, reads the Bible regularly but was still unable to make serious progress in certain areas of his life until he began to learn about TOB and got some really sound, strong spiritual direction in Confession.
I think that your comment about TOB promoters using the fact that “sex sells” is totally off base. The reason that many, many people find TOB compelling is that they are longing for love, in its true sense, and have not found it, even within their marriages. They are hurt and wounded and long to be loved for the unique persons that they are and long to be able to love others but find all of that unattainable. TOB provides a pathway, that if followed, can bring satisfaction to those longings.
You are upset about the discussion of the beauty of the human body and masculinity and femininity but it is necessary to understand all of this in the proper context. We are created in the image and likeness of God. Who is God? God is love. What is love? Love is making a total gift of self to another. That is what masculinity and femininity reveal, the giving and receiving of love. Because of that, the human body is beautiful since it is revealing, in a sense, God. Also, if we can say that a flower or a bird or a rainbow is beautiful, why can we not also say that the human body is beautiful? After all, it is also God’s creation, which I believe He called VERY good.
About concupiscence, I don’t believe that CW de-emphasizes its effect as much as he emphasizes the effect of the Redemption in assisting with concupiscence. In listening to CW’s story about his life, he sounds like a man who has been an alcoholic and controlled by his addiction that has been able to get free from the chains of that addiction. He glories in the freedom that he now has to relate to others in a healthy way without being overcome with unchaste thoughts and desires. I know other men who have experienced that same gift and are extremely grateful for it. Also, I would like to emphasize that much of what people attribute to CW is merely him quoting or paraphrasing JPII. JPII is the one who first used the term “liberation from concupiscence”. A quote from JPII’s audience on July 21, 1982:
The redemption of the body, however, expresses itself not only in the resurrection as a victory over death. It is present also in the words of Christ addressed to ‘historical’ man, both when they confirm the principle of the indissolubility of marriage as a principle coming from the Creator himself, and when—in the Sermon on the Mount—Christ invites us to overcome concupiscence, even in the exclusively inner movements of the human heart. About both of these key statements one must say that they refer to human morality and have an ethical sense. Here it is not a question of the eschatological hope of the resurrection, but of the hope of victory over sin, which can be called the hope of everyday…When it penetrates into daily life with the dimension of human morality, the redemption of the body helps man, above all, to discover the whole good in which he achieves the victory over sin and over concupiscence.
Your statement that CW de-emphasizes the effect of sin in the world I find very interesting. I have heard many of his taped talks and in most of them he apologizes to women for the sins committed against them by men. He mentions many examples of how people’s sins wound relationships and affect the course of the world. I don’t have the time to go through his individual tapes to find the examples but there are many. Of course we can find God in every created thing. He made them all! From listening to CW talk, it seems as though he is able to see beyond the sin to the PERSON created in the image and likeness of God, in which there is great goodness. That is a virtue that we should all strive to attain. I remember years ago walking one evening in downtown Calgary when some prostitutes came up to proposition my husband and all I could feel was deep sorrow for them. That was before I knew anything of TOB—just some plain old Catholic teaching.
I will end with a quote from JPII (Wednesday Audience February 4, 1981) to answer your comment about the body being a revelation of the person:
The Pauline ‘description’ of the human body corresponds to the reality that constitutes the body; it is thus a ‘realistic’ description. At the same time, the description weaves into its realism a very subtle thread of evaluation that gives it a deeply evangelical, Christian value. It is certainly possible to ‘describe’ the human body, to express its truth with the objectivity proper to the natural sciences; but such a description—with all its precision—cannot be adequate (that is, commensurate with its object), given the what is at issue is not only the body (understood as an organism in the ‘somatic’ sense) but also man who expresses himself by means of that body, and in this sense, I would say, ‘is’ that body.
I agree with both of you. Someone who strives to live the fullness of the Catholic faith WILL come to the same realization that TOB brings us to.
I, too, am a convert, Scott, from atheism. I converted at 19. Sometimes, as one looking, in a certain sense, from the outside, it almost seems as tho cradle Catholics can be at somewhat of a disadvantage. For many, it seems as tho “learning” about the truths of the faith as a child makes them less able to understand and incorporate the fullness of what is there. Their understanding stays at a more childlike level. For me, coming into the faith as a young adult, if someone said something to me that didn’t seem to make sense, I would question and read until I came to understand correctly what was being taught.
One of the things that is so appealing to me is the systematic way that TOB teaches. It seems to tie all of the major tenets of the faith together in this flow that makes so much sense. I understood the individual tenets of the faith but sometimes things seem disjointed to me and I didn’t see the connectedness in the same way that I do now.
I have some thoughts on Original Sin that I would like to share with you at some point, but am up against the clock since we are setting roof trusses and I am to be ready at the crack of dawn—and it is coming quickly!
All comments by: Lauretta
Thank you, Jules, beautifully explained.
Re:
Why a theology of the body?
Date:
Nov 10 at 5:54 pm
Go to:
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I found a section in TOB (I’m sorry for its length) that I would like to have explained. I understand it a certain way but I would like the opinion of those much more educated than I. The quote follows:
“Returning to the Pauline ‘description’ of the body in 1 Cor12:18-25, we wish to call attention to the fact that according to the author of the letter the particular effort to reach reverence for the human body and especially for its ‘weaker’ or ‘unpresentable’ members corresponds to the Creator’s original plan or to the vision about which Genesis speaks” ‘God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good’ (Gen 1:31). Paul writes, ‘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’(1Cor 12:24-25). ‘Disunion within the body,’ the result of which is that some members are considered ‘weaker,’ ‘less honorable,’ and thus ‘unpresentable,’ is a further expression of the vision of man’s—that is, historical man’s—interior state after original sin. The man of original innocence, male and female, about whom we read, ‘both were naked…but they did not feel shame’ (Gen 2:25), did not feel that ‘disunion within the body’ either. An analogous harmony in man’s innermost [being], the harmony of the ‘heart,’ correspon ded to the objective harmony that the Creator gave to the human body, which Paul explains as reciprocal care of the various members (1 Cor 12:25). This harmony, or precisely ‘purity of heart,’ allowed man and woman in the state of original innocence to experience in a simple way (in a way that made both of them originally happy) the unitive power of their bodies that was, so to speak, the ‘unsuspectable’ substratum of their personal union or communio personarum.
As one can see, in 1 Cor 12:18-25 the Apostle ties his description of the human body to the state of ‘historical’ man. At the threshold of the history of this man stands the experience of shame connected with ‘disunion in the body,’ with the sense of modesty for this body (and especially for those of its members that determine masculinity and femininity in somatic terms). Nevertheless, in the same ‘description,’ Paul also indicates the way that leads (precisely on the basis of the sense of shame) to the transformation of this state, to the gradual victory over this ‘disunion in the body,’ a victory that can and should be realized in the human heart. This is precisely the road of purity or of keeping the body ‘with holiness and reverence.’”
I am particularly interested in the last two sentences. Thanks for your help.
Re:
Continuing the TOB discussion
Date:
Nov 10 at 11:32 am
Go to:
entrycomment
Katie, I remember several years ago, Cardinal George making the comment that we in the US all think like Protestants—even us Catholics. When reading Catholic authors like Graham Greene and Flannery O’Connor, I could really see that. And again, the literature of the Middle Ages—it is quite earthy compared to anything that we have today, it seems to me.
While I’m on the topic, of Protestantism, that is, I am going to make a bold statement that one of the major things TOB does is refute the errors of the heresy of Protestantism. It has seemed to me for quite some time that the main errors of Protestantism centered around the nature of man more than that of God.
Back to the article, yes, it was quite topical, wasn’t it? I find it sad that the Church had all of this understanding in the past and we seem to have buried it under…I’m not sure what. And, so sadly, we thought we were being fully Catholic by having these distorted ideas of holiness and purity and modesty.
Re:
Continuing the TOB discussion
Date:
Nov 9 at 8:37 pm
Go to:
entrycomment
This discussion is making me want to go eat an orange LOL!
Re:
Continuing the TOB discussion
Date:
Nov 9 at 8:26 pm
Go to:
entrycomment
Another interesting article:
Vatican plea to uncover Virgin Mary and show her breast-feeding baby Jesus
By Simon Caldwell
Last updated at 11:09 PM on 23rd June 2008
It might be enough to make Banksy drop his aerosol in the gutter in surprise or cause Lucien Freud to spill paint down his smock in shock.
But the Vatican yesterday said it wanted to see more paintings of a semi-nude Virgin Mary.
What Catholic leaders have in mind is more images of Mary breast-feeding baby Jesus.
The official newspaper of the Holy See has declared it is time to undo four centuries of church disapproval of traditional representations of Mary as an earthy, fleshy mother doting on her newborn son.
Virgin and Child, by Joovs van Cleve
Images like Virgin and Child, by Joovs van Cleve, painted in 1525, have fallen out of favour in recent centuries
The latest edition of L’Osservatore Romano ran two articles by respected art critics who said that for nearly 1,500 years the Madonna was portrayed partly clothed and shamelessly nursing the Christ child.
One of them blamed Protestant prudes for changing the trends in religious art that then led to the Virgin being covered up and left critics wondering if the infant Jesus was bottle-fed instead.
Such currents were so strong that even the nudes in Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel were covered up in fear of giving offence, and today the best places to see pictures of Mary nursing Jesus are not churches but major art galleries housing collections of Renaissance paintings.
But the hugely influential newspaper - which is often seen as having the support of the Pope - has now called for the “artistic and spiritual rehabilitation” of “loving and tender” images of Mary breast-feeding.
The intervention could inspire a revival in sacred art that would spell the end of 400 years of dressing up the Virgin to make her look “respectable”.
One article, written by Italian Church historian Lucetta Scaraffia, claimed a vast iconography of traditional Christian art had been “censored by the modern age” because images depicting Mary’s naked breast for her child were deemed too “unseemly”.
It said that artists later depicted the nursing Mary fully clothed because the Protestant reformers were generally critical of “the carnality and unbecoming nature of many sacred images”.
But Miss Scaraffia argued that later depictions had also diminished the Madonna’ s human side “that touches the hearts and faith of the devout”.
Miss Scaraffia said that when the early Christian artists represented the Virgin breast-feeding they had sought to reveal the reality of God’s incarnation.
A second piece, written by Father Enrico dal Covolo, a professor of classic and Christian literature in Rome, said: “The Virgin Mary who nurses her son Jesus is one of the most eloquent signs that the word of God truly and undoubtedly became flesh.”
Images of a semi-nude Mary breastfeeding can be traced back to early Christian times and were popular during the Renaissance period of the Middle Ages.
But they came to an abrupt end around the 16th or 17th century with the emergence of Calvinism and other dour Protestant faiths that viewed representations of ‘sexuality’ as essentially sinful.
Such ideas were resisted by Rome but they were accepted by Catholics particularly in France, Ireland and northern Europe.
The result is that very few, if any, Catholic churches or newspapers will dare to show such imagery even today.
Re:
Continuing the TOB discussion
Date:
Nov 9 at 5:52 pm
Go to:
entrycomment
Ah, a break for us women in the house-building project! I now have a few moments to correspond possibly a little more lucidly than my last several hastily drafted comments.
I need to apologize, Steve, if I sounded harsh in any way in my responses to you. I sometimes tend to be too direct and sound harsh when I don’t mean to. And, the last ten days or so I have not had time to sit back and critique my writing as I was trying to respond in very small open windows of time. I thoroughly enjoy discussing these subjects and appreciate challenges to learn how to express my thoughts more coherently about the beautiful subject of TOB.
I was talking with a friend who had just been to CW’s latest workshop in PA a few weeks ago, and in our conversation she mentioned a painting of the Blessed Mother that CW had displayed. It renewed my interest in this subject so I did a quick Google search. This is one site: http://www.darkfiber.com/pz/chapter4.... that came up that I found particularly interesting. I haven’t taken the time to look into what the focus of this website is because I was so excited to find the information and wanted to share it. It, I think, shows how much TOB was understood in past generations as shown by these depictions in art but we have lost this understanding somehow in the modern area. I would enjoy it very much if all of you had the time to read through this material and let me know what you think as it pertains to our discussion.
Re:
Continuing the TOB discussion
Date:
Nov 9 at 5:22 pm
Go to:
entrycomment
We have used CW’s tapes for both marriage prep and to teach people about TOB and, at times, I have mentioned CW’s earthiness to people before they have watched the tapes to give them a heads up about the material. We have almost never had anyone express dismay over his style and most people said they liked it. Some men don’t like his aggressive way of confronting the issue of lust but most women seem to respond quite well to his teaching.
One thing I think that happens for many people who have lived secular lives is that CW’s method makes them comfortable and they trust him because he seems like one of them. I worry that if we speak in too lofty a manner with terminology and content, it will cause those whose lives have not been at all holy to feel such shame that they cannot hear the message that is being delivered. CW is very honest about his life and people appreciate that since they have often been living lives worse than what CW describes.
Concerning goodness being everywhere, of course it is—God who is absolute goodness is everywhere even in the most difficult of scenarios. My husband had cancer at 24, went through 10 months of horrible chemo which caused him to become sterile causing us to be able to have only one child when all I ever wanted to do was to be a mother. Sounds pretty terrible doesn’t it? We wouldn’t trade any of it because we would not be where we are today in our faith without those challenges.
Some of the complaints about CW’s teaching which aren’t original with him are getting rather tedious. Here is a comment from Christopher Derrick in 1981:
And when it comes to our own spring-festival of resurrection and new life, we use a sexual symbolism as blatant as anything that ever featured in an archaic fertility-rite. (I wonder how many of us notice that we’re doing so, at however exalted a level of new meaning” It’s a shade less explicit than it used to be. We still have the cosmic marriage of male candle with female water. But the priest is no longer told to breathe upon the fruitful water in the form of the Greek letter psi, the archetypal yoni. The basic symbolism remains, even so, however piously we avert our attention from its natural meaning.)
The phallic imagery is not CW’s as this shows, nor are his explanations in Good News About Sex and Marriage of what is acceptable foreplay, at least according to Janet Smith.
It seems to me that much of what you are upset with is Catholic teaching when it is expressed in more depth. I don’t believe that TOB is really saying anything that has not been understood in the past. However, for whatever reason, we seem to have lost some of our understanding of these things in our Catholic culture and, I believe, that JPII is just bringing a lot of this understanding back to our awareness.
I do hope that you will read the book I recommended as well as the original text of TOB as written by JPII. I am so appreciative of this teaching and believe that it is going to be key in the future to help people stop participating in the many evils with which, you so rightly acknowledge, the world is filled.
Re:
Christopher West breaks silence; answers critics
Date:
Nov 9 at 1:34 am
Go to:
entrycomment
Steve,
I really don’t relish trying to answer your very valid and deep questions personally because I have not kept up with my study of TOB the last three years and so am a little rusty at the task right now. I would like to encourage you to read CW’s “Theology of the Body Explained” because the prologue has a beautiful in depth answer to your question about why a theology of the body. I will just give you a few comments that may be of some help.
JPII makes a statement that is kind of the core of his teaching. He states that: “The body, in fact, and it alone, is capable of making visible what is invisible: the spiritual and divine. It was created to transfer into the visible reality of the world, the mystery hidden since time immemorial in God, and thus to be a sign of it.”
This makes a lot of sense if one thinks about it. Everything that we know about God we have received through a human body. The Old Testament was given to us through human words, spoken and written. Then Christ came in a body to grace us with the fullness of revelation. God chose to redeem us using a human body and in that act showed us the fullness of His love for us.
Unfortunately, however, much of human history has had man distorting the understanding of the body. We have discounted it as useless, we have distorted its meaning and labelled it as evil as in Manicheism, we have misused it as a recreational toy, etc. Today we are in desperate need to understand the sacredness of the body and its importance in our lives as Christians.
Concerning CW’s lack of discussion about prayer, I don’t believe that prayer is a topic that is frequently brought up by JPII in this particular teaching. I just checked in the latest translation of TOB (that I am aware of) in its index of words and phrases and prayer is not listed. I agree that prayer is essential in the Christian life but I also know that we need to understand what we need to pray for and about. My husband is a deeply prayerful person and has even had a few mystical types of experiences, reads the Bible regularly but was still unable to make serious progress in certain areas of his life until he began to learn about TOB and got some really sound, strong spiritual direction in Confession.
I think that your comment about TOB promoters using the fact that “sex sells” is totally off base. The reason that many, many people find TOB compelling is that they are longing for love, in its true sense, and have not found it, even within their marriages. They are hurt and wounded and long to be loved for the unique persons that they are and long to be able to love others but find all of that unattainable. TOB provides a pathway, that if followed, can bring satisfaction to those longings.
You are upset about the discussion of the beauty of the human body and masculinity and femininity but it is necessary to understand all of this in the proper context. We are created in the image and likeness of God. Who is God? God is love. What is love? Love is making a total gift of self to another. That is what masculinity and femininity reveal, the giving and receiving of love. Because of that, the human body is beautiful since it is revealing, in a sense, God. Also, if we can say that a flower or a bird or a rainbow is beautiful, why can we not also say that the human body is beautiful? After all, it is also God’s creation, which I believe He called VERY good.
About concupiscence, I don’t believe that CW de-emphasizes its effect as much as he emphasizes the effect of the Redemption in assisting with concupiscence. In listening to CW’s story about his life, he sounds like a man who has been an alcoholic and controlled by his addiction that has been able to get free from the chains of that addiction. He glories in the freedom that he now has to relate to others in a healthy way without being overcome with unchaste thoughts and desires. I know other men who have experienced that same gift and are extremely grateful for it. Also, I would like to emphasize that much of what people attribute to CW is merely him quoting or paraphrasing JPII. JPII is the one who first used the term “liberation from concupiscence”. A quote from JPII’s audience on July 21, 1982:
The redemption of the body, however, expresses itself not only in the resurrection as a victory over death. It is present also in the words of Christ addressed to ‘historical’ man, both when they confirm the principle of the indissolubility of marriage as a principle coming from the Creator himself, and when—in the Sermon on the Mount—Christ invites us to overcome concupiscence, even in the exclusively inner movements of the human heart. About both of these key statements one must say that they refer to human morality and have an ethical sense. Here it is not a question of the eschatological hope of the resurrection, but of the hope of victory over sin, which can be called the hope of everyday…When it penetrates into daily life with the dimension of human morality, the redemption of the body helps man, above all, to discover the whole good in which he achieves the victory over sin and over concupiscence.
Your statement that CW de-emphasizes the effect of sin in the world I find very interesting. I have heard many of his taped talks and in most of them he apologizes to women for the sins committed against them by men. He mentions many examples of how people’s sins wound relationships and affect the course of the world. I don’t have the time to go through his individual tapes to find the examples but there are many. Of course we can find God in every created thing. He made them all! From listening to CW talk, it seems as though he is able to see beyond the sin to the PERSON created in the image and likeness of God, in which there is great goodness. That is a virtue that we should all strive to attain. I remember years ago walking one evening in downtown Calgary when some prostitutes came up to proposition my husband and all I could feel was deep sorrow for them. That was before I knew anything of TOB—just some plain old Catholic teaching.
I will end with a quote from JPII (Wednesday Audience February 4, 1981) to answer your comment about the body being a revelation of the person:
The Pauline ‘description’ of the human body corresponds to the reality that constitutes the body; it is thus a ‘realistic’ description. At the same time, the description weaves into its realism a very subtle thread of evaluation that gives it a deeply evangelical, Christian value. It is certainly possible to ‘describe’ the human body, to express its truth with the objectivity proper to the natural sciences; but such a description—with all its precision—cannot be adequate (that is, commensurate with its object), given the what is at issue is not only the body (understood as an organism in the ‘somatic’ sense) but also man who expresses himself by means of that body, and in this sense, I would say, ‘is’ that body.
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Christopher West breaks silence; answers critics
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Nov 8 at 1:05 am
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P.S. What about my questions about concupiscence? Any thoughts about that? I am really curious.
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Christopher West breaks silence; answers critics
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Nov 7 at 10:00 am
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I agree with both of you. Someone who strives to live the fullness of the Catholic faith WILL come to the same realization that TOB brings us to.
I, too, am a convert, Scott, from atheism. I converted at 19. Sometimes, as one looking, in a certain sense, from the outside, it almost seems as tho cradle Catholics can be at somewhat of a disadvantage. For many, it seems as tho “learning” about the truths of the faith as a child makes them less able to understand and incorporate the fullness of what is there. Their understanding stays at a more childlike level. For me, coming into the faith as a young adult, if someone said something to me that didn’t seem to make sense, I would question and read until I came to understand correctly what was being taught.
One of the things that is so appealing to me is the systematic way that TOB teaches. It seems to tie all of the major tenets of the faith together in this flow that makes so much sense. I understood the individual tenets of the faith but sometimes things seem disjointed to me and I didn’t see the connectedness in the same way that I do now.
I have some thoughts on Original Sin that I would like to share with you at some point, but am up against the clock since we are setting roof trusses and I am to be ready at the crack of dawn—and it is coming quickly!
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Christopher West breaks silence; answers critics
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Nov 7 at 9:58 am
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