Waiting for Godot to Leave

After 129 lectures spanning nearly a five year period, Pope John Paul II gave a summation of his "Theology of the Body" in his final lecture. I'm going to emphasize here some of the main points JP2 makes in summing up these sometimes abstruse and difficult talks. He notes at one point that the term "Theology of the Body" is a "working term", and he says that while these lectures focused on "the redemption of the body and the sacramentality of marriage," he was presenting only a portion of the full Theology of the Body.  What he was leaving out in focusing on the significance of the body from the point of view of sex and marriage was "the problem of suffering and death, so important in the biblical message".   (Perhaps young eager theologians can get to work on that side of the Theology of the Body). But while he was not touching upon the body's experience of suffering and death, he was placing "the redempt...

CONCUPISCENCE - Fallen man's proclivity to sin, especially in matters of sex. How Christopher West and his followers say we should handle concupiscence. Engage it, especially by confronting and indulging near occasions of sin (or what weaker minds would call near occasions of sin).  If you see a naked person who is not your spouse, stare at him or her.  (In Fr. Loya's memorable admonition, "Look at her butt!  Look at her breasts!")  If you're afraid that in doing so, your lust will be stirred, that's only because you're a coward.  The only way through the purgative way to the illuminative way - the only way from beginner's spirituality to advanced spirituality - is to see naked bodies, to stare at them, and to transform your lust into love.  This sounds sordid, but it's highly advanced and spiritual.   How St. John Paul II says we should handle concupiscence.   If we indulge concupiscence, we end up sinning, turning the prophetic lan...

The word "marriage" occurs 597 times in the online translation of JP2's Theology of the Body .  The word "nuptial" occurs 126 times: that's 723 references to marriage by name alone, not counting the overall context, for the concept marriage permeates this work, even when the word "marriage" or "nuptial" is not being used.  In fact, the official title of John Paul II's Wednesday Audiences is The Redemption of the Body and Sacramentality of Marriage. By contrast, the word "sex" occurs 161 times, and the vast majority of those times the word "sex" is used to mean "gender", "sex" in the sense of "male" or "female". When it comes to "sexual activity", the phrase "conjugal act" or "marital act", meaning sexual intercourse between spouses, are used a combined 42 times.  The contrasting concept, sex which violates the bond of marriage, is "adult...

Another in my series:  The Real Theology of the Body , continued. That is to say, what is the Theology of the Body according to Bl. John Paul II and not according to the pop-Catholic peddlers of skewed interpretations of it? The pop perversion of TOB errs not only in focusing exclusively on sex, but in focusing on a very narrow image of man.  The kind of man in the Westian view of the Theology of the Body is a man who lives on the level of appetite, and who spends a lot of time spiritualizing an appetite that remains, in the end, a mere appetite, a base hunger dressed up in church robes. But JP2's vision of man is of a man much more whole and complete than that. This is what is impressing me most about JP2's TOB.   Man is a whole in John Paul's vision.  He is a complex, mature, complete and multi-layered being, for whom lust is a sin, but that sin does not define him; a man for whom sex is part of his destiny, but not the whole of his destiny.  JP2's ma...