Open to Life: Theology of the Body

If you are new to this series, I recommend starting at the beginning: Open to Life Series: What is Openness to Life?


Most quotes from this post are from Theology of the Body for Beginners. The numbers in parentheses are page numbers. I thoroughly enjoyed the book both times I read it, but I have to admit, this post is written from my notes I took from the book a few years ago. It is currently packed away in boxes. I wish I had the time to get it out and reread it for this post.

I would like to focus on just a few sections. The whole book is greatly important, and Man and Woman He Created Them: A Theology of the Body is even more important, but I chose only the most relevant parts to include here.

The first is Spousal Love as Prayer: “The internal goal of every marriage is for the spouses to ensure that what they express subjectively in their sexual union confirms the objective truth of God’s plan. … Simply getting married is not enough to make sexual union something holy and beautiful” (99). Many engaged couples would ask, “What is wrong with having sex now if we’re going to be married in a few weeks (months, etc.)?” Christopher West answers this exact question in “Living Together Before Marriage”. There is no difference. “What you are doing now is not marital and—unless you have a change of heart before the wedding—what you’ll be doing then won’t be marital either” (9). The marital union can only be fully realized the way God intended within marriage and with a pure heart.

The second section is an interesting one. It is entitled Respect for Procreation. On page 104, Christopher West tells us that “even Sigmund Freud recognized [that respect for the procreative function of sexual union is the linchpin of all sexual morality]. In Freud’s book Introductory Lectures in Psychoanalysis he wrote, “Abandonment of the reproductive function is the common feature of all perversions. We actually describe a sexual activity as perverse if it has given up the aim of reproduction and pursues the attainment of pleasure as an aim independent of it.” Even the atheist psychologist understood the importance of openness to life.

I will lump the next two sections together, as they are very similar (“Birth Control” and the Purpose of Contraception). “The Church has always recognized that the only method of ‘birth control’ that respects the language of divine love is ‘self-control’” (111). Chesterton has a similar quote that I shared earlier. To fully understand this, we must realize that the purpose of contraception is not to prevent pregnancy—abstinence was around long before contraception, is 100% effective and 100% safe. “Contraception was invented because of lack of self-control; contraception was invented to serve the indulgence of lust” (113).

The last two sections (Lust and Sex and True Freedom and Sex) are so important. In his book Love and Responsibility, Karol Wojityla (Pope John Paul II) wrote, “If sexual intimacy results from nothing more than lust, it is not love.” This is so true today. Many people do not even know what true love is. I have heard multiple TV show characters that are getting divorced say, “I still love you.” How can you love someone and leave him or her? What does this teach society? I want to finish with a few final quotes from the book:

• “What distinguishes us from the animals? Freedom!”
• “God gave us freedom as the capacity to love. Contraception negates this freedom.”
• “Contraception not only attacks the procreative meaning of sex, ‘it also ceases to be an act of love’ (TOB 123:6). If you cannot say no to sex, what does your ‘yes’ mean?” (emphasis original)
• “Only the person who is free with the freedom for which Christ set us free (see Gal 5:1) is capable of authentic love.”

Up Next: What is Wrong with Fornication?

For full texts of the documents used, see my Open to Life Series: Introduction

Contempt for Christianity

I think Stanford Nutting (a character from G.K. Chesterton: Apostle of Common Sense) says it best in his thoughts on Christmas: “We don’t use the “C” word in the Nutting household. Christmas we don’t say. It’s too judgmental. It’s too exclusive. We need to be inclusive. That’s why we need to exclude Christmas, and so we say, ‘Merry Kwanza-Rama-Hanukkah-dan.’” You should watch the whole thing. It is hilarious, and it gets the point across very clearly.

We are no longer “allowed” to say “Merry Christmas”, because it is too exclusive. But we can say “Happy Hanukkah” or “Happy Kwanza” or “Happy Ramadan”. The problem with this country is not its lack of tolerance of other religions, but its hypocrisy through persecution of Christianity. It is only the Christian religion that is not tolerated in America (and other countries around the world). And yet America claims to be an open-minded, welcoming, free society.

How much persecution have Christians and especially Catholics suffered in this past century alone? A show from EWTN penned it as the bloodiest century for Catholics. Here are some numbers to give you an idea:

* Approximately one million Catholics were martyred in the twentieth century.

* Millions of Catholics were killed in WWII. Many people hold the false idea that Catholics were not persecuted for their religion during the war, only Jews. This is a lie. In Poland alone, – a country specifically targeted by the Nazis – the same amount of Catholics (over three million) were killed in death camps as Jews (approximately three million).

* 108 Martyrs of WWII – The Nazis martyred 108 clergy, other religious and lay Catholics in Poland. Pope John Paul II recognized these people in 1999 for their sacrifice.

* Wikipedia has 46 articles about wars and other persecutions of Catholics in the 20th Century.

But the most important thing fact is that Catholic persecution has been going on since Jesus’ death. The fact that most people today feel (or even “learned”) that Catholics “started” the Crusades out of intolerance or that the Church is against science prove that the persecution is deeply ingrained in our culture. You cannot read an article or a book about the Crusades that does not blame the Church and throw pity on the Muslims. Or one about science that accuses the Church of suppressing discoveries.

The Crusades were not started by the Catholics in order to “wipe out” Islam. It was provoked by the Muslims and was an effort to take back the land that the Muslims already stole from them. For more information on this, you should watch The Catholic Church: Builder of Civilization on EWTN.

As far as the Catholic Church being against science, all I can do is laugh, and tell you that Catholic priests and monks have made thousands of significant scientific advances and discoveries over the last two thousand years. Copernicus was a priest and was the first one to come up with the heliocentric idea (and was not “punished”). Galileo was punished because he called the theory “a law of science” before it had been proven as such and continued to teach it in that manner. You can also find more information on this on the show The Catholic Church: Builder of Civilization on EWTN.

The only way we can change people’s minds and hearts is by example. Show them who Catholics really are and what they really believe. And by speaking out against atrocities when they happen.

True Freedom

Freedom is fully realized by choosing properly between good and evil.” (Theology of the Body for Beginners, Christopher West, p. 23) Freedom is not doing whatever you feel like without regard for others or even yourself. That is licentiousness. Action can only be called truly free if it remains within moral and logical bounds. Two examples will explain this better: I am free to draw a circle, but I am not free to call it a square. “We are free to do whatever we want with our bodies but we are not free to determine whether or not what we do is good or evil.” (ToB for Beginners, p. 23)

Many people today feel they can do whatever they want. They think because God gave them free will, they are free to live their lives however they choose; there is no right or wrong way to do something. Well, if that were true, then according to Chesterton, Christianity must be false because: “You cannot evade the issue of God … defending [Christianity means] talking about anything or everything. … Nothing can be irrelevant to the proposition that Christianity is true.” (For the whole quote, see my Intro to Chesterton post.)

Since God gave us free will we have a responsibility, as Christians, to live our lives as examples and to show others what it means to be truly free. When you choose “properly between good and evil”, you are happy. And others will notice that. Hopefully, by your example you will encourage others to live like you.