Veja as horas e locais das conferências no fim da entrevista.
So what exactly is Theology of the Body?
It is a
series of lectures that John Paul II gave publicly during his Wednesday
audiences, outside St. Peter’s. He had actually written them all before this,
but over a four year period he delivered 20 lectures. It’s a beautiful catechesis
on what it is to be Human, with an emphasis on the theme of Marriage, Family
and Sexuality.
People mostly associate this concept with
issues regarding sexuality, but there are other aspects as well, correct. He
mentions resurrection of the body, for example.
It almost
opens like a play. Jesus is speaking at the beginning of Matthew 19 with the
Pharisees, who ask him if they can divorce their wives and remarry. They say
that Moses let them do this, but Jesus says he did so out of the hardness of
their hearts, but at the beginning it was not so. He goes back to Genesis and
this is very striking because he divides time into three periods, the original
state, the fall and the redeemed state. All three are mentioned in the book of
Genesis, but he says you can’t use the fall as permission to sin, because the
way Adam and Eve were before the fall, we still have an echo of that in our
hearts, and they loved each other fully and even though the fall has happened,
we have to love each other like Adam and Eve did before the fall. And the
redemption, the resurrection, gives us the grace to do so, even though it is a
challenge.
Did these lectures introduce any novelties to
church teaching on these issues? Or did they just rephrase them?
The novelty
is that John Paul II explains them in a way that everyday people can understand,
and live joyfully. Typically, from church teachings on sexuality, everybody
knows what the prohibitions are, and what is allowed. But John Paul II decided
he wanted to give a rich explanation of what it is to be Human, because if one
lives according to church teaching on sexuality it is a source of profound
happiness.
He wanted
people to make people understand the happiness that can come from living
according to church teaching, and that is difficult if you just have a list of yes and no’s.
Were the lectures well received? Were there
suspicions at the time?
A lot of
people were surprised because there was the Pope talking about human sexuality
in a way that was so beautiful, and nobody had heard a Pope speak for four
years about these themes. Many were surprised. There were times when the Media
really attacked the Pope. For example in one of the audiences he talked about
the passage where Jesus says that you can commit adultery in the heart every
time you look at a woman lustfully. Then the Pope said that it is possible for
married people to commit adultery in the heart with their own spouse, and what
he meant by that was that men can still think of their wives as sex objects
even if they are married to them, and they shouldn’t, they should think of them
as a person who they love. And the media went berserk, because they didn’t want
to accept that lust still needs to be overcome in marriage. But in general it
was a novelty because a Pope was talking about human sexuality in a way that
was full of life and happiness.
This was almost 30 years ago, yet we still have
the idea, amongst Catholics, and especially amongst those who are more critical
of the Church, that the Church is more about no’s than yes’s and that it has a
very negative view of sexuality. Why is this the case?
One reason
is because the text is very long and it is very challenging. He was a trained
philosopher and, you could also say, a philologist. The footnotes are full of
references to ancient languages and to philosophers who people don’t know very
much about. But he really presented a metaphysical, theological, scriptural
meditation on the meaning of human sexuality. It’s one of these texts somebody
like St. Augustine might write, like The City of God, which will take 100 years
for the church to interiorize.
This is why
I am here in Portugal. Next year, from 13-16 June 2013 we are having a
conference in Fátima with many speakers who can really break this down and
explain it to people from many different angles, from Theology, from practical
life, philosophy, Scripture. So it’s true that it hasn’t been absorbed yet, one
reason is because the text is difficult, but there are many people working on trying
to make it understandable, which often is the case with texts like this. It
took a long time for the Church to absorb Thomas Aquinas’ teachings, and it
will be the same with this text.
George Weigel described these teachings as a “timebomb”
set to go off in the third millennium; could this really change the face of the
Church?
I really
think it could. On the one hand it is true that it hasn’t been absorbed yet. On
the other hand it actually has. There is a large percentage, maybe more so in
America than in Europe, who are hearing talks about this from people who can
break it down, or who are taking the time to read it themselves, which is a
good thing to do, the passages are very short. And it is changing their lives,
there are people who read this and stop watching pornography, there are people
who read this and stop using contraception with their spouses and switch to natural
family planning. They read this and realise they should respect people more and
stop being promiscuous, because this is a source of happiness.
So I think
the quote is true, this has the potential to really make people yearn to live
according to Church teaching. Maybe because now, after the 60’s and so forth,
everybody is so broken by divorce, contraception, using each other as sex
objects. Maybe we could say now people are looking for a deeper experience of sexuality,
and I think this has a potential to explain it to people.
The
prohibitions are still there. No sex before marriage, marriage only between a
man and a woman, no contraception, but when people accept why, they are willing
to accept the challenge, because they want the beautiful fruit.
What it the main stumbling block, what do
people have most difficulty in understanding and accepting?
The
anthropology. When John Paul II uses the word anthropology in this book, he just
means what it is to be a Human Being; we are a bodily spiritual unity. He often
likes to say you are your body, not because he is a materialist, but because
your soul is so close to your body, so present in it. Today we separate, people
think of their body as separate from themselves, so they can do all these sexual
things with their body, they can go and have an abortion, and it isn’t going to
affect them.
To get
people to realise the profound unity of the spiritual and bodily that we are is
the first step which is difficult to explain, because we live in a dualistic
society. If a slap or a hug has the power to touch your soul, then how much
more so human sexuality.
As you go
through the text you get this idea of self-donation, making a gift of yourself.
And it is precisely because our bodies and our souls are one, that through
Human expression, like a smile or a hug we reveal our souls to each other. And
in human sexuality God has set things up where through the conjugal act, by
which children come into the world, we are able to give ourselves as a whole
gift to the other person, but you need to commit yourself with your will first,
through marriage, otherwise it is sort of a lie, with your body.
How do people usually react when you speak
about this issue?
I don’t
like to be harsh on bishops or priests, I think after the 1960’s it was very difficult
for them to understand how to explain Humanae Vitae. But after I give a talk
somebody always asks “how come we never hear about this from the pulpit?” They
want to hear it.
How should priests address these issues?
One thing
would be to try to work through the text itself, or to try to get some of the
secondary sources, or to listen to some talks about it. On my website I have
some talks that people can listen to, where I break it down, but I do think
that maybe the priests and the bishops could be a little bit more courageous than
in the 1960’s because we have a way to explain. It was right for them to be
afraid, because all they had was the prohibitions, if you just go up and say no,
no, no, you lose parishioners. But if you take the time to interiorize this
text you get the tools to give you confidence.
There are
more and more priests who are, because of this text, finding the courage and
the tools to speak. You have to do it pastorally, take time, I always tell the
students not to give the homily right away on the prohibitions. Start by
talking about sacrifice, self-donation, body-soul unity, some of these themes,
and then at the end of the year they will be ready to hear a homily directly
about contraception.
Did John Paul II write this on his own? Did
somebody help him?
Before he
wrote this text he wrote a more philosophical one called Love and
Responsibility, and that was published before he became Pope. Then the
translator of this book found out that John Paul himself, before he became Pope,
had written this entire book. Nowadays Popes write books, but at the time it
wasn’t so common, and somebody told him he couldn’t publish it, and he thought
he’d get around it using his Wednesday audience. So every week he would take a
small section and write an introduction, then a nun would turn it into Italian,
and that is what he would read, so yes, he wrote it himself. He seems to have been
doing lectio divina when he wrote it,
pondering Scripture quietly, in fact he wrote it in front of the Tabernacle,
they found out.
There seems to be a war, as some call it,
between the Obama Administration and the Catholic Bishops, mainly about the HHS
mandate. What is your view on this?
The Health
and Human Services is a department of our Federal Government which has a
cabinet level secretary whose name is Kathleen Sebelius, and she is a Catholic.
What they are doing is forcing all the institutions in America, including the
Catholic ones, to pay for contraception, sterilization and the pills which
cause abortion. The Church, obviously, says these are intrinsic evils.
This is a
violation of the First Amendment, which stipulates that there is Freedom of
Religion, which means you should be able to practice your religion publicly and
participate in policy debates even from your religious perspective. What is
happening now is that the Obama administration is trying to delete that. They
are trying to silence the religious voice.
This
mandate could close all Catholic hospitals, and these are huge, there are many
of them. Sadly, even though many Catholics are using contraception and having
abortions, it is different for a Catholic hospital to have a policy that
supports it. The bishops in America are fighting this from a religious freedom
perspective, to try and build a coalition. But I do think it is interesting
that the administration chose contraception for their first attack against
religion. Because they know the bishops are a little bit afraid to talk about
it, and they are having a little bit of trouble getting a groundswell of
support because many Catholics use contraception.
I don’t
know what the best approach is. I can see their reasoning for focusing on
religious freedom and not on contraception, but Pope Paul VI, in Humanae Vitae,
predicted that when contraception became widespread the governments would use
it as a tool to try and quash religion. So I think they should, not on TV, but
in their dioceses, try and talk more about theology of the body.
You say that Obama is trying to silence the
religious voice, yet he explicitly invoked his beliefs when he came out in
favour of gay marriage…
In its
teachings about homosexuality the Church always begin by saying that everybody
has the dignity of the person and needs to be loved. Now the Church does hold
the view that to freely choose to act on homosexuality is a sin. The same-sex
attraction is a state of somebody’s soul which is disordered. But the people
should be loved.
There are
many reasons why the Church defends that marriage is between a man and a woman,
but the reason why the State has an interest in defending this definition is
because that is the best thing for children, to have a mother and a father. The
complementarity of men and women is the source of happiness for children, and
that is a good for society, and that is the reason why the State has an
interest in defining marriage as between a man and a woman, because it is the
best thing for children. This is clear in Church teaching and in Scripture,
both in the old and new testament.
It is
Christian to love people with same-sex attraction, but it is not Christian for
the state to define marriage out of existence.
You mentioned that
people are thirsty for a deeper understanding of sexuality, yet we see a surge
in legislation for same-sex marriage…
It is a war in America. There are many groups fighting to
keep the definition of marriage as between a man and a woman, so far we have
had referenda in about 30 states, and they have all voted to keep it as between
a man and a woman. So I’m hoping that trend keeps going, and as I said this is
not an attack on people who are homossexuals, it is a desire to keep this
definition of marriage for the good of society, because if you redefine marriage
out of existence it is going to have delitorious effects.
It is hard to make predictions. I think if Obama loses the next
election there will be more resources at the federal level to encourage these
States. All these things are supposed to be at the state or local level, and he
is taking them to the federal level.
The most importante thing is the grass roots, and I would
encourage the bishops and priests to read this and explain it to the people in
their parishes, to build up a proper understanding. It would be great to get
some federal laws in place, but we really need people at the local level to
interiorize the goodness of this teaching, that is the best.
Hoje o professor falará na Universidade
Católica às 18h30. Amanhã está prevista uma conferência às 21h30 na igreja
paroquial das Caldas da Rainha e na quarta outra, à mesma hora, no seminário de
Caparide. Quinta-feira é a vez do seminário de Almada, novamente às 21h30. Todas
as conferências são públicas e de entrada livre.