Hence the notion of the sacramentality of the body. The body, in fact, and it alone, is capable of making visible what is invisible: the spiritual and the divine. It was created to transfer into the visible reality of the world the mystery hidden since time immemorial in God, and thus be a sign of it.
This is what lies behind the experience of being naked without shame. The sacrament of the world, and the sacrament of man in the world, comes from the divine source of holiness, and at the same time is instituted for holiness. The masculine and feminine body of Man is the expression of the ethos of grace in which Man was created.
But it is in Man that creation itself reaches its apex. And it is in human gender differentiation, in human sexuality, that this revelation is disclosed. The two cannot be separated. In Marxist terms and obviously this is what both Wojtyla and Havel had in mind when relating history to conscience , this work of human dominion is at the center of history; it is the key to the history of Man, since it is through such praxis that Man constitutes himself.
The center of this history, however, is not class struggle, as Marxism claims, but another kind of struggle. This tree, John Paul explains, is planted in the very heart of Man. The history of human dominion over creation will be determined by how Man experiences himself in relation to this Tree. It is thus not human dominion exercised through particular economic, political, and technological structures that lies at the heart of human history; it is the self-determination of the person in another through fruitful love that lies at the center of history.
In his conscience, Man experiences the presence of the Tree of the knowledge of good and evil. His response to this presence will characterize the history of Man. That is why history can never run against the current of conscience.
At stake is the survival or the destruction of Man. And this will be decided by how Man is a couple, that is, how Man lives his masculinity and femininity. Which direction does conscience follow? The tree fknowledge knows no frontiers. The only frontier, he says, is the Coming which will join into one Body the struggles of conscience and the mysteries of history.
Obviously he is referring to the eschatological coming of Jesus Christ, and his theological anthropology explains why. For Man did disobey and eat of the Tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
The Man of Lust appeared as a result, replacing the Man of Love. And this was seen precisely in the loss of the experience of the nuptial meaning of the body. As a result, creation itself is questioned; its goodness is suspected or denied.
Historical Man, however, is not this Man of Concupiscence. He can still hear within himself the echo of the original state. But more important, with the first Coming of Jesus Christ another possibility has been opened to Man, an invitation to enter into the existential space of the ethos of redemption, the anticipation of the eschatological state of the perfect communion of Love.
How is this accomplished? As a result of sin, solitude becomes loneliness, radical loneliness, the impossibility, the real impossibility of entering into an inter-personal relation with others, of establishing a communion of persons, and thus of being a person! It is only in Jesus Christ that this existential impasse, this alienation, can be overcome. It can be overcome only by sharing or living within the ethos of Jesus Christ. I believe that a privileged source for understanding this conviction are the plays written by Karol Wojtyla, particularly three of his major dramas which show how this impasse is experienced by Man, and how it can only be overcome by sharing in the ethos of Jesus Christ.
Adam rejects such a split and continues to believe in the possibility of authentic inter-communion between persons, of solidarity, but he does not know how to achieve it.
True social justice, he holds, requires the destruction of the present corrupt social arrangement, and this will occur only when the anger of the poor reaches critical mass.
Revolutionary anger at the heart of human dominion over creation. We know how strong this temptation is for Man. He must become a child in The Eternal Child, a son in the Eternal Son these are actual words from the drama.
Only this makes solidarity possible and does full justice to the truth about Man, about personhood. Only Jesus Christ can make possible the communionofpersons. In these plays we find the same assertion: without Jesus Christ, without a share in his paschal mystery, it is impossible to be a husband, a wife, a father, a mother, a son, a daughter.
It is really impossible. Without Him, personhood, especially experienced through sexuality, remains an enigma experienced as a tragedy. Listen to how in Radiation of Fatherhood, a drama about the meaning of human procreation, the character Adam explains his refusal to be a father. It will reveal to us exactly what interior spiritual disposition contraception betokens. Is not the teaching of Humanae Vitae precisely that this link may never be broken? This character is clearly seen to be both the Church and the Virgin Mary and, in an extended sense, each woman in her femininity, for as we saw, Man becomes a male person through communion with the female person.
At the same time — Adam, Adam — I desire you to die in it to die in the birth of a child, that is, to surrender his own self entirely. You resist it. My Bridegroom does not want to remain lonely in his death! And why does Adam resist? But is it enough to know? Is this not the perfect description of contraception? Is not contraception the separation between intelligence and love?
Is this not at the heart of the teaching of Humanae Vitae? By and large, Man has not listened. He is still fascinated by his intelligence without love. He still refuses to become himself a son in the Eternal Son of the Father.
One deep problem facing the Catholic church is the question of how its teaching authority is understood today. It is fairly clear that, while Rome continues to teach as if its authority were unchanged from the days before Vatican II , the majority of Catholics - within the first-world church, at least - take a far more independent line, and increasingly understand themselves rather than the church as the final arbiters of decision-making, especially on ethical questions.
This collection of essays explores the historical background and present ecclesial situation, explaining the dramatic shift in attitude on the part of contemporary Catholics in the U.
The overall purpose is neither to justify nor to repudiate the authority of the church's hierarchy, but to cast some light on: the context within which it operates, the complexities and ambiguities of the historical tradition of belief and behavior it speaks for, and the kinds of limits it confronts - consciously or otherwise.
The authors do not hope to fix problems, although some of the essays make suggestions, but to contribute to a badly needed intra-Catholic dialogue without which, they believe, problems will continue to fester and solutions will remain elusive. In Cry of Wonder, Gerard W. Hughes, author of God of Surprises, encourages readers to explore their own human experience, the unique doorway opening each of us out into the mystery of our present existence.
In our time, such attention to mystery is considered counter-cultural and subversive of law and order. The truth of this observation becomes very clear to us if we give attention to our own felt reactions to the events of our lives. The purpose of this book is to focus our attention on this inner conflict, because it can reveal to us a vision of the transformation into which we are all now being invited in all that we are experiencing in every moment of our existence.
For the 25th anniversary year of the historic document Humanae Vitae , Janet Smith has gathered together twenty-one outstanding essays and articles by well-respected thinkers to provide the demonstration that Pope Paul VI was not simply correct, but prophetic.
While this document is still widely neglected and misunderstood, the Church continues to proclaim that contraception is a moral evil and that the view of man, sexuality, and marriage that leads to the use of the Pill is not one that is compatible with human dignity, sexual responsibility and spousal love.
Many are unaware that there have been energetic and persuasive worth defenses of this teaching. The general reader, as well as the ethicist and moral theologian, will find much here to stimulate his thinking on this issue. The Holy Father's teaching seeks to make clear that, without a fundamental mutual respect and devotion, any sexual act between a husband and wife is a counterfeit of the real thing.
Such an evil act is not what the Lord of Life wants human beings to contribute to the creation of a new life. A woman who has no way to escape such abuse is morally justified in resorting to effective, non-abortifacient but medically effective means to avoid being impregnated.
A Call to Fidelity seeks to thoughtfully examine and critically evaluate the contributions that Charles E. Curran has made to the field of Catholic moral theology over the past forty years. It also seeks to assess the development of specific topics in contemporary moral theology to which Curran has made his unique mark, particularly in fundamental ethics, sexual and medical ethics, social and political ethics, and topics related to dialogue with other traditions and approaches to Catholic ethics.
Reviewing the many years of his influential writings, thought, and scholarship, fourteen distinguished scholars examine his contributions and the current state of the topics under discussion-which are as far ranging as academic freedom, birth control, gay and lesbian relationships, and feminism.
Each contributor also provides a critical evaluation of Curran's work and outlines how these areas will hold or undergo transformation as the church looks toward its relationship with society and culture in the coming decades. Books Video icon An illustration of two cells of a film strip. Video Audio icon An illustration of an audio speaker. Audio Software icon An illustration of a 3. Software Images icon An illustration of two photographs. Images Donate icon An illustration of a heart shape Donate Ellipses icon An illustration of text ellipses.
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