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Things the Holy Father Never Taught Me, Part 2

Myths and Facts About the Theology of the Body

by Dawn Eden 

In my last column, I explored how some well-intentioned authors and speakers, in attempting to convey Pope John Paul II’s teachings, mistakenly imply that there is no objective need for modest dress. Today’s column looks at another common myth regarding the theology of the body (TOB), in which the late Holy Father’s teachings on union with God are given a sexual interpretation.

Myth: The consecrated woman is a Bride of Christ not only spiritually, but also sexually, as exemplified by St. Teresa of Avila’s ecstasies. The expression on St. Teresa’s face in Bernini’s famous statue bears witness to the sexual nature of such union.

Who says this? TOB instructors who believe they are accurately conveying John Paul II’s analysis of how those who have chosen “celibacy for the kingdom” experience the “spousal meaning of the body.”

Christopher West makes this point in his talks, citing the Bernini statue as the answer to the question of “how does a celibate woman enter into this consummation” of spousal love. Steve Kellmeyer, in his TOB guide Sex and the Sacred City, also cites St. Teresa’s ecstasies as analogous to sexual union. But the sexual interpretation of the Bernini statue is by no means limited to TOB instructors; Dan Brown and Father Andrew Greeley have taken a similar line.

How do they arrive at this misinterpretation? Regarding the statue, in our post-Freudian world, people are far too ready to see sex everywhere. I side with art critic Robert Harbison: “Human sexuality or even the senses cannot have the primacy for Teresa or Bernini which they do for us.”

Beyond that, TOB interpreters are aware that a central concern of John Paul II in his TOB addresses was to explain that God created the human body with an inherent “spousal meaning,” which enables man to make a “sincere gift of himself.” In marriage, this spousal meaning is fulfilled via the sacrament of matrimony, which transforms the gift of self that the spouses make to one another, turning it into a mutual gift to God.

In consecrated life, the gift of self to God is made with no such intermediary. However, since this manner of spousal union, unlike matrimony, is not finalized by sex, some TOB interpreters believe that there remains the question of how the consecrated person’s body participates in this gift of self.

Looking at the TOB as a whole, however, there is really no need to even raise such a question. The Church’s constant teaching is that love is more than sex. Being embodied persons, when we give love—whether with a word, a touch, or a mental prayer—we cannot help but do so with our bodies. John Paul likewise stresses the essential unity of the human person; everything that the body does affects the soul, and vice versa.

Moreover—and this point is not explicit in the TOB, but is certainly in John Paul’s other writings, such as Salvifici Doloris—all the baptized are members of the Mystical Body of Christ.

Therefore, consecrated persons, having made their gift of self to God, do not exist in some sort of airy spiritual vacuum, detached from the rest of humanity. On the contrary, in living out their charism in faith, hope, and charity, they are united to the rest of mankind in a deeper way even than those who make their self-gift through marriage (see Catechism of the Catholic Church 916). 

Where does such a misinterpretation lead? It leads to the idea that the TOB is simply about how to have “ecstasy”—be it the ecstasy of “great sex,” or the ecstasy of a quasi-sexual mystical union with God. Christopher West inadvertently reinforces this impression when he says of John Paul’s teachings, “If we have the courage to drink deeply from this new wine and allow ourselves to get drunk in the spirit, so to speak, we will discover that Christianity is not the prudish list of prohibitions we so often assume it to be. Christianity is a call to ecstasy.”

In fact, nowhere in the TOB does John Paul set ecstasy—be it physical, spiritual, or both—as the barometer of holiness in marriage or consecrated life

What he does say is that “[t]he human being, male and female, who, in the earthly situation where people usually marry (Lk 20:34), freely chooses continence for the kingdom of heaven” thereby reveals “the absolute and eternal nuptial meaning of the glorified body in union with God himself through the ‘face to face’ vision of him.” Such a person is a sign pointing to the heavenly union that “will unite all who participate in the other world, men and women, in the mystery of the communion of saints.”

The value of the sign stems from the celibate person’s whole life, not how ecstatic he or she may be at a given moment. Likewise, in matrimony—which is a sign of the great mystery of Christ’s marriage to His Church (Ephesians 5)—the outpouring of Trinitarian love and the hope of heaven is seen in the couple’s gift of their entire lives.

A presentation of the TOB that reduces the sign-value of marriage or celibacy to sensual pleasure (or, in St. Teresa’s case, what outsiders may think is a sensual pleasure) omits the Cross, and so turns John Paul’s teachings into a prosperity gospel.

Solution:  TOB interpreters would do well to heed John Paul II’s words in his final TOB address, when he said, “We must immediately note that the term ‘theology of the body’ goes far beyond the content of the reflections that were made. These reflections do not include multiple problems which, with regard to their object, belong to the theology of the body (as, for example, the problem of suffering and death, so important in the biblical message). We must state this clearly.”

In other words, to understand the “spousal meaning of the body,” one must understand not only how the gift of self is expressed in joy; one must also understand how it is expressed in suffering. The great Christian secret, in fact—and the secret of St. Teresa’s ecstasies, which the saint herself said were suffused with “excessive pain”—is that suffering, when endured in union with Christ’s sacrifice on the Cross, itself leads to the highest joy.

Papal documents such as Salvifici Doloris and Pope Benedict’s Spe Salvi are helpful for understanding this. On a popular level, Fulton J. Sheen’s classic Three to Get Married gives an excellent account of how spousal love reaches its fruition through sharing in the Cross. In such a marriage, “Love, which once meant pleasure and self-satisfaction, changes into love for God's sake. The other person becomes less the necessary condition of passion and more the partner of the soul.”

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(The views expressed in this column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of Headline Bistro or the Knights of Columbus.)