Dear
***,
Thank
you for lending us the recommended by Fr *** books
‘Theology of the Body Made Simple’ by Anthony Percy and
‘Theology of the Body for Beginners’ by Christopher
West. I was somewhat surprised with the content of those
four public lectures which were announced, as you know,
as “Pope John Paul II’s Theology of the Body”. I have
sampled the lectures of Pope JP II in the past; I cannot
say I was wildly interested in the topic but
nevertheless interested enough to attend the local
lectures about TOB, probably out of my habit to attend
just anything in our parish that promises some theology,
especially if it is something new to me.
The
local lectures, while they clarified nothing about the
complex ideas of the Pope (as I recalled them), seemed
to also introduce something else that I found to be
sufficiently at odds with what I remembered from my
cursory reading of the ‘The Redemption of the Body and
the Sacramentality of Marriage’, the title of the of
Pope JP II’s Wednesday Catecheses. Hence I dived into
Pope John Paul II’s work again.
Almost
everyone comments that his text is extremely difficult
to get through. My difficulties with it are that the
topic is very wast and the ideas are very many; it is
exceedingly difficult to keep them all in mind while
moving through the dense text which is his separate
lectures presented in chronological order. Some say
there are many contradictions in the text as well; I
pinned a few. There is nothing surprising about that
though, considering that Pope JP II had given his
lectures over six years; it is only natural that his
thoughts would develop over that time, sometimes
abruptly I suspect. At least this is my impression.
Hence his talks appear to be anything but the smooth
monolith the modern TOB presents.
I think
I am almost instinctively drawing the line here, between
the ‘The Redemption of the Body and the Sacramentality
of Marriage’ and the current TOB movement, via
stressing the original title and the character of Pope
JP II’s lectures because the character of what is now
circulating in the Catholic Church makes it hard to see
it as the organic continuation of the Pope’s teaching
(please note that when I say “TOB” I always mean the
current TOB movement). While Pope John Paul II
indeed spoke much about the human body he would always
speak of it in the context of the human person. This is,
I believe, the #1 important difference between Pope JP
II’s thought and the thoughts of the developers of the
Theology of the Body (hence referred to as TOB) who tend
to consider the body as a separate entity. The body in
their take, being separated from the soul, becomes
somewhat impersonal. Consequentially, a human being can
now be considered as an animal whose bodily functions,
sexual in particular, can be observed, studied, and
discussed without the slightest consideration of the
dignity of his person. Hence comes the #2 important
difference between Pope JP II and the TOB-developers,
namely that the former, while discussing human
sexuality, does it far more broadly, laconically and
immeasurably more modestly than the latter.
Hence,
in my mind, there is a definite shift of the foci,
proportions and vectors which one can clearly
observe when comparing the teaching of Pope JP II and
the TOB being put side by side. At the same time, the
TOB seems to faithfully retain what they call “the
ground-breaking approach” of Pope JP II, four original
experiences of the human being, Original Solitude,
Original Unity, Original Nakedness and Original
Sin and following from them the realisations that
the human body is symbolic, nuptial, free and
fallen. It instructive though what the TOB does with
it:
“John Paul II is taking us
back to our proper roots. It is only from a proper
foundation that you can build anything of worth. To go
back to “the beginning” – to Original Solitude, Unity
and Nakedness – means to understand that only by opening
ourselves up to God, his creation and other human beings
can we mature.”[1]
I am
quite sure that, even while Pope JP II maintained the
utmost importance of the understanding of these
“original experiences” for his teaching about marriage,
he would not put it in the way that TOB does, i.e.
creating an impression that we must somehow run back to
Eden – he is a far better theologian than this. The
quote above creates a very strong vector “from the New
Testament to the Old”, “from the New Adam to the Old”,
“from being born in Christ – back to before the
Incarnation”. This is just an example of how the
handling of the Pope’s work can change its meaning via
blowing up some of its parts and reducing other,
distorting the proportions.
Before I
move on to the discussion of what actually propelled me
to write this letter I must say that I have numerous
disagreements with the thesis of Pope John Paul II. My
major disagreement is that I do not see any need in
creating some additional “logical concepts” (like “the
original experiences”) for backing up the Church’s
teaching about marriage (as it was delivered by ‘Humane
Vitae’ by the Pope Paul VI), for a very simple reason:
the concept of the Christian marriage (as
distinct from human marriage) is a product of revelation
hence the former cannot be justified by the latter.
Nothing in the created order can explain revelation
without reducing that very revelation and without making
it trivial. Rather the meaning of creation is itself
revealed through the action of the Holy Spirit.
For
example, reference to a “natural law” fails because,
while a natural law points towards the normality of a
union between man and woman and abnormality – of a
homosexual union it cannot back up decidedly unnatural
ideals like, for instance, the ideal of monogamy. In
fact, the biology of every mammal [human being included]
is contrary to it. I am quite sure that the Pope was
aware of this problem hence his use of the concept of
“original experiences” but – they do not say anything
new, anything that Our Lord and His apostles have not
already said. And, unlike a “natural law”, the “original
experiences” are the subject of faith so they would not
convince non-believers. As for believers, they, I
repeat, have revelation including the grand revelation
of ‘Song of Songs’ and the Apostle Paul’s letter to the
Ephesians:
“Be
subject to one another out of reverence to Christ.
Wives should be subjects to their husbands as to the Lord, since, as Christ is head of the Church and saves the whole body, so as a husband the head of his wife; and the Church is subject to Christ, so should wives be to their husbands, in everything.
Husbands should love their wives, just as Christ loved the Church and sacrificed himself for her to make her holy by washing her in cleansing water with a form of words, so that when he took the Church to himself she would be glorious, with no speck or wrinkle or anything like that, but holy and faultless.
In the same way, husbands must love their wives as they love their own bodies; for a man to love his wife is for him to love himself. A man never hates his own body, but he feeds it and looks after it; and that is the way Christ treats the Church, because we are parts of his Body.
This is why a man leaves his father and mother and becomes attached to his wife, and the two become one flesh.
Wives should be subjects to their husbands as to the Lord, since, as Christ is head of the Church and saves the whole body, so as a husband the head of his wife; and the Church is subject to Christ, so should wives be to their husbands, in everything.
Husbands should love their wives, just as Christ loved the Church and sacrificed himself for her to make her holy by washing her in cleansing water with a form of words, so that when he took the Church to himself she would be glorious, with no speck or wrinkle or anything like that, but holy and faultless.
In the same way, husbands must love their wives as they love their own bodies; for a man to love his wife is for him to love himself. A man never hates his own body, but he feeds it and looks after it; and that is the way Christ treats the Church, because we are parts of his Body.
This is why a man leaves his father and mother and becomes attached to his wife, and the two become one flesh.
This mystery has great significance, but I am applying
it to Christ and the Church.”
The
apostle does not say “husbands, love your wives as some
good people I told you about” or even “love your wives
as Avraham loved Sara” but he says they should “love
their wives, just as Christ loved the Church and
sacrificed himself for her”. He gives the Lord’s
self-sacrifice as an example for their earthly love! He
continues doing that, always drawing on the heavenly
examples (Christ and Church as the Bride) to explain how
Christian couples are supposed to relate to each other.
By doing that he gives the relationship on earth a
heavenly dimension, the vector is not “back to the roots
in Eden” but forward, to the New Jerusalem. The only
time when the apostle uses a human relationship to
explain the divine realm is:
“a man leaves his father and mother and becomes attached to his wife, and the two become one flesh. This mystery has great significance, but I am applying it to Christ and the Church.”
“a man leaves his father and mother and becomes attached to his wife, and the two become one flesh. This mystery has great significance, but I am applying it to Christ and the Church.”
However,
he uses the Old Testament revelation to explain some
aspects of the New Testament revelation, of how in the
sacrament two become inseparable, by the grace of God
and how in Baptism and Eucharist a human being becomes
the Body of Christ i.e. inseparable from Him. He does
nothing “to back up” or to explain the revelation
about one flesh. A man could never come up with such
an idea of “one flesh”, unless it was given to him; once
it is given he can understand the truth of it on his own
experience. And, hence people understand experientially
what it is to be “one flesh” with one’s spouse – i.e. to
feel each other’s pain as own, to love until death and
even more they can grasp [albeit dimly] the ultimately
higher mystery, of the relationship of Christ with His
Church and with each of them. Genesis spoke purely about
human marriage; now the Church is the Bride of Christ
and each soul is a bride of Christ = in intimate
communion with Him. The apostle seals this new reality:
“Be subject to one another out of reverence to Christ.”
This phrase by the way can be applied to any personal
relationship between Christians.
To put
it simply, after the Apostle compared the desirable
attitude to one’s spouse with the self-sacrifice of
Christ for His Church a Christian nothing more is
needed. And, because Our Lord said “one cannot love more
than one who sacrifices himself for his friends” we have
a direction for everything needed here including the
subject of the TOB. It logically follows that a
hypothetical person who is trying to practice
self-sacrificial love would try to refrain from cheating
their spouse, killing (including the embryos in vitro),
and so on. That is not to say that the Church should not
speak about marriage and sexual relationships. The
question is how it should speak. I think the
Church [the members of the Church] should speak as the
true Bride of Christ i.e. considering the dignity of her
Bridegroom first and also her own dignity, of persons
made by Him and in His image.
Precisely because God has spoken about Himself as the
Spouse of Israel, in the books of the Prophets, and as
Bridegroom of a human soul, in the ‘Song of Songs’,
Christians generally have an idea of marriage as
something definitely exulted, definitely good and holy
(I am saying “an idea” because we are sinful people
living in a fallen world therefore the marriage is
capable to become its opposite values in these
conditions). And, precisely because God uses this
symbol, of the love between earthly spouses, for His
own love for us which stretches even beyond this life
into eternity with Him, one should be very careful
not to misuse or abuse it. Now, at last, I came to the
actual point of this letter, that is, the current TOB as
it is in the writings of Christopher West and his
followers.
After
giving up the idea to read every lecture of Pope John
Paul II I moved on to your books. They both surprised me
with, for an Eastern Orthodox, indecency when handling
this delicate matter, of human sexual intimacy and God.
Here is a typical example of such indecency. Anthony
Percy about nuptial meaning of the body:
“The
man’s genitals are external, while the woman’s are
internal. They are made for each other. The man enters
the woman in sexual intercourse and the woman receives
him. They become “one flesh”…. Nuptial means meant for
love – it made for relationship. You can see it from the
symbolic nature of the human body. A man and a woman
find each other attractive. There is a physical
attraction but there is also a spiritual attraction.
They marry and come together sexually. This act is both
physical and spiritual since the body is symbolic.(…)
The human body speaks – it has a language of his own.
Therefore, sex – a bodily activity – has a language. Sex
speaks a language of love… In the next chapter, we will
examine closely the issue of contraception. But we can,
I think, begin to see what is wrong with it.
Contraception contradicts the language of love – the
language of the body. It alters the language of love.
Bishop Victor Galeon – Diocese of St Augustine, Florida,
USA – has noted this. He writes: why do we tolerate a
wife using a diaphragm or a pill, or a husband employing
a condom during sexual communication?”
It is
quite depressing to see the “differences in genitalia”
as the major reason for a man and a woman “coming
together”. Even Genesis is much nobler than that –
probably because the major reason for the union of Adam
and Eve was the fact that God created Eve especially
for Adam and brought her to him. Because everything
that God does is ultimately very good he made the two in
the most perfect way so that they could fulfil each
other, and not just as “bodies” but as persons. The
whole poetic intonation of Genesis has something epic,
noble and pure about it – something that is totally
alien to the TOB movement. I find especially touching
the moment of sudden recognition of Adam, “this is bone
of my bones the flesh of my flesh”, the exclamation
which, in the language of the Scriptures, expresses much
more than “body from my body”. The love story as it is
delivered by Percy, of a hypothetical man and woman, is
reduced to the naked sexual act determined by their
anatomical match. The admission “but there is also a
spiritual attraction” does not raise the affair to the
realm of the spirit because the spiritual attraction
seems to have only one value – to give the sexual act a
quality of the “language” i.e. the “sign”. This fragment
quite well demonstrates the soullessness of the
TOB and also the emerging shamelessness clearly
seen in the last lines: “why do we tolerate a wife using
a diaphragm or a pill, or a husband employing a condom
during sexual communication?”
I am
quite disgusted even to comment on those lines by the
way. I find the words of the Bishop extremely offensive
and also alarming because “tolerating” or “not
tolerating” the usage of condom or diaphragm is
something that only two involved can experience and
discuss and be angry about, as the Bishop evidently is.
His words and even more so, his transparent emotion,
convey that the private affair of lovemaking including
the most intimate details of the process are no longer
private – he has somehow made himself the third so to
speak and can now literally “tolerate” or “not
tolerate” them. It may be argued that Pope Paul VI in
his ‘Humanae Vitae’ also spoke against contraceptives.
True, but the language he used is entirely different. He
employed general principals of moral/ethical theology
never allowing his argument to drop from the theological
to the physiological level. Hence his discourse, despite
the severity of the doctrine, never robs human sexuality
and marital life of its intrinsic privacy. Perhaps it
was so because Pope Paul VI did not make the sexual
realm into something else like a “sign”. “Sign” is
public by definition – noteworthy, the Bishop treats
sexual intercourse as “sexual communication” – and there
is something public, at least potentially, in the word
“communication”, something to be heard or seen by the
other unlike the term “love making” that excludes anyone
but the couple.
You may say that there are
books on sex and contraception which are far more
explicit. Correct, but such books [usually] do not
discuss God alongside of condoms, so to speak, as the
current TOP routinely does, and not as the plain
statement “God prohibits contraception” – if it did just
that no spiritual harm would come out of it.
Unfortunately, because the whole TOB doctrine rests on
the thesis “body is the sign; it has own language;
sexual act is also the language which is supposed to
express the truth of God” it cannot speak about the
sexual act plainly, without reference to God. Sign
points to the divine in the TOB’s take. Hence the use of
condoms is not allowed not because they are just wrong
but because “it twists the sign because condoms make the
mutual self-giving less full”. Hence the condoms are
somehow now, in a reader’s or a listener’s mind,
connected with God. But this is not all.
Paradoxically, while reducing two persons to two bodies without souls the TOB is compelled to bring God into bedroom in even more direct way[2], via references to God’s revelation about Himself as the Spouse of Israel and making parallels not between the love of human spouses and the love of God but between the sexual relationship of the human spouses and the spousal love of God. As a consequence, God becomes sexualized – not eroticised as an object of the pure desire of a mystic but sexualized i.e. he is turned into a pagan god. An example: Christopher West refers to ‘Song of Songs’ (which in Rabbinic and Christian traditions is interpreted, respectably, as the love of God for Israel and the love of Christ for His Church and each human soul) as “the centrefold of the Bible”.
Paradoxically, while reducing two persons to two bodies without souls the TOB is compelled to bring God into bedroom in even more direct way[2], via references to God’s revelation about Himself as the Spouse of Israel and making parallels not between the love of human spouses and the love of God but between the sexual relationship of the human spouses and the spousal love of God. As a consequence, God becomes sexualized – not eroticised as an object of the pure desire of a mystic but sexualized i.e. he is turned into a pagan god. An example: Christopher West refers to ‘Song of Songs’ (which in Rabbinic and Christian traditions is interpreted, respectably, as the love of God for Israel and the love of Christ for His Church and each human soul) as “the centrefold of the Bible”.
I think
this term, “the centrefold”, is very descriptive of the
thinking, both of West and his followers who seems to be
the major force behind that odd sex/fertility cult
within the Catholic Church – not of spiritualisation =
transfiguration of the total human person, including
flesh, into god (God became Man so a man would become
god as St Athanasios said) but sexualisation of God who
is Love making out of Him God who is Sex.
While researching about
Christopher West (who appeared to progress since he
wrote his ‘TOB for Beginners’ in 2004, pun intended) I
came across an informative website, of a person who
seems to spend much longer time trying to define the
problems with West’s “theology”. Here are a just few
quotes; one can read the whole thoroughly referenced
argument following the link in the reference[3]:
“Overemphasis
on Sex (or Sexualizing Christianity)
The novelty of Christopher West’s “Bedtime Prayers for Children” wherein “sexuality” and “the body” become central themes over our “personhood” and our “souls” even in one’s personal prayer.
This is the bedtime prayer Christopher West has taught his children to pray every night: “Thank you Jesus for making Mommy to be a woman. Thank you for making Daddy to be a man. Thank you for bringing Mommy and Daddy into the Sacrament of Marriage. Thank you for bringing [insert name(s) of children here] into the world through Mommy and Daddy’s love. Help our boys grow into strong men ready to give away their bodies in love. Help our girls grow into strong women ready to give away their bodies in love. If they are called into the Sacrament of Marriage, please prepare them for their future spouse. If they are called to give themselves entirely to Jesus and the Church as a priest or religious, please prepare their hearts for that. Amen”.”
In every sentence, “sexuality” is central. It goes from the mother’s “femininity” to the father’s “masculinity”, then to the marital bond, to procreation through sexual intercourse, then to the “bodies” of the male children and to the “bodies” of the female children, to their future “marriages” or their future as celibates (which is the only thing here not strictly sexual). None of the religious saints ever taught their spiritual children to pray with so much focus on sexuality, gender, and bodies. They focused on “persons” and “souls”. Clearly, these prayers demonstrate West’s inordinate preoccupation and even obsession with sexuality and the body. West seems to feel the need to sexualize everything, including even a child’s bedtime prayers.”
It is called the “seminary” because it is where priests are prepared to “inseminate” the Church.
West asks: “Where does a man go to train to be a priest? The seminary. What is he learning to do in the seminary? Where do we get that word, ‘seminary’? He is learning how to ‘inseminate’. Who is he learning to inseminate? The Church, with his spiritual seed”. It is true that the word “seminary” comes from the Latin word "semen", which simply means "seed". However, this is not why "seminary" was given a name based on the word "semen". Rather, it was because vocations begin as a “seed” and need to be nurtured and grown and raised to full maturity before that vocation is ready to “blossom” and be exposed to the world in such a way that it will survive and effectively thrive. But because West is disposed to connect everything with sex or give a sexual interpretation to everything, he commits this error.”
The novelty of Christopher West’s “Bedtime Prayers for Children” wherein “sexuality” and “the body” become central themes over our “personhood” and our “souls” even in one’s personal prayer.
This is the bedtime prayer Christopher West has taught his children to pray every night: “Thank you Jesus for making Mommy to be a woman. Thank you for making Daddy to be a man. Thank you for bringing Mommy and Daddy into the Sacrament of Marriage. Thank you for bringing [insert name(s) of children here] into the world through Mommy and Daddy’s love. Help our boys grow into strong men ready to give away their bodies in love. Help our girls grow into strong women ready to give away their bodies in love. If they are called into the Sacrament of Marriage, please prepare them for their future spouse. If they are called to give themselves entirely to Jesus and the Church as a priest or religious, please prepare their hearts for that. Amen”.”
In every sentence, “sexuality” is central. It goes from the mother’s “femininity” to the father’s “masculinity”, then to the marital bond, to procreation through sexual intercourse, then to the “bodies” of the male children and to the “bodies” of the female children, to their future “marriages” or their future as celibates (which is the only thing here not strictly sexual). None of the religious saints ever taught their spiritual children to pray with so much focus on sexuality, gender, and bodies. They focused on “persons” and “souls”. Clearly, these prayers demonstrate West’s inordinate preoccupation and even obsession with sexuality and the body. West seems to feel the need to sexualize everything, including even a child’s bedtime prayers.”
It is called the “seminary” because it is where priests are prepared to “inseminate” the Church.
West asks: “Where does a man go to train to be a priest? The seminary. What is he learning to do in the seminary? Where do we get that word, ‘seminary’? He is learning how to ‘inseminate’. Who is he learning to inseminate? The Church, with his spiritual seed”. It is true that the word “seminary” comes from the Latin word "semen", which simply means "seed". However, this is not why "seminary" was given a name based on the word "semen". Rather, it was because vocations begin as a “seed” and need to be nurtured and grown and raised to full maturity before that vocation is ready to “blossom” and be exposed to the world in such a way that it will survive and effectively thrive. But because West is disposed to connect everything with sex or give a sexual interpretation to everything, he commits this error.”
“West criticizing “flat-chested” images of Mary in art
while encouraging Catholics to “rediscover Mary’s ...
abundant breasts”.
This is a quotation taken from Dr. Schindler's initial
critique of West, which Schindler pulled from the March,
2002 edition of Crisis
Magazine. I would hope that this argument and these
statements by West are so prima
facie wrong
that it need not require commentary from me, but no
doubt some defenders of West will even provide an apologia for
this.”
End of quotes.
Those statement of West, while being errant and
extremely offensive and (some of them) even blasphemous
are nevertheless the logical outcome of the vector
of the TOB movement towards God as Sex. If you take them
out of the context of Christianity and apply them to
some sex/fertility cult [to which they belong, in truth]
they will cease being offensive. Who can be offended
with the “abundant breasts” of the Mother Goddess or a
priest who has to literally “inseminate” someone to
ensure a good harvest?
Finally, to show how far the vector towards paganism can
go, I would like to provide a take on the symbolism of
the Paschal candle of the
West disciple Fr Thomas Loya[4]:
“After
stating that it is clear that the Eastern Church looks
at the paschal candle in a phallic sexual way (that the
descent of the Paschal Candle into holy water 3 times is
analogous to a husband penetrating his wife in coitus)
[Fr Loya says]:
“Acknowledging the Paschal candle’s phallic imagery does
not require a quote from a particular Father of the
Church. It
is only one example of the spousal character of the
church’s entire liturgical life, from Bernini’s canopy
over the altar in St. Peter’s Basilica, designed to
resemble a nuptial bed, to St. John Chrysostom reminding
married couples that on the cross Christ united Himself
with his Church in “spiritual intercourse,” to the
liturgical texts of the Eastern churches that proclaim
on Easter: “Christ emerges from the tomb like a
bridegroom from the bridal chamber and fills the women
with joy!” What Roman Catholics call “Holy Week,”
Eastern churches call “The Week of the Bridegroom.” ”
I am not sure whether there is a need to say that we
(Eastern Orthodox) do not look at the
Paschal candle in a “phallic sexual way” because the
denial in this case inevitably retains some of the
sticky dirt and blasphemy of the original. Likewise, I
am not sure that I should clarify that an Orthodox
priest lowers the paschal candle into the water [blesses
it] three times because of the Orthodox habit of saying
and doing things, during the Liturgy, thrice as a
reference to the Most Holy Trinity. Those facts are
actually not important because no normal Christian would
ever regard the thought about an analogy of the paschal
candle with a male penis “in action” as anything else
but an impure thought coming from an impure source – the
impure psyche or the devil or both. To that the TOB-adepts
would say [as they do] that “there is nothing impure
about marital sex and Christ is married to the Church”.
I rest my case – see my argument above about making the
God of Love into the God of Sex. In the light of that
there is no need to point out other mistakes of Loya
about Eastern Orthodox liturgical practices and their
interpretation. They are not just “mistakes” but an
indication of a serious spiritual problem hence the
clarification of particular mistakes would not prevent
such people from continuing to pervert Christian symbols
– they will come up with new ideas straight away. Like
this example, from a West’ disciple in a public
discussion:
“I forgot to mention that
Christ's baptism in the Jordan is also part of that
metaphysical sexual pattern. Whether carnal or virginal,
it's the same pattern.
A husband 'knows' his wife.
The flame (or Christ candle) plunges into the font.
Christ plunges into the river Jordan.
The seed falls into the ground.
The Holy Spirit hovers over the waters.
The Holy Spirit overshadows the womb of Mary.
The Persons of the Holy Trinity all indwell each other in an eternally fruitful and blessed union.”[5]
Noteworthy, West and his followers seem to be completely oblivious to the very inappropriateness – to leave alone the aberrance – of their “discourse”, and not just in the light of the Christian faith but in light of the normal modesty and dignity of a human person. Now, we have all met with people who seem to be unable to talk about anything but sex and sexual life (their own and others), in the most precise physiological detail and in the most inappropriate situations. Such people usually do not make any gender-related considerations before who they speak (a man before a group of women or likewise). A common (and entirely correct) explanation of such aberrant behaviour is that a chronic frustration of libido (chronic sexual dissatisfaction) drives the person to express it in whatever way is available to them. He or she engages in a kind of a “verbal sex” via making his or her audience to passively participate in their obscene discourse. The fact that such behaviour is nothing else but the channelling of the oppressed libido is supported by the typical reaction of a normally modest listener, that he or she feels themself being polluted and his or her dignity – somewhat violated.
The flame (or Christ candle) plunges into the font.
Christ plunges into the river Jordan.
The seed falls into the ground.
The Holy Spirit hovers over the waters.
The Holy Spirit overshadows the womb of Mary.
The Persons of the Holy Trinity all indwell each other in an eternally fruitful and blessed union.”[5]
Noteworthy, West and his followers seem to be completely oblivious to the very inappropriateness – to leave alone the aberrance – of their “discourse”, and not just in the light of the Christian faith but in light of the normal modesty and dignity of a human person. Now, we have all met with people who seem to be unable to talk about anything but sex and sexual life (their own and others), in the most precise physiological detail and in the most inappropriate situations. Such people usually do not make any gender-related considerations before who they speak (a man before a group of women or likewise). A common (and entirely correct) explanation of such aberrant behaviour is that a chronic frustration of libido (chronic sexual dissatisfaction) drives the person to express it in whatever way is available to them. He or she engages in a kind of a “verbal sex” via making his or her audience to passively participate in their obscene discourse. The fact that such behaviour is nothing else but the channelling of the oppressed libido is supported by the typical reaction of a normally modest listener, that he or she feels themself being polluted and his or her dignity – somewhat violated.
While it is transparent to me that it is not a “new
theological concept” but plain sexual desire (frustrated
libido) that is the real force behind West and his
followers activity I acknowledge that the very frame of
their discourse, of Christian theology, can [and does]
prevent their audiences from seeing this fact. The words
“theology” and, worse even, “God”, “Jesus Christ”,
“Virgin Mary”, “Bride”, “Bridegroom” used by West and
other likeminded work as a theological cover for the
obscenity – for their audiences and, I suspect, for
themselves as well. It is nothing else but an act of
public masturbation sanctioned by theology; unlike an
act of physical masturbation, the spiritual one may not
only pass unnoticed but can also give to the person
engaged in it a sense of being virtuous, so it is really
handy so to speak.
As a result of that act, the sacred words and symbols
become flattened and even polluted. The TOB is big on
“symbolic language of the body” and its “truthfulness”
hence it is quite amazing to observe how religious
sisters who are supposed to represent, symbolically, the
Bride of Christ, engage in public discussions of the
techniques of the sexual act and various kinds of
contraception under the cover of “defining the
truthfulness of the language of the body” – all that
combined with constant references to “God/ Jesus Christ
as a Lover”. They seem not to be able to see that by
doing this they are hopelessly untruthful to the sign
of their own vocation, of a bride. It seems to
escape their understanding that a vow of chastity means
not just physical chastity but the chastity of a
mind/soul as well. The same is applied to a virgin; one
can remain a virgin physically and be corrupted, by
one’s own mind and words.
Likewise, a celibate priest engaging in far too explicit
discourse about sexual intercourse which, in his take,
is somehow intimately connected with “the mysteries of
the Holy Trinity” looks incongruent to his vocation to
say the least. He also ruins the very idea of his
vocation, of being a father for a congregation
because the notion of “father” assumes the absence of
any sense of sexualisation, before his “children” at
least. Of course, by perverting the normal idea of a
human father the image of God the Father becomes
perverted as well. It is a good example of how the
corruption of the earthly image corrupts the divine and
likewise: it is enough just to start diminishing one and
the other will inevitably fall down as a consequence.
This is why the destruction of human morality always
goes together with the destruction of the image of God =
destruction of God.
Hence the West-TOB manages not only to pervert the
unanimated Christian symbols and the Names of the
Divine, it also perverts the symbols embodied by the
people: priests, nuns, religious sisters, consecrated
virgins etc. It also perverts the whole Christian
theology including the very core of it as we can see on
the example above. Under the cover of “making marital
sex holy” it literally does not leave anything sacred,
in the Church. This is an extreme outcome of course but
it is already clearly visible in the writings and
actions of West and his followers.
Finally, a few words about what I consider to be the
worst damage the TOB does, namely to Christian mysticism
or better to say not mysticism as such (nothing can
damage the truth objectively) but the damage it does to
an individuals’ ability to understand mysticism. I
understood it from my own experience which I will relate
to you. As you probably know I have been into Carmelite
spirituality for some time now, with St John of the
Cross being my spiritual guide. Until I heard and read
“the TOB-things” my mind was free from the obscene
associations discussed above. It means that when I read
the lines of St John of the Cross from his ‘Spiritual
Canticle: Songs between the soul and the Bridegroom’:
“In the inner wine cellar
I drank of my Beloved, and, when
I went abroad
through all this valley,
I no longer knew anything,
and lost the herd that I was following.”
I drank of my Beloved, and, when
I went abroad
through all this valley,
I no longer knew anything,
and lost the herd that I was following.”
I see
the spiritual reality of the pure intimacy of a soul
with God and the transformation it causes, to the soul.
I still perceive those lines in this way. However, the
TOB of West made me aware of other possible
interpretations. After hearing and reading about “God
and sex, sex and God” I had to labour for days to get
rid of the dirt which got stuck to my soul. Please
notice that I have been studying Christian mystical
tradition for years now – and still I was profoundly
affected. It is really hard to address God along the
lines of ‘Song of Songs’ if ‘Song of Songs’ was turned,
by a “theologian”, into the “centrefold of the Bible”
because “centrefold” and God do not go together! Imagine
then someone who has never read anything of the
Christian mystical tradition (and it appears to me that
it is the condition of the majority of the regular
Catholics now, in the English speaking world at least)
but read/listen the TOB. The ability of such a person to
perceive any spiritual reality conveyed by the language
of human love is ruined, probably forever. Why? – Simply
because the sex drive is an instinctive, primary, and
very powerful force, and for a human being it is much
more natural/ easier to see “sex” instead of the
“sacred” everywhere; unless they are educated properly
so that their inherent sense of sacred is not ruined. An
adept of the TOB is simply unable to go further than a
superficial level. He can never really know God
intimately.
Apart from the obvious, that
the love of God is not “sex”, I think there is another
reason why the Church, for all its history, has always
been speaking about the divine in terms of human love,
even of erotic love and never in terms of “sex” – not
because it is “prudish” as some TOB-ists say – but
because the notion of love understood as “the love of a
human person in all the totality of his being” normally
lifts an individual up and hence the discourse about
love is capable of lifting a person up to God –
unlike the discourse about “sex”. It is clearly seen in
the poetry of St John which, while boldly using the
language of erotic love has nothing to do with “sex”.
Here the sense of the sacred (divine) is also being
transmitted via the sublime quality of the poetry, just
like in ‘Song of Songs’ – this can explain why the
Church has been always very peculiar about the language
it uses guarding against desacralisation, of the
mysteries of God and man. Oh, what a vast topic it is!
– I could now discourse about the Incarnation of our
Lord in Whom God and Man come together [one would hope
this fact would prevent vulgar discourses about God and
man both] but this letter is already long. I conclude
then that one can speak as boldly as he wishes about God
in terms of erotic love as long as the sense of awe is
retained – as Christian mystics did. And here is
something I have just noticed: the TOB, while talking
much about making a body “sacred”[6]
is totally devoid of the sense of awe, towards God and
towards love as a gift of God.
I was
going to finish on this point but, while checking the
references, I came across of what seems to be an example
of the “new mysticism” of the TOB which takes a vector
towards turning Christianity into what it is not even
further:
L., a follower of West, says in a public discussion
[with my underlining]:
“The fact that the Blessed
Mother's womb became fruitful indicates that a masculine
act of giving life occurred. It doesn't have to be in
the natural order of sexual intercourse any more than we
have to think that God had intercourse with our mothers
to give us spiritual life. But, the marital embrace is
an earthly SIGN of life-giving love which points to the
spiritual life-giving love that God bestows on us.
I still do not understand why this cannot all apply to the Easter vigil liturgy. If the candle is a symbol of Christ on the Cross, which is the marriage bed on which Christ consummates His marriage to His Bride where He gives His spiritual seminal fluid to her, wouldn't it make sense that there would be some sort of phallic imagery there? Rahner and Bux use the terms procreative and fertilize which are both masculine actions. Phallic images denote the masculine act of fertilizing since they are used in relation to crops and animals as well as human fertility.”[7]
I still do not understand why this cannot all apply to the Easter vigil liturgy. If the candle is a symbol of Christ on the Cross, which is the marriage bed on which Christ consummates His marriage to His Bride where He gives His spiritual seminal fluid to her, wouldn't it make sense that there would be some sort of phallic imagery there? Rahner and Bux use the terms procreative and fertilize which are both masculine actions. Phallic images denote the masculine act of fertilizing since they are used in relation to crops and animals as well as human fertility.”[7]
The words of L. about “Christ giving his spiritual semen
to his Bride” disturbingly reminded me of a somewhat
similar interpretation, of the encounter of Our Lord
with the Samaritan woman at the well. In that account
the “living water” which Christ proposed to give to the
Samaritan woman is also explained as “seminal liquid”
but physical, i.e. real. This interpretation actually
belongs to the tradition of Gnosticism/Satanism. I do
not know what you may think of it; as for me I am simply
stunned with such a likeness of interpretations. The
word “spiritual” obviously cannot rescue the discourse
of L. from the obscene meaning. It is also noteworthy
that the episode with the Samaritan woman is often
symbolically interpreted, in the Christian tradition, as
an encounter of the Bridegroom with His Bride. Hence it
appears that both TOB-ists and Gnostics/Satanists have
somehow a similar “vector” of turning Christ into
Pan-like pagan god and His Bride into a Whore – that is
not surprising because both are into the “sexual cult”;
the difference is that the former seems to engage in
imaginary sex and the latter – in real sex. But the
spiritual fruits are disturbingly identical.
For the purpose of regaining the sense of reality I will
quote an authentic mystic and theologian of the Catholic
Church, St Teresa Benedicta of the Cross (Edith Stein):
“In the colourful series of
images [of the ‘Spiritual Canticle’ of St John of the
Cross] the whole way of the soul has been uncovered for
us. At the same time, we were allowed an insight in the
secret designs of God that were set in place along this
way from the very morning of creation. And we see how
the hidden way of the soul is woven together with the
mysteries of faith. From all eternity the soul has been
chosen to share the triune life of the Godhead as bride
of the Son of God.
In order to lead the bride home, the Eternal Word clothed himself with human nature. God and soul are to be two in one flesh. But because flesh of a sinful human beings riots against the spirit, all life in the flesh is battle and suffering: for the Son of Man even more than for any other human being; for the others, more in proportion to the intimacy of their bond with him. Jesus Christ woos the soul, in that he substitutes his life for hers in the battle against his and her enemies. He chases away Satan and all evil spirits wherever he personally encounters them. He snatches souls from the tyranny of the evil ones. Relentlessly he uncovers human malice wherever it approaches him in delusion, disguise, and obduracy. To all who recognize their own sinfulness, remorsefully acknowledge it, and long to be liberated from it, he extends his hand. But he demands that they follow him unconditionally, and renounce everything that can oppose his Spirit within them.
Through all this he rouses the rage of hell and the hatred of human malice and weaknesses against himself until they break loose and prepare the death on the cross for him. Here, in the extreme torment of body and soul, above all by in the night of abandonment by God, he pays divine Justice the ransom for the accumulated debt of sin of all times and opens the sluice of paternal Mercy for all who have the courage to embrace the cross and the crucified one. Into them he pours his divine light and life. But because this light unceasingly annihilates all that stands in his way, they experience it first as night and death. This is the dark night of contemplation, the death on the cross for the old self. The night is so much darker, the death is so much more painful, the more forcefully this wooing by divine Love grips the soul, and more unreservedly the soul surrenders herself to it. The progressive collapse of nature gives more and more room to the supernatural light and to divine love. It overpowers the natural faculties and transforms them into divinized and spiritualized ones. Thus a new incarnation of Christ takes place in Christians, which is synonymous with a resurrection from the death on the cross. The new self carries the wounds of Christ on the body: the remembrance of the misery of sin out of which the soul was awakened to a blessed life, and a reminder of the price that had to be paid for that. The pain of yearning for the fullness of life persists until, through the door of actual physical death, entrance into the shadowless light is gained.
So the bridal union of the soul with Christ is the goal for which she was created, purchased through the cross, consummated on the cross and sealed for all eternity with the cross.”[8]
In order to lead the bride home, the Eternal Word clothed himself with human nature. God and soul are to be two in one flesh. But because flesh of a sinful human beings riots against the spirit, all life in the flesh is battle and suffering: for the Son of Man even more than for any other human being; for the others, more in proportion to the intimacy of their bond with him. Jesus Christ woos the soul, in that he substitutes his life for hers in the battle against his and her enemies. He chases away Satan and all evil spirits wherever he personally encounters them. He snatches souls from the tyranny of the evil ones. Relentlessly he uncovers human malice wherever it approaches him in delusion, disguise, and obduracy. To all who recognize their own sinfulness, remorsefully acknowledge it, and long to be liberated from it, he extends his hand. But he demands that they follow him unconditionally, and renounce everything that can oppose his Spirit within them.
Through all this he rouses the rage of hell and the hatred of human malice and weaknesses against himself until they break loose and prepare the death on the cross for him. Here, in the extreme torment of body and soul, above all by in the night of abandonment by God, he pays divine Justice the ransom for the accumulated debt of sin of all times and opens the sluice of paternal Mercy for all who have the courage to embrace the cross and the crucified one. Into them he pours his divine light and life. But because this light unceasingly annihilates all that stands in his way, they experience it first as night and death. This is the dark night of contemplation, the death on the cross for the old self. The night is so much darker, the death is so much more painful, the more forcefully this wooing by divine Love grips the soul, and more unreservedly the soul surrenders herself to it. The progressive collapse of nature gives more and more room to the supernatural light and to divine love. It overpowers the natural faculties and transforms them into divinized and spiritualized ones. Thus a new incarnation of Christ takes place in Christians, which is synonymous with a resurrection from the death on the cross. The new self carries the wounds of Christ on the body: the remembrance of the misery of sin out of which the soul was awakened to a blessed life, and a reminder of the price that had to be paid for that. The pain of yearning for the fullness of life persists until, through the door of actual physical death, entrance into the shadowless light is gained.
So the bridal union of the soul with Christ is the goal for which she was created, purchased through the cross, consummated on the cross and sealed for all eternity with the cross.”[8]
Best
wishes,
A.T.
--------------------------------------------------------
[1]
Anthony Percy, ‘Theology of the Body Made
Simple’.
[2]
I wonder if it is compensation, for the
soullessness of the constructed couple.
[3]
‘TOB "Smoking Guns" of West's Theology’
http://wademichaelstonge.blogspot.com.au/2012/02/tob-smoking-guns-of-wests-theology.html
http://wademichaelstonge.blogspot.com.au/2012/02/tob-smoking-guns-of-wests-theology.html
[4]
‘Common Sense Catholicism’
http://commonsensecatholicism.blogspot.com.au/2010/09/fr-thomas-loya-take-on-tob-christopher.html
http://commonsensecatholicism.blogspot.com.au/2010/09/fr-thomas-loya-take-on-tob-christopher.html
[6]
I thought our bodies are already sacred, being
consecrated by the Holy Spirit.
[8]
Edith Stein ‘The
Science of the Cross’
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