Negative Christopher West Feedback

The story of Pelagia is inspiring. However, I don't have time to read this long winded waste of energy. I believe that you, Mr. Kellmeyer, are leading a witch hunt, wasting time better spent on holy endeavors. You are not going to bring down Christopher West, who is doing good work. With all due respect, has the Holy Spirit truly prompted you to sink to this level? May I ask how much prayer and fasting you have done for your brother, who you believe is in error?

This was sent to me by a friend:

Below is a quote from Christopher West's response to Dr. Michael Healy's talk at the Personalist Project event. It perfectly illustrates the point Alice von Hildebrand made in her CNA interview about how West fails to understand the inflammability of sexual passion. He sounds truly Manichean in his claim that an engaged couple is not virtuous unless they are capable of being alone together the day before their wedding without sinning.

Dr. Healy's talk was on "Dietrich von Hildebrand on Human Sexuality." West says at the beginning of his response that he composed his talk in advance, based on reading an advance copy of Dr. Healy's talk. So West is not speaking off the cuff when he says on the topic of moving from continence to virtue:

"St. Paul is so clear on this: 'We are called to freedom! Do not take up again a yoke of slavery.' In my travels, I run into all kinds of different perspectives on these things. What is appropriate, for example, for, say, a young engaged couple? They want to be chaste, they want to save themselves for marriage. What would be appropriate in terms of their affection for one another, what would be appropriate in terms of even their spending time together?

"And in some of the more extreme positions on these questions, which are open for conversation, I hear things like this: 'Well, you never better be alone together. Because you know what's gonna happen if you're alone together.'

"Okay. Take a good-hearted couple. If they know their weaknesses, if they know if they were alone together, they would engage in behavior that they shouldn't be engaging in, I will be the first to commend them for not being alone together. Christian, know thyself. But we must not call that virtue.

"Such a couple is continent, but they are not virtuous, in the true sense of the word, in the true Thomistic sense of the word.

"Think of it from this perspective: If the only thing that kept you from having sex before marriage was the fact that you didn't have the opportunity, what does that say about the desires of your heart? And then there is a real and present danger of justifying lust within the marriage.

"Here's the, the kind of visual that comes to me when I think this through: You get this good-hearted engaged couple, they have never been told about the progress of the Christian life, they've been dropped off at the curb of continence, and they think that's all they can expect. 'Okay, so I'll chain myself to this tree, and you chain yourself to that tree, so we can't get at one another.' What then does the honeymoon become?

"'Oh, now we are allowed to cut the chains loose!' [Makes a dramatic sound effect like a person ripping himself free.] Is that an act of love? Is that an act of purity?

"There is no magic trick on the wedding day that suddenly makes what you do that night an act of love. If you could not be alone together the day before you got married and not sin, there is no magic trick, there is no waving at the wand at the altar, that suddenly makes your sexual behavior beautiful, true, good, lovely, and pure.

"We must take up our cross and follow. It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. This freedom is a real, living possibility if we are willing to undergo deep and painful purifications. ..."

First: Christopher West seems to think that avoiding near occasions of sin is not virtuous activity. Unfortunately, all the saints of the Church and all the manuals on morality say he is in error on this point. The conscious decision to avoid a near occasion of sin is a virtue.

Second: Christopher West seems completely unfamiliar with the theology of the sacrament of marriage. It is precisely the case that actions which are sinful prior to a sacrament can be pure afterward, simply because of the sacrament. Take, for instance, the reception of Eucharist. If I receive Him while in a state of mortal sin, even if I am most sorrowful, then I have just committed another mortal sin. If, however, I first receive the sacrament of reconciliation worthily, then receive the Eucharist, that reception is not only NOT a sin, I I actually grow in the infinite grace of God. Same action, quite different results, all because of the reception of a sacrament.

Similarly, no matter how much I love the woman, if I have sex with her before marriage, it is a sin, while if I have it after marriage, it is not. St. Paul talks precisely about this when he says, "it is better to marry than to burn with passion" (1 Cor 7:9).

So, it is, in fact, the case that the divinizing graces of marriage do begin to work immediately upon the newly married couple, helping them to withstand concupiscence, turning us towards the "beautiful, true, good, lovely and pure." Indeed, it is precisely the ability to the sacraments' ability to make us gods (see CCC #460, 1988, 1999) that allows us to love with purity.

Third: West also seems unfamiilar with John Paul II's summary of the Catholic teaching on the THREE ends of marriage in Love and Responsibility.

Here's what JP II said about sex in marriage in Love and Responsibility, p 66, and he's just drawing on the writings of the Fathers:

"The Church, as has been mentioned previously, teaches, and has always taught, that the primary end of marriage is procreatio, but that it has a secondary end, defined in Latin terminology as mutuum adiutorium. Apart from these a tertiary aim is mentioned - remedium concupiscentiae. Marriage, objectively considered, must provide first of all the means of continuing existence, secondly a conjugal life for man and woman, and thirdly a legitimate orientation for desire. The ends of marriage, in the order mentioned, are incompatible with any subjectivist interpretation of the sexual urge, and therefore demand from man, as a person, objectivity in his thinking on sexual matters, and above all in his behaviour. This objectivity is the foundation of conjugal morality."

He goes on to point out that the ends are attained on the basis of a personalistic norm, that is, the ends all flow from love, but he specifically says that the ends themselves are not subjective, i.e., not personalistic. Indeed, he goes on to say, "By reason of the fact that they are persons a man and a woman must consciously seek to realize the aims of marriage according to the priority given above, because this order is objective, accessible to reason, and therefore binding on human persons." (p. 67, emphasis added)

He continues by pointing out, "The personalistic norm itself is not, of course, to be identified with any one of the aims of marriage: a norm is never an end, nor is an end a norm." (p. 68)

I recommend you read the whole section very closely.
You can find it here:
http://books.google.com/books?id=TNRY9HkssDQC&pg=PA68&lpg=PA68&dq=%22lov...

My friend's note continues, "I think this talk alone shows that West's idea of Hildebrandian purity is deeply flawed, colored heavily with his own memory of growing up in the Mother of God community. Compare his criticism of those who say an engaged couple shouldn't be alone together with these passages from the Washington Post's Mother of God exposés:"

Some former members say their marriages were arranged by Mother of God superiors and that they were manipulated into marrying partners they did not love.
Ex-members say they were told where to honeymoon, how to eat, dress and decorate their homes, and how to have sex. [Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/local/longterm/library/mog/mgod1.htm]

The control began with dating. "It was almost, like, 'Big Brother is watching,' " recalls ex-member Bonnie West [Christopher West's mother!!!]. Parents learned from their heads that their teenaged children were forbidden to date until the community's leaders judged them ready. Even then the community would try to control every step. Many parents say they were taught to distrust everything their own children said and were encouraged to mount a steady surveillance of the community's youngsters.
"We'd be reporting back and forth to other parents: 'We saw your girl talking to this boy,' " Stan Weightman recalls. "We'd be encouraged to look through their dresser drawers for things, to read diaries if they had any." Rick Herald recalls being asked by his head "about how you thought about certain girls, whether you fantasized about them, how far your sexual fantasies went." Roger Cavanaugh says he was asked questions about whether he masturbated, whether he fantasized about particular women and how many minutes it took for him and his wife to have sex." [Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/local/longterm/library/mog/mgod3.htm ]

Although West keeps using the appendix from Love and Responsibility to talk about mutual orgasm, I don't believe he has EVER quoted the passage in L&R where Wojtyla points out the purposes of sex in marriage:

There are three ends to marriage, not two, and the ends exist in a definite hierarchy.
Primary: Fecundity
Secondary: Unitive
Tertiary: Remedy for Concupiscence

Here's what JP II said about sex in marriage in Love and Responsibility, p 66, and he's just drawing on the writings of the Fathers:

"The Church, as has been mentioned previously, teaches, and has always taught, that the primary end of marriage is procreatio, but that it has a secondary end, defined in Latin terminology as mutuum adiutorium. Apart from these a tertiary aim is mentioned - remedium concupiscentiae. Marriage, objectively considered, must provide first of all the means of continuing existence, secondly a conjugal life for man and woman, and thirdly a legitimate orientation for desire. The ends of marriage, in the order mentioned, are incompatible with any subjectivist interpretation of the sexual urge, and therefore demand from man, as a person, objectivity in his thinking on sexual matters, and above all in his behaviour. This objectivity is the foundation of conjugal morality."

He goes on to point out that the ends are attained on the basis of a personalistic norm, that is, the ends all flow from love, but he specifically says that the ends themselves are not subjective, i.e., not personalistic. Indeed, he goes on to say, "By reason of the fact that they are persons a man and a woman must consciously seek to realize the aims of marriage according to the priority given above, because this order is objective, accessible to reason, and therefore binding on human persons." (p. 67, emphasis added)

He continues by pointing out, "The personalistic norm itself is not, of course, to be identified with any one of the aims of marriage: a norm is never an end, nor is an end a norm." (p. 68)

I recommend you read the whole section very closely.
You can find it here

Here, in no particular order, are some things that I've personally heard Chris West say in front of large audiences:

(1)"Heaven doesn't make any sense without hell."
This is the formally condemned heresy of double predestination, most notably associated with and promoted by John Calvin. It is a form of Manicheanism, against which John Paul II specifically preached in his Wednesday audiences. According to the Manichees, there are two equally powerful forces in the universe - the God of Goodness and the God of Evil. Each has his own abode and mode of operation. Calvin took that idea and melded it together to say that God is One, but He creates some beings just in order to damn them to hell. Hell is, for both Calvin and the Manichees, a necessary place.

In fact, hell was created "for the devil and his angels," not for man. Men go there by imitating the fallen angels, but they are not meant to go there, nor were the angels meant to fall. Heaven is the only reasonable thing, hell is not necessary to make sense of heaven.

(2)"Pain is Good."
Chris dropped this little bombshell during the height of the Da Vinci Code furor, when the "Christians think pain is good" meme was being promoted everywhere. In fact, it is the very first heresy Dan Brown hits us with in his very popular novel. Chris West repeated the heresy in a Friday night talk, and expounded on the theme of pain and suffering for several hours. This is what Pope John Paul II had to say about the concept:

Before the cross two attitudes are possible, both dangerous. The first consists in seeking in the cross what is oppressive and painful in it to the extent of delighting in pain and suffering as if they had a value in themselves. The second attitude is that of one who, perhaps out of reaction to the preceding, rejects the cross and succumbs to the mystique of hedonism or of glory, pleasure or power. A great spiritual author, Fulton Sheen, spoke in this connection of those who adhere to a cross without Christ, in contrast with those who seem to want a Christ without the cross. Now, the Christian knows that the Redeemer of man is Christ on the cross and therefore only with Christ is the cross redemptive. (Homily, Pope John Paul II, 6/30/80) (emphases added).

(3)Saints' Mortifications show a "distorted understanding of holiness."
Chris West asserted that St. Rose of Lima’s self-mortifications, the mortifications of the saints who undertook whipping, scourging, throwing themselves into thorn bushes to train their bodies or to avoid lust all stemmed from a “distorted understanding of holiness.”

This is likewise a condemned heresy. As Pope John Paul II points out in his homily above, that's an attempt to avoid the Cross.

“At any rate, Christ drew close above all to the world of human suffering through the fact of having taken this suffering upon his very self. During his public activity, he experienced not only fatigue, homelessness, misunderstanding even on the part of those closest to him, but, more than anything, he became progressively more and more isolated and encircled by hostility and the preparations for putting him to death. Christ is aware of this, and often speaks to his disciples of the sufferings and death that await him: "Behold, we are going up to Jerusalem; and the Son of man will be delivered to the chief priests and the scribes, and they will condemn him to death and deliver him to the Gentiles; and they will mock him, and spit upon him, and scourge him, and kill him; and after three days he will rise"(35).” Salvifici Doloris, #16

“Christ suffers voluntarily and suffers innocently… The words of that prayer of Christ in Gethsemane prove the truth of love through the truth of suffering….human suffering itself has been redeemed… .
“Every man has his own share in the Redemption. Each one is also called to share in that suffering through which the Redemption was accomplished.” Salvifici Doloris #19

Self-mortification is actually REQUIRED by the Church - we MUST fast, abstain from good things, etc., as part of keeping the law of the Church. While not everyone is called to the level of mortification undertaken by the greatest saints, the lives of those same saints, including their great mortifications, are held up as an example for us to imitate, not a distortion to excoriate. Chris West here mocks 2000 years of Church history and example to the faithful.

(4)The Garden of Eden represents the woman's womb.
According to West's skewed understanding of typology, the Garden of Eden represented alternately the womb of Eve and/or the womb of Mary. Christ was crucified - 'took the hit', in West's words - in order to protect the virginal womb so that we could enter it. In a related trope, a friend of mine heard West say in another talk that we must prepare ourselves to enter Mary's womb.

First, the "typology" is just stupid. According to the Fathers of the Church, accurate typology is supposed to account for all the aspects of the passage in question. So, what would correspond to the snake in the garden? What "snake" was there in Mary's womb, attempting to pervert its purpose? God clothed Himself in flesh in her womb (a good thing), but Adam and Eve's get clothed in Eden as a result of the Fall (a bad thing). Adam and Eve fell because they ate of the fruit of a tree, what does the new Adam eat, or not eat, in the womb? Did Christ get crucified to protect Mary's womb? Well, no.

Christ specifically denied that we can re-enter the womb (John 2). Instead, Christ and His mother, Mary, both insist that we are to unite ourselves to His Sacred Heart and her Immaculate Heart. We aren't joining gonads, we are joining hearts. West's emphasis on the womb displays lower-order thinking on many different levels, certainly not what the Church teaches.

(5)“Self-castration excluded Origen from being a saint”
As I pointed out to Chris, popular history aside, we can't even be sure that Origen castrated himself. The Greeks, from whom we got the story that Origen performed this deed as a teenager, often confused circumcision with castration. So, assuming anything close to this event took place, which we aren't sure, it might not have been what is portrayed.

But all of that is really immaterial. Origen was not excluded from the odor of sanctity because of the physical state of his genitals. He was believed to have taught heresy on multiple occasions, inadvertently fueling a series of heresies that comes down to us today under the name Origenism. THAT is what keeps him from being held up as an example for all Catholics. To state otherwise is both doctrinally erroneous and historically inaccurate.

(6)Distorted emphasis on "right thinking"
West often spends time emphasizing that if we just start thinking pure thoughts in line with his teaching, we will gradually overcome our interior struggles, which are remnants of our prudish attitudes towards human sexuality. This loss of prudishness and the loss of our overdeveloped concerns about being naked in front of ourselves or others is a sign we are increasing in holiness.

In fact, that's a crock of ... well, it's a crock. As even the Anglican CS Lewis liked to point out, holy people generally have much greater fights with their conscience than less holy people do. The one who surrenders is taken prisoner and stops fighting; it's the soldier who keeps fighting on despite incredible odds, who is the victor. Father Corapi testifies to this in his personal witness story: for a long time he had no problem with his conscience... because it was dead. It has only been his conversion to living the full Catholic life that his conscience has been resurrected to life. The Dark Night of the Soul is a testimony to how severely conscience must struggle as one increases in holiness. Mother Teresa spoke of this struggle often. Everything becomes more DIFFICULT as we are more firmly united to the Cross, not the reverse.

West is just preaching a "prosperity Gospel" that's founded in sexuality instead of bank accounts.
The Church, on the other hand, preaches Christ, and Him crucified.
There's a big difference between the two.

And even assuming Chris West was in some way right, how would he dispute someone who shares his level of arrogance but has a dead conscience? Consider a couple who have decided to live together in a "friends with benefits" arrangement prior to marriage. When questioned, the couple can argue, "Well, you just have a dirty mind. We no longer have those internal struggles that you talk about because we've pretty much overcome our concupiscence, so there's no reason NOT to move in together. This is holy sex and YOU, sir, are a prude."

If you tell them they haven't overcome concupiscence and it isn't holy sex, they can just say that you are on a lower level of sexual understanding than they are, and they'll pray for you as they set up housekeeping together. They have the "secret knowledge," you see, the knowledge that Chris West has, in fact, they have a knowledge even more deep and pure than West's. West needs to return to Hugh Hefner and overcome the last vestiges of prudery in his outlook.

Or, following another West trope, they can say that they are having sex prior to marriage as a form of service to one another, and not out of any lust, because they have followed Chris West's teaching and no longer have interior struggles on the issue.

Conclusion
Do you see how wonderfully this "you won't struggle anymore" mantra plays into the culture?

Is it any wonder that Americans love the Gospel of Sexual Prosperity that West preaches?

And have you noticed that none of his supporters talk about these problems?

On Theology of the Body, Sex, and Faithful Reason

Apolonio Latar III
la nouvelle theologie
May 31, 2009
http://ressourcement.blogspot.com/2009/05/on-theology-of-body-sex-and-fa...

[Apolonio Latar III is a seminarian of the Priestly Fraternity of the Missionaries of St. Charles Borromeo. He has a B.A. in philosophy from Rutgers University. He is currently living in Rome, Italy.]

A friend of mine has asked me to comment on the recent debate on Christopher West’s theology of the body. Rather than simply taking on the issue of John Paul’s theology, which I thought Schindler’s criticism of West was outstanding, I would like to situate the topic into a broader context.

In the last decades, we have seen a movement from Christian communities responding to the materialistic mentality that has been advertised in cultures and in the academia. Recent philosophies of the mind, for example, are filled with researches from cognitive science and since nobody can produce the method in which the soul is united to the body, dualism, whether substance-dualism or interactive-dualism, has been disregarded by the majority in the academia. Jaegwon Kim, for example, has stated that most philosophers of the mind are pretty much a materialist, in the sense that the majority of the philosophers do not believe in an immaterial mind. This does not mean that every philosopher is a reductionist. David Chalmers, for example, believe that consciousness cannot be reduced to material components. Of course Christians do not sit idly when an essential part of their faith is being disregarded. They try to argue against the insufficiencies of the materialist proposal (cf. Alvin Plantinga, Dean Zimmerman, and see especially John Hawthorne’s article on Cartesian dualism. Of course, there are some like Peter van Inwagen who welcome the materialist proposal). This is from the philosophical perspective. In the theological, we have seen a criticism of the overemphasis of the soul. N.T. Wright, for example, has tried to orient Christian thinking by focusing on the resurrection of the body. Heaven, he argues, is not the end or purpose of life; the goal of life is the resurrection of the body. This seems to be in line with Romano Guardini’s statement that Christianity is the most materialistic worldview; God has, in fact, assumed a human body. Over and over, we read Christian materials reminding us that God made everything good, including matter. We see Thomists re-emphasizing that for Aquinas, souls in heaven are not really persons until they are again united to the body. I think it is safe to say, then, that Christians have been trying to save the body from corrupted thinking in the last decades.

Then we had the rejection of Humane Vitae in which the modern world had chosen power over the beautiful life. This rejection was not a spontaneous event but rather the result of the struggle against the Church’s proposal to human life. Thinkers have reduced happiness to a measurable utility that contradicts Christ’s proposal that a servant is useless to his master, not because the servant lacks goodness but because the measure of service comes from the love of the master. The rejection of Humane Vitae, then, was simply the acceptance that the sensual-hedonistic life as the measure of utility. The reception of Human Vitae from the Church had been horrible and we need not recollect Pope Paul’s suffering from the rejection of his theologians.

The rejection of Humane Vitae from Catholics and the world made John Paul share the truths he had discovered as a pastor and philosopher. He had already written a book on sexuality from a personalistic perspective and he knew that the natural law perspective needed to be complemented by a Christological outlook on the matter. It is in this way, I believe, that we need to understand the Theology of the Body. Citing Gaudium et Spes 22 and 34 are necessary but insufficient. One must also read his other encyclicals and works, especially his plays and poetry to understand his overall approach to the question of the human body. For him, a human body is a sign of a person and therefore can only find his fulfillment and truth in the Person of Christ. From this perspective, he has shown that the human body is valuable because it has been created and redeemed by God. The human body carries a sacramental value in that it expresses the visible. For John Paul, a sacrament is the visibility of the invisible. This sacramental outlook also places human love within the context of divine love, for divine love has assumed a human love in the Person of Jesus Christ. From this perspective, we can understand that a sexual act like sex is good when it is within the context of this divine-human love.

After the catecheses of John Paul had came out, some saw the genius and beauty of such a work that they wanted to share this with others. They wanted to respond to theologians who have corrupted the Church as well as responding to the modern proposal of sexual life. They have found Theology of the Body to be their refuge, their “dessert,” from the attacks against the human person. But what had happened is that these people have become obsessed with chastity and sex that we can safely say that it is simply the participation of the world’s obsession about sex under the disguise of theology. This is not to say that people have not found popular presentations of Theology of the Body to be helpful in their lives. Many people have changed because of these presentations. But I believe that not only are they incomplete, but they have also been ineffective for the Church as a whole. Maybe the problem is not these popular presentations of theology of the body per se, but the attitude of certain parishioners that a presentation or couple of presentations on chastity is the best way to educate children on the delicate topic of sex. I remember, for example, as a youth minister that the topic of sexual education was one of the primary concerns of parents. They wanted their children to be free from the corruption of sexual education in secular schools and the parish church to educate their children properly what it means to have sex. Parents constantly asked me to act upon their insistence that chastity be imposed on their children. I even remembered a young girl receiving her fifteenth (exaggeration here) book on chastity for Christmas. Certainly, Catholic parents, in America, that is, are obsessed about this topic as well. I remember a couple of parents asking me how they can educate their child about sex. Of course, I have never been a parent so I gave the answer a Christian can only give: love them and continue educating their hearts. The parents, of course, because of the moralistic mentality they live in, were unsatisfied. I then said a sentence that was surprising for them: “And even if they go to college and make the mistake of committing pre-marital sex, love them anyway. God does miraculous things even through sin.” This, of course, raised eyebrows. Of course, sin is sin and it is ugly. Yet, this event seems to me the defining factor for me in this recent debate on theology of the body and how popular presentations have fallen short of the good it seeks to attain. The Church in America, the American culture, does not have a perception of mercy, and therefore gift. It is in this context that I would like to make small comments on the topic of the human body and how popular presentations of theology of the body have not been effective.

The human body is a sign of love and the capacity for a sincere gift of self. This has been already emphasized by popular presenters. However, what is important in this is the fact that the human body expresses and is sonship. When I look at myself, my hands, feet, and face, I can see that it is not me that has made these; we can look at a child’s face and see how it resembles his father’s and/or mother’s. We come from another to participate in giving. This is important because without this aspect of sonship, the nuptial meaning of the body loses its intelligibility. In fact, it is precisely in losing this filial aspect that lust and blindness to the experience and consciousness of the nuptial meaning of the body came into being. Man committed original sin and therefore lost his sonship. The break from this sonship is what made him hide from his wife. Sonship is what keeps the experience of original solitude and nakedness united of which without, man lives in a fragmented and delusional way.

This aspect of sonship is important because it is here that we can respond to the concerns of some Thomists who think that theology of the body is simply a theology of the genitals. There are some Thomists who think that John Paul’s nuptial theology disregard the traditional thought that the image of God lies in the mind of man. How can we unite the notion that we are made in the image of God because of our capacity to reason as well as our sexual differences? The answer is simple, it seems to me, because Christians have always understood the Genesis passage in a Christological context. Christ is the image of the Father that man is made in the image of. As Etienne Gilson pointed out in his book The Spirit of Medieval Philosophy, man is the image of the Image of God. Man is made in the image of the Son who is the Logos and Beloved of the Father. Rationality is relational because it comes from the unbegotten begetter. This is why Ratzinger had emphasized that there can be no truth without communion, no truth without love. We are made in the image of God because we are begotten to share in the eucharist (thanks-giving) of the Father’s Son. The connection between truth and communion, between truth and love, then, gives us the way we can understand that rationality and nuptiality are complementary. The Son’s procession comes from the Father’s knowledge of Himself (rationality) which draws Him to the world (nuptiality); the Son’s mission is identical with his procession.

Original wounds our nature in that it takes away this relationship, our sonship with God. This does not destroy our image, that is, that we are begotten to participate in the self-giving of God, but it does take away its actualization. This is why God sent His Only begotten Son, so that we can be raised into His life. Here we can understand the early Christian proclamation that the resurrection of Jesus is the vindication that he is the Son of God. The resurrection is God’s merciful claim upon us. It is a mystery we cannot fully grasp. Robert Jenson even said that the resurrection itself is the ousia of God. This is true insofar as the resurrection shows the Father continually begetting-loving the Son, and that the economic activity reflects the immanent activity of God in His triune tenderness. The Resurrection is not simply an event, but contains a promise: we will be resurrected. This takes away any criticism against Catholic theology that it absolutizes heaven. The Last Judgment of God upon the world is Sonship. The Last Judgment, as Giussani observed, is Paradise.

This is not simply a theoretical exercise since this is an education for all of us. Our body is a gift and we are looked with unconditional mercy. There is the tendency in American Catholicism which thinks that we are forgiven after we have asked for forgiveness. This is a pelagian mentality under the guise of sacramentalism. What really happens as Herbert McCabe noted, is that the only way we can actually have the courage to ask for forgiveness is because of the tender gaze of God; because we are forgiven we come to the Father. Without this merciful gaze, we take reality for granted as well as thinking that we can manipulate nature. If there is a way we can understand John Paul’s theology, it is from this perspective: the first and last word in history is mercy, is Christ. Without Christ, without this experience and personal relationship with Him, the imposition of the natural law into our behaviors falls short of the glorious life. In participating in this mercy, we begin to give ourselves because of the superabundant love that has been shown, give, and spoken to us. In participating in this mercy, we begin to understand the depth of the other. At this point, we can really love somebody. The emphasis is not on sex or a way to justify sex, but to embrace the other in all of his or her totality. As Romano Guardini noted, to accept the person means to accept good and bad qualities of that person; it embraces the good and the bad. In this way, we can understand theology of the body is really the paradigm for marriage, in that it relates to every day problems such as economic or personalities ones. A lot of the problems with relationships is precisely how people can come together, how it is possible that people, with their sinfulness, can stay together. Popular presentations of theology of the body reduce this great theology into a teenage mentality and that is why it is insufficient for the Church, for the growth of the Church.

What I have argued, I believe, is the way we can approach our lives within this great theology. I would like to give a personal perspective in closing. When I was in Rutgers University, what was really troubling was not that couples slept in the same bed together or had sex every weekend at a frat party. True, those were sad moments. But what was awful was that couples lived together without commitment or couples not understanding how it is possible for them to give themselves to the other forever. Unless we are educated in forgiveness, in the permanent tender gaze of God, we will be suffocated by the thought that we can lose what is true and beautiful in our lives.