Nova et Vetera, English Edition,Vol. 6, No. 4 (2008): 711–730

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Humanae Vitae 17: Vaticinium ex eventu?
An Illustration from the Maritains’
Moral Guidance to Maurice Sachs
ROMANUS C ESSARIO, O.P.
St. John’s Seminary
Brighton, Massachusetts

Introduction
I N REMARKS prepared for a conference that commemorated the
twenty-fifth anniversary of Humanae Vitae, Father Ernest Fortin, A.A.,
made the following observation:“In retrospect, Humanae Vitae can be said
to have been truly prophetic. It foresaw that the use of contraceptives and
the development of a contraceptive mentality would deal a severe blow
to family life and therewith to society as a whole.”1 The text that Father
Fortin probably had in mind is found at §17 of the 1968 encyclical letter
of Pope Paul VI:
Not much experience is needed in order to know human weakness,
and to understand that men—especially the young, who are so vulnerable on this point—have need of encouragement to be faithful to the
moral law, so that they must not be offered some easy means of eluding its observance. (Humanae Vitae, §17)

In 1993 at Assumption College in Worcester, Massachusetts, Father
Fortin included among the unhappy consequences of the widespread
acceptance of contraceptives the fact that “homosexual partnerships are
1 Ernest Fortin,“Humanae Vitae’s Silver Jubilee:Twenty-Five Years Later,” in Ernest

L. Fortin: Collected Essays, vol. 4, Ever Ancient, Ever New: Ruminations on the City,
the Soul, and the Church, ed. Michael P. Foley (New York: Rowman & Littlefield
Publishers, Inc., 2007), 164.

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being granted both family status in law and the right to adopt children.”2
He wondered about future “nightmarish choices.” He was right to wonder
out loud. In 2008, Massachusetts and Connecticut now recognize civil
marriages between persons of the same sex.
This paper reports on the distinctively Catholic moral guidance that
Jacques and Raïssa Maritain gave to a certain young Frenchman named
Maurice Sachs. We know of course that Jacques Maritain and Pope Paul
VI were friends. It remains speculation whether the following story of
Maurice Sachs may have contributed to that warning—the one Father
Fortin calls “prophetic”—that is contained in §17 of Humanae Vitae. In
other terms, whether this text does in fact constitute a vaticinium ex eventu.
Some Background to Sexual Mores entre les deux guerres
Taking a broad view, the English philosopher, Roger Scruton, has observed
that the situation of French intellectuals during the early twentieth century
was not unlike that of the English intellectuals. Writers and artists were
drawn in three directions—towards a kind of iconized vision of France and
her Catholic faith, towards a flamboyant bohemianism that defied bourgeois conventions, and towards the new universal faith of the communist
Church.3 The Maritains became acquainted with representative figures
from each class.The early decades of the twentieth century also witnessed
a marked increase in the number of homosexual liaisons that occurred
among les vedettes of the Paris literary and artistic salons.These ephemeral
gay relationships were countenanced for the most part by the fashionable
elite that inhabited le beau monde.What one may describe as a sociological
phenomenon, this “world” forms some of the background for the exercise
of that divine mission to evangelize that Jacques and Raïssa Maritain
undertook with passion during “les Années Folles.”
The Figure of Maurice Sachs (1906–1945)
To explore the Maritains as spiritual guides for the perplexed, I have
chosen one figure from the period, Maurice Sachs, a man whose biography is subtitled, Les travaux forcés de la frivolité.4 If we follow the standard
accounts of this Frenchman’s topsy-turvy life, he comes out looking like
the poster boy for French-style bohemianism. Truth to tell, however,
2 Ibid.
3 In private research that Professor Roger Scruton has contributed to a research

project on natural law underway at the Institute for the Psychological Sciences
in Arlington,Virginia.
4 Henri Raczymow, Maurice Sachs, ou Les travaux forcés de la frivolité (Paris: Gallimard, 1988). Sachs himself coined the expression. See p. 423.

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Maurice Sachs at various times and at other times perhaps simultaneously
followed all three of the directions that Roger Scruton sketches out to
describe the paths taken by early twentieth-century French intellectuals.
It should be noted first of all, that the second path, that of flamboyant
bohemianism, was not explicitly or exclusively homosexual. It was, again
on Roger Scruton’s account, a path of wit, satire, bohemianism and
cosmopolitanism, a thousand miles from the patriotic fervor of Charles
Péguy. It owed much, however, to Péguy’s contemporary Guillaume
Apollinaire, illegitimate son of a Polish mother. Apollinaire coined the
term “surrealism” and revived interest in the works of the Marquis de
Sade. He wrote erotic novels as well as the verses (for example, Alcools)
which made him famous, and was perhaps the first apostle of Transgression.5 Among his friends were Jean Cocteau, Erik Satie, Marc Chagall, and
Max Jacob, all of whom belonged after World War I (at the end of which
Apollinaire died of influenza, weakened by a head wound received at the
front) to the circle which frequented Le boeuf sur le toit.6 This celebrated
5 “Alcools (1913) was a selection of poems written over the previous fifteen years.

It combined classical verse forms with modern imagery, involving transcriptions
of street conversations overheard by chance and the absence of punctuation. It
opened with the poem ‘Zone,’ in which the tormented poet wanders through
streets after the loss of his mistress. Among its other famous lyrical pieces is ‘Le
pont Mirabeau.’ Some of its poems were inspired by Jacqueline Kolb.Annie Playden, an English governess, inspired the Rhineland piece, ‘La chanson du malaime.’ ” For further information, see www.kirjasto.sci.fi/apollina.htm.
And of course one notes the unmistakable and almost overbearing Christian
symbolism of “Zone,” which intimates something of the intensely Catholic milieu
of early twentieth-century France. It seems that no matter what the position (from
nihilistic transgression to apostolic exhortation) an intellectual or artist adopted in
those days, Catholicism was inevitably close at hand.Also noteworthy is the temptations of paganism and its connection with eroticism, which would preoccupy
Georges Bataille (another failed Catholic) for the rest of his life. It is interesting to
observe as well that Bataille was at first deeply involved in surrealism until his break
with Andre Breton.The scene at the end of Histoire de l’oeil involving the mutilation and murder of a Catholic priest is perhaps the most ugly expression of the
rage some of these men felt at being not only tied to a Catholic past, but involved
in a Catholic present. No wonder so much of this work in transgression is taken
up in the search for new gods, in the form of idols and concepts.
6 Le Boeuf sur le Toit, op. 58 (The Ox on the Roof, subtitle The Nothing-Doing Bar ) is
a surrealist ballet. It is based on a score composed by Darius Milhaud that is
strongly influenced by Brazilian popular music (the title is that of an old Brazilian tango, one of close to thirty Brazilian tunes quoted in the composition). Originally the piece was to have been the score of a silent Charlie Chaplin film
(Cinéma-fantaisie for violin and piano). Its transformation into a ballet was the
making of the piece, with a scenario by Jean Cocteau, stage designs by Raoul
Dufy, and costumes by Guy-Pierre Fauconnet.The choreography was deliberately

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eighth-arrondissement cabaret was the place at which Stravinsky and
Diaghilev could be seen along with the surrealists, the fauves, poets like
Jacob and Paul Claudel—and just about anybody who was anybody
among the bohemians of the day.7 It played a great role in the “education” of the unattached adolescents of the period—or so we are told by
one such who was prominent among those who frequented Le boeuf.8
The person in question was the above-mentioned teenager Maurice
Sachs, a budding novelist who seduced and betrayed in endless succession, and who finished life as a prisoner of the Gestapo, having first
worked for them as an agent happy to betray even his friends. On the
surface, Sachs was the epitome of the serial double-dealer whose predatory homosexuality began in adolescence, when he was educated in a
Parisian English-style boys school, and later led to promiscuous affairs
with everyone who mattered—including Gide, Coceatu, and Jacob—as
well as with many who did not.9 Persuaded by Cocteau in 1925 to
embrace Catholicism, Sachs shortly thereafter entered a seminary with a
view to becoming a priest. However he shortly left on account of a
relapse into promiscuous homosexuality, and seems thereafter to have
drifted away from the practice of the Catholic faith, though not from his
Catholic friends.10 Nor did his Catholic friends abandon him. In his
acclaimed biography of Jacques and Raïssa Maritain, Jean-Luc Barré

very slow, in marked contrast to the lively and joyful spirit of the music. The
premiere was given in February 1920 at the Théâtre des Champs Élysées and
comprised, besides the ballet, Adieu New York by Georges Auric, Cocardes by Francis Poulenc and Trois petites pièces montées by Erik Satie.The version for chamber
orchestra was followed by another for piano duet, subtitled Cinema Symphony on
South American Airs. Its performance lasts about a quarter of an hour.The ballet
gave its name to a well-known Parisian bar-restaurant that opened in 1922. For
further information, see www.boeufsurletoit.com.
7 Sergei Pavlovich Diaghilev (Russian: Cеpге́п
/∑ па́влOвп
/ ч дя́гп
/ леB/Sergei Pavlovich Dyagilev), also referred to as Serge (March 31, 1872–August 19, 1929), was a
Russian art critic, patron, ballet impresario and founder of the Ballets Russes from
which many famous dancers and choreographers would later arise.
8 Maurice Sachs, Witches’ Sabbath, trans. Richard Howard (New York: Stein and
Day, 1964), 72.
9 The school was L’École de l’Isle-de-France, which Sachs referred to in The
Sabbath as le college de Luza.
10 “Il parlait beaucoup, beaucoup de Paris et en particulier de la Maison Maritain
à Meudon. . . . À la fin, nous avions decidé de nous rencontrer à Meudon apres
la guerre.” “Letter of Richard Hitzler to Raïssa Maritain,” in Maurice Sachs,
Jacques and Raïssa Maritain, Correspondance (1925–1939), eds. Michel Bressolette
and René Mougel (Paris: Gallimard, 2003), 323.

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reports that Jacques Maritain as late as 1949 plaintively wondered out
loud, “Poor Maurice Sachs, is he dead, is he alive?”11
As will become evident in what follows, Maurice Sachs affords a good
example of the second of Scruton’s directions—the bohemian.Thanks to
his association with André Gide, Sachs also briefly followed the third, the
communist, direction.12 And his attachment to the first or Christian
direction may not be as short-lived as many commentators assume. We
know, for instance, that from his prison cell at Fuhlsbüttel, a Nazi concentration camp located near Hamburg, Sachs recalled his early association
with the Maritains that led to his baptism.13 Richard Hitzler, a fellow
prisoner at Fuhlsbüttel who, unlike Sachs, survived his internment,
reports that, during his final days, Sachs repeatedly expressed the ardent
wish that he would be able to return after the war to the Maritains’ home
at Meudon, which since the spring of 1923 had provided a spiritual gravitational center for the poets, painters, and musicians whom they had met
in the company of their own evangelist, Léon Bloy.14
To appreciate the Maritains’ influence on Maurice Sachs, we must
examine closely the evolution of their friendship with him. Abandoned
by his father at the age of five, Maurice Sachs was brought up in straightened circumstances. “From the time of his teens,” writes one author,
the physically unappealing yet highly seductive Sachs, whom [Jean]
Cocteau has depicted in his memoirs stuffing his pockets with toilet
paper he pretended was money, followed an essentially theatrical calling, an endless getting into character. Sachs has hastily been labeled ‘the
11 Jean Luc Barré, Jacques & Raïssa Maritain: Beggars for Heaven, trans. Bernard E.

Doering (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2005), 405. The
book has been favorably reviewed by John F. X. Knasas in Catholic Historical
Review 93 (2007): 435–36.
12 His biographer includes a chapter on “Maurice ‘communiste.’ ” See Raczymow,
Maurice Sachs, 249–56.
13 The prison, originally built as a regular prison in 1879, was converted to a satellite concentration camp after the Nazis’ takeover of Germany in 1933, when it
was placed under the control of the SS and SA. Most of the inmates were antiNazi sympathizers, Jews, Jehovah Witnesses, Roma, gays, and others whom the
regime wanted to lock up. Over seven hundred people were interned in the
camp following Kristallnacht in 1938.“Konzentrationslager Fuhlsbüttel” (Fuhlsbüttel concentration camp) was referred to as “KolaFu” in common parlance and
became a synonym for oppression and death through hard labor. Fuhlsbüttel was
often an initial point of incarceration for prisoners who were sent on to other
camps such as Buchenwald, Neuengamme, Ravensbrück or Sachsenhausen.The
camp was liberated in May 1945, by which time over 250 people had been
murdered there. A camp memorial has been constructed nearby.
14 Sachs, Correspondance, 23. See also, Barré, Maritain, 149ff.

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Jean Genet of the twenties,’ but the resemblance is superficial, based on
their shared combination of homosexuality, thieving, black marketeering, and later fascination with Nazi Germany.15

This sketch published in Yale French Studies represents the standard unsympathetic account of the teenager that the Maritains welcomed into their
affections. At the same time, this short description helps us to appreciate
Raïssa Maritain’s first reaction to Maurice Sachs: “something mysteriously dark,” she opined.16
What follows touches only the high points of the interaction between
the Maritains and Maurice Sachs, whose true personal dispositions and
intentions, it should become evident, are not always easy to judge. We
begin in July 1924, when, at Meudon, Jacques the Evangelist first receives
Jean Cocteau, and eventually welcomes his friends, including the eighteen-year-old Maurice Sachs, who in February of the same year, had
become one of Cocteau’s “secretaries.”17 Twelve months later, August 2,
1925, to be precise, and urged on by Cocteau, Maurice Sachs visits
Jacques Maritain in order to pursue instructions in the Catholic faith.
Jacques begins with the Trinity.18 By the end of the month, Maurice
receives baptism with Raïssa Maritain as godmother and Jean Cocteau
godfather by proxy—Jacques standing in.The place: the private chapel of
the Maritains at 10 rue du Parc, Meudon. It is on the same day, August
29, 1925, that we read in Raïssa’s Journal,“Baptism of Maurice. Still, I am
not reassured. This lad has something mysteriously dark about him that
makes me ill at ease.” Maurice’s First Communion and Confirmation by
the Bishop of Versailles follow appropriately.19
His biographer, Henri Raczymow, describes the young Maurice Sachs
as an all or nothing man.20 Soon the new convert is thinking about pursuing a priestly vocation, and in the meantime, about taking up temporary
residence with the Maritains. Raïssa holds out the advantages of his living
with them: The presence of the Most Blessed Sacrament and “la douce
15 David J. Jacobson, “Jews for Genius: The Unholy Disorders of Maurice Sachs,”

Yale French Studies 85 (1994): 183.
16 Barré, Maritain, 216. See also, Raczymow, Maurice Sachs, 58, citing Jacques Mari-

tain, Journal de Raïssa (Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 1963):“Ce garçon, écrira-t-elle
dans son Journal, a quelque chose de obscur qui m’inquiète.”
17 Barré, Maritain, 180–226, devotes a chapter to the meeting of Maritain and Jean
Cocteau titled “God or Jean Cocteau?” See also, Sachs, Correspondance, 33 note 1.
18 Raczymow, Maurice Sachs, 101.
19 Ibid., 106.
20 “Sachs, c’est toujours tout ou rien” (ibid., 108).

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717

influence de Jacques.”21 On January 2, 1926, Maurice enters the Séminaire
des Carmes, 21 rue d’Assas, which in 1792 had been the scene of the
martyrdom of 115 priests and three bishops.22 The Maritains, Jean
Cocteau, Max Jacob, and his peer friend, Jean Bourgoint, support him variously and variously.23 Maurice perseveres in his vocational resolution for
about six and a half months.
With certain allowances, Maurice adapted to the rigorous schedule of
the seminary. Jacques Maritain, it is said, helped him to obtain permission
to wear the clerical soutane in advance of the usual time. Maurice argued
that the cassock would help him sustain the moral requirements of his
new vocation, although he later confessed a perverse fascination with the
dress-style of the soutane. At the same time, for six months, he made his
daily morning meditation, mostly while reading Pascal, and assisted, kneeling, at Mass, even though he later reported in his diary that he suffered
from spontaneous movements of the flesh.“But still,” Sachs further recalled,
“it is a futile and merely nervous erection when the imagination does not
sustain it with any incongruous image; there is no harm in it, at most a
certain surprise and embarrassment.”24 Sachs nonetheless goes on to admit
that these occurrences caused him “to feel remorse,” and that they led him
to ask for permission to serve the Mass, an activity which he imagined
would ease his discomfort.
All in all, Maurice’s very first days in the Seminary were not without
peace, especially when at the end of the day he came before the Blessed
Virgin Mary. “There was no occasion to forget her,” writes Sachs.
It was here that I prayed best, it was here that I believed best. Perhaps
because it is easier to believe in the Holy Virgin than in God; for she
created neither heaven nor earth, but a man in our image; because
everything in us believes in her, as all that we are has grown within her,
nine months from the day of conception.25

Not bad for a young convert burdened with past disorders and present
temptations.
21 Letter

of Raïssa Maritain to Maurice Sachs, November 19, 1925, Archives
Madeleine Castaing, cited in Raczymow, Maurice Sachs, 110.
22 The web site reports: “L’accueil du séminaire des Carmes: Durant la Première
Guerre mondiale, des séminaristes venus du nord et de l’est de la France sont
hébergés dans l’ancien couvent. En 1919, Mgr Verdier y fonde un séminaire
universitaire, toujours en fonctionnement aujourd’hui.”
23 Max Jacob ( July 12, 1876–March 5, 1944) was a French poet, painter, writer, and
critic. He too was a convert to Catholicism.
24 Maurice Sachs, Witches’ Sabbath, 128–29.
25 Ibid., 132, original emphasis.

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Seminary discipline soon taxed the immature virtuous dispositions of
the young Maurice.After two months of presumably good willed endeavor,
he began to think of his cell as a “chamber of horrors and demons.”26
Old deep-seated habits, including losing struggles with masturbation,
recurred: “I groaned in my solitude; I ran to the chapel, the garden,
returned, knelt, got up again, fell back, started up, and finally sank down,
beaten, into my lacerating pleasures.”27 Neither the ascetical practices of
the period, which included using the discipline and other instruments of
physical penance, nor the more humane suggestion of Jacques Maritain
that he take up a minimum amount of apostolic activity—which Maritain, one assumes, rightly considered would put the still teenager,“M. Le
Cure Maurice Sachs,” into living contact with other persons—were sufficient to calm his unholy desires.
Then came the summer vacation months of 1926 when the diocesan
seminarians were allowed to return to their families. Maurice left with his
maternal grandmother Alice Bizet—sometime daughter-in-law of the
composer Georges—for the French Riviera. The devil was waiting for
him, as Jacques Maritain, who took the time to escort grandmother and
grandson to the Gare de Lyon, may have instinctually anticipated.
“I had come in utter innocence of heart,” Maurice later pleaded with
his reader to believe in faith.28 Still, the highly charged atmosphere of the
beach side resort, Juan-les-Pins, quickly overpowered this all too recently
converted habitué of le beau monde.The young American writer Glenway
Wescott, who would later become a familiar figure in the New York artistic and gay community, introduced Maurice to a teenage boy named Tom
Pinkerton, who was then vacationing with his high-strung mother on
the Côte d’Azur.29 Infatuation developed first, followed by what may
have been a mutual seduction. “We succumbed to the exhaustion of our
26 Ibid., 135.
27 Ibid.
28 Ibid., 140–41.
29 As a writer, Glenway Wescott (1901–1987) left behind a series of novels, includ-

ing The Grandmothers and The Pilgrim Hawk, noted for their remarkable lyricism.
As a literary figure, Wescott also became a symbol of his times. Born on a
Wisconsin farm in 1901, he associated as a young writer with Hemingway, Stein,
and Fitzgerald in 1920s Paris and subsequently was a central figure in New York’s
artistic and gay communities.Though he couldn’t finish a novel after the age of
forty-five, he was just as famous as an arts impresario, as a diarist, and for the
company he kept: W. H. Auden, Christopher Isherwood, Marianne Moore,
Somerset Maugham, E. M. Forster, Joseph Campbell, and scores of other luminaries. See Jerry Rosco, Glenway Wescott Personally:A Biography (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2002).

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719

forces of resistance but took no pleasure in doing so,” Maurice later
wrote, perhaps tendentiously.30 The public scandal caused by Maurice’s
sudden preoccupation with the sixteen-year-old Tom was enough to make
the recently repentant Cocteau react strongly, and to insist that Maurice
return immediately to Paris. Once back at the seminary, the priest who
had baptized him the year before counseled:“Better make a good Christian than a bad priest.”31 In November 1926, Maurice left the seminary
to fulfill his military service. From his military barracks, he wrote to
Jacques on November 23, 1926, recounting his religious practices: “The
only thing is that there is no Mass, but I make my stations of the cross
while walking up to the stables which are two kilometers away, and I
make my mediation while combing my horse.”32
After finishing his military service in April 1928, Maurice took on
literary projects, eventually left for the United States where he opened an
art gallery, married the daughter of a New York Presbyterian minister
(whom he thereafter shortly abandoned), and subsequently took up a
relationship with a young man, Henry Wibbels, in California. In March
1933, he encountered Jacques Maritain in Chicago. Later that same year
Maurice returned to France. In 1939, Sachs was assigned to the commander
of the British troops in Caen, then in 1942, he impulsively volunteered
for service in Germany, where he briefly worked in 1943 for the Gestapo,
that is, before he was arrested and sent to the Fuhlsbüttel concentration
camp.33 Even his work as an informer betrayed his conflicted state of soul:
“Though willing,” reports one authority, “to turn in other resistance
workers, he refused for example, to hand over a Jesuit priest.”34 Maurice
perished toward the end of the war, perhaps on a forced march. His death
certificate is dated April 14, 1945.
The Maritains’ “Intemperate Zeal”
The above account of Maurice Sachs’s life largely follows the account of
his biographer, Henri Raczymow, complemented with excerpts from
Sach’s own “illusionist” autobiographical essay, Le Sabbat, translated as
30 Sachs, Witches’ Sabbath, 142.
31 Ibid.
32 “Seulement pas de messe, mais je fais mon chemin de croix en montant à pied

aux écuries qui sont à deux km. et ma méditation en étrillant mon cheval.” See
Sachs, Correspondance, 183.
33 His biographer speculates that the decision to go to Hamburg may have been
made for no reason more profound than the “l’impatience de changer d’air.” See
Raczymow, Maurice Sachs, 410.
34 Jacobson, “Jews for Genius,” 198.

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Witches’ Sabbath.35 In 2003, Michel Bressolette and René Mougel published
an edition of the known correspondence between Sachs and the Maritains. The letters, cards, and telegrams date from 1925 to 1939, the year
that Maurice disappears into the fog of the Second World War. So we
have a privileged vantage point from which to inquire about what transpired between the Maritains and this young Jewish convert whom today
some would say suffered from deep-seated same-sex tendencies. Secular
studies of Sachs take for granted his dominant sexual preferences; they
have a more difficult time granting the authenticity of his conversion to
Catholicism, still less of accepting it as something permanent.The Correspondance, on the other hand, raises questions about these assumptions.
Maurice after all had fallen under the sway of the Maritains’ “intemperate zeal.”36
In his first letter to Jacques, dated July 28, 1925, the nineteen-year-old
Maurice states things clearly: “Nothing concerns me more than Baptism.
I regret the years empty of faith that are behind me.”37 As the days pass,
the exchanges between Maurice and each of the Maritains intensify both
in rhythm and spiritual density. On August 13, 1925, Raïssa quotes to him
large chunks of the Liturgy for the feast of the Assumption—“les Anges se
réjouissent de son Assomption et ils en louent le Fils de Dieu.”38 Maurice
replies appreciatively, although it is clear that he has not yet completed his
mystagogy: “I am accustoming myself,” he writes, “to fear no longer the
Church in her exterior rituals.”39 Again, Maurice acknowledges the satisfaction he found in reading the copy of the Imitation of Christ that the
Maritains sent him.Though at the same time, he writes revealingly:
I do not have to confess the sins of the catechism, but I must fortify my
heart against the human affections that suddenly surge into my heart
like gushing water. They upset the calm blood that passes tranquilly
through our arteries when we love only God and those who are like us
in this love.40

Certain of Maurice’s human affections center on, among others, Jacques
Maritain who reminds him of images of Christ and on Jean Cocteau,
35 See Barré, Maritain, 208ff.
36 Barré, Maritain, 205.The conversions for which the Maritains were instrumental

did not win the admiration of all, even of the ecclesiastical authorities.
37 Sachs, Correspondance, 33.
38 Ibid., 39.
39 Ibid., 44.
40 Ibid., 49, 50, my translation.

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721

whose initials are the same as those of Christ’s—J. C.41 Then there is the
figure of Jean Bourgoint, who on March 11, 1966 would die a Cistercian
monk, caring for lepers in the Cameroon.42 He was Maurice’s peer and
one of Cocteau’s ephebes, whom Maurice later introduced to Le Père
Pressoir, the seminary priest who would soon baptize Maurice and later
serve as his spiritual guide.
From the day of Maurice’s baptism through the rest of 1925, the
exchange of letters between Maurice and the Maritains continues steadily.
Even the editor of their correspondence is constrained to remark:
“Mystère des lettres et leur rapidité, 29 sept. 7 h moins 1/4.”43 All in all,
these accelerated communications reflect the struggles of a young man
exposed suddenly to the highest forms of Catholic spiritual doctrine,
including a compendium of the entire mystical doctrine of St. John of the
Cross, and at the same time trying to understand how the baptism which
gave him every grace of the Christian life still leaves him uncertain of
himself.“My spirit is weak, distracted, and sometimes tepid,” he writes to
his “très chers et doux amis,”“and my body is sometimes shaken up by the
demon.”44 Maurice also writes individually to Raïssa and Jacques. Each in
turn replies. Sometimes on the same day. For instance on October 20,
1925, when Jacques briefly reminds Maurice of his prayerful sentiments,
and suggests that he send a letter to Fribourg, Switzerland.
After hearing High Mass at Notre Dame, Maurice exclaims: “It’s the
only possible environment. One must be either a poet or a priest. Jacques
is both, but he is a miracle.”45 A Catholic comprehension develops in
Maurice. On November 2, 1925, he asks his Godmother to pray for his
grandfather, Jacques Bizet, whose anniversary of death falls on the next
day. As November draws to a close, Maurice, who has decided to move
in with the Maritains, cries out,“My God, I can’t wait to live at Meudon.
What better preparation than to sleep under your chapel and to pray for
long times in your house which is the House of God.”46 December
interrupts the rhythm of letters. Maurice is living with Jacques and
Raïssa. By January 4, 1926, Maurice again takes up his correspondence
with the Maritains. Now from the seminary, des Carmes.
41 Maurice to the Maritains,“Letter of 6 August 1925,” in Sachs, Correspondance, 35.
42 For further information on Jean Bourgoint, see Jean Bourgoint (Frère Pascal), Le

Retour de l’enfant terrible: Lettres, 1923–1966, ed. Jean Hugo and Jean Mouton
(Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 1975); and Georges Lauris, Itinéraire d’un enfant terrible. De Cocteau à Cîteaux (Paris: Presses de la Renaissance, 1998).
43 Letter 23, in Sachs, Correspondance, 62.
44 Sachs, Correspondance, 66.
45 Ibid., 80.
46 Ibid., 84.

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During the first month, the letters from the seminary reveal the interests of Maurice’s life, his personal relationships, including Raïssa’s sister,
Vera, and their mother, who of course live with the Maritains, his efforts
to begin a spiritual life, especially of prayer, and his concern to settle
affairs left over from his former life, such as the payment of debts. Something of the emotionally immature and of the mawkishly sentimental
inform these letters—such as the hand drawn sketch that depicts his
friends on a field of roses and stars.47 At the same time, Maurice reports
on his careful reading of Jacques’s books as they appear, for example, on
February 13, 1926, Élements de philosophie (Premier Fasicule). On March 7,
the old feast of St.Thomas Aquinas, Maurice sends a poem on a homemade card decorated with religious symbols. By the end of the month
however, he writes to his dear friends:“I am very weak.What now! God
gave me a little of his Cross and I let it down.”48
On the Monday of Holy Week, Maurice writes in order to borrow
660 francs from Jacques. Maurice was in the habit of visiting the Maritains and his other Paris friends when his seminary schedule allowed, and
he did so on the following Easter Sunday. By June 6, Raïssa is constrained
to remind him: “It is not without cruel struggles that nature cedes to
grace.” By the middle of July 1926, after passing some days of retreat at
Solesmes,“where he cried for the first time in six years,” Maurice is moved
to consider a Benedictine vocation as the only way to ensure his perseverance.49 The Maritains continue to support the young seminarian by giving
sound spiritual advice, by assuring him of their personal support, and on
the part of his Godmother, Raïssa, by offering a womanly expression of
understanding and consolation.
Even while on vacation, Maurice still writes “home.” The first letter
from Juan-les-Pins is written on the feast of Saint Mary Magdalene.
Three days later, on the feast of Saint James, Maurice writes to Jacques:
“Thank you, thank you for all that you have done for me. My heart is full
of gratitude for you, for you James the Apostle.”50 On July 31, the feast
of St. Ignatius,“How beautiful will be the day of my ordination; I will be
able to bless you as my heart blesses you.”51 On the Vigil of the Assumption, Maurice sends a post card from Lerins. Next on 22 August, he
writes,“I prayed this morning to ask God for all the graces of conversion
47 Ibid., 103.
48 Ibid., 121.
49 Ibid., 149.
50 Ibid., 151.
51 Ibid., 153.

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that we hope for, by the intercession of our Mother.”52 From these external signs, Maurice’s Marian and liturgical spirituality appears in order. He
expresses himself as one would expect from a seminarian of the period,
even while on vacation.
Then arises the storm. On August 29, 1926, Maurice writes to Jacques
as to a secular father confessor, and he tells him that since four days he
has lived in horrible disarray and deception: “I am taking the only
remedy. I am leaving here tomorrow for Solesmes.There, I hope to gain
my composure.”53 Maurice had met Tom Pinkerton. “Pray Jesus that he
will humble me and that he will bend me. I belong to Him, and still all
of me wants to be elsewhere. . . .Write!”54 It would be difficult to overlook the conflicted state of Maurice’s soul. The rational in Maurice
reaches out for truthful counsel from the “apostle” who had guided him
to Catholic faith. His emotional powers however are captivated by other,
less reliable forces.
Things did not improve for Maurice. After he had both finished
another stay at Solesmes and spent some time at Meudon, Jacques is
obliged to write on October 1, 1926, a sharp letter of admonition: “The
Maurice of before, we did not know.This time, during the few days that
you spent at Meudon, we met him. He and the Christian Maurice were
at the same time before us, creating together an unhappy peace.”55 This
exercise in fraternal correction displays a masterful expression of both
spiritual paternity and spiritual direction. Jacques spared no effort to curb
the waywardness that he rightly recognized as recapturing the soul of
Maurice Sachs. Like a father, Jacques explained the classical teaching on
repentance: “Your life from before has left profound marks in you that
only a long practice of the most strict Christian life is able to erase.”56
Later the same month, Maurice writes confidentially to Jacques, informing him that he has seen “the young American,” though without committing a carnal sin. But this affaire is not finished. For two months now, my
heart has been aching, admits Maurice.
Maurice spends time at another French Benedictine monastery, SaintBenoît-sur-Loire, along with his old friend Max Jacobs (+1944), whose religious conversion achieved stability with his retirement to Benedictine life.57
52 Ibid., 155.
53 Ibid., 156–57.
54 Ibid., 157.
55 Ibid., 165.
56 Ibid., 167.
57 “Jacob converted to Christianity in 1909 and became a Roman Catholic in 1915,

but he nevertheless continued to oscillate between extravagant penitence and

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“Jacques,” Maurice writes,“I am not doing well.”58 Again on November 5,
Maurice tells Jacques that he vows not to have sexual relations with Tom
Pinkerton, who is not homosexual, but at the same time allows that he
cannot live without his friendship altogether. Maurice sends Tom the Imitation, and he encourages him to return to the practice of the faith. He also
warns Tom to escape the “constant torment that homosexuality is.”59 This
long letter written from Saint-Benoît-sur-Loire expresses clearly Maurice’s
at least unconscious identification with what St. Paul writes in the Letter to
the Romans: “For I take delight in the law of God, in my inner self, but I
see in my members another principle at war with the law of my mind,
taking me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members” (Rom
7:22–23).60 Or, to cite a text of the Second Vatican Council that may apply
to Maurice, “And being weak and sinful, they frequently do what they
would rather not, and fail to do what they would.”61
Theological Analysis
It is possible to interpret the personal and epistolary exchanges between
the Maritains and Maurice Sachs within the context of the “vocational
teleology” that dominates the first chapter of the 1993 encyclical letter,
Veritatis Splendor. Pope John Paul II there appeals to the dialogue of Jesus
with the rich young man as related in the nineteenth chapter of Saint
Matthew’s Gospel. “Teacher, what good must I do to gain eternal life”
(Mt 9:16)? “Because God is there,” Raïssa wrote early on to a young
Maurice worried about his conversion, “you have nothing to fear. I do
not say, you have nothing to do, that would be to miss what is apparent.
‘If you love me, keep my commandments.’ ”62 Maurice, it seems difficult
to deny, was an earnest searcher, at least for a time.
The Maritains embraced him and their other “guests” from the
perspective of the overarching participation of the rational creature in the
divine goodness.“L’infinie Bonté de Notre Seigneur.”63 They acted toward
wild bohemianism until 1921, at which time he retired into semi-monastic seclusion at Saint Benoît-sur-Loire. He lived there most of the time, supporting himself
by painting, until World War II, when he was interned in the concentration camp
at Drancy, near Paris, where he died.” See the website concise.britannica.com/
ebc/article-9043189/Max-Jacob
58 Sachs, Correspondance, 172.
59 Ibid., 174.
60 Ibid., 173–77, no. 119.
61 See Vatican Council II, Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World
(Gaudium et Spes), §10.
62 Sachs, Correspondance, 45.
63 Ibid.

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Maurice based on their conviction that, as St.Thomas teaches,“each creature is stretched out toward the attainment of its own perfection, which
is a likeness of the divine perfection and goodness.”64 In other words, the
Maritains pursued their evangelizing efforts inspired by a confidence that
the basic dynamisms of creation flow from the divine will from which all
striving for perfection derives. Veritatis Splendor repeats this key interpretative principle of Thomist moral theology:
The moral life has an essential “teleological” character, since it consists
in the deliberate ordering of human acts to God, the supreme Good
and ultimate end (telos) of man. This is attested to once more by the
question posed by the young man to Jesus: “What good must I do to
have eternal life?”65

The encyclical further reminds us, “Only God can answer the question
about what is good, because he is the Good itself.”66 Or, as Raïssa wrote
in 1925 to Maurice, “Only the Good God, in effect, is able to begin,
continue, and accomplish the work of our sanctification.”67
Maurice received instruction in both nature and grace. Adoptive
sonship is prefigured by a more limited likeness of God in the created
nature, which as St.Thomas also teaches, becomes fuller as it approaches
the absolute expression of the divine sonship.68 The adoptive sonship of
the Christian is not a sonship that is simply and univocally natural as is
that of Christ who is the eternal Word. Rather, there exists within human
nature—which is specifically different from the divine nature—an analogical likeness to God that is able to undergo transfiguration. This may be
expressed in an analogy of proper proportionality: Christ the natural Son
is to the Father as the adoptive son is to the Trinity. Love for the full truth
of man’s divine good can surmount the difficulties that human weakness
and a fallen world create. Only the man whose operational capacities are
conformed to Christ through the infused theological and moral virtues
will love as does Christ. Maurice had come to understand that the goal
of life is to become like Christ. As late as August 1927, he tells Jacques
that he wants to include an image of the Shroud of Turin in a book of
64 See Summa theologiae I, q. 44, a. 4: “Et unaquaeque creatura intendit consequi

suam perfectionem, quae est similitudo perfectionis et bonitatis divinae.”
65 Veritatis Splendor, §72.
66 Ibid., §9.
67 Sachs, Correspondance, 45.
68 See ST I, q. 33, a. 3. Also, my “Sonship, Sacrifice, and Satisfaction: The Divine

Friendship in Aquinas and the Renewal of Christian Anthropology,” Letter &
Spirit 3 (2007): 69–91.

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poems that he intends to publish, with the title, the “Miraculous Sketch
of Jesus.”69 And of course, he found in Jacques himself a living resemblance of how Maurice envisaged the Savior. His personal embrace of
Christ raises other questions. While trying to rationalize an acceptable
relationship with Tom Pinkerton, Maurice wrote to Jacques: “I think
about God with fear and revolt.”70
If Maurice Sachs today were to seek entrance into a Catholic seminary, he would have to confront the directives for persons with same-sex
tendencies set down by the 2005 “Instruction” of the Congregation for
Catholic Education.71 Grace is called to stand before the psychological
tribunal. It is useless to engage in historical psychoanalysis. At the same
time, it is evident from the Correspondance that the Maritains did not hesitate to regard Maurice’s baptism as the start of a new life. In doing this,
they clearly drew on classical Catholic teaching about the “rich reality”
that baptismal grace bestows.72 How then did they regard what in
Maurice today would be called “deep-seated homosexual tendencies”?
Three points emerge:
1. First, the Maritains refused to hypostasize homosexuality. Note in the
2005 “Instruction” that the use of the word “tendency” to describe
homosexual leanings is meant to signal that while the Church considers “homosexual tendencies” distelic and therefore incapable of
perfecting human nature, such tendencies are not as close to the
appetites as natural inclinations. In Catholic moral thought, there exists
only one sexual inclination, only one sexual orientation. It should be
noted that the “Instruction” of 2005 speaks of tendencies that are
“objectively disordered.”73 The terminology is that of the Catechism of
the Catholic Church.74 On the other hand, when discussing the moral
anthropology of Catholic life, Veritatis Splendor employs the word
“inclination” seven times.The word “tendency” however appears only
69 Sachs, Correspondance, 215.
70 Ibid., 176.
71 Congregation for Catholic Education, “Instruction Concerning the Criteria for

the Discernment of Vocations with Regard to Persons with Homosexual
Tendencies in View of Their Admission to the Seminary and to Holy Orders”
(2005).
72 See CCC, §1279: “that includes forgiveness of original sin and all personal sins,
birth into the new life by which man becomes and adoptive son of the father, a
member of Christ and a temple of the Holy Spirit.”
73 Congregation for Catholic Education, “Instruction,” §2.
74 CCC, §2358: “Virorum et mulierum numerus non exiguus tendentias homosexuales praesentat profunde radicatas,” emphases added.

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once, and then to describe a trend of thought not a psychological state.
The Maritains read correctly Maurice’s human and religious inclinations.They were less successful, it seems, in comprehending his disordered and predominately homosexual tendencies.
Veritatis Splendor employs twice the adjective “disordered” to
describe sinful actions.The Catechism cites the 1976 “Persona Humana”
document of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (issued
during the height of the sexual revolution in North America). It defines
homosexual acts as intrinsically disordered.75 Disordered tendencies to
commit such acts describe psychological dispositions toward sin. The
theological word would be “temptation.”76 In any case, the Church
does not locate homosexual lust at the level of being.
The Maritains obviously viewed Maurice’s past profligacy as
something altogether remediable.They believed in the forgiveness of
all personal sins that baptism brings.They knew what Aquinas teaches
about the fomes peccati. In short, temptations after baptism should be
overcome by manfully resisting them by the grace of Jesus Christ.77
We can infer the gist of their spiritual counsel from what Maurice
plaintively says when his struggles with presumably sexual temptations had led to discouragement. In a 1927 letter, Maurice complains
to Jacques: “You tell me that God wants me to play the hero. But
what thanks should I give God who permitted that my heart and my
body be perverted at an age when one is ignorant, and who ten years
later requires heroism of me?”78 “Manfully resist.” “Play the hero.”
2. The Maritains brooked no sympathy for any chosen expression of
homosexual lust. Aquinas never discusses explicitly homosexual
tendencies. He alludes to what since the late nineteenth century we
call homosexuality in the treatise on the old law where he notes that
the sixth commandment forbids the “vices against nature” and cites
Leviticus 19:16:“You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is
an abomination.”79 He mentions the same “vice against nature” in
the reply to an objection in the treatise on the natural law.80 Again,
75 CCC, §2357, citing Persona Humana, §8: “actus homosexualitatis suapte intrin-

seca natura esse inordinatos.”
76 For an interesting essay that mentions classical outlooks on sexual temptations,

see John Joseph Williams, “Ordered and Disordered Friendships: Some Classic
Distinctions,” Faith & Reason 29 (2004): 33–47.
77 CCC, §1264.
78 Sachs, Correspondance, 228.
79 ST I–II, q. 100, a. 11.
80 ST I–II, q. 94, a. 3.

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“homosexuality” appears in the treatise on intemperance, where
Aquinas discusses the shamefulness of homosexual coitus.81 And
again, when he is discussing the sins of lust.82 All sins of lechery go
against reason, but some—what Mary Ann Glendon likes to call the
filthy five—also go against nature; they are not only against reason
but also contra naturam: masturbation, bestiality, sodomy, contraception, and fetishes.
The first mention of sodomy in the Summa theologiae comes,
however, when Aquinas discusses pleasure. In this article, the
Common Doctor offers what may be the closest thing to clinical
psychology in the Summa, namely, that some men are sick of soul and
so take pleasure in cannibalism, bestiality, homosexual congress, and
other things not in accord with their nature.83 Do such persons act
from an innate inclination to find pleasure in practicing the vices
against nature? It would come as a surprise to discover that the Maritains thought so. There is no evidence to think that Aquinas did.
There are persons who take pleasure habitually in bad sex. Maurice
seems to have been one of them. He shared his bed with men up
until his arrest in 1943. Does the word “tendency” adequately
describe his condition? Perhaps. Then there is the testimony of
Maurice himself: “My life is impossible because I love equally virtue
and sin, God and the devil.”84 In other words, he explains himself in
terms of a choice.
3. The Maritains believed in the power of contemplation to pacify the
lower powers of the soul.What distinguishes deep-seated homosexual tendencies from, as the “Instruction” puts it, “homosexual
tendencies that were only the expression of a transitory problem”?85
It is important to determine criteria to answer this question. Those
who experience the latter may be admitted today into seminaries.
Others may not. It seems to me that if we follow the lead of Aquinas,
then we will find ourselves obliged to discover a way to evaluate the
pleasure that an individual takes in the prospects or realization of
81 ST II–II, 142, a. 4.
82 ST II–II, q. 154, a. 11.
83 ST I–II, q. 31, a. 8.
84 Sachs, Correspondance, 267.This reminds one of an aphorism from The Way (#24):

“You tell me that in your heart you have fire and water, cold and heat, empty
passions and God: one candle lit to St. Michael and another to the devil. Calm
yourself. As long as you are willing to fight there are not two candles burning in
your heart.There is only one: the archangel’s.”
85 Congregation for Catholic Education, “Instruction,” §2.

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729

sexual congress with a person of the same sex. The Catechism of the
Catholic Church tells us that many of them find their situations a
trial—“pro maiore eorum parte constituit probationem.”86 We find
ourselves back to Maurice Sachs and his advice to Tom Pinkerton: at
all costs, escape the “constant torment that homosexuality is.”87 For
their part, the Maritains proceeded on a premise that Aquinas enunciates in Summa theologiae I–II, question 38: “The contemplation of
truth is the greatest of all pleasures.We have seen that every pleasure
assuages pain. The contemplation of truth therefore assuages pain;
and it does so the more, the more perfectly one loves wisdom.”88
How else may one interpret the words of Raïssa? “God will make
known to you interiorly and little by little what he desires of you.
And little by little, and sweetly, he will teach you how to remain
strong by his love.”89
Postscript
Maurice continued to exchange letters with the Maritains during his
period of military service. He also continued for a time to practice the
Catholic faith. He reported back to the Maritains on conversations with
his confessor, who advised him to marry. . . .And so one assumes that “the
torment of homosexuality” remained an issue for Maurice. On November 20, 1927, he writes to Jacques, and confesses to some form of relationship with a certain Jean Mangüe that had the same effect on
Maurice’s desire to marry as what had happened at Juan-les-Pins had on
his desire for the priesthood. “A brutal warning,” he tells Jacques.90
Marry, we know however, Maurice did. But his struggles with homosexual impulses continued. They eventually took a toll on his religious
practice.“But you know better than I,” he writes to Jacques in April 1934,
“how essential is the Eucharist, which I cannot receive without a firm
purpose of not living in a manner that St. Paul condemns.”91 Jacques
agrees, and the next month tells him that if a firm purpose is impossible,
there is nothing else to do except to wait, while still doing all that is in
one’s power.92 The last letter that Maurice writes is addressed to Raïssa
Maritain, shortly before Christmas 1939. Sin appears to have worked its
86 CCC, §2358.
87 Sachs, Correspondance, 174.
88 ST I–II, q. 38, a. 5.
89 Sachs, Correspondance, 45.
90 Ibid., 226.
91 Ibid., 291.
92 Ibid., 292.

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sad effect.“I am born, it seems to me, without the sense of the eternal. . . .
I remain indifferent toward life eternal. Mille et mille affections. Maurice.”93
On November 16, 1943, Maurice Sachs was arrested by the Gestapo
under the pretext of article 175, the section of criminal law that
condemned the practice of acts “against nature.” Ordinarily, those who, like
Maurice Sachs, served as agents for the Nazi government were exempt
from this law, except when the Gestapo found reason to lose confidence in
them.This they did in the case of Maurice when they discovered that he
had alerted a Jesuit priest, le Père Jean Nicot, who was working undercover
in Hamburg with the help of the Swiss consulate. Illusionist accounts of his
death circulated after the end of World War II. On February 4, 1951, KarlLudwig Schneider published an article in the Berlin magazine, Welt am
Sonntag, proving that Maurice Ettinghausen (Sachs’s real family name) had
been killed by a Flemish S.S. officer while trying to escape a prison march.
On April 21, 1951, his mother had a funeral Mass celebrated for him at
N&V
Saint-Philippe-du-Roule in Paris.

93 Ibid., 312.

Nova et Vetera, English Edition,Vol. 6, No. 4 (2008): 731–764

731

The “Inseparable Connection” between Procreation
and Unitive Love (Humanae Vitae, §12) and
Thomistic Hylemorphic Anthropology1
PAUL G ONDREAU
Providence College
Providence, Rhode Island
Humans are amphibians—half spirit and half animal. As spirits they
belong to the eternal world, but as animals they inhabit time [and are
thus ordered to temporal goods].This means that while their spirit can
be directed to an eternal object, their bodies, passions, and imaginations
are in continual change [since they are directed to temporal objects].
—C. S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

I F AN ENGAGED couple is asked why they are getting married, they
will say, usually, because they love each other. No surprise there. They
very well might add, and should add, that they are getting married
because they want to have children (however many that may be and
whenever they may come).And thus we have the celebrated “inseparable
connection,” as Humanae Vitae (§12) calls it, between the unitive and
procreative dimensions of human sexuality.2 Often, appeals are made to

1 I would like to express my gratitude to the Centre for Philosophical Psychology

of the Institute for the Psychological Sciences (Arlington,VA) at Blackfriars Hall,
University of Oxford, England, which made possible the writing of a substantial
part of this essay.
2 The 1983 Code of Canon Law follows suit: “[marriage] is by its nature ordered
to the good of the spouses (ad bonum coniugum) and the procreation and education of offspring” (canon 1055; trans. Canon Law Society of America, Code of
Canon Law. Latin-English Edition [Washington, DC: Canon Law Society of America, 1984], 387).

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the body-soul unity in the human being as the foundation for this inseparable connection. But such appeals can at times be vague or at least lacking in metaphysical depth and clarity.3 Here is where an anthropology
that brings the full weight of Aristotelian hylemorphism (matter-form
causality) to bear on this issue, such as we find in St.Thomas Aquinas, can
offer a marked contribution. With this essay, then, I would like to invite
consideration of the indivisible union of the procreative and unitive
dimensions of our sexuality as a reflection of the body-soul unity, such as
we can understand in light of Aquinas’s robust hylemorphic (or integrated) account of the human being.
The Union of Matter and Form
In a hylemorphic account of reality, all things (save God and the angels)
are composed of matter and form, that is, of material “stuff ” arranged or
determined (read: informed) in some specific way (hylemorphism comes
from the Greek hyle ˜ for “matter,” and morphe ˜ meaning “form”). Indeed,
matter exists only insofar as it is informed—one never finds matter without a form—since the form is what organizes or determines matter to be
the particular kind of material thing it is.4 Matter possesses the possibility of becoming, via the form, a specific kind of thing: wood has the
potentiality of becoming either a desk, or a table, or a chair, or a piece of
paper, or a floor, or a statue, or a piece of kindling, and it is the form
which determines the specific kind of wooden thing it becomes. Without its form, matter remains in pure potency.
This makes form the actualizing principle, or that which gives “act” or
actual existence to matter: “matter has actual existence by the substantial

3 Humanae Vitae, in fact, simply makes a general appeal to the natural law as the

basis for this inseparable connection, but follows with little by way of exposition
on this. For its part, Pope Benedict XVI’s encyclical letter Deus Caritas Est, §5,
begins its attempt at arguing for the union of eros and agape on the simple fact
that “it is man, the person, a unified creature composed of body and soul, who
loves,” but follows with virtually no elaboration on this.
4 Richard J. Connell (Nature’s Causes [New York: Peter Lang, 1995], 73 and 104)
defines matter in the sense of material cause as “that from which something
comes to be and which remains within,” and as “that out of which something is
made and which remains within.” When it comes to form or formal cause, which
he observes stand out as “some of the more confusing [words] in the vocabulary
of Aristotle,” he offers various meanings: form signifies the “principle within the
substance” and which give it its nature; form means that which constitutes the
species as such or signifies “what the individual things are.”

Procreation and Unitive Love

733

form,” Thomas writes, “which makes it exist absolutely.”5 Because of
matter’s dependence upon form, we can say matter is for the sake of form.6
There is, then, a kind of duality in all things on account of their
matter-form composition. By no means, however, does this equate with
dualism.There is no inherent opposition between matter and form, even
if form, the actualizing principle, is superior to matter, the passive or
potential principle. Instead, there is substantial inseparable unity between
the two, precisely since matter’s actual existence is provided by its union
with form. Form is the principle of unity of all material things.7
Modern Science and Aristotelian Hylemorphism
Today it is often assumed that this older hylemorphic view of the natural world (inspired by Aristotle) does not square with, and indeed has
been eclipsed by, what modern science has uncovered. However, recent
scholarship has begun to show that the Aristotelian doctrine of hylemorphism (matter-form composition) can be reconciled with the modern
scientific account.8 To say, as I think one can and must, that modern
science has focused almost exclusively on what the Aristotelian would
call material causality (in addition to efficient causality) and has largely
ignored the notion of form (as well as of final causality)—or at least that
5 Aquinas, Summa theologiae I, q. 76, a. 6.Also, in III, q. 3, a. 7 ad 1,Thomas explains:

“A created nature is completed in its essentials by its form.”
6 “Since the form is not for the matter, but rather the matter for the form, we must

gather from the form the reason why the matter is such as it is, and not
conversely.” ST I, q. 76, a. 5.
7 “[T]he form, through itself, makes a thing to be actual since it is itself essentially
an act. . . . Wherefore the unity of a thing composed of matter and form is by
virtue of the form itself, which by reason of its very nature is united to matter
as its act.” ST I, q. 76, a. 7.
8 Scholars who argue this include: Connell, Nature’s Causes, esp. 57–122; idem,
Substance and Modern Science (South Bend, IN: University of Notre Dame Press,
1988); idem, From Observables to Unobservables in Science and Philosophy (Landham,
MD: University Press of America, 2000); Nicanor Austriaco, “Immediate
Hominization from the Systems Perspective,” National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly
4 (2004): 497–516; idem,“How to Navigate Species Boundaries:A Reply to The
American Journal of Bioethics,” National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly 6 (2006): 61–71;
and John Goyette,“Substantial Form and the Recovery of Aristotelian Science,”
The Thomist 66 (2002): 519–33. Goyette has also argued against a plurality of
substantial forms being found in one substance in “St.Thomas on the Unity of
Substantial Form,” in Restoring Nature: Essays in Thomistic Philosophy and Theology,
ed. Michael M.Waddell (South Bend, IN: St. Augustine’s Press, 2008). Cf. Benedict M. Ashley, “The River Forest School and the Philosophy of Nature Today,”
in Philosophy and the God of Abraham, ed. R. James Long (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1991), 1–16.

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Paul Gondreau

modern science dismisses form (and finality) as causes—is not to say the
experimental method of modern science has disproved formal (or final)
causality as such. While formal (and final) causality may have fallen on
hard times, one could argue that in many ways modern science implies
or even begs for the equivalent of what Aristotle calls form.
To give just once piece of evidence for this, one can look at the relatively new field of systems biology that has arisen in the wake of postgenomic science.9 Whereas scientists overall used to think the measure of
the complexity of a species was to be found at the genomic level, they
have had to revise this view. Advances in genomic science have shown
that the chromosomal differences among species are relatively insignificant. For instance, many species, such as apes, have more chromosomes
than human beings, while many species of animals have fewer.And at the
level of genes, whereas one would expect the most complex animal
species, the human being, to own more genes than any other organism
(there are 22,000 total genes in humans, compared to, say, 6,000 in yeast),
one would be surprised to learn that an organism like rice (with 38,000)
has significantly more genes than humans.10
As a result, systems biologists have come to recognize that an organism’s
material components, looked at on their own or simply as a net sum, do
not help us identify what is distinctive of a species as a structural unity; they
do not tell the whole story of an organism. Instead, systems biologists have
come to see that an organism, considered as a unified whole, is greater than
the sum of its parts. And they prefer the term “state cycles” to signify the
distinctiveness and structural unity of an organism.11 Put more technically,
state cycles is the term employed by systems biologists to designate the
organism as a specific type of organization, that is, “as a single, unified
network of interacting molecules [namely, of DNA, RNA, lipids, metabo9 The following overview of systems biology and its relation to Aristotelian-

Thomistic biology is taken from Austriaco, “Immediate Hominization from the
Systems Perspective,” 500–502. In this essay Austriaco explicitly targets the suggestion of Jean Porter (“Is the Embryo a Person?: Arguing with the Catholic Traditions,” Commonweal 129 [Feb. 8, 2002], 8–10) that it is difficult to reconcile modern
science, at least on the issue of embryogenesis, with Aristotelian-Thomistic hylemorphism. For an overview of and introduction to systems biology (provided by
Austriaco), cf. Hiroaki Kitano, “Systems Biology: A Brief Overview,” Science 295
(March 1, 2002): 1662–64.
10 Cf. Matt Ridley, Genome:The Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters (New York:
Harper Collins, 2000), 4.The gene count is provided by Austriaco in an oral presentation to an interdisciplinary faculty seminar on being human at Providence
College, Providence, RI, on January 25, 2007.
11 For more on state cycles in systems biology, see Stuart Kauffman, At Home in the
Universe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995).

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lites, and proteins] which is organized in a species-specific manner.”12
Among other things, state cycles account for the enduring stability of
organisms while they undergo dramatic changes—such as when the
species-specific pattern of molecular interactions in a human being remains
constant throughout one’s entire lifespan, despite the fact that, as biologists
have shown, nearly ninety-eight percent of the atoms in the mature human
body are replaced over a two-year period.
Because the term state cycles signifies that which accounts for the
structural (or organizational) and species-specific unity of a living thing
in a way that the mere material (i.e., molecular) components, even as a
net sum, cannot, one can say that “state cycles” stands out as a more or
less equivalent term to what Aristotle and Aquinas mean by “form” (or
formal cause). Form signifies nothing other than that which confers
structural and species-specific unity upon a thing’s material components
(upon organic matter in the case of living things), since form is present
to the entire body and to all of its parts. Form completes the story of an
organism and ensures the enduring stability of a thing in the midst of its
numerous biological changes. Hence the lasting value for modern science
of matter-form causality: “[Aristotelian hylemorphism] remains a potent
explanation for biological species” is what the biologist and bioethicist
Nicanor Austriaco concludes.13 The field of systems biology provides
strong counter-evidence to the Scottish philosopher David Hume’s
famous denial of formal causality, as he asserts nothing holds a thing
together, nothing makes a thing stable over time.14
Reconciling modern science with Aristotelian hylemorphism does
present its terminological hurdles, however. Étienne Gilson noted in his
correspondence with Jacques Maritain that simple disagreement over the
meaning of the word “nature” separates Thomist philosophers from
modern scientists.15 To be sure, terms such as matter and form carry a
12 Austriaco, “Immediate Hominization from the Systems Perspective,” 504.
13 Austriaco, “How to Navigate Species Boundaries,” 68.
14 David Hume, A Treatise on Human Nature, ed. L.A. Selby-Bigge (Oxford: Oxford

University Press, 1888), Bk. I, Pt. III, section 14 (“Of the Idea of Necessary
Connexion”), 155–72; and Bk. I, Pt. IV, section 6 (“Of Personal Identity”),
251–63; cited in Stephen L. Brock, “The Rational Primacy of the Common
Good and the Natural Presuppositions of the ratio boni,” paper delivered at a
conference on “Providence, Practical Reason, and the Common Good,” Providence College, Providence, Rhode Island, April 26, 2008.
15 Étienne Gilson, Jacques Maritain, Correspondance, 1923–1971, ed. Géry Prouvost
(Paris: J. Vrin, 1991), 250 (letter of Gilson, Sept. 8, 1971); cited in Lawrence
Dewan, O.P.,“St.Thomas and the Divinity of the Common Good,” paper delivered at the conference “Providence, Practical Reason, and the Common Good.”

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much wider or more metaphysically precise sense in the writings of such
a proponent of Aristotelian hylemorphism as Aquinas than they do in
modern science. Whereas, for instance, modern science denotes matter
almost exclusively to mean a quantifiable, measurable thing, for Aquinas
(and Aristotle) it also and especially means a principle of potentiality, or,
again, that which possesses the possibility of becoming, via the form, a
specific kind of thing.
The Human Being as a Matter-Form
(Body-Soul) Composite
Like all bodily beings, the human being, too, is composed of matter and
form. The human being is unique, however, in that he is composed of
organic matter (which he shares with all other animals) and a rational
form. The human being is constituted by an animal body joined to an
immaterial or spiritual soul.16 If the human soul, owning its various intellectual and sensate powers, is immaterial, it is because those acts unique
to the human species, namely, abstract thought and free choice, cannot be
reduced to the material.17 Accordingly, we can say animality represents
In their correspondence, Maritain expressed optimism on the possibility of
dialogue with evolutionary scientists, and of convincing them of the need for a
God to supply the substantial forms of new species. But Gilson was dubious, given
that Descartes’s elimination of substantial form from reality had resulted in the
inability of modern science to recognize form and finality as intrinsic to nature.
16 Cf. ST I, q. 76, aa. 1 and 4, and a. 6, ad 1, where Thomas writes:“the same essential form makes man an actual being, a body, a living being, an animal, and a man.”
17 As for human thought implying its being grounded in an immaterial mind (soul),
a biologist friend once employed the following useful argument to convince a
materialist why this is so. If human thought is reducible entirely to the material
(namely, to neurological chemicals), then every human thought or idea must be
reducible to what is finite, that is, no thought can exceed the limits of the particular, since the material is of its very nature composed of the particular (“particles”), and thus of the limited or finite.The problem, however, arises from the fact
that we can conceive of things that go beyond the finite or the particular; we can
have thoughts that extend to the infinite or the indefinite, such as when we
conceive of an infinite (indefinite) set of numbers. Here a metaphor of a box filled
with marbles can be employed, where to every thought would correspond a
marble, at least if human thought is reducible entirely to the material. Put in other
terms, every time we have a thought a marble must be placed in the box.
However, when we conceive of an infinite (indefinite) set of numbers, we could
never have enough marbles in the box. A finite, limited set of marbles is not
proportioned to an infinite set of numbers, that is, is not proportioned to a
thought that goes beyond the finite.The mind therefore cannot be limited to the
finite, the limited, the material. For more on the immateriality of the human soul,

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what is bodily in the human being, the matter, while rationality represents what is formal in man, the soul.
What is more, the human being is on account of his (material) body and
his (immaterial) soul.18 In the hylemorphic view, matter (material cause)
cannot tell the whole story of man (or of any created thing). Such a story
reduces the human being to nothing more than a mechanized aggregate
of material components (molecules, genes, etc.). Form supplies what is
specific as such to a being in a way the material components on their
own cannot. As the form of the human being, the soul completes the
story of man, just as form completes the story of any being. Put in other
terms, the body is the necessary condition for the existence of the soul,
even while the soul, for whose sake the body exists, is necessary for the
realization of the body.
Wishing to stress the profundity of the hylemorphic bond between
body and soul in the human being, and aware that the soul, as form, marks
the principle of unity in human nature,Aquinas does not hesitate to write:
“the intellectual soul is united by its very being (per suum esse) to the body as
a form.”19 Here all the powers of the soul, whether sensitive (and thus
affective) or intellectual (or rational), share an intimate unity and synergy
both with each other and with the body, of which the soul, with all its
powers, is the form.The soul is the source, the principle, of all the body’s
vital motions and actions. Far from a loose, accidental juxtaposition, then,
see Brian J. Shanley, O.P., The Thomist Tradition (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2002), 153–66;
for Aquinas’s argument, see ST I, q. 75, a. 5.
18 In coming to adopt this integrated anthropology, Aquinas would draw especially
upon Aristotle, but also upon St. Augustine, for whom, as Joseph Torchia, O.P.
(chapter entitled “St. Thomas Aquinas: A Subsistent Individual,” in his Exploring
Personhood: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Human Nature [Lanham, MD:
Rowman & Littlefield, 2007]) points out, the human being is a “harmonious
union” of body and soul; cf. Augustine, De civitate Dei, Bk. XIX, ch. 3 (for
Aquinas’s citation of this passage, cf. ST I, q. 75, a. 4). At the same time,Torchia
notes a “certain uneasiness on Augustine’s part regarding the possibility of a true
psychosomatic unity [in the human being]” in his “The Significance of the
Communicatio Idiomatum in St.Augustine’s Christology, with Special Reference to
His Rebuttal of Later Arianism,” in Studia Patristica, vol. 38, Papers Presented at the
Thirteenth International Conference on Patristic Studies Held in Oxford 1999. St.
Augustine and His Opponents. Other Latin Writers, eds. M. F. Wiles and E. J. Yarnold
(Leuven: Peeters, 2001), 306–23, at 321.
19 ST I, q. 76, a. 6 ad 3; emphasis added. Previously in I, q. 29, a. 1 ad 5,Thomas maintains:“the soul ever retains its nature of unibility (unibilitatis) [with the body].” For
a more profound look at the metaphysical hylemorphic conception of the human
being in Aquinas, cf. Anton Pegis, St.Thomas and the Problem of the Soul in the Thirteenth Century (Toronto: Pontifical Institute for Mediaeval Studies, 1978).

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the union of the immaterial (the rational soul) with the material (the
organic body) in the human being constitutes a profound, if paradoxical,
unity.The human being is one.
This view of the human being as a substantial composite of matter and
form, of body and soul, provides us with the metaphysical key to a truly
integrated sexual anthropology. Defining the human being as a fundamental unity of body and soul marks the most crucial step, in my opinion, at rendering a proper account of the meaning and purpose of human
sexuality, and more particularly of the inseparable connection between
procreation and unitive love of which Humanae Vitae §12, speaks. Let us
sketch this out.
Sexuality Follows Primarily upon the Bodily
Animal Dimension of Human Nature
Aquinas explains how certain essential attributes accrue to our nature
that, while not entering into the definition of the human being as a
rational animal per se, nonetheless proceed immediately, and thus essentially, upon that which does enter into this definition. Put simply, there
are certain essential human attributes, call them “proto-essential” properties, that follow immediately upon our animality (expressive of the body
or of our matter) and upon our rationality (expressive of the soul or of
our form).20
While risibility is an example of an attribute following upon human
rationality, sexuality, on Aquinas’s account, is an attribute that proceeds
upon our animality or upon our bodies.21 The very basis of the sexual
20 Thomas calls these attributes “proper accidents,” but this should not be taken to

mean they are “accidental” (in the Aristotelian sense of the term).The following
remarks on human sexuality as an attribute or proper accident of our nature are
pulled from Aquinas’s De ente et essentia, chs. 5–6. I wish to express my gratitude
to Stephen A. Hipp for providing me with his (unpublished) “Succinct Presentation of the De ente et essentia and the De principiis naturae of St.Thomas Aquinas.”
21 “[T]he diversity of male and female among animals derives from matter.” De ente
et essentia, ch. 5; cf. Aristotle, Metaph., Bk. X, ch. 11 (1058b21–23). Aquinas goes
on to note in ch. 6 of the De ente that only those proper accidents that ensue
upon the human form (the rational soul) will characterize the whole human
species as such, such as risibility, since “laughter results from some apprehension
on the part of the [rational] human soul.” In this way, we say all human individuals are risible. However, since, as the principle of individuation, matter accounts
for what differentiates (or individuates, concretizes) particular human beings, the
proper accidents that derive from the matter (the human body) pertain only to
individuals. Maleness and femaleness are thus to the individual what risibility is
to the human species. In this way, we say only some human individuals are male
and some female. But since any true human being must share in full rationality

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differentiation between male and female, obviously the distinguishing
mark of sexuality as such, is animal bodiliness.This does not mean, as shall
be seen immediately below, that our sexuality is wholly reducible to what
is bodily in us. Nor does it deny the important social and psychological
aspects of our sexual identity. Much modern scientific research has shed
considerable light on the importance of an individual’s social and psychological self-identity as a man or as a woman. But that animal bodiliness
provides the primary foundation for our sexuality is supported by the
simple biological fact that the sex chromosomal complement (XX for
females, XY for males) determines one’s sex, including all respective
sexual characteristics (genitalia, bone and muscular structure, etc.).22
In a word, sex, inclusive of our affective loves and desires, belongs to
us primarily as embodied beings. Without our bodiliness, without our
animality, we have no truly satisfactory way of explaining the malefemale sexual complement. Human sexuality implies embodied altereity,
embodied complementarity. While this point may seem obvious, especially as we consider it in light of the entire animal kingdom, it needs to
be stressed. For, even respectable moral theologians have advanced
misleading notions of what constitutes maleness and femaleness as such.23
and full animality, every human individual must be both risible and either male or
female. Every human individual must possess the proper accidents that follow
upon the rational form (e.g., risibility) and upon the animal matter (e.g., maleness or femaleness) as from its essential principles. Therefore, although maleness
and femaleness fall into the category of proper accidents, they may in no case be
classified as accidental, just as denoting risibility as a proper accident does not
mean it is accidental to human nature. Citations from the De ente are done in
consultation with the translation of A. Maurer, Aquinas on Being and Essence (2nd
ed.;Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1968).
22 “The X and Y chromosomes are known as the sex chromosomes for the obvious reason that they determine, with almost perfect predestination, the sex of the
body” (Matt Ridley, Genome:The Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters, 108).
That one can find isolated cases of hermaphroditism (the possession of ambiguous genitalia) does not change this fact, since hermaphroditism results from an
aberration in nature, inasmuch as it is caused by either a genetic mutation, a
chromosomal aberration, a birth defect, or a hostile exterior agent, such as a
virus; cf. James A. Monteleone, “A Biological Perspective: Problems Associated
with the Determination of Sex of Rearing in the Presence of Ambiguous Genitalia,” in Sex and Gender: A Theological and Scientific Inquiry (St. Louis: Pope John
Center, 1983), 65–80, at 66. And even in these cases, one sex over the other
always predominates (though this may be difficult to ascertain).
23 Thus, for instance, John Grabowski (Sex and Virtue:An Introduction to Sexual Ethics
[Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2003], 109–11), who
appeals to the person/nature distinction as it is known in light of the Trinitarian
mystery in order to argue that maleness and femaleness are constitutive of

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Psychiatric Research and Human Embodiedness
Important research in the field of clinical psychiatry helps show that the
sexual anthropology which holds up animal bodiliness (or human biology)
as the primary basis of our sexual differentiation is not out of step with
current science. To quote one leading researcher, sexual identity is less a
matter of the malleability of our nature and more a reality of “our constitution by the genes we inherit and the embryogenesis we undergo.”24 More
personhood rather than of human nature. Mary Shivanandan (in her Notre Dame
Seminary School of Theology Aquinas Lecture, “Happiness in John Paul II and
Thomas Aquinas,” given on April 20, 2007) amplifies this view, as she criticizes
Aquinas’s anthropology because of “his rejection of man as a substantive relation
in the manner of the Trinitarian persons.” Grabowski’s argument stands on an
analogy drawn between the male-female relation on the one side and the FatherSon relation in the Trinity, which is indeed constitutive of Personhood in God but
not of the divine nature, on the other.While an admirable attempt, this argument
by analogy fails on many counts, not least of which because, by abstracting sexuality from human nature, Grabowski abstracts maleness and femaleness from the
bodily, animal dimension of the human being. This, of course, is to jettison the
very basis of the male-female distinction. Grabowski and Shivanandan’s argument
also fails to take into account the fundamental difference between the way relation applies to God and the way it applies to us. As Aquinas explains in ST I, q.
29, a. 4, relation in God is the divine essence itself, whereas relation in creatures
is an accidental property of nature. To reduce maleness and femaleness to strict
relational properties constitutive of personhood is to make maleness and femaleness pure accidental properties (not to be confused with maleness and femaleness
understood as proper accidents, as previously noted). This is tantamount to
suggesting that being a man or a woman is no more essential to one’s identity than
any other relational property of one’s person, such as being a teacher or a student.
Furthermore, Grabowski and Shivanandan imply an equivocal notion of nature.
For, the universal nature that a man and a woman share in common is purely
abstract relative to the individuals themselves, as no man or woman is human
nature. Concretely speaking they are separate beings. But the universal nature that
the divine Persons share in common is concrete, as the Father is the divine nature,
the Son is the divine nature, the Holy Spirit is the divine nature. Father, Son, and
Holy Spirit are one in being, they are the same being (consubstantial, or
homoousios, to use the term of Nicaea).
24 Paul McHugh,“Surgical Sex,” First Things 147 (November, 2004): 34–38.As chief
psychiatrist at Johns Hopkins Hospital, McHugh conducted extensive research
into hermaphroditism (the possession of ambiguous genitalia) and confused sexual
identity. Based on this research, he writes: “we in the Johns Hopkins Psychiatry
Department eventually concluded that human sexual identity is mostly built into
our constitution by the genes we inherit and the embryogenesis we undergo.
Male hormones sexualize the brain and the mind.” Matt Ridley (Genome: The
Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters, 217–18) agrees: “nature does play a role
in gender. . . . The evidence from the genome, from imprinted genes and genes
for sex-linked behaviours, now points to th[is] same conclusion.” In support,

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and more, researchers are challenging the nominalist view which holds that
male and female sexual identity refers to nothing grounded in natural reality (human biology) but simply to cultural conditioning or social upbringing (nurture).They are coming to recognize the fixed biological grounding
(nature) of our identity as males and females, as men and women (without,
however, denying the role of nurture).25 Further, if some therapists suspend
judgment on whether persons with confused sexual identity can be said to
suffer from a psychopathology, these same therapists, in the clinical setting,
often endorse traditional adolescent gender roles (such as associating “rough
and tumble” play with boys and the preference of playing “with dolls” with
girls) in determining whether one has a gender identity disorder.26
Sex and Procreation
Looking at our sexuality in light of the biological datum of our embodiedness, it is obvious that the male-female complement (sexual dimorphism), manifested primarily in the male and female genitalia, exists for the
sake of procreation. With animal bodiliness providing the basis for the
male-female distinction, we can therefore say that human sexuality owns
an intrinsic ordering to procreation. Indeed, procreation expresses the
primary meaning of our sexuality.27 As human sexuality arises immediately,
see the work of the psychiatrist Leonard Sax, Why Gender Matters: What Parents
and Teachers Need to Know about the Emerging Science of Sex Differences (New York:
Doubleday, 2005). Sax concludes that behavioral differences between girls and
boys are not just caused by cultural factors but are innate and result in large measure from the composition and development of the brain itself. One could also cite
in support the work of the professor of psychology and psychiatry at Cambridge
University, Simon Baron-Cohen, The Essential Difference:The Truth about the Male
and Female Brain (New York: Basic Books, 2004).
25 In his Taking Sex Differences Seriously (San Francisco: Encounter Books, 2004),
Steven Rhoads takes issue with the view which holds that, on the one hand, malefemale gender roles are a social construction (thereby opening the door to their
being “deconstructed”), while, on the other, the reproductive differences between
male and female are few and relatively unimportant. Rhoads argues that there exist
hormonal, chemical, even neurological, as well as psychological, differences between
men and women that are innate, with the result that “[m]en and women have
different natures, and generally speaking, different preferences, talents and interests.”
26 This is true, for instance, for the psychiatrists Kenneth J. Zucker and Susan J. Bradley
and their case studies are found on 341–43, Gender Identity Disorder and Psychosexual
Problems in Children and Adolescents (New York: Guilford Press, 1995).
27 This, essentially, is what the sixteenth-century Thomist Cajetan argues in the
quaestiunculae he inserts (“De sacramento matrimonii triplex quaesitum,”“Quaestiones de usu matrimonii” and “De delectatione morosa triplex dubium”) in his
commentary on the Supplement of the Summa theologiae, all found in the Leonine
edition of the Summa (pp. 370–75).

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742

and thus essentially, upon the body, upon our animality, human sexuality is
ordered immediately, essentially and primarily to procreation. Hardly is it
possible, then, to abstract the procreative dimension from an act—the sex
act—which of its very nature is first and foremost an embodied act, an act
of sexual biological union. This biological ordering to procreation leads
Georges Cottier, theologian of the pontifical household under Pope John
Paul II, to note that sexuality allows humans to participate in a kind of
“biological infinity.”28
If to modern ears it sounds off-putting to ally human sexuality so closely
with the animal or “biological” side of our natures, this is due in large
measure to the disdain that Cartesian rationalism has implanted into our
heads for what is inferior and animal-like in us. But we need to appreciate
that by grounding our sexuality in the objective order of being, namely, in
our organic embodiedness belonging to the animal kingdom (which is at
the same time infused with the rational), Aquinas avoids the two extremes
to which the human regard for sex can often lead. The one extreme
outright deifies human sexuality, as in the case of the ancient fertility cults,
popularized most recently in The Da Vinci Code’s honoring of “the sacred
feminine” through orgiastic ritual worship. Also veering toward this
extreme, one could say, are those current theological trends which, even if
remaining faithful to the Catholic tradition, identify sexual union between
husband and wife too intimately with the sacred mystery of the divine.
The other extreme banalizes sex in a Jansenist-like manner, perhaps
even to the point of scorning it as inherently disdainful or sinful. Lurking never far from Aquinas’s mind in this regard is the medieval version
of this extreme, Albigensianism (or Catharism). Albigensianism proposes
a recycled Manichaean-like condemnation of matter and all things associated with it, including marriage and sex, as inherently evil, and it was
against this heresy that St. Dominic fought in the first formative years of
the Order he would found and which St. Thomas himself would later
join as a youth. Perhaps it is with Albigensianism explicitly in mind that
Thomas quickly dismisses the view that says sexual pleasure within
marriage cannot be enjoyed without sin: “this cannot be” (hoc non potest
esse), he insists in uncharacteristically strong language, since sexual pleasure within marriage, arising from the “sweet bond” (suavem societatem) of
sexual union, is a “good action” (operationis bonae) to be enjoyed.29
28 Georges Cottier, O.P., Défis éthiques (Saint-Maurice, Switzerland: Editions Saint-

Augustin, 1996), 24.
29 ST Suppl., q. 49, a. 6 (cf.Thomas’s Commentary on Peter Lombard’s Sentences, Bk.

IV [hereafter cited as IV Sent.], d. 31, q. 2, a. 3; and Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics,
Bk. X, chs. 3–4); and Summa contra Gentiles III, ch. 123.

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Sex and the Unitive or Personalist Dimension
If we say human sexuality is ordered exclusively to procreation, we distinguish in no way the meaning and purpose of our sexuality from the rest
of the animal kingdom.To be genuinely human, our sexuality must share
in what is unique and noblest in us, it must be integrated into the totality of human life. Indeed, that sexual intercourse between humans is
commonly referred to as “making love,” which we would never say of
animals (even monogamous animals), or even that sexual intercourse
between humans is performed facing each other and “at will” (whereas
all other animal species mate “in heat” and never face to face in an erect
manner) and lasts exceedingly longer than copulation among all other
animal species indicates, even at the biological level, that there is a qualitative difference to our sexuality. It indicates that sex as owing to our
animality undergoes a radical alteration in the human being.30 Obviously,
it is human rationality that accounts for this qualitative difference, for this
radical alteration. To repeat, rationality—by which we mean reason and
free-will taken together—is expressive of the form (the soul) in the
human being and distinguishes us as humans.
The hylemorphic anthropology outlined above allows us to sketch, in
the following terms, the way in which our sexuality is integrated into the
totality of our persons as rationally ensouled embodied beings. As matter is
for the sake of form, as the body is for the sake of the soul, so is human
sexuality for the sake of the soul’s highest, noblest functions: intellectual
knowing and loving. Sexuality implies, then, not only the offering of
one’s (procreative) body, but the offering of one’s entire self in the deepest bonds of knowledge and love, in the deepest bonds of personal
communion and friendship. For it is in friendship that knowledge and
love unite.Thus, if sexual union between animals constitutes a mere bodily
union, sexual union between humans constitutes a union of persons, who
are composed of both animal bodies and rational souls.
Subsequently, we can say human sexuality owns another essential
dimension: the unitive or personal (or “love-making”). Human sexuality,
in its primary ordering to procreation as owing to the body, is at the same
time ordered essentially to personal, unitive love as following upon the
(rational) soul. By means of the unitive dimension, in other words, our
sexuality participates in the rational dimension of human life, that is, in the
psychical (from the Greek psyche ˜ for “soul”). Georges Cottier even calls
human sex the “great paradox” in that it reflects the paradoxical union of
30 Cf. Cottier, Défis éthiques, 25; and Servais Pinckaers, O.P., The Sources of Christian

Ethics, trans. Mary T. Noble, O.P. (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1995), 438.

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body and soul in human nature.31 This unitive dimension derives from the
bodily (procreative) side as a result of the soul’s union with the body, since,
again, animal bodiliness marks the primary foundation of our sexuality.
Aquinas does not name this other dimension “unitive” or “personal,”
though he has nearly the equivalent, as when he affirms that “the form of
marriage” (forma matrimonii) consists in an “indivisible union of souls” (in
quadam indivisibili coniunctione animorum), or when he speaks of marriage as a
“society of domestic fellowship” (domesticae conversationis consortium).32 These
denominations broach closely with, and to a certain extent encapsulate,
what the classical tradition, beginning with St.Augustine, calls the “secondary” (read:“personalist”) goods of marriage: first, life partnership (or mutual
help); second, sexual fulfillment (or remedy for concupiscence); and, third,
conjugal love.33 Aquinas follows suit, holding up procreation and the rearing of children as the “primary end” (or good) of marriage, the principalem
finem, and conjugal friendship its subordinate “secondary end” (or good),
the secundarium finem, as again it derives from the bodily (procreative) side
of our sexuality.34 Such a view of marriage finds support from Jesus’ remark
that in the resurrected state there is no more giving and taking in marriage
(Mt 22:30), as this locution makes little sense if procreation does not mark
the primary purpose of marriage (presumably the unitive dimension will
remain for those married couples who attain to the beatific vision, since all
the blessed will be joined in unitive love).35
31 Cottier, Défis éthiques, 25.
32 The form of marriage as an indivisible union of souls comes in ST III, q. 29, a.

2, while domesticae conversationis consortium appears in ScG III, ch. 123. One also
finds St.Thomas calling marriage a “conjugal society” (associatio matrimonium) in
ST Suppl., q. 41, a. 1 (reproduced from IV Sent., d. 26, q. 1, a. 1). Cf. ST II–II,
q. 26, a. 11.
33 These secondary goods are indeed called “personalist” by the moralists John C.
Ford and Gerald Kelly, Contemporary Moral Theology, vol. 2, Marriage Questions
(Westminster, MD: Newman Press, 1963), 38–39, and 75–76. For a definitive
treatment of love in Aquinas’s thought, see Michael Sherwin, By Knowledge and
By Love: Charity and Knowledge in the Moral Theology of St.Thomas Aquinas (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2005). Cf. Peter Kwasniewski,
“The Ecstasy of Love in Aquinas’s Commentary on the Sentences,” Angelicum 83
(2006): 87–93; and Eleonore Stump, Aquinas (London: Routledge, 2003), esp.
277–306.
34 ST Suppl., q. 41, a. 1 (IV Sent., d. 26, q. 1, a. 1). Cf. Guy de Broglie,“La conception thomiste des deux finalités du mariage,” Doctor Communis 27 (1974): 3–41.
35 Thomas writes in his commentary on Matthew 22:30 in ST I, q. 98, a. 2 ad 1:
“After the resurrection man will be like an angel, spiritualized in soul and body
[i.e., where ‘the soul will, to a certain extent, communicate to the body what
properly belongs to itself as a spirit’ (I, q. 97, a. 3)].”

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Much maligned for relegating conjugal friendship, that is, the unitive
dimension, to secondary status,Aquinas is yet much misunderstood on this
point. It would be a grave error to read “secondary end” as signifying
“accidental” or “non-essential.”36 The unitive remains just as essential to
our sexuality as the procreative.The consortium of marriage is not parceled
out into two types of ends, essential and non-essential, but is the ground of
co-essential ends. The conjugal act has a per se ordering both to procreation, its per se primary ordering, and to unitive love, its per se secondary
ordering.The ordination to unitive love, while secondary, is not merely per
accidens. As the moralists Ford and Kelly put it: “the secondary, personalist
ends, while remaining essentially subordinate, are nevertheless truly essential ends of marriage, just as the primary ends are.”37 For an analogy of
how sexual union can have a per se ordering to two types of ends, primary
and secondary, consider the co-essential primary and secondary ends of a
professional sports team, where the secondary end of winning a division
title is no less essential than, even if subordinate to, the primary end of
winning the entire league championship. Likewise, when a mother prepares
a meal for her family, the secondary end of serving good tasting food is no
less essential than, even if subordinate to, the primary end of providing
wholesome nutrition to her family.
So while it is true Aquinas gives near exclusive attention to the procreative end, it is no less true that the procreative and unitive (or personalist) dimensions of human sexuality stand side by side in Thomas’s system
of thought, even if one is subordinate to the other.To be sure, in a crucial
passage from the Summa contra Gentiles, Aquinas does not hesitate to
elevate the “secondary” good of conjugal love to the very summit of
friendship; for St. Thomas, marital love holds the rank not only of a

36 Thus the misleading observation of Marie Leblanc (“Amour et procréation dans

la théologie de saint Thomas,” Revue Thomiste 92 [1992]: 433–59, at 434) when
he writes: “The gift of life in view of human progeny stands out clearly and
constantly in the works of St. Thomas as the primary and essential end [of
marriage]; on this point he does not modify his thought” (translation my own).
I read this as implying that, on Aquinas’s account, procreation marks the only
essential end of marriage. It is no doubt on account of the confusion that the
term “secondary” engenders that the 1983 Code of Canon Law simply drops out
all language of primary and secondary ends when holding in canon 1055 that
marriage “is by its nature ordered to the good of the spouses (ad bonum coniugum)
and the procreation and education of offspring” (trans. Canon Law Society of
America, Code of Canon Law. Latin-English Edition, 387).
37 Ford and Kelly, Contemporary Moral Theology, vol. 2, 76; emphasis theirs.While dated,
Ford and Kelly’s treatment of this issue, which spans 75–126, remains excellent.

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“friendship of equality” (aequalis amicitia), but of maxima amicitia,“the highest type of friendship.”38
The Nuptial Grammar of Human Sexuality:
Marriage Marks the One End of Sex
Only in marriage can the offering of oneself in loving personal communion which is at the same time profoundly bodily, that is, procreative, take
place. Only marriage—heterosexual marriage—unites the procreative and
unitive dimensions, as corresponding to the substantial union of body and
soul. We can therefore say marriage, nuptiality, marks the intrinsic teleological
meaning of human sexuality. Better yet, human sexuality has but one end,
marriage, with two essential, complementary dimensions: the procreative (expressive
of the body) and the unitive (expressive of the soul).39 Human sexuality, and by
consequence the sexual act, have a “grammar” written into them: a nuptial
procreative-unitive grammar as owing to our constitution as body-soul
composites, as rationally ensouled embodied beings.
Human sexuality is deeply symbolic, then of the human being as a
body-soul (procreative-unitive) unity. As Pope John Paul II’s theology of
the body points out, the body-soul constitution of the human being
owns a “spousal” meaning.
To say human sexuality is inherently nuptial in meaning does not deny
the wider social or psychological dimension of our sexuality that extends
far beyond marriage.The distinction between male and female impacts the
whole of our lives and applies to numerous aspects of our character and to
38 ScG III, ch. 123.This qualification of marriage as maxima amicitia is all the more

significant in light of the fact that, as Charles J. Reid (Power over the Body, Equality in the Family. Rights and Domestic Relations in Medieval Canon Law [Grand
Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2004], 105) observes, canonists and lawyers since the
twelfth century had stressed “the sense of obligation (debitum) [rather than friendship] that bound [married] parties together.” At the same time, Reid (99) does
explain how “women and men were recognized [in twelfth- and thirteenthcentury theology] as spiritual equals, who benefited equally from Christ’s salvific
acts. Men and women alike and in equal measure have gained eternal life
through Christ’s death and resurrection.” For more on male and female equality
in Aquinas, cf. Michael Nolan,“The Aristotelian Background to Aquinas’s Denial
that ‘Woman is a Defective Male,’ ” The Thomist 64 (2000): 21–69.
39 Kenneth Schmitz has often stressed to me (in personal conversation) that we
should not speak of two ends, the procreative and unitive, for the unified being that
is man, but of only one. Ramón García de Haro also emphasizes the same point in
Marriage and the Family in the Documents of the Magisterium, trans. William E. May
(San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1993), 244, as pointed out by Mary Shivanandan
(Crossing the Threshold of Love: A New Vision of Marriage in Light of John Paul II’s
Anthropology [Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1999], 110).

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distinctions in roles across the societal spectrum. Nor does it deny a higher
derived or even allegorical application of the nuptial meaning of human
sexuality, such as when we speak of celibacy or mystical union with God
in nuptial terms.40 Nevertheless, it remains true that the primary meaning
of our sexuality is nuptial—understood as union “in the flesh”—and that
only a hylemorphic anthropology makes this fully intelligible.
We should note that the biblical witness, deeply influential on Aquinas’s
view of human sexuality, confirms what the foregoing philosophical
reflection otherwise demonstrates on the nuptial meaning of human sexuality being inscribed in the hylemorphic makeup of the human being.41
(Especially paramount here is Gen 1:26–27, which attests to God’s institution of the procreative dimension of human sexuality via our embodied
sexual complementarity; and Gen 2:18–25, which testifies to God’s institution of the unitive or personalist dimension of our sexuality.) This does
not mean the biblical testimony serves no other purpose than to “window
dress” a philosophical perspective that otherwise stands well enough on its
own.The Thomist view on sex and the human good is rooted both in what
Scripture reveals and in what unassisted reason can determine.
Distinguishing In Order To Unite
Aware that in today’s mindset distinction often equates with separation or
compartmentalization—whereas the Thomist seeks to distinguish always
40 Pope John Paul II (Man and Woman He Created Them:A Theology of the Body, trans.

Michael Waldstein [Boston: Pauline Books, 2006], General audiences of Jan. 16,
1980, and May 5, 1982, 185–90, and 440–43) speaks of the nuptial meaning of
celibacy as a union in the spirit, whereby a man or a woman makes the disinterested gift of oneself not exclusively to another human person but to all of
God’s people. Thus, the Pontifical Council for the Family (The Truth and Meaning of Human Sexuality: Guidelines for Education within the Family [Boston: Pauline
Books, 1996], 34) calls “virginity or celibacy the supreme form of that self-giving
that constitutes the very meaning of human sexuality,” though in a derived,
analogical sense, since marriage as a union “in the flesh” serves as the prime
analog for its being assigned to celibacy. Cf. Grabowski, Sex and Virtue, 87–88.
Aquinas, for his part, allows for this extended meaning of the term in ST II–II,
q. 152, a. 2, ad 1. As for mystical union, when the mystics use such nuptial
imagery as a “kiss on the mouth” (as in Bernard of Clairvaux’s Sermon 7 on the
Song of Songs ) or “betrothal” (as in Teresa of Avila’s The Interior Castle) to describe
the loving union of the soul with God, these images must be understood as
purely allegorical, since God has no body.
41 Evidence for the influence of the biblical witness on Aquinas’s account of human
sexuality is seen in the simple fact that his commentary on the Genesis creation
narrative is woven into his anthropological treatise in the Prima Pars of the
Summa, particularly when he treats of the distinction between man and woman
(qq. 92–102).

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in order to unite—we need at this point to stress the inseparable union
between the procreative and unitive dimensions of human sexuality.
Distinctions must be drawn but always with the aim of seeing how the
unity of the larger whole is maintained. So we must avoid making too
hard and fast a distinction between the two dimensions of human sexuality—just as we should avoid fixing too hard and fast a line of division
between body and soul—as if to give the impression there is a purely
“bodily” side of sex that can be set apart from a purely “psychical” or
“rational” side.As the human being is a fundamental unity, as each human
individual is his body and his soul, so is human sexuality a fundamental
unity of the procreative (the bodily) and the unitive (the rational or
psychical), even as the latter derives from the former: “it is neither the
spirit alone nor the body alone that loves,” writes Pope Benedict XVI in
his inaugural encyclical letter Deus Caritas Est (§5),“it is man, the person,
a unified creature composed of body and soul, who loves.”
Every procreative aspect of human sexuality participates, then, via the
hylemorphic union, in the unitive dimension, and every unitive act
participates in the procreative. The substantial union between body and
soul establishes a profound come-and-go between procreative and unitive
aspects of our sexuality.While we can, and must, distinguish the procreative as expressive of the body from the unitive as expressive of the intellectual soul, it would be tantamount to a kind of dualism to suggest a
separation of the procreative (bodily) side of sex from the unitive (rational/
psychical) dimension.
Anthropological Alternatives in a Post-Modern Culture
As should seem clear by this point, the principal thrust of this essay is to
suggest that one’s stance on the morality of sexual practice is ultimately
grounded in the way one views the human being, whether consciously
formulated as such or as merely implied in one’s actions.And the Thomistinspired hylemorphic conception of human nature, which Catholic tradition has appropriated for its own (see Catechism of the Catholic Church,
§365), leads one to conclude that our sexuality comprises the two coessential and indivisible dimensions of the procreative (expressive of the
body) and the unitive (expressive of the soul). Put in other terms, while
our sexuality certainly orders us to sexual pleasure, the anthropology
adopted here insists human sexuality targets not merely pleasure, but two
higher co-essential goods (procreation and unitive love-making), into
which sexual pleasure is subsumed.
If, then, we live in a post-modern world that by and large rejects the
Catholic vision of human sexuality, it is because the Catholic view of the

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human person vies with other, more dominant anthropologies to which
most people, to varying degrees, adhere. In general, these other dominant
views of the human being fall into one of two camps, yet both yield near
identical fruits in the arena of sexual conduct.
The first, and most widespread, is the Cartesian view of the human
being (the view inspired by the seventeenth-century philosopher René
Descartes, the so-called “Father of Modern Philosophy”). Having difficulty seeing the human individual as anything other than a thinking
being who is embodied in a problematic, accidental sense, the Cartesian
account pits the body in fundamental and perpetual contest with the
soul. The soul, and thus the human person, is identified primarily with
the ego or with the self-conscious thinking self—recall Descartes’s
famous dictum, “I think, therefore I am”—and the body is relegated to
the “less than human.”42 Citing Descartes, Pope Benedict XVI recounts
in his encyclical Deus Caritas Est how Descartes was greeted humorously
with “O Soul!” by a philosopher acquaintance of his.43
In the sexual sphere, the Cartesian view has certainly played a significant role in the post-modern tendency to consider the body a pure instrument without value in and of itself. Not infrequently, the body today is
treated as a kind of morally neutral playground, as a kind of Never-Never
Land, where, like Peter Pan, we prefer perpetually to play without a proper
grown-up sense of moral responsibility.44 The body’s sole aim, at least
sexually speaking, is utilitarian, namely, to provide pleasure or enjoyment
for the “self ” (the soul).“Consent,” provided by the “self ” (the soul), is the
only essential ingredient to morally acceptable sexual activity.
The Cartesian attitude thus leads to a destructive domination of the
body. It incites us to live not in deferential harmony with our bodies, but
to exploit and conquer our bodies, to use or manipulate our sexual
organs as a mere means to satisfying sexual desire. Generally speaking, we
42 Evidence of how deeply the Cartesian undercurrent runs in post-modern thought

comes from the philosopher Owen Flanagan, whose anthropological study The
Problem of the Soul:Two Visions of Mind and How to Reconcile Them (New York: Basic
Books, 2002) implies a Cartesian anthropology as its presupposed starting point. In
the opening lines of the preface, Flanagan (ix) takes it as a given that a “humanistic image” of the human being (as “spiritual beings endowed with free will”) and
a “scientific image” of man (as “evolved according to the principles of natural selection”) are in “conflict” and are simply “incompatible.” An Aristotelian-Thomist
would never grant such an anthropological mindset as a presupposed starting point.
43 “The Epicurean Gassendi used to offer Descartes the humorous greeting:‘O Soul!’
And Descartes would reply: ‘O Flesh!’ [cf. René Descartes, Oeuvres, ed.V. Cousin
(Paris 1824), vol. 12, 95ff]” (Benedict XVI, Deus Caritas Est, §5).
44 My gratitude here to Thomas Joseph White, O.P.

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are morally justified in whatever we choose to do with our bodies,
provided we respect the bounds set by “consent” and by the criterion that
one often hears loosely formulated as “so long as no one gets harmed.”
The other dominant anthropology which holds favor today, particularly
among various philosophers and countless natural scientists, and which
piggybacks, so to speak, the Cartesian view, even if quite distinct from it,
is the one that advances a materialist mechanized view of the human
being.This anthropology explains human life wholly in terms of molecular interaction or genomic design, and considers human thought as
reducible entirely to neurological chemicals: “we are all animal,” is how
one philosopher puts it,“[since t]he mind or soul is the brain . . . [with the
result that] we are fully embodied creatures.”45 The evolutionary biologist
Richard Dawkins employs even starker language, as his renowned The
Selfish Gene refers to human beings as “survival machines” and as “robot
vehicles” that are “blindly programmed” to preserve selfish interests.46 In
terms of sexual conduct, this view of the human being as a mere machine,
like the Cartesian account, also encourages us to treat the body, or, more
specifically, our sexual organs (with their concomitant pleasure), in utilitarian means, that is, as mechanized, manipulable objects without inherent
value.The body can be treated purely recreationally, as a toy.
For evidence of how such a Cartesian/mechanist-like attitude toward
the human body manifests itself in the sexual arena, one need merely
point to the current social phenomenon in America known as “hooking
up.” In the culture of “hooking up,” young adults engage in non-committal sex detached not only from love and commitment but from all romantic involvement. According to a telling journalistic account of this
phenomenon, in the world of “hooking up” sexual encounters act as “the
primary currency of social interaction.”47
45 Flanagan, The Problem of the Soul, xii and 6. Flanagan holds this in light of

“advances in evolutionary biology, genetics, and the sciences of the mind, cognitive science and cognitive neuroscience.” Speaking for many scientists, Ridley
(Genome, 2) asserts that the human genome—the complete set of human genes—
accounts for “the question of whether and how our actions are determined” as
well as for “this curious sensation called free will.”
46 While softer in tone, Ridley (Genome) yet speaks of the human being in mechanized terms as well when he calls us “working machine[s]” (22), and “the most
complicated biological machine on the planet” (25) which are capable of the
“mechanism” known as learning (106), and so on. This language is common in
the scientific community.
47 In her book, Unhooked: How Young Women Pursue Sex, Delay Love and Lose at Both
(New York: Riverhead Books, 2007), Laura Session Stepp (4–5) notes the following in response to numerous conversations she had with “real girls and young

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Such stark examples of contemporary sexual conduct as “hooking up”
sets in relief Pope Benedict XVI’s rather strong assertion in Deus Caritas
Est (§5) that the body today is “exploited at will,” that human sexuality
is treated as “a commodity, a mere ‘thing’ to be bought or sold.” The
encyclical does not stop there, pointing to the Cartesian/mechanistinspired attitude of the human body as a contributing cause of such
exploitation, and then labels this attitude for what it is: a veritable “debasement of the human body,” a “hatred of [human] bodiliness.”48
“The Radiance of the Flesh”
Needless to say, evaluating our sexuality from a Thomist hylemorphic
angle places us in a different universe. It is the universe of “the radiance
of the flesh,” to use Dante’s phrase from The Divine Comedy (a work that
draws heavily upon the thought of St.Thomas) when affirming how our
humanity is “lovelier for being whole”—and by “whole” he means an
organic body “robed about” a rational soul.49 If we follow the Thomist
women”: “Young people have virtually abandoned dating and replaced it with
group get-togethers and sexual behaviors that are detached from love and
commitment—and sometimes even from liking. . . . Relationships have been
replaced by the casual sexual encounters known as hookups. Love, while desired
by some, is being put on hold or seen as impossible; sex is becoming the primary
currency of social interaction. . . . [H]ooking up, in the minds of this generation,
carries no commitment. Partners hook up with the understanding that however
far they go sexually, neither should become romantically involved in any serious
way. Hooking up’s defining characteristic is the ability to unhook from a partner
at any time.” Later (6) she recounts how in a three-hour conversation with four
young working-class women about men and sex, “[n]ever once during the
conversation did they use the word ‘love.’ ”
48 “[T]he contemporary way of exalting the body is deceptive. Eros, reduced to
pure ‘sex’, has become a commodity, a mere ‘thing’ to be bought and sold, or
rather, man himself becomes a commodity.This is hardly man’s great ‘yes’ to the
body. On the contrary, he now considers his body and his sexuality as the purely
material part of himself, to be used and exploited at will. . . . Here we are actually dealing with a debasement of the human body: no longer is it integrated into
our overall existential freedom; no longer is it a vital expression of our whole
being, but it is more or less relegated to the purely biological sphere.The apparent exaltation of the body can quickly turn into a hatred of bodiliness” (Benedict XVI, Deus Caritas Est, §5).
49 Dante, Paradiso, Canto XIV (trans. Anthony Esolen [New York: Modern Library,
2004], 147); according to Esolen (from personal conversation), next to the Bible,
Aquinas was Dante’s most influential source. One potent manner by which St.
Thomas affirms the goodness and integrity of the human body is to accord it an
essential role in the beatific vision of God after the final resurrection, as when he
writes: “There will be a kind of beatitude for our bodies, inasmuch as they will
see God in his sensible creatures and especially in the body of Christ” (IV Sent., d. 49,

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anthropological account to its logical conclusion, as traditional Catholic
moral teaching does, we find ourselves affirming the full moral worth
and integrity of the human body, that is, the intrinsic moral worth of our
(procreative) bodies. Convinced that the human being is on account of his
material body and his immaterial soul,Thomistic hylemorphism reminds
us that we must take moral ownership of our bodies, together with our
souls, since what we do to our bodies we do to our very persons. Hardly
morally neutral, the human body is morally charged.
Little wonder certain scholars should identify in Aquinas a
pronounced anti-Manichaean defense of “the metaphysical and moral
goodness of bodiliness, sexuality, marriage, and procreation.”50 Aquinas is
well known for staking his claim as a tireless defender of God’s entire
created order—for which reason G. K. Chesterton dubs him “St.Thomas
of the Creator”—no matter how “low grade” or inferior that level of
nature might be, including our animal-like procreative embodiedness.51
Indeed,Aquinas does not hesitate to affirm that the human body, because
of its dignity of being fitted to a rational soul, stands apart from all other
bodies as a most excellent expression “of the divine art” (ab arte divina).52
This must be borne in mind when considering the disparaging criticisms commonly leveled against Catholic moral teaching, and more particularly against Humanae Vitae. Often such criticisms amount to nothing
more than ruses, either because they outright misrepresent the Catholic
defense of the human body, if not of conjugal love, or because they often
issue from an underlying Cartesian bias. We see an example of the latter
when we are told the Catholic teaching on human sexuality amounts to
nothing more than an “obsession” with the “mechanics” of procreation.53
q. 2, a. 2, ad 6; emphasis added). Also, in Quodlibet 8, q. 9, a. 2, he explains: “The
blessed . . . will find their joy in the contemplation of the divinity and the
humanity of Christ.” Our resurrected bodies will share in the contemplation of
Christ’s humanity, inasmuch as this contemplation will include the perception
our bodily senses will have of his body.
50 Peter Kwasniewski argues this in his address “Aquinas on the Grandeur and
Limitations of Marriage,” offered at the conference “Sacraments in Aquinas,” held
at Ave Maria University, Naples, Florida, February 1–3, 2007.
51 Chesterton, Saint Thomas Aquinas (Garden City: Image Books, 1956), 119.
Among those who have highlighted this aspect of Thomas’s thought, Josef Pieper
merits first mention; cf. his Guide to Thomas Aquinas (San Francisco: Ignatius
Press, 1991), 120–33.
52 ST I, q. 91, a. 3.
53 Thus, for instance, the Catholic priest and sociologist/novelist Andrew Greeley
(Sex:The Catholic Experience [Allen, TX: Thomas More, 1994], 75 and 82), who
charges “conservative hierarchies” in the Catholic Church with being “obsessed
with the mechanics of the pro-creative process” and with holding “romantic

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To speak of the procreative process as if it were a mere machine is deeply
revealing of a disdain for the organic beauty of the human body and of a
supposition that the procreative dimension is purely accidental to our sexuality. Because it embraces all that is authentically human, the Catholic
vision of human sexuality draws the line in the sand when confronted with
a Cartesian-like disregard for the human body (i.e., for human “biology,”
procreation), and thus with a truncated approach to moral living.
Avoiding a Dualist-leaning (Cartesian) Anthropology
in Our Sexual Acts
Human sexuality has one end, heterosexual marriage, with two essential
dimensions, the procreative (expressive of the body) and unitive (expressive of the soul). Since body and soul always remain a substantial composite, we can see that separating or opposing in any fashion the procreative
and unitive dimensions is, at bottom, to opt for a dualist-leaning Cartesian anthropology.Whenever one attempts to further the aims of one of
the dimensions at the exclusion of the other, or to pit one dimension in
fundamental and perpetual contest with the other, one implies a disintegrated view of the human being.
If we consider those sex acts that Catholic moral teaching has traditionally labeled as opposed to the nuptial meaning of human sexuality,
from homosexual intercourse to masturbation, to premarital sexual relations and even to artificial contraceptive use, we can see that each of these
acts attempts to uphold one dimension at the expense of the other
(normally the unitive at the exclusion of the procreative). There is a
denial, at least in practice, of the hylemorphic union of body and soul, of
the fundamental unity of the human being. There is a denial of the
symbolic meaning of human sexuality as a body-soul (procreative-unitive)
composite. By these acts human persons live as if they were either disembodied spirits or pure bodies. Such persons live as “fragmented selves,” to
use the memorable line from Augustine when describing his earlier life
of sexual dissipation in the Confessions.54
love” in ill repute. Consider as well the remarks of the psychotherapist and moral
theologian Daniel A. Helminiak (Sex and the Sacred: Gay Identity and Spiritual
Growth [New York: Harrington Park Press, 2006], 93), who takes a Cartesian-like
swipe at human bodiliness in favor of the interpersonal dimension of sex when
he writes: “Psychological studies show that the distinctive function of human sex
is intimacy and relationship, not procreation” (emphasis his).The views of Greeley and Helminiak are shared in the very least implicitly by most theologians
who dissent from Humanae Vitae.
54 Augustine, Confessions, Bk. II, ch. 1 (trans. Henry Chadwick [Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1992], 24). Indeed, in describing his “disintegrated self,”Augustine

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Among other things, respecting the human being as a body-soul (procreative-unitive) composite means the sexual act must at all times have at least
a symbolic orientation to procreation. This symbolic ordering is absent
where the sexual act of its very nature suppresses it, as in the case of intentional sterilization, contraceptive intercourse, or same-sex intercourse.
However, since the actual conception of a child is accidental to this
ordering, the symbolic orientation to procreation is maintained in those
instances where the procreative end is not per se suppressed yet where the
failure to produce a child is foreseen. This is the case for those couples
whose infertility results either from advanced age or from some other natural or accidental cause. It is also the case for those couples who, with the
express intention of not conceiving a child for morally justifiable reasons,
observe the natural method of birth regulation (natural family planning).
Failure to produce a child as a result either of natural or unintended infertility or of following the natural method of birth regulation does not in
itself remove the symbolic ordering to procreation. It is analogous to the
way the symbolic ordering to seeing is not removed or suppressed when
the failure to see results either from natural or accidental blindness (similar
to infertility) or from the express intention to close one’s eyes in order to
sleep (similar to the couple practicing natural family planning). But failure
to see as a result of the act of purposefully blinding oneself does remove
the symbolic ordering to seeing, since it is per se opposed to it.
So in the case of conjugal intercourse between spouses who are infertile
or who are observing the natural method of birth regulation, the fullness of
embodied complementarity, and thus the symbolic orientation to procreation, remains present. Furthermore, group persons, or societies, such as
marriage, whose unity of order transcends the individuals themselves who
comprise it, are presumed to last unto perpetuity and do not dissolve simply
because they do not achieve their ends. A baseball team survives even if it
suffers a losing season; a marriage survives even if it fails to produce children.
Marriage as Maxima Amicitia: Uniting the Two Dimensions
Let us return to Aquinas’s qualification of marriage as maxima amicitia,“the
highest type of friendship.”That St.Thomas should reserve maxima amiciwrites the following:“At one time in adolescence I was burning to find satisfaction
in hellish pleasures. I ran wild in the shadowy jungle of erotic adventures.”Then in
ch. 2 he quickly adds: “Clouds of muddy carnal concupiscence filled the air. The
bubbling impulses of puberty befogged and obscured my heart so that it could not
see the difference between love’s serenity and lust’s darkness. Confusion of the two
things boiled within me. It seized hold of my youthful weakness sweeping me
through the precipitous rocks of desire to submerge me in a whirlpool of vice.”

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tia for man and woman in marriage, rather than for men alone, as one might
expect from a medieval author, ought to arrest us.True enough, the opening pages of Genesis, which certainly impacted Aquinas, hold up the
conjugal relationship as the most fulfilling of human friendships. But in
the history of western literature that stretches even into the Renaissance
and modern periods, one would be at pains to find one male-female
(conjugal) friendship that could rival the deeply fulfilling male friendships
that abound in the best known pieces of western literature up to Thomas’s
day—from the friendship enjoyed by Gilgamesh and Enkidu in the
Mesopotamian Gilgamesh epic, to Achilles and Patroklus in Homer’s Iliad,
to Beowulf and Wiglaf in the early medieval epic Beowulf, to Roland and
Olivier in the early twelfth-century epic The Song of Roland.55 Aquinas
could easily have echoed this literary tradition. Or he could have stayed
within the more measured language of his former Master General of the
Dominican Order, Raymond of Peñafort (†1275), who affirms in his
Summa on Marriage that God created woman to be man’s “companion and
friend” in marriage.56 Furthermore, presumably St.Thomas, writing in an
age of arranged marriages, that is, in the age of adulterous courtly romance
where affective love often occurred outside marriage, had few contemporary examples in mind on which to stake his claim of maxima amicitia.57 If
55 Perhaps there is one exception to this: the marriage of Odysseus and Penelope

in Homer’s Odyssey, symbolized by their immovable marriage bed which
Odysseus built around the stump of an olive tree, fashioning one of the bed posts
out of that stump still rooted in the ground. But as in the marriage ceremonies
of the Shakespearean comedies or of the Jane Austen novels, which occur only
at the end of the work, even here we fail to see the conjugal friendship from
within and the subsequent long-term playing out of the marriage: Odysseus is
absent for twenty long years and we merely witness his reunion with Penelope
at the end of the epic. It is my colleague in English literature Brian Barbour who
has pointed out to me (in personal conversation) this absence of a sympathetic
presentation of a happy, fulfilling marriage from within and of the subsequent
playing out of that marriage in Western literature.Again, if one does find a happy
marriage in literature, invariably it occurs only in the context of the wedding
ceremony itself (à la Shakespeare or Jane Austen), that is, only at the inception of
the marriage rather than in the long-term playing out of the marriage. On the
other hand, presentations of bad marriages from within, including the playing
out of those marriages, abound in the history of Western literature.
56 Raymond of Peñafort, Summa on Marriage,Title II, n. 3 (trans. Payer, 20):“The Lord
did not form (the first woman) from the man’s head lest she seem to be the ruling
lady, nor from the feet lest she be considered a servant, but from his side so as to
be a companion and friend.” According to Payer (“Introduction,” 6),“the parallels
[between Raymond and Aquinas] suggest a use of Raymond by Aquinas.”
57 Charles J. Reid (Power over the Body, Equality in the Family, 29–30) notes: “the
canonists [and thus also the theologians] of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries

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mutual respect was often present in such arranged marriages, friendship in
the highest sense of the term most likely was not.
So if marriage holds the rank of maxima amicitia in Aquinas’s estimation,
it is because marriage, to quote him again, constitutes an “indivisible union
of souls” (indivisibili coniunctione animorum), or a domestic society of loving
personal communion (domesticae conversationis consortium), which enjoys the
“sweet bond” (suavem societatem) of sexual procreative union.58 In other
words, marriage rises to the level of maxima amicitia because it unites the
two essential dimensions of human sexuality, procreative and unitive. No
other type of friendship can rival the degree of intimacy and union, which
is both physical and affective/spiritual, that marriage attains. It is not without pertinence that in his commentary on the Genesis creation narrative,
woven into the anthropological section of the Prima pars of the Summa,
Thomas asserts that one of God’s purposes in the creation of man and
woman was “so that man might love (diligeret) woman all the more, and

did not share our conception of marriage as belonging primarily to the parties
themselves to arrange. . . . Most marital decisions in twelfth- and thirteenthcentury Europe continued to be influenced, above all else, by dynastic and familial considerations.”Thus courtly love, i.e., the genre of romance literature dating
from the High to Late Middle Ages (e.g.,Andreas Capellanus’s Art of Courtly Love
or Chretien de Troyes’s Lancelot: Knight of the Cart), celebrates adulterous love for
the simple reason that romantic sentiments typically occur outside (arranged)
marriages. However, the anonymous late-medieval Sir Gawain and the Green
Knight, which aims at countering the dominant adulterous, unchaste themes of
courtly love, marks an exception to this. For more on the relation of canon law
to Thomas’s teaching on marriage, cf. Seamus P. Heaney, The Development of the
Sacramentality of Marriage from Laon to Thomas Aquinas, S.T.D. dissertation (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1963).
58 ScG III, ch. 123:“The greater the friendship, the more need for it to be firm and
lasting. But the friendship of man and woman is counted strongest of all, since
they are united not only in the union of the sexes, which even among beasts
makes a sweet bond, but also in all things related to their society of domestic
fellowship, as a sign whereof a man leaves even father and mother for the sake of
his wife (Gen 2:24).” In the following chapter,Thomas explains how polygamy
is opposed to the friendship of marriage: “If the wife has one husband only,
whereas the husband has more than one wife, there will not be a friendship of
equality on both sides (non erit aequalis amicitia ex utraque parte).There will not be
the friendship of a free man with a free woman, but a sort of friendship of a slave
with his master.” My gratitude here to Michael Sherwin, O.P. Likewise for
Raymond of Peñafort (Summa on Marriage, Title II, n. 3 [trans. Payer, 20]), the
companionship and friendship that husband and wife enjoy, as implied in the
Genesis creation account, entails a “conjugal society” whereby both enjoy “an
undivided manner of life.”

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cleave to her more closely.”59 Humanae Vitae, for its part, holds that
marriage marks a “very special form of personal friendship, in which
husband and wife generously share everything, without undue reservations
or selfish convictions” (§9).
We can say more.The term Aquinas employs to speak of marriage as
a “society” of domestic fellowship is consortium. Consortium as it applies to
conjugal life means marriage is more than a simple social union. It is a
society that has been institutionalized in the robust juridical sense of the
term.60 Marriage is not “merely” a friendship or a communion, but a
permanent aspect of the entire human social order, that is, an institution.
Since the consortium of marriage is an institution with permanent value
and is of interest to everyone in society, it is wrongheaded for western
culture to seek to turn marriage into a “private agreement.”
To be sure, Aquinas’s denomination of marriage as a consortium only
underscores how deeply “personalist” and unitive his vision of sex and
marriage truly is.This term consortium means marriage is to be regarded as
a group person, a society with a unity of order that transcends the spouses
as individual partners. Married partners hold themselves out as one; they
attain a veritable “two-in-oneship”—something no society would say, for
instance, of cohabitating couples. Speaking juridically, marriage is more
than a mere “partnership,” since partnerships are for a determinate period
of time (as when an individual and an automobile dealership agree on a
lease contract) and can dissolve at any moment, and normally do dissolve
when the determinate period of time expires.The consortium of marriage,
on the other hand, is again presumed to last unto perpetuity, that is, it is a
unity (a group person) that is regarded as permanent. Evidence for this is
seen in the fact that no state reduces marriage to a pure partnership, since
59 ST I, q. 92, a. 2.The Latin verb Thomas uses for love, diligere, signifies a properly

human form of love, that is, freely chosen, spiritual love. It is significant that he
elects not to use amare, which signifies more general, sensual love (as it relates to
sex), even if diligere includes amare, at least in reference to marriage.These words
on marriage as maxima amicitia serve as an important qualification of Aquinas’s
more off-putting remarks, at least as these remarks sound to modern ears.These
would include Thomas’s assertion (in ST I, q. 98, a. 2, sed contra [cf. as well q. 92,
a. 1], and II–II, q. 164, a. 2, ad 1) that women are of most help to men in the
begetting and rearing of children, or that in this domestic fellowship the man is
by nature the “head” (caput) and “governor” (gubernator) of the woman—though
Aquinas does add (in ST II–II, q. 164, a. 2, ad 1) that in the post-lapsarian condition the woman suffers on account of such headship, as she is made “to obey her
husband’s will even against her own.”
60 These and the following remarks take their inspiration from Russell Hittinger, both
from personal conversation and from his lecture “Social Justice: Devolution or
Subsidiarity?”, delivered at Providence College in Providence, RI on Oct. 23, 2007.

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no state allows two individuals to contract a marriage for a determinate
period of time (say, for eighteen months), something it does for partnerships (as in the case of the automobile lease). Every state presumes that a
contracted marriage lasts unto perpetuity, and it is only when informed
after the fact by those spouses seeking a divorce that it thinks otherwise.
Further, we would be remiss if we did not situate this view of marriage
as maxima amicitia against the backdrop of the Aristotelian teaching on
friendship, which was deeply influential on St. Thomas. If we keep in
mind, for instance, the Aristotelian view that friendship implies “equality” and “community,” and that the highest type of friendship is the one
where friends admire the virtuous character of each, that is, where friends
“are similar in virtue and wish goods [of virtue] to their friend for the
friend’s own sake,” we have the foundation for a high estimation of the
personalist, unitive dimension of sex: “In fact there is a virtue proper to
both husband and wife,” affirms Aquinas in his commentary on Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, “that renders their friendship delightful to each
other, [since] friendship of this kind can be based on virtue, utility, and
pleasure” (i.e., it unites in a unique way the three types of friendship).61
And we can be sure Aristotle’s declaration that a friend “is another self ”
was not lost on Aquinas’s appreciation of Scripture’s claim that in
marriage man and woman “become one flesh” (Gen 2:24), in such wise
that it can be “put asunder” by no human being (Mk 10:9).62 So while
looking upon marriage as maxima amicitia does not mean that marriage,
like the polity, provides all the goods requisite for human flourishing, the
friendship of marriage is emblematic of that which the polity ultimately
aims at: the cultivation of virtuous friendship.
The Marriage “Debt”
At seeming odds with the view of marriage as maxima amicitia is what
medieval theologians, Aquinas included, often include in their treatment
61 Aquinas, Commentary on Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics (trans. C. I. Litzinger [Notre

Dame, IN: Dumb Ox Books, 1993]), Bk.VIII, lect. 12 (§1723). Aristotle’s remarks
on friendship cited in the text come from Nicomachean Ethics, Bk. VIII, chs. 3
(1156b8–11), 8 (1159b3), 9 (1159b32), and Bk. IX, ch. 4 (1166a30). For St.Thomas’s
succinct summary of Aristotle’s teaching on friendship, cf. ST II–II, q. 25, a. 7.
62 In addressing the distinction between love of concupiscence and love of friendship
in Aquinas, Ferrucio Galeotti (“Amore e amicizia conjugali secondo S.Tommaso
d’Aquinas,” Doctor Communis 25 [1972]: 39–59) argues that because marriage
implies a love of friendship, which centers on the other as another self rather than
on the other as a good ordered to the satisfaction of one’s immediate needs, the
friendship of marriage is properly human and thus profoundly personalist.

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of marriage: the notion of the marriage “debt” (debitum).63 While this
notion comes from St. Paul, when it is raised scholars not infrequently
snicker at it for the archaic and inadequate way it speaks of marriage, and
disregard it as an excusable “hiccup” in the Pauline corpus.
Mindful that married partners have “power” or “dominion” (e’ notriáfx in the original Greek; potestas in the Latin Vulgate) not over their
own bodies but over each other’s bodies, St. Paul enjoins his readers in 1
Corinthians 7:3–4:“Let the husband render the debt (o’ ueikǵ in Greek;
debitum in the Vulgate) to his wife, and the wife also in like manner to her
husband.” Sometimes o’ ueikǵ/debitum is translated in English as “conjugal rights,” as in the RSV: “The husband should give to his wife her
conjugal rights, and likewise the wife to her husband.” Whatever one’s
preferred translation, at bottom the marriage “debt” signifies that married
partners have the moral obligation to grant conjugal intercourse to each
other whenever it is asked, within the bounds of reason.
But on this matter, too, we need not see the marriage debt as necessarily out of step with contemporary “personalist” approaches to human
sexuality.When, through marriage, a man and a woman bind themselves
in life-long love and fidelity to each other, they become united in body
and soul. They become “another self,” to use Aristotle’s language for
friendship, in the deepest and most intimate sense of the term. That is,
their entire persons, including their bodies and their souls, belong to each
other. In a sense, and as in fact evoked by the marriage vows of Thomas’s
own day, each has a claim on the other’s body and soul as on his/her very
person.64 To speak of “debt” is to speak of what is owed, due, on the basis
of fundamental equality in personal dignity—and this, essentially, is what
Aquinas argues when discussing the matter.65 Each spouse is due the total
gift of body and soul of the other as another self in the deepest bonds of
63 An entire article is devoted to the matter in ST Suppl., q. 64 (this is pulled from

IV Sent., d. 32, q. 1). As remarked earlier, Reid (Power over the Body, 105) notes
how canonists and lawyers since the twelfth century had stressed “the sense of
obligation (debitum) that bound [married] parties together.” Raymond of
Peñafort, who was himself a thirteenth-century teacher of canon law, gives
central treatment to the notion of the marriage debt in his Summa on Marriage
(cf., e.g., Title II, nn. 9–11 [trans. Payer, 23–24]). For a modern treatment of it,
cf. Ford and Kelly, Contemporary Moral Theology, vol. 2, 63–74.
64 According to Raymond of Peñafort (Summa on Marriage, Title II, n. 2 [trans.
Payer, 20]), the “customary words” pronounced at the moment of marital
consent (at least in the thirteenth century) were “I take you as mine” by the
bridegroom and “I take you as mine” by the bride.
65 ST Suppl., q. 64, a. 5 (IV Sent., d. 32, q. 1, a. 3).

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friendship (maxima amicitia). Granted, the medievals see the rendering of
the marriage debt largely as a kind of legal transaction and as an antidote
to concupiscence, or, as St.Thomas explains, as an assuagement of sexual
desire.66 But this does not mean a more “personalist” take on the
marriage debt signifying the offering of one’s body and soul in the total
gift of self is absent from such a view.
The Primacy of Procreation
At a time when current fashion touts the primacy of the personalist
dimension, sometimes at the expense of the procreative, the preeminent
role of the procreative needs to be reasserted, at least if we attend to the
objective metaphysical facts of the matter. To use Aquinas’s language,
procreation marks the primary end (or good), the principalem finem, of
marriage. Otherwise, we have no way of making proper sense of the
uniqueness of marriage, that is, of distinguishing marriage from any other
loving, affirming relationship.
Since the unitive dimension characterizes all types of relationships that
are not specifically genital or even bodily—after all, we enjoy unitive love
with our friends, with our family members, and with God, the angels
enjoy it with each other and with God, and God enjoys it with himself—
we know the unitive or personalist dimension alone cannot be the defining mark of the nuptial meaning of our sexuality (as Aquinas’s Dominican
predecessor Raymond of Peñafort already observed).67 Just as human
nature cannot be defined in abstraction from the bodily (i.e., animal)
dimension, so neither can we abstract the bodily, procreative dimension
from the nuptial, symbolic meaning of our sexuality. Marriage is unique
among all human relationships in that man and woman, while united in
spiritual and affective communion, express their love specifically through
their bodies. To put the matter in more technical Thomistic language, if
the unitive dimension (or what Aquinas again calls the indivisible union
of souls) signifies what is formal to marriage, the procreative union of
bodies corresponds to what is material to marriage. Those who give
66 The argument for the marriage debt assuaging concupiscence appears in ST

Suppl., q. 64, a. 1, sed contra (IV Sent., d. 32, q. 1, a. 1, sed contra). He adds in q.
64, a. 9 ad 1 (IV Sent., d. 32, q. 1, a. 5, qla. 3 ad 1): “It is ordained by God, on
account of the weakness of the flesh (propter lubricum carnis), that the debt must
always be paid to the one who asks lest he be afforded an occasion of sin.”
67 In his Summa on Marriage, Title II, n. 3 (trans. Payer, 20), Raymond notes that
without procreation, there would be no real way of distinguishing marriage from
any other cohabitating union, such as “between a brother and a sister, between a
son and a mother.”

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disproportionate emphasis to the personalist dimension risk obscuring
this important truth.68
The Unitive Marks the Higher, Nobler Dimension
of Human Sexuality
At the same time, a Thomist-inspired hylemorphic sexual anthropology
does not look upon the unitive or personalist dimension as some kind of
a beside-the-fact good. On the contrary, the unitive dimension expresses
human sexuality’s participation in the rational, in what is highest and
noblest in us.The personalist dimension raises our procreative animality, as
it were, to the properly human. Signifying what is formal to marriage, the
unitive dimension marks the higher, nobler meaning of human sexuality.
It is in this sense that we can say the procreative is for the sake of the
unitive, just as matter is for the sake of form, body is for the sake of soul.
The procreative is for the sake of the building up of the love between
spouses. And just as the common good is always for the sake of the individual good, so is human sexuality’s orientation to the common good of
the human race (procreation) for the sake of our sexuality’s orientation
to the private good of the spouses themselves (unitive love-making).
Further, since form is the principle of unity between matter and form,
the unitive dimension marks the principle of unity between the two
dimensions.This explains why it would be odd to hear the engaged couple
first say they are getting married because they want to have children and
only afterward say they are getting married because they love each other.
Their spousal unitive love is the “soul” of their procreative fecundity.
The Procreative Reaches Beyond the Purely “Biological”
The foregoing remarks expose how misleading it is to stick pejorative labels
like “physicalist” or “biological” onto those moral (natural law) accounts of
human sexuality which place such heavy emphasis upon the procreative
dimension. Not only is the procreative for the sake of (or even internal to)
the unitive love between spouses, but procreation itself signifies something
much broader than a mere “biological” or “physicalist” act: “one should not
68 While perhaps inadvertent, Grabowski’s decision in Sex and Virtue: An Introduc-

tion to Sexual Ethics to wait until the sixth chapter to examine the procreative
dimension of human sexuality is yet quite telling. Such a delay in treating the
procreative is unthinkable from a Thomist hylemorphic (or even natural law)
perspective; thus, Fulvio Di Blasi (“What Nature? Whose Nature? Reflecting on
Some Recent Arguments in Natural Law Ethics,” in Restoring Nature: Essays in
Thomistic Philosophy and Theology, ed. Michael M. Waddell [South Bend, IN: St.
Augustine’s Press, 2008]) writes:“procreation, far from being extrinsic or secondary, is exactly the defining trait of marriage as a specific communion of persons.”

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make the mistake of imagining that procreation and the rearing of children are not personalist values, too,” argue the moralists Ford and Kelly,
“or that the so-called personalist values do not contribute to the biological or social ends.”69
To be sure, since form actualizes, informs, matter and provides the principle of unity, we can say the unitive informs the procreative and marks the
principle of unity between the two. How does this translate concretely? It
means we do not just “produce babies” like animals. Human biology does
not function as a kind of free-floating mechanism in isolation from a social
unit. Rather, we first enter into a communion of personal spousal love,
from which the begetting of human children flows, followed by the
welcoming of these children into this same communion of love, into a
family. Procreation means the begetting of new life, the begetting of new
human persons, along with the subsequent rearing or educating of those
new human persons as members of a community (a family). It means
attending to what Thomas calls “the training of the soul” (instructione quantum ad animam), that is, attending to the full physical, emotional and spiritual needs of these new human persons who, while lacking in knowledge
and virtue, are yet made to know and love the good.70 It is in this way that
the unitive love between husband and wife informs and unites to it the
procreative. The procreative end cannot remain confined to the “animal”
or purely “biological” dimension of human life.
Aquinas drives home the personalist depth of the procreative dimension
in a significantly, if subtly, worded phrase: fines autem matrimonii est proles
generanda et educanda, “the end of marriage is the producing and rearing of
offspring.”71 What stands out here is how this statement’s grammatical struc69 Ford and Kelly, Contemporary Moral Theology, vol. 2, 49.
70 ScG III, ch. 122: “in vain would be the generation of man unless due nurture

(debita nutritio) followed, without which the offspring generated could not
endure. (Sexual intercourse) then ought to be so directed as that both the proper
generation may ensue and the rearing of the offspring be secured. . . . [For] in
the human species the young need not only bodily nutrition, as animals do, but
also the training of the soul.” Reid (Power over the Body, 87) notes that this teaching on parental responsibility by St. Thomas marks a significant theological
development. Indeed, Reid explains that by appealing to 2 Corinthians 12:13–15
in expressing his view on the matter in ST Suppl., q. 49, a. 2, ad 1 (which opens
with the assertion “offspring signifies not merely the begetting of children, but
also their rearing”), Aquinas suggests that “sacrificial giving should characterize
the parents’ relationship with the child.”
71 ST III, q. 29, a. 2. I am grateful to Mark Johnson for pointing out this phrase to
me in an electronic communication on Feb. 20, 2008. One finds nearly the same
wording in Vatican Council II, Gaudium et Spes, §50:“Marriage and conjugal love

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ture of one noun (proles,“offspring”) modified by two gerundives or adjectives ( generanda et educanda,“producing and rearing”) highlights the “personalist” aim of marriage relative to the procreative dimension. For, one might
expect Aquinas to have said, simply, that the end of marriage is procreation,
or the production of children. Instead, he inserts “rearing” (educanda) as an
essential part of the procreative package. Put in other terms, we cannot speak
of procreation in abstraction from the concomitant—and more “personalist”—duty of rearing children.Whenever we speak of offspring (proles), we
imply therein not only their being produced ( generanda), “which is attained
by conjugal intercourse,” adds St. Thomas, but also their being reared
(educanda), “which is attained by the other duties of husband and wife, by
which they help one another in rearing their offspring.”72
Procreation is therefore brought up and fully integrated into the
higher, nobler functions of knowledge and love, into the unitive, personalist dimension of our sexuality. Indeed, procreation targets the common
good proper, inasmuch as it ensures the continued (procreated) existence
of the human race, and in that it often implies selfless acts of sacrificial
love and service more than what the love between husband and wife
implies.This allows one to attach the label of unitive love as much to the
procreative dimension as to the love between husband and wife proper,
if not more.73 And since the private good of persons, hardly opposed or
alien to the common good, is itself enhanced by and, as St.Thomas affirms,
loved “for the sake of the common good,”74 only misguided views of sex
pit the individual (unitive) good of the spouses in opposition to the
common good of procreation.
On this score, Michael Waldstein has rightly criticized current discussions on marriage and human sexuality for largely ignoring the importance of the common good. Instead these discussions opt for a view
where marriage “is seen in terms of the individual personal dignity of
husband and wife and their personal love for one another as unique
are by their nature ordained toward the begetting and educating of children.” Cf.
Ford and Kelly, Contemporary Moral Theology, vol. 2, 84.
72 “Procreation is not just a continuation of the race or the nation. It is inherently
a continuation and fulfillment of the persons of husband and wife also. Parenthood may well be, and in fact frequently is, the highest of the personalist values
in a given marriage which is de facto fruitful” (Ford and Kelly, Contemporary Moral
Theology, vol. 2, 49). For more of the same line of reasoning, cf. Galeotti,“Amore
e amicizia conjugali secondo S.Tommaso d’Aquinas,” 39–59.
73 For passages relating procreation to the common good in St. Thomas, cf. ST
II–II, q. 154, a. 2; ScG IV, ch. 78; and IV Sent. d. 33, q. 2, a. 1, ad 4.
74 ST I–II, q. 109, a. 3.

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persons.”75 Experience might well show that those married couples who
show a greater degree of generosity and self-giving love toward the
common good of procreation often enjoy a deeper, stronger unitive bond
in their love as spouses. It is in their procreative bodily union, as form is
in the matter, as the common good subsumes the private good, whereby
married couples are united in the deepest bonds of personal love.
Furthermore, marriage not only targets the common good of humanity, as a society it possesses a unity of order itself, which is to say it enjoys
a common good on its own, a common good to which it is ordered and
by which it is perfected. Marriage in other words imitates God, so to
speak, since, as St.Thomas observes, God is himself the common good of
humanity—indeed, of the entire created order.76 Marriage’s imitatio of
the divine in fact goes further, as married couples (pro)create in the very
same way that God creates, namely, through love and through a subsequent invitation to this same communion in personal (familial) love.
Married spouses participate in God’s creative handiwork in a way no
other creature can, not even angels.
Lastly, because God must directly create every human soul, as the
union of sperm and ovum cannot “produce” an immaterial rational soul,
married spouses co-create with God, inasmuch as they provide the matter
while God supplies the form. Such is the dignity that the procreative
dimension confers upon human sexuality.
N&V

75 Michael Waldstein argues this in his address “Children as the Common Good of

Marriage,” offered at the conference “Sacraments in Aquinas,” held at Ave Maria
University, Naples, Florida, February 1–3, 2007.Waldstein’s purpose is to recover
an element of John Paul II’s teaching (found, for instance, in Familiaris Consortio)
that, as he notes, “some personalist philosophers and theologians have rejected
rather sharply,” but which he shares with Aquinas. Cf.Waldstein’s “The Common
Good in St.Thomas and John Paul II,” Nova et Vetera 3 (2005): 569–78.
76 “God is the common good of the entire universe and of all its parts.” Aquinas,
Quodlibet I, q. 4, a. 3 (cited in Dewan, “St. Thomas and the Divinity of the
Common Good,” 14). Cf. Aquinas’s commentary on Romans, In ad Roman., 1,
6 (commenting on Rm 1:20); and In Ethic., Bk. X, lect. 12. Commenting on this
passage from the commentary on Romans, Dewan (“St.Thomas and the Divinity of the Common Good,” 2) writes: “Divinity signifies God’s goodness as a
common good participated by all.”

Nova et Vetera, English Edition,Vol. 6, No. 4 (2008): 765–778

765

Theological Reflections on
Natural Family Planning
J OSEPH W. KOTERSKI , S.J.
Fordham University
Bronx, New York

CAN THE USE of Natural Family Planning (NFP) to avoid pregnancy
be morally justified? In discussions about the difference between NFP and
contraception, one often hears the response that NFP is justifiable so long
as one does not have a “contraceptive mentality.” There is something quite
right about this answer, for in that case there would be something amiss
with one’s basic intention.The proper method for the moral evaluation of
any course of action always involves a consideration of the end of the
action (finis operis), the intention of the agent (finis operantis) and the
circumstances.1 Presumably what is meant by “a contraceptive mentality”2
in this context is the intention of a married couple to live out their
marriage in a way that deliberately closes off their intercourse to the very
1 See Veritatis Splendor, §74; see also Catechism of the Catholic Church, §§1750,

1755–56.
2 Donald DeMarco comments on the history of the usage of this term in his article

“The Contraceptive Mentality,” www.catholiculture.org/library/view.cfm?recnum
=3417. Among the important sources for the term are: Stanislas de Lestapis, S.J.,
La limitation des naissances, 2nd ed. (Paris: Spes, 1960), 63–65, which speaks of a
“contraceptive state of mind”; the “Majority Report” of the 1967 papal commission that preceded Humanae Vitae; and Elizabeth Anscombe, who noted that “the
contraceptive mentality teaches that women need to be as little chaste as pagans
thought men need to be,” in Contraception and Chastity (London: Catholic Truth
Society, 1977). Interestingly, even the Majority Report, which argued for a
change in the Church’s teaching regarding the moral permissibility of contraception in certain cases, condemned the “contraceptive mentality” as a “way of
life which in its totality is egoistically and irrationally opposed to fruitfulness,”
cited as “The Papal Commission Report,” in The Catholic Case for Contraception,
ed. D. Callahan (Toronto: Collier-Macmillan, 1969), 159.

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possibility of procreation.What is problematic about such an intention is
that it separates the inseparable meanings of intercourse within marriage,
that is, its unitive and procreative dimensions.3 Regardless of the moral
evaluation that we might make of the practice of NFP in general or in
some specific set of the circumstances, there is reason to think that the
practice of NFP with a “contraceptive mentality” is morally problematic.
But presumably a couple might consider practicing NFP with an intention other than a contraceptive mentality. One might, for instance, think of
morally good reasons for wanting to do so, such as spacing births a bit for
the good of a mother’s health, or caring better for the sake of one’s existing children, or for the good of the marriage in a time of great pressures of
some sort—these are scenarios in which a couple might remain open to
any children that might come and yet might have reasons that bring them
to hope that there will not be a pregnancy for a time. Is NFP in such a
scenario morally justifiable? If we presume that the intention of the couple
is morally acceptable here, then the issue turns to the moral evaluation of
the practice—to the finis operis rather than the finis operantis.
One way in which to attempt an answer to this question would be to
consider whether NFP is in principle morally permissible, provided that
there are morally unexceptionable motives for using it in specific circumstances. Unlike an act of contraception, where the nature of the action is
morally objectionable regardless of the intentions,4 there does not seem
to be anything intrinsically objectionable to the acts of intercourse themselves or to any of the actions taken in the course of deciding whether
or not to have intercourse on a particular day. If spouses are using their
knowledge of NFP well, their actions in preparation for and during
sexual relations need be no different in those cases in which they are
seeking to avoid children than in those in which they seek to have them.
The difference between the two cases consists rather in the pattern of
having intercourse and abstaining that the couple chooses, and this pattern
exists only because of their intention. The moral quality of NFP would
then need to be determined not by considering the nature of one’s acts
(as in contraception) but by the ends and goals that motivate one’s free
choice of a particular pattern of intermittent intercourse.
The motives under discussion here seem unobjectionable. They raise
no red flags about a contraceptive mentality. But what might still give one
pause here is a set of background worries that one sometimes hears voiced,
3 See Humanae Vitae, §12; and Pope John Paul II, Theology of the Body: Love in the

Divine Plan (Boston: Pauline Books & Media, 1997), “Reflections on Humanae
Vitae,” §4.
4 See Humanae Vitae, §14.

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767

especially by religious people who are convinced of the goodness of raising up children for the Lord and who are convinced about the connection between the procreative and the unitive dimensions of the marital
act. One might pose them thus:
1. Are we morally required to have all the children possible for us, given
our current understanding of the natural rhythms of fertility?
2. Are we morally required to refrain from intercourse when we know
as a couple that we are infertile?
Neither of these questions is yet resolved by the answer that urges us to
avoid a contraceptive mentality. It may prove helpful to think about the
theological underpinnings of NFP, so as to see its justifiability beyond
merely presuming this practice to be permissible so long as one does not
have a contraceptive or some other morally disqualifying intention.
The Writings of Father Paul Quay, S.J.
Among the papers that the late Father Paul M. Quay, S.J., left at the time
of his death in 1994 is an unfinished manuscript on the theology of
Natural Family Planning that may help to address these questions. In
cooperation with Sr. Miriam Paul (Dr. Hanna Klaus), I am presently working to bring this manuscript to completion. A year before Humanae Vitae,
Quay had published an essay called “Contraception and Conjugal Love”5
that provides a splendid defense of the view that contraception contradicts
not only the procreative but the unitive meaning of marriage. In many
ways the relatively brief treatment given in that article to sexual intercourse as a sort of language and to contraceptive sex as a kind of lie is
much like the view that Pope John Paul II would take up in his Angelus
lectures on the theology of the body. Quay went on to develop his ideas
at greater length in his book The Christian Meaning of Human Sexuality.6 In
his posthumously published book The Mystery Hidden for Ages in God,7 one
can find a thorough account of the doctrine of recapitulation in Christ
that gives the larger framework. His general thesis is that Christ recapitulated in his life the whole of the life of Israel (taken together as if it were
a single individual), but completing what was incomplete, perfecting what
5 Paul M. Quay, S.J., “Contraception and Conjugal Love,” Theological Studies 22

(1961): 18–40.
6 Paul M. Quay, S.J., The Christian Meaning of Human Sexuality (1985; repr., San

Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1988).
7 Paul M. Quay, S.J., The Mystery Hidden for Ages in God (1995; repr., New York:

Peter Lang, 1998).

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Joseph W. Koterski, S.J.

was imperfect, and sanctifying what was sinful. Each Christian individual,
family, and culture, in turn, needs to live in Christ and to recapitulate the
life of Christ.As human beings we continue to bear the marks of the Fall,
especially in the darkness of the intellect, the weakness of the will, and the
distortions of our natural inclinations that are consequences of original sin,
for the image of God in which we were made has been shattered. With
our baptism, sanctifying grace restores the life of God within us, but
coming to live and act according to His likeness requires the sacraments
and other gifts of grace, so that we learn how to recapitulate the life of
Christ by imitating Him at each stage of our growth.
Within this general framework of recapitulation in Christ, Quay’s
general approach to human sexuality and more specifically to the topic
of natural family planning pays much attention to the natural and supernatural symbolism of sexuality. The mere mention of symbolism may
make some people think of literature and worry that this risks reading
something into biblical texts that is not there. To use such an approach
successfully as a means of theological reflection depends on recognizing
that not all symbols are of human invention. It would be easy to suppose
that they are, given the incredible range of symbols that we human beings
have devised—not only the clever symbols that poets dream up and that
artists paint, but the stylized symbols of the highway department and the
prosaic characters that are letters of the alphabet. Conventional signs like
these involve the use of one physical object or design to represent
another by means of a connection that is imposed on the sign. There is
nothing, for instance, about the word “apple” (spoken or written) that
resembles an apple. A picture of an apple might, I suppose, resemble the
apple—unless I were the one trying to draw it!
But there are natural signs as well—signs in which one physical object
or event signifies something else without any human imposition of meaning: smoke is a sign of fire, certain kinds of clouds are a sign of impending rain, a baby’s cry is a sign of discomfort, and (to get closer to the point
of this reflection) estrus is a sign of fertility by which the females of many
animal species can alert the males that they are in heat. By contrast,
human beings are the exception here.With us, sexual attraction occurs independently of the periods of fertility. Precisely because we are persons
with an intellect and a will whose freedom makes us responsible for our
choices, human relationships need to be mediated through spoken words
and governed by properly ordering our loves. But the fact that we need
to make free choices does not take away the fact there still are natural
signs that operate in our lives independently of our choices.Those who
have become versed in the techniques of natural family planning increas-

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ingly know how to read the cycles of temperature and of cervical fluid
as signs of fertility and infertility.
In addition to natural signs and conventional signs, there is also a
whole world of symbolism, natural and supernatural. The distinctive
connotation of “symbol” here is that the object (including events and
patterns of events) that is the sign does not just point to something else
on the same level.There is something in the object’s structure that makes
it specially suitable to point to or mean something else on another level
altogether. In fact, it is this aspect of signification that makes some physical objects particularly good symbols in literature. When the poet, for
instance, say, “My love is a rose, pretty but prickly,” there is something
about a rose (its loveliness, but also its thorns) that make it specially suitable for being a poetic symbol for the woman whom the poet is describing. And it is no surprise that love is frequently symbolized by fire—the
inviting warmth, the fascinating flame, but also the danger of getting
burnt suggests something about fire that is readily descriptive at another
level altogether about human love.
Human sexuality, Quay shows, manifests natural symbolisms of this
sort. Sexual organs and activities not only have structures and functions
at the biological level but also point to important realities in personal
relationships, desires, conscious/unconscious urges, feelings, impulses,
inclinations, and understandings.Without trying to make in this essay the
whole case for Quay’s understanding of the symbolic structure of human
sexuality, let me merely mention some examples that may help to clarify
the general approach that Quay takes when reflecting on the theology of
NFP. At the level of its natural symbolism, the sexual intercourse of
human beings carries significance like other signs do (whether verbal,
written, or iconic) as a kind of language that says various things, regardless of whether a given individual or couple is conscious of them, or
prepared to say them, or even wants to deny them.The physical union of
intercourse symbolizes the union of persons in a marriage.The nakedness
of a couple having intercourse symbolically conveys their openness to
one another and their vulnerability (not keeping anything back or
hidden, but presenting oneself for the acceptance of the other, warts and
all). In sexual relations bodily actions communicate various things
whether we consciously affirm these meanings or not, or just do them
spontaneously and without any such conscious intention, and even if we
deliberately misuse them in a deceitful way, as in a seduction for some
ulterior motive.
The sexual activity of human beings involves so much more than the
comparable activities of any other animal, precisely because there are

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Joseph W. Koterski, S.J.

persons involved, persons whose thoughts and words and choices can
make their intercourse a word of love or of domination, a word of affirmation or of denigration, a word of tenderness or of indifference. In their
sexual relations, do any given individuals always say by their words and
their actions what they actually intend? do they really mean what their
words and their actions say? do they consciously intend anything at all?
When I occasionally speak on this level with the freshmen students in the
dormitory where I live at Fordham, many a local Romeo and a local Juliet
seem immediately to understand the distinction between what someone
actually says in so many words, what one may mean (or want to say, or is
thinking about possibly saying, etc.), and what one’s actions (for example,
in sexual intercourse) are in fact saying. Even a Romeo who tells his Juliet
of his undying affection and who truly means it may not be ready to make
good on that promise, given the demands of residency, medical school,
sophomore year in college, or even just final exams.
At the level of supernatural symbolism, the richness of Quay’s view
can be suggested by even just one passage from scripture. In Ephesians 5,
husbands and wives are told to be mutually submissive to one another out
of reverence for Christ.Wives are to respect and obey their husbands, like
the way in which the Church should conduct herself toward Christ.
Husbands are to love their wives as their own bodies and to be ready to
sacrifice themselves for their wives, as Christ did for the Church. For in
the relation of husband and wife we see the mystery of Christ and His
Church. From the supernatural symbolism used in this passage Quay
draws a number of the implications:
• Just as the Lord would never seek another bride, and the Church
should never seek another Lord, so too adultery is gravely wrong.
• Just as the Lord will never seek another man like himself but dedicates himself to his bride, and the Church should never seek another
bride but give herself entirely to this Bridegroom, so too human
beings should never enter into homosexual relations.
• Just as Christ the Bridegroom and his bride the Church await the
marriage feast of Heaven, so too human beings should await their
marriage and not engage in premarital intercourse.
• Just as Christ does not strive to please himself, but should be ready
to die to render His spouse pure and spotless (unlike Adam, who
joined his bride in sin), so no human being should masturbate, or try
to dominate one’s spouse, but should love that spouse in a way that
will help that spouse to grow in holiness.

Theological Reflections on Natural Family Planning

771

Nor is Quay’s approach limited to showing why certain practices would
necessarily be inauthentic for reflecting the relations between Christ and
his bride the Church and thus for knowing what is good and right for
human beings. Much of his study is devoted to showing how God has
inspired the writers of Scripture to use sexuality symbolically for displaying certain things that we need to know about the mystery of God in
himself and about his plans for the Church. The prophet Hosea, for
instance, uses human marriage as a symbol for the covenant that God
made with Israel, and Paul uses that same imagery to have us understand
the relation between the Church and Christ.
The Application of Quay’s Understanding to NFP
What does all of this have to say about natural family planning? If we
grant that human marriage symbolically points to something about the
love between Christ and His Church, then the practice of NFP for the
avoidance of children would, at least at first glance, appear to be gravely
evil.The task of the Church on this earth is presumably (with due respect
for human freedom) to bring as many souls to live in Christ as she can.
How could the Church ever stand in the position of being unwilling to
bear such children? It would seem that any use of NFP to avoid children
would contradict the basic symbolism by which sexual activity, seen in
light of the supernatural symbolism, points to a need always to stand
ready for bearing new children in the Lord. Presumably, couples could
only use NFP so as to have as many children as possible.
Such problems require careful reflection on the structures of human
fertility as well as on their natural and supernatural meanings, so as to
discern the moral rightness or wrongness of specific patterns of sexual
activity that makes use of the sort of knowledge that NFP brings. It would
be all too easy to mistake the images being employed for the meaning to
which they point. It would be all too easy to suppose that the Scriptures
show us Christ and the Church as if already husband and wife, with the
baptized as their children. But in fact, Christ is not our Father, and he has
not begotten the children of the Church through the Seed that is the Holy
Spirit. Christ is the Son of the Father, and not anyone’s Father. Revelation
does not show him having entered into a generative union with his bride.
Rather, the baptized are the Father’s adopted children, the sisters and
brothers of Christ. This caution allows us to see that the Church should
indeed have as many children as possible, but there is no need to bring the
largest possible number of children into this world. The task, rather, is to
bring all those who are naturally born to be reborn of water and the Holy
Spirit from the womb of the Church by baptism.

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For the resolution of the problem, it is crucial to remember that the
espousal of Christ and the Church is not the Bible’s only use of the
symbolism of human sexuality. The espousal texts focus on the type of
love found between Christ and the Church. In a way, this corresponds to
the tenderness, generosity, and loveliness that is common between the
engaged but that sometimes fades in human marriages. In the best ones,
the idea remains as model of what the couple wants to preserve, even as
they come to learn how their love needs to be deepened over time.While
children are not expressly mentioned in these texts, they are prominent
in other scriptural uses of sexual symbolism that are concerned with
motherhood and with adoptive fatherhood.
In Isaiah (1:2, 4), for instance, God speaks of the tribe of Judah as children whom he has reared despite the fact that they are the sinful sons of
wicked people: “The LORD has spoken: ‘Sons have I reared and brought
up. . . .’ Ah, sinful nation, offspring of evildoers, sons who deal corruptly!”
While their biological generation is recognized to come from their human
parents, these people are God’s children by adoption. Isaiah 29:33 (“When
[Jacob] sees his children, the work of my hands, in his midst, they will sanctify my name”) treats the sons begotten by Jacob as the people that he has
formed for himself and thus the work of his hands. One could recount
others passages in the same vein (43:5–7, 21; 44:21; 45:11; 50:1). Correlated
with God’s adoptive fatherhood is Israel’s motherhood, for it is the task of
Israel, God’s people, to bear children for him. Hosea (that is, 1:10; 2: 2, 4, 5)
and Ezekiel point to the link between the symbolism of fatherhood/motherhood and the symbolism of husband and wife, for example:“The LORD
says,‘You took your sons and your daughters, whom you had borne to me,
and these you sacrificed to them [to idols] to be devoured . . . , you slaughtered my children’ ” (Ez 16:20–21; see 23:4, 37).The individuals who were
born naturally to their human parents only became God’s children by his
espousal to Jerusalem, their mother.
Similar sexual symbolisms are used in the New Testament, but the relationships grow more complex with the revelation that God is not just
Father but Son and Holy Spirit—one God in three distinct Persons. Only
one is Father, and there is only one Son whom he has begotten naturally,
his eternal Word, Jesus Christ ( Jn 1:1–5, 18). All God’s other children
only become his children by being reborn as children of the Church,
whom Christ espoused by the sacrifice of the New Covenant on the
Cross (Eph 5:25–27).We become children of the Church through reception of the word of God by faith. But Christ is not said to beget children
of his Church, and the Church can only give us life supernaturally by the
gift of the Holy Spirit, not by natural generation (see Gal 4:26–27, with

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echoes of Is 54:1, and Rom 8:15). A man’s love for his wife, whether she
be fertile at the moment or not, should be taken to symbolize Christ’s
love for his Church, which never fails, whether she is bearing new children for the Father at any particular time or not.
Natural birth to Christian parents does not make anyone a Christian.We
are born into a world of sin, outside of the Church and afflicted by the
consequences of the Fall. But we are reborn as Christians through water and
the Holy Spirit. Paradoxically, since the Church is not only his Body and his
Bride but also the new Israel and the People of God, the newly (re)born
Christian becomes part of the Church by becoming one of God’s People,
just as a child generated from the physical union of its parents thereby comes
to be a member of the family into which that child has been born.
There is significance to the fact that Christ leaves his espoused Bride a
virgin who brings forth the members of his body virginally, for it is by the
power of the Holy Spirit who has been given to her that the Church bears
us.The Holy Spirit was the agent of the Father’s begetting of the human
nature of his Son in the virginal Mary, and is likewise the agent of our
regeneration as children of the Church, so that we can truly be said ( Jn
3:9) to be born of the Spirit. In fact, it is only after the resurrection of
Christ that he spoke of his disciples as his brothers.8 By his sacrifice and
victory on the Cross, he won the Church as his bride. At Pentecost his
disciples became her first-born, and we who have come later are his
brothers and sisters, not because the Father has begotten any Sons other
than Jesus but because he has shared with us the life of his Only-Begotten Son (Gal 3:26–27). All the children of God except for Jesus are
adopted (Gal 4:5–6; Rom 8: 14–16, 23, 29–30; Heb 2:10–17). But unlike
human adoption, this adoption actually bestows a share in the very life of
the adoptive Father by the gift of the Holy Spirit (1 Jn; Jn 3:3–8; Eph 1:5).
Quay also finds a certain support for this view at the level of natural
symbolism, from the hiddenness of conception, which we now recognize to
be distinct from an act of intercourse. Upon the discovery of a pregnancy,
there is a need for a free and right response from those who have begotten
a child to accept and nurture the child who has begun to grow within his
mother. Quay reads the natural symbolism here as a kind of adoption, that
is, an acceptance of the child into the family, and he speculates that there
may be a certain significance to the fact that the gametes or sex cells
involved in generation operate independently of the will or actions of
those having sexual intercourse.The gametes are formed in the bodies of
adults and depend on these bodies to be able to live, but they are actually
8 A point also made by Joseph Ratzinger in The Meaning of Christian Brotherhood

(San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1993).

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Joseph W. Koterski, S.J.

independent organisms. Each of them lives with its own life and not with
the life of the person within whose body the new organism has been
formed in the way that the cells that make up our bodies do. In this respect,
it is possible to grasp, far more clearly than earlier ages could, that when a
child is conceived, it has not been “created,” even unconsciously, by its
parents.The time of their sexual relations does determine whether it is even
possible for the gametes to meet; but whether the gametes do actually unite
is not even under the scrutiny, let alone the control of human volition
(except, of course, for laboratory IVF). Strictly speaking, the new child’s
conception has not been brought about by their will as some object that
they have made, and therefore it is not something owned by them. Its actualization, even biologically, is not their doing. On this point Quay notes that
the evil of in vitro fertilization (IVF) consists in its rejection (and attempted
denial) of this latter fact, for IVF treats the gametes (and implicitly the child
that results) as if they were parts of the parents or as if they totally belonged
to the parents for their existence and for their goals. Contraception also gets
this wrong by treating the gametes as some sort of foreign bodies, alien to
each of the couple (or as totally dependent on the individuals), since they
can be blocked and disposed of at will. IVF thus reflects symbolically a technological will to make a child, regardless of what happens to the marital
union in the context of which it takes place, regardless of what happens to
the zygote if “things don’t work out,” regardless of the consequent expectations laid upon the child that has been so made on the basis of the implied
ownership, and, above all, regardless of the radically altered understanding of
what it is to be human that is implicit in the making process.
In fact, children are begotten through the creative act of God, not made
as items of property desired by their parents. At the supernatural level we
need to be adopted by God the Father, but at the natural level too we are
begotten and conceived by parents who must, in one sense, adopt us.The
child thus formed from gametic union is an independent entity, distinct
from both parents, but (considered symbolically) it is utterly dependent. A
child’s every trait and entire genetic endowment comes from his parents,
half from his father and half from his mother.As human persons, new children are like brothers and sisters to their parents, except displaced from
them in time.Yet, whenever the union of the gametes results in a healthy
zygote, a new genetic type is formed, one that was hitherto non-existent.
Even though a child’s physical qualities may be familiar on either or both
sides of the family, they are in aggregate wholly new. But more, this person
is, in a far stronger sense, wholly new. Although sharing in the personal
properties of its lineage, the child remains an individual who has his own
destiny. The child is not the genetic replica of any of its forebears but

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constitutes a new human type.Those of its problems that are rooted in its
genes (whether the standard types of genetic disease, or some genetic
predispositions to other diseases or certain traits of temperament, or various patterns and intensities of feeling and emotion) may be unique to it,
or at least not shared with its family.The child that has been conceived (as
zygote, as embryo, or as fetus) depends wholly on its mother’s body for its
sustenance and protection.And while each parent provides a single gamete,
an equality that symbolizes the gift of an equal genetic component to this
new child, the size and structure of the contributions differ. Once the
generation has taken place, everything else that the child needs of a material nature for its growth and development is supplied by its mother: food,
elimination of waste, warmth, physical protection, suitable environment,
and so on. And yet this newly conceived child is an entity that is radically
distinct from the mother in whose womb it lives. In principle, the child can
be separated from her completely and still survive (that is, insofar as it is
possible to substitute artificially for her nurturing activities). But a bonding
begins in utero, and separation from one’s mother can mean the stunting
of psychological development, for the child in the womb is already in the
womb responding to stimuli from her. At sixteen weeks, for instance, an
unborn child already has ears that are developed far enough to hear its
mother’s voice, and it can already feel its mother’s movements.
Seen in this way, at both the natural and the supernatural levels there
is a hiddenness to the cycles and to the actualizations of fertility. The
precise manner of conception is as imperceptible to the human eye as is
grace working in a soul, for the Lord is one who acts in secret and, as 1
Timothy suggests, one who “dwells in unapproachable light, whom no
man has ever seen or can see” (1 Tim 6:16).
What NFP relies upon, of course, is the presence of cycles of fertility, and
these too, with careful discernment, bear a natural symbolism of great importance, and one that has parallels in the supernatural order.The infertile periods are not sterility, but periods in which a woman’s body rests and prepares
for the next ovum to be released. She neither knows nor controls the genetic
complement of that ovum. Neither does a man know or control the genetic
complement of any of the sperm contained in his seed. Curiously, any
number of the ancient nature religions connected the cycles of the year with
human fertility and devised rituals that begged their gods for fruitfulness in
their fields and in their families. Some of these rituals seem to suggest an
attempt to control the outcome, and in this way are not unlike what happens
when IVF (let alone the technologies under preparation to produce designer
babies) tries to bring to light and to put under our control what is naturally,
and quite likely by divine design, kept hidden from human eyes.

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At the natural level, we need to take note of the biological values of
the biological rhythms of fertility, for the rest that it gives to a mother’s
body. One of the most obvious regulative goods in this domain is this
natural spacing of pregnancies, which is such that a nursing mother is
highly unlikely to become pregnant again during the period when her
young baby needs the strength of her body for the nourishment that she
provides by her nursing.
Although the love between the spouses is expressed positively by
intercourse, it can also be expressed by refraining from intercourse for the
good of the other spouse. It is clearly the case that many of the goods that
must be sought by any couple during their fertile times will exclude
simultaneously having sexual relations.There is the good of life itself, for
the couple—and any children for whom they may already be responsible—need to eat and sleep.The parents clearly need to work, so as to earn
what is needed for the family, to keep the home in order, to prepare
meals, to take care of the sick, not only each other and their children, but
their own parents and relatives and also their neighbors. Refraining from
sexual relations might be needed for the sake of the common good, not
only of their own family but of their community and their country.
The love between the spouses can call for abstinence from intercourse
for the sake of each of the characteristic “goods of marriage.”When one’s
spouse is sick or absent, for instance, one must refrain from sexual relations
for the sake of the basic good of mutual fidelity. Similarly, the indissolubility of their marriage could well be threatened if one forces the other to
have relations (for example, a drunken husband or one who is trying to
force contraceptive intercourse upon the other).And perhaps most importantly, abstinence may be needed for the sake of the third good of marriage,
their children (already born or, in some circumstances, those hoped for).
And there are countless occasions when a couple will rightly refrain
from having relations, for example, when very tired, or when traveling
and forced to spend the night without private accommodations, or when
one of them is emotionally upset by a death among kin or by a quarrel,
and so on. Presumably, no special consideration with regard to fertility
enters into decisions of these kinds. Further, spousal love might also
require intermittent abstinence for prayer (see 1 Cor 7:5–6), or in exceptional cases, even of permanent abstinence, as in the case of virginal
marriages, which are, in principle, acceptable to the Church.9
9 The reasons are far from clear to most people—but most people are not called

to such a life.What is involved is, in traditional language, the conceding of a right
to coitus to one another, supplemented with a solemn agreement and pledge that
neither party will make use of this right.

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The Question at Hand
To return, then, to the general question of this essay.What we have seen
is that there are solid theological underpinnings in the natural and supernatural symbolisms of human fertility and conception for the practice of
natural family planning.As noted at the beginning of the paper, the moral
quality of a specific use of NFP is determined wholly by a specific
couple’s motives and the relations of these motives to the natural meaning of intercourse and to the particular pattern of relations that they are
choosing. The reason that we can affirm this point is that the cycle of
fertility is good, and the employment of the natural activities of the body
for good ends is good. Properly practiced, NFP is one manifestation of
spousal love as a way to acknowledge in action the intrinsic limits to
fertility. In this particular way, it can symbolize the love of Christ for his
Church and hers for him. Needless to say, this judgment does not exempt
a couple from their obligation to a complete openness to children in
every act of intercourse, especially during the fertile times, since sexual
relations at such times are, ordinarily, the necessary and sufficient condition for fertilization. What lies at the end of any causal chain is morally
the initiator’s responsibility if he knows (or ought to know) of its nature
N&V
in advance.

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Original Sin and the Anthropological
Principles of Humanae Vitae
M ATTHEW L EVERING
Ave Maria University
Ave Maria, Florida

I N Man and Woman He Created Them: A Theology of the Body, Pope John
Paul II develops Humanae Vitae’s insights regarding embodied human
personhood.1 In particular, John Paul points to the difficulty of “maintaining the adequate relationship between that which is defined as ‘domination . . . of the forces of nature’ (HV, §2) and ‘self-mastery’ (HV, §21). . . .
Contemporary man shows the tendency of transferring the methods
proper to the first sphere to those of the second.”2 This tendency could
be averted, he suggests, by means of a deeper appreciation of the body’s
teleological ordering, which he calls the “language of the body.”3 Original sin has distorted this language, turning the “relationship of reciprocal
gift . . . into a relationship of reciprocal appropriation.”4 This distortion has
not wholly corrupted the body’s language, however. The body remains
ontologically “oriented from within by the ‘sincere gift’ [Gaudium et Spes,
§24] of the person.”5 Because of human body-soul unity, human bodily
and spiritual teleology constitute a unity.
1 See John Paul II, Man and Woman He Created Them: A Theology of the Body, trans.

Michael Waldstein (Boston: Pauline Books and Media, 2006). For further discussion see John M. Grondelski, “Karol Wojtyla on Humanae vitae,” Angelicum 81
(2004): 51–63.
2 John Paul II, Man and Woman He Created Them, 630–31 (General Audience of
August 22, 1984). For investigation of the roots of this situation as regards contemporary bioethics, see Vincent Bourguet, “Bioéthique et dualisme ontologique,”
Revue Thomiste 97 (1997): 619–39.
3 Cf. John Paul II, Man and Woman He Created Them, 631.
4 Ibid., 260 (General Audience of July 30, 1980).
5 Ibid., 188 (General Audience of January 16, 1980).

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Like Humanae Vitae, John Paul’s presentation of the “language of the
body” has persuaded relatively few. In the fallen world, the body seems so
often to speak the language of “appropriation” rather than “gift,” the
latter seeming to be the province of the spirit.The human spirit’s capacity for intelligence and freedom seems to be the source of hope for liberation from the tyrannical structures instantiated by bodiliness as we
experience it in our lives. By technologically mastering the body, we
hope to produce a world of physical and emotional fulfillment, rather
than of physical and emotional pain. Thus theological dissenters from
Humanae Vitae generally appeal to progress in “physical, economic, psychological, and social conditions” (HV, §10).As the encyclical observes,“It is
also asked whether, in view of the increased sense of responsibility of
modern man, the moment has not come for him to entrust to his reason
and his will, rather than to the biological rhythms of his organism, the
task of regulating birth” (§3).6
Because of this association of bodiliness with oppression, the role of the
body has become suspect not only with respect to the moral life, but also
with respect to the theology of the Cross, sacramental theology, eschatology, and so forth. The interconnectedness of doctrine thus requires that
Humanae Vitae be discussed in the context of other central Christian
doctrines.7 As a step in this direction, the present essay explores the links
6 Humanae Vitae goes on to note that “the Church is the first to praise and recom-

mend the intervention of intelligence in a function which so closely associates
the rational creature with his Creator; but she affirms that this must be done with
respect to the order established by God” (§16). Quoting from Gaudium et Spes,
§§52 and 51, the encyclical also offers “encouragement to men of science, who
‘can considerably advance the welfare of marriage and the family, along with
peace of conscience, if by pooling their efforts they labor to explain more thoroughly the various conditions favoring a proper regulation of births.’ It is particularly desirable that, according to the wish already expressed by Pope Pius XII,
medical science succeed in providing a sufficiently secure basis for a regulation
of birth, founded on the observance of natural rhythms. In this way, scientists and
especially Catholic scientists will contribute to demonstrate in actual fact that, as
the Church teaches, ‘a true contradiction cannot exist between the divine laws
pertaining to the transmission of life and those pertaining to the fostering of
authentic conjugal love’ ” (§24, cf. §27).
7 David Matzo McCarthy argues that Humanae Vitae “is a statement about the very
meaning of our nature and the continuity of our natural life with our supernatural fulfillment.The encyclical is not an argument from nature as much as a proposal
about our nature from the givens of our true end.To speak of nature in this way
is to make a claim about what binds us in human solidarity” (McCarthy,“Procreation, the Development of Peoples, and the Final Destiny of Humanity,” Communio 26 [1999]: 698).This teleological understanding of nature enables McCarthy to
describe natural law not as “generated from a disinterested, general point of view

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between Humanae Vitae and the doctrine of original sin. After first summarizing the principles of Humanae Vitae, I examine in detail Thomas
Aquinas’s account of Adam and Eve’s sin, especially as regards soul-body
unity. I suggest that the the doctrine of original sin and the teaching of
Humanae Vitae rely upon the same anthropological principles.
The Anthropology of Humanae Vitae
Humanae Vitae argues that “one must necessarily recognize insurmountable limits to the possibility of man’s domination over his own body and
its functions” (§17). Earlier the encyclical states that
to make use of the gift of conjugal love while respecting the laws of the
generative process means to acknowledge oneself not to be the arbiter
of the sources of human life, but rather the minister of the design established by the Creator. In fact, just as man does not have unlimited
dominion over his body in general, so also, with particular reason, he
has no such dominion over his generative faculties as such, because of
their intrinsic ordination towards raising up life, of which God is the
principle. (§13)

But, one might ask, what does it mean to say that human beings have
only a limited dominion over their “generative faculties as such, because
of their intrinsic ordination towards raising up life”? Why should human
freedom be limited by an “intrinsic ordination” belonging to the body’s
generative faculties?
The encyclical’s answer is that although human rationality frees human
beings to choose how to “use” our bodies, our bodies are not mere instruments. Just as the soul has an innate teleological ordering toward truth and
goodness (a teleology that can, to varying degrees, be frustrated), so also
the body has an “intrinsic ordination” toward “raising up life.” This “intrinsic ordination” is not something that the human spirit freely elicits in the
body through an act of humanization. On the other hand, neither is this
“intrinsic ordination” uninformed by the soul. Instead, the ordination of
(in Kantian fashion)” but as “an account of human solidarity in terms of God as
beginning and end” that therefore “depends (whether explicitly or not) upon an
understanding of human unity in creation and our eschatological communion”
(ibid., 716). By contrast, a contraceptive culture orders itself toward consumption
rather than toward the communion of persons (most fully and concretely expressed
in hospitality to children). McCarthy’s article shows the value of reading Humanae
Vitae in the broader context of human fulfillment, to which context original sin
(as the distortion of such fulfillment) belongs. For work in a similar direction, see
Richard R. Roach,“More than Integration:The CTSA Report on Human Sexuality,” Communio 5 (1978): 182–201.

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the body accords with the soul’s teleological ordering thanks to the work
of God in creating human body-soul unity.
This approach undergirds Humanae Vitae’s insistence upon “the inseparable connection, willed by God and unable to be broken by man on his
own initiative, between the two meanings of the conjugal act: the unitive
meaning and the procreative meaning” (§12). Paul VI explains that “the
conjugal act, while most closely uniting husband and wife, capacitates
them for the generation of new lives” (§12). It “capacitates” husband and
wife not in a sense that applies only to fertile couples, but “according to
laws inscribed in the very being of man and of woman” (§12), whether
or not they at the time have the capacity for fertility. These “laws” that
capacitate human beings “for the generation of new lives” belong to the
body’s teleology. The “inseparable connection” between the unitive and
procreative aspects of the conjugal act results from the inseparability of
the body’s teleology from that of the soul. In the conjugal act, spiritual
(unitive) self-giving and bodily (procreative) self-giving are joined.
It follows that as regards Paul VI’s affirmation that “each and every
marriage act [quilibet matrimonii usus] must remain open to the transmission
of life” (§11), this openness cannot be that of the soul over against the body.
Likewise the unity of spiritual and bodily teleology enables one to understand Paul VI’s appeal to the notion of the “gift of self.” As Paul VI states,
this love is total, that is to say, it is a very special form of personal friendship, in which husband and wife generously share everything, without
undue reservations or selfish calculations. Whoever truly loves his
marriage partner loves not only for what he receives, but for the partner’s
self, rejoicing that he can enrich his partner with the gift of himself. (§9)

By contrast, the rejection of Humanae Vitae flows from a view of the
body as proto-human.8 Russell Hittinger points out that the pro-birth
8 Paul VI writes, “It can be foreseen that this teaching will perhaps not be easily

received by all:Too numerous are those voices—amplified by the modern means
of propaganda—which are contrary to the voice of the Church.To tell the truth,
the Church is not surprised to be made, like her divine founder, a ‘sign of contradiction,’ yet she does not because of this cease to proclaim with humble firmness
the entire moral law, both natural and evangelical. Of such laws the Church was
not the author, nor consequently can she be their arbiter; she is only their depositary and their interpreter, without ever being able to declare to be licit that which
is not so by reason of its intimate and unchangeable opposition to the true good
of man” (HV, §18). Sensitive to the charge that the Church thereby impedes the
human progress allegedly made possible by contraceptive sexual intercourse, the
encyclical goes on to say, “In defending conjugal morals in their integral wholeness, the Church knows that she contributes towards the establishment of a truly

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control argument of the Majority Report of Paul VI’s Commission
hinges on this negative view of body, behind which stands a longstanding debate about “the scope of human dominion in the light of Genesis
and natural law.”9 Quoting the Majority Report, Hittinger observes:
The majority argued that “what is given in physical nature” reflects an
order of dynamisms and processes that it is the duty of human agents
to “humanize and bring to greater perfection.” . . .The majority averred
that the inherent finalities, which Genesis says are “good,” permit us to
conclude that their negation is a “physical evil.” But the humanization
of nature can permit, and perhaps require, a negation of pre-moral
goods for the affirmation of what is specifically human in marriage.10

As Hittinger goes on to show, this depreciation of “ ‘what is given in physical nature’ ” fits within the Enlightenment evacuation of normative
content from the notion of “human nature.” For the various versions of
Enlightenment “negative anthropology,” human nature can only be known
in its “proto-human” material, which then “must be tamed, shaped, and
humanized.”11 Unable to arrive at a normative endpoint, this humanization
of the body ensures that “human nature” cannot be reified beyond history’s
human civilization; she engages man not to abdicate from his own responsibility
in order to rely on technical means; by that very fact she defends the dignity of
man and wife” (ibid.).
9 Russell Hittinger, “Human Nature and States of Nature in John Paul II’s Theological Anthropology,” in Human Nature in Its Wholeness:A Roman Catholic Perspective, eds. Daniel N. Robinson, Gladys M. Sweeney, and Richard Gill, L.C.
(Washington, DC:The Catholic University of America Press, 2006), 22.
10 Ibid.
11 Ibid., 18. See also Michael Waldstein’s introduction to his translation of John Paul
II’s Man and Woman He Created Them, 1–128, where Waldstein remarks of the
project of Francis Bacon: “Authority over nature belonged to the human race
before the fall, and it is to this primeval condition that Bacon intends to return,
undoing the consequences of the fall as far as possible” (ibid., 37). Drawing upon
the work of Charles Taylor, Waldstein goes on to point out that late-medieval
nominalism “eliminated from nature precisely those features that resist its subjection to power, namely, a strong teleology and formal causality” (ibid., 38).
Regarding the majority report, Waldstein points out the same problem as does
Hittinger: “The ‘Majority Report’ of Paul VI’s birth control commission (intentionally leaked to the press in 1967) is unequivocal in its support for the Baconian program, unequivocal in identifying this program with the divine will. ‘The
story of God and of man, therefore, should be seen as a shared work. And it
should be seen that man’s tremendous progress in control of matter by technical
means and the universal and total “intercommunication” that has been achieved,
correspond entirely to the divine decrees.’ It would be difficult to formulate a
more unqualified allegiance with the Baconian program” (ibid., 100).

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fluid “experimental constructions of what is indeterminate in the original
of nature.”12 On this view, the rational powers of the human person
remain always free to construct anew what it means to be human, unimpeded by the bodily mechanisms that natural science studies. The implication is that the Creator made human bodiliness so that human
rationality could re-make it in accord with the demands of rational freedom. It follows that the teleological ordering that belongs to the human
body is disjoined from the human spirit’s free dynamisms.
Against this disjunction, Humanae Vitae affirms the unity of spiritual and
bodily teleology in the human person. The encyclical refuses to split the
body’s “intrinsic ordination” from that of the spiritual powers of the human
person. At the ontological level, the soul does not have to claim the body
for God through “humanization.” Rather, the “intrinsic ordination” of the
body forms a unity with that of the soul in the self-giving movement of
love. Far from being impediments, human bodily structures are instructive
in the task of understanding human fulfillment. Either the Creator made
the human being as a body-soul unity, or the “human” is the realm of
rational freedom that operates above and upon a proto-human substratum
of bodiliness. Humanae Vitae opts for the former alternative.
Adam and Eve’s Sin
What is the relationship of soul and body in the doctrine of original sin?
The Catechism of the Catholic Church emphasizes original sin’s character as
12 Hittinger, “Human Nature and States of Nature in John Paul II’s Theological

Anthropology,” 19. Hittinger adds that “the anthropologies that assign man
dominion over proto-human material are not merely a curious chapter of the
Enlightenment. It is true that for thinkers such as Hobbes, Rousseau, Kant, and
Feuerbach the state-of-nature scenarios were devised for a purpose of showing
the basis of the civilizing mission of the state.The transition from animal to man,
from laws of nature to the sovereignty of law, correlate with the movement from
pre-political to citizen. Here, we can pass over the interesting question of how
the ‘state of nature’ could prepare the way for such different programs of political power, from class dictatorships to republican regimes.The key point for our
purposes is that after the Second World War the myth of origins was released
from its earlier function of justifying the state, and turned toward the sovereignty
of the individual. . . . Given the radical indeterminacy of human nature, the
Enlightenment theorists tended to conclude, all the more reason for the civilizing task of the state; the contemporary mind concludes, all the more reason for
individual liberty. As the French philosopher Pierre Manent puts it, human
nature is a cipher, an ‘efficacious indetermination’ allowing a zone of liberty in
which the individual can ‘affirm himself without knowing himself.’ ” Ibid., 20,
citing Manent’s The City of Man, trans. Marc A. LePain (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1998), 129.

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an active spiritual deformation: “man preferred himself to God and by that
very act scorned him. He chose himself over and against God, against the
requirements of his creaturely status and therefore against his own good”
(§398).According to the Catechism, however, this spiritual frustration of the
teleology of the human creature is inseparable from the frustration of the
telos of human bodiliness: “the control of the soul’s spiritual faculties over
the body is shattered; the union of man and woman becomes subject to
tensions, their relations henceforth marked by lust and domination” (§400).
Original sin causes not only spiritual death but also bodily death, which
here “makes its entrance into human history” (§400). While the Catechism
focuses its attention on Genesis, the inseparability of spiritual and bodily
teleological frustration appears throughout Scripture, most notably perhaps
in the Letter to the Romans:“Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of
their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped
and served the creature rather than the Creator” (Rom 1:24–25).
As Gary Anderson observes, 1 Corinthians and Romans develop a
Christian theology of Adam and Eve’s sin.13 The Old Testament, Anderson points out, gives central place not to Adam and Eve’s sin (referred to
only once more in the Old Testament, Ezekiel 28) but to the Israelites’
worship of the golden calf (Exodus 32). Genesis 2:7 states that “the Lord
God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils
the breath of life; and man became a living being.”The word “man” here
is ’adam, from the word for the ground, ’adamah.After the creation of the
woman, the collective term ’adam becomes the name of the first man,
Adam. St. Paul draws especially upon the collective sense of ’adam. As
Anderson explains, “If the first (protos) Adam died . . . then all must die
through him. Since Christ was the second or final (eschatos) Adam, his
death and resurrection must also have had universal dimensions.”14 Paul
13 Gary A. Anderson, The Genesis of Perfection: Adam and Eve in Jewish and Christian

Imagination (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2001), 209 (app. A).
Following Joseph Blenkinsopp,Anderson comments,“Indeed it is difficult not to
see the influence of a theology very similar to that of Deuteronomy. For in that
book God sets life and death before the Israelites and the choice is theirs: Obey
my Torah and you shall have life in the land; disobey it and you shall die in exile.
Eden is Torah in miniature. . . . By placing the story of Adam and eve after the
creation account of P, the editor of Torah has said something very profound
about the propensity of human nature toward disobedience” (ibid., 208). As
Anderson concludes, “What is revealed in microcosm through the nation Israel
can be extended, in macrocosm, to all peoples” (ibid., 210).
14 Ibid., 210.Anderson remarks,“If Paul were to look solely at the central Old Testament narratives about Israel’s proclivity for sin and rebellion, he would not be able

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contrasts Jesus’ Resurrection with Adam’s sin: “For as by a man came
death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. For as in
Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive” (1 Cor 15:21–22).
In Romans 5:12 Paul likewise understands Adam in this collective sense.
Given this background, let us turn to Thomas Aquinas’s theology of original sin.To understand what the created order is and how it can be healed—
the goal of both the opponents and the proponents of Humanae Vitae—we
need to reflect further upon what ails the human creature.
Pride or Concupiscence?
Aquinas considers Adam and Eve’s first sin to have been the sin of pride.
Before arguing for his position, however, he sets forth four alternative
construals of the first sin.15 The first alternative has its roots in Paul’s letter
to the Romans: “For as by one man’s disobedience many were made
sinners, so by one man’s obedience many will be made righteous” (Rom
5:19). It would seem, then, that disobedience, not pride, constituted the
first sin. A second alternative is the sin of curiosity, because “the serpent”
tempted Adam and Eve by promising that “you will be like God, knowing good and evil” (Gen 3:5), so that they came to think that “the tree
was to be desired to make one wise” (Gen 3:6).Third is the sin of unbelief, because Adam and Eve were “deceived” (1 Tim 2:14) or “beguiled”
(Gen 3:13) to think of God as selfish, and thus as a mere god rather than
as the true good God. Fourth is the sin of gluttony, not merely because
“the woman saw that the tree was good for food” and “took of its fruit
and ate” (Gen 3:6), but also and more importantly because “the devil in
tempting Christ observed the same order as in overcoming the first man.
Now Christ was first tempted to gluttony, as appears from Matthew 4:3,
where it was said to Him: ‘If thou be the Son of God, command that
these stones be made bread.’ ”16
Of these four alternatives to pride, three have their root in human spiritual powers, whereas one—gluttony—has its root in sense appetites. In
explaining his view that pride was Adam and Eve’s sin, Aquinas observes
that “man was so appointed in the state of innocence, that there was no
rebellion of the flesh against the spirit.”17 Recall St. Paul’s complaint,“So
I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand.
to say much about the state of the Gentiles. Paul’s turn to the figure of Adam as
the parade example of a biblical sinner is not in accord with the basic thrust of
the Old Testament” (ibid.).
15 Summa theologiae II–II, q. 163, a. 1, obj. 1–4.
16 Ibid., obj. 2.
17 ST II–II, q. 163, a. 1.

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For I delight in the law of God, in my inmost self, but I see in my
members another law at war with the law of my mind and making me
captive to the law of sin which dwells in my members” (Rom 7:21–23).
Aquinas affirms that original sin brings about this “rebellion of the flesh
against the spirit,” so that with Paul we experience “the law of sin which
dwells in my members.” Does this mean, then, that original sin has more
to do with the bodily appetites than with the spiritual powers? Indeed,
in the prima secundae, Aquinas defines original sin not as pride but as
“concupiscence,” which is indeed rooted in the bodily (concupiscible)
powers of the soul. He explains that this definition has to do with the
“material” aspect of original sin as a privation in human beings. Employing Aristotelian terminology, he notes that when original sin is considered as to its cause—which exposes its “formal” aspect, its “species” or the
kind of reality that it is—then one must begin with the original justice
whose opposite is “original sin.”
Original justice may well seem mythological, since we cannot observe
it empirically. The philosopher Daniel Dennett, for example, traces
human problems to an “Original Sin” caused not by human agency but
by “the first macromolecules that have enough complexity to ‘do
things.’ ”18 These macromolecules unconsciously made the first “mistake,”
a “copying mistake” in the code of life.The eventual product of such “copying mistakes” is the human person, who gradually comes into existence
18 Daniel C. Dennett, Darwin’s Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meanings of Life

(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995), 203 and 202. Dennett emphasizes that
while there seems to be an extraordinary amount of design and natural teleology involved, in fact there is none:“There is something alien and vaguely repellent about the quasi-agency we discover at this level—all that purposive hustle
and bustle, and yet there’s nobody home. The molecular machines perform their
amazing stunts, obviously exquisitely designed, and just as obviously none the
wiser about what they are doing” (ibid., 202). Once the “molecular machines”
begin to function, then they can function badly—but even the word “function”
seems to Dennett to import a false notion of teleological purpose: “Exactly the
same gratuitous predicament faces anyone who, despairing of defining something as complicated as life, decides to define the apparently simpler notion of
function or teleology. At exactly what point does function make its appearance?
Did the very first nucleotides have functions, or did they just have causal powers?
Did Cairns-Smith’s clay crystals exhibit genuine teleological properties, or just ‘as
if ’ teleological properties? Do gliders in the Life world have the function of locomotion, or do they just move? It doesn’t make any difference how you legislate
the answer; the interesting world of functioning mechanisms has to start with
mechanisms that ‘straddle the line,’ and, however far back you place the line, there
will be precursors that differ in arguably nonessential ways from the anointed
ones” (ibid., 201). One might respond that this means that there will be teleology all the way down.

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filled with all sorts of encoded deficiencies.19 In Dennett’s view there is no
“original justice,” but instead only a period of time in which “no opportunity for error existed” because there was no genetic copying. By contrast,
Aquinas would point out that these macromolecules were not engaged in
anything that could be called “sin.” Instead, as Aquinas states, the first human
beings possessed a will that was already, by its very ontological constitution,
drawn toward the good. So long as they did not choose created goods over
the infinite good, they had not yet sinned: and in this state of “original
justice,” God gave them unique gifts, so that they could not crumble spiritually or physically except by freely disordering themselves.
They did so. Aquinas observes that
the whole order of original justice consists in man’s will being subject
to God: which subjection, first and chiefly, was in the will, whose function it is to move all the other parts to the end, as stated above (I–II, q. 9,
a. 1), so that the will being turned away from God, all the other powers
of the soul become inordinate.20

This sounds complicated but in fact is not, since examples of harmonious
organisms breaking down are commonplace. Think of the smoothly
running classroom that falls apart without the teacher, or the well-tended
flock that dissipates without the shepherd.The body-soul person is made
to be a harmonious organism: the rational appetite forms a unity with the
sense appetites or passions, which operate on the borderline between
rational and non-rational. The passions assist the rational appetite in
attaining desired ends (the concupiscible passions) and avoiding undesirable ends (the irascible passions). Every movement of the rational appetite
is accompanied by movement of the appropriate passions. The breakdown occurs when the rational appetite chooses against reason and
thereby cannot govern the sense appetites in accord with reason. The
rational appetite and the sense appetites then experience the same problem: their volition, which takes place together, is “inordinate,” misdirected. In this condition, the human person desires created goods as if
they were the uncreated good, and pursues them with unruly concupis19 Dennett states, “Love it or hate it, phenomena like this exhibit the heart of the

power of the Darwinian idea.An impersonal, unreflective, robotic, mindless little
scrap of molecular machinery is the ultimate basis of all the agency, and hence
meaning, and hence consciousness, in the universe” (ibid., 203). He intends to
divorce the “little scrap of molecular machinery” which is the source of all meaning and consciousness, from any notion of a Creator.
20 ST I–II, q. 82, a. 3.

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cible and irascible appetites. Original sin therefore is not “concupiscence”
per se, but rather it is concupiscence “so far as it trespasses beyond the
bounds of reason.”21
Is original sin (“concupiscence”) therefore located primarily in the
sense appetites? Aquinas seeks to hold together the rational and sense
appetites, so that the body-soul unity of human action remains intact.22
As regards the cause or “formal element,” original sin is the “privation of
original justice.” As experienced in the human person, however, original
sin appears most clearly in the unruly sense appetites: “the law of sin
which dwells in my members” (Rom 7:23). These formal and material
aspects cannot be separated. Aquinas points out that “among the inward
movements, the appetite is moved towards the end before being moved
towards that which is desired for the sake of the end,” and so sin must
corrupt the human person, as it were, from the top down.23 The sense
appetites possess their rational ordering through participating in the
rational appetite. In the state of original justice, therefore, “it was not
possible for the first inordinateness in the human appetite to result from
his coveting a sensible good, to which the concupiscence of the flesh
tends against the order of reason.”24 Instead the first sin must involve the
rational appetite’s ordering toward its end:“man’s first sin consisted in his
coveting some spiritual good above his measure: and this pertains to
pride.”25 Adam and Eve freely chose themselves above God, through an
“inordinate desire for excellence.”26 This choice made by their free will,
however, immediately pulled them down rather than increasing their
excellence, because of the participation of the sense appetites in the
rational appetite.
This helps to explain the complex portrait of Adam and Eve’s sin
provided by Genesis. Eve responds to the serpent’s promise that “you will
be like God, knowing good and evil” (Gen 3:5) with a display of disordered rational and sense appetites:“So when the woman saw that the tree
was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree
was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she
also gave some to her husband, and he ate” (Gen 3:6). Aquinas observes
that sins of the sense appetites followed directly upon the sin of pride:
“Gluttony also had a place in the sin of our first parents,” although “the
21 ST I–II, q. 82, a. 3, a. 1.
22 ST I–II, q. 82, a. 3.
23 ST II–II, q. 163, a. 1.
24 Ibid.
25 Ibid.
26 Ibid., ad 3.

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sin of gluttony resulted from the sin of pride.”27 Given body-soul unity,
once the rational appetite chooses against the order of reason, the sense
appetites too lose their rational ordering.
Angelism
The serpent tempted Adam and Eve with two large promises: “You will
not die” (Gen 3:4) and “you will be like God, knowing good and evil”
(Gen 3:5). Since Adam and Eve’s intellective faculties had not been darkened by sin, Aquinas notes that they would not have thought that they
would become absolutely equal to God.28 What kind of likeness to God,
then, did they hope to grasp? Aquinas states that “spiritual good, insofar
as the rational creature participates in the divine likeness, may be considered in reference to three things,” namely, natural being, knowledge, and
power of operation.29 Genesis 3 points to the third kind of likeness,
power of operation: Adam and Eve will know good and evil and thereby
become wise. Adam and Eve, however, do not aim at wisdom in accord
with their human measure. Rather, they aim at a likeness to God as
regards knowledge that is proper to the angels. At their creation, angels
receive a full participation in God’s wisdom according to their capacity,
whereas human beings are created without yet receiving their full participation in God’s wisdom.
In wishing to attain an angelic likeness to God,Adam and Eve wish to
be free of spatio-temporal limitations. In light of the promises that they
will not die and that they will know good and evil,Aquinas first observes
that Adam wishes that “he should of himself foreknow what good and
evil would befall him.”30 Adam and Eve seek an angelic knowledge of
everything all at once, rather than having acquire wisdom through an
embodied, temporal existence. Second, Adam wishes “that by his own
natural power he might decide what was good, and what was evil for him
to do.”31 Adam and Eve do not want to conform their behavior to moral
laws inscribed by the bodily mode of existence, just as angels are not
subject to norms with respect to eating, drinking, sexual intercourse, and
so forth. Third, Adam “sinned by coveting God’s likeness as regards his
own power of operation, namely that by his own natural power he might
act so as to obtain happiness.”32 Here again Adam and Eve seek to over27 Ibid., ad 2.
28 ST II–II, q. 163, a. 2.
29 Ibid.
30 Ibid.
31 Ibid.
32 Ibid.

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come what their bodiliness makes manifest: how could Adam “by his own
natural power” attain happiness (“be like God,” Gen 3:5), when happiness requires stability in existence? Adam and Eve’s bodily mode of being
underscores contingency and finitude. By contrast, Adam and Eve wish
to be the source of their own operation: “You shall not die” (Gen 3:4).
In short, Adam and Eve’s temptation and fall are rooted in the desire
to repudiate the givens of their bodiliness.This does not mean, of course,
that their pride had solely to do with the desire to rise above bodily existence toward a more “angelic” mode of being, in which they would
control their bodiliness rather than submit to its givens.As Aquinas notes,
Adam and Eve’s sin of pride is like the devil’s in that “both coveted somewhat to be equal to God, insofar as each wished to rely on himself in
contempt of the order of the divine rule.”33 In their pride, they primarily wished to reject the submission of their wills to God’s ordo of love,
an order that seemed to them a constraint. Adam and Eve also wished to
reject the body-soul unity that constrained them “from below,” as it were.
Rejecting God takes the form of rejecting all givens, since all givens
come from God.
The Punishment of Original Sin
If original sin therefore displays the body-soul unity of the human
person, as well as the human temptation to repudiate this unity and overthrow bodily and spiritual givens, what about the punishment of original
sin? Why does a fundamentally spiritual sin receive a bodily punishment,
death? Before probing the reasons for this confirmation of body-soul
unity, we should ask the question that Dennett would pose: how could
death be the punishment of original sin, since death was already a constitutive part of the world millions of years before the first human beings?
This objection, in its basic form, is pressed also by Aquinas: “Now death
is natural to man: and this is evident both from the fact that his body is
composed of contraries, and because mortal is included in the definition
of man.”34 Moreover, not only human beings but also animals die, and
certainly they do not die as the result of an animal “original sin.” Here
Aquinas quotes Ecclesiastes 3:19, a text that Dennett could approve:“For
the fate of the sons of men and the fate of beasts is the same; as one dies,
so dies the other.They all have the same breath, and man has no advantage over the beasts; for all is vanity.”
These objections to the view that death is the punishment of original
sin hinge upon the evident naturalness of death. On the other hand,
33 Ibid.
34 ST II–II, q. 164, a. 1, obj. 1.

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Aquinas also includes objections that call into question this presumed
naturalness. For example, Aquinas quotes Wisdom 1:13, “God did not
make death, and he does not delight in the death of the living.”35 If “God
did not make death,” why did God make bodily creatures subject to the
natural decomposition of matter? However one answers this question,
certainly it appears that if “God did not make death,” then God also did
not make death the punishment for original sin.This view gains further
support from Genesis’s teaching that Adam and Eve did not immediately
die, but lived on for many years.36
How then could death be the result of Adam and Eve’s heeding the
serpent’s promise “You shall not die” (Gen 3:4)? Aquinas adheres to St.
Paul’s remark that “sin came into the world through one man and death
through sin” (Rom 5:12). Human death could only come “through sin”
if God upheld the first human beings in a state of preservation from decay.
Surely this supposition proves Dennett’s broader case against Christian
faith:37 is this not a “God of the gaps,” who mythologically overturns the
laws of nature? One can respond that God, marking the introduction of
distinctively human rationality and freedom into the world, ensured that
human beings would enjoy the internal harmony and physical integrity
that allows for the fullest experience of human freedom.38 In this sense
the inauguration of distinctively human rationality and freedom in the
world truly is a sacred moment. God enables it to be a true beginning,
rather than already being marked by the internal and external degeneration that crimp rational freedom. God does this because he creates human
rationality and freedom with the purpose of participating in his life.
35 Ibid., obj. 5.
36 Ibid., obj. 8.
37 Dennett suggests both that religious faith will naturally fade away—“times are

coming when they will no longer be viable” (Darwin’s Dangerous Idea, 514)—and
that if they do not naturally fade away, then the non-religious majority will need
to ensure that they do fade away:“I know, I know, the lion is beautiful but dangerous; if you let the lion roam free, it would kill me; safety demands that it be put
in a cage. Safety demands that religions be put in cages, too—when absolutely
necessary. We just can’t have forced female circumcision, and the second-class
status of women in Roman Catholicism and Mormonism, to say nothing of their
status in Islam. . . .A faith, like a species, must evolve or go extinct when the environment changes. It is not a gentle process in either case” (ibid., 515–16).
38 It is not worthwhile to probe into hypotheticals such as where Eden was located,
or how Adam and Eve could have been preserved from the depredations of wild
animals or storms, and so forth. Reading too literally, such questions miss the point
that the first two creatures to possess distinctive human rationality and freedom
were upheld, by God’s grace, in the state of internal justice and physical integrity
without which full freedom is not possible.

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Indeed, God’s gifts to the first man and woman accord with what we
otherwise know of God’s infinite creative and redemptive love.
Aquinas observes that “God bestowed this favor on man, in his primitive state, that as long as his mind was subject to God, the lower powers
of his soul would be subject to his rational mind, and his body to his
soul.”39 Original sin brings to an end this enjoyment of body-soul
harmony, but it does not bring to an end the human person’s body-soul
unity. On the contrary, death is the result of this unity—although this
unity is now revealed in disorder. Original sin alienates the soul’s spiritual powers from the life-giving God and alienates the soul’s bodily
powers from the spiritual powers. Aquinas states that
inasmuch as through sin man’s mind withdrew from subjection to God,
the result was that neither were his lower powers wholly subject to his
reason, whence there followed so great a rebellion of the carnal appetite
against the reason; nor was the body wholly subject to the soul; whence
arose death and other bodily defects.40

Neither the bodily powers nor the spiritual powers can, as it were, separate from the other and blame the other for the disorder. Because of the
human person’s soul-body unity, once original sin introduces disorder,
this disorder infects the whole.
The presence of original sin—both as the lack of original justice and as
concupiscence—means that a time will come when the material degeneration of the body causes a rupture with its life-giving form, the soul.This
is why we can say that human sin, not God, causes death.After original sin,
God does not need to intervene for human beings to deteriorate and die.41
Adam and Eve’s effort to take their lives into their own hands and to rule
over all givens has the result that they die in accord with the givens that
govern body-soul existence. In attempting to rise to the level of the angels,
they instead fall to the level of animals:“death is . . . natural on account of
a condition attaching to matter.”42 As Ecclesiastes says,“All go to one place;
all are from the dust, and all turn to dust again” (Eccl 3:20).

39 ST II–II, q. 164, a. 1. He discusses this aspect in full in ST I, q. 95, a. 1; and I, q.

97, a. 1.
40 ST II–II, q. 164, a. 1.
41 Cf. ST II–II, q. 164, a. 1, ad 5: “Death may be considered in two ways. First, as

an evil of human nature, and thus it is not of God, but is a defect befalling man
through his fault. Secondly, as having an aspect of good, namely as being a just
punishment, and thus it is from God.”
42 ST II–II, q. 164, a. 1, ad 1.

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A Punishment for the Soul?
“Dust to dust” does not tell the full story, even if the book of Ecclesiastes
sometimes seems to think so. In the context of Adam and Eve’s susceptibility to the serpent’s promise that they would “be like God, knowing
good and evil” (Gen 3:5), Aquinas attends to Genesis’s teaching that God
made human beings “in our image, after our likeness” (Gen 1:26).When
Ecclesiastes says “all have the same breath” and “all are from the dust” (Eccl
3:19–20), this point comports only partly with Genesis. Genesis distinguishes the human being from the other animals by “the breath of life”:
“then the Lord God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed
into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being” (Gen
2:7). Likewise, despite Ecclesiastes’s affirmation that “man has no advantage over the beasts” (Eccl 3:19), Genesis suggests the opposite: God gives
human beings, created “in his own image” (1:27),“dominion over the fish
of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that
moves upon the earth” (1:28). Genesis 2 confirms this portrait by exhibiting man not only as naming the animals, but also as so distinct from the
other animals that no animal can truly be a companion to man.
What then does it mean to be in the image of God, radically distinct
from the other animals? Since God is not bodily, neither is God’s image
and likeness in human beings.43 Death therefore does not entirely destroy
the human being; the just punishment of original sin is not annihilation.
Aquinas states,“This likeness of man to other animals regards a condition
attaching to matter, namely the body being composed of contraries. But
it does not regard the form, for man’s soul is immortal, whereas the souls
of dumb animals are mortal.”44 If death does not destroy the soul,
however, how can the punishment of death be a just punishment for
original sin, which as we have seen is an act of the soul’s spiritual powers?
Why is this not simply a liberation of the soul from the body?
This question returns us to Aquinas’s placement of his discussion of
Adam and Eve’s sin under the rubric of the virtue of temperance, whose
seat is the concupiscible sense appetite. The soul, which is “the act of a

43 For further discussion of the image of God in the soul, see ST I, q. 93, as well as

ch. 3 of my forthcoming Jewish-Christian Dialogue and the Life of Wisdom. See also
Jean-Pierre Torrell, O.P., Saint Thomas Aquinas, vol. 2, Spiritual Master, trans.
Robert Royal (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press,
2003), 80–100; Michael Dauphinais,“Loving the Lord Your God:The Imago Dei
in Saint Thomas Aquinas,” The Thomist 63 (1999): 241–67.
44 ST II–II, q. 164, a. 1, ad 2. For further discussion of the immortality of the soul,
see ST I, q. 75, a. 6.

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body,”45 is made for the body, and the body for the soul.The soul alone
is not man: “it belongs to the notion of man to be composed of soul,
flesh, and bones.”46 Furthermore, the soul is inextricably linked to the
body, as its “substantial form” inhering fully in the whole body and each
part of the body.47 How does this understanding of soul-body unity help
us? Adam and Eve’s spiritual pride led them to seek a higher mode of
existence, and their punishment is a lesser mode of existence. This
punishment involves first the suffering and indignity that come with the
process of dying. The punishment also includes the loss of the body in
death. Ruptured from the body, the soul loses that of which it is the
form. Such souls are not angels. Even when separated souls are drawn
into communion with God, they are not yet what they should be in the
integrity of their proper mode: an embodied form, a soul-body composite that is the whole human person.
In this way, original sin as an act of pride appears yet more clearly in its
contrast with humility. Humility, Aquinas says, works “to temper and
restrain the mind, lest it tend to high things immoderately.”48 As a virtue,
it “conveys the notion of a praiseworthy self-abasement to the lowest
place.”49 Following Origen, Aquinas exhibits Jesus as the preeminent
model of humility:“Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am
gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls” (Mt
11:29).50 Mary too, as the first of the fully redeemed, models humility:“My
soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has
regarded the low estate of his handmaiden” (Lk 1:46–48). Likewise Jesus
commands humility for those who will follow him, the new Adam:
“Whoever humbles himself like this child, he is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven” (Mt 18:4) and “He who is greatest among you shall be
your servant; whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever
humbles himself will be exalted” (Mt 23:11–12). Aquinas emphasizes that
humility means that the human person “must know his disproportion to
that which surpasses his capacity,” so as successfully to “moderate” the
rational appetite’s desire toward goods beyond one’s capacity.51 This is what
45 ST I, q. 75, a. 1. Aquinas goes on to explain that “the soul is said to be the act of

a body, etc., because by the soul it is a body, and is organic, and has life potentially.” ST I, q. 76, a. 4, ad 1.
46 ST I, q. 75, a. 4.
47 ST I, q. 76, a. 8.
48 ST II–II, q. 161, a. 1.
49 Ibid., ad 2.
50 Ibid., s.c.
51 ST II–II, q. 161, a. 2.

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Adam and Eve, in pridefully seeking an “angelic” mode of existence in
which they would have charge over life/death failed to do.
Aquinas urges that humility requires above all “divine reverence, which
shows that man ought not to ascribe to himself more than is competent to
him according to the position in which God has placed him.”52 This
means that humility first denotes “man’s subjection to God.”53 In this light
Aquinas argues that human beings more easily fall into concupiscence
than into pride. Concupiscence bursts upon one’s rational faculties with
a powerful surge, whether of anger, lust, greed, jealousy or so forth. By
contrast, one’s rational faculties should be well protected against pride.
Aquinas points out that one can avoid pride
by considering one’s own infirmity, according to Sirach 10:9, “Why is
earth and ashes proud?” and by considering God’s greatness, according
to Job 15:13, “Why doth thy spirit swell against God?” as well as by
considering the imperfection of the goods on which man prides
himself, according to Isaiah 40:6, “All flesh is grass, and all the glory
thereof as the flower of the field.”54

One likewise recalls St. Paul’s injunction, “What have you that you did
not receive? If then you received it, why do you boast as if it were not a
gift?” (1 Cor 4:7).
Powerful though they are, however, these rational considerations often
do not sway the will that seeks a good disproportionate to its measure.
Love of one’s own excellence to the point of desiring to increase it
beyond all proportion leads to a prideful “aversion from God” that is the
“most grievous of sins.”55 In refusing to be subject to God’s ordo, pride
subjects the human creature to death and thereby turns on its head whatever excellence the sinner may have had. Despite its gravity, then, there is
a ridiculous aspect to the foolishness of pride. Everything good is God’s
gift, and to reject this ordo is to reject God’s gifting, the entire basis of our
excellence. As Aquinas puts it,
We may consider two things in man, namely that which is God’s, and
that which is man’s.Whatever pertains to defect is man’s: but whatever
pertains to man’s welfare and perfection is God’s, according to the
52 Ibid., ad 3.Aquinas points out in ad 2,“It is contrary to humility to aim at greater

things through confiding in one’s own powers: but to aim at greater things
through confidence in God’s help, is not contrary to humility; especially since
the more one subjects oneself to God, the more is one exalted in God’s sight.”
53 Ibid., ad 3.
54 ST II–II, q. 162, a. 6, ad 1.
55 ST II–II, q. 162, a. 6.

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saying of Hosea (13:9), “Destruction is thy own, O Israel; thy help is
only in Me.”56

Aquinas’s treatment of Adam and Eve’s sin under the rubric of the
virtue of temperance highlights the ridiculous aspect of repudiating the
basis of all one’s excellence. Aquinas observes that the virtue of temperance builds upon the natural inclination toward what is good for the
human person: “Nature inclines everything to whatever is becoming to
it. Wherefore man naturally desires pleasures that are becoming to man
which are in accordance with reason. From such pleasures temperance
does not withdraw him, but from those which are contrary to reason.”57
Temperance has to do specifically with physical pleasures, “pleasures of
meat and drink and sexual pleasures.”58 It is precisely in intemperance
with regard to physical pleasures that human beings appear most ridiculous, because their animal appetites overcome their rationality, as in the
drunkard, the glutton, and the sexually promiscuous person. Sins against
temperance are less culpable than other sins, because driven by unruly
passions, but they are more “disgraceful.” Following Aristotle, Aquinas
offers two reasons for this evaluation. First, sins of intemperance tend
toward reducing the rational creature almost to a mere animal, and thereby
are disgracefully opposed to human excellence. Second, “the pleasures
which are the matter of intemperance dim the light of reason from which
all the clarity and beauty of virtue arises: wherefore these pleasures are
described as being most slavish.”59
Thus Adam and Eve’s first sin of pride, which is in a certain sense the
“highest” kind of sin (because it seeks, albeit in a disordered way, the
highest excellence), has something in common with the lowest or most
“disgraceful” kind of sin. By including Adam and Eve’s sin under the rubric
of temperance,Aquinas shows that the disordered rational appetite is, as far
56 ST II–II, q. 161, a. 3. Along the lines of this distinction, Aquinas interprets Phil

2:3,“Do nothing from selfishness or conceit, but in humility count others better
than yourselves.” In light of the elements of “his own” that each person possesses,
each person must “subject himself to every neighbor, in respect of that which the
latter has of God’s.” Ibid.
57 ST II–II, q. 141, a. 1, ad 1.
58 ST II–II, q. 141, a. 4.
59 ST II–II, q. 142, a. 4. He adds,“When we say that intemperance is most disgraceful, we mean in comparison with human vices, those, namely, that are connected
with human passions which to a certain extent are in conformity with human
nature. But those vices which exceed the mode of human nature are still more
disgraceful. Nevertheless such vices are apparently reducible to the genus of
intemperance, by way of excess: for instance if a man delight in eating human
flesh, or in committing the unnatural vice” (ad 3).

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as ridiculousness or foolishness goes, like the disordered sense appetite, even
though the former aims too high while the latter aims too low. Again one
gains an appreciation for the body-soul unity in human action, where the
temperate person rejects both angelism and sheer animality.60 In sketching
each cardinal virtue, Aquinas describes “three kinds of parts, namely integral, subjective, and potential.”61 The integral parts are the virtues without
which one could not embody the cardinal virtue; the subjective parts
distinguish, according to the object of the action, the kinds of virtues that
the cardinal virtue itself includes; and the potential parts are those virtues
which possess the mode of the cardinal virtue, but not its matter. Humility
(and its opposed vice, pride) belongs to the potential parts of temperance,
because it operates according to the mode of moderating the appetite—
although in its case the rational appetite.
Summary
With regard to Adam and Eve’s sin, we have explored four aspects. First,
we inquired into why Aquinas identifies “original sin” both as pride and
as concupiscence. Original sin as Adam and Eve’s action differs in description from original sin as it is found in us, because Adam and Eve’s act of
spiritual pride results most noticeably in unruly passions (“concupiscence”) in us.We emphasized the complex integration of body and soul
in original sin and its effects, due to the relationship of the sense appetites
to the rational appetite. Second, we noted that Adam and Eve’s pride
involves, for Aquinas, a kind of angelism, because Adam and Eve wish to
rule over the givens of their existence, including the bodily givens. The
knowledge that they seek is the knowledge that the angels receive at
creation.Third, we explored the punishment of original sin. Seeking in a
disordered fashion to overcome the givens of their bodily existence,Adam
and Eve came to experience these givens as punishment. Grasping at a
higher mode of existence, they lost the bodily integrity in which God had
sustained them in original justice, and fell to a lower mode of existence,
so that human beings now live and die more like the other animals.
Fourth, we asked whether the soul, separated from the body by the
rupture of death, truly experiences death as a punishment. It might seem
that the soul finally finds in death its liberation, the angelic life that Adam
and Eve were seeking.We observed that death renders the soul less than it
should be.We contrasted this with the virtue of humility, to which pride
is opposed. Death exhibits the foolishness of Adam and Eve’s pride, by
60 Cf. the opening pages of Walker Percy’s Lost in the Cosmos: The Last Self-Help

Book (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1983).
61 ST II–II, q. 143, a. 1.

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deforming the human person in a manner analogous to the animal-like
deformations caused by disordered sense appetites for pleasure.
Concluding Reflections
In light of our examination of soul-body unity in Adam and Eve’s sin
according to Aquinas, what kind of account of soul and body serves human
liberation from sin? Specifically, how should we understand human
“biological rhythms” (HV, §3)? Can human beings heal their families and
societies by using their spiritual powers to overrule, through technology,
their bodily ordering? Recall the lengthy quotation from Humanae Vitae
that we discussed in the first section of this essay:
to make use of the gift of conjugal love while respecting the laws of the
generative process means to acknowledge oneself not to be the arbiter of
the sources of human life, but rather the minister of the design established
by the Creator. In fact, just as man does not have unlimited dominion
over his body in general, so also, with particular reason, he has no such
dominion over his generative faculties as such, because of their intrinsic
ordination towards raising up life, of which God is the principle. (§13)

Human bodily powers, just like human spiritual powers, have an “intrinsic ordination.”This intrinsic ordination means that “man does not have
unlimited dominion” either over his spiritual or his bodily powers. The
limits on this dominion come about because God has inscribed in these
powers a teleological ordering or “intrinsic ordination.”This ordering, as
original sin makes clear, is a unified one. In the act of volition of the
disordered soul, neither the rational appetite nor the sense appetites move
in accord with reason. Instead, just as the rational appetite now tends irrationally toward finite and created goods as its ultimate end, so also “the
inordinateness of the other powers of the soul consists chiefly in their
turning inordinately to mutable good; which inordinateness may be
called by the general name concupiscence.”62
The doctrine of original sin thus corresponds to the doctrine taught
by Humanae Vitae. Humanae Vitae upholds the view that human beings
cannot seek to overrule the bodily teleological ordering in body-soul
actions, to reject the bodily givens, without causing a disorder whose
consequences will deform human families and societies. This point,
N&V
indeed, is the lesson of original sin.

62 ST I-II, q. 82, a. 3.

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801

Toward an Understanding of Fruitfulness
A NTONIO L ÓPEZ , F.S.C.B.
John Paul II Institute
Washington, DC

P OPE PAUL VI’ S encyclical Humanae Vitae sought to encourage man
to live out “the highest vocation (munus) to fatherhood” (HV, §12) in the
living memory that “the source of conjugal love is God, who is ‘Love’ (1 Jn
4:18) and who is the Father ‘from whom all parenthood in heaven and
earth receives its name’ (Eph 3:15)” (HV, §8).The encyclical’s invitation to
embrace the highest call to parenthood responsibly (HV, §13) is truly
understood only if one sees that this responsibility of the spouses is first and
foremost their response to the permanent source of their love, the Father.
This response takes place in his Son, whose Spirit, the giver of life, enables
the spouses to encounter each other, to establish a communion of love that
is indwelt by His love, and to fulfill in ever new ways the promise contained
in their love.This paper seeks to show that spousal love is fruitful because
its form is filial. Spousal love is filial both because it ultimately and ongoingly comes from its source, the Triune God, and also because the Giver has
given, along with the gift, the capacity to give and to be fruitful. In this
sense, as we will see, the stern call to “responsible parenthood” is a tender
and courageous reminder that one can become father or mother only
because one is oneself always being begotten.
In order to illustrate how paternity and maternity are truly “responsible” when they are an expression of the filial form of conjugal love, we
will look first to an opposing view.We will see how some contemporary
theological reflection in the wake of Humanae Vitae builds upon an
anthropology in which the “person,” rather than being understood in
terms of childhood, is seen rather as an androgynous being with a selfdetermining, self-originated will, which takes its own autonomy as the
measure of love and its very fruitfulness. The term filiality, when it

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Antonio López, F.S.C.B.

appears at all, seldom moves beyond a nominalistic or voluntaristic sense.
Since it would be unrealistic to attempt to respond to the many voices
and views here, for the sake of clarity, the first part of the paper will be
limited to a critical examination of the influential work of M. G. Lawler.
In particular, we shall consider his understanding of the experience of
married love, which, in his view, requires a rejection of Humanae Vitae.
The second part, then, in an attempt to account for Humanae Vitae’s assertion that the “highest mission of parenthood” must be conceived and
lived in the memory of one’s own childhood, retrieves an adequate
conception of the experience of love that then grounds the particularly
spousal experience of love and its call to fruitfulness.This second section
will form the basis for the third section’s account of the meaning of fruitfulness and fecundity that is presupposed by the encyclical.
The Rhetoric of Experience
One of the many significant contributions of the Second Vatican Council grew out of its awareness of the modern dichotomy between life and
faith, man and God. In response to this perceived dichotomy, the Council appealed to man’s own “experience” to help him discover who he
really is (Gaudium et Spes, §21) and to remind him of his own familiarity
with the divine revealed mysteries (Dei Verbum, §8; GS, §13).1 Experience, so the Council claims, is a means of access to a unified knowledge
of oneself in relation to one’s own self, to the world, and to God. In so
doing, the Council’s insight benefited from the Magisterium’s critique of
the modernist understanding of experience and also retrieved a term that
the Church had regarded with suspicion since the council of Trent.2
Referring to many of the contributions of Vatican Council II, Lawler
ascribes great significance to the role experience plays in theological
reflection. His concept of experience, however, is sociologically interpreted to mean, simply, what it is that married couples live out and do.
According to Lawler, this experience lacks intrinsic meaning and its
1 See Alessandro Maggiolini, “Magisterial Teaching on Experience in the Twenti-

eth Century: From the Modernist Crisis to the Second Vatican Council,”
Communio: International Catholic Review 23 (1996): 225–43. See also Angelo
Bertuletti, “Il concetto di esperienza,” in L’evidenza e la Fede, ed. G. Colombo
(Milan: Glossa, 1988), 112–81.
2 Pius X, “Encyclical Pascendi,” in The Doctrines of the Modernists (The Encyclical
Pascendi of Pope Pius X) and Modernist Errors (The Decree Lamentabili of July 4,
1907), ed. L. Watt (London: Catholic Truth Society, 1937). Behind the retrieval
of the concept of experience also lies the reflection on the meaning of action.
See Maurice Blondel, L’action (1893). Essai d’une critique de la vie et d’une science
de la pratique (Paris: Quadrige/PUF, 1993).

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cultural interpretation is thus unavoidable.3 Faithfulness to the concrete
experience of married couples, which indicates the increase of divorce
and use of contraception, calls in Lawler’s view for a reconsideration (or
a re-reception, in his terms) of the meaning of fruitfulness and of the
Church’s declaration on contraception.4
To understand the meaning of fruitfulness in a way that does justice to
the data collected from the experience of married couples, says Lawler, it
is necessary to examine the conceptual framework according to which
fruitfulness is understood, that is, the theological reflection on the ends
of marriage and the undergirding conception of marriage itself. Lawler
sets out to ground his rejection of Humanae Vitae historically, but the
understanding of marriage he presents is limited to a primarily anthropological, rather than theologically grounded, perspective, and the reading he offers of the history of the development of doctrine regarding the
3 Lawler follows Rahner’s appreciation of pastoral theology and Lonergan’s theo-

logical method. See, for example, Michael G. Lawler, What Is and What Ought to
Be (New York: Continuum, 2005), 44–67.
4 “The sociological evidence,” says Lawler,“is clear: what is in virtually the whole
church is a re-reception of the doctrines of divorce and remarriage, and contraception. I further suggest that it is about past time to acknowledge theologically
and to teach magisterially that re-reception as not only what is but also what
ought to be the belief of the future church.” Later on he writes:“The question can
be put baldly here: How can anyone say that the church believes that artificial
contraception and remarriage after civil divorce and without annulment are
morally wrong when some 89 percent of the communion-church does not
believe the former and some 64 former percent does not believe the latter? . . .
[T]his does not prove anything theologically. It does however, raise questions that
converted theologians cannot ignore” (Lawler, What Is and What Ought to Be,
170). This book is Lawler’s methodological synthesis of his previous work. See
also his Marriage and the Catholic Church: Disputed Questions (Collegeville, MN:
The Liturgical Press, 2002); idem, Secular Marriage, Christian Sacrament:A Theology
of Christian Marriage (Mystic, CT: Twenty-Third Publications, 1985); idem,
Symbol and Sacrament: A Contemporary Sacramental Theology (Omaha, NE:
Creighton University Press, 1995); idem, Ecumenical Marriage and Remarriage:
Gifts and Challenges to the Churches (Mystic, CT: Twenty-Third Publications,
1990); Michael G. Lawler and Thomas J. Shanahan, Church:A Spirited Communion
(Collegeville, MN:The Liturgical Press, 1995); Center for Marriage and Family,
Marriage Preparation in the Catholic Church: Getting It Right (Omaha, NE:
Creighton University Press, 1995); Christian Marriage and Family: Contemporary
Theological and Pastoral Perspectives, eds. Michael G. Lawler and William P. Roberts
(Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 1996); Lawler, Family: American and
Christian (Chicago: Loyola Press, 1997); idem, Marriage and Sacrament: A Theology
of Christian Marriage (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 1993); Center for
Marriage and Family, Time, Sex, and Money: The First Five Years of Marriage
(Omaha, NE: Creighton University Press, 2000).

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Antonio López, F.S.C.B.

ends of marriage has far-reaching limitations.5 He determines that this
history can be classified according to three heuristic models. The first
model, extending from the second to the twentieth century, views
marriage as an institution whose raison d’être is procreation. In view of
Augustine’s conception of the goods of marriage and Aquinas’s reinterpretation of them as ends, Lawler contends that in this first model the
faithfulness of the spouses to each other (fides) and the indissolubility and
sacramentality of their union (sacramentum) are secondary to and dependent upon offspring.6 Lawler argues that this model is typified by the 1917
Code of Canon Law, which defines marriage as a contract in which “each
party gives and accepts a perpetual and exclusive right over the body for
acts which are of themselves suitable for the generation of children”

5 Lawler’s understanding of sacrament and of marriage relies heavily on Edward

Schillebeeckx. See his Christ the Sacrament of the Encounter with God (London:
Sheed and Ward, 1963); idem, Marriage: Human Reality and Saving Mystery, trans.
N. D. Smith (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1965); idem, “Christian Marriage and
the Reality of Complete Marital Breakdown,” in Catholic Divorce:The Deception of
Annulments, ed. Pierre Hegy and Joseph Martos (New York: Continuum, 2000),
82–107. See Lawler, Symbol and Sacrament, 5–62 and 176–215. Lawler does
mention Rahner’s understanding of God and pastoral theology but makes little
use of his concept of marriage and symbolic ontology. A less biased historical
account of marriage would have allowed him to see that the understanding of the
Church moves from the consideration of marriage as a state of life in dialogue
with virginity; to an elaboration of marriage as a sacrament, once the ages of the
persecutions passed and the Church had to define before the world what is
specific about her identity; through the controversies with the rising liberal state
that understood marriage exclusively as a contract on which the state had the final
say; to the contemporary understanding of marriage as sacrament and state of life.
For an account of the historical development of marriage, see among others: P.
Adnès, Le Mariage (Paris: Desclée, 1963); Christian Marriage: A Historical Study, ed.
Glenn W. Olsen (New York: Crossroads, 2001); Juan Francisco Muñoz García, El
matrimonio, misterio y signo, 5 vols. (Pamplona: EUNSA, 1971–1982). See John Paul
II, Man and Woman He Created Them: A Theology of the Body, trans. Michael Waldstein (Boston: Pauline Books and Media, 2006); Angelo Scola, The Nuptial
Mystery, trans. Michelle K. Borras (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2005); Marc
Ouellet, Divine Likeness.Toward a Trinitarian Anthropology of the Family, trans. Philip
Milligan and Linda Cicone (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2006).
6 Lawler, What Is, 153–64; idem, Marriage and the Catholic Church, 27–42. Augustine, De Bono Coniugali (PL 40), bk. 1. Aquinas has a more nuanced understanding of the ends of marriage than Lawler’s account might seem to grant. See his
Commentary on the Sentences IV, dd. 26–42; Supplementum, qq. 41–68; and Summa
contra Gentiles III, 123–26, 137; IV, 78. Bonaventure’s treatment of marriage in his
Commentary on the Sentences IV, dd. 26–29, is also useful here.

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(canon §1081, 2).7 This is true, but Lawler does not elaborate here on the
difference between canon law’s normative authority to define and distinguish, which is one thing, and its role in developing theological reflection, which cannot be reductively equated with his necessarily spare and
seemingly clinical definitions. Reacting to, among other things, the
Lambeth Conference’s approval of the morality of artificial contraception, and drawing on Dietrich von Hildebrand and Heribert Doms’s
personalistic reflections on marriage, Lawler contends that Pius XI’s Casti
Connubii (1930) “introduced for the first time in theological history a
new ecclesial doctrine, namely procreation as the end of sexual intercourse rather than the end of marriage.”8 With this second stage, says
Lawler, the Church moved from a procreative model of marriage to one
of procreative-union. Here the conjugal union takes precedence over the
offspring, which is reduced to a “part” of married life. On this reading of
marriage, the discussion regarding the nature of marriage begins to veer
away from the “ends” of the conjugal act toward its nature.9 The final
stage took place with Gaudium et Spes, a constitution which, according to
Lawler, proposes “an entirely new and previously unheard-of Catholic
model of marriage, a model of interpersonal union.”10 Lawler notes that
Gaudium et Spes examines the nature of marriage without using the
language of ends and hierarchy, and thus abandons the prior legalistic,
narrowly biological model of marriage. He defines what he means by
“interpersonal union” first by reducing the discourse on marriage to the
place and meaning of the conjugal union in married life, and then by
7 See, for example, Lawler, Marriage and the Catholic Church, 92–117. For the discus-

sion of marriage as a contract, see Carlo Caffarra, “Marriage as a Reality in the
Order of Creation and Marriage as a Sacrament,” in Contemporary Perspectives on
Christian Marriage, ed. Richard Malone and John R. Connery, S.J. (Chicago:
Loyola University Press, 1984), 117–80.
8 D. von Hildebrand and H. Doms are the two most frequently cited sources in
Lawler’s description of the “personalistic turn.”
9 Lawler, What Is, 157.Theological reflection on marriage has moved from focusing its attention on the ends of marriage to studying the meaning of the conjugal act.The discussion regarding the ends has disappeared in a world that can no
longer understand the meaning of causality and participation. Consequently, the
debate has been reduced to the discussion of the meaning of the conjugal union.
While this reflection, enhanced by a deeper knowledge of biology and a retrieval
of the concept of person, has brought crucial insights to the reflection on
marriage, as we will see in section three, it is necessary to incorporate the anthropological, Christological, Trinitarian, ecclesiological, sacramental, and nuptial
dimensions of marriage to offer an adequate account of the meaning of conjugal love.
10 Lawler, What Is, 158; idem, Marriage and the Catholic Church, 33–37.

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Antonio López, F.S.C.B.

seeking to enlarge this horizon by explaining that the “interpersonal
covenant,” which is the married “communion of life and love” (GS, §48),
consists of many other aspects.11 According to this third model, typified
in the revised Canon Law (1987), what counts in marriage, then, is not
so much the presence of children but rather the love that the spouses
share with each other. An examination of Lawler’s conception of the
human body and the meaning of love can help us understand the way he
accounts for the relation between conjugal union and offspring.
This third model moves away from a too narrow identification of
sexuality with genitality, which by definition is unable to distinguish
human from subhuman sexuality, toward a concept of sexuality specific
to the human person who is “a spiritual animal, vitalized by a human
soul.” Lawler argues that experience witnesses to the fact that conjugal
union, more than the fusion of two bodies, is the fusion of two ensouled
bodies, two persons. This, for Lawler, means that “the primary end of
sexual intercourse is the marital union between the spouses,” and not
procreation.12 “To get really real about sexuality and sexual activity in the
modern world, the exclusive connection between sexual intercourse and
procreation,” therefore,“has to be abandoned.”13 The fact that the conjugal acts of infertile couples or those acts that take place during times of
nonfertility still preserve their intrinsic goodness—which is more than
merely a remedy for concupiscence—makes it clear, says Lawler, that the
conjugal union should be viewed under this personalistic reading.
Specifying that he does not diminish the importance of offspring,
Lawler argues that the persons and their mutual love are what determine
the nature of marriage. Conjugal union expresses nuptial, personal intimacy, pleasure, and at times, though not necessarily always, is also a means
for reproduction. In this view, fruitfulness has to do first and foremost with
the well-being of the couple, their “spiritual communion.”14 This split
11 Lawler, What Is, 162; idem, Marriage and the Catholic Church, 36.
12 Lawler, Marriage and the Catholic Church, 35.
13 Ibid., 177. This separation between sex and procreation also justifies cohabita-

tion, which, according to Lawler, should be open to offspring. See ibid., 162–92.
Karol Wojtyla and Angelo Scola, among others, also seek to integrate a personal
understanding of the conjugal act.Their studies, however, arrive at the inseparability of the three different elements forming the nuptial mystery: unity, sexual
difference, procreation. See K.Wojtyla, Love and Responsibility, trans. H.T.Willetts
(San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1993), 224–44; and Scola, Nuptial Mystery, 3–52.
14 It is true, as Lawler indicates, that it is the love of the spouses that matters most
for the offspring. The reciprocal love of the parents is crucial for the education
of their children. See Lawler, Family, 166–75; idem, Marriage and Sacrament, 69ff.
Nevertheless, emphasizing this point to the extent of breaking the intrinsic link

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between the personal and the biological/genital dimensions of sexuality,
however, indicates that the sexed body only partially expresses the person.
The dichotomy here between the personal and the biological in spousal
procreativity reaches its logical conclusion in Lawler’s affirmation that, as
the experience of “monogamous, loving, committed homosexual relationships” witnesses, there is no need to contend “that personal complementarity can only be realized in and through genital complementarity.”15 The
bodily union of the “one flesh” is personal before it is biological/genital,
which means that the union could include both heterosexual and homosexual persons. Deprived of any ontological depth, sexuality, according to
Lawler, now has a primarily cultural meaning and its right use consequently depends on the sexual orientation of the person—an orientation
which he sees as innate and therefore normative.16 His
between the proles and the spousal love handicaps Lawler’s conception of the
relation between conjugal love and offspring. This relation is crucial because
fecundity is a dimension of unity, not its outcome. In this regard, there is much
talk about the meaning of fruitfulness in Lawler’s work, but reflection on the
meaning of childhood is basically absent.This lack contributes to the incomplete
character of the understanding of marriage’s fruitfulness underlying Lawler’s
account.A very interesting account of the consequence for children of this division between conjugal love and proles, which is at the root of so many divorces,
can be seen in Elizabeth Marquardt’s sociologically grounded work, Between Two
Worlds:The Inner Lives of Children of Divorce (New York:Three Rivers Press, 2005).
15 Todd A. Salzman and Michael G. Lawler,“New Natural Law Theory and Foundational Sexual Ethical Principles: A Critique and a Proposal,” Heythrop Journal
47 (2006): 182–205. For a similar reflection, see also their “Quaestio Disputata.
Catholic Sexual Ethics: Complementarity and the Truly Human,” Theological
Studies 67 (2006): 625–52. A few years earlier Rowan Williams reached the same
conclusion. See his “The Body’s Grace,” in Theology and Sexuality: Classic and
Contemporary Readings, ed. Eugene Rogers (Oxford: Blackwell, 2002), 309–21.
16 For Lawler, sexuality, in fact, could mean “either security through fertility or role
definition or cooperation with God in a sacred created activity” (Symbol and
Sacrament, 178). Another important consequence of this proposal of the body’s
incapacity to adequately express the person is Lawler’s conviction that a single
conjugal act does not fully communicate personal love. He claims that a marriage
is “consummated” only after several years of common life together, in which the
spouses have had numerous occasions to physically express a loving unity and to
share life together. See, among others, Lawler, Symbol and Sacrament, 202–3; idem,
Marriage and the Catholic Church, 100–101; idem, Secular Marriage, 82, 109.While
it is true that history deepens love and that the human soul cannot be identified
with the body, Lawler’s principle of totality, according to which married life is
seen as a whole with a loose connection to its parts, evacuates the meaning of a
single conjugal act and hence is unable to adequately account for incarnate
human freedom. In the natural language of the body the spiritual word of love
expresses itself with precision and freedom in bodily form.

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Antonio López, F.S.C.B.
personalist interpretation of genital complementarity, which sees the
physical genitals as organs of the whole person, including his or her
sexual orientation, allows [him] to expand the definition of the natural, reasonable, and therefore moral sexual act to include both heterosexuals and homosexuals.17

Lawler approaches love in its three aspects as eros, agape, and philia. In
terms of the place within married love of eros, “that rambunctious, irrational, and selfish component of human love,” Lawler says that “when it
dominates there is never mutuality and equality; there is only the selfish
drive to dominate and to use.”18 Nevertheless, and without playing down
the erotic dimension, Lawler writes that spousal love is, first of all, agape.
Spouses love each other for their own sake.Agapic love considers the other
as equal to oneself and hence married love, to be true and human, must be
perfectly symmetrical. Lawler’s theological reflection is unable to come out
from under the shadow of the theology of the manuals. His treatment of
canon law remains legalistic, and here he reads agapic love predominantly
through the virtue of justice and the lens of equality.To affirm any difference between the spouses is seen as unjustly pitting the one against the
other and as leading inevitably to hierarchical subservience.19 The human
person is conceived as an individual who first possesses certain inviolable
rights, and then at a second moment freely decides to enter into marriage
and let his “I” become a “We.”20 For Lawler, agapic love is therefore mainly
17 Salzman and Lawler, “New Natural Law Theory,” 198. It is important to note

that the concept of person, as a unity of body and soul, does not inform Lawler’s
conception of the conjugal act. His texts leave the reader wondering in what way
the soul informs the body. The anthropology he presents identifies conception
with (animal) reproduction and the personal with the unitive dimension of
conjugal love. In this view, then, the body is a neutral instrument of the personal
will that seeks union with another human person.
18 Lawler, Marriage and Sacrament, 100.
19 I am not lobbying, of course, for a separation of justice and love, and I recognize
Lawler’s claim to ground equality in man’s image of the divine. However, it is
important to consider the relation between love and justice carefully.To think of
love in terms of justice, and to do so without critically sifting “justice” from, e.g.,
its common distributive conception, leads to an identification of love with power.
The relation with another, then, always remains dialectic, equivocal, or questionable. See Lawler, Marriage and Sacrament, 98–102; idem, Christian Marriage and the
Family, 22ff. For a reflection on the circularity between justice and love, see John
Paul II, Dives in Misericordia; idem, Dominum et Vivificantem.The last section of this
paper suggests a more adequate framework for the understanding of love.
20 While it is true that the spouses are equal since they are created in the image of
God, as we shall see in the third section, the claim of radical symmetry between
the spouses eliminates the notion of difference between male and female, which

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a love of friendship, which alone “can mandate the reciprocal consent to
love.” “Why,” asks Lawler, “would a man and a woman freely choose to
yield their individual rights and become a coupled-We for life? A short
answer is because they wish to be best friends for life.”21 While it is true
that love seeks only to affirm the other while allowing oneself to be
defined by the beloved, Lawler’s understanding of love does not only set
aside any discourse on “the ends of marriage”; it results in making the
goods of marriage extrinsic to love itself. Procreation, faithfulness, and
sacramentality, in this view, always simply follow a free decision of the
person and are subordinate to man’s initiative. Indeed, they enrich human
married love but they do not constitute an integral part of it; their presence or absence does not affect the nature of love.22
In fact, Lawler contends that these heuristic models do not claim to
define the “nature” of married love. A theoretical model “is an imaginative
construct, postulated by analogy with a familiar reality and used to construct
a theory to correlate a set of observations.” At the Second Vatican Council,
Lawler tells us, the Church changed her way of accounting for the reality of
marriage, because the cultural, sociological, political, and economic context
of marriage had changed. Lawler’s theology therefore seeks to correlate the
present experience (of marriage) with the theological tradition while maintaining their equal status.23 Theology is empirical—not deductive or upheld
by a metaphysics, he says, because “experience and not ontology makes reality”24; correlational—it does not look for causes but for a relation between
past and present that gives equal importance to both; and probabilistic—
seeking for certainty would be form of a-historical thinking that lacked the
necessary integration of sociology and theology.What these models claim to
then reappears in the guise of unjust inequality. Lawler’s conception of person
can also be found in Lawler, Christian Marriage and the Family, 38–58; idem,
Symbol and Sacrament, 201–9; idem, Secular Marriage, 59–61; idem, Marriage and the
Catholic Church, 43–65, 162–92.
21 Lawler, Marriage and the Catholic Church, 154.The long answer is his re-examination of the doctrine regarding the ends of marriage. See also idem, Marriage and
Sacrament, 98–104; idem, Christian Marriage and the Family, 22–28, 32–33.
22 Granted, my comments presume the existence of this or that “nature”; on the
opposing view, of there being no such thing as nature, it becomes possible to
defend divorce and cohabitation, along with contraception.
23 Lawler, embracing Rahner’s theory of the supernatural existential, contends that
present experience can and does illumine tradition and past theological reflection because our present is “graced.”This, according to him, means that contemporary experience has equal status with tradition; any experience is, in this sense,
revelatory. This is why he rejects Tillich’s and Tracy’s understanding of correlation. See Lawler, What Is, 1–24 and 77–88.
24 Ibid., 48.

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Antonio López, F.S.C.B.

do, then, is to be faithful to the reality of marriage as it is experienced by
believers and nonbelievers alike. None of the models, not even the interpersonal one, claims to account exhaustively for the empirical data
collected by sociological sciences. They remain open-ended and their
validity resides in their capacity “to explain all the observations that [they]
seek to explain.”25
Lawler claims that the existence of different models of marriage does
not presuppose a relativistic theology. Rather, multiple models must exist
because God is an unfathomable mystery. Following Rahner’s interpretation of God, Lawler believes that no theological or sociological attempt
to account for the reality of marriage can claim to pronounce definitively
on that human and divine reality. The historical development of these
models is a sign of scientific progress. Although it is not the final word
on marriage, the interpersonal model is the most accurate evaluation of
the sociologically retrieved data on the experience of married life
produced by the Church.26 Lawler contends that Gaudium et Spes’s interpersonal model as he reads it should guide the way married couples live
their intimate communion of life and love.27 What married couples
within the ecclesial community do, however, is more than just the living
out of Christian doctrine as designed by theologians. The ecclesial
community shapes and generates doctrine. Lawler’s understanding of the
Church as communio—that is, the Church is neither a “democracy” nor a
“monarchy” but rather a “super-diocese”—leads him to argue that the
members of the Church must freely receive a doctrine “presented to
[them] as apostolic truth and ecclesial faith,” after “critical judgment of
the data.”This reception has to do with the relevance or irrelevance of a
teaching, not its truth. Lawler contends that only if it is considered relevant, can a teaching be taken as part of the belief of the Church, though
25 Lawler, Marriage and the Catholic Church, 28–29.
26 This quote may help in grasping his understanding of the complementarity of

theology and sociology: “for the theological prescription of what ought to be to be
realistic it should be preceded by the sociological description of what is. Karl Rahner
puts it well.The task of practical theology is both description and evaluation of the
present world and ecclesial situation. For description, theology relies on social
science; for evaluation of the present situation, theology distills this description in
the still of ecclesial and theological perspective” (Lawler, What Is, 42).
27 “The action required by the interpersonal union model is quite different: the
procreation and nurturing of the relationship between the spouses, a relationship
that is mutually loving, faithful, self-sacrificing, just, companionate, forgiving, and
peaceful. In a marriage, the time to procreate children is when the spousal relationship is sound and the climate, therefore, right for the procreation of children
and their positive nurture into functioning adults” (Lawler, Marriage and the
Catholic Church, 38).

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he offers only the sociological reading of experience as a criterion for
judging “relevancy.”28
In this understanding, the interpersonal model of marriage, however,
is still in the process of being-received by the Church. Echoing an early
critique of Humanae Vitae, Lawler claims that Paul VI’s encyclical represents a step back because, unlike the interpersonal reading of marriage, it
still proposes the biologistic, procreative reading. Humanae Vitae, then,
could not be seen as in continuity with Gaudium et Spes. Contrary to
what Paul VI thought, Lawler considers “the majority report” as the judgment that is truly faithful to the Conciliar doctrine on marriage. Had
Paul VI allowed the Council to decide on this moral issue, the outcome
would have been altogether different. Lawler contends that, as was the
case with usury, slavery, and religious freedom, the current official position of the Church on contraception as expressed in Humanae Vitae has
not been received.29 Since the rejection or “re-reception” of Humanae
Vitae does “not make the traditional teaching necessarily false,” what
matters, says Lawler, is to see that Humanae Vitae is utterly “irrelevant to
the life of the whole church, a theological fact that has been abundantly
documented by sociological research.”30 He claims that “what is,”—i.e.,
what happens—“ought to be the belief of the future Church.”31 This
conclusive statement in Lawler’s recent work leaves the reader wondering whether Lawler’s heuristic models and use of experience end up, in
fact, doing what he claims they do not, namely, defining the nature of
married love and fruitfulness. The alternative is to reduce “belief ” to
sheer opinion.
An attentive comparison of the two documents, however, reveals that
Humanae Vitae continues and deepens the doctrine on marriage found in
Gaudium et Spes.32 Both see marriage as originating from God who is
Love (GS, §48; HV, §8); describe marriage as a communion of persons
constituted by the self-gift of the spouses (GS, §49; HV, §8); elucidate the
28 Lawler, What Is, 121. “The past,” writes Lawler “is always re-appropriated or re-

received in the church.” See also idem, Church for his ecclesiological reflection.
29 Lawler, What Is, 127–29.
30 Ibid., 163.
31 If relevance and reception are the main criteria, one can still ask what the rejec-

tion of Christ’s message and his death on the cross in utter abandonment would
mean for Christ’s claim to truth. Ultimately, it seems that Lawler’s theological
methodology, with its consequent understanding of marriage, despite its claim to
be concrete and compassionate, is unable to shed any significant light on the
problem of evil and suffering experienced in every married life.
32 The following comments follow Alain Mattheeuws, Union et procréation. Développments de la doctrine des fins du mariage (Paris: Cerf, 1989), 124–31.

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Antonio López, F.S.C.B.

meaning of the conjugal act in positive terms and determine that it is
ordered to expressing and enhancing the union of the spouses (GS, §49;
HV, §11); and clarify that by nature marriage is ordered to the procreation and education of children (GS, §§48, 50; HV, §10–2). It is true that
Gaudium et Spes indicates that marriage “is not instituted solely for
procreation” (GS, §50); yet it also clarifies that the morality of the conjugal acts “does not depend solely on sincere intentions or on an evaluation of motives, but must be determined by objective standards” (GS,
§51). Humanae Vitae sees the unitive and procreative dimensions of conjugal love as those “objective standards” and calls them “two essential
dimensions of the conjugal act” (HV, §12).What Humanae Vitae does that
Gaudium et Spes does not, is to draw out the moral implications contained
in the ontology of the person and of love presented in Gaudium et Spes.33
Where is the step backward that Lawler regrets? If we have understood
Lawler correctly, his judgment that Humanae Vitae reinstates a previously
overcome, inadequate model of marriage, is simply a fundamental
disagreement between his own understanding of experience and love and
that of the Council. Humanae Vitae therefore brings to light this fundamental misinterpretation of the Council. Lawler’s anthropology rests on
a presumption that offspring, faithfulness, indissolubility, and sacramentality are ultimately extrinsic to the very experience of conjugal love. Let us
now look at an elaboration of an anthropology that seeks to take into
account those factors.
The Discovery of the Self
While the reigning confusion about the meaning of experience should
warn us to be cautious, the term nevertheless remains indispensable when
the meaning of person and of love is at stake.34 Man discovers through
experience who he is.35 Given the purpose of this essay, we will limit
33 This is further proved by the speech of Paul VI to the Equipes of Notre-Dame

in 1970 and by John Paul II’s work on theology of the body. Lawler does not
provide any sustained engagement with John Paul’s theology of the body, which
is an important missing element in his treatment of marriage.
34 See, e.g., Karol Wojtyla, The Acting Person, trans. Andrzej Ptocki (Boston: D.
Reidel Publishing Company, 1979); Giovani Paolo II, Uomo e donna lo creò. Catechesi sull’amore umano (Rome: Città Nuova, 2001), 5–24.
35 As recent moral theologians have demonstrated, every moral experience regards not
only the “what” but, intrinsically connected to this, the “who am I?” See, for example, Servais Pinckaers, O.P., The Sources of Christian Ethics, trans. Sr. Mary Thomas
Noble (Washington, DC:The Catholic University of America Press, 1995); 48–50;
Livio Melina, José Noriega, and Juan José Pérez-Soba, Una luz para el obrar. Experiencia moral, caridad y acción cristiana (Madrid: Palabra, 2006), 29–67, 84–98.

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ourselves to a few considerations on the meaning of human experience,
following J. Mouroux’s work, in order to offer an alternative reading to
Lawler’s and to ground an adequate understanding of fecundity.36
Mouroux seeks to show that “experience” is the person’s incarnate,
affective awareness of his historical and dramatic relation with the
antecedent, symbolic, and non-intrusive self-manifestation of being’s
truth through reality. “Experience” refers then to man’s totalizing and
lived encounter and relation with the one who alone is, the one who is
the divine mystery. This encounter has its beginning with God and not
with man—who finds himself always already in relation with the
mystery—and is always a mediated one: either through the symbolic
richness of reality, or the presence of a witness—the other seen as a sacrament of God.37 The sense of immediacy frequently ascribed to experience refers to the person’s being freely engaged in this encounter, not to
a gnostic “direct presence.”38 Despite its indispensable relevance, it is
crucial to acknowledge that experience is not the final, all-encompassing
horizon. Experience presupposes but does not encompass either the
person’s life or the divine mystery—and the latter in a twofold sense:
experience is unable to exhaust God and incapable of grasping God in
36 Jean Mouroux (1901–1973) reflected deeply on Aquinas and was also in dialogue

with other significant French theologians, including de Lubac, Danielou,
Blondel, and Rousselot. On the topic of experience, his was a lone positive voice
between the Modernist Crisis and the Second Vatican Council. It did, however,
open up a path for reflection that many have followed. See, among others, Hans
Urs von Balthasar, The Glory of the Lord: A Theological Aesthetics, vol. 1, Seeing the
Form, trans. Erasmo Leiva-Merikakis (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1983); Joseph
Ratzinger, Principles of Catholic Theology: Building Stones for a Fundamental Theology, trans. Sr. Mary Francis McCarthy (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1987),
343–55; Luigi Giussani, The Risk of Education: Discovering Our Ultimate Destiny,
trans. Rosanna Giammanco Frongia (New York: The Crossroad Publishing
Company, 2001), 98–102. For the present purpose I would like to mention these
works by Mouroux: Sens chrétien de l’homme (Paris:Aubier, 1945); idem, Je crois en
Toi. Structure personelle de la foi (1949; Paris: Du Cerf, 1966) (English translation:
Jean Mouroux, I Believe: The Personal Structure of Faith [New York: Sheed and
Ward, 1959]); idem, L’expérience chrétienne. Introduction à une théologie
(Paris:Aubier, 1952) (English translation: Jean Mouroux,The Christian Experience:
An Introduction to Theology, trans. George Lamb [New York: Sheed and Ward,
1954]); and idem, Le mystère du Temps (Paris: Aubier, 1962).
37 For faith as knowledge by way of a witness see, e.g.,Augustine, De fide rerum quae
non videntur (PL, 40); Le témoignage, ed. Enrico Castelli (Paris: Aubier, 1972).
38 Even the immediacy proper to mystical experience is not lacking in a sense of
mediation. Since God is Triune, one “sees” the Father in the Son through the
Holy Spirit. To advocate an absolute lack of mediation would entail a rejection
of Trinitarian theology and of metaphysics.

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himself.39 Since it is inexplicable without its relation to God, human
experience is always religious experience.
Experience exists so that man, who is a communal being, might grow
as a person by living his constitutive relation with God. Experience, then,
is essentially dynamic and historical.The encounter with God by way of
a historical witness that happens gratuitously, and which in a sense is
always already taking place, bespeaks a relation whose fulfillment is
prophetically present in the historical circumstances but whose final form
cannot be deduced from those circumstances or from man’s own desires.
This dynamic movement that characterizes human experience, however,
does not mean that historical development determines human nature.
Rather, on the one hand, man is born, is given to himself, is a self from
the beginning, and has the task to be and become himself.40 On the
other hand, as his own sexed bodiliness witnesses, this task is undertaken
always within his being-given and cannot be completed by his own
means. Human experience, then, refers to the growing awareness of a
path originated by the encounter with Another through a witness, a path
whose goal is the personalization of the human being.41 Given that
Christian experience is the unexpected fulfillment of human and religious experience in the divine mystery made present in Christ—that
sacrament of the Father in whose light one is able to read and understand
every other experience—in theological terms we could say that growth
into humanity is both the indwelling of the Trinity in the believer and
the participation in the communion of saints, a participation which
makes of the human person a truly anima ecclesiastica.
The depersonalization of experience, that is, the contraction of experience to its objective or subjective pole, rather than seeing it as the lived
encounter in which two subjects know each other, is its most drastic
reduction.42 According to Moroux, the empiricist and idealist interpretations are the two common forms this reduction takes.Whereas the idealist reading considers experience a sheer construct of the subject, the
empiricist sees experience as what is simply lived out by a passive subject
who does not critically assess what happens to him. On this reading,
simple, direct contact guarantees knowledge, as though the living out of
39 Mouroux, L’expérience chrétienne, 369.This second incapability also secures man’s

impossibility of knowing that he is in a state of grace.
40 Mouroux, L’expérience chrétienne, 19–24; Giussani, The Risk of Education, 98–99.
41 See Mouroux, Je crois en Toi.
42 In this regard the subjectivistic, emotivistic, and idealistic reductions of experi-

ence are ultimately a rejection of the dialogical nature of the person that is itself
in relation with another. See Mouroux, L’expérience chrétienne, 19.

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something were identical with awareness of its meaning.43 Emotions, feelings, and whatever else one undergoes become the essential content of
human experience. In a manner consistent with this reading, Lawler and
other contemporary theologians characterize the Magisterium’s theological method as an artificial deduction and imposition of ethical norms
from a priori ethical principles or abstract metaphysical reflections, without taking into serious account the real and lived experience of actual
men and women.The Church, it is claimed, tends to offer a limited and
self-referential theology that is unwilling to listen to the voices of concrete
individuals because it fears having to change its position on, for example,
contraception, divorce, or homosexuality. Lawler says that by not paying
attention to human experience, the Church ends up either blocking
doctrinal development or elaborating ethical norms that are unreal and
incoherent.The Church, he claims, has always defended marriage’s indissolubility but, de facto, has rarely followed her own understanding.44
43 In this light, many contemporary theologians believe that lived married experience

grants their theoretical reflection an a priori authority over that of consecrated
people.This claim, however, misunderstands the nature of love and the structure of
experience. Experience of conjugal love does not coincide with lived conjugal love.
The former is the historical, growing, affective awareness of the origin, meaning,
depth, and telos of the latter (in this regard experience cannot be identified with a
knowledge by connaturality either).To identify conjugal love with the experience
of it amounts to imposing on love a logos that is extrinsic to it and hence unable to
give itself through the experience of love. It is not a coincidence that, e.g., Lawler’s
critique of Humanae Vitae disregards the encyclical’s numerous references to the
“concrete” experience of love. Furthermore, the dichotomy that these authors
baldly presume between married and consecrated life is rooted in a reductive
understanding of virginity as lack of sexual activity and in an identification of
virginity with life of singlehood. If virginity is the eschatological anticipation of the
way eros and agape come together in God’s love, an anticipation offered to man by
the Crucified Risen Christ, then conjugal love finds its truth and not its negating
opposite in it.These theological reflections on marriage tend to conceive the conjugal and virginal states of life apart from the logos of agape brought by Christ, whose
contribution to man’s experience of love is therefore reduced to a moral enhancement.The incapacity to see the integral relation between virginity and married life
and the existence of both in Christ’s form of love leads ultimately to marriage’s loss
of any horizon able to transcend and hence embrace and enlarge the married experience of love. See Lawler, Symbol and Sacrament, 201–15; Lisa S. Cahill,“Marriage:
Developments in Catholic Theology and Ethics,” Theological Studies 64 (2003):
78–105; Kenneth R. Himes and James A. Coriden, “The Indissolubility of
Marriage: Reasons to Reconsider,” Theological Studies 65 (2004): 453–99; Stephen
Pope, “The Magisterium’s Arguments Against ‘Same-Sex-Marriage’: An Ethical
Analysis and Critique,” Theological Studies 65 (2004): 530–65.
44 Lawler, What Is, 144–53; Himes and Coriden,“The Indissolubility of Marriage,”
498–99.

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Although it is true that one “learns from experience,” it is important
to realize that Lawler’s claim—that the experience of many married
couples and how they live out their marriages should bring about a
reconsideration of doctrine—is the conclusion of a deductive methodology based on an anthropology and a metaphysics that themselves contradict experience.45 Conceiving God more as an a-personal, unfathomable
mystery rather than a Trinitarian communion of persons, and hence
consciously self-limiting the nature of experience, Lawler’s system postulates a notion of person as an androgynous singlehood that determines
himself and his own bodiliness out of his free choices.To claim that the
experience of conjugal love (as revealed by sociological research) is sufficient grounds for a reconception of doctrine is to introduce into the
experience of married couples a concept of the person and his relation
to God that does not respect what experience makes evident about either
of them.46
Looking now at the experience of love—which is not merely one of
many experiences that the human being may have, but rather the privileged place given to man to discover himself and the meaning of the
whole—will help us to see that the logos of agape gives itself to be known
from within the experience of love, and cannot be imposed on it from
the outside as one of many possible models. The experience of love is
always an experience of creatureliness and hence it is called to enter into
the logos that offers itself as agape. Participation in the logos of agape, as
we will see in the next section, offers man the possibility of experiencing true fruitfulness. In this regard, the experience of evil—for instance,
45 It is therefore insufficient to state, as Lawler does, that experience offers data and

that meaning is mediated culturally. Meaning, which always has a cultural dimension, is offered to the human person from within experience itself and, although
it is greater than one’s experience, it is not extrinsic to it.
46 Mouroux cogently shows that experience has three meanings: empirical, experimental, and existential. The first refers to what happens to man, what he
perceives through sense knowledge.The second refers instead to the measurable
data upon which science is built. In his summary of Mouroux’s concept of experience, J. Ratzinger comments that whereas empirical experience refers to the
Aristotelian and Thomistic “nihil in intellectu nisi in sensu,” the experiential
refers to the Platonic “nihil in sensu nisi per intellectum.” Ratzinger follows W.
Beinert in explaining “experiential” as “existential” experience. See Ratzinger,
Principles of Catholic Theology, 346–50.Yet if life is greater than experience, and life
shows that the human being is a person inasmuch as he lives his relation with
God through concrete historical circumstances, then the previous two levels are
subsumed in and ordered to the “experiential” or existential level. Experience,
Mouroux claims, must be taken in all its personal totality; and this totality
includes having being created by a Triune God who is Love.

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817

the case of abusive parents—and its consequent theological and anthropological distortions of the meaning and experience of love, can indeed
impede an adequate interpretation of one’s own experience.Yet these are
distortions of what things are.Things as such can be understood only in
light of a proper ontology and anthropology.The reduction of the experience of love to the empiricist-experimental level, and the relegation of
the “experiential” level to culturally determined extrinsic models, do not
do justice to experience because they prevent the logos borne by experience itself from speaking. My claim, however, is that to understand the
experience of married love, one must see it within the form of love experienced by the child with his or her parents.The natural relation between
childhood and marriage will help us to see the relation between natural
and sacramental love and the relation between baptism and the sacrament
of marriage.
The initial experience of human love, first of all, indicates that love
itself precedes and enables one’s encounter with it. A child is conceived
in love: within that love he begins to be aware of his own difference with
respect to those to whom it has been given to exist, as it has been given
to himself to exist.The wonderful recognition of one’s own having been
invited to exist, as John Paul II beautifully explains, is awakened through
man’s own nuptial body, the sacrament of his very person, in his
encounter with the other.47 Love not only awakens the self through the
nuptial body, but also entrusts this wonderful recognition to the parents’
and the child’s freedom. It is only, as Ferdinand Ulrich says, if the
father and mother enter a priori into the modesty of the finite, that the
child may experience them positively as parents in the first place. The
child can receive himself from his parents as a “gift to himself,” his existence can be something that is thanked for, only through their Yes to
the difference, which can never be closed, between the finite origin
that they are and the infinite origin.48

If the parents accept that difference, then the child’s encounter with love
through the maternal embrace will reveal not only that love (and life) is
beautiful (it gives itself to be seen), good (it gives itself) and true (it does
not deceive). It also makes the child aware that his gratitude is finally to
47 John Paul II, Man and Woman He Created Them, 13:1. See also Adrian J. Walker,

“On ‘Rephilosophizing’ Theology,” Communio: International Catholic Review 31
(2004): 143–67.
48 Ferdinand Ulrich, Der Mensch als Anfang. Zur philosophischen Anthropologie der Kindheit (Einsiedeln: Johannes Verlag, 1970), 77–78.

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be offered to the ultimate paternal Source from which he comes.49 This
encounter with love allows the child to discover that his very self exists
always already only within love, and that all his creativity will be an
expression of his having been handed into existence. Experience witnesses
that the human person is a gift whose free participation in the gratuitous
and paternal source makes the person be.
The encounter with Love that precedes and offers itself to the freedom of the child, but without determining its answer, contains within
itself the promise that what is given will remain and grow.What is given,
however, is not some-thing but a communion with someone. The
encounter with love reveals not only that a person comes from someone,
and is this dialogue with the Source in and through the witness, but that
love is a communion of persons. As experienced in childhood, the presence of the other—in this case the parents—is not a threat to an abstract
independence but the promise of communion.50 The encounter with the
beloved contains the same prophecy.
Experience is not only the continuous introduction into a love that is
always greater. The promise of communion also brings to light another
element that is crucial for understanding the awareness proper to experience: a true experience of love, and hence every experience, is always
an experience of conversion. Such conversion is not a breakthrough to
power, as E. Johnson would contend, but rather a renunciation of one’s
own self-will for the sake of the other.51 Experience teaches that the true
form of love is one in which the affirmation of oneself is given in terms
of an affirmation of the other as the meaning of one’s own existence.The
surrender, therefore, is a true death to the egotistic self that seeks to
impose its own little measure on love—even if the beloved agrees with
this measure. Ultimately this surrender is to Love itself, a conversion to
the Origin with and through the witness. If the ultimate horizon of
experience were not Love itself, the surrender to another would alienate
the self. At the same time, if it were not through and with a witness,
history and the cosmos would be meaningless.

49 Hans Urs von Balthasar, The Glory of the Lord: A Theological Aesthetics, vol. 5, The

Realm of Metaphysics in the Modern Age, trans. Oliver Davies et al. (San Francisco:
Ignatius Press, 1991), 613–27.
50 Livio Melina, José Noriega, and Juan José Pérez-Soba, La plenitud del obrar cristiano:
dinámica de la acción y perspectiva teológica de la moral (Madrid: Palabra, 2001), 345–77.
51 Elizabeth Johnson, She Who Is:The Mystery of God in Feminist Theological Discourse
(New York: Crossroad, 2005), 61–67.

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819

The experience of love bears within itself both the mark of childhood
and that of the Cross.The former indicates that the person has received
everything as a gift, himself first and foremost. This having received
himself releases the child into a spontaneous self transcendence. In this
way he imitates the love that has generated him and gradually discovers
that the mark of the Cross is integral to the gift of self. As revealed in
Christ, and as human experience intuits, this giving of oneself for the
other’s sake has Love itself as its adequate measure.The experience of the
filial form of love—that is, human love as authentically existing within
the preceding divine love, in the movement of conversion toward its
permanent source, through the acceptance and abandoning of oneself to
the promise of communion and fruitfulness that the encounter with the
other person conveys—remains at the core of married love (Gn 2:24).
Bearing in mind this filial nature of the experience of love, we can now
ponder the meaning of marriage’s fruitfulness.
The Child’s Fatherhood
Lawler seems to perceive spousal friendship as the end of marriage itself.
In so doing, he overlooks the reality that, as Alain Mattheeuws acutely lifts
out of Gaudium et Spes, conjugal love—which is sacramentally and ecclesially immersed in God’s love for the Church in Christ—constitutes the
essence of marriage.The love of the spouses is not its own end.52 The experience of conjugal love witnesses that it comes from Another and has this
Other as its telos.To conceive marriage in terms of conjugal love allows us
to approach the question of its fruitfulness from the point of view of the
vocation to and mission of love that finds its telos, and hence its truth, in
sacramental married love.53 Thus, as we shall see, fruitfulness regards both
the growth of the persons of the spouses in their entrusting one another
to the complete form of their married love, and the exuberant fruit of the
conjugal bond, the child. This is true, however, inasmuch as these two
elements are rooted in the Paternal source through Christ in the Spirit,
and are at the service of Triune Love.This framework is able to preserve
and deepen the content of the Thomistic and Augustinian accounts of the
ends and goods of marriage. For the sake of clarity I would like to
approach the concept of married fruitfulness in four points.These reflections attempt to draw on the Christological,Trinitarian, sacramental, and
52 Mattheeuws, Union et procréation, 239.
53 The sacrament of marriage is married love in its truth, not a spiritual enhance-

ment.What is intuited in the human experience of love (which is always in relation to God, as we saw in the preceding section) reaches its truth here.

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Antonio López, F.S.C.B.

ecclesial illumination of marriage proposed by Gaudium et Spes, which
Lawler’s theology of marriage, I believe, would benefit from engaging.54
1. Sacramental married love is fruitful and lives out its vocation to parenthood responsibly if it acknowledges that its form is filial; that is to say,
if the spouses recognize that the source and end of conjugal love is not
simply the will of the spouses but, in them and through them, the God
who has revealed himself in Christ as Love (HV, §8).55 The first meaning of fruitfulness is then the recognition that married love is itself the
fruit of the interaction between God’s love and the spouses’ love. Fruitfulness in sensu stricto occurs within this encompassing event.The vows
that the spouses make at the ceremony grow out of a generative past
that is not limited only to the directly preceding time of courtship and
engagement. The sacrament of marriage, as has frequently been
discussed, has its roots in baptism.The spouses were created in Christ’s
image so that at a certain moment in history, they could find their
place in existence in Christ’s “place,” that is, in his relation of love with
the Father in the Holy Spirit. Baptism then is not simply the conditio
sine qua non for a valid sacramental wedding. It is the defining moment
of the person who receives it because it incorporates him into Christ
and his body, and it is precisely that to which every man is called.56
Baptism is the incorporation into Christ and his body, the Church,
which opens the person up to communion while also making him
disposed toward it; he is no longer under the sway of the claim of
autosoterism. Man, who has brought division and segregation upon
himself (as de Lubac has shown), is retrieved by Christ from the hellish solitude that is marked by fear that the Father is the deceiver, and
is re-grafted into that communion for which he was made.57
54 As mentioned earlier, Lawler’s sacramental theology does not include these

dimensions of marriage, which are made explicit by GS.This framework suggests
reading conjugal love in terms of gift, and thus is able to retrieve causality and
teleology within sacramental married love.Alain Mattheeuws, among others, has
pursued this road in his Les ‘dons’ du mariage. Recherche de théologie morale et sacramentale (Paris: Culture et vérité, 1996).
55 “Authentic married love,” says GS §48, “is caught up into divine love and is
governed and enriched by Christ’s redeeming power and the saving activity of the
Church, so that this love may lead the spouses to God with powerful effect and
may aid and strengthen them in sublime office of being a father or a mother.”
56 In this sense, it is not coincidental that Paul VI in his Ecclesiam Suam placed a
tremendous insistence on the Church’s need to help Christians acknowledge and
deepen the truth of their baptism.
57 Henri de Lubac, Catholicism: Christ and the Common Destiny of Man, trans. Lancelot
C. Sheppard and Sr. Elizabeth Englund (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1988).

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This insertion into and opening up to communion reveals its
form within man’s specific vocation. Marriage is the form that the
call to communion of some baptized Christians takes; it is, in this
sense, the flourishing of the form of love given in baptism.As created
in Christ, man is in a certain sense also created for friendship, thanks
to the Spirit, the Person-Communion, as John Paul II suggests.58 The
Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Christ, guides the spouses from within that
they might know one other, fall in love, and grow in that love until
they are given the freedom to say a total yes to each other in Christ.59
The fact that marriage takes place in the Church before a witness is
the lovers’ discrete and clear acknowledgment that the ultimate
origin of their love is Christ, the sacrament of the Father, and not
themselves. Being married in Christ is the offering to him of the gift
received, a deeper participation in his love for them through their
mutual love. It is a free and gratuitous act of expropriation that
follows the nature of love, which, as we saw, has within it the form
of childhood and of the Cross. This expropriation is, at the same
time, the beginning of the fulfillment of the promise of communion.
Christ receives the offering of their love and makes it part of his love
for the Church and the Father. The Father, in response to his Son’s
love, sends the Spirit to the spouses so that they can both be and live
an indissoluble communion whose form, like the Son’s love for the
Church, is Eucharistic: thankfulness and the gift of oneself to the
end. The Spirit of Christ, the person-communion, is the one who
makes the bond, the communion of love of the spouses, sacramentally indissoluble.60 Marriage becomes and remains a sacrament,
which means that “Christ abides with them thereafter so that just as
He loved the Church and handed Himself over on her behalf, the
spouses may love each other with perpetual fidelity through mutual
self bestowal” (GS, §48). This act of faith, which the Father rewards
with the Spirit of Christ, allows the spouses to experience their
sacramental bond itself as a God-given fruitfulness.61 This fruitfulness
is the fertile ground in which children, when they are given, are
58 John Paul II, Dominum et Vivificantem, §34.
59 The numerous forms of this are determined by the Spirit himself. For a reflec-

tion on the role of the Holy Spirit in marriage, see Il matrimonio in Cristo è matrimonio nello Spirito, ed. Renzo Bonetti (Rome: Città Nuova, 1998).
60 See Ouellet, Divine Likeness, 79–101.
61 For a deeper reflection on faith as the encounter with a presence, see, among
others, Mouroux, Je crois en Toi; Benedict XVI, Deus Caritas Est; Luigi Giussani,
The Journey to Truth Is an Experience, trans. John Zucchi (Montreal: McGillQueens, 2006).

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received.This mutual self-gift, the self-transcendence that characterizes the spouses’ love, is not, however, an end in itself. Human love,
through Christ in the Spirit, is caught up in divine love so that “this
love may lead the spouses to God” (GS, §48).The filiality of spousal
love does not mean only that it has its source in the Father’s love, it
also means that conjugal love is part of the movement of return to
the Father. Conjugal love is transcendent both in its origin and its
telos. Earlier we indicated that every true experience of love is an
experience of conversion. Now we can see that the total reception
of the human beloved for life is authentically human only if it lets go
of the voluntaristic hubris that looks to do only what is “humanly
feasible,” and lets itself be embraced instead by the reckless, divine
measure of love.Without this eschatological perspective, spousal love
and its fruitfulness remain incoherent.We will return to this again at
the end.
2. The fruitfulness of filial conjugal love consists also in representing the
Father. We saw that conjugal love is a communion of life and love
because it participates in God’s love. Divine love, in fact, cannot but
generate a form of love that is similar to its own: communion. In this
regard, conjugal love represents the Father in that it makes evident to
human experience the fact that it does not come from itself; that is,
it is always being begotten (sacramentally).62 Its being itself gift is, at
the same time, an icon of its source. Furthermore, conjugal love
represents the Father because, analogically to God’s, conjugal love has
an inextricable order. Without affirming any sort of subordinationism, it is possible to affirm the irreplaceable position the Father—
who gives all of himself in begetting the Son, without ceasing to be
himself—holds for the divine communion of persons. The wellknown misinterpretations of the term “communion” have at their
root the fear that the establishment of a beginning, a hierarchical
principle, would entail the enslavement of the other members. This
would indeed be the case, if hierarchy were taken to mean power in
a worldly sense.Yet the Father as revealed in Christ is the one who
gives all of himself: to the Son (and to the Spirit with the Son) the
Father gives life in itself; to man, the Father gives participation in his
life.The Father is the one whose gift of himself is that of making the
62 The meaning of evidence here presupposes an understanding of truth as self-

disclosure that gives itself through a sign without pre-determining it, and that calls
for man’s free and rational response. See Angelo Bertuletti, “Sapere e libertà,” in
L’evidenza e la fede, ed. Giuseppe Colombo (Milan: Glossa, 1988), 444–65.

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other be.63 If authority, as its Latin root indicates, is to make someone grow, a father fulfills his task not only by begetting a child, but
by exalting the one whom he begets. It is thanks to the father’s
authority that the child can truly experience freedom.64
That authority is indeed self-surrender, as Christ reveals of God
the Father, does not mean that a father’s position of authority within
the family is lost in his self-sacrifice. If this were the case, his gift of
self would not be a true surrender but rather a rejection of the logos
of love. The absence of fatherhood always entails the disintegration
of communion and hence the loss of identity. Furthermore, the
absence of the father who surrenders himself (while remaining
father) that the other might be also prevents the development of freedom and makes it almost impossible to avoid the decline of conjugal
friendship into an egotistic affirmation of self.
While both spouses are creatures, and as such, both take their
form of existence from the Son—thankfulness, acceptance, and gratuitous response—within conjugal love it is the husband who also
represents the Father.65 This mission is utterly disproportionate to
man’s efforts. “In love and in fidelity,” Balthasar says, “the woman has
63 While for obvious reasons we cannot develop this point here, it is important to

say that this understanding of the divine processions in terms of gift does not
eliminate the absolute equality of the divine persons. The Father possesses the
divine essence only as given and the Son as received and reciprocated in gratuitous response. See Hans Urs von Balthasar, Theo-Logic:Theological Logical Theory,
vol. 2, Truth of God, trans. Adrian J.Walker (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2004),
123–70. I dealt with this issue in my “Eternal Happening: God as an Event of
Love,” Communio: International Catholic Review 32 (2005): 214–45.
64 Irenaeus’s famous statement, “Gloria Dei vivens homo,” as Orbe explains, indicates that “contrary to other ideologies, God seeks to glorify the human being
divinely in everything. God wants to throw himself in the human being; that he
be clarified with God’s own clarity.” Antonio Orbe, “Glora Dei vivens homo
(Análisis de Ireneo, adv. haer. IV, 20, 1–7),” Gregorianum 73 (1993): 263.
65 An adequate understanding of this requires viewing conjugal love and the family
as one reality. In addition, it must also attend to the asymmetry of the dual unity
of male and female. Interpreting Genesis 2:23, Balthasar explains that “the word
that calls out only attains fulfillment when it is understood, accepted and given
back as a word.This clearly shows us the way in which man can be primary and
woman secondary, where the primary remains unfulfilled without the secondary.
The primary needs a partner of equal rank and dignity for its own fulfillment. . . .
The woman, who is both ‘answer’ and ‘face,’ is not only man’s delight: she is the
help, the security, the home man needs; she is the vessel of fulfillment specially
designed for him. Nor is she simply the vessel of his fruitfulness: she is equipped
with her own explicit fruitfulness.Yet her fruitfulness is not a primary fruitfulness:
it is an answering fruitfulness” (Balthasar, Theo-Drama:Theological Dramatic Theory,

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Antonio López, F.S.C.B.

an easier time of it. . . . The woman is not called upon to represent
anything that she herself is not, while the man has to represent the
very source of life, which he can never be.”66 The fact that the human
father cannot be the very source of life is precisely what calls him to
be most transparent to the Paternal source that gratuitously allows
him to communicate life. This representation of the Father has little
to do with the human father’s precarious good intentions or his moral
coherence.The capacity of the human father to represent the origin
is mediated to him by Christ. In Christ, the husband’s gift of himself
acquires its truth; the memory of the origin, the Father, is both ontological-sacramental and existential. For human love to be caught up
in divine love means too that the husband’s love for his spouse, in
being like Christ’s for the Church (Eph 5:25–27), becomes more
transparent to what it is called to be. In this regard, human fatherhood
is not simply a “role” that can be exchanged. The wife cannot be
herself, that is, the icon of divine gratitude and creaturely, fruitful
reception of divine love (Gen 4:1), if the husband does not represent
the paternal origin. At the same time, the husband’s generativity and
authority are themselves elicited by the wife’s response to love’s presence.This circularity, which does not obviate the hierarchical order of
conjugal love, shows that the husband’s gift of self is always already a
response to an antecedent love.67 Only asymmetry between husband
and wife, as the experience of conjugal love witnesses, respects equality—that is, being created in the Son’s perfect human response to the
Father on the Cross who gives all of himself for man’s salvation.
3. As filial, conjugal love is fruitful because it has been given the possibility of a further giving and the generation of a person. Created in the
image of God the giver, the communion of life and love is offered the
capacity to give superabundantly, i.e, to conceive another. Fruitfulness,
a crucial term in Scripture, is always a superabundant fulfillment.68 The
vol. 3, The Dramatis Personae: The Person in Christ, trans. Graham Harrison [San
Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1992], 284–85).
66 Hans Urs von Balthasar, New Elucidations, trans. Sr. Mary Theresilde Skerry (San
Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1986), 221. It is important not to draw a direct and unilateral relation between the persons of the Trinity and each member of the family.
67 Karol Wojtyla, “Radiation of Fatherhood,” in idem, The Collected Plays and Writings on Theater, trans. Boleslaw Taborski (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1987), 333–64.
68 It suffices here to recall that Christ transforms 180 gallons of water into wine ( Jn
2:9), that twelve baskets of bread remain after having fed thousands (Mt 14:20),
and that Christ washes the disciples’ feet ( Jn 13:5–10).

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825

fruitfulness that man desires, and which he often confuses with the
fulfillment of expectations, is not simply the successful accomplishment of great deeds, but more importantly, the begetting of someone—whether a child or a people.
Human love arrives at its truth when it is allowed to enter sacramentally into the absolute measurelessness of divine love. In their gift
to each other—a gift that, as experience witnesses, is constitutive of
their very being and of their marriage—the parents thus participate in
a fruitfulness that, like their bond, is greater than they are.The fruit of
marriage is “excessive,” first of all, because it comes from the spouses’
communion of life and love. The child is conceived only with and
through another—who is truly other only if sexually different. Fruitfulness is not a gift that the spouses have in storage to exchange when
they deem it appropriate. It is a dimension of the communion they
have been allowed to form and is therefore not simply the outcome of
an act of two individuals.This is also why the child always incarnates
their unity in a new way.69 When calculation is introduced, when the
parents seek to determine the form and the content of the fruitfulness
of their God-given communion, they claim the Father’s place for
themselves. In so doing, they limit their love and thus break its fruitful
unity asunder.The child, when he comes to be within this fragmentation, is introduced into his own identity and into the family only as a
replica of a poverty that has little to do with divine exuberance. Fruitfulness, therefore, is fulfillment, not as “meeting the need” or the desire
of the spouses, but as over-fulfillment. The mutual indwelling proper
to spousal love contains within itself the fruitfulness proper to God,
that is, the capacity to generate, with God’s help, another person.
After several decades of IVF and various other recent biotechnological achievements, contemporary man has come to think of
procreation technologically. Within this mindset, the child is seen as
something the parents have the right to receive, and, when advisable
and feasible, also the right to modify in order to offer the child a life
of as little suffering as possible.70 The child, however, is not just
69 Today this is no longer obvious. Androgynous anthropology conceives fruitful-

ness solipsistically by denying the meaning of sexual difference or interpreting it
in terms of symmetrical complementarity. See David C. Crawford, “Liberal
Androgyny:‘Gay Marriage’ and the Meaning of Sexuality in Our Time,” Communio: International Catholic Review 33 (2006): 239–65.
70 In this sense, Gregory Stock comments: “IVF still accounts for fewer than 1
percent of live births in the United States. Improvements, however, may transform the procedure enough to integrate it into routine procreation.With a little
marketing by IVF clinics, traditional reproduction may begin to seem antiquated,

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Antonio López, F.S.C.B.

another subject of the human species, the obvious outcome of a
fecund bodily union. It is a gift, a completely new being, given to
itself with its own singular destiny to meet and mission to live. The
fruit of marriage, in this second sense, is excessive because the child
is a third, another person.The child’s first smile and his communication through language are just two moments that reveal that the child
is not something but someone, a spiritual human being.71 Like the
Logos, the child is never a repetition of the parents, no matter how
much the child may take after them.As the only-begotten Son of the
Father shows us, the closer to the source, the more perfectly new is
one’s re-living of the origin.What this means is that the more closely
the spouses live out the relation to the source of their love, the more
truly personal and fruitful their love will become. It is only distance
from the origin that results in dreary monotony and “elderliness.”72
Married fruitfulness, as it is given to the eyes of faith to see, is a
participation in Christ’s fruitfulness on the cross.73 Christ’s Eucharistic self-surrender on the cross is absolutely unreserved, and so is able
to introduce a new fruitfulness into history. Christ’s virginal fecundity introduces a new meaning of bodily human generation, while,
at the same time, it is the way in which God the Father blesses the
couple. This blessing could be one of offspring, but it could also be
one of the sacrifice of not being able to have children. Conjugal love
participates in the form of the cross and sometimes this means
if not downright irresponsible. One day, people may view sex as essentially recreational, and conception as something best done in the laboratory” (Gregory
Stock, Redesigning Humans: Our Inevitable Genetic Future [New York: Houghton
Mifflin, 2002], 55). See Joseph Ratzinger, “Man between Reproduction and
Creation: Theological Questions on the Origin of Human Life,” Communio:
International Catholic Review 16 (1989): 197–211.
71 I dealt with this in my Spirit’s Gift: The Metaphysical Insight of Claude Bruaire
(Washington, DC:The Catholic University Press, 2006), 83–113.
72 Meister Eckhart wrote that “Novitas est propria principio, vetustas autem omnis
est separatio et distantia ab eodem; veterascit ergo omne recedens et elongatum
a principio, renovatur autem et innovatur accedendo et redeundo ad principium” (Meister Eckhart, Exp in Sap., in Archives d’histoire doctrinale et littéraire du
Moyen Âge, IV, 264; cited in Vladimir Lossky, Théologie négative et connaissance de
Dieu chez Maître Echkhart [Paris: J. Vrin, 1960], 366). If, as we mentioned, the
parents accept their own difference from the divine source in their acknowledgment that they have been sacramentally introduced into divine love, they will
allow their children to be themselves in their relation to their (paternal and
divine) origin.The implications of the loss (or distortion) of fatherhood for the
formation of the child are enormous.
73 See Aquinas, Super Sent. IV, d. 26, q. 2, a. 1, ad 3.

Toward an Understanding of Fruitfulness

827

embracing not only the sacrifice of an ongoing surrender—to one
another, to one’s own family, and to the Father—but also that of
being unable to beget. If the spouses, then, embrace this sacrifice as
a participation in the sufferings of Christ, the fecundity proper to
marriage, which we discussed above, is transfigured. Christ’s Eucharistic offer of himself for his bride, the Church, makes the sacrifice
offered by the spouses spiritually fecund and, in a way that is
frequently not given to them to perceive, it also makes the community grow. In this case, the fecundity of conjugal love, by means of the
sacrifice, comes closer to Christ’s supernatural fecundity.This brings
us to our concluding point.
4. Conjugal love lives its own given fecundity responsibly if it accepts
being placed at the service of another. Christ’s claim that there is no
greater love than to give up one’s life for one’s friends ( Jn 15:13) does
not only reveal the measure of love. It also reveals that this gift of his
life is not his own initiative. He, the one sent by the Father, accomplishes his work within the modality and time determined by the
Father. He does what he sees the Father doing, and awaits patiently
from him the fulfillment of his hour. In a similar way, the spouses,
having been incorporated into Christ’s love for the Church, are invited
to put their married love at the service of Christ’s mission through the
Church. In this regard, responsible fruitfulness is either obedience to
the form of love to the end as determined by Christ, or it is simply
reproduction, a technical calculus. In Christ, however, God has brought
love’s ever-greater and truer measure to man.This obedience to love,
as we mentioned earlier, is what secures the personal creativity of the
spouses.The parents introduce the children to the truth of love only
if they themselves accept their own sonship; that is, if they recognize
and teach their children that reality is positive because the Father is
good and all-giving, and that the Father’s design for Christ “to be all
in all” is the fulfillment of human existence.Taking responsibility for
spousal fruitfulness is, first and foremost, a matter of allowing the
Father’s love to take effect within conjugal love. Humanae Vitae’s clarification that every conjugal union is both unitive and procreative,
then, is not a prohibition or a distortion of the experience of conjugal love, but rather a reminder that married love, as a true, sacramental participation in Christ’s love for the Church, is an education
N&V
toward the truth of love and love’s fruitfulness.

Nova et Vetera, English Edition,Vol. 6, No. 4 (2008): 829–836

829

“I Am Awaited by this Love,
and So My Life Is Good”:
Children and Hope
G. J. M C A LEER
Loyola College
Baltimore, Maryland

T HE FINAL fantasy of the Marquis de Sade was to take hold of the
sun and hurl it into the earth. In this paroxysm of annihilation God’s law
would finally be lifted from human flesh utterly. It is a curiosity in the
history of ideas to see a similar image in a 2007 book by David Benatar.
Published by Oxford University Press, Better Never to Have Been: The
Harm of Coming into Existence,1 is a work of Analytic philosophy aiming
to justify a pro-death ethics. Discussing the norms that ought to guide
human extinction, Benatar observes that science gives hope that a meteor
may strike the earth and finally kill off the entire human population
(164–65). Indeed, science, he says, gives us sure hope that human extinction is coming sooner rather than later.
His pro-death platform includes the following theses and items:
• “Bringing people into existence always inflicts serious harm on
those people” (184). (Emphasis on the always.)
• Abortion is a moral obligation (127)
• Non-procreative sex is the norm of sexuality (127)
• There is no human right to procreation2
1 D. Benatar, Better Never to Have Been:The Harm of Coming into Existence (Oxford:

Clarendon Press, 2006).
2 Benatar is aware that the European Convention on Human Rights and the United

Nations Universal Declaration on Human Rights says otherwise (ibid., 102, fn 8).

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G. J. McAleer

• A positive legal right to procreate must be acknowledged. However,
this is only a concession to contingent privacy issues. Should government
secretly administer a contraceptive through drinking water akin to
florid today the practical problems of privacy would be overcome
(107; 110–11).
• On John Stuart Mill’s authority that government ought legally prohibit
“paupers from breeding hereditary paupers,” sterilization and abortion
for “the most harmful reproduction” must be compelled by law. Of
course, one would have “to control for possible biases”3 in the selection process of the coerced.
Christians should not dismiss Benatar’s book as nonsense worthy only
of the National Enquirer. The book has pedigree: it is published by
Oxford; the readers of the manuscript mentioned in the Preface who
proposed the book for publication hold prominent positions in the academy; and the book itself is full of recondite discussions of the best
philosophers in the Analytic tradition—the dominant form of philosophy
in the Anglo-Saxon world. In one sense, Catholic Christians should also
be especially pleased with the book: mainstream philosophy now
acknowledges that procreation is a serious philosophical issue. To put it
mildly, this was hardly true when Humanae Vitae appeared. Analytic
philosophy has come a long way since Peter Singer’s complete dismissal
of sexual ethics in 1979.4 Indeed, as Benatar’s discussions make clear,
there has been a quiet and growing interest in the topic for some time
now in Analytic circles.
My essay is built around two questions:Are Benatar’s arguments valid?
What does this book tells us about the history of ideas in the West?
Benatar does not address any Catholic arguments about procreation
but, given his claim that coming to exist is a harm, his pointed question,
“Why have children?” is clearly an interesting one to Catholics. The
question might seem easy for Catholics to answer, and in a sense this is
true, but I wonder about its persuasiveness. The right answer is not a
surprise: Catholics hope for children because, as Boethius says, Love rules
3 Ibid., 113. This seems fantastical and ludicrous though the stature of Mill in

liberal circles should give us pause. Sir Keith Joseph, one of the intellectual pillars
of Thatcherism, lost national credibility in England by suggesting the same (see
his Birmingham Speech 1974). Even the conservative Catholic press St. Augustine’s Press has published a collection of essays by Vittorio Hösle who advocates
enforced sterilization (though not abortion) for environmental reasons.V. Hösle,
Objective Idealism, Ethics, and Politics (South Bend, IN: St.Augustine’s Press, 1998).
4 P. Singer, Practical Ethics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979), preface.

Children and Hope

831

the sky. But Benatar’s pro-death platform stems from his humanitarianism and it is, I think, undeniable that Catholic ideas about love have lost
serious ground to humanitarian ideas about love.There is greater sympathy for Bono than Benedict.
And what about the history of ideas: How did Western thought ever
arrive at a closely argued rational demonstration for the morality of
extinguishing all human life? Boethius speaks about “the rich and fruitful harvest of Reason” assaulted by “the barren thorns of Passion,”5 and
Nietzsche uses his literary greatness to praise the fecundity of the will to
power,6 and yet now an absolute sterility is celebrated by philosophy.
There is no doubt that Humanae Vitae was keenly attuned to the times.
Love, sex, birth, and marriage all suffered radical change in the West in
the 1970s.7 Attending to these questions, the most consequential documents of Catholic social thought, Evangelium Vitae and Donum Vitae, for
example, show Pope Paul VI’s depth of insight.
But Humanae Vitae is forty years old. Benatar’s themes are more radical,
it seems to me, than those discussed in the encyclical. The encyclical is
about marriage; it is written from the perspective of married love and
about the responsibilities of marriage.There is a host of debates the encyclical still speaks to, especially when one considers the voluminous literature
on the family and marriage from within psychology and the industry of
fertility medicine. But the philosophical debate is now running far ahead
of these sorts of concerns. Benatar does not mention marriage and he
might best be said to be most interested in the phenomenon of vulnerability. He does address sexual ethics but not until the fifth chapter and what
he has to say is derivative of his earlier argument about human suffering.
Benatar has two basic arguments. One, the less foundational, is a rehash of Schopenhauer: ours is a “world of suffering” (14). Unlike Schopenhauer, Benatar is optimistic. Schopenhauer’s famous pessimism is that
although one is morally obliged to annihilate oneself the will at the core
of reality is eternal, and slips away from you in the moment that you try
to annihilate it.You might nought yourself but you cannot nought the
will. Its structural alienation renders it eternally fecund, eternally suffering. Benatar is an optimist, however, because he is assured by science that
extinction is inevitable: and so, sure in his hope that all human procreation, all suffering, will cease.
This Schopenhauer-like argument relies on a more basic argument
deriving from humanitarian sentiment. “I have argued,” writes Benatar,
5 Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy (London: Penguin, 1999), 4.
6 F. Nietzsche, The Genealogy of Morals (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998).
7 D. Frum, How We Got Here:The 70’s (New York: Basic Books, 2000).

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G. J. McAleer

“that so long as a life contains even the smallest quantity of bad, coming
into existence is a harm” (60). It is a curiosity of Benatar’s book that
whilst de Sade longed for the annihilation of the world on account of
twisted love Benatar longs for the elimination of worldly sentient life on
account of rationality (163). He does not mention love. The topic of
procreation certainly does not naturally suggest the theme of love to
Benatar.The reason: parents are never loving because given the vulnerability to suffering of every child parents should be aghast at playing
“procreational Russian roulette” (92); indeed, as he puts it, playing with
a fully load gun pointed at the head of one’s child.To give birth is no act
of love. On account of vulnerability, no human life is “worth starting”
therefore there is no moral duty to procreate (94). Rather is there a duty
not to procreate (101). To support these claims, the central argument is:
a) suffering is bad and b) stopping all procreation eliminates suffering
(ultimately) and c) the undoubted pleasures found amidst the suffering
that is human life cannot justify birth.
“Only existers suffer harm,” (29) says Benatar, but surely, the optimist
will argue: only existers have pleasure and these pleasures of life must be
put in the balance against harm experienced (29–30). His subsidiary,
Schopenhauerian argument shows the pleasure-harm balance test does
not favor procreation. Yet even if it did somehow, the balance test idea
ignores a crucial asymmetry, observes Benatar.The non-existence of pain
is a good thing but the absence of pleasure is not a bad thing. Loss of
pleasure is only a bad thing if it is a diminishment of human aspiration
and comfort but in the absence of people the loss of pleasure is not a
diminishment and not a bad thing, therefore (30). It still makes perfect
sense, however, to say that a universe without pain is a good thing even
if there are no people to enjoy life without pain.
Analytic philosophy is rightly praised for its caution in building arguments. No implications of an argument are warranted until they follow
with a cast-iron logic from the premise of the argument. Benatar is oddly
lacking here. Christians, for example, do not think that all suffering is bad;
indeed, most people do not. All cultures recognize that self-discipline
implies unpleasantness of some sort and they do not regard this unpleasantness as a harm. Benatar, unaccountably, from what I can tell, assumes
that pain and suffering are harms. By having a child, I harm the child, for
the child will suffer. This is not right, though. It is certainly true that I
put the child in harm’s way, but do I harm the child? A general puts his
troops in harm’s way but it is the enemy that harms them. Benatar runs
together the physical reality of pain with the moral phenomenon of harm
and seems to think wherever the first is found so is the second. His natu-

Children and Hope

833

ralism is unargued for, he smuggles in the idea of harm, and it is surely
false anyway.What Benatar says, seems to me false:“Bringing people into
existence always inflicts serious harm on these people” (184). False:
because putting someone in harm’s way is not the same as inflicting harm
upon him or her. There seems to be some odd confusion in Benatar’s
ideas of agency and causation.8
There are at least two other reasons the argument fails, one moral, the
other ontological. Is Benatar right about the asymmetry? He thinks a
balance test of suffering and pleasure is irrelevant because a loss of suffering is a good and a loss of pleasure is morally indifferent. But what if one
is not a scorched-earth utilitarian like Benatar? One might think, as do
Smith, Hume, and Scheler, that the realization of high values is a basic
moral desideratum. Creating actors able to realize high civilization values,
despite suffering, is a conceivable ethics, obviously, and recognizably,
animated by the idea of noble life, I would have thought. Benatar thinks
the asymmetry idea a knock-down insight, the entire book is built upon
it, and yet anyone interested in civilization values is going to argue that
the loss of pain is good and the loss of civilization values bad, not morally
indifferent. That is, those values themselves matter; and yes, people have
suffered for their art! Admittedly, Hume might crack under pressure: he
might concede Benatar’s point that loss of refinement is a negative only
if humans suffer diminishment. Hume’s ethics puts a strong emphasis on
utility or happiness, but Smith explicitly rejects Hume on this point:9
Smith, like Nietzsche, and perhaps Peirce, thinks that beauty is the foundational value and pain filled human effort serves beauty.10
Catholics will insist that persons can only serve persons. Smith’s position is unsatisfactory. But Catholics will join with Smith in resisting
Benatar’s asymmetry and make the point that the realization of love is
worth being born and suffering for.There is nothing odd at all in saying
that a universe without love is a diminished universe. To live for love is
to live for persons. Generosity is inseparable from the nobility of birth.
This is why Pope Benedict XVI, in Spe Salvi (§3), cites St. Josephine
Bakhita: “I am awaited by this Love. And so my life is good.”
It is hope that is Benatar’s undoing; it is an unexamined premise
assumed in his argument. Benatar hopes for extinction because he is an
essentialist about suffering. This hope is based on a misunderstanding
about the ontology of children. Benatar thinks that for as long as humans
8 “Since all existers suffer harm, procreation always causes harm.” Benatar, Better

Never to Have Been, 50.
9 A. Smith, Theory of Moral Sentiments (Indianapolis: Liberty Press, 1974), 179 and 183.
10 Ibid., 181–82.

G. J. McAleer

834

live there will be suffering. Christians do not believe this, obviously.The
world may perish but eternal life is our hope. But Christians believe
more. St. Paul speaks of the form of this world passing away. Benatar
thinks every child is essentially suffering.To his mind, every birth repeats
the past. Here, he has drunk deeply of Schopenhauer’s essentialism. But
is a child the past? Human nature is, essentially, vulnerable, but not suffering. For every child is novitas mundi. Ontologically, it is undeniable, it
seems to me, that the world begins anew with every child. Every child is
unique. As the medieval Dominican theologian Robert Kilwardby puts
it: a person is res in actu sui generis.This uniqueness is not a repetition of
the past; it is a beginning, a radically new beginning. Every child is the
hope of the world made new. Christians have children because they grasp
that ontologically a child is what the Incarnation revealed: a refreshing of
the world. More, birthing, a wound of love, to use Thomas Aquinas’s
phrase, is suffering evacuated by love, an act expressive of the ontology of
hope that is a child. Every child is an ontological hope, a fresh beginning
for the world: the child’s vulnerability rightly acted out makes the child,
each person, a vessel of mercy (Augustine), refreshment for others.A child
is not essentially suffering. A child is true history, novitas mundi. Each child
is the form of the world passing away, vulnerability begun as hope, acted
rightly upon, love.11
Perhaps one will simply shrug and say “Benatar’s are the views of a
lonely radical.” This may be true in some sense, but a question persists.
Nietzsche was a lonely radical but The Genealogy of Morals starts with a
celebration of fecundity.What is it about the history of ideas that today a
radical might question what even a thinker of audacious originality like
Nietzsche took for granted? Unlike Nietzsche, Benatar is a humanitarian;
his moral complaint is that we suffer. Nietzsche thrilled to the idea that
what does not kill you only makes you stronger. By contrast, Benatar wants
to avoid every “unpleasantness.” Indeed, his moral complaint is against
sentience as such since it means experiencing “unpleasantness” (p. 2). Is his
theory logically the end point of humanitarianism? Certainly, since de
Lubac’s wonderful book The Drama of Atheist Humanism, a core Catholic
thesis is: eliminate God and you eliminate man.The problem humanitarian love poses to Christianity cannot be underestimated. Humanitarian
sentiment is so similar to Christianity: both the Christian and the humanitarian long for the end of suffering; action that re-makes the world; that
alleviates poverty; that cures; that overcomes prejudice with sympathy. So
similar are the aspirations of Christians and humanitarians that many
11 This paragraph owes much to the influence of the American Catholic pragma-

tist, D. G. Leahy.

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835

Christians are sincerely puzzled if told there is not a straight line from
Bono to Benedict. Isn’t it true that humanitarians respect human life as
much as Catholics? Don’t the wealthiest humanitarians spend their
fortunes on respecting human life, trying to cure malaria, to ensure fresh
water for all?
Why were some of the best modern Catholic thinkers, people like de
Lubac, Scheler, Kolnai, so suspicious of humanitarianism? This is an enormous topic, actually, but a part of the answer, and it might seem an odd
answer, is: Catholics are suspicious of humanitarianism’s hyper-moralism.12
As Aurel Kolnai pointed out in the ’40s, humanitarianism is hostile to
moral hierarchy. Egalitarianism is a preponderant emphasis of humanitarianism and thus moral distinctions must be elided. Certainly, the idea of
intrinsic evil, the idea that a certain kind of act can never be moral, is
deeply offensive to the social justice sensibility of the humanitarian. It
encourages the idea that there might be “intrinsic discrimination between
human ‘needs,’ ” as Kolnai puts it. In turn, this suggests judgment and
complexity, and so a break on broad policy solutions. Extremely anxious
to resolve social problems, social suffering, social justice activists find deference to a variegated moral order intolerable for this reason. Rejecting the
idea of intrinsic moral evil might seem an excuse for immoralism, and it
is, but its motivation is avidity for the reign of goodness. Benatar’s book
is a perfect example of this: he is sincere about wanting to end suffering.
Noughting the human accomplishes this.Vulnerability (74) is replaced by
monism.This explains his obscuring the distinction between the natural
and moral orders.
What does monism secure? It delivers the resolution of moral tension.
It delivers purity. Strange to say, but an upshot of Benatar’s ethics is impeccability.War, hunger, exploitation are all done away with by monism but
so also greed, vanity, sloth, egoism, and sexual impurity. Benatar’s strange
recourse to angelic impeccability is signaled by the alienation of the body
that courses through the book. Schopenhauer’s brilliant writing skills
might furnish Benatar with snappy starts to a few chapters but Schopenhauer is not worthy of bring argued with seriously. No arguments are
offered as to why Schopenhauer’s pessimism is misplaced, or why we are
normatively rational, as Benatar thinks, and not willful, as Nietzsche
thinks. There is something “obscene” about our planet (89), we are told,
and we must be “suspicious” of “human drives” to procreate (96). To
observe man’s “curious, manifold, and contradictory attributes” is impossible for the humanitarian. For our complex nature suggests something
12 Paragraphs following owe much to Kolnai’s essay,“The Humanitarian versus the

Religious Attitude,” The Thomist 7 (1944): 429–57.

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G. J. McAleer

religious: that man is torn between fallness and nobility; that civilization
betokens God because human aspiration seeks to recuperate what is sensed
as amiss. Indeed, this militancy for angelic impeccability is, as Kolnai
pointed out, the core contradiction of humanitarianism: it concludes in “a
N&V
decisive moral abandonment of man.”13

13 Ibid., 452.

Nova et Vetera, English Edition,Vol. 6, No. 4 (2008): 837–856

837

St. Thomas’s Moral Psychology and
the Rejection of Humanae Vitae
K EVIN E. O’R EILLY
Milltown Institute
Dublin, Ireland

W E LIVE in a day and age when not only do many Catholics question
the Church’s teaching on birth control, they accept as self-evident the
notion that the Church has got it wrong on this matter.1 This state of
affairs has led to a situation in which couples, when they contracept, no
longer seemingly experience pangs of conscience; rather, this mistaken
self-evidence functions as a major premiss in their moral reasoning.
Contraception has of course led to a whole range of other aberrations in
the area of sexual morality—some of which, incidentally, were foreseen by
the encyclical2 —and the moral blindness that is widespread with regard
to these aberrations arguably has one of its roots in contraceptive mentality that has emerged over the course of the last few decades.
This essay aims to engage with those psychological dynamics that have
contributed to widespread confident rejection of Humanae Vitae 3 by
1 For a discussion of this issue, see Desmond Connell,Archbishop of Dublin, Christ

Our Life (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 1995), 149–54.
2 See Humanae Vitae, §17. All translations are from Janet E. Smith, Humanae Vitae: A

Generation Later (Washington DC:The Catholic University of America Press, 1991).
3 There are of course other factors that have contributed to the inability of many

to appreciate the riches of this encyclical. Thus, to name but one, there is the
abiding deleterious legacy of Descartes’s anthropological dualism, issuing in a
notion of freedom that is well-described by John Paul II: “A freedom which
claims to be absolute ends up treating the human body as a raw datum, devoid
of any meaning and moral values until freedom has shaped it in accordance with
its design. Consequently, human nature and the body appear as presuppositions or
preambles, materially necessary for freedom to make its choice, yet extrinsic to the
person, the subject and the human act” (Veritatis Splendor, §48).The focus of this

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drawing upon the work of St.Thomas on the emotions, for the emotions
play a role both in our perception of moral reality and in our reasoning
about the same. I will argue, on the basis of St.Thomas’s texts, that affectivity is integral to the perception of what constitutes the human good,
which perception provides the starting point for the practical reason as it
deliberates about the means to attain this good. It will thus become
apparent that knowledge of the natural law can never be divorced from
the agent’s affective constitution.This knowledge is also a function of the
life of grace, which perfects nature.4 Given the sanitary effect of grace on
the life of reason, it is not difficult to appreciate how ultimately the most
exalted grasp of the natural law is reserved for those who are immersed
in the living faith of the Church. On the other hand, as we shall see, the
sanitary effects of grace can be undermined by moral vice, the most
harmful of these being that of lust. It is precisely this vice, let loose by the
uncoupling of the unitive and procreative aspects of the marital act, occasioned by the practice of contracepting, that lies at the root of the failure
even of many Catholics to perceive the truth of the beautiful and wholesome teaching of Humanae Vitae.
The Truth of the Practical Intellect
For St.Thomas “the truth of the practical intellect depends on conformity with right appetite,”5 a conformity that pertains rather to contingent
matters than to necessary ones, for we have influence only over contingent affairs, whether these concern interior actions or external works.
Hence, concludes Thomas, “it is only about contingent matters that an
intellectual virtue is assigned to the practical intellect, namely, art, as
regards things to be made, and prudence, as regards things to be done.”6
Here we are dealing with human action, namely things to be done.
Prudence—“the right reason of things to be done”7—the subject of which
is the practical intellect in its relation to the right will, constitutes the pertinent virtue in this domain. Just as we are rightly disposed to the principles
of speculative truth (such as the principle of contradiction) by the natural
light of the active intellect, so too we are rightly disposed to the principles
of the reason of things to be done—which principles are provided by the
essay is however on the psychological dynamics that have undermined the moral
vision necessary to see the correctness of Humanae Vitae’s teaching and to live it
out in conjugal life.
4 See ST I, q. 62, a. 5; De malo q. 2, a. 11.
5 ST I–II, q. 57, a. 6.
6 Ibid.
7 ST I–II, q. 56, a. 3.

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ends to which man is rightly disposed—by the rectitude of the will.8 Thus,
the constitution of a person’s will fundamentally determines the principles
of the reason of things to be done, namely prudence. A person’s affective
condition either facilitates or impedes his prudential reasoning, influencing
the degree to which the latter is in conformity with truth.
Affectivity and the Perception of Moral Truth
At the beginning of the secunda secundae pars,Thomas famously observes
that “General remarks about moral matters are of little use because
human actions are about particular things.”9 Particular concrete moral
cases confront us with the fact that human beings are moved by passions.
As Gilson points out, “the study of the passions, therefore, must precede
any discussion of moral problems.”10 In adopting this approach,Thomas
displays his moral realism; as Paul Gondreau tells us,“the moral quality of
human life begins for him in the most concrete of human experiences:
the movements of sensitive affectivity, the passions.”11 In Thomas’s view,
choices and intentions do not belong to the realm of abstraction; rather,
we desire particular objects, we fear particular outcomes, and so on.
One main reason for Thomas’s positive attitude towards human affectivity is his espousal of Aristotelian hylomorphism, that is to say, the
theory of form and matter which he inherited from Aristotle, albeit
adapting it according to his own purposes. On the basis of this hylomorphism, Thomas views the human person as a unitary composite being,
comprising both body and soul. One consequence of this view is that
one cannot separate the sensible and psychic dimensions of human life, a
point expressed well by Judith A. Barad: “[T]he psychic and corporeal
elements of emotional experience are not characteristic of two entities;
together they make up one affective experience.”12 Again, a hylomorphic
conception of human nature demands that any affective movement be
informed by and integrated into the life of reason.
In this view, it becomes apparent that the moral life engages the whole
person.13 Of particular interest to us is the effect of affectivity on our
8 Ibid.
9 ST II–II, prol. (my translation).
10 E. Gilson, The Christian Philosophy of St.Thomas, trans. L. K. Shook (New York:

Random House, 1956), 271.
11 Paul Gondreau, The Passions of Christ’s Soul in the Theology of St.Thomas Aquinas

(Münster: Aschendorff, 2002), 108.
12 Judith A. Barad,“Aquinas on the Role of Emotion in Moral Judgment and Activ-

ity,” The Thomist 55 (1991): 399.
13 See Servais Pinckaers, O.P.,“Les passions et la morale,” Revue de sciences philosophiques

et théologiques 74 (1990): 381–86.

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perception of the good. In this regard it ought to be noted that whether
the object of the will be a true good or merely an apparent good, there is
always an affective influence on reason. The question on any particular
occasion is: given the appetitive condition of the practical reason, to what
extent does affectivity facilitate or impede an objective perception of reality on the part of the person? To what extent is the affective response in
accord with the very constitution of the reality at hand, thereby facilitating reason in accomplishing its work in fidelity to the demands of truth?
Aquinas himself notes that “the fact that something appears good in
particular to reason, whereas it is not good, is due to a passion.”14 Passion
can even obstruct a man’s reason from considering in particular what he
knows in general; passion in effect fetters the reason, thereby preventing
it from arguing from the appropriate premiss. An incontinent man, for
example, may well be aware that to fornicate is wrong, but on account of
passion be blind to the fact that this particular act is one of fornication
and therefore immoral. This happens because, instead of reasoning from
the universal premiss “No fornication is lawful,” the incontinent man
employs the premise “Pleasure is to be pursued.” We in effect reason
about the universal proposition which is “suggested by the inclination of
the passion,”15 and reason to a conclusion accordingly.Thomas explicitly
refers to this argument, which occurs in his treatise on the passions, in his
treatment of the natural law.Although the general principles of the natural law, in the abstract, cannot be blotted out from human hearts, they can
be eradicated in the case of a particular action,“insofar as reason is hindered
from applying the general principle to a particular point of practice, on
account of concupiscence or some other passion.”16 In order that the
conclusion of practical reason may in fact be in accord with the particular objective reality at hand, “a right appetite of the end” is required so
that reason “may hold itself aright in respect of principles, i.e., the ends,
on which it builds its argument.”17
We ought to bear in mind, with regard to all that we have said thus far,
that reason always remains the first principle of human acts; all other principles of human acts are subordinate to reason, but in various ways. Some,
14 ST I–II, q. 77, a. 2, ad 2. Elsewhere he states that “a man is changed as to his

disposition according to the passions of the sense appetite. Hence something
seems fitting to man when experiencing a certain passion which would not seem
so with the passion absent; for example, something seems good to a man when
angry which does not seem so when he is calm. In this way, on the part of the
object, the sense appetite moves the will” (ST I–II, q. 9, a. 2).
15 ST I–II, q. 77, a. 2, ad 4.
16 ST I–II, q. 94, a. 6.
17 ST I–II, q. 58, a. 3, ad 2.

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such as healthy bodily members, obey reason without resistance, “for as
soon as reason commands, the hand or the foot proceeds to action.”18 In
contrast to healthy limbs, “the appetitive faculty obeys the reason, not
blindly, but with a certain power of opposition.”19 Thomas cites Aristotle’s
analogy of the exercise of political power, whereby a man rules over free
subjects who enjoy a certain right of opposition, in order to elucidate the
relationship obtaining between reason and the passions. Reason, for example, might dictate that a special diet is necessary if one is to regain or to
maintain one’s health; this demand, however, cannot take effect until the
sensitive appetite approves of it and translates it into actual practice.
Insofar as the passions do not follow the lead of reason, therefore, they
impede its judgement. When however they do follow the judgement of
reason, they facilitate the execution of its command since they are inclined
to the good which is in accord with reason. Moreover, as Mark D. Jordan
tells us,“so far as the passions are brought under right reason, they increase
the exercise of reason and so nearness to the good.”20 It is precisely this
inclination of the appetitive faculty to the good which is in accord with
reason that constitutes moral virtue. Moral virtue is not simply that appetitive condition which inclines a man to what is in accord with right
reason; in order to count as moral virtue it must be joined with right
reason. Moral habits are “to be considered as virtues insofar as they are in
conformity with reason.”21 The movements of passion furnish the matter
of moral virtue, while moral virtue itself is constituted by the habitus of
choosing informed by the rule of right reason. As Gondreau puts it,
“reason’s penetration into sensibility helps the concupiscible and irascible
powers engage actively in the work of virtue, whereby they desire themselves
the good of reason and where they exercise their proper activity within the
arena of virtuous duty.”22
Grace, Affectivity, and Our Knowledge of the Good
At the beginning of his treatment of grace in the Summa theologiae,
Thomas deals with the question of the relationship obtaining between
grace and knowledge. He tell us that the act of the intellect is like that of
any created being in that it depends upon God in two ways:“[F]irst, inasmuch as it is from Him that it has the form whereby it acts; secondly,
18 ST I–II, q. 58, a. 2.
19 Ibid.
20 Mark D. Jordan, “Aquinas’s Construction of a Moral Account of the Passions,”

Freiburger Zeitschrift für Philosophie und Theologie 33 (1986): 92.
21 ST I–II, q. 58, a. 2. See I–II, q. 61, a. 2; also II–II, q. 141, a. 6.
22 Gondreau, The Passions of Christ’s Soul, 281.

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inasmuch as it is moved by Him to act.”23 God of course enlightens the
soul with natural light in the case of natural knowledge, but we ought
not to confuse this light with that of grace. A new light added to the
natural light of reason is not required in order to know the truth in all
things, but only in the case of those that surpass the bounds of natural
knowledge. In the latter case, “the light of grace or prophecy which is
called the light of grace, inasmuch as it is added to nature,”24 is needed. By
grace the nature of the soul is transformed so as to participate in the
divine nature, “after a manner of likeness, through a certain regeneration
or re-creation.”25 The recipient of grace is thus enabled in his intellective
power to participate in the divine knowledge through the virtue of faith
and in his power of will to participate in the divine love through the
virtue of charity.
Grace, however, is to some extent imperfect, for it does not heal man
completely: although the mind is healed by grace, human nature “remains
corrupted and poisoned in the flesh, whereby it serves the law of sin (Rom
7:25).”26 Even when transformed by grace, the intellect is beset by the
darkness of ignorance since it cannot know the various possible
outcomes of events or know fully what is for our good. Grace, however,
by uniting man to God, affords him the care and guidance of “God,Who
knows and can do all things.”27 This care and guidance of course pertains
to divine providence, whereby God watches over and cares for men in all
things—in this case with regard to all that lies beyond their knowledge
and capability.
Moreover, it is clear that the healing effects of grace in the mind can
be vitiated on account of the corruption of the flesh which is a constitutive feature of human existence.Thomas’s hylomorphic conception of
human nature can be adduced in order to support this claim: the human
person is a unitary composite being, comprising both body and soul; he
is a psychosomatic unity. We cannot therefore divorce the sensible dimension of human life from the psychic when we enter the dispensation of
grace.28 Grace perfects human nature, it does not destroy it. In the supernatural order, as in the natural, it is necessary to acknowledge the move23 ST I–II, q. 109, a. 1.
24 Ibid.
25 ST I–II, q. 110, a. 4.
26 ST I–II, q. 109, a. 9.
27 See ST I–II, q. 109, a. 9.
28 For a contemporary phenomenological discussion of this point, a discussion

which is hugely indebted to Aristotle and Aquinas, see Karol Wojtyla, The Acting
Person, trans. Andrzej Potocki (London: D. Reidel, 1979), 187–258.

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ments of sensitive affectivity in the moral life. In both of these orders disordered sensitive affectivity serves to undermine the life of reason.
Recta ratio and the Theological Virtue of Faith
In order for reason to attain the status of recta ratio it is not enough that
it unfold in the context of the natural virtues, for these are unable to
confer upon it union with its proper Final End, namely God as Father,
Son and Holy Spirit. If ratio denotes man’s power to grasp reality then, as
Pieper points out as he comments on Thomas, it cannot be “that reason
which arbitrarily restricts itself to the province of purely natural cognition.”29 Ratio, in its broadest sense, refers to man’s power to grasp reality
in its fullness.Thus, Pieper continues:
[M]an grasps reality not only in natural cognition but also—and this
reality is a higher object of knowledge and the process of grasping it a
higher process—by faith in the revelation of God. If therefore the
Summa Theologica states that Christ is the chief Lord (principalis Dominus), the first owner of our bodies, and that one who uses his body in
a manner contrary to order, injures Christ the Lord Himself,Thomas is
not of the opinion that this proposition exceeds the pattern of “mere”
rational order, but rather that for Christian thought to be guided by
divine revelation is the very highest form of “accord with reason”—this
in spite of the fact that elsewhere Thomas knows how to distinguish
sharply between natural and supernatural cognition. “The order of
reason,” accordingly, is the order which corresponds to the reality made
evident to man through faith and knowledge.30

Time and space do not permit an extensive treatment of the theological virtue of faith. Its ecclesial context, however, ought to be signalled
very clearly. Although Thomas does not develop an explicit ecclesiology,
it is clear that the Church is for him “the background to sacrament, grace,
and life where the Incarnation continues in history after the Ascension of
the risen Christ.”31 The Holy Spirit governs the universal Church:“If we
say: ‘In’ the Holy Catholic Church, this must be taken as verified insofar as
our faith is directed to the Holy Ghost,Who sanctifies the Church; so that
the sense is: I believe in the Holy Ghost sanctifying the Church.”32 Since the
29 Joseph Pieper, The Four Cardinal Virtues (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre

Dame Press, 1966), 156.
30 Ibid.
31 Thomas F. O’Meara, O.P., “Theology of the Church,” in The Theology of Thomas

Aquinas, ed. Rik van Nieuwenhove and Joseph Wawrykow (Notre Dame, IN:
University of Notre Dame Press, 2005).
32 ST II–II, q. 1, a. 9 ad 5.

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Holy Spirit is the Spirit of truth, the Church therefore cannot err.Accordingly, since the creed or symbol has been published by the authority of the
universal church it can contain nothing defective.33 Those who think that
the symbol offers a seeming alternative to the truth of faith found in
Sacred Scripture have misunderstood the relationship between the various
symbols and Holy Scripture. The truth of faith is indeed contained in
Scripture, but “diffusely, under various modes of expression, and sometimes obscurely.” Since many simply would be unable to afford the time
necessary in order to understand the truth of faith as it is presented there,
“it was necessary to gather together a clear summary from the sayings of
Holy Writ, to be proposed to the belief of all. This indeed was no addition to Holy Writ, but something taken from it.”34
With regard to this point, we ought to bear in mind that the term
“Scripture” is understood differently by Thomas than it is by theologians
of our own time. For Thomas Holy Scripture encompasses God’s revelation in the Old and New Testaments and its transmission in the Church.
Consequently, he does not perceive any clear-cut separation between
Scripture, on the one hand, and the authoritative documents formulated
by the Church throughout the course of her history.This intertwining of
Scripture and Tradition may well appear strange to a postmodern sensibility, but we ought to bear in mind that for Aquinas the tradition of the
Church is to a large extent “the tradition of explaining Scripture.”35
Indeed, as Valkenberg tells us,
In this vein, the Church and its tradition can be seen as vehicles for
receiving and transmitting the Scriptures in a liturgical and doctrinal
setting. The Fathers and Teachers of the Church, the Synods and the
Magisterial documents, they are all involved in this sacra doctrina: it is a
continuing process of handing down the words of God.36

In our own times, Humanae Vitae, as a magisterial document of the highest authority, forms part of this process.
Since faith, which perfects the intellect, is essentially ecclesial in its
character, it follows that immersion within the life of the Church is necessary for right judgment concerning reality in its totality. Connaturality
with the mind of the Church, the explicator of Scripture and the receptor and transmitter of Tradition, furnishes the necessary condition for opti33 ST I–II, q. 1, a. 9, sed contra.
34 ST II–II, q. 1, a. 9, ad 1.
35 Wilhelmus G. B. M.Valkenberg, Words of the Living God: Place and Function of Holy

Scripture in the Theology of St.Thomas Aquinas (Leuven: Peeters, 2000), 11.
36 Ibid.

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mum functioning of the life of the intellect.37 This condition extends to
every member of the Church, including—nay, especially—to theologians.
The following comment from Thomas is highly instructive in this regard:
[I]t must be said that the custom of the Church has the greatest authority which must be followed in all things, because even the very teaching of the catholic theologians has authority from the Church. Hence
we should stand more on the Church’s custom than on the authority
of Augustine or Jerome or some other teacher.38

In this regard,Valkenberg’s words, already quoted, are of note:
[T]he Church and its tradition can be seen as vehicles for receiving and
transmitting the Scriptures in a liturgical and doctrinal setting. The
Fathers and Teachers of the Church, the Synods and the Magisterial
documents, they are all involved in this sacra doctrina : it is a continuing
process of handing down the words of God.39

Grace, nevertheless, never leaves behind the order of nature. Human
freedom remains in tact, while those forces that influence man in his
natural constitution can never be annulled. In this regard we have in mind
specifically the role of virtue in coming to knowledge of the demands of
the natural law. The dynamic interplay between nature and grace is
indeed highly complex and cannot form a part of our investigation here.
It suffices to note that religious conversion has as its natural concomitant
a moral transformation—any conversion to the faith which lacks this
transformation must be deemed to be suspect. On the other hand, those
forces that bear upon man in his natural constitution can either cooperate with the life of grace or undermine it. Our own times have given rise
to various forces that unfortunately serve the latter purpose. Over a
period of time they have altered the configuration of the affective structure of many individuals including, unfortunately, a significant proportion
of the faithful.They have consequently undermined perception of what
constitutes the true good in various domains of human existence, particularly the sexual.
Arguably, the confusion engendered by theological dissent from the
teaching of Humanae Vitae has been one important source for the practical
37 See Kevin E. O’Reilly, “Objective Prejudice: St. Thomas on the Elevation by

Grace of the Life of Reason,” Angelicum 84 (2007): 59–95, for an extended argument supporting this contention.
38 Aquinas, Quodl., 2, 4, 2.
39 Valkenburg, Words of the Living God, 11.

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rejection of the Church’s teaching on contraception by all too many
Catholics.40 Whatever may the merits of that assertion, the consequences
in the order of moral psychology of the separation of the unitive and
procreative aspects of the conjugal act cannot be underestimated. John Paul
II has of course outlined these consequences in detail in his Love and
Responsibility. As a prelude to my own treatment of the effect of lust—as
expounded in the texts of St. Thomas—on the failure to appreciate the
teaching of Humanae Vitae, which lust has its roots in the uncoupling of the
unitive and procreative aspect of the marital act, let me quote briefly from
this important text:
If the possibility of parenthood is deliberately excluded from marital
relations, the character of the relationship between the partners automatically changes. The change is away from unification in love and in
the direction of mutual, or rather, bilateral,‘enjoyment’. . . .When a man
and a woman entirely reject the idea that he may become a father and
she a mother, when they deliberately exclude the possibility of parenthood from their relationship, the danger arises that objectively speaking there will be nothing left except ‘utilisation for pleasure’, of which
the object will be a person.41

Chastity, Lust, and the Life of Reason
Thomas tells us that the vice which most undermines the life of reason
and will is lust, for “the effect of the vice of lust is that the lower appetite,
namely the concupiscible, is most vehemently intent on its object, to wit,
the object of pleasure, on account of the vehemence of the pleasure.”42
When the attention of the soul is strongly directed to the activity of a
lower power, its higher powers are correspondingly weakened in their
operation. Consequently, Thomas tells us, “when the whole attention of
the soul is drawn to lower powers (i.e., the concupiscible power and the
40 But see also note 3 above.
41 Karol Wojtyla, Love and Responsibility, trans. H.T.Willetts (London: Collins, 1981),

228. This dynamic of “utilization for pleasure” has its roots in original sin. As
John Paul II tells us: “It is as if the personal profile of masculinity and femininity,
which before [the Fall] had highlighted the meaning of the body for a full
communion of persons, had made the way only for the sensation of sexuality
with regard to the other human being. It is as if sexuality became an obstacle in
the personal relationship of man and woman” (The Theology of the Body: Human
Love in the Divine Plan [Boston: Pauline Books and Media, 1997], 119. General
audience of June 4, 1980). Desire for personal communion is directed by lust to
the satisfaction of bodily desire, “often at the cost of a real and full communion
of persons” (ibid., 123).
42 ST II–II, q. 153, a. 5.

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sense of touch) in acts of sexual lust because of the strong pleasure
therein, the higher powers, namely, reason and the will, necessarily suffer
deficiency.”43 Lust contracts dullness of judgement by plunging man’s
sense into earthly things, “whereby his sense is rendered incapable of
perceiving divine things, according to 1 Corinthians 2:14: The sensual
man perceiveth not these things that are of the Spirit of God.”44 This dullness
of sense in judging, that is to say, folly, is analogous to the sense of taste
which is infected by an evil humour and which renders things sweet in
themselves to be without savour for the one afflicted by this infected
sense.Thomas’s description of the negative impact of lust on reason and
will is marked by profound psychological insight. On the part of reason,
the four acts in matters of action are adversely affected: the simple understanding which apprehends some end as good, counsel about what is to
be done for the sake of the end, judgement about things to be done, and
reason’s command about the thing to be done are all undermined by
lust.45 In other words, rectitude of will, which provides those ends to
which man ought rightly to be disposed, is undermined, as are the three
steps which constitute prudence’s “transformation of truth into decisions
corresponding to reality.”46 The disordering of the will occurs as a result
of a twofold inordinate act occasioned by lust. On the one hand, there is
the pleasure which a man desires inordinately and the concomitant
hatred of God on account of his having forbidden the desired pleasure.

43 De malo, 15, 4.Thomas, quoting Gregory the Great’s Moralia, lists the eight daugh-

ters of lust: “blindness of mind, lack of consideration, inconstancy, temerity, selflove, hatred of God, love of this world, and despair of the next” (ibid.).
44 ST II–II, q. 46, a. 2.
45 ST II–II, q. 153, a. 5: “Now the reason has four acts in matters of action. First
there is simple understanding, which apprehends some end as good, and this act
is hindered by lust, according to Daniel 13:56, ‘Beauty hath deceived thee, and
lust hath perverted thy heart.’ In this respect we have blindness of mind.The second
act is counsel about what is to be done for the sake of the end: and this is also
hindered by the concupiscence of lust. Hence Terence says (Eunuch., act 1, sc. 1),
speaking of lecherous love:‘The thing admits of neither counsel nor moderation,
thou canst not control it by counselling.’ In this respect there is rashness, which
denotes absence of counsel. . . .The third act is judgment about the things to be
done, and this again is hindered by lust. For it is said of the lustful old men (Dan
13:9):‘They perverted their own mind . . . that they might not . . . remember just
judgments.’ In this respect there is thoughtlessness. The fourth act is the reason’s
command about the thing to be done, and this also is impeded by lust, insofar as
being carried away by concupiscence, a man is hindered from doing what his
reason ordered to be done.” See also De malo 15, 4.
46 Pieper, The Four Cardinal Virtues, 162.

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On the other hand there is the desire for those things that are directed to
the end.47 The net result is well summarized by Joseph Pieper:
Unchaste abandon and the self-surrender of the soul to the world of
sensuality paralyzes the primordial powers of the moral person: the
ability to perceive, in silence, the call of reality, and to make, in the
retreat of this silence, the decision appropriate to the concrete situation
of concrete action.48

One cannot overstate the blinding effects of unchastity: “This blindness
is of the essence of unchastity itself, which is by its very nature destructive. It is not its outward effect and consequence, but its immanent and
essential property.”49
Nevertheless, one ought to distinguish between chastity as temperentia
or unchastity as intemperentia, on the one hand, and chastity as continentia
or unchastity as incontinentia, on the other. The former is the fruit of a
deep-seated attitude in man, an attitude which is as it were second nature
to him.The latter results from an inclination which has as yet not become
integrated into the existential core of man. Continent chastity entails a
form of strenuous control, while incontinent unchastity exhibits a mere
lack of control. Just as the former does not constitute the perfected virtue
of temperance and moderation, neither does the latter instantiate
consummate intemperance. The sensitive appetite of the continently
chaste man resists reason by its evil desires: it is merely by force of will
that he restrains his concupiscence; in contrast, the sensitive appetite is
obedient to the reason of the temperately chaste man.50 The good of
reason that penetrates down into the sensitive appetite is greater than that
which reaches the will alone.51 Continence is less perfect than temperance because, as Pieper puts it, “by the former, the directing power of
47 ST II–II, q. 153, a. 5.We should note that Thomas conceives the human being as

ontologically unitary in nature. He therefore views the cognitive and volitional
activities of the soul as inseparable in their principle, even though they constitute distinct operations.There is therefore no such thing as pure reason or pure
will; rather, they mutually inform one another. For Thomas, the spiritual activity
of man is a synthesis of the acts of intellect and will. If either functions in a defective manner, the other will necessarily be distorted in its operation.
48 Pieper, The Four Cardinal Virtues, 160.
49 Ibid. One ought to be clear, along with Pieper, that “it is not reference to the
province of sexuality that produces the blindness and deafness brought about by
unchastity”; the destructiveness, rather, “lies in the fact that unchastity constricts
man and thus renders him incapable of seeing objective reality” (ibid., 160–61).
50 See ST II–II, q. 155, a. 4.
51 See ST II–II, q. 155, a. 4, ad 3.

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reason has been able to mold only the conscious will, but not yet the
sensual urge, whereas by the latter will and urge are both stamped with
‘rational order.’ ”52
The source of ignorance of the incontinent and the intemperate man
differs: in the case of the former it arises from the appetite being inclined
to something by passion while, in the case of the latter, it issues from habit.
The intemperate man is characterized by the greater degree of ignorance.
Thomas adduces two reasons in support of this contention. Firstly, the
ignorance of the incontinent man lasts only as long as the passion endures,
“just as an attack of intermittent fever lasts as long as the humor is
disturbed,” whereas the ignorance of the intemperate man never ceases on
account of its being rooted in habit,“wherefore it is likened to phthisis or
any chronic disease.”53 Secondly, while “the ignorance of the incontinent
man regards some particular detail of choice, that of the intemperate man
regards the end itself.”54 In other words, the incontinent man is better
than the intemperate man because, as Aristotle states, “he retains the best
principle, to wit, the right estimate of the end.”55
It might seem that the sin of incontinence is more incurable than the
sin of intemperance and that the incontinent man sins more gravely than
the intemperate man:
For a person’s sin is cured by admonishment and correction, which are
seemingly no good to the incontinent man, since he knows he is doing
wrong, and does wrong notwithstanding: whereas it seems to the
intemperate man that he is doing well, so that it were good for him to
be admonished.56

It must be borne in mind, however, that mere knowledge does not suffice
to cure the incontinent man; the inward assistance of grace, “which
quenches concupiscence,” is also required in addition to “the external
remedy of admonishment and correction, which induce him to begin to
resist his desires, so that concupiscence is weakened.”57 The intemperate
man can be cured by these same means, but with greater difficulty.There
are two reasons for this greater difficulty. Firstly, his reason is corrupt as
regards its estimation of the last end, which in the practical domain functions as a first principle. And just as “it is more difficult to bring back to
52 Pieper, The Four Cardinal Virtues, 163.
53 ST II–II, q. 156, a. 3, ad 1.
54 Ibid.
55 Ibid. See Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, bk. 7, ch. 8.
56 ST II–II, q. 156, a. 3, obj. 2.
57 ST II–II, q. 156, a. 3, ad 2.

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the truth one who errs as to the principle,” so too “in practical matters
with one who errs in regard to the end”58 Secondly, the inclination of
the habit of the intemperate man issues from a habit, which is difficult to
eradicate, while that of the incontinent man arises from passion, which is
more easily controlled and suppressed.
Chastity and a Proper Vision of Family Life
At this juncture, I would like to examine briefly how Thomas’s moral
psychology in relation to chastity and lust can afford us a deeper appreciation of Humanae Vitae’s reflections on self-mastery and chastity. Paul VI
is clearly aware that the weakness of incontinence afflicts most human
beings. When prophetically pointing out how easy it would be “[for
many] to justify behavior leading to marital infidelity or to a gradual
weakening in the discipline of morals,” he calls attention to “human
weakness” and to the “temptation” to which human beings, particularly
the young, are prone.59 As already indicated in our brief quotation from
John Paul II, the uncoupling of the unitive and procreative aspects of the
marital act gives rise to a utilitarian attitude toward one’s spouse: bilateral
pleasure in the body and sex become the order of the day. Expressed in
more traditional categories the vice of lust, along with that blinding of
reason which is its essential property, is unleashed.
Moral realism reigns supreme in the encyclical when it states that “Not
much experience is needed to understand human weakness and to
comprehend that human beings, especially the young, are so susceptible to
temptation that they need to be encouraged to keep the moral law. It is
wrong to make it easy for them to violate the law.”60 It would be foolish
to presume that most people, particularly the young, have reached the
stage where the virtue of chastity engages not simply the intellect but also
the sensitive appetite and that they never experience sensitive inclinations
that are incompatible with their state of life. In other words, continence
and not temperance is most likely to be the most one can expect from
them. Most people, moreover, are not Kantian self-legislating agents and
moral wisdom is not distributed in a democratic fashion. It therefore falls
to the lot of those who have the greatest purchase on that wisdom to
provide suitable guidance for their fellow human beings. In this way one
can hope to limit the cause of moral failure in the realm of sexual relations to the realm of incontinence. Since the incontinent man sins
58 Ibid.
59 Humanae Vitae, §17.
60 Ibid.

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through passion, once this passion passes he repents;61 the incontinently
unchaste man does not lose sight of the end with respect to sexual relations and can therefore continue to struggle with the disordered inclinations of his sensitive appetite. It is to be hoped, moreover, that through
habituation to the discipline of the chaste life, facilitated by the cultivation
of conditions that promote chastity and discriminate against unchastity,
the seal of reason will eventually extend not simply to the will but also to
the sensitive appetite. In other words, it is to be hoped that situations that
once provoked a struggle within his fragmented being will at length evoke
pleasure in espousing the true good of human being. In that case, the
incontinently unchaste man will have become temperately chaste.
Failure to make it difficult to violate the moral law on the part of
those who have authority in society is wrong since it creates the conditions in which citizens can easily become habituated to immoral practices. This fact applies in particular to matters which touch upon the
virtue of chastity, for when the incontinently unchaste man becomes
habituated to being unchaste on account of his frequent encounters with
temptation, he naturally becomes intemperately unchaste.The strength of
resistance on the part of the continently chaste man can likewise be
undermined and, over a period of time, it is not impossible that he too
can become intemperately chaste; such a possibility is open even to the
temperately chaste man. And we have outlined the deleterious psychological impact of such intemperance: the true good of man, which
furnishes the first principle of prudential reason, is no longer recognized
as such; indeed, that which is objectively harmful to his well-being
appears to him as self-evidently good. Little wonder, therefore, that Paul
VI advises “educators and all others whose right and duty it is to be
concerned about the common good.”62 In continuity with the moral
wisdom of the tradition which we have seen St. Thomas expound, he
recognizes the need “to work to create conditions favourable to the cultivation of chastity, so that the norms of the moral order might be kept and
true freedom might prevail over licence.”63
By no stretch of the imagination could it be maintained that conditions favourable to the cultivation of chastity have been fostered in the
developed world since the promulgation of Humanae Vitae.While Paul VI
could condemn the forms of entertainment at that time that “arouse
man’s [base] passions and that foster dissolute morals, such as obscene
61 ST II–II, q. 156, a. 3.
62 Humanae Vitae, §22.
63 Ibid.

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literature and corrupt theatrical and film productions,”64 the situation has
worsened considerably since then. Thus, for example, various television
series which have a grip on the popular imagination present a vision of
reality in which sexual dissoluteness reigns supreme. It is difficult to
encounter a film in which there are not sexually graphic scenes. Pornographic publications abound. In the name of child protection, an increasing number of primary school pupils are given sexual instruction.
Information campaigns aimed at countering the transmission of sexually
transmitted diseases accept and communicate as self-evident that there is
nothing wrong with casual sex and that it is a constitutive component of
the lifestyle of most “normal” people. We witness public authorities, in
some cases, leading the way in legislating for a more “enlightened” attitude to the gay lifestyle, thereby introducing into the family “practices
opposed to the natural and divine law.”65 One could continue the litany.
Little wonder therefore that there is a diminished appreciation, even on
the part of many Catholics, of the sublime truth of the Church’s teaching
on human sexuality. In recent times there has grown an appreciation of the
fact that there is no such thing as pure reason, pace Kant, thanks especially to
the work of Hans-Georg Gadamer.This notion is however not a novel one
in the history of western thought and is clearly to be found in Aristotle and
Thomas, albeit implicitly.66 This point ought to be clear from our exposition of Thomas’s understanding of the influence of faith and of the passions
on the life of reason. There is arguably however also a recognition that
reason cannot escape the influence of the social practices which furnish the
context in which it necessarily operates.67 Growing up in a society which
in large part rejects Church teaching on issues of marriage and sexuality,
young people are more liable to come to regard this teaching as selfevidently wrong, insofar as they have any familiarity with it at all. Expressed
in terms of the syllogistic structure of human action, the major premise is
often informed by a vision of the place of sexuality in human life that is
heavily coloured by the vice of lust.This vision is formulated concisely by
John Paul II: “When carnal desire is not kept within the bounds of the
appetitus concupiscibilis but communicates itself to the will, on which it tries
to impose its characteristic attitude to the object, it orients the subject first
towards ‘the body and sex’ and secondly toward ‘enjoyment.’ ”68 The major
64 Ibid.
65 Humanae Vitae, §23.
66 See O’Reilly, “Objective Prejudice,” 59–95.
67 See O’Reilly, “The Vision of Virtue and Knowledge of the Natural Law in

Thomas Aquinas,” Nova et Vetera 5 (2007): 41–66.
68 John Paul II, Love and Responsibility, 149.

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premise of the practical syllogism might therefore receive the following
formulation: Any attractive body is a legitimate object of pursuit for the
purpose of sexual gratification.69 Pleasure is the order of the day and, as John
Paul II tells us, “all else—the ‘person,’ that person’s ‘body,’ ‘femininity’ or
‘masculinity’—is only a means to it.”70 Notions of personal communion are
jettisoned and men and women “remain only an object of attraction, in a
certain sense as happens in the world of living beings, which, like man, have
received the blessing of fertility.”71
Conclusion
The thrust of my argument in this essay has been to show how human
reason is undermined by the vice of lust.While the teaching of the encyclical can clearly be seen to be in accord with right reason by those endowed
with the same on account of that colouring of the life of reason which is
the fruit of a rightly ordered affective structure, which in turn is the fruit
of a life of moral virtue and in particular of a life lived in accordance with
the virtue of chastity, those whose reason is infected by lust are rendered
blind to the truth of this teaching.The following words from Archbishop
Desmond Connell offer a concise portrayal of the further consequences of
the moral blindness engendered by a contraceptive mentality and bear
negative testimony to the fact that continence “always appears and acts in
connection with the other virtues (nexus virtutum), and therefore in
connection with prudence, justice, fortitude, and above all with charity”:72
Approval of contraception logically extends the blessing of moral
approval to the sexual revolution, which has resulted in the chaos of
69 The following passage from John Paul II on the deforming effects of carnal

concupiscence helps to elucidate the point just made: “For sensuality furnishes
love with ‘material,’ but material which can only be shaped by the appropriate
creative activity on the part of the will.Without this there can be no love, there
is only the raw material which is used up by carnal concupiscence as it seeks an
‘outlet.’ This results in actions, interior and exterior, which have as their sole
object the sexual values connected with a person, and which take the direction
of mere sensuality—‘the body as a possible object of enjoyment.’ Their relation
to the person is therefore a utilitarian, a ‘consumer’ approach. They make the
person an object of enjoyment. Whether the acts are purely internal or partly
external depends in large measure on the sensual make-up of the person
concerned” (Love and Responsibility, 151).
70 Ibid., 155. See also 159: “Concupiscence is a consistent tendency to see persons
of the other sex through the prism of sexuality alone, as ‘objects of potential
enjoyment.’ ”
71 John Paul II, Theology of the Body, 125 (General audience of July 23, 1980).
72 Ibid., 409 (General audience of October 24, 1984).

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broken families, co-habitation, promiscuity, uncertainty about the limits
that define the nature of the family. It has helped to shape a society of
widespread divorce, and encouraged such resentment against new life
in the womb as to create blindness to the injustice of abortion. Addiction to sex as an absolute good in itself prompts the kind of fascination
that flirts with pornography and, at times, even takes the plunge that
defiles the minds of the reading and viewing public through the
communications and entertainment media. Clouded in a turbulent fog
of invasive emotion, they become blind to spiritual reality, and, accepting a degraded dignity as normal, they lose their affinity with the things
of God.The currency of the language of love is devalued and placed on
a par with the language of lust.73

The foregoing phenomena certainly negate the assumption that “underlying human sexuality is a Christoform natural law which orders persons
to an ecstatic generosity that moderates domination and promotes life,”74
an assumption clearly operative in Humanae Vitae as evidenced by the
claim that “if both essential meanings [ratio] are preserved, that of union
and procreation, the conjugal act fully maintains its capacity for [fostering] true mutual love and its ordination to the highest mission [munus] of
parenthood, to which man is called.”75 The blinding of reason by lust to
the Christoform splendour of the natural law has profound ramifications
for the life of society, a point made in Humanae Vitae 76 and borne out by
the litany quoted above. Likewise, as we have also argued, the ethos of
society in our own times—marked by that Cartesian dualism that seeks
to dominate and manipulate the material conditions of being—undermines the ability of many to perceive moral truth in the area of sexuality.77 The following truth, delineated in Veritatis Splendor, becomes obscured
to their moral vision:
Only in reference to the human person in his “unified totality,” that is,
as “a soul which expresses itself in a body and a body informed by an
immortal spirit,” can the specifically human meaning of the body be
grasped. Indeed, natural inclinations take on moral relevance only insofar as they refer to the human person and his authentic fulfilment, a
fulfilment which for that matter can take place always and only in
73 Archbishop Desmond Connell, “Reflections on Humanae Vitae,” Irish Theological

Quarterly 64 (1999): 304.
74 G. J. McAleer, Ecstatic Morality and Sexual Politics: A Catholic and Antitotalitarian

Theory of the Body (New York: Fordham University Press, 2005), 116.
75 Humanae Vitae, §12.
76 Humanae Vitae, §17.
77 For a masterful treatment of the political ramifications of dualistic anthropology,

see McAleer, Ecstatic Morality, 156–87.

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human nature. By rejecting all manipulations of corporeity which alter
its human meaning, the Church serves man and shows him the path of
true love, the only path on which he can find the true God.78

The powers of concupiscence, when given free reign, since they are identical to the practical dynamics that issue from an anthropological dualism,
necessarily give existential support to the erroneous belief that such dualism is in keeping with the truth of human nature.They thereby “detach
the language of the body from the truth, that is, they try to falsify it.” In
contrast, the power of love “strengthens it ever anew in that truth, so that
the mystery of the redemption of the body can bear fruit in it.”79
This essay has attempted simply to understand how men of our time
have failed to appreciate a teaching which is in accord with reason, a teaching which prophetically foresaw the effects of its own rejection. Such an
approach might be deemed somewhat negative in its tenor, a criticism that
the author accepts. Such negativity is however grounded in the anthropology and the moral realism that inform Humanae Vitae, both of which in
turn are grounded in a metaphysical realism. Such realism dictates that
there are limits to the extent to which humans can violate the dictates of
the natural law without undermining their own well-being, both physical
and psychological. History offers examples of how the collapse of civilizations on account of moral dissoluteness contained within it the seeds of a
renewed appreciation of the moral law.There comes a point when continued transgression of the moral law becomes impossible on account of its
destructive consequences and, even in the absence of an appreciation of the
natural law, decadent civilizations are compelled to obey it in spite of themselves. This process entails a habituation to virtuous practice that serves
once again to awaken the moral vision of civilizations. There are indications that the same dynamic is about to unfold once again, although not
78 Veritatis Splendor, §50.
79 John Paul II, Theology of the Body, 406. General audience of October 10, 1984.

Further on, John Paul II tells us that continence, the expression of a rightly
ordered affectivity animated by true love, is “the fundamental condition for the
reciprocal language of the body to remain in the truth and for the couple to
‘defer to one another out of reverence for Christ,’ according to the words of
Scripture (Eph 5:21). This ‘deferring to one another’ means the common
concern for the truth of the language of the body” ( John Paul II, Theology of the
Body, 408). The fact that continence is accompanied by “the gift of the fear of
God (a gift of the Holy Spirit)” perhaps gives weight to the idea that the practical rejection of the teaching of Humanae Vitae, with its attendant unleashing of
the psychological dynamics of lust, has been responsible for the diminished levels
of immersion of the faithful in the life of the Church in the last few decades. See
also ST II–II, q. 45, aa. 2 and 3.

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yet in the developed world: perhaps I can simply instance the abstinence
campaign that has yielded such great success in the fight against AIDS in
Uganda. One can only hope that the penetrating moral vision that is the
fruit of chastity and that illumines Humanae Vitae from beginning to end
may have once again been ignited on the African continent and that it may
N&V
spread to the so-called developed world.

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Integration and Transcendence of
the Person in the (Marital) Act
A DRIAN J. R EIMERS
University of Notre Dame
Notre Dame, Indiana

T HE QUESTION that lay at the basis of John Paul II’s ethics and
anthropology is that of love, and following the Second Vatican Council’s
teaching, John Paul II taught that love is realized in sincere, disinterested
gift of self.1 This gift of self is realized in acts, by which the person
accomplishes his will and realizes his intentions. In his earlier philosophical treatise Person and Act 2 our author proposes a thoroughgoing account
of the essence of this experience, “a human being acts,” in order to
account for the integration and transcendence of the person in act.
Through such an analysis he intends to provide, as the basis of his personalistic ethics, an adequate account of the person as given in experience.
In his ethical analysis of marital love, Love and Responsibility, and then later
in his theology of the body audiences, John Paul II argues that the most
complete and thoroughgoing gift of self between human persons in this
life is that gift made by husband and wife in their marriage vows, a gift
that is realized and represented most perfectly in the physical act by
1 Vatican II, Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World Gaudium

et Spes, §24. See Karol Wojtyla, Love and Responsibility, trans. H. T. Willetts, (San
Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1993) (in Polish: Mil ość i odpowiedzialność [Krakow:
Wydawnicto, 1960]), 95–100, 125–26; John Paul II, Redemptor Hominis, §21;
idem, Man and Woman He Created Them: A Theology of the Body, trans. Michael
Waldstein (Boston: Pauline Books & Media, 1006), 15:1–3, 17:5–6, 32:4, etc.
2 Karol Wojtyla, Osoba i czyn (Lublin:Towarzystwo Naukowe KUL, 2000). Unless
otherwise noted, citations for this article are from “Persona e atto,” in Karol
Wojtyla, Metafisica della persona:tutte le opera filosofiche e saggi integrativi, ed. G. Reale
and T. Styczeń (Milan: R. C. S. Libri S.p.A., 2003), 831–1216, cited in the text as
Person and Act.
/

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which the marriage is consummated. In this paper we will look at that
specific act by which is expressed the complete and mutual gift of self in
marriage, with particular attention to the concepts of integration and
transcendence, as developed in Person and Act. In doing so, I hope to show
the essential continuity between that dense and difficult philosophical
work on the human person and his more accessible studies on love and
sexual expression
The Human Act
A word on Wojtyla’s phenomenological method is in order here. In the
tradition of Husserl’s original inspiration—“Back to the things themselves”—Karol Wojtyla intends to examine this particular datum of experience, “a human being acts,” an experience that each of us has from the
subjective perspective, as we undertake our own acts, as well as from the
objective, observing the acts of others. He intends to investigate, therefore, what must pertain to this experience—its phenomenological
essence—in order to extract from the analysis an account of the person
as moral subject. Although his works indicate the necessity of a metaphysical account of the person and his acts,3 for the purposes of Person
and Act he confines himself largely, but not uncritically, to the phenomenological perspective.
The Essence of “a Human Being Acts”
By the expression “a human being acts”Wojtyla means the kind of experience each of us has innumerable times every day.4 By its essence, this
experience,“a human being acts,” is both a subjective event in consciousness and an objectively efficacious cause.
The act is a conscious event, something reflected in or given to consciousness, and this is essential to the experience of “a human being acts.” Indeed,
the consciousness of the act arises precisely because of the role of the will
in commanding the act, or (to use Wojtyla’s terms) “dynamizing” the
person, as the common expression “he did it consciously” suggests.5 In
consciousness, the interiority of the person comes to the fore in two ways.
3 Karol Wojtyla, “The Degrees of Being from the Point of View of the Phenome-

nology of Action,” in Analecta Husserliana:The Yearbook of Phenomenological Research,
vol. 11, ed. Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka (Dordrecht, Holland: D. Reidel Publishing
Company, 1981), 125, 129; idem,“The Separation of Experience from the Act in
Ethics,” in idem, Person and Community: Selected Essays, trans. Theresa Sandock,
O.S.M. (New York: Peter Lang, 1993), 42–43; idem, “Persona e atto,” 888, 1064,
1162–63.
4 Wojtyla, “Persona e atto,” 839.
5 Ibid., 864.

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Consciousness both mirrors the subject’s experience and also reflects the
personhood of the agent. First, one is conscious when he becomes aware
of what his senses receive and his organism (his body) feels. Second, and
more important for our present considerations, is the reflexive function of
consciousness, as consciousness refers its objects back to the acting subject
himself, so that he can identify his experiences as his own and as experiences of a self or ego. However, consciousness itself, even as it performs this
reflexive function, is not sufficient to form that experience of self, because
consciousness remains out of the direct control of the human subject.
Rather this task of forming and unifying the self as center of experience
must be the work of reason in its application as self-knowledge. Further,
consciousness is not itself sufficient to account for the essence of the human
act, because consciousness as such is of what “happens in” the person.
Without the specific note of agency the experience of “a human being
acts” is lost. Wojtyla identifies this note with the moment of efficacy. To
distinguish between “what happens in a human being” and “a human
being acts,”Wojtyla observes that the human person can be dynamized (set
into motion) in two different ways. I lay my hand on a hot burner and
jerk it back before I can even think. Having glimpsed an alluring young
woman, the young man’s eyes are drawn to her, and he begins to feel
hormonally induced stirrings in his body. Such dynamizations of the
person are “happenings” that respond to some value (or disvalue); they
are not willed or necessarily desired.The psychosomatic organism responds
to external stimuli and internal conditions. These happenings are important to us, however, because they present values to which one can respond.
On the other hand, the person can also dynamize himself in response to
the values presented to him, and by this self-dynamism he acts.We experience this every day.To mount an attack in chess I move my rook to the
open file. The woman is attractive, but I am married. I turn away. This
acting manifests the faculty of will. It is by the will that the human person
dynamizes himself.
Although what happens in a human being flows from his nature as an
organism in this world, that a human being acts by his own will’s choice
means that he transcends the order about him. The person is self-determining, and hence by his will he makes himself to be the person he is,
be this for good or evil. By his efficacy, the human person realizes values
in the world and for himself. The person, whose objective existence in
the world is manifest in his efficacy and whose own will determines his
acts, is responsible. He is responsible for what he does in the world and for
what he makes of himself.

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The Shoals of Materialism and Phenomenalism
By his account, Karol Wojtyla seeks to avoid the modern dangers of
materialist reductionism and sensationalist phenomenalism. Materialism
acknowledges the reality of the act but only as an objective event. The
materialist perspective reduces the act to a causal event, itself caused by
earlier events. The literature of scientific materialism is quite clear in its
insistence that the sense we have of consciously controlling our acts is
illusory, that our actions are the results of causal influences over which
the mind has no real control.6 Wojtyla’s response to this is to observe that
this account denies the very experience of acting. It ignores the awareness of our subjectivity in acting, which is intrinsic to the experience of
acting. Karol Wojtyla rejects the determinist thesis as a confusion of the
proper reason with its condition.7 Regardless what some third person
might say—such as a scientific observer—I am inextricably aware that it
is I who want something, think about it, and decide on the act. Someone
else may attempt to predict my act, but I cannot. I must choose and perform
the act. Without this self-dynamization, I will not perform the act. This
perspective of the person in act is critical if we are to understand the
essence of “the human being acts.”
Phenomenalism commits the opposite error, reducing the person
entirely to his consciousness, where what is important is not the interaction with the world but rather inner experience. This perspective is
usually accompanied by a phenomenalist view of the world, which
regards objective reality as a value-free realm of neutral events and interactions, which are in themselves neither good nor evil.Thus according to
Kant’s moral theory, the will is good only by its conformity with universal law and not by what it accomplishes or even attempts.8 But we also
find it in phenomenologist Max Scheler, who located morality in the
intuition of and response to values. Rather than coldly acknowledging
moral duty, Scheler would have the moral agent respond with warm
emotion to deep and important values, from which actions spontaneously
flow. The good person is he who interiorizes the richest values and lets
them guide him. For Scheler as well as Kant, morality is only secondarily related to the effect one’s actions have in the world. Indeed, for Scheler

6 See, for example, Daniel Dennett, Consciousness Explained (Boston: Little, Brown,

and Company, 1991), 171–76; Francis Crick, The Astonishing Hypothesis: The
Scientific Search for the Soul (New York: Charles Scribner and Sons, 1994), 3–5.
7 Wojtyla, “Persona e atto,” 1002.
8 Immanuel Kant, Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals, 393–94.

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it is a sign of immorality if one is too concerned about “doing good.”9
Wojtyla finds such theories too subjective adequately to describe the
essence of the human act, because they ignore the moment of efficacy or
efficient causality.10 To put it more simply, we are bodily beings whose
acts have consequences. This efficacy is not something extrinsic, but
rather it is central to the act.The human act is for some purpose, to realize some value—be this a tasty omelet, a pretty picture, or a convincing
lecture. This efficacy manifests what Wojtyla calls “horizontal transcendence,” which is the capacity of the subject to go outside himself toward
the objects that represent heterogeneous values.11 The acting person is an
agent of change in the world.
The Will and Vertical Transcendence
A person’s conscious experience is filled with values that attract him, as it
were calling on the acting subject to respond. However, these experienced
values (what “happens in” the person) are neither self-validating nor integrated with each other. Indeed, values as experienced may work at crosspurposes. I want to lose weight, but the cheesecake is tasty. As a rational
being, the person is capable of inquiring about the truth of things,12 and
this truth can serve to guide actions and choices. Therefore, the human
person needs to seek out the truth about the good. He must transcend the
realm of his own subjectivity, of his desires and the influences of other
persons and things on him to find the objective truth about the values to
which he is inclined to respond.Wojtyla calls this “vertical transcendence,”
“which is intrinsic to self-dominion and self-possession as specific structural properties of the person.”13 As such, the person is necessarily free in
the sense that he is self-determining.14 Moral choices therefore must be
more than simply responses to values. The rational being, a person, is
responsible to respond to values presented to him according to the criterion of truth.The truth about the good therefore becomes the foundation
for the moral qualification of acts as good or evil.15
9 Max Scheler, Der Formalismus in der Ethik und die materiale Wertethik: Neuer Versuch

der Grundlegung eines ethischen Personalismus (Bern und München: Franke Verlag,
1966), 48.
10 Karol Wojtyla,“The Will in the Analysis of the Ethical Act,” in Person and Community, 3–22; and in the same volume,“The Separation of Experience from the Act
in Ethics,” 23–44.
11 Wojtyla, “Persona e atto,” 998.
12 Ibid., 1003.
13 Ibid., 998.
14 Ibid., 1007.
15 Ibid., 1008.

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In this context it is important to note that this transcendence does not
at all imply a rejection or dismissal of the values presented in human experience, presenting themselves through what happens in the person. Indeed,
these values often give life its richness.16 Karol Wojtyla does not anywhere
imply that the moral act must spring from an impassive consideration of
the truth known by cool reason. To be sure, he warns against the
“emotionalization of consciousness,” by which one’s emotional response
to the world as experienced overwhelms rational considerations, particularly self-knowledge.17 The task of reason is, however, not to reject the
emotional and affective experience of values, but rather to consider them
in the light of truth, to determine the truth about the good in the face of
experiences that propose, as it were, various values as good. On the basis
of this knowledge, the person can then choose freely to shape his own acts
and in doing so to form himself.And in forming himself—his own ego or
self—he indirectly forms his own consciousness.
Because his life is to be centered around truth and goodness, the
human being is also a spiritual being that transcends the physical order,
directing himself to the good known in truth.This good serves to integrate
the person in his act, because his true good is the fitting good, the bonum
honestum,18 according to which the values of pleasure (bonum delectibile)
and use (bonum utile) can be properly ordered.This does not mean simply
that the person must wisely choose the good he wants most and leave the
others behind, although this dynamic may sometimes occur. Rather, the
good for which the person is called in truth to live for is the bonum honestum, which is the good appropriate to him as a human being, a good that
John Paul II identifies with God himself.19 As Creator, God is the origin
of all created goods. Indeed, the order of created goods is the order of
existence.20 It follows, therefore, that the values presented in experience
(by what happens in a person) can be mutually integrated, and with them
16 See Wojtyla, Love and Responsibility, 109.
17 Wojtyla, “Persona e atto,” 896–903.
18 Karol Wojtyla uses the term “fitting good” or bonum honestum.The German text

of the Lublin Lectures (Lubliner Vorlesungen, trans. Annaliese Danka Spranger and
Edda Wiener [Stuttgart-Degerloch: Seewald Verlag, 1986]) uses “rechtschaffen.”
In “Osoba: Podmiot i wspólotna” (in Karol Wojtyla, Osoba i czyn: oraz inne studia
antropologiczne [Lublin:Towarzystwo KUL, 2000], 385),Wojtyla characterizes bonum
honestum by the phrase “dobrem w znaceniu bezwzgledç nym i bezinteresownym,”
which the English translation renders “the good in an unconditional and disinterested sense.” See Wojtyla, “Person: Subject and Community,” in idem, Person and
Community, 230.
19 Wojtyla, Love and Responsibility, 137–38, 173; John Paul II,Veritatis Splendor, §9.
20 See Wojtyla, Love and Responsibility, 57.

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the person as a self, only in terms of the fitting good. Therefore the integration of the person in his act must ultimately rest on a metaphysical
basis, on God as the source of all being.
With this very brief summary some of Karol Wojtyla’s key philosophical themes, we may turn to that distinctive act by which the “two
become one flesh.”
The Marital Act
In analyzing the human act, we tend to think in terms of transitive acts,
that is, of acts that pass into external matter.21 “Making” is a resultdirected interaction with things: “Break two eggs into a bowl and beat
them well, etc.” Similarly, we see acting-together in terms of mutual
cooperation:“I’ll hold the beam in place while you hammer in the nails.”
The purpose of such acts is to attain some result, and the performance of
the act is normally subject to the will’s cool decision. Even if baker’s
hands get tired, he must knead the dough a full ten minutes. For several
significant reasons, this model of action does not apply well to the marital act. On the other hand, unlike the intransitive acts of which Aristotle
and Aquinas speak (sensing, understanding, and the like), the marriage act
can indeed have the characteristic of a making, for by it a couple can
conceive a child. Let us consider this more closely.
First, although conception may result from the marital union, couples
seldom engage in relations with the express intention to conceive by this
act. Indeed, given the biological conditions, the processes by which the
sperm fertilizes the egg, such an intention is beyond their capability intentionally to realize. Second, the incentive to make love ordinarily arises not
from some deliberately productive strategy to respond to environmental
conditions or states of affairs, but from within as man and wife experience
the desire for each other. Attracted by a spouse’s masculinity or femininity, the married person experiences a sexual urge toward the spouse, an
urge that frequently manifests itself by incipient physical response. Let us
note that this is not (ordinarily) a simple desire for pleasure. More than
simple relief of sexual tension, the loving married couple wants to be
joined to each other.As a kind of corollary to this, we may note that sexual
relations have a note of spontaneity, seldom resulting from a kind of cool
decision of will. Indeed, couples who closely watch the symptoms of
fertility, hoping to find the right moment to be sure of conceiving, often
find that too much planning cramps their love-life. It becomes a chore. In
short, the act of physical lovemaking is ordinarily motivated and incited
21 Aristotle, Metaphysics, IX, 8, 1050a 30;Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae I–II, q. 3,

a. 2, ad 3.

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by what happens in the married partners. Because of these differences from
many other kinds of act, we need different criteria for understanding the
act of marital union.To clarify the issue, we may also pose the question in
this way: When is marital intercourse done well and when not?
Spousal Significance and the Act
In his theology of the body, John Paul the Great speaks of the spousal
meaning of the body,22 by which the marital act acquires a twofold significance as unitive and procreative.
The human body as male and female bears within itself the “sign of
the gift.”23 By this John Paul means to say that the body, in its differentiation as male and female, expresses and can realize the spousal gift of
self. This refers in part to the fact that the male and female bodies are
designed to unite physically in sexual union, but it does not stop there.
The man is drawn to the beauty of a woman’s femininity and the woman
to a man’s masculine strength and beauty. The woman, whose physical
constitution—including her endocrinal and nervous systems—is
oriented to motherhood, has a characteristic openness to the person.24
Her brain is more globally integrated than a man’s, which for its part is
more hierarchically and less integrally structured. He is a “doer” who has
to prove his value in work and competition.25 And so John Paul II points
to the man’s readiness to accept responsibility, to work, to protect and
provide as characteristic of the husband and father.26 The spousal meaning
of the body is written not simply into our reproductive systems, but into
the entire psychosomatic structures of our bodies as male and female.This
is one source of the delicious tension of falling in love and the delight of
its realization.
The person can be a gift only if he or she gives himself freely. As spousal
it is a gift of the entire self.This notion is central to Karol Wojtyla’s analyses of marriage: “Its [betrothed love’s] decisive character is the giving of
one’s own person (to another). The essence of betrothed love is self22 In John Paul II, Man and Woman He Created Them, Michael Waldstein translates

the Italian “sponsale” as “spousal.” See also Wojtyla, Love and Responsibility, 95–96,
where the English translator renders “milość oblubieńcza” as “betrothed love,”
and the Italian translator in Amore e responsabilità (in Karol Wojtyla, Metafisica della
persona, 552) as “amore sponsale.”
23 John Paul II, Man and Woman He Created Them, 14:4; and in general 14:2–16:2.
24 John Paul II, apostolic letter Mulieris Dignitatem, §18. See also John Tierney,
“What Women Want,” New York Times, May 24, 2005.
25 See “Male Brains,” Reuters New Service, October 1, 2003.
26 See John Paul II, apostolic exhortation Redemptoris Custos, for a portrayal of the
ideal characteristics of the good man as husband and father.
/

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giving, the surrender of one’s own ‘I.’ ”27 Wojtyla is careful to stress that
this gift is not to be regarded only in the context of sex, but precisely in
its most radical and paradoxical form as the gift of one’s self to another.
“The concept of betrothed [spousal] love implies the giving of the individual person to another chosen person.”28 This means that not only
one’s body but also his intellect and will, his freedom and self-determination are given over to the beloved. The spouse no longer lives for
himself but in union with and, in a way, as part of another.
John Paul the Great develops this notion further in his theology of the
body. Analyzing the creation narrative in Genesis 2, John Paul II interprets the original nakedness of the first man and woman in terms of the
spousal gift that they are to be for each other:
seeing and knowing each other in all the peace and tranquility of the
interior gaze, they “communicate” in the fullness of humanity, which
shows itself in them as reciprocal complementarity precisely because
they are “male” and “female.” At the same time, they “communicate”
based on the communion of persons in which they become a mutual
gift for each other, through femininity and masculinity. . . . The original meaning of nakedness corresponds to the simplicity and fullness of
vision in which their understanding of the meaning of the body is born
from the very heart, as it were, of their community-communion. We
call this meaning “spousal.”29

This union is, in fact, a communion of persons, a sharing that results in a
common life, so that the two act “as one.” The “original nakedness” is
therefore not only sexually significant. The body in its nakedness
expresses the transparency of each to the other in the gift of self, so that
their actions are in harmony. A sign of this is the rupture between them
that occurred after the Fall. Their first act was to cover their physical
nakedness out of shame (Genesis 3:8–9), but their second was to turn
against each other when God called them to account.“It was the woman
you put with me” (Gen 3:12). No longer did they act as one, but instead
the man looked out for himself, and the communion was ruptured.
Before the Fall it was not so, as the two lived as “one flesh.”
This theme of communion of persons is an important one for John Paul II,
one which he explored in a variety of ways and contexts in his writings.30
27 John Paul II, Love and Responsibility, 96.
28 Ibid., 98.
29 John Paul II, Man and Woman He Created Them, 13:1.
30 See Wojtyla,“Persona e atto,” cap. 7, especially 1175–81, 1205–13; idem,“Person:

Subject and Community,” 240–52.

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866

How can two individual persons, distinct centers of consciousness and
action, become one? In his theology of the body teachings, John Paul II uses
the term “bi-subjectivity” to describe this unity. Commenting on Ephesians
5:22–33, he writes:“This supplementary analogy of ‘head and body’ shows
that . . . we are dealing with two distinct subjects who, in virtue of a particular reciprocal relation, become in some sense a single subject.”31 And further:
Still, this analogy does not blur the individuality of the subjects, that of
the husband and that of the wife, that is, the essential bi-subjectivity
that stands at the basis of the image of “one body,” more precisely the
essential bi-subjectivity of the husband and the wife in marriage which
makes them in a certain sense “one body,” passes in the whole text we
are examining (Eph 5:22–33) into the image of the Church as body
united with Christ as head.32

This text complements that cited above on “original nakedness” in that
it emphasizes not the so much the sexual encounter as the relationship as
a whole. It is a serious mistake to regard the spousal gift of self in sexual
terms alone; the gift is of the person and not just of the body.33 It is
uniquely that act, however, which expresses this gift. Because of specific
circumstances in the life of a particular couple, another act may at a certain
time express the gift of self more perfectly to the spouse (as when, for
instance, a husband turns down a personally attractive professional appointment for the good of his wife). Nevertheless, it is this act which of its own
nature represents that self-gift. In this act, husband and wife, putting aside
the normal shame that nakedness brings with it, expose themselves to each
other and unite physically so as to become one flesh. Their union takes
place by means of their genital—that is, reproductive—organs, in an act
whose natural finality is reproduction, the conception of not just “a child”
but a “little you and a little me,” someone who comes from the two and
shares something of them. No other act of itself fully represents this: “I
give myself to you completely and receive your gift of self to me.”
Unitive Meaning
Here is the first key to understanding the marital act and its criteria.The
marital embrace, to be done well, needs to express love as the free and
total gift of oneself to the beloved. (They must, of course, be married for
the act to express the total gift of self, for only marriage is a full commit31 John Paul II, Man and Woman He Created Them, 91:3.
32 Ibid., 91:4.
33 Wojtyla, Love and Responsibility, 99.

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ment of oneself to another person such that the two become one.)34 In
their physical lovemaking husband and wife intend to unite themselves
fully, to express physically the unity of their life together.The point is not
so much to do something but to share each other with each other, to be
a married couple together. By the same token, the act is done badly to
the extent one or the other withholds himself from giving fully of
himself, perhaps by greedily milking his own pleasure from the act to the
neglect of his wife, by her quietly submitting with her mind on tomorrow’s concerns, or by some more serious failure. Sexual intercourse is
done well insofar as it expresses and serves to realize the union of the two
persons who have given themselves to each other in marriage. Depending on circumstances, both interior to the persons and exterior, it may be
more or less thrilling, delicious, or pleasurable, but it can always be good.
Therefore, the marital act is an act of leisure, comparable to play, to making
music, or even to contemplative prayer.35
The Efficacy of Sex
In Person and Act Karol Wojtyla argues that an act is not constituted by
subjectivity alone, that the moment of efficacy is essential to the human
act.36 As a human act, therefore, the marital act is efficacious. More to the
point, whether conception results or not, every marital act is efficacious
and not merely an event in the respective consciousnesses of the couple.
In other words, the reality of the act necessarily extends beyond any feelings, pleasurable or not, that one or both partners may experience. That
the act is efficacious means that it is—and must therefore be evaluated
as—more than an event in their respective consciousnesses.That organ by
which the husband’s masculinity is most clearly manifest becomes hard
and strong to penetrate that in his wife which manifests most clearly—
and vulnerably—her femininity, that organ which is also the channel by
which a new life enters the world. In this act, the man ejaculates his
semen into his wife’s body, which is where that semen can sometimes
have a procreative effect.The sexual act is a drama of power and vulnerability, an elemental event that can change lives. Even when this act does
not attain its most dramatic effect, when it does not result in conception,
the marital act is efficacious, because it causes physiological, hormonal,
34 Ibid., 211–16.
35 Here I am reminded of the opening sentence of my first book on chess, Reuben

Fine’s Chess the Easy Way (New York: D. McKay Co., 1942), which my father
gave me when I was a boy: “Chess, like music, like love, has the power to make
men happy.”
36 Wojtyla, “Persona e atto,” 917–22.

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and emotional reactions in the psychophysical organisms of both spouses.
The act dramatically affects heart rate, blood pressure, the flow of
hormones, as well as large and small muscle groups. The natural trajectory of lovemaking then issues in a state of physical calm, leading to
tenderness of expression and, most likely, peaceful sleep.The body has its
own “subjectivity” in its somatic, sensory, and emotional responses.37
These are aspects of the efficacy of the marital act.
This moment of efficacy must be interpreted by the significance of the
act, which is to express the union of the spouses who give themselves to
each other. For weak and sinful human beings, the marital act is a powerful and—especially for the woman—dangerous event, not merely a pleasurable stimulation of the senses.As rational beings capable of understanding
the efficacy of the act, both partners are responsible for the act and its
consequences. The import of this becomes clearer if we consider the
common attitudes surrounding the various forms of “recreational sex,”
both within marriage and without, attitudes which reduce the act simply
to the enjoyment of pleasures to which women and men are equally entitled.What is happening is more than parallel conscious experiences.The
act itself expresses something. It is certainly possible, for example, to read
this act as masculine conquest (the act is often described as “taking” the
woman) and feminine submission. One might also read it as a man’s
return to the womb, and by his entering the woman she “swallows him
up,” as it were.The man can be the conqueror, but in his conquest he is
absorbed into her scheme to domesticate him. These are not the only
possible readings, but they are common enough. And we note that these
readings posit either an indifference to the well-being of the other or
even a positive conflict between man and woman.
If, however, the act is one of union, then according to the logic of the
gift the man’s penetration of his wife and her reception of his semen is
not a conquest but a pledge. His strength is redeemed by her loving
acceptance of his emission into her body. She will tame and care for him,
because she has given herself, not just her body but her heart. In the
marital union governed by the logic of gift, he does this not as her master
but as loving husband and protector. Such a lived interpretation of the act
is possible only if the act is truly a joint action, an act of the two in union.
By the bodily expression of the marital act, the wife unites her soul to
the husband in such a way that she becomes the guardian and caretaker
of his masculinity. Having accepted her gift of herself, of her submission
to his strength, he in turn pledges by his actions to care for her, for this
37 Ibid., 1095–111, especially 1095, where Wojtyla says that the body “possesses its

own purely somatic interiority,” an interiority expressed in its reactivity.

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869

woman who has received and will nurture the evidence of his virility. In
this way, the existential efficacy of their bodily interaction is responsibly
grasped and understood.The couple in their embrace integrate not only
their intentions but their behavior into one coherent act.
Procreative Efficacy
The most significant efficient causality of the marital act, of course, is
procreation. Even though not every such act will result in conception
and although couples incapable of conceiving can perform the act, the
biological structure of the act is such that in the normal course events,
the healthy young couple regularly engaging in this act without interfering with its finality will conceive a new life. The advent of reliable and
relatively safe pharmaceutical and other contraceptives has led many to
call this finality into question, arguing that since the same act is performed
by those past childbearing age or simply using contraceptives, its procreative finality is optional. Even when rendered infertile by age, physical
incapacity (such as hysterectomy), or pharmaceutical contraceptives, the
act still brings pleasure and the sense of union between spouses with its
attendant physical and emotional benefits. These natural and man-made
factors notwithstanding, it is clear that the fundamental structure of the
marital act is procreative. The only purpose that the male’s sperm serves
is to fertilize a female’s egg. It has no other finality. Furthermore, this
sperm is relatively vulnerable and, once emitted by the man, dies fairly
quickly unless in an appropriate environment, and the vagina of the
woman is particularly well suited for the protection and movement of the
sperm. Similarly, the woman’s egg has but one finality, which it can
achieve only upon encountering the sperm.The marital act is the means
by which these are brought together.38 Every act of sexual intercourse,
even if naturally or artificially sterile in a particular instance, is an instance
of the kind of act by which procreation is effected.
Procreative Significance
As we noted above, the person in act transcends himself not only horizontally toward the surrounding world, but also vertically toward truth39
in order to realize the true and fitting good (bonum honestum). It follows
that in the marital act human beings are to transcend themselves in truth
38 Of course, this encounter may now be effected by artificial means, a point which

we will address shortly. However, this technological capability does not change
the finality of the marital act as such.
39 On this see Edward Kaczyński, O.P., “Verità sul Bene”nella Morale: Alcuni temi di
morale fondamentale (Roma: Millennium Romae, 1998), 205–27, 220.

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870

to the fitting good, to the good as such.This good is identical with God
himself, as we have already noted. Besides the physical and emotional
effects of sexual relations on the spouses themselves, the finality of the act
is such that by it the married couple can conceive a new human person,
characterized by his own interior or spiritual life, centered on truth and
good.40 Because, no merely physical interaction can result in a spiritual
being, it is necessary that the Creator himself be directly and efficaciously
involved in the conception of a new human being.41 This creativity is
linked in such a way to the act that, even if the act is seriously flawed by
sin, God respects the laws he has written into his human creatures and
endows the being so conceived with a human soul. The implications of
this are of immense importance. The biological relationship between
sexual intercourse and procreation means that God the Creator has
placed into human hands the direct responsibility for the management of
this aspect and continuation of his creative activity.This is, therefore, not
only a gift but also a grave responsibility. Pope Paul VI and Vatican II use
the word munus, which means “office,”“duty,” or “function.”42 Husband
and wife united in their sexual union not only enjoy their mutual gift of
love, but simultaneously act as ministers of God’s creative love. In their
union they affirm each other in their love, but this wonderful and—John
Paul the Great’s term—beatifying 43 mutual gift occurs in a still more
remarkable context, as a participation in the Creator’s activity.
It is important here to recall the implications of these two facts: (1) that
conception cannot reliably be taken as the purpose of a single act of intercourse, and (2) that married persons do not ordinarily unite for the express
purpose of conceiving a child. If sexual relations, to be done well, must be
an expression of loving union, then the procreative efficacy must pertain,
in a way, to the union as a whole.The procreation of offspring can therefore be more appropriately regarded as the fruit of the union of man and
wife rather than as the effect produced by a technique or procedure.To make
something is to take charge of material and transform it according to some
plan or design that the maker has in mind.This is not the situation of the
man and wife in their sexual union. By their union they express what John
Paul the Great calls the “primordial sacrament,” a sign of and participation
in the Creator’s love by which that love is realized in the world.44 Partici40 John Paul II, Love and Responsibility, 22–23.
41 Ibid., 55.
42 Paul VI, Humanae Vitae, §1; Vatican Council II, Pastoral Constitution on the

Church in the Modern World Gaudium et Spes, §§48, 50–52.
43 John Paul II, Man and Woman He Created Them, 14:1–4.
44 Ibid., 100:1–2.

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pating in God’s love by their free and full love for each other, the spouses
become ministers of his love, opening themselves to his creative work in
bringing the new person into being.
This direct participation in the work of the Creator renders the vertical
transcendence of the act particularly manifest. Vertical transcendence is
constituted by the reference to the truth about the good, and in this case
we are dealing with the good of the Creator’s love in creation. Because
God is truly the First Cause and source of all being, we can appeal to no
prior cause to account for his work of creation. His work as Creator satisfied no lack or deficiency on his part, nor was it a response to some impulse
external to himself. Because no cause, neither final, formal, efficient, nor
material, can account for the work of the First Cause,45 the work of
creation can have been motivated only by the divine love.46 Therefore
creation itself has the character of gift. “Through these words (Gen 1:31)
we are led to glimpse in love the divine motive for creation, the source, as
it were from which it springs: only love, in fact, gives rise to the good and is well
pleased with the good.” 47 It follows therefore that this participation of the
spouses in the Creator’s work must represent also a sharing in his love.The
truth about their expression of love in marital intimacy is that it does
indeed “give rise to the good,” the good represented by a new person in
creation.48 It is this procreative significance and potency of the marital act
that gives the act its peculiar dignity as a sharing in the divine love.
Human beings can, as Karol Wojtyla notes, regard this procreative significance as an inconvenience, a secondary aspect of an act whose principal
purpose is the satisfaction of libido.49 So to regard it and to restructure it
so as to render the act deliberately infertile is to deny the act of what specifically constitutes its love-character. To be sure, spouses may perform the
contraceptive act to express their love and affection, to experience through
the closeness of their bodies their emotional and existential closeness. In
doing so, however, they effectively deny to their own mutual love its
intended participation of their act in the divine love. It is in this way that
the contraception not only thwarts the procreative efficacy of the act but
also denies its procreative significance.That significance is rejected along with
the efficacy.50 Contraception denies the true greatness of marital love.
45 ST I, q. 2, a. 3; q. 44, aa. 1–4.
46 ST I, q. 45, a. 6.
47 John Paul II, Man and Woman He Created Them, 13:2–4.
48 Wojtyla, Love and Responsibility, 51–55.
49 Ibid., 62–63.
50 We may note that natural methods of fertility control deny neither the efficacy nor

the significance of the act as procreative. Indeed by their very nature they do both.

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It is also in precisely this context that we can understand the Church’s
rejection of in vitro fertilization techniques. In its 1987 Instruction Donum
Vitae the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) condemned
artificial techniques for conceiving life outside the womb, arguing:
For human procreation has specific characteristics by virtue of the
personal dignity of the parents and of the children: the procreation of
a new person, whereby the man and the woman collaborate with the
power of the Creator, must be the fruit and the sign of the mutual selfgiving of the spouses, of their love and of their fidelity.51

In-vitro fertilization pioneer Robert Edwards, who assisted in the
conception of the world’s first successful “test tube baby,” finds the CDF
position “pernicious”52 and bigoted, because it denies to infertile couples
the joy that they seek. Infertility, he argues is “a great and lasting cause of
human sadness,”53 and science can now remedy it.The remedy, however,
is actually a technique to harness the biological substrate of human procreation in order to produce a result.The CDF position, which John Paul II
endorsed, is that procreation is not simply another event in the biological order, but rather a work in which the Creator himself is involved.
It is worth noting that Edwards’s appeal to the deeply felt desire of
childless couples, a desire whose frustration may often represent genuine
pain, parallels the common appeal to the sexual desires of the spouses who
practice contraception. In both cases, we see the application of technology according to the “greatest happiness principle,”54 to relieve subjective
feelings of frustration, sorrow, or pain. Here the issue of the fitting good
comes clearly to the fore.The conception of a child or the enjoyment of
marital intimacy is good in itself, but both must be achieved within the
context of the truth about the good of a person as such. Edwards focuses
on the bonum delectabile, trying to minimize the suffering of childlessness.
To evaluate the “useful good” of the IVF or contraceptive technologies,
however, we must refer this utility first and above all to the “fitting good”
(bonum honestum), lest in serving only the delectable good we undermine
that primary good.
51 Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, instruction Donum Vitae (1987),

www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_
doc_19870222_respect-for-human-life_en.html.
52 Robert Edwards, Life before Birth: Reflections on the Embryo Debate (New York:
Basic Books, 1989), 29–30.
53 Ibid, 31.
54 See John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism, 2nd ed. (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing
Company, 2001), 7.

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Here we directly engage a theme John Paul the Great developed at
length in his first encyclical, Redemptor Hominis, where he asks “What is
modern man afraid of?”55 His answer is that man is afraid of what he
himself produces, of the work of his intellect and the tendencies of his
will. But does this apply to the techniques for producing a child for an
infertile couple? Later in that same encyclical, he indicates the answer.
Affirming the primacy of persons over things, of ethics over technology,
John Paul writes:“What is in question is the advancement of persons, not
just the multiplying of things that people can use. It is a matter—as a
contemporary philosopher has said and as the Council has stated—not so
much of ‘having more’ as of ‘being more.’ ”56 The couple can indeed
“have” a child, but in the economy of creation, within which they minister, they become “mother” and “father” precisely through who they are as
“wife” and “husband,” through the realization of their spousal union.
Transcendence: The Fantastic and the Authentic
Our great temptation, as beings with powerful sexual urges, is to regard
sex and sexual activity only on the horizontal plane.Viewed only in terms
of this “horizontal transcendence” it is hard to see why this very malleable
act might not be formed according to the desires of individual persons.
With pharmaceutical technology we can render the act infertile. Utilizing dress, drugs (including alcohol), and setting, we can enhance the pleasure attendant upon the act. Indeed we can seek the pleasures of genital sex
with the body that most stimulates our senses or fulfills our fantasies,
whether this body be one of the same sex as oneself or one tailored by diet,
exercise, and even surgery to fit an erotic ideal. If we are able to do these
things and the attendant risks can be reduced to an acceptable level, then
by the utilitarian standard, which measures acts according to their effects
on the “horizontal” plane, these acts ought to be acceptable.
To deny the legitimacy of this approach frequently evokes anger, as
though by this denial we deprive people of some great good.This anger
points to something very important. It is not that, in fact, the requirements of chastity actually deprive people of sexual pleasure. Rather the
Catholic Church’s teaching, even when so winsomely explained as in
John Paul the Great’s theology of the body, is offensive because it refutes
the very dream of a kind of fantastic erotic transcendence. Underlying
our sexual utilitarianism is a powerful myth of glorious, Dionysian sexual
release—the absolute all-consuming ecstasy of the beautiful joining of
55 John Paul II, Redemptor Hominis, §15.
56 Ibid., §16.

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perfect bodies swept up by irresistible passion, a joining governed only by
passion and the thoroughgoing enjoyment of the other’s body without
shame, restraint, or regard for anything but the moment.57 Although the
call to chastity actually interferes with no one’s pleasure, it denies that
alluring myth which the utilitarian culture secretly nourishes and expects
its technology to deliver. In fact, that dream is an illusion. The myth of
erotic ecstasy rests on a desire for transcendence, but a transcendence that
is misconceived.
The authentic transcendence of the marital act is situated not only
within the context of a personal relationship of mutual self-gift, but within
the order of God’s own love as it works in creation.The husband and wife
joined in their manhood and womanhood are in truth participating in the
great act of love by which the entire universe was created. In this they find
not only individual personal integration, but a mutual integration in their
communion. And in place of the fantastic sensual explorations of mythical “Great Sex,” they place themselves under the thrilling (and very erotic)
possibility of conceiving a new life.The flaw of the myth of Great Sex is
not that it expects too much but that it settles for too little. Even though
it is the fullest expression of spousal love, the gift of self in marital lovemaking is not itself the fullness of marital love.The free and unrestrained
gift of each others’ bodies in marital lovemaking expresses the further gift
of the entire self, a gift realized in the homely domesticity of married life.
The very real values of the body and sex are situated within a broader
nexus of domestic and even civic values and most importantly are realized
in relation to the highest and most perfect Good.
This holistic—or personalistic—conception of self-gift entails an additional truth. Marital sex has a future and is therefore laden with responsibility.The mythical Great Sex is, in a way, timeless. It has no future, only
the hoped for repetition of the one experience over and over, whether
with one or with many partners. Hence it is necessary to repair the
damage of pregnancy and childbirth to the woman’s body (for it is
primarily her body that must be perfect). She must return to the perfect
form of the 23-year-old virgin, to delight the senses of her partner.Then
as time takes its inevitable toll, the man must resort to Viagra or Cialis to
mimic the virility of his youth. Marital sex, precisely because of its transcendent character, is costly. Mother loses the firmness and perfect form
of her youthful body as she bears and delivers her children. Her husband,
who has pledged himself to her and gratefully accepted her love, continues to rejoice in the beauty of this person and in the manifest femininity
57 On this see Benedict XVI, Deus Caritas Est, §§3–5.

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of her now maternal body. And as he ages, inevitably losing not only his
hair but also that youthful sexual stamina, she continues to rejoice in his
body, by the strength of which she became a mother and has had her love
protected and cared for. Husband and wife love each other in the face of
decline and eventual death in the realization that an authentic love
between persons will never die,58 because it is ultimately rooted in and
directed toward the One who is eternal love. When all is lost, then it is
fulfilled. In the face of disintegration and death, it is this spousal love—
the complete gift of self—that is the key to full integration of the person.
Mutual Integration in the Act
We may and must draw a final implication of this transcendence in the
marital act.The fundamental principal underlying Wojtyla’s Person and Act
is that the person is revealed through his acts, that the person is manifest
most clearly and precisely in act.59 Analogously, the union of the spouses
is manifest in the marital act. As we noted above, bi-subjectivity is essential to the act; it is one act performed by both together, such that neither
could perform it without the other’s complementary participation. Just as
the person integrates himself by his transcendence in act toward the good,
so too does the couple in their act. Disintegration is the grave danger that
threatens the married couple. By his organic integrity the individual
enjoys safeguards against personal disintegration, for his organic constitution serves to remind him of his need for personal integration.The married
couple, however, exists ontologically as two distinct beings, two relatively
autonomous persons. We can readily see how the demands of social and
economic life, as well as the inducements of concupiscence, can lead to
strains and eventual rupture of the spousal union.
If we consider this act from the perspective of its two agents, we find
profound and significant forces that tend toward disintegration, even as the
man and woman unite their bodies. It is well known, for example, that
men and women have different patterns of sexual response. Men are
quickly aroused and quickly satisfied, and their arousal is triggered most
frequently by specific kinds of sensory stimulation, especially visual images
and touch. Women, by contrast, are much more slowly aroused sexually,
responding not so much to the immediate prospect of sexual encounter
as to the context of manifest concern and affection on the part of the
man.The factors are well known to those who counsel married couples.
What is important to our present discussion is that, taken in themselves,
58 Karol Wojtyla,“Thomistic Personalism,” in idem, Person and Community, 174–75.
59 Wojtyla,“Persona e atto,” 863; idem,“Person: Subject and Community,” 223, and

see especially note 6 to that text.

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876

these differences can have a disintegrating effect. The sexual encounter
may well look quite different from his side than from hers. Furthermore,
the accomplishment of the act will have markedly different effects in the
man’s psychosomatic constitution than in the woman’s.The completion of
the act “reverberates” differently through the woman’s being than through
the man’s. The great danger to the married couple, therefore, is that this
act become in fact two, a kind of compromise encounter through which
each attempts to attain his or her personal satisfaction.To succumb to this
danger is to undermine the unity of the act precisely as one of union.
This act by which the two become one flesh (Gen 2:24) is intended
to express and realize the ongoing unity of the two persons in the
marriage bond.To do so, however, the act must be performed according
to its true nature. Just as the integration of the individual person in the
act occurs through his transcendence toward the fitting good,60 so too
the mutual integration of married spouses is realized through their marital intercourse—provided that this act is accomplished virtuously, that is,
according to their willed choice of the fitting good.The applicable virtue
in this case is chastity, by which one moderates and governs his sexual
appetites.61 The more physical vigor and impatience of the male impulse
is to be moderated and integrated with the more emotional female
response and its inherent desire for a more total fulfillment. Indeed, the
dynamic of the violent masculine ejaculation’s reception into the nurturing feminine body serves as an apt metaphor and symbol of the total
personal integration in the act. This personal integration, however, is
achieved not by focus on the biological factors of the act itself, but rather
on the good toward which this one act, jointly performed, is directed.
The pleasure, the physical or emotional satisfaction of one or both
spouses is insufficient to serve as the principle of integration, for pleasure
and satisfaction are subjective experiences of the objective reality, and as
subjective are not shared goods.62
The marital act is one in which both strong feelings and experiences—“what happens in a human being”—and chosen actions—“what
a human being does”—are inextricably combined, as two persons who
love each other give their bodies to each other in a peculiarly intense act.
The purpose of integration is to unify what happens in the person with
his own self-dynamization into unity. “And the specific function of integra60 Wojtyla, Persona e atto,” 1112–13, 1154.
61 Wojtyla, Love and Responsibility, 168–69; John Paul II, Man and Woman He Created

Them, 131:1–2, 132:2.
62 “I” may, of course, rejoice that “you” are pleased, but that does not mean that “I”

share the pleasure in the sense of experiencing it with “you.”

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tion consists precisely in the overcoming of the boundary between ‘happening’ and ‘acting,’ ” writes Wojtyla.63 Should this integration be lost or
missing—so continues Wojtyla’s analysis—then with it is lost the personal
structure of self-dominion and self-determination.To protect the integrity
of their mutual act of sexual intercourse, the couple need therefore to
integrate the act according to the fitting good. This cannot be accomplished by a simple abandonment to whim, passion, concupiscence, or
lust. In the final analysis, therefore, the marital act is to be fully rational
and freely chosen, an act of the will, understood as that faculty by which
the good is loved and chosen. Through the willed choice of a common
transcendent good, the two can become one.64 A couple may indeed
allow themselves to abandon themselves to the delights of their physical
union, spontaneously responding to the beauty and sensual desirability
each finds in the other. Nevertheless, such playfulness in sexual activity
cannot imply a simple abandonment to exploitation of the other for selfish satisfaction, much less a denial of the transcendent good in relation to
which the marital union is constituted.
In Conclusion
The interpretation of Karol Wojtyla’s principal philosophical work, Person
and Act, has been a matter for dispute from the very time of its publication, as even his closest colleagues debated the nature of the philosophical task he had undertaken.65 By his own testimony, he sought to supply
a more contemporary presentation of Aquinas’s thought, taking advantage of the resources of phenomenology.66 His concern was not only
theoretical, however. Referring to the English translation of Osoba i czyn,
Michael Waldstein comments:
The main agenda of The Acting Person, however, is not dictated by
Scheler, but by Wojtyla’s roots in the spousal theology of St. John of the
Cross, specifically by the key notion:“gift of self.” . . . The Acting Person
supplies the account of the person that is presupposed by St. John of
the Cross’s spousal theology of self-gift.67
63 Wojtyla, “Persona e atto,” 1084.
64 Wojtyla, Love and Responsibility, 28–30; John Paul II, Man and Woman He Created

Them, 92:5–7.
65 See especially Karol Wojtyla,“The Personal Structure of Self-Determination,” in

idem, Person and Community, 187–95; and idem, “Person: Subject and Community,” 258–59 note 3.
66 Wojtyla, “The Personal Structure of Self-Determination,” 187–88.
67 Michael Waldstein, Introduction to John Paul II, Man and Woman He Created
Them, 79.

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Adrian J. Reimers

Person and Act provides us with the philosophical roots undergirding the
theology of the body and of the personalism we find in Redemptor Hominis,
Laborem Exercens and the other social encyclicals, Salvifici Doloris, Mulieris
Dignitatem, and his many addresses. In this dense and difficult philosophical work he asks himself, “What sort of being is this that is able so to
possess itself that it can give itself in love?” In this paper I have looked at
the act which, in a way, is fundamental to the theology of the body audiences, the act by which husband and wife become one flesh, through the
lens of categories expressly provided by Person and Act. Although our
contemporary culture focuses much attention on sexual activity and enjoyment, very little attention is paid to the overall structure of sexual intercourse as a personal act, as a willed and chosen response to experienced
values. As a result, our contemporary conceptions of sex and sexual activities tend to be rather crudely and often unrealistically formed in terms
that are more mythical than realistic. Educated men and women routinely
discuss sex in terms of pleasure, a vague sensory fulfillment, and expression of deeply felt love, but without serious consideration of the nature of
the act which they actually engage in, its efficacy and significance.To be
sure, a study of Person and Act is hardly necessary for one who would love
well.The husband and wife who would love each other well must live and
act for the love of God, realizing in that mutually shared love their own
union. And this is what the transcendence and integration of the person
N&V
in act is ultimately about.

Nova et Vetera, English Edition,Vol. 6, No. 4 (2008): 879–900

879

Feminism, Nature and Humanae Vitae:
What’s Love Got to Do with It?
M ICHELE M. S CHUMACHER
University of Fribourg
Fribourg, Switzerland

“M UTUAL self-donation in a communio personarum, a community of
persons, was the moral framework—the humanistic framework—in which
to ponder the question of birth control,” writes Michael Waldstein of the
personalist vision of Pope John Paul II, even in his pre-papal writing.1
Similarly, the venerable servant of God insisted as no less “indispensible”2
to a satisfactory consideration of woman’s dignity and vocation than to
that of Humanae Vitae, what he esteems an “adequate anthropology” as
summarized in Gaudium et Spes, §24.3 “Man,” we read in that passage—
so we are already off to a bad start, from a feminist point of view!—“who
is the only creature on earth which God willed for its own sake, cannot
fully find himself except through a sincere gift of self.”4 It is precisely in
1 Michael Waldstein, introduction to John Paul II, Man and Woman He Created

Them:A Theology of the Body, trans. Michael Waldstein (Boston: Pauline Books and
Media, 2006), 143.
2 John Paul II, apostolic exhortation on the Dignity and Vocation of Women,
Mulieris Dignitatem (1988), §7.
3 See John Paul II, encyclical letter “On the Holy Spirit in the Life of the Church
and the World,” Dominum et Vivificantem (1986), §59; idem, Mulieris Dignitatem,
§7: “With these words, the council text presents a summary of the whole truth
about man and woman.”The significance that he awards to this passage explains
the importance that it assumed in his magisterial writings. See Pascale Ide,“Une
théologie du don. Les occurrences de Gaudium et spes, nr. 24, §3 chez Jean-Paul
II,” Anthropotes 17 (2001): 149–78; 17 (2001): 313–44.
4 Vatican Council II, Pastoral Document on the Church in the Modern World,
Gaudium et Spes, §24. That creature, John Paul II specifies in his commentary in
Mulieris Dignitatem,“is thus a person. Being a person means striving towards selfrealization (the Council text speaks of self-discovery), which can only be achieved

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Michele M. Schumacher

this, moreover, that John Paul II recognized the meaning of being in the
image and likeness of God: that “man”—and honestly, we all know that
the Council meant “man and woman”—“is called to exist ‘for’ others, to
become a gift.”5
Four years before the Council promulgated these words,Valerie Saiving—in a very influential publication providing the “initial stirrings” of
feminist theology6—objected to any such presentation of self-giving love
‘through a sincere gift of self ” (§7). In this sense, self-realization is never really selfrealization but rather communal human fulfillment. By this I mean—as will
become increasingly evident—not only that we realize ourselves in the very acts
whereby we contribute to the common good, but also that we are able to do so
precisely because others are always and constantly contributing to our own good.
Hence, personal realization—within which also consists the entire drama of salvation, as we shall see—is a properly communal fulfillment.
5 John Paul II, Mulieris Dignitatem, §7.
6 See Francis Martin, The Feminist Question: Feminist Theology in the Light of Christian Tradition (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1994), 160–61. Sally Purvis explains:
“Both the content and the analytical method of Saiving’s article have become
classics in Christian feminist work and are richly suggestive for developments by
others” (Purvis,“Christian Feminist Ethics and the Family,” in Religion, Feminism,
and the Family, eds. Anne Carr and Mary Stewart Van Leeuwen [Louisville, KY:
Westminister John Knox Press, 1996], 113). As a case in point, Saiving’s analysis
is taken up and developed by Judith Plaskow who critiques the theologies of
Reinhold Niebuhr and Paul Tillich for highlighting and developing “certain
aspects of human experience” in their theologies while others, i.e., those of
women, “are regarded as secondary or ignored.” “The effect of this tendency,
which is not incidental but springs from the very definitions of sin and grace, is
to identify human with male experience.This identification,” Plaskow concludes,
“not only impoverishes theology but leads it to support prevailing definitions of
femininity” (Plaskow, Sex, Sin and Grace: Women’s Experience in the Theologies of
Reinhold Niebuhr and Paul Tillich [Washington, DC: University Press of America,
1980], 4). In the meantime,American feminist theologians of such influence and
stature as Mary Daly, Rosemary Radford Ruether, and Elisabeth Schüssler
Fiorenza began critiquing not merely theologies purporting to speak from the
universal human situation while reflecting a uniquely male perspective, but also
the very Tradition and core symbolism of Christianity—indeed, even Scripture
itself—as reflecting and reinforcing an oppressive patriarchal social structure. For
more detail, see Michele M. Schumacher, “Feminine Experience and Religious
Experience,” in Women in Christ:Towards a New Feminism, ed. Michele M. Schumacher (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2004), 169–200. It is also worth mentioning that arguments similar to that of Saiving (without direct reference) are
developed by Elizabeth Johnson and Daphne Hampson, to name just two influential feminist theologians. The former argues that for women who have been
oppressed the “language of conversion as loss of self, turning from amour sui,
functions in an ideological way to rob them of power, maintaining them in a
subordinate position to the benefit of those who rule” ( Johnson, She Who Is:

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as bespeaking a masculine idea of redemption with regard to the particularly masculine sin of “pride, will-to-power, exploitation, self-assertiveness, and the treatment of others as objects rather than persons.”7
Women, on the other hand, Saiving notes, tend to very different forms of
sin which read more like “triviality, distractibility, and diffuseness; lack of
an organizing center or focus; dependence on others for one’s own selfdefinition; tolerance at the expense of standards of excellence; inability to
respect the boundaries of privacy; sentimentality, gossipy sociability, and
mistrust of reason—in short, underdevelopment or negation of the self.”8
These, Saiving maintains, are “outgrowths of the basic feminine character structure,”9 whose content remains ambiguous, although her analysis
addresses both that which is natural and acquired in woman.10 Both boys
and girls must learn to differentiate themselves from their mothers who,
in every society, bear children and are closest to them in their infancy and
early childhood. Precisely this process of differentiation is, however, different for boys and girls.Whereas a girl attains to sexual maturity, including
The Mystery of God in Feminist Theological Discourse [New York: Crossroad, 1995],
77). As for the second, she writes: “That it [kenosis] should have featured prominently in Christian thought is perhaps an indication of the fact that men have
understood what the male problem, in thinking in terms of hierarchy and domination, has been. It may well be a model which men need to appropriate and
which may helpfully be built into the male understanding of God. But . . . for
women, the theme of self-emptying and self-abnegation is far from helpful as a paradigm”
(Hampson, Theology and Feminism [Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1990], 155). For a
development of this theme from a pastoral perspective, see B. L. Gill-Austern,
“Love Understood as Self-Denial: What Does it do to Women?” in Through the
Eyes of Women: Insights for Pastoral Care, ed. J. S. Moessner (Minneapolis: Fortress
Press, 1996), esp. 304.
7 Hence, the male conception of redemption “as restoring to man what he fundamentally lacks (namely, sacrificial love, the I-Thou relationship, the primacy of
the personal, and, ultimately, peace)” (Valerie Saiving, “The Human Situation: A
Feminine View,” in Womanspirit Rising:A Feminist Reader in Religion, eds. Carol P.
Christ and Judith Plaskow [San Francisco: Harder & Row, 1979], 35, first printed
in The Journal of Religion 40 [1960]: 100–12).
8 Ibid., 37. Similar is the list of specifically female weaknesses as addressed by Edith
Stein. See her Essays on Woman (Washington, DC: ICS Publications, 1996); and
Mary Shivanandan,“Sentiment and Sentimentality:Woman’s Choice?” in Fellowship of Catholic Scholars Quarterly 20.2 (Spring 1997): 7–17.
9 Saiving, “The Human Situation,” 37.
10 Saiving follows Margaret Mead’s approach: “Instead of asking the question most
of us ask: ‘Are character differences between the sexes the result of heredity or
environment, of biology or culture?’ she asks, rather, whether there may not be
certain basic similarities in the ways in which men and women in every culture
have experienced what it means to be a man or to be a woman” (ibid., 29).

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motherhood, quite naturally,11 a boy experiences his manhood as an
achievement, as something that he must acquire.A girl simply is a woman—
at least potentially—but a boy must prove himself a man.12 This phenomenon, which Saiving presents as cross-cultural, is further accented—as other
feminists have noted13—in a contemporary western culture which not
only encourages boys to be detached from their mothers, but also
educates them according to the cultural ideal of isolated individualism.14
Girls, by contrast, are encouraged, even within this same cultural context,
to develop a self-identity based on connection with and similarity to
their mothers.
While Saiving’s analysis was intended to demonstrate the male bias in a
theology purporting to address the universal human situation without
addressing the particular experiences of women,15 her critique is one that
11 “The processes of impregnation, pregnancy, childbirth, and lactation have a

certain passivity about them; they are things which happen to a woman more
than things that she does” (ibid., 31).
12 “The case is quite otherwise for the male, whose active desire and active performance in the sexual act is absolutely required for its completion. And here again
the demand for performance is coupled with an inevitable anxiety; in order to
prove his maleness, he must succeed in what he has undertaken—and it is possible for him to fail” (ibid., 32). Similar is the analysis of Michelle Zimbalist
Rosaldo: “A woman becomes a woman by following in her mother’s footsteps,
whereas there must be a break in a man’s experience. For a boy to become an
adult, he must prove himself—his masculinity—among his peers. And although
all boys may succeed in reaching manhood, cultures treat this development as
something that each individual has achieved.” In contrast to womanhood as a
natural category or criteria—woman being regarded as ‘naturally’ what she is—
manhood is “a cultural product” achieved within a complex social structure
including “elaborate systems of norms, ideals, and standards of evaluation”
whereby men compete and order relationships among themselves (Rosaldo,
“Woman, Culture, and Society: A Theoretical Overview,” in Woman, Culture, and
Society, eds. Michele Zimbalist Rosaldo and Louise Lamphere [Stanford, CA:
Stanford University Press, 1974], 28, emphasis added).
13 See, for example, Nancy Chodorow’s classic work The Reproduction of Mothering:
Pyschoanalysis and the Sociology of Gender (Berkeley, CA: University of California
Press, 1978); and Luise Eichenbaum and Susie Orback, “The Construction of
Femininity,” in Women’s Spirituality: Resources for Christian Development, ed. Joann
Wolski Conn (New York: Paulist Press, 1986), 128–49.
14 For an excellent analysis of this cultural ideal of individualism, beyond the feminist critique, see Robert Bellah et al., Habits of the Heart: Individualism and
Commitment in American Life (New York: Harper & Row, 1985).
15 Similar to Saiving’s critique of Reinhold Niebuhr’s theology on this ground, is
Carol Gilligan’s faulting of Lawrence Kohlberg for his failure to account for the
experiences of women and girls in his moral development theory. See Carol Gilligan, In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women’s Development (Cambridge,

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cuts to the very heart of John Paul II’s so-called “adequate anthropology”
and even to the very heart of the Christian faith, as is evident in her argument as follows:“If human nature and the human situation are not as
described [by male theologians], then the assertion that self-giving love is
the law of man’s being is irrelevant and may even be untrue.”16 It must be
granted that Saiving specifically addresses with these words neither the
theological vision of the Council nor that of John Paul.17 Her argument
nonetheless raises very significant questions, foundational to the teaching of
Humanae Vitae: Firstly, that of whether it is at all possible to address human
love and the ends of marriage in objective terms: in terms—to borrow from
Saiving—addressing a “universal human situation” as opposed to a cultural
situation marked by individualism, for example; secondly, whether it is possible to speak of self-realization in those same terms; whether, in other words,
one might actually find oneself in the very act that appears as its contrary:
that act expressed in the important Gospel formulation,“Whoever seeks to
gain his life will lose it, but however loses his life will preserve it.”18 These
two essential questions presuppose, in turn, third, requiring that we address
it before the others: that of whether we might admit a metaphysical human
nature, a nature, more specifically, implying an orientation to the properly
human good of communion; from whence, finally, the question of the
“place” (if any) of sexuality within that nature (if any).
I.
Of no little significance to this inquiry into the nature of love and human
realization—not only for Saiving’s argument, but also for my own—is the
question inspiring John Paul II’s apostolic letter on the dignity and vocation of women: that, more specifically,“of understanding the reason for and
the consequences of the Creator’s decision that the human being should
always and only exist as a woman or a man.”19 This very formulation,
which grounds sexual difference in the mystery of creation, lies in contrast
to the highly influential slogan of Simone de Beauvoir: “One is not born
a woman; one becomes a woman.”20 In Beauvoir’s vision—and in the wide
MA: Harvard University Press, 1982); Mapping the Moral Domain, eds. Carol Gilligan, Janie Ward, Jill McLean Taylor, and Betty Bardige (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 1988).
16 Saiving, “The Human Situation,” 27.
17 Rather, she provides a specific critique of the theology of Reinhold Niebuhr.
18 Luke 17: 33. This scriptural reference is actually cited in a footnote in the very
passage of Gaudium et Spes that we are considering: §24.
19 John Paul II, Mulieris Dignitatem, §1.
20 See Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, translated by H. M. Parshley (New
York:Vintage Books, 1989).

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approval that it has received among feminists21—is evident not only the
sex-gender separation characteristic of modern feminism, but also the
feminist denial of the whole metaphysical content of human nature, which
has—like women herself under patriarchal control, that is to say, as she is
perceived by feminism—been reduced to a sub-rational reality. Because it
is woman’s “misfortune” to be “biologically destined” to transmit life,
Simone de Beauvoir challenges her—that is to say, each woman—to rise
above the “animal” act of giving life and to share instead in the masculine
act of risking life. In so doing, she is said by Beauvoir to transcend the natural realm and enter into the properly human sphere, wherein man resides.
It is in woman’s possibilities—which Beauvoir contrasts to her actual
state—that she is comparable to man who, the French philosopher maintains, is a historical idea rather than a natural species.22
The feminist objection to a preconceived nature—one that is dynamically programmed by the Creator—is, therefore, based not so much upon a
presentation of human nature, as upon the notion of a properly feminine
nature which is aligned with the animal, or sub-rational, realm at odds with,
or otherwise opposed to, the normative male, or rational, nature.23 Refusing—with good reason—to be reduced to their biological structure and/or
to be “measured” by the male standard according to which they are judged
not only different, but truly “Other,”24 many feminists simply refuse to grant
any metaphysical content to sexual differences.25 Hence the body-spirit dual21 This insight, Donna Haraway claims, originated all modern feminist accounts of

gender. See “ ‘Gender’ for a Marxist Dictionary: the Sexual Politics of a Word,”
in Haraway, Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature (New York:
Routledge, 1992), 131.
22 This insight she attributes more directly to Merleau-Ponty. See Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 33, 64, 255, 34.To assimilate woman to Nature is, Beauvoir
argues, “simply to act from prejudice” (ibid., 255).
23 As summarized by Virginia A Held: “The philosophical tradition that has
purported to present the view of the essentially and universally human has, masked
by this claim, presented instead a view that is masculine, white, and Western.” (Feminist Morality: Transforming Culture, Society and Politics [Chicago: The University of
Chicago Press, 1993], 19). See Michele M. Schumacher,“The Nature of Nature in
Feminism: Old and New” in Women in Christ:Toward a New Feminism, ed. Michele
M. Schumacher (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2004), 17–51.
24 Perhaps the most classic argument among feminists in this regard is likewise that
of Simone de Beauvoir: “She [woman] is defined and differentiated with reference to man and not he with reference to her; she is the incidental, the inessential as opposed to the essential. He is the Subject, he is the Absolute—she is the
Other” (The Second Sex, xxii).
25 See Beatriz Vollmer de Marcellus, The Ontological Differentiation of Human Gender:A
Critique of the Philosophical Literature between 1965 and 1995 (Philadelphia: Xlibris,
2004); and idem (published under her married name of Coles),“New Feminism:A

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885

ism that they so often attribute to “androcentric” logic26 is transformed—as
feminists have not only observed but also advanced—into a male-female dualism which, in turn, has given birth to a sort of androgynous hybrid that is
both ideological and reactionary. Denied or otherwise refused are thus the
essential differences within human nature itself—namely sexual differences affecting
the whole body-spirit union of the human person—in virtue of which this
nature might be understood as relational per se.27
It is precisely this refuted optic that lies at the heart of the catechism’s
presentation of sexuality as affecting “all aspects of the human person in the
unity of his [or her] body and soul” and thus also, more specifically, of
“affectivity, the capacity to love and to procreate, and in a more general way
the aptitude for forming bonds of communion with others.”28 Hence, in
the feminist refutation of the metaphysical value of sexual difference, we are
once again confronted with the question which more directly concerns us:
that of human love and that, more precisely, of its metaphysical grounding.
II.
Such a metaphysical nature of love—one, more specifically, which is
rooted within the human subject, and not only within his body29—
might be explained in terms of the scholastic maxim: the good is what
all things seek30; or “love denotes a certain adapting of the appetitive power

Sex-Gender Reunion,” in Women in Christ, 52–104.
26 See Ina Praetorius,“In Search of the Feminine Condition: A Plea for a Women’s

Ecumene,” Concilium (1991/6), 3.
27 In question is, in the words of Margaret McCarthy, not simply “an ‘abstract’

belonging to human nature, standing outside of or alongside difference, but a
likeness carried within difference” (“ ‘Husbands, Love your Wives as Your Own
Bodies’: Is Nuptial Love a Case of Love or Its Paradigm?” Communio 32 [2005],
288). Similar is the insight of Balthasar, also noted by McCarthy: “God did not
simply create mankind male and female as he had created the animals male and
female.” To be sure, he created them “to be one in the duality of sex,” but he also,
Balthasar insists, “created their duality out of their own oneness” (Balthasar, The Christian State of Life, trans. Mary Frances McCarthy [San Francisco: Ignatius Press,
1983], 227).
28 Catechism of the Catholic Church, §2332.
29 In the words of Pope Benedict XVI, “it is neither the spirit alone nor the body
alone that loves: it is man, the person, a unified creature composed of body and
soul, who loves. Only when both dimensions are truly united, does man attain
his full stature. Only thus is love—eros—able to mature and attain its authentic
grandeur” (Deus Caritas Est, §5).
30 See, for example,Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae I–II, q. 27, a. 1, ad 3; I–II, q.
28, a. 6; I–II, q. 94, a. 2.

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to some good.”31 It follows, then—at least for the scholastic mind—that
love aims at a commingling of the subject and the object towards which
he or she is naturally and willfully bent,32 an idea sadly lacking in most
feminist claims.33 Love proper to the will is, in other words, by its very
nature, transitive and personal. “To love,” Josef Pieper explains, “always
implies to love someone or something. And if this element is missing in a
definition, it has failed to hit its target.”34 This, in turn, means that there
is a double dynamic involved in the movements motivated by love. I am,
firstly, drawn inwardly (or subjectively) toward that which (or toward one
whom) I passionately or instinctively desire or, more nobly,35 toward that
which (or toward one whom) I willfully—that is rationally—esteem as
good and thus desirable. Secondly, I am at the same time—hence the
priority is not temporal but ontological—drawn outwardly (or objectively)
as it were, by an actual attraction whose force lies less in me than in the
objective goodness of the person or thing whom I love.36 These two
aspects of attraction—the subjective and objective—are so interwoven in
an actual act of love that it is, as Cornelius Murphy argues, “practically
impossible to distinguish what is receptive from what is out-going.”37 We
might thus speak of a sort of magnetic force at work in the movements
that we call “love”:38 a force supposing a potential, or passive, force of
attraction rooted within me—that is to say, in my nature—in the form of
31 ST I–II, q. 28, a. 5. English translation throughout from the Benzinger Brothers

edition, 1947.
32 “The rational creature,”Thomas argues, “naturally desires to be happy; hence, it

cannot wish not to be happy” (Summa contra Gentiles, trans. Charles J. O’Neil
[Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1957], IV, 92, 4 [p. 339]).
33 The subtitle of Christina Traina’s notable exception is revelatory of the situation:
Feminist Ethics and Natural Law:The End of the Anathemas (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 1999).
34 About Love, trans. Richard and Clara Winston (Chicago: Franciscan Herald Press,
1972), 77. Such, more specifically, is the love of friendship. See ST I, q. 20, a. 2,
ad 3.
35 The specification bespeaks the degrees of the various appetites of human beings:
the natural appetites which we also share with non-animated beings, the sensitive appetite that we share with irrational animals, and the rational appetite,
which is proper to us, qua human. See ST I–II, q. 26, a. 1.
36 St. Thomas Aquinas teaches, for example, that unlike the divine will, which
creates the good in things and persons, our own human will is moved by the
good pre-existing in things. See ST I–II, q. 110, a. 1.
37 Cornelius Murphy, Beyond Feminism:Toward a Dialogue on Difference (Washington,
DC:The Catholic University of America Press, 1995), 140.
38 In question is whether in fact love might properly be considered a movement,
as shall be made increasingly evident.

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my natural, sensitive, and rational appetites39; and a force of attracting
rooted in the objective nature of the object or person whom I love.
Hence, as Aquinas explains, it is the object of love that is the cause of
love,40 from whence the twofold distinction regarding the union of loved
and beloved: the real union,“consisting in the conjunction of the one with
the other,” which is proper to joy or pleasure, and the affective union—
preceding both this real union and even the movement of desire toward
this end—consisting in “an aptitude or proportion” in virtue of which
one might be said to already partake of that toward which (or the one
toward whom) he or she is thus inclined.41 This means, as Michael Sherwin has masterfully argued, that before love is a principle of action, it is
“a response to goodness,”42 particularly in the form of “a pleasant affective affinity” that St.Thomas calls complacentia.43
These two interwoven aspects of love—the subjective and objective
dimensions which meet in complacentia—might also be interpreted in
terms of ecstasy: that love whereby the lover is moved out of himself,44
as is the case in a properly erotic love. The so-called lover, who remains
concentrated upon his own interest, does not really love in the proper
sense, C. S. Lewis tells us. It is not union with the Beloved that he seeks,
but merely the pleasure that she might afford him. His desire is simply for
a woman, in contrast to the one beloved woman whom the truly erotic
lover contemplates day and night.45 From this perspective, love cannot be
39 See ST I–II, q. 26, a. 1; and I–II, q. 94, a. 2.
40 ST I–II, q. 27, a. 1; cf. I–II, q. 25, a. 2.
41 ST I–II, q. 25, a. 2.
42 More specifically: “It is a response to God’s goodness, to rational creatures’

fellowship in this goodness, and to the goodness proper to non-rational creatures
in their ordered relationship to God and our fellowship with Him” (Michael S.
Sherwin, “Aquinas, Augustine, and the Medieval Scholastic Crisis concerning
Charity,” in Aquinas the Augustinian, eds. Michael Dauphinais, Barry David, and
Matthew Levering [Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press,
2007], 199). See also his By Knowledge and by Love: Charity and Knowledge in the
Moral Theology of St. Thomas Aquinas (Washington, DC: Catholic University of
America Press, 2005), esp. 63–118.
43 “This affinity,” Sherwin specifies, is “the aptitude, inclination, or proportion
existing in the appetite for the loved object” (By Knowledge and by Love, 70).
44 ST I–II, q. 28, a. 3: “To suffer ecstasy means to be placed outside oneself.”
45 “We use a most unfortunate idiom [therefore] when we say, of a lustful man
prowling the streets,” Lewis explains,“that he ‘wants a woman.’ Strictly speaking,
a woman is just what he does not want. He wants a pleasure for which a woman
happens to be the necessary piece of apparatus. How much he cares about the
woman as such may be gauged by his attitude to her five minutes after fruition
(one does not keep the carton after one has smoked the cigarettes)” (Lewis, The

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adequately addressed in terms of the popular maxim as “blind,” for it is
necessarily endowed with an objective nature: objective with regard to its
object—the other,46 who is considered objectively attractive, and thus
good, not only for me but in se 47—and objective as to its subject, that is to
say, with regard to the lover, who possesses the real capacity of being
attracted to the other and thus also to being placed “outside himself,” so
as to dwell upon the beloved or to be otherwise moved toward communion with her. This attraction, in other words, all in really being rooted in
the subject, is nonetheless that whereby the lover is orientated to the
beloved qua other, and not simply as an object of his own interest.When
such is the situation—when the lover is not really placed outside himself,
as is the case in the love of concupiscence—the object of his love
remains, in fact, himself.48

Four Loves [1960; New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1988], 94). Similar is
the insight of Pope Benedict XVI: “Eros, reduced to pure ‘sex,’ has become a
commodity, a mere ‘thing’ to be bought and sold, or rather, man himself becomes
a commodity” (Deus Caritas Est, §5).
46 The “other” is here understood not in the Sartrian sense as one who necessarily
limits my freedom by setting constraints upon me, by objectifying me—that is to
say, by directing me according to his own interests—but in the sense of Levinas:
as one who remains mystery, and as such awakens my capacity for exchange and
thus also, in a certain sense, my freedom.
47 On the other hand, to address the objective nature of love is to acknowledge not
only the objective goodness of the object or of the person loved, but also and
especially the fittingness of that object or person to or for me. Hence, it is possible to speak of one’s loves as either perfecting or degrading with regard to one’s
very self. “Nothing is hurt by being adapted to that which is suitable to it,” St.
Thomas argues; “rather, if possible, it is perfected and bettered. But if a thing be
adapted to that which is not suitable to it, it is hurt and made worse thereby.
Consequently love of a suitable good perfects and betters the lover; but love of
a good which is unsuitable to the lover, wounds and worsens him” (ST I–II, q.
28, a. 6). Even the so-called subjective value of our loves have objective weight
from this perspective, which is to say that they might be judged, according to
objective criteria, as appropriate to, or befitting, one’s (human) nature.
48 “In love of concupiscence, the lover is carried out of himself, in a certain sense;
insofar, namely, as not being satisfied with enjoying the good that he has, he seeks
to enjoy something outside himself. But since he seeks to have this extrinsic
good for himself, he does not go out from himself simply, and this movement
remains finally within him. On the other hand, in the love of friendship, a man’s
affection goes out from itself simply; because he wishes and does good to his
friend, by caring and providing for him, for his sake” (ST I–II, q. 28, a. 3). See
also Peter A. Kwasniewski, “St. Thomas, Extasis, and the Union with the
Beloved,” The Thomist 61 (1997): 587–603.

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When, therefore, we address love in terms of self-giving—as does Paul
VI in Humanae Vitae 49 and John Paul II in his defense of the same50—this
need not be understood in the negative sense as self-abnegation or selfdenial, but rather in the positive sense of a particular valorizing of the
other, such that one is, as it were, forgetful of oneself: one’s thoughts and
energies are concentrated more upon the other than upon oneself. This
is not to deny the fulfillment of one’s own deepest desires; for these are
simultaneously inclined, in a natural manner, to the being that is loved
and to one’s own good.51 Eros, as Murphy explains, draws us out of
ourselves,“arousing yearnings of happiness that we are powerless to resist.
However, it opens up possibilities that it cannot of itself fulfill”52; hence
the distinction between the transient and the transcendent nature of
love.53 We are truly orientated to the other by every one of our appetitive powers—natural, sensual and rational—but our happiness does not
lie in the other. Rather, that which we long for is the communion realized by a mutual gift of self: a communion which, far from negating the
49 Human love is presented, more specifically, as “a compound of sense and spirit”—

bespeaking man’s corporal-spiritual unity—and thus not merely a matter “of
natural instinct or emotional drive. It is also, and above all,” Paul VI insists,“an act
of the free will.”This (free will) is not, in turn, to be understood—in the spirit of
this same document—as an autonomous power, but rather as a God-given faculty
in virtue of which one acts, in accord with objective criteria, to achieve one’s
human potential—to fulfill oneself as a person—and at the same time to
contribute to the good of the other. “Whoever really loves his partner” does so,
Humanae Vitae teaches us, “not only for what he receives, but loves that partner
for her own sake, content to be able to enrich the other with the gift of himself ”
(Humanae Vitae, §9).
50 See, most especially, his famous theology of the body: Man and Woman He Created
Them.
51 “Every agent acts for an end. . . . Now the end is the good desired and loved by
each one. Wherefore it is evident that every agent, whatever it be, does every
action from love of some kind” (ST I–II, q. 28, a. 6).
52 Murphy, Beyond Feminism, 141.
53 Every love is transient: it is ordered by necessity to an object other than the lover
himself.This act of being drawn out of oneself need not, however, be understood
as elevating, for I might be degraded by a love whose object is unsuitable to my
own nature, as St.Thomas argues (see note 47 above), or in the positive sense of
a love that entails a kenotic movement of sacrifice: an authentic giving of oneself.
Especially in this second sense, the transient character might take on the specific
form of immanence, that is to say, the giving of oneself in such a way as to receive
the other.This, in other words is a giving which makes “room” for the reception
of the other’s self gift, and this reception requires—given the nature of the gift
as personal—a personalist response: the gift of one’s very self. See John Paul II,
Mulieris Dignitatem, §29.

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personality of its members, actually serves their development. In the
words of Pope John Paul II:
When God-Yahweh says,“It is not good that the man should be alone”
(Gen 2:18), he affirms that,“alone,” the man does not completely realize this essence. He realizes it only by existing “with someone”—and, put
even more deeply and completely, by existing “for someone.”. . .
Communion of persons means living in a reciprocal “for,” in a relationship of reciprocal gift.54

III.
We are now, perhaps, better positioned to respond to Saiving’s challenge
of any notion of self-giving love which might foster the particular
womanly tendency of seeking one’s identity in another, a tendency
which Saiving qualifies as sinful. “[I]f [as male theologians insist] this
refusal to become selfless is wholly sinful,” she reasons, “then it would
seem that we are obliged to try to overcome it; and, when it is overcome,
to whatever extent this may be possible, we are left with a chameleonlike creature who responds to others but has no personal identity of his
own.”55 Obviously, Saiving is not objecting to the traditional anthropological notion of transcendence—a dynamic tending of the person
towards what is greater than him- or herself—but to its very contrary:
the abasement or even denial of one’s own self. On the other hand, the
paradox of realizing oneself and even transcending oneself precisely in the
act of being “emptied” after the pattern of Christ, as in the famous hymn
of Philippians 2:3–11,56 is hardly avoidable in Christian thought and spir54 Man and Woman He Created Them, §14:2 ( January 2, 1980), p. 182. Similarly:

“Human life is by its nature ‘co-educational’ and its dignity as well as its balance
depend at every moment of history and in every place of geographic longitude
and latitude on ‘who’ she shall be for him and he for her.” (Man and Woman He
Created Them, §43:7 [October 8, 1980], p. 301); “In the [original] ‘unity of the
two,’ man and woman are called from the beginning not only to exist ‘side by
side’ or ‘together,’ but they are also called to exist mutually ‘one for the other’ ” ( John
Paul II, Mulieris Dignitatem, §7).
55 Saiving, “The Human Situation,” 41.
56 “Do nothing from selfishness or conceit, but in humility count others better than
yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the
interests of others. Have this mind among yourselves, which you have in Christ
Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God
a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being
born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form he humbled
himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross.Therefore God
has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name which is above every
name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth

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ituality.To reject this kenotic attitude is, it would seem as some Christian
feminists have argued,57 to reject the distinctively Christian manner of
redemption. It is, in other words, not simply human self-realization that
is in question, but salvation itself.58
Precisely this distinction which illuminates the seriousness of the stakes—
the distinction between self-realization and salvation—might, it seems to
me, serve our response to this important feminist challenge.As in the example of so valorizing another that one forgets or loses focus of oneself,59 the
denying of oneself for love of Christ is only secondarily negative. In the
primary sense, it should be understood as the positive act of preparing
oneself for the divine Visitor, of making room, or clearing space, within
oneself for his divinizing visit, and thus also of ridding oneself of all that
hinders communion with him.60 It is precisely within this communion,
moreover, that salvation is realized and not within a Buddhist ideal of emptiness. It is in this communion that the human person is fulfilled to the very
and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the
glory of God the Father” (Phil 2: 3–11).
57 See, for example, Kerry Ramsay, “Losing One’s Life for Others: Self-Sacrifice
Revisited,” in Challenging Women’s Orthodoxies in the Context of Faith, ed. Susan
Frank Parsons (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2000), 121–33; and Sarah Coakley,
“Kenosis and Subversion: On the Repression of ‘Vulnerability’ in Christian Feminist Writing,” in idem, Powers and Submissions: Spirituality, Philosophy and Gender
(Oxford: Blackwell, 2002), 3–39. Coakley also makes reference to the very influential Rosemary Radford Ruether (Sexism and God-Talk [London: SCM Press,
1983], 137–38) as likewise defending this notion. Tina Beattie, combining the
insights of Saiving and Coakley, argues:“The problem that feminists of faith must
negotiate is that, without some form of the giving of self in prayer and in human
relationships, the modern, autonomous subject remains the foundation upon
which the postmodernist self constructs its ostensibly deconstructive parodies
and performances. . . .The challenge is to discover a way of being that preserves
the fragile sense of self that women are beginning to acquire in modern culture,
while allowing that self to willingly abandon herself to God in the confidence
that this God is an Other who participates in our personal becoming and makes
us more rather than less the selves we seek to be” (Beattie, New Catholic Feminism:Theology and Theory [London: Routledge, 2006], 72, 73).
58 This in turn requires that we admit the important, typically Catholic, distinction
between objective and subjective redemption: between, that is to say, Christ’s
salvific act “for us all” (cf. 1 Tim 2:6) and each one’s personal appropriation of
his merits on our behalf.
59 As Georgio Buccellati puts it with regard to the Christian’s relation to Christ:“I
yield to affirm.” (“Religious Vows and the Structure of Love,” Communio 23
[1996]: 562).
60 On this see, Michele M. Schumacher,“Toward a Spirituality of Poverty,” Nova et
Vetera 3 (2005): 217–30, esp. 221–26.

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depths of his soul. “You made us for yourself, O Lord,” St. Augustine
fittingly recognizes,“and our hearts are restless until we rest in you.”61
This analogy between the gift of self, whereby we are salvifically
united with Christ, and the gift of self to the human other, whereby we
might be said to realize ourselves as persons, or to realize our human
potential, is also expressed in what Hans Urs von Balthasar calls, with
reference to Genesis 2:23,62 the “basic law” of the human person: “it is
in the Thou . . . that we find our I.”63 “God became man,” Balthasar
explains, “so that this law, which is understandable to us—perhaps the
most understandable of all the laws of life—should turn for us into the
definitive law of being, explaining and satisfying everything.”64 Obviously, he does not mean to thereby encourage the neglect or degradation
of one’s own self and the subsequent assuming of another’s identity: that
sinful refusal of one’s own “I” or of the dignity that is rightfully accorded
to oneself as a being willed by God for his or her own sake.65 Rather,
this insight might be described by what Karol Wojtyla presents as “the law
of the gift”66:
In the normal course of events, the thou assists me in more fully discovering and even confirming my own I: the thou contributes to my selfaffirmation. In its basic form, the I-thou relationship, far from leading
me away from my subjectivity, in some sense more firmly grounds me
in it.67

Like Balthasar,Wojtyla explains this law in terms of human self-discovery
within the specific context of the Genesis story of Eve’s creation. In the gift
of the human other, the person is revealed to himself in the whole objective truth of his own ontological and ethical goodness: he understands
himself not only as loved—and thus loveable—but also as capable of love
and called to love. Loved into being by the Creator who—in virtue of the
61 Augustine of Hippo, Confessions I, 1.
62 “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.”
63 Hans Urs von Balthasar, Convergences:To the Source of Christian Mystery (San Fran-

cisco: Ignatius Press, 1983), 128.
64 “In Christian faith alone, then—to say it once more—lies the single sufficient

explanation for human existence” (ibid., 130–31). See also his A Theological Anthropology (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1967), 312–13.
65 Cf. Gaudium et Spes, §24; and John Paul II, Mulieris Dignitatem, §7.
66 Karol Wojtyla, “The Personal Structure of Self-Determination” in idem, Person
and Community: Selected Essays, trans. Theresa Sandok, O.S.M. (New York: Peter
Lang, 1993), 194.
67 Karol Wojtyla,“The Person: Subject and Community” in idem, Person and Community, 242–43.

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primary gift of human freedom—has entrusted the rational creature to
himself, this creature comes to know himself as an object of love.With the
gift of the woman—the gift of another human “I”—he is given, or
revealed, to himself also and more specifically as a subject of love: his ontological orientation to interpersonal communion68 is inwardly appropriated,
as it were, and his loving powers are awakened within him. He thus knows
himself as possessing a certain value not only “before God,” but also as for
himself:“first,” John Paul II explains,“because he is ‘man’; second, because
the ‘woman’ is for the man and, vice versa, the ‘man’ for the woman.”69 The
gift of the human other—whose reception is prepared by the gift of human
freedom—is thus the origin of a call to interpersonal communion: to “the
shared life that makes up the pure and simple guiding thread of human
existence,”70 wherein John Paul II recognizes the unfolding of the whole
drama of human history, including the history of salvation.71 It is a history
marked by the determining question of who she will be for him and he for her,
the question of whether a utilitarian or a personalist value will be ethically
awarded to the ontological orientation expressed as “being for” another.72
IV.
Let us opt for the second of those meanings: the personalist meaning of
“being for.”Would it not be possible from within this personalist optic to
regard those so-called masculine and feminine tendencies to sin within
68 “The man’s solitude in the Yahwist account presents itself to us not only as the

first discovery of the characteristic transcendence proper to the person, but also
as the discovery of an adequate relation ‘to’ the person, and thus as opening
toward and waiting for a ‘communion of persons’ ” (Man and Woman He Created
Them, §9:2 [November 14, 1979], 162).
69 Ibid., §9:1, pp. 161–62. “While Genesis 1,” he continues, “expresses this value in
a purely theological (and indirectly metaphysical) form, Genesis 2, by contrast,
reveals, so to speak, the first circle of experience lived by man as a value” (ibid., 162).
70 Ibid., §43:7 (October 8, 1980), 301.
71 See John Paul II, Mulieris Dignitatem, §7.
72 See John Paul II, Man and Woman He Created Them, §43:7 (October 8, 1980), 301;
cf. John Paul II, Mulieris Dignitatem, §14. “Only a person can love and only a
person can be loved.This statement is primarily ontological in nature, and it gives
rise to an ethical affirmation. Love is an ontological and ethical requirement of
the person.The person must be loved, since love alone corresponds to what the
person is” (ibid., §29) It is not surprising, then, that Michael Waldstein recognizes
already in the pre-papal writings of John Paul II (Karol Wojtyla) “the truth about
the human person” and “the heart of the individual drama of our lives” presented
as “the history of love or its negation” (Waldstein, introduction to Man and
Woman He Created Them, 143). For a very thorough philosophical analysis of this
ethical and ontological concept, see Kenneth Schmitz, “Selves or Persons: A
Difference in Loves?” Communio 18 (1991): 183–206.

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more positive terms, namely, as tendencies in love and more specifically
still as differing and complementary manners of self-giving: love in the
form of self-bestowal and love in the form of receptive availability?73
Woman’s admittedly negative tendency to “dissipate herself in activities which are merely trivial,” make it possible, Saiving observes, “to
perform cheerfully the thousand-and-one routine tasks—the woman’s
work that is never done—which someone must do if life is to go on.”74
Likewise, her sinful tendency—as noted by Edith Stein—to hover
“anxiously over her children as if they were her own possessions,” binding them to herself at any cost, even that of their own freedom and that
of her husband’s paternal authority and rights,75 are more positively
regarded, she notes, in terms of a particular capacity to sympathize with
and serve other human beings,76 a value which is addressed by John Paul
II in terms of the specific “genius” of women.77 Similarly, man’s sinful
avoidance of his paternal responsibility, noticed by Stein, is countered by
what she and Saiving both acknowledge as a certain pursuit of excellence
and a highly creative spirit. He is also more likely, due to his more sensual
nature, as Paul Quay notes, to initiate a romantic relationship than is
woman, thereby assuming the risk of unreciprocated love.78
73 “To receive someone, a guest for example, is popularly understood as offering him

or her hospitality, welcoming him into one’s home, sharing what one has; but there
is also a deeper, more intimate meaning which aims at an authentic communion
of persons. In this second sense, one may be said to communicate who one is, to
give one’s very self, but in such a way as to simultaneously welcome the other’s
self-gift, as when a woman is said to ‘receive’ in the sexual embrace the man who
loves her in giving himself.When this ‘other’ is the Lord, the receptive act implies
both surrender and devotion as are simultaneously evoked by the German term
Hingabe. In Scripture, the two forms of receptivity are perhaps best modeled by
Martha, the busy hostess, and Mary, the quiet contemplative who has chosen ‘the
one thing needful,’‘the better part’ (Lk 10:42). Like that other Mary, most ‘blessed
among women,’ she receives Christ, not merely as visitor but as Lord; not just in
her home, but in her heart” (Schumacher,“Toward a Spirituality of Poverty,” 225).
74 Saiving, “The Human Situation,” 38.
75 Stein, Essays on Woman, 75.
76 This explains, she adds, why women are “naturally” assigned the principal share
of educating children. See ibid., 72.
77 See Mulieris Dignitatem, §§30, 31; idem, Letter to Women on the occasion of the
Beijing Conference, Origins 25 (1995): §9; idem, Christifideles Laici, §51; idem,
encyclical letter on the Gospel of Life, Evangelium Vitae (1995), §99; and Michele
M. Schumacher, “The Prophetic Vocation of Women and the Order of Love,”
Logos 2 (1999): 147–92.
78 See Paul Quay, The Christian Meaning of Human Sexuality (San Francisco: Ignatius
Press, 1985), ch. 3. This typically masculine character trait stands in contrast to
women’s typically sentimental disposition. On the risk of non-reciprocated love,

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The countering of what might be considered sinful tendencies with
positive human values—both within each individual human person and
within culture as a whole—is not, however, realized in isolation but
precisely within a community of persons, and more specifically still,
although not exclusively, within that community of persons formed of the
marriage bond: persons vowed to one another in an exclusive and permanent union, which is also open to life. My reasoning here is simple: this
union so tightly binds its partners—not in what Edith Stein’s translator has
rendered “the separate vocations of man and woman according to nature
and grace”79—but rather in a common, shared vocation according to nature
and grace: the universal human vocation to love.80 It is, moreover, within
the specific vocation of marriage and the experience of spousal love—the
experience of being entrusted with the gift of the other person and his
specific difference by the Creator himself—that might be awakened, John
Paul II argues, a personal sense of responsibility for the other and his
welfare: a responsibility that should be lived as “a sincere gift of self.”81
Beyond this, it is precisely because men and women really are different
and really do give themselves differently, I maintain, that they are particularly
suited to provide mutual help (cf. Gen 2:18), especially, but not exclusively,
in their parenting responsibilities. In so doing, moreover, we come to a
deeper knowledge of ourselves and we develop as persons, both individually and communally.82 By this I do not mean that we simply rub up against
see Kenneth Schmitz’s analysis of a gift that is not received, The Gift: Creation
(Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1982), 48–49.
79 This is the English title that is given to the second essay in the English collection of her works on women (Essays on Woman), emphasis added. The original
German is more accurately translated as simply: “The vocation of man and
woman according to the order of nature and grace” (Beruf des Mannes und der
Frau nach Natur- und Gnadenordung). See Edith Stein Gesamtausgabe, vol. 13, Die
Frau. Fragestellungen und Reflexionen, ed. Hanna-Barbara Gerl-Falkovitz (Freiburg
im Breisgau: Herder, 2000), 56–78.
80 “God inscribed in the humanity of man and woman the vocation, and thus the
capacity and responsibility, of love and communion. Love is therefore the fundamental and innate vocation of every human being” ( John Paul II, apostolic
exhortation on “The Role of the Christian Family in the Modern World,” Familiaris Consortio [1981], §11). It is perhaps worth noting that Hans Urs von
Balthasar recognizes in the reciprocity of man and woman “a paradigm of that
community dimension which characterizes man’s entire nature” (Theo-Drama:
Theological Dramatic Theory, vol. 2, Dramatic Personae: Man in God, trans. Graham
Harrison [San Francisco: Ignatius Press, l992], 365). See also Margaret McCarthy,
“ ‘Husbands, Love your Wives as Your Own Bodies.’ ”
81 See Mulieris Dignitatem, §14.
82 “Ours are,” as John Paul II teaches, “two complementary dimensions of selfknowledge and self-determination, and at the same time, two complementary ways

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Michele M. Schumacher

one another, purifying ourselves and the other in the process, like two
diamonds in the rough. Nor is this a matter of seeking—precisely in our
contrasts—the Aristotelian “mean” wherein virtue is said to reside,83 or of
becoming an accomplice to the other’s shortcomings, as is the case of the
silent, perfectly submissive wife, who might be thought of, in the words of
Jean Bethke Elshtain, as the “perfect companion to the ‘self-made man’
of being conscious of the meaning of the body. Thus, as Genesis 2:3 already shows,
femininity in some way finds itself before masculinity, while masculinity
confirms itself through femininity. . . . The presence of the feminine element,
next to the masculine and together with it, signifies an enrichment for man in
the whole perspective of his history, including the history of salvation” (Man and
Woman He Created Them, §10:1 [November 21, 1979], 166). Similarly, but from a
more objective perspective than that of self-knowledge, he notes: “The Bible
convinces us of the fact that one can have no adequate hermeneutic of man, or
of what is ‘human,’ without appropriate reference to what is ‘feminine’ ” (Mulieris
Dignitatem, §22).This insight is complementary to that of Paul Evdokimov:“The
more man and woman each deepen their own type, and do so not in isolation
but in archetypal reciprocity, the closer they come to fully assimilating their
counterpart’s positive core, and thus arrive at their own truth” (Woman and the
Salvation of the World: A Christian Anthropology on the Charisms of Women, trans.
Anthony P. Gythiel [Crestwood, NY: St.Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1994], 250).
Even more insightful is the argument of Margaret McCarthy who maintains that
sexual difference is what accounts for the placing of nuptial love at “front and
center” of the Christian tradition: “as the first and paradigmatic expression of
love among other loves” (and in this regard we need only mention Benedict
XVI, Deus Caritas Est, §11): “[T]he movement towards the opposite sex,”
McCarthy continues, “is never the movement of a mere aspect of oneself nor a
movement towards a mere aspect of the other; it is, rather, a movement of and
towards a particularity in which the whole of his or her humanity is expressed.”
For this reason, she explains that “the movement towards the opposite sex is not
per se a love of the other per accidens, whereby the other person is reduced to an
object for the one loving (even if this is abundantly possible when sexual difference is taken to be a mere aspect of one’s humanity and not the vehicle of its
manifestation). It is rather the possibility of an affirmation of the good of the
other as other, that is, of his or her (similar) humanity which always exists bodily
in a different manner. This possibility is moreover the possibility of one’s own
fulfillment, for here one encounters ‘another self ’ not only because by seeing in
the other a common humanity (or some other similarity) one identifies with the
other, and so extends his love for himself thereby expanding his own good (now
a larger common good), but also because by associating with this other in his or
her difference and leaving one’s former place, so to speak, to be resituated, one
now has oneself—one now has one’s ‘body’—all the more and is more at home”
(McCarthy, “Husbands, Love your Wives as Your Own Bodies,” 267, 294).
83 Hence, for example, a woman would try to imitate the masculine qualities of her
husband and he of his wife, so that both might arrive somewhere in between the
typically male and the typically female.

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whose tough, pragmatic, no-nonsense code is ‘free choice,’ ‘no constraints,’
and ‘my life is my own.’ ”84 Rather, that mysterious “law” of finding one’s
“I” in the “thou” is operative here in a special way: not in the so-called feminine tendency to lose oneself or one’s identity in the other, the concentrating of one’s energies so much upon another’s life that we prevent him from
authentically living his own.85 Nor, in that more “masculine” tactic of
conforming the other to my vision of things, of aggressively seeking her
good or even preparing her whole future for her and then requiring of
her—for her “own good,” of course—to assume her place therein. Nor, still,
is this the somewhat androgynous ridding oneself of any such tendency
whatsoever or the striving to adopt, for oneself, the other’s particular character structure. No, this finding of oneself in the other means that the “thou”
reveals my feminine specificity to me in contrast—or better, in its complementarity—to his own masculinity. More significantly still, my femininity is
revealed in the value that he accords to it as an essential, innate aspect of my
person as sexed. As such, it is specifically entrusted to him, with my entire
person, for his safekeeping, a safekeeping requiring that he encourage my
human, feminine and personal growth, from whence we might recognize a
certain harmony between the cultural, or acquired, aspects of femininity and
the innate ones.86 And indeed, it is his sincere love for me—his delight in
the fact that I exist as me, and thus also as feminine—that both encourages
and incites my own particularly feminine manner of loving him in return.87
84 Jean Bethke Elshtain,“ ‘Thank Heaven for Little Girls’:The Dialectics of Devel-

opment,” in The Family in Political Thought, ed. Jean Bethke Elshtain (Brighton,
England:The Harvest Press, 1982), 299.
85 Such is the case of C. S. Lewis’s “Mrs. Fidget”: “For Mrs. Fidget, as she so often
said, would ‘work her fingers to the bone’ for her family.They couldn’t stop her.
Nor could they—being decent people—quite sit still and watch her do it.They
had to help. Indeed they were always having to help.That is, they did things for
her to help her to do things for them which they didn’t want done.” Such, Lewis
explains, is a form of gift-love,“but one that needs to be needed. But the proper
aim of giving is to put the recipient in a state where he no longer needs our gift”
(The Four Loves, 50).
86 For a treatment of these three aspects of every woman’s character structure
(human, feminine, and personal) as it is presented in the thought of Edith Stein,
see Sibylle von Streng, “Woman’s Threefold Vocation according to Edith Stein,”
in Women in Christ, 105–38. In that which concerns the dynamic between the
innate and the acquired aspects of femininity, see Schumacher, “The Nature of
Nature in Feminism, Old and New.”
87 “The Bridegroom,” explains John Paul II, with reference to Ephesians 5,“is the one
who loves. The Bride is loved: it is she who receives love, in order to love in return”
(Mulieris Dignitatem, §29). It is extremely important that these words by John Paul
II be read for what they are: not a “further” effort of the Church to submit women

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Michele M. Schumacher

Precisely in receiving him as a man—as gratefully encouraging and promoting his masculinity and accepting his self-gift in the form of my own selfgift—I, in turn, encourage, foster and promote his specifically masculine
manner of loving.88 In so doing, I say in my own particularly feminine
manner, what Bobby Vinton made popular in his 1968 hit because it was
true:“Darling, most of all, I love how you love me.”
V.
Assuredly, to conclude, we are not without an alternative to this vision of
things. In fact, many individualistic and self-centered men, as well as a
growing number of independently minded and willfully “unhampered”
women, prefer the tune of Tina Turner’s “What’s Love Got to Do with
It?” There are, however, consequences to the words we live by. Loving
one another as our humanity requires—as befits the personalist definition
of the person89—entails allowing the other to give him- or herself to me
and to others.To the extent that the so-called masculine tendency toward
individualism has hindered authentic self-giving among men, it has likewise hindered self-giving among women. It should not come as a surprise,
then, that many women have experienced self-giving as self-abnegation.
On the other hand, when we refuse to give ourselves as women—in our
body-spirit whole, including our female fertility—we simultaneously
refuse to receive our husbands as men: to receive them, in other words, in
that “reciprocally completing” manner, as John Paul II puts it, of “being
a body and at the same time as being human.”90 We consequently frusto male dominance, but a personalist insistence that “the dignity of women” be
“measured by the order of love, which is essentially the order of justice and charity” (ibid.). Indeed, far from arguing for the subjection of women to their husbands
(cf. Pius XI, Casti Connubi, §15), John Paul II insists upon the “mutual subjection”
of the spouses “out of reverence for Christ” (cf. Eph 5:21) “and not just that of the
wife to the husband.”This, he teaches, is a specific “Gospel innovation” that “must
gradually establish itself in hearts, consciences, behaviour and customs” (Mulieris
Dignitatem, §24). For a thorough treatment of this notion of “the order of love” in
Mulieris Dignitatem, see Michele M. Schumacher, “The Prophetic Vocation of
Women and the Order of Love,” 147–92.
88 Helpful for this analysis might be Kenneth Schmitz’s treatment of receptivity as
conditioning giving: “What is a gift? It is a free endowment upon another who
receives it freely” (The Gift, 44). “Despite the absolute gratuity inherent in the
gift as endowment, reciprocity is appropriate to the gift. A gift is meant to be
reciprocated. The fundamental reciprocity called for, however, is not the return
of another gift. It is rather the completion of the gift being given.” It must, in
other words, be received (ibid., 47).
89 Cf. Mulieris Dignitatem, §29 (cited in note 71 above); and Redemptoris Hominis, §10.
90 John Paul II, Man and Woman He Created Them, §10:1 (November 21, 1979), 166.

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trate our husbands’ masculine manner of giving themselves and thus also
that revelation of our own specific beauty and truth as feminine. We
furthermore deny that prophetic display of “genius,” that particularly
feminine sensitivity for persons, that Pope John Paul II challenges us to
provide in the promotion of a culture of life.91 That genius is most especially at work when a woman witnesses to her husband that of which she
is keenly aware: that in receiving his love, she is receiving his very person,
and not only his person, but also his seed. In accepting that seed as proof
of her love for him, she not only realizes her own vocation as wife and
potential mother,92 she also reveals the man to himself as husband and
potential father.
Human love—especially marital love—is not, therefore, a finding of
oneself in the other by way of either identification or aggressive dominance; nor is it a simple vis-à-vis without transcendence, a self-serving
communion which like feminism and the culture as a whole, “vacillates
between,” what Balthasar describes as, “the emancipation of the microego in anarchic sovereignty and the emancipation of a ‘we,’ a macro-ego,
in a collective tyranny that absorbs the freedom of the individual.”93 No,
true love is rather “ecstasy,” as Pope Benedict XVI, describes it:
not in the sense of a moment of intoxication, but rather as a journey,
an ongoing exodus out of the closed inward-looking self towards its
liberation through self-giving, and thus towards authentic self-discovery and indeed the discovery of God: “Whoever seeks to gain his life
will lose it, but whoever loses his life will preserve it” (Lk 17:33), as
Jesus says throughout the Gospels (cf. Mt 10:39; 16:25; Mk 8:35; Lk 9:24;
Jn 12:25).94

N&V

91 See Evangelium Vitae, §99.
92 She is not, in other words, simply his mistress, but truly his partner in the sense

described by the second chapter of Genesis, especially verse 23.
93 “[B]oth claim universality,” he continues, “but what they portray is only a

personal apartheid or a collective party” (Hans Urs von Balthasar, In the Fullness
of Faith: On the Centrality of the Distinctively Catholic, trans. Graham Harrison [San
Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1988], 44). For a critique of the individualism that has
deeply infected feminist thought itself, see Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, Feminism
without Illusions: A Critique of Individualism (Chapel Hill & London:The University of North Carolina Press, 1991).
94 Benedict XVI, Deus Caritas Est, §6.

Nova et Vetera, English Edition,Vol. 6, No. 4 (2008): 901–926

901

Reflections on Humanae Vitae
in the Light of Fides et Ratio
M ARY S HIVANANDAN
John Paul II Institute
Washington, DC

I N A MOVIE called Castaway, Tom Hanks is marooned on a remote
island in the South Pacific after a plane crash. With the help of the
contents of a few FEDEX packages washed ashore with him, he builds a
shelter and starts planning his escape.A reef against which the surf crashes
prevents him from getting beyond the enclosed lagoon to the ocean. All
the ingenuity he can muster will not allow him to surmount the wall of
foam. His makeshift raft is continuously tossed back to the island. After
four years, during which he comes to the point of suicidal despair, the sea
gives up a large metal sheet from beyond the reef.At last he is able to build
a raft using the metal sheet as a sail, which carries him over the reef. For
four years the castaway had studied the seasons, the wind, and the waves.
Armed with this knowledge, and a boundless faith in life itself, he sails out
into the ocean and the whole wide world is once again open to him.
In the encyclical Fides et Ratio, John Paul II calls the preaching of
Christ crucified and risen “the reef upon which the link between the
faith and philosophy can break up, but it is also the reef beyond which
the two can set forth upon the boundless ocean of truth. Here we see not
only the border between reason and faith, but also the space where the
two may meet.”1 Man cannot escape the horizon of his own limited existence through reason alone. He needs the revelation that comes from
beyond if he is to know “the boundless ocean of truth.”The key, as John
Paul II says, is the preaching of Christ crucified.

1 Pope John Paul II, Fides et Ratio, §23.

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Mary Shivanandan

Although Fides et Ratio was promulgated in 1998, thirty years after
Humanae Vitae 2 and fourteen after John Paul II’s own Reflections on
Humanae Vitae in what is called the Catechesis on the Theology of the
Body, it bears, it seems to me, a direct relation to both.3 Besides the task
imposed on bishops to give witness to the truth, John Paul II gives the
following reasons for promulgating Fides et Ratio:
In my encyclical letter Veritatis Splendor, I drew attention to “certain
fundamental truths of Catholic doctrine which, in the present circumstances, risk being distorted or denied.” In the present letter I wish to
pursue that reflection on the theme of truth itself and on its foundation in relation to faith. (FR, §6)

Later in the same paragraph of Veritatis Splendor the pope states: “It is no
longer a matter of limited and occasional dissent, but of an overall and
systematic calling into question of traditional moral doctrine on the basis
of certain anthropological and ethical presuppositions.”4 The section goes
on to say that the Church’s magisterial teaching on moral matters and the
natural law is simply rejected in favor of a private morality. At the heart
of this dissent has been opposition to the encyclical Humanae Vitae. It is
well known that proportionalism and consequentialism were devised as
2 Pope Paul VI, Humanae Vitae (1968).
3 John Paul II, Man and Woman He Created Them: A Theology of the Body, trans.

Michael Waldstein (Boston: Pauline Books & Media, 2006). It is interesting to
note the close relationship in time of Pope Leo XIII’s encyclical letter recommending the study of the metaphysics of Aquinas, Aeterni Patris (1879), and the
encyclical on marriage, Arcanum (1880) without any intervening encyclical. Both
occurred at the beginning of his pontificate at a time when contraception in the
form of the condom first became widespread in industrial society thanks to the
vulcanization of rubber in 1843, although John Noonan notes that Rome
responded mostly to requests from French clergy for clarification on increasing
use of “onanism” for birth control ( John Noonan, Contraception: A History of Its
Treatment by the Catholic Theologians and Canonists [Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1986], 397). A secular author, Rudolph Binion, in an extensive review
of European novelists of the period, reveals the antagonistic attitude toward the
family, which both fueled contraception and was fueled by it. He concludes:“In
Europe at large, contraception was felt to be a first decisive step away from the
family” (Rudolph Binion, Past Impersonal: Group Process in Human History [Dekalb,
IL: Northwestern University Press, 2005], 30). The First Vatican Council issued
only two documents, Dei Filius (1870) on revelation, faith, and the relation of
faith and reason and the First Dogmatic Constitution on the Church of Christ
(1870), concerned exclusively with the apostolic primacy of Peter and papal
infallibility, which proved of inestimable importance in the promulgation of
Humanae Vitae by Pope Paul VI in 1968.
4 John Paul II, Veritatis Splendor (1993), §4.

Humanae Vitae and Fides et Ratio

903

moral arguments in order to undermine the reaffirmation by Paul VI of
the Church’s unbroken teaching on the proper regulation of births.5
In Veritatis Splendor, John Paul II takes up the question of the good and
its relation to truth and freedom. Its primary focus is morality as it is related
to the natural law and to Christian precepts. Its final chapter proposes the
crucified Christ as revealing “the authentic meaning of freedom; he lives it
fully in the total gift of himself and calls his disciples to share in his freedom”
(VS, §85). Christ reveals that the open acceptance of truth is “the condition
for authentic freedom” (VS, §87), and freedom which is rooted in the truth
about man “is ultimately directed toward communion” (VS, §86). The
encyclical then moves from a consideration of the nature of the good and
its separation from truth to “the more serious and destructive dichotomy”
which separates faith from morality (VS, §88).
It is in order to address this dichotomy of the separation of faith not only
from morality but from truth itself that John Paul II pens the encyclical,
Fides et Ratio.6 So I propose that there is a direct link between this encyclical and the challenge of responsible parenthood addressed in Paul VI’s
Humanae Vitae. Dissent from that encyclical has struck at the foundations
not only of Christian morality and the authority of the Magisterium but
of truth itself, both philosophical and theological.This is not to mention an
assault on Christian anthropology and the family, which John Paul II
addressed in the encyclical Evangelium Vitae (1995) and in the apostolic
exhortations, Familiaris Consortio (1981) and Mulieris Dignitatem (1987).
In this essay I wish to focus on the methodology that John Paul II
employs in his Catechesis on Human Love, a work that was particularly
5 William E. May traces the roots of the rejection of moral absolutes and the rise

of a revisionist moral theology to arguments presented to justify contraception
in the Majority Report of Pope Paul VI’s Birth Control Commission set up
during Vatican Council II to study the licitness of the hormonal pill for spacing
births.Among the revisionist theologians, May includes Franz Bockle, Charles E.
Curran, Josef Fuchs, Bernard Haring, Louis Janssens, Richard McCormick,
Timothy E. O’Connell, Richard Gula, Franz Scholz, and Bruno Schuller.Among
important arguments they used are the “preference” principle or principle of
proportionate good, and the historicity of human existence principle. See William
E. May, An Introduction to Moral Theology (Huntington, IN: Our Sunday Visitor,
1994), 107–27. Veritatis Splendor critiques erroneous views of the relationship
between law and freedom, natural law and freedom, conscience and the Magisterium, which have subverted the Church’s teaching as found in Humanae Vitae
(VS, §§54–83).
6 Livio Melina proposes that “Fides et Ratio can therefore be read inter alia as a
particular development of the teaching of Veritatis Splendor” (Melina,“The ‘Truth
about the Good’: Practical Reason, Philosophical Ethics, and Moral Theology,”
Communio 26 [1999]: 641).

Mary Shivanandan

904

designed to respond to the questions raised by Humanae Vitae, as he
himself states in the last homily:
If I draw particular attention precisely to these final catecheses, I do so not
only because the topic discussed by them is more closely connected with
our present age, but first of all because it is from this topic that the questions
spring that run in some way through the whole of our reflections. . . . In
some sense, that part, which in the overall disposition is located at the end,
is at the same time found at the beginning of that whole.This is important from the point of view of structure and method.7

After a consideration of the methodology the pope employs in the catechesis, I shall show how it is a demonstration, as it were, of the principles
he recommends in Fides et Ratio for the correct relationship between
faith and reason.8 In the conclusion I shall propose that the Church’s
teaching on sexual morality as expressed in Humanae Vitae, far from being
a peripheral moral issue as the proponents of contraception maintain, is
central to faith, life, and worship.
The Question of Method
Carl Anderson has said that Humanae Vitae is the last encyclical addressed
to the modern engagement with reasoned argument.9 Paul VI, in referring
to the inseparability of the unitive and procreative meanings of human
sexuality, wrote:“We believe that the men of our day are particularly capa7 John Paul II, Man and Woman He Created Them, §133:4 (November 28, 1984),

original emphasis.
8 Charles Curran, a major dissenter from Humanae Vitae, fully understands the crit-

ical role played by methodology. In The Moral Theology of John Paul II (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2005), he attacks John Paul II’s theological
suppositions to discredit his teaching especially on marriage, sexuality, gender, and
family. He singles out the methodology of the catechesis on the theology of the
body as a major source of his critique: 4, 5. For a critique of Curran’s book on
John Paul II’s moral theology, see E. Christian Brugger and William E. May,“John
Paul II’s Moral Theology on Trial:A Reply to Charles E. Curran,” The Thomist 69
(2005): 279–312. For a wide-ranging critique of Curran’s moral theology see John
McDermott, S.J., “Charles Curran’s Moral Theology: Foundational Sexual
Ethics,” Anthropotes: Rivista di Studi sulla Persona e la Famiglia 23 (2007): 167–225.
9 Carl Anderson, “Political Reflections on Humanae Vitae,” paper given at the
Theological and Pastoral Congress on the 25th Anniversary of Humanae Vitae,
Pontifical Council on the Family, Rome, Italy, November 24–26, 1993. Anderson states: “The discourse of Humanae Vitae presupposes a certain social consensus which no longer exists. That former consensus included a confidence in
human reason to find moral truths, an appreciation of procreation as a good of
marriage and of marriage itself as a unique and stable institution” (15).

Humanae Vitae and Fides et Ratio

905

ble of seizing the deeply reasonable and human character of this fundamental principle.”10 The uproar of dissent both within the Church and
secular society showed clearly that reason was no longer sufficient to
convince contemporary man, who has lost faith in the very power of
reason to arrive at truth. Clearly a different approach was needed.
In his Catechesis on Human Love, John Paul II gives primacy to revelation in discerning the truth and meaning of human sexuality.The first
part of the catechesis is devoted to the words of Christ. Guided by the
text of Genesis 1:1 to 4:1, John Paul II traces the way Adam comes to the
truth about God, the world, and himself and demonstrates the critical
relationship between objective and subjective truth, faith and reason.
There are two key Scripture passages through which John Paul II
addresses the question of methodology in the Wednesday catechesis. The
first is Jesus’ response to the Pharisees on the question of divorce, which
Moses allowed:“Because of the hardness of your heart Moses allowed you
to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so” (Mt 19:3–8).11
John Paul II comments that Christ wants to change the level of discussion
from questions of casuistry to the meaning and purpose of the creation of
man and woman, that is to say to marriage in the “beginning.”
The second passage, also quoting the words of Christ, occurs in the
discussion of the resurrection. This time he is addressing the Sadducees,
who deny the resurrection by proposing a fictitious scenario. Christ
responds: “You are wrong, because you know neither the Scriptures nor
the power of God” (Mt 22:9).12 John Paul II comments:
Without any doubt, the Sadducees treat the question of the resurrection
as a type of theory or hypothesis that can be refuted. Jesus first shows
them a mistake in their method: they do not know the Scriptures; and then
an error of substance: they do not accept what is revealed by the Scriptures—since they do not know the power of God—they do not believe in the
one who revealed himself to Moses in the burning bush.13

In both cases Christ himself has pointed out the error in method, in the
first place of giving a primacy to abstract reason over faith in the Word of
God and in the second place of not believing in the Source itself of Scripture. John Paul II will follow Christ’s own methodology in both the Catechesis on Human Love and in Fides et Ratio. In the former he is seeking
10 Paul VI, Humanae Vitae, §12.
11 John Paul II, Man and Woman He Created Them, §2:2 (September 5, 1979).
12 Ibid., §65:1 (November 18, 1981).
13 Ibid., §65:3 (November 18, 1981), original emphasis.

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to discover the truth of God’s plan for human sexuality, and in the latter
he is setting forth the correct method for coming to truth both by faith
and reason. In the catechesis he demonstrates the correct method for
coming to truth; in Fides et Ratio he articulates its principles.
It is precisely the error in method that John Paul II addresses in Fides
et Ratio, the relation between faith and reason. And it is precisely by
addressing the questions raised by Humanae Vitae from the perspective of
faith as well as reason in the Catechesis on Human Love that John Paul
II shows how, far from being a restriction on human freedom, the
Church’s teaching opens up vistas beyond human reason to reveal man’s
exalted destiny to participate in divine Trinitarian life. At the beginning
of Fides et Ratio John Paul II posits the link between faith, reason, and life
by commenting that the answer to the questions on the meaning of life
“decides the direction which people seek to give to their lives” (FR, §1).
The encyclical answers the pressing need for “a foundation for personal
and communal life” (FR, §6) of which marriage and family are the most
common path. In other words the pope is saying that what a person
believes has a profound effect on the way life is lived.
The Methodology of the Wednesday Catechesis
on the Theology of the Body
Michael Waldstein, translator of the new English edition of the Wednesday catechesis, has given a comprehensive and helpful account of its structure and method.14 But here we are concerned with the nature of the
relationship between reason and faith in addressing the questions raised by
Humanae Vitae. By choosing to begin with the words of Christ, John Paul II
gives primacy to knowledge through faith. At the same time he finds in
the Genesis text the ultimate justification of the path to truth of both faith
and reason. Both meet in the human person, and this is a critical concept
that he will develop in Fides et Ratio, especially §32, which follows a
general discussion on the way men come to truth, by abstract reason and
also by trust in knowledge previously acquired since it is not possible to
verify every truth personally. So the one who seeks truth is also the one
who believes. And this truth comes by way of a personal relationship. It
involves not simply the person’s capacity to know but his capacity to
entrust himself to another person.
From the beginning of his catechesis on Genesis, John Paul II makes
use of philosophy to illuminate the text. This is immediately noticeable
in the second catechesis which recounts the priestly account of the
14 See the introduction by Michael Waldstein, John Paul II, Man and Woman He

Created Them, 105–28.

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creation of man, made in the image of God. First of all he emphasizes that
while the priestly account is “theological in character,” since it defines man
as made in the image of God, it also has a “powerful metaphysical
content.”15 Man is defined in a more metaphysical than physical way.
John Paul II states that “this text of Genesis has become the source of the
deepest inspirations for the thinkers who have sought to understand
‘being’ and ‘existing.’ ”16 We see here the emphasis on a metaphysics of
being as fundamental to any philosophical account of the nature of man
and the cosmos.17 The Genesis text also shows the convertibility of being
and the good (ens et bonum convertuntur). Such convertibility is, he says,“an
incontrovertible point of reference and solid basis of a metaphysics and
also for an anthropology and an ethics.”18
Without understanding the grounding of the Wednesday catechesis on
the primacy of objective reality, “free from any trace of subjectivism,”19
it is not possible to interpret correctly the pope’s emphasis on the subjective aspect of man’s experience in the Yahwist account of creation. Later
in Fides et Ratio John Paul II makes it abundantly clear that any development in philosophical method must always build on the foundation of a
metaphysics of being.20
15 John Paul II, Man and Woman He Created Them, §§2:4, 5 (September 12, 1979).
16 Ibid. §2:4.
17 In criticizing the English translation from the Polish of The Acting Person for

obscuring the extent to which Karol Wojtyla’s ethics is steeped in the metaphysics of Thomas Aquinas, Kenneth Schmitz states that it is the view of Wojtyla
himself that “the metaphysics of Thomas Aquinas, however accommodated to the
present situation, is an indispensable ingredient in ethical analysis” (Kenneth
Schmitz, At the Center of the Human Drama [Washington, DC: The Catholic
University of America Press, 1993], 61).
18 John Paul II, Man and Woman He Created Them, §2:5 (September 12, 1979).
Kenneth Schmitz has shown how the philosopher Karol Wojtyla considered the
relationship of being, truth, and goodness as the “most original teaching of
Thomas.” The good is inextricably bound up with existence (Schmitz, At the
Center of the Human Drama, 52; see also 51).
19 John Paul II, Man and Woman He Created Them, §2:4 (September 12, 1979). In Fides
et Ratio John Paul II emphasizes that “metaphysics . . . plays an essential role of mediation in theological research. . . . If I insist so strongly on the metaphysical element,
it is because I am convinced that it is the path to be taken in order to move beyond
the crisis pervading large sectors of philosophy at the moment, and thus to correct
certain mistaken modes of behavior now widespread in society” (FR, §83).
20 The inadequate subjectivism of the phenomenology of Max Scheler is attributed
by Karol Wojtyla to the absence of a metaphysics of being: see Wojtyla, “The
Problem of the Separation of Experience from the Act in Ethics in the Philosophy of Immanuel Kant and Max Scheler,” in Wojtyla, Person and Community,
trans.Theresa Sandok (New York: Peter Lang, 1993), 23–44. For a superb account

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John Paul II describes the Yahwist account as above all presenting man
in the aspect of his subjectivity, a person who knows, wills, and acts. For
John Paul II, being a subject includes the traditional philosophical definition of man as a rational animal.21 It also includes the dimension of
consciousness.The text, he says, is “the first witness of human consciousness.”22 From the point of view of John Paul II’s methodology in uniting faith and reason, as well as knitting modern insights of interiority
onto the traditional definition of man as a rational substance, the Yahwist
text is extremely important.
Without going into great detail on his methodology—that has been
dealt with elsewhere23—in his philosophy he points out that the Boethian
definition of man is the “metaphysical terrain”24 in which human subjectivity is realized. Human action is conscious action.The human person is
not only the one who acts but the one who knows and experiences
himself as acting. Scholastics did not develop the unique significance of
consciousness for subjectivity.The human being is not just a member of
the genus “rational animal,” a human suppositum, but a unique individual.
The dynamism of action helps us to understand human subjectivity since
consciousness accompanies action.
The individual’s whole development . . . tends toward the emergence
of the person and personal subjectivity in the human suppositum. In this
way, somehow on the basis of this suppositum, the human self gradually
both discloses itself and in disclosing itself constitutes itself—and it
discloses itself also by constituting itself.25

Consciousness is essential, says Wojtyla, for understanding the human self.
The person not only knows that he knows and acts but experiences himself
as knowing and acting. The suppositum must manifest itself as personal
of a contemporary account of the metaphysics of being, drawing primarily on
Thomas Aquinas, see Kenneth Schmitz, “Human Nature and Human Culture,”
unpublished paper given at Catholic University of America, March 2008.
21 See John Paul II, Man and Woman He Created Them, §5:5, note 10 (October 10,
1979).
22 Ibid., §3:1 (September 19, 1979).
23 See Mary Shivanandan, “Subjectivity and the Order of Love,” Fides Quaerens
Intellectum 1 (2001): 251–71, esp. 253–59 and 262–64. Specific articles by Karol
Wojtyla on subjectivity can be found in his Person and Community, namely “The
Personal Structure of Self Determination,” 187–95; “Subjectivity and the Irreducibility in the Human Being,” 209–17; and “The Person: Subject and
Community,” 219–61.
24 Wojtyla, “Subjectivity and the Irreducible in the Human Being,” 212.
25 Wojtyla, “The Person: Subject and Community,” 225.

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subjectivity. Not only is the human being a person by nature, but subjectivity also belongs to him by nature.26 It is in his interpretation of the
Yahwist text that the full significance of John Paul II’s philosophical
investigations for theology, using phenomenology as a method but without in any way reducing the metaphysical content, becomes apparent.
Knowledge as Encounter
It is significant that he begins with the Yahwist phrase, “ ‘It is not good
that man’ (male) ‘should be alone; I want to make him a help similar to
himself ’ (Gen 2:18).”27 The starting point is one directly concerned with
relationship or the lack thereof. It is within the context of relationship
that man comes to knowledge of himself and the world.When the pope
talks of man’s consciousness, he rejects categorically the disembodied
consciousness of an autonomous self. Knowledge comes through an
encounter with objective reality, whether the cosmos, himself, or another
human being.28 It comes by way of experience, our ordinary human
experiences. The appeal to experience is fundamental because man is a
body. He goes so far as to say that “our experience is in some way a legitimate means for theological interpretation.”29 In a footnote he elaborates
on the “surprising convergence” between “experience and revelation.”
Although faith and science are two distinct disciplines, they meet in the
human person and his experience.
26 The roots of consciousness are always in the suppositum not simply in “acts of

consciousness” (ibid., 226).This assures the unity and integrity of body and soul.
27 John Paul II, Man and Woman He Created Them, §5:2 (October 10, 1979). In both

the original Italian and the English translation, Pope John Paul II inserts the word
“maschio” or “male” in reference to Gen 2:18 as well as in 2:7. This is a good
example of the distinction he makes between humanity and subjectivity. Adam
was created as a concrete male person but only became aware of his masculinity
in the encounter with Eve.The separate creation of man and woman refers back,
he says to their creation as male and female in the priestly text. See John Paul II,
Man and Woman He Created Them, §3:2 (September 19, 1979).
28 Angelo Scola has developed most fully the nature of knowledge as encounter in
The Nuptial Mystery, trans. Michelle K. Borras (Grand Rapids, MI: William B.
Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2005), 224–27. He has coined the term “symbolic
ontology” to capture the fact that being cannot be grasped directly by man. It
does not mean that man cannot touch the real itself through intuition but the
real communicates itself in a sign to form concepts. This encounter constitutes
an event. Man must choose it in freedom, but the thing always remains other.
This otherness or difference allows for relationship and encounter. Sexual difference is a primary form of otherness. See ibid., 225.
29 John Paul II, Man and Woman He Created Them, §§4:4, 5, and §4:5, note 8
(September 26, 1979).

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In the Genesis text the pope discerns three succeeding levels by which
man comes to know and experience himself and his place in the world.
First he discovers who he is as a person with intellect and will, different
from the animals with the power to determine his own destiny.This is an
existential solitude, prior to man’s (male’s) solitude vis-à-vis the woman
(female) and common to man, male and female. It is specifically in an
encounter with the physical world and his own body that he discovers
his subjectivity and his contingency before God. The text, he says,
“sketches man as a person with the subjectivity characterizing the person.”30
Secondly through an encounter with Eve he discovers himself as a male
person ordered to a relationship of self-gift as spouse and thirdly he
discovers the generative nature of his body when Eve conceives and bears
a son. Indeed through the “knowledge” involved in the bodily union of
the spouses the woman discovers a new dimension of her being, that of
mother, while the man discovers the dimension of fatherhood.
The catecheses on knowledge and procreation are especially significant for our argument.The use of the verb “knew” for conjugal relations
means that the biblical text raises the level of the act from the merely
biological to the personal.There are then in the biblical understanding of
“know” two aspects, intentionality and the reality of the union in one
flesh. Both the husband and the wife know each other reciprocally and
by doing so discover the depths of their own specific “I.” Each is known
as an “unrepeatable feminine or masculine ‘I.’ ”31 This reciprocal knowledge, he says, “establishes a kind of personal archetype of human bodiliness and sexuality.” He goes on to say that,
the “man” who for the first time “knows” the woman, his wife, in the act
of conjugal union is in fact the same one who—in giving names, that is,
also, by “knowing”—differentiated himself from the whole world of living
beings or animalia, thus affirming himself as a person and a subject.32
30 Ibid., §6:1 (October 24, 1979), original emphasis. See ibid., §4:4 (September 26,

1979).
31 Ibid., §20:5 (March 5, 1980).
32 Ibid., §21:1 (March 12, 1980). Kenneth Schmitz has brought out well the rela-

tional dimension of knowledge, not just of one human being to another, but of
things in themselves in a metaphysics of being.“Knowledge,” he says,“is precisely
the relation in and through which we come to know things as they are in their
own being.” By being intelligible to man, things are rendered explicit in themselves.This makes them available for a relationship in which they retain their own
integrity. In giving themselves they also affirm their identity. See Schmitz,
“Human Nature and Human Culture.” According to David Schindler, “Knowing at root is but the distinctly cognitive manner of participating in the relations
of love and beauty implicit in an ontology of creation” (David L. Schindler,“God

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911

The Principles in Fides et Ratio
Whereas in the Wednesday catechesis John Paul II demonstrates the
primacy of revelation in coming to know truth and the role of philosophy in illuminating faith on the one hand and reflecting on the cosmos
on the other, in Fides et Ratio John Paul II articulates firstly the absolute
primacy of faith, putting reason in its place as the handmaid of faith;
secondly he brings out the nature of the person as the one who seeks
truth; and thirdly he traces the path to truth by personal encounter, thus
uniting objective and subjective truth.
Just as John Paul II begins the catechesis with the words of Christ, in
Fides et Ratio he begins chapter one with Jesus as the revealer of the
Father, an utterly gratuitous initiative on the part of God (FR, §7).With
Christ eternity enters time. By his death and resurrection he bestows on
man the divine life that Adam lost. “Through this revelation,” says John
Paul II,“men and women are offered the ultimate truth about their own
life and about the goal of history” (FR, §12).The source of its credibility
lies in the authority of the Revealer. It is through faith that we can penetrate the mystery. In the act of faith the person gives consummate expression to his freedom and through it “reaches the certainty of truth and
chooses to live in that truth” (FR, §13).
In order to help reason understand, revelation presents signs, which urge
reason to look beyond to deeper truths (FR, §13). Here John Paul II categorically states that revelation sets a point of reference not to be ignored if
human life is to be understood.The reference point continually points back
to God, fuller knowledge of whom can only be received by faith. Reason
has the domain between these two reference points (FR, §14).33

and the End of Intelligence: Knowledge as Relationship,” Communio 26 [1999]:
527). He proposes that “knowledge is first and foremost a matter of relation, the
order of which is disclosed in the creation of all things by and in the triune God
revealed in Jesus Christ” (ibid., 528). In love the subject discovers the self in relation first to the Other who gives himself together with the gift of the world.The
relationship with God is primary.Therefore there is a priority of the ‘objective’
as already given as a gift of God and the world.“What this means,” says Schindler,
“is that knowledge takes its first and most basic order from within relation or
relationship defined by love and beauty, which originates in submission of the
self to the other (God and all others in God)” (ibid., 536–37).
33 Here John Paul II inserts a section on the relationship between life, reason, and
faith.The truth of Christian revelation “enables all men and women to embrace
the ‘mystery’ of their own life.” It offers those who want to know the truth the
possibility of “taking full and harmonious possession of their lives precisely by
following the path of truth.”This is the ultimate goal also of philosophy (FR, §15).

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Sections 31 to 33 of Fides et Ratio are pivotal for John Paul II’s close
linking of reason and faith. Human beings, he argues, are not meant to
live alone. More truths, even empirical truths, are believed not because
they have been acquired by personal verification but on the credibility of
others (FR, §31). Man entrusts himself to this knowledge and, he adds, it
is often a richer truth since it is acquired in an interpersonal relationship.
This is because it involves not just the capacity to know but a “deeper”
capacity to entrust oneself to others and to enter an enduring relationship. One can think here of the relationship between student and a
revered teacher. Such truth is not primarily empirical or philosophical.
What is sought is the “truth of the person.”“Human perfection, then,” he
sums up,“consists not simply in acquiring an abstract knowledge of truth,
but in a dynamic relationship with others. It is in this faithful self-giving
that a person finds a fullness of certainty and security” (FR, §32).
In section 33, John Paul II summarizes his argument. It is the nature
of the human person to seek truth, not just partial truths from empirical
or scientific evidence or the true good in individual acts of decisionmaking.They look for an ultimate truth which would explain the meaning of life. The search can only end in “reaching the absolute,” as the
ancient philosophers concluded. But the search for truth also needs trust
and friendship, which was well accepted by these philosophers.Therefore,
there is both “a search for truth and a search for a person to whom they
might entrust themselves.” Christian faith offers Jesus Christ, both true
God and true man. Through the order of grace Christ offers participation in divine mysteries and coherent knowledge of the Triune God.
Through his humanity, the goodness of the order of creation is confirmed.
There can be no contradiction between the order of faith and the order
of reason, both of which are united in the person of Christ.34 In entrusting themselves to the Person of Jesus, believers find a fullness of truth not
available to reason alone (FR, §33).
The Relationship between the Language
of the Body and Truth
Since entrustment to another is such an integral part of arriving at truth,
whatever might hinder self-giving to another will also inhibit the path to
truth. Here we find the close link between life, reason, and faith. Reason
reflects on experience to form concepts. It also uses those concepts to
shed light on the truths of revelation. As we have seen, John Paul II con34 The principle of non-contradiction is cited as the first of five principles form-

ing the core of philosophic thought in FR, §4.

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913

siders experience a valid path to understanding revelation.35 The experience itself must be an objectively true experience.
As John Paul II recognizes the biblical use of the verb “know” both for
conjugal intercourse and knowledge as “intentionality,” reflects a deep
truth about the human person, for the spousal union is the deepest selfgiving union of human persons in creation, a paradigm for all others.
Angelo Scola, drawing on the insights of John Paul II, identifies the
concrete experience of the man-woman relationship as the base of what
he terms the “nuptial mystery,” in his view the analogatum princeps for all
reality. On the one hand, the expression “nuptial mystery,” he states,
“refers to the organic unity of sexual difference, love (objective relationship to the other) and fruitfulness. On the other hand, it refers objectively,
through the principle of analogy to the various forms of love that characterize both the man-woman relationship and all it derivatives (fatherhood, motherhood, brotherhood, and sisterhood, etc.) and God’s
relationship with man in the sacrament, the Church and Jesus Christ, all
the way to the Trinity itself.”36
If the nuptial mystery is disturbed in any way, the unity of the human
person dictates that the integrity of the act of knowledge will also be
disturbed. And indeed as a result of original sin, the human mind was
darkened.37 Here we can see a connection with the truths expressed in
Humanae Vitae. John Paul II affirms that the dignity of the communio personarum demands that the language of the body in the conjugal act be
expressed in the truth of total mutual self-giving. If it is artificially deprived
of this truth,“such a violation of the inner order of conjugal communion,
a communion that plunges its roots into the very order of the person,
35 In a footnote to his reflections on the first chapters of Genesis, John Paul II speaks

of the relationship between “experience” and “revelation.” Although many would
draw a line between the two, he cites Rom 8:23 “We therefore have a right to
speak about the relationship between experience and revelation; in fact we have
the right to raise the issue of their relationship to each other” (Man and Woman He
Created Them, §4:5 note 8, [September 26, 1979]).
36 Angelo Scola, The Nuptial Mystery, trans. Michelle K. Borras (Grand Rapids, MI:
William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2005) 213–14.
37 John Paul II notes that before sin man was designed to have ready access to God
through metaphysical enquiry. Original sin wounded all men’s path to God
through reason. Reason became a “prisoner of itself.” The Incarnation freed
reason from its weakness (FR, §22). For an insightful discussion of the relationship of language to “ontology” or “the translation of encountered existence in
the language of being, giving primacy not to being but to the modality of logos,”
see Kenneth L. Schmitz, “The Language of Conversion and the Conversion of
Language,” Communio 21 (1994): 745.

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Mary Shivanandan

constitutes the essential evil of the contraceptive act.”38 When a couple makes use
of contraception in marriage, they alter the objective truth of the language
of the body. Its objective meaning of total self-gift, which includes the gift
of procreation, is changed. Any reflection on the experience will also
necessarily be flawed. A dualism has been introduced, separating the
conjugal act from its true meaning, expressed in the body.
It is significant that John Paul II speaks of “rereading the language of
the body in truth” (emphasis added), which is related to a cognitive act. Is
it surprising, then, that in order to justify falsifying the language of the
body through contraception, theologians and ethicists have altered the
very foundations of truth acquired both by reason and faith? These
theologians do not understand that, as John Paul II says,
If the human being—male and female—in marriage (and indirectly in all
spheres of life together) gives to his behavior a meaning in conformity with the
fundamental truth of the language of the body, then he too “is in truth.” In the
opposite case, he commits lies and falsifies the language of the body.39

This falsification reaches to the very person of Jesus, since he is “the way,
the life and the truth” ( Jn 14:6).40 The unity of truth and love is the core
of revelation. Where one is not lived the other is also warped and even
destroyed.
38 John Paul II, Man and Woman He Created Them, §123:7 (August 22, 1984).William

E. May and others, including Paul VI in Humanae Vitae, point out that the traditional
view of the contraceptive act as anti-life still pertains. It seems to me that John Paul
II has in mind the wider implications of falsifying the language of the body.
39 John Paul II, Man and Woman He Created Them, §106:3 ( January 26, 1983), original emphasis. By using the phrase “is in truth,” John Paul II calls to mind the
first letter of John on the link between truth and behavior. Ignace de la Potterie
gives a detailed commentary on the use of the two different words for “knowing truth” in 1 John: “The word ginowskein is used in a more external sense and
eidenai in a more internal. (The word eidenai means to know with certainty as a
result of firm faith).The two words complement one another. For example the
Christian knows by faith (invisible—idein—the word is linked to the ideas in
Plato); he acts morally (visible) which is how we know (ginoskein) if someone is
in the truth; and finally we conclude from this external behavior that the Christian has communion with God (invisible).” See Mary Shivanandan, “The
Anthropological Background of Fides et Ratio,” Anthropotes 17 (2001): 139.
40 In commenting on this Scripture passage, Ignace de la Potterie states that Jesus
identifies himself with the truth and is the revelation of the Father. It is because
Jesus “is the truth that he is for us the life and then also the way; the mediation
of truth is ordered to the mediation of communion; Jesus is the truth in order to
give us life” (Ignace de la Potterie, “Je suis la Voie, la Vérité et la Vie” [Jn 14:6],
Nouvelle Revue Theologique 88 [1966]: 930–37).

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Erroneous Methodologies
There are many contemporary examples of erroneous philosophical and
theological methodologies. Mention has already been made of proportionalism and consequentialism, faulty ethical systems that were initiated in
order to justify contraception. Before discussing other erroneous methodologies, it is appropriate to review Charles Curran’s critique of John Paul
II’s methodology in his 2005 book The Moral Theology of John Paul II.41
Curran attacks John Paul II’s theological methodology because of its
implications for reaffirming and extending the Church’s magisterial teaching on marriage, family, gender, and sexuality. Curran admits as much in
the introduction: “In the past, I have on occasion disagreed with some
aspects of his moral theology and continue to do so. I have tried to be fair
in my analysis, but obviously my own position colors my approach.”42 It
is noteworthy that in the chapter on marriage and sexuality his most
significance source is the Wednesday catechesis on the theology of the
body. Curran ascribes to them “little or no importance from the viewpoint of authoritative teaching,”43 effectively dismissing both their theological method and import.Yet in the process he undermines the authority
of other papal documents, such as Mulieris Dignitatem, and Letter to Families, which rely heavily on the theology of the body. For Curran they are
just one theologian’s approach to these fundamental issues.44
In this brief essay it is only possible to touch on a few salient points of
Curran’s critique. Curran’s approach approximates the very approach that
Jesus challenges in the Gospel of Matthew on divorce and the resurrection.
Curran wants less emphasis on universal moral norms and instead a return
to casuistry.45 The nub of his argument is that John Paul II maintains a
41 Charles E. Curran, The Moral Theology of John Paul II (Washington, DC: George-

town University Press, 2005).
42 Ibid., 6. See also p. 160 where he directly links the two. Curran clarifies the posi-

tion of the revisionist theologians by saying that “for the good of the person or
the good of the marital relation, one can interfere with the physical structure of
the sexual act in order to prevent procreation” (ibid., 111). He asserts that John
Paul II’s theology of the body does not refer to all bodies. Since it does not do
so, “he also would have to prove that heterosexual morality is the only meaning
for sexuality for all human beings” (ibid., 168).
43 Ibid., 4.
44 Ibid., 160, 164, 165. See also Waldstein, introduction, in John Paul II, Man and
Woman He Created Them, 16, 17.
45 Curran, The Moral Theology of John Paul II, 33. “The Catholic tradition has often
used casuistry as a way of trying to deal with specific moral issues, thus showing
how important it is to consider all the details of the situation” (ibid.). Curran
commends casuistry over “the unchangeable and universal moral norm on abortion found in Evangelium vitae.” He also links the condemnation of direct abortion

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Mary Shivanandan

dichotomy between faith and reason, between the social encyclicals and
those on faith.46 It would seem that the opposite is the case. Curran asks
a key question: “Do we find moral theology and Christian moral teaching only in Scripture, in Jesus Christ, and in Christian tradition? Or do we
share some moral wisdom and knowledge with all humankind?”47 His
very formulation of the question would seem to make the two sources of
wisdom equal, where John Paul II sees a hierarchy. Curran in fact introduces a dichotomy in a way that Vatican Council II, which John Paul II
follows, does not.48 Curran seeks to find sufficient human wisdom and
the meaning of life in a totally human way through natural law outside
the Church, as in the condemnation of slavery (even though such
condemnation is intrinsic to man made in the image of God).49 His error
is acceptance of the view of an “autonomous” ethic and rejection of what
John Paul II called a “participated theonomy” (VS, §41) or true understanding of natural law as the participation in the eternal law by the
rational creature. On Curran’s view the Church must therefore be open
to such “wisdom” even on the fundamental issues of life, marriage, and
gender in such a way as to give more credibility to human hypotheses than
to the wisdom of faith.50
Curran consistently gives greater weight to contemporary findings
rooted exclusively in historical exegetical studies, the social sciences, and
other “human wisdom,” than he does to Scripture itself as understood
theologically in the Church, making appropriate use of the historicalcritical method and its interpretation according to the mind of the
Church or to the Magisterium of the Church. He is critical of John Paul
II’s neglect of the modern historical method, charging that he uses Scripto “a particular philosophic view . . . far removed from the core of faith and from
more general ethical norms, such as respect due to all life including nascent life”
(ibid., 31).
46 Ibid., 19.
47 Ibid., 23.
48 See Gaudium et Spes, §22:“The truth is that only in the mystery of the Incarnation does the mystery of man take on light. . . . Christ, the final Adam by the
revelation of the Father and his love fully reveals man to himself and makes his
supreme calling clear.”
49 Curran’s understanding of natural law itself is dualistic, criticizing John Paul II
for accepting the Thomistic view of the inclinations shared with animals as
intrinsic to human nature as a union of body and soul (ibid., 114).
50 It is as if he is saying that it is possible to escape the island through human ingenuity alone instead of making use of human reason both to understand through
experience the resources of the island and to interpret the assistance that comes
from beyond, the view that John Paul II takes in Fides et Ratio.The pope specifically condemns Fideism (FR, §55).

Humanae Vitae and Fides et Ratio

917

ture as a proof text. John Paul II generally follows Dei Verbum’s principles
which give a clearly defined but subordinate role to the historical-critical method.51 His discrimen or interpretive key is “wholeness” or unity
between the Old Testament and the New, between the Bible, theology,
spirituality, and life.52 This allows new theological insights to emerge from
the texts themselves.53
The paucity of Curran’s approach and the richness of John Paul II’s can
be seen in their respective treatment of Ephesians 5:21–33. Curran
applauds the pope’s new emphasis on the equal dignity of the sexes which
he, himself, regards as in opposition to “official Catholic teaching less than
fifty years ago.”54 He goes on to say, however, that drawing the equality of
husband and wife from Ephesians 5:21–33 is an egregious example of John
Paul II’s “lack of historicity and historical consciousness,” by expanding the
meaning of the text beyond a first-century understanding of the household
code.55 By contrast, John Paul II sees in the text “the wisdom and the
power of God.” In his Letter to Families he calls it a summa of the Church’s
51 This essay is too brief to mount a response to Curran on this point. Dei Verbum

gives two main criteria for scriptural interpretation: (1) it must be in agreement
with tradition, and (2) it must be mindful of biblical scholarship, that is, the
meaning the authors intended, what God wanted to manifest given the literary
form and cultural context in which it was composed. The footnote to the
September 29, 1979 catechesis is a good example of John Paul II’s fidelity to Dei
Verbum principles on the proto evangelium of Genesis 3:15. First of all he cites the
Septuagint interpretation, then Irenaeus and other Church Fathers followed by
modern conflicting interpretations. He then interprets the Old Testament in light
of the New.
52 Two articles provide useful commentaries on John Paul II’s use of Scripture: J.
Michael Miller,“Interior Intelligibility:The Use of Scripture in Papal and Conciliar Documents,” The Canadian Catholic Review (September 1993): 9–18; and S. J.
Prendergast, “ ‘A Vision of Wholeness’: A Reflection on the Use of Scripture in
a Cross-Section of Papal Writings,” in The Thought of John Paul II: A Collection of
Essays and Studies, ed. John M. McDermott, S.J. (Roma: Editrice Pontificia
Universita Gregoriana, 1993), 69–91.
53 See David S.Yeago,“The New Testament and The Nicene Dogma: A Contribution to the Recovery of Theological Exegesis,” Pro Ecclesia 3 (1994): 152–64, for
a useful discussion of the emergence of the dogma of the Incarnation from scriptural texts.
54 Curran, Moral Theology of John Paul II, 188. Curran himself relies “heavily on
feminist thought” (ibid., 190).
55 Ibid., 199. John Paul II avers that analyses of the passage “must begin with the
preliminary understanding of the text in itself ; they must then lead us, so to speak,
beyond the limits of the text, in order that we may understand if possible ‘to the
very depths’ what wealth of truth revealed by God is contained within the scope
of that stupendous page.” See John Paul II, Man and Woman He Created Them,
§87:6 ( July 28, 1982).

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teaching on man and woman, marriage and creation: “St. Paul’s magnificent synthesis concerning the great mystery appears as the compendium or
summa, in some sense, of the teaching about God and man, which was
brought to fulfillment in Christ.”56 Through Christ’s reference to “the
beginning” in Genesis, the historical state of sin, redemption, and the fulfillment of the “mystery” of Ephesians 1:3–10, John Paul II sees the whole of
salvation history encompassed in the text and the definitive understanding
of masculinity, femininity, and the sacramentality of marriage in creation
and grace.57 At the center is Christ and his self-gift on the Cross.
Demonstration of Erroneous Methodologies
A comprehensive undermining of the theological foundations of the
Church’s teaching on sexuality pervades a study commissioned in 1972
by the Catholic Theological Society of America (CTSA), and published
in 1977 as Human Sexuality: New Directions in American Catholic Thought.58
This study, which circulated widely in and outside of seminaries for
nearly twenty years, clearly illustrates the impact of an incorrect relation
between faith and reason and the resulting effect of erroneous views on
sexuality. One might say that as a demonstration of an incorrect method
applied to marriage and sexuality, it stands in relation to Curran’s articulation of erroneous theological principles in the same way as John Paul II’s
Catechesis on Human Love stands in relation to Fides et Ratio. In other
words, it shows the interrelationship between a distorted philosophy and
theology and the subversion of the truths on sexuality and procreation
proclaimed in Humanae Vitae.
Let us begin with the pastoral guidelines recommended by the CTSA
theologians. With regard to marital sexuality, they argue that no physical
sexual expression can be judged intrinsically wrong or perverse.The justification for such an assertion is empirical studies (that is, reason in a limited
sense) which show that the diversity of sexual expression depends on
culture, temperament, and education.The objective truth of the act itself is
immaterial as long as it fosters the values of “self-liberation, other-enrichment, honesty, fidelity, life service, social responsibility and joyousness.”59
There can be no blanket “no” to premarital sex60 and extreme caution
56 John Paul II, Letter to Families, §19.
57 John Paul II, Man and Woman He Created Them, §93:1 (September 8, 1982).
58 Anthony Kosnik et al., Human Sexuality: New Directions in American Catholic

Thought: A Study Commissioned by the Catholic Theological Society of America (New
York: Paulist Press, 1977).
59 Ibid., 110.
60 Ibid., 167.

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919

should be exercised in condemning variant marriage patterns, such as
cohabitation, communal living and extramarital sex or adultery. They
should not be ruled out, since “the empirical data does not as yet warrant
any solid conclusions on the effects of such behavior, particularly from the
long-range view.”61
All methods of contraception are recommended—they equate natural
family planning (NFP) with contraception—with the main criteria for
acceptability being medical, psychological, or personal considerations.
Religious considerations are treated last. Reasons given to reject the
teaching of Humanae Vitae are listed as “the person-centered approach to
moral judgment”62 (prescinding from the objective nature of the act
itself), a renewed (or revisionist) understanding of natural law, scientific
and medical advances, insights from the psychological and behavioral
sciences—all on the side of reason. A brief reference to biblical exegesis
and teaching on moral matters points out that Humanae Vitae did not cite
any scriptural evidence, a lack amply remedied by John Paul II in his
Catechesis on Human Love.63 Confessors are advised to present both the
Church teaching on Humanae Vitae as well as information on contraception and leave the choice up to the conscience of the penitent.64
These guidelines follow the methodological part of the study, beginning with the “Bible and Human Sexuality” and “Christian Tradition and
Human Sexuality.” There is heavy reliance on the historical-critical
method.The conclusions of the CTSA study:
No single text or collection of texts constitutes anything like a coherent biblical theology of human sexuality. Scripture is not even concerned
with sexuality as such, regarding it as one aspect of life, properly viewed
only within the context of the whole person and the whole of human
life with all its relationships and responsibilities.65
61 Ibid., 145–49. The negative effects of divorce on children were documented as

early as 1989 by Judith S. Wallerstein and Sandra Blakeslee in their Second
Chances: Men,Women, and Children a Decade after Divorce (New York: Cicknor &
Fields, 1989).
62 Kosnik et al., Human Sexuality, 123.
63 Ibid., 114–25.
64 Ibid., 127.They argue that use or nonuse of contraception cannot provide a basis
of judgment on the morality or immorality of a person’s conjugal life.
65 Ibid., 29, 30. See also their remark,“Critical biblical scholarship finds it impossible on the basis of empirical data to approve or reject categorically any particular sexual act outside of its contextual circumstances and intention” (31).
Contrast this with a Jewish view: “The Halakhah ( Jewish Law) has a great deal
to say about the sexual conduct of married couples. . . . Over one-sixth of the
Talmud itself, one whole ‘Order’ is devoted to such matters as marriage, divorce,

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Mary Shivanandan

Some recognition is given to a greater pastoral sensitivity on the part
of the Church to sexual matters but the study finds its approach to “specific
issues (premarital sex, homosexuality and masturbation) . . . exaggeratedly
absolute and legalistic.”66 A chapter on empirical sciences and human
sexuality relies heavily on Alfred Kinsey’s flawed data on masturbation,
premarital sex, and the prevalence of homosexuality.While not claiming
such data is conclusive, the study warns against assuming that human experience confirms any particular moral position but then argues in favor of
its own position.
It is in the development of a new “theology of sexuality,” that the influence of social science theory, particularly that of sociologist Ira Reiss, is
most evident. Instead of procreative and unitive, these theologians propose
as a criterion that “wholesome human sexuality . . . fosters a creative growth
toward integration.”67 The morality of any particular sex act is judged on
whether it is self-liberating, other-enriching, honest, faithful, socially
responsible, life-serving, and joyous.68 It adds that “these values are not
expressed in terms of concrete, physical actions.”69 This constitutes in
practice a revised moral evaluation of sexual conduct, dependent more on
social science theory and data than on Christian revelation and the reflection of the Church on revelation.
The Language of Deception
A major argument of the revisionist theologians is that the Church’s traditional teaching on gender, sexuality, and marriage does not accord with
contemporary experience. For example, the common thread running
through feminist theology is that the feminist experience should determine
the relevance of particular doctrines for feminists.70 The same position is

and women’s rights” (Norman Lamm, A Hedge of Roses: Jewish Insights into
Marriage and Married Life [New York: Philipp Feldham, Inc., 1966], 32, 33). A
good critique of their Scripture interpretation is also given by Manuel Miguens,
“Biblical Thoughts on Human Sexuality,” a chapter from Human Sexuality in Our
Time, ed. George A. Kelly (Boston: St. Paul Editions, 1979).
66 Kosnik et al., Human Sexuality, 52.
67 Ibid., 86.
68 Ibid., 92–95.
69 Ibid., 96.
70 Sallie McFague considers the appropriate question not which doctrine is true or
false but “which is a better portrait of Christian faith for our day” (Models of God,
Theology for an Ecological Nuclear Age [Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1987], xiii).
Rosemary Radford Ruether posits “human experience as the starting point and
the ending point of the hermeneutical circle” (Sexism and God-Talk: Toward a

Humanae Vitae and Fides et Ratio

921

taken with regard to various sexual practices including contraception.The
experience of couples is cited as the most convincing arguments for
endorsing divergent theological views.71 Statistics are given on how many
Catholics are not obeying the Church’s teaching, with the implication that
it does not accord either with their experience or understanding.72
Lutheran theologian George Lindbeck challenges the widespread theological assumption that experiences are the leading partner in the exchange
between doctrines and experience. He proposes a rule theory of doctrines
as a more satisfactory method of explaining the link between experience
and belief. In the experiential-expressive model, “The experience is the
source and norm of objectifications.”73 Lindbeck holds on the contrary that
“a religion can be viewed as a kind of cultural and/or linguistic framework
or medium that shapes the entirety of life and thought.”74 It functions a
priori like an idiom. Although it is influenced by the inner experience of the
believer, the idiom is the leading partner in the exchange. “Religions,”
according to Lindbeck’s approach, “are seen as comprehensive interpretive
schemes, usually embodied in myths or narratives and heavily ritualized,
which structure human experience and understanding of self and world.”75
Feminist Theology [Boston: Beacon Press, 1983], 12). See also Kosnik et al., Human
Sexuality, 174.
71 Kosnik et al. Human Sexuality, 122.
72 Thomas Martin states that “contrary to the norms of most mainstream Christian positions, many experience genital sexuality outside of marriage.” See
Thomas M. Martin, The Challenge of Christian Marriage: Marriage in Scripture,
History and Contemporary Life (New York: Paulist Press, 1990), 135, 146, 147.The
experiences of couples in a survey conducted by Pat and Patty Crowley,
members of the 1966 Birth Control Commission summoned by Paul VI to
consider the licitness of the anovulant pill as a method of birth, are cited as a
prime reason in the majority report for changing the Church’s teaching on
contraception. See Robert McClory, Turning Point: The Inside Story of the Papal
Birth Control Commission, and How Humanae vitae Changed the Life of Patty Crowley and the Future of the Church (New York:The Crossroad Publishing Co., 1995),
86–95, 107. A reinterpretation of the data of this survey does not support all its
conclusions on the negative effect of the so-called Rhythm Method on the
couple’s relation.As much as 64 percent of those interviewed stated that in some
way “rhythm” was helpful to their marriage. See Richard J. Fehring and Elizabeth McGraw, “Spiritual Responses to the Regulation of Births (A Historical
Comparison),” in Life and Learning, vol. 12, Proceedings of the Twelfth University
Faculty for Life Conference, ed. Joseph W. Koterski, S.J. (Washington, DC: University Faculty for Life, 2003), 265–83.
73 George A. Lindbeck, The Nature of Doctrine, Religion and Theology in a Postliberal
Age (Philadelphia:Westminster Press, 1984), 31.
74 Ibid., 33.
75 Ibid., 32. In classical terms it is perhaps best expressed as lex orandi, lex credendi.

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This differs from the cognitivist or propositional approach, which is
also external, by allowing for the importance of the interiorization of
beliefs.76 Lindbeck holds, however, that this rule theory of doctrines does
not choose between propositionally formulated truths and inner experiences. Instead “it is the framework or medium in which Christians experience rather than what they experience or think they know that retains
continuity and unity through change.”77 While the experience of love, for
example, of one individual changes as a result of cultural factors, it can
only be called Christian love if it is shaped by the Christian story. And
this Christian experience is significant only when it arises within the
context of a Christian worldview or cultural-linguistic framework. Another
cultural-linguistic framework will produce very different experiences,
even among those who call themselves Christian.78
Lindbeck gives great importance to language. “Language . . . shapes
domains of human existence and action that are preexperiential.”79 This sets
in perspective the change in language for discussing sexuality, which was
devised in specific contrast to the Judeo-Christian worldview.80 Although
the sociologist Ira Reiss is not the architect of the “secular humanist” view
of sexuality, he has played a major role in redefining the language used both
to advance it and to oppose the Judeo-Christian approach.81 The terms
76 Ibid. The cultural-linguistic approach emphasizes that practice and training are

essential for learning “how to feel, act, and think in conformity with a religious
tradition. . . .The primary knowledge is not about the religion, not that the religion teaches such and such, but rather how to be religious in such and such ways”
(ibid., 35).The stress is on the code rather than on encoded propositions. Religion is not so much a set of beliefs to choose but a set of skills to practice. Ritual,
prayer, and example are more important, in his view, than explicitly formulated
statements. The experiential-expressive is oriented towards private experience,
while “all symbol systems have their origins in interpersonal relations and social
interactions” (ibid., 38). See also ibid., 33–38, 83.
77 Ibid., 84.
78 Ibid., 83.
79 Ibid., 37. A feminist has pointed out the unconsciously negative way of speaking
about fertility and conception in medical journals within a contraceptive framework. A comparison with natural family planning instruction manuals reveals the
opposite. All the terms for fertility and conception speak of union and gift. See
Mary Shivanandan,“Body Narratives: Language of Truth?” Logos 3 (2000): 166–93.
80 Anthropologist Margaret Mead is quoted as saying that since Kinsey,“the language
of tables and variables . . . has replaced Latin as the acceptable language for the
discussion of sex.” Cited in Letitia Anne Peplau, Zick Rubin, and Charles T. Hill,
“Sexual Intimacy in Dating Relationships,” Journal of Social Issues 33 (1977): 86.
81 Paul Kurtz, editor of The Humanist, in his preface to a collection of essays originally published in The Humanist and titled “The New Sexual Revolution,” sums
up this view: “A revolution is occurring and a new morality is emerging. This

Humanae Vitae and Fides et Ratio

923

“premarital” and “extramarital” have a sociological not a biblical source.
Reiss has stated that social scientists have developed these terms explicitly
to avoid the moral bias of “fornication” and “adultery.”82 Reiss’s views are
evident throughout the CTSA Report, including the term “personcentered” sexuality that he coined.83
Reiss has defined ideologies as “firmly held doctrines of particular
philosophical groups,”84 and concludes that “our ideology determines
what we see as the ‘crucial’ issues in any social situation involving sexuality.”85 He identifies a “traditional-romantic” ideology that he describes
as supporting gender-role distinction with male dominance, female fear
of the body and sexual emotions, emphasis on coitus in sexual expression, and love as a redeemer of sexual guilt. In the “modern-naturalistic”
view, that he chooses, gender roles are similar and egalitarian; personcentered sexuality is valued more than body-centered; sexual emotions
are manageable; physical pleasure and psychological intimacy in a variety
of sexual acts are the major goals of sexuality for both genders; and,
finally, “a wide range of sexuality should be accepted without guilt by
both genders providing it does not involve force or fraud.”86
Reiss’s main work was in the area of what he terms “premarital sexuality.” He conducted, in his own words, “the first systematic sociological
study of a national probability sample in the area of premarital sexual attitudes.”87 One of the first major theorists in the field, he was influential
in promoting his preferred standard of “permissiveness with affection”
morality demands liberation and freedom for the individual to realize his own
potentialities and satisfy his own needs, desires, and tastes as he sees fit, with a
minimum of intolerant social rules and regulations. This is basically a humanist
revolution. . . . Sexual liberation insists that we be emancipated from the puritanCatholic theology of repression.” Cited in The New Sexual Revolution, ed. Lester
A. Kirkendall and Robert N. Whitehurst (New York: Donald W. Brown Inc.,
1971), ix, x. See also Leonard V. Ramer, Your Sexual Bill of Rights: An Analysis of
the Harmful Effects of Sexual Prohibitions (New York: Exposition Press, 1973).
82 Ira L. Reiss, Journey into Sexuality:An Exploratory Voyage (New York: Prentice Hall,
1986), 239.
83 Ira L. Reiss, Premarital Standards in America: A Sociological Investigation of the Relative Social and Cultural Integration of American Sexual Standards (New York:The Free
Press, 1960), 83–85.
84 Ira L. Reiss,“Some Observations on Ideology and Sexuality in America,” Journal
of Marriage and Family 43 (1981): 271.
85 Ibid., 281.
86 Ira L. Reiss,“Some Observations on Ideology and Sexuality in America,” 279–80.
87 Ira L. Reiss,The Social Context of Premarital Sexual Permissiveness (New York: Holt,
Rinehart and Winston, 1967), vii. Reiss,“Some Observations on Ideology,” 280.
See also Reiss, Premarital Sexual Standards in America, 133, 144.

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Mary Shivanandan

and calling it “person-centered” behavior.88 It is not hard to see the influence of Reiss’s work on the authors of the CTSA Report. In discussing
sex outside of marriage they use the term “non-marital sexuality” and
discuss fornication within a context of changing the Tradition of the
Church.They distinguish five approaches to “premarital” sexuality which
correspond closely to Reiss’s categories. They favor the approach that
“premarital intercourse is wrong but pre-ceremonial intercourse may be
moral.” Empirical studies of current sexual activity are cited to support
this position.89
Conclusion
While the authors of the CTSA report continually nod towards the traditional teaching of the Church in giving pastoral advice, there can be no
doubt that such teaching takes second place to contemporary theories of
sexuality and empirical studies.These are precisely the errors of method
that Christ pointed out in the Gospel, placing human reason above the
word of God and not believing in its power.They are also the errors that
John Paul II enumerated in Fides et Ratio. Particularly noticeable in the
study commissioned by the Catholic Theological Society of America is
the place of Jesus and his teaching in the text.After a brief section on the
Old Testament in the first chapter, a few pages are given to the New
Testament and Jesus, distinguishing between the Jesus of history and the
Jesus of post-Easter faith.This is in telling contrast to John Paul II’s teaching from the first words of the first encyclical of his pontificate, Redemptor Hominis: “The Redeemer of man, Jesus Christ, is the center of the
universe and of history.”
In Fides et Ratio Jesus Christ crucified is the stumbling block but also
the path to the restoration of man’s dignity and communion with the
Triune God. Through him, life and faith are reunited. Reason, which
passes between the two, can now correctly interpret the visible world in
88 Ibid., 192.The standard states that two people who have built up a stable affec-

tionate relationship may engage in full sexual relations.
89 Kosnik et al., Human Sexuality, 152, 153, 158–65. Social science methods that

observe human behavior can and do reveal useful but partial insights. Indeed
contemporary studies on human sexuality and marriage are vindicating the truth
of Catholic teaching. See W. Bradford Wilcox,“Social Science and the Vindication
of Catholic Moral Teaching,” in The Church, Marriage & Family: Proceedings from the
27th Annual Convention of the Fellowship of Catholic Scholars, September 24–26, 2004,
Pittsburgh, PA, ed. Kenneth D.Whitehead (South Bend, IN: St. Augustine’s Press,
2007), 330–40. See also W. Bradford Wilcox et al., Why Marriage Matters Second
Edition: Twenty-Six Conclusions from the Social Sciences (New York: Institute for
American Values, 2007).

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925

the light of faith and illumine faith itself to guide man on his path to his
eternal destiny. Jesus Christ’s total self-gift even unto death becomes the
key to interpreting man and the cosmos.Whatever distorts the meaning
of this total self-gift, of which conjugal union is the prime earthly analogy, obscures the truth about God, man, and the cosmos.
The acceptance or rejection of the teaching of Humanae Vitae, which
reaffirms and extends the true meaning of conjugal love as total self-gift,
has far wider implications than simply its impact on the sphere of conjugal relations.All these false or partial methodologies obscure the full truth
of the humanum. In an article published the year of his election to the See
of Peter, Karol Wojtyla/John Paul II himself writes:“It might even appear
strange that the response to a concrete question in the field of conjugal
morality can have such strong anthropological implications, that it can
become the field of this struggle for the value and meaning of humanity
itself.”90 One can go further. Since man is made in the image of God, it
ultimately affects what we believe about the Trinity and Jesus Christ, how
we worship as well as the integrity of reason as a path to truth. References have been given in the footnotes to show how those who redefine
sexuality also redefine such dogmas as the Virgin Birth and the Trinity
and vice versa.91
90 Karol Wojtyla, “The Anthropological Vision of Humanae Vitae,” trans.William E.

May, Lateranum 44 (1978): 6.
91 See Donald Goergen, The Sexual Celibate (New York:The Seabury Press, 1974).

Goergen does not come down in any definitive way against genital activity on
the part of celibates (ibid., 103, 183). He asserts that Mary’s physical virginity is
not a defined doctrine of the Magisterium and it is not necessary to maintain
her virginal conception to hold that Jesus was born of the Holy Spirit.“She was
not celibate; she may not have been a virgin” as Goergen defines it but “the
significance of her chastity still remains.” See ibid., 126, 128, 129.With regard to
homosexuality, he states that “the so-called Christian attitude towards homosexuality is beginning to change” (here he footnotes a long list of articles in
support). He claims that the traditional condemnation of homosexuality stems
from a misinterpretation of the sin of Sodom and Gomorrah. “We no longer,”
he concludes,“have sufficient theological grounds for perpetuating a destructive
attitude” (ibid., 195).The feminists have undertaken a more radical realignment
of thinking on the Trinity and the Incarnation, linked to both contraception and
abortion. Sally McFague, in Models of God, seeks to view the world as God’s body
and to replace Father, Son, and Holy Spirit with God as lover, mother, and
friend.The metaphor of God as mother, giver of life, does not mean being antiabortion, since she says God is on the side of all species not simply the human
species. Population control is one way to assure the survival of all species (see
ibid., 103, 104). Her theology makes no room for the Trinity, finding God as
immanent and transcendent sufficient. Jesus Christ is not the Incarnate Son of

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Mary Shivanandan

Through his study of the person and human sexuality, especially as a
result of the dissent on Humanae Vitae, John Paul II came to a profound
understanding of the fundamental importance of foundations, both theological and philosophical. What he articulated in Fides et Ratio, he had
already put into practice in his catechesis on the theology of the body.
In the process he has both restored and extended the Church’s understanding of human sexuality as well as the indissoluble link between faith
N&V
and reason.

God himself in the world; rather Jesus of Nazareth is one of the paradigmatic
manifestations of the divine in the world (ibid., 183). Another feminist, Mary
Elizabeth Hunt, co-founder and co-director of the Women’s Alliance for Theology, Ethics, and Ritual and Board member of Catholics for a Free Choice, argues
for friendship, not conjugal union, as the criterion for marriage so that
lesbian/gay relationships become “in fact, the relational equivalent of marriage.”
“Problems heat up,” she says, “when the divine or God is likened not to Father,
Mother, or even Parent, but to Friend.” See Mary E. Hunt, “Friends and Family
Values: An Old Song,” in The Changing Face of Friendship, ed. Leroy S. Romer
(Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1994), 173, 175.

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927

Conscious Parenthood
J ANET E. S MITH
Sacred Heart Major Seminary
Detroit, MI

I N BOTH his prepapal writings and throughout his pontificate, Pope
John Paul II expended an enormous amount of intellectual energy defending the Church’s teaching on contraception.1 His particular interest was
to defend this teaching from the point of view of the nature of the person
rather than exclusively from the nature of the sexual act as directed towards
the procreative good.Yet he did not try to sidestep or supplant the importance of respect for the procreative good as a keystone in sexual ethics;
indeed, he continued to recognize the procreative good as the primary
good of marriage and greatly expanded our understanding of the value of
the procreative good in the direction of personalism.Wojtyla progressively
became clearer on the fact that he understood the procreative good to be
not simply the child that results from sexual intercourse, but the conscious
and even eager acceptance of the connection between the sexual act and
becoming a parent with another person. Stated simply,Wojtyla maintained
that the fact that sexual intercourse leads not just to children but to
parenthood is a truth that those who would engage in sexual relations must
acknowledge and accept for their sexual relations to be moral; they must
be committed to what Wojtyla called “conscious parenthood.” In making
such an acknowledgement and letting it guide their decisions about
sexual matters, spouses will experience many personal goods, among
them growth in self-mastery, the ability to select a spouse well, and the
ability to be loving spouses and parents.
1 Let me commend readers to the unpublished dissertation of John Grondelski,

Fruitfulness as an Essential Dimension of Acts of Conjugal Love:An Interpretative Study
of the Pre-pontifical Thought of John Paul II (New York: Fordham University, Dept.
of Theology, 1985).

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Janet E. Smith

In this essay, using Love and Responsibility as my primary source, I will
show how Wojtyla used the concept of “conscious parenthood” in his
attempt to meld natural law ethics with his personalistic ethics in his
explanations of the Church’s teachings on sexuality.We shall also see how
these themes are present and central to the argument of Humanae Vitae.
Indeed, Wojtyla identified “responsible parenthood”—the usual translation of “conscious parenthood”—as the central theme of Humanae Vitae.2
Living by the Truth
A fundamental principle that underlies all John Paul II’s anthropology is
that human dignity is rooted in man’s ability to know the truth and to
choose freely to live in accord with the truth. It is a principle he enunciates throughout his work. Veritatis Splendor provides a succinct formulation: “Although each individual has a right to be respected in his own
journey in search of the truth, there exists a prior moral obligation, and
a grave one at that, to seek the truth and to adhere to it once it is
known.” (§34)3 Man’s dignity resides not only in his ability to know the
truth and to live by it, but also in his ability to recognize the goodness of
the truth. He in his subjectivity must make objective truth his own. In an
article celebrating the tenth anniversary of Humanae Vitae Wojtyla claims:
Man becomes capable of seeing in a more mature way the authenticity, the reasonableness, and the beauty of the objective moral order
when he conceives it with his own conscience as subject. Perhaps then
is accomplished precisely what St. Thomas Aquinas wanted to express
by speaking of the “participation of the eternal law in the rational creature.”4 The encyclical Humanae vitae follows the same direction, postulating that man “observes with intelligence and love” the laws “written
by God in his nature” (no. 31).5

In Love and Responsibility Wojtyla speaks of the objective truths that man
must know in order to conduct his sexual life morally, as truths of justice:
Man is endowed with reason not primarily to ‘calculate’ the maximum
pleasure obtainable in this life, but above all to seek knowledge of
2 Karol Cardinal Wojtyla,“The Truth of the Encyclical Humanae Vitae,” L’Osservatore

Romano,Weekly Edition in English, 16 January 1969, p. 6, www.ewtn.com/library/
Theology/WOJTLAHV.HTM
3 John Paul II, Veritatis Splendor (Boston: Pauline Books and Media, 1993): AAS 85
(1993).
4 See Summa theologiae I–II, q. 93, a. 2.
5 Karol Cardinal Wojtyla,“La Visione Antropologica della Humanae Vitae,” Lateranum 44 (1978): 125–45, trans. William E. May, www.christendom-awake.org/
pages/may/anthrop-visionjpII.htm.

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929

objective truth, as a basis for absolute principles (norms) to live by.This
he must do if he is to live in a manner worthy of what he is, to live
justly. Human morality cannot be grounded in ‘utility’ alone, it must
sink its roots in ‘justice.’ Justice demands recognition of the supra-utilitarian value of the person; and in this the contrast between ‘justice’ and
mere ‘utility’ is most clearly evident. In sexual matters in particular it is
not enough to affirm that a particular mode of behaviour is expedient.
We must be able to say that it is ‘just.’6

Wojtyla characterizes sexual relations that are directed primarily to pleasure as “utilitarian”: they involve using the other (and/or allowing one’s
self) to be used as a sexual object.7 To engage in sexual relationships
morally is to be “just” to the various relationships involved in sexual relations: it is to know the various goods that are objectively at play in the
sexual realm and to be true to them.
Wojtyla identifies three relationships that demand “justice” in the realm
of morality, a justice that must be true to the objective truth of the human
person and the nature of the sexual act.8 (1) He speaks of the need to be
just to the “order of existence,” that is, to the ordination of the sexual act to
the procreation of a new human being, an inestimable good. (2) He speaks
of the need to be just to the Creator who made the order of nature. (3) He
speaks of the need to be just to one’s beloved, who deserves to be treated
with love rather than sexually exploited.These are all objective reasons why
the procreative good is important; these are the truths of which people
should be conscious to ensure that their sexual acts are moral.
The Order of Nature
In his essay, “The Problem of Catholic Sexual Ethics,” written in 1965,
Wojtyla speaks of two interdependent ways of determining sexual morality.9 One way is the naturalistic or teleological way which looks to procreation, the objective natural end of the sexual act as the norm that should
govern moral decisions. He notes that this way has fallen somewhat from
popularity but has lost nothing of its “metaphysical value.”10 The other
way is the personalistic way which involves an appeal to the experience of
6 Karol Cardinal Wojtyla, Love and Responsibility (San Franscisco: Ignatius Press,

1993), 239.
7 Ibid., 25–28.
8 Ibid., 245–49.
9 Karol Cardinal Wojtyla,“The Problem of Catholic Sexual Ethics: Reflections and

Postulates,” in Person and Community: Selected Essays, trans.Theresa Sandok (New
York: Peter Lang, 1993), 279–99.
10 Ibid., 280. It is important to note that Wojtyla maintains that the naturalistic
approach seems “implicitly to contain elements of the personalistic view” (284).

Janet E. Smith

930

the human person, to experience which realizes the need to convert the
sexual urge from an instinct directed to selfish pleasure, to a motive for
building a loving relationship with another.These two ways could also be
distinguished as the “objective” way of assessing goods and the “subjective,” or personalist, way of assessing goods.
Let me note that “subjective” here does not have the connotation of
something private and perhaps idiosyncratic and opposed to the objective and measurably true.“Subjective” refers to the interior experience of
the person; subjective goods are immanent goods; many of them redound
to the benefit of the character of the subject. These goods can have a
universal status; for example, courage is good for all human beings, but it
is a good that is experienced as an interior good, as a good of the subject.
Objective goods are goods outside of the acting person. Perhaps a rather
pedestrian example might serve to illustrate the difference between
objective goods and subjective goods. Some might own a dog for protection; protection, then, would be the objective good. Others own dogs in
order to train them and sell them for profit; in this instance the objective
good of dog ownership would be the financial profit. Dog ownership, of
course, can also be the source of significant subjective goods such as feeling loved.We can even expect that the owner will develop certain virtues.
Parents who make the brave decision to allow their children to own a
dog hope that feeding, disciplining, exercising, and cleaning up after the
dog will help their children become more responsible and diligent and
even that their hearts will become more loving, tender, and committed.
These are the personalistic, or subjective, values of dog ownership. No
one should undertake owning a dog unless he or she is conscious of all the
responsibilities that come with owning a dog and are prepared to accept
those responsibilities; those who responsibly care for dogs will experience
many subjective as well as objective goods.
These two ways of assessing goods are abundantly displayed in Wojtyla’s
approach to sexual morality. In Love and Responsibility, Wojtyla refers to
two “orders”: the order of nature—equivalent to objective goods—and
the order of the person—equivalent to subjective goods:
In the sexual relationship between man and woman two orders meet:
the order of nature, which has as its object reproduction,11 and the personal
order, which finds its expression in the love of persons and aims at the
fullest realization of that love. We cannot separate the two orders, for
each depends upon the other. In particular, the correct attitude to
procreation is a condition of the realization of love.12
11 Although Wojtyla uses “reproduction” here, more regularly he uses “procreation.”
12 Love and Responsibility, 226.

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So far from being at odds with each other, the order of nature, with its
end of procreation, and the personal order, with its end of reciprocal love,
should be realized together. Again, in Love and Responsibility, we read,
In the world of persons . . . instinct alone decides nothing, and the
sexual urge passes, so to speak, through the gates of consciousness and the
will, thus furnishing not merely the conditions of fertility but also the
raw material of love. At a truly human, truly personal level the problems of procreation and love cannot be resolved separately. Both
procreation and love are based on the conscious choice of persons.
When a man and a woman consciously and of their own free will
choose to marry and have sexual relations they choose at the same time
the possibility of procreation, choose to participate in creation (for that is
the proper meaning of the word procreation).And it is only when they
do so that they put their sexual relationship within the framework of
marriage on a truly personal level.13

Clearly Wojtyla considers consciousness not simply to be awareness that
X is linked to Y: those engaging in X should accept the possibility of Y
and be prepared for it. And as noted above, Wojtyla is not speaking of a
begrudging acknowledgment that sexual intercourse leads to children; he
is speaking of a joyful acceptance of the connection between sexual
intercourse and all the responsibilities entailed. Those who have a fuller
understanding of the procreative good—the good of the life of the child
and the good of parenthood for the parents—are more likely to achieve
that joyful acceptance.Wojtyla sketches out what would be the elements
of that fuller understanding.
Procreative Good as an Objective Good
In Love and Responsibility Wojtyla uses a classic argument to establish that
the proper end of the sexual urge or act is procreation, an argument that
some people might characterize as being right out of the “manuals.” Some
dissenters have rejected the Church’s teaching on contraception because
they believe it is physicalistic or biologistic in placing an emphasis on the
biological consequence of sexual intercourse, the perpetuation of the
species.14 They object that this view puts human sexual intercourse on the
same level as animal sexual intercourse and that it does not recognize that
human sexual intercourse has a spiritual as well as a physical dimension.
13 Ibid., 226–27 (italicized portions are Wojtyla’s emphasis; bolded are my emphasis).
14 Fr. Charles Curran regularly makes this objection; for an early instance, see

Contemporary Problems in Moral Theology (Notre Dame, IN: Fides Publishers, Inc.,
1970), 142–48.

Janet E. Smith

932

Certainly Wojtyla is not guilty of identifying human sexual intercourse
with animal intercourse, though he does not shy from noting that in a
global scheme there are similarities in the purposes of both. In portions
of Love and Responsibility,Wojtyla speaks of the defining feature of sexual
intercourse, both ontologically and ethically, as the child that may result
from an act of sexual intercourse. He speaks of the sexual urge as having
a “necessity” for the whole human species:
The [human] species could not exist if it were not for the sexual urge
and its natural results. So that a sort of necessity is clearly discernable.
Human kind can be maintained in being only so long as individual
people, individual men and women, human couples, obey the sexual
urge. . . . Obviously then it is not the love of man and woman that
determines the proper purpose of the sexual urge. The proper end of
the urge, the end per se, is something supra-personal, the existence of
the species Homo, the constant prolongation of its existence.15

But Wojtyla does not understand the act of maintaining the existence of
the species to be merely a biological good. In observing that sometimes
the procreative purpose is seen as a nuisance, Wojtyla notes that man
“often accords the sexual urge a merely biological significance” and does
not realize that the “link with the very existence of man and of the species
Homo . . . gives the sexual urge its objective importance and meaning.”16
Note that Wojtyla does not link the biological purpose simply to reproducing a species, but links it also to bringing into existence a human being
and continuing the species of man, a species that is on an entirely different level from animals. The act of bringing into existence another
member of the human species is an entirely different kind of act. In days
prior to the arguments of such philosophers as Peter Singer who argue
that human life does not per se have greater value than animal life, such
a claim did not need further justification.17
The claim that continuing the species is a service to mankind meets
with resistance in a world that has for decades been terrified that we are
killing ourselves by overpopulating. Nonetheless, in spite of the hostility
to human beings expressed by some environmentalists, most people would
acknowledge that the continuation of the human species is a good thing
and that thus at least some reproductive acts of human beings are good.
The growing awareness that many portions of the globe are not repro15 Love and Responsibility, 51.
16 Ibid., 53;Wojtyla revisits this point later in Love and Responsibility, 230.
17 Cf. Peter Singer, Practical Ethics, 2nd edition (Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press, 1993).

Conscious Parenthood

933

ducing themselves and thus facing severe economic challenges may restore
our awareness of the goodness of reproducing the human species.18
In Love and Responsibility, Wojtyla distinguishes the order of nature
from the biological order, the order occupied by plants and animals that
are directed by laws of which they are not conscious. Wojtyla maintains
that although the human sexual act is also directed to the general biological purpose of reproducing the species, it does not have a “purely biological significance.”The human sexual urge belongs not just to the biological
order but also to the order of nature or the “order of existence.” He
describes this order:
The order of nature is above all that of existence and procreation. We
intend the word to be taken in its fullest sense when we say that the
order of nature aims at ‘procreation’ by means of the sexual act. Sexual
intercourse, on all occasions, is in the nature of things affected in one
way or another by its primary purpose, procreation. Looked at objectively the marital relationship is therefore not just a union of persons, a
reciprocal relationship between a man and a woman, but is essentially a
union of persons affected by the possibility of procreation.19

Wojtyla goes on to explain that “procreation” is the proper term for
human sexual intercourse rather than “reproduction.” “Reproduction”
refers to the purely biological process of bringing forth a new being, a
new member of any species, whereas “procreation” refers to the bringing
forth of a new person, which is of infinite value in itself.
This point cannot be stressed enough. All other entities that come to
be through the biological process are instrumental goods; they are here
to contribute to the good of the whole, which itself is ordered to the
good of human beings. Only human beings have an intrinsic, infinite
value.Thus the human act of sexual intercourse has an infinitely greater
value than acts of animal sexual intercourse.The respect due to a human
sexual act derives not from the simply natural biological fact that it is by
nature ordained to reproduction, but that it is by nature ordained to the
procreation of something of infinite value.Thus, we can see that the high
valuation the Church sees in human sexual relations is not at all biologistic or physicalistic; it is not based solely or primarily on the physical
nature of the sexual act as a means of reproducing a species; it is based on
the physical nature of the sexual act that is a means of procreating a new
18 Cf. Steven Mosher, Population Control: Real Costs, Illusory Benefits (Piscataway, NJ:

Transaction Publishers, 2008).
19 Love and Responsibility, 226.

Janet E. Smith

934

human being. That new human being is the procreative good that is of
inestimable value.
Furthermore,Wojtyla maintains that well raised children are a benefit to
the nation, state, and Church.20 While Wojtyla does not elaborate on what
kind of goods a child supplies to the nation, state, and Church, surely
among them would be included the fact that for the most part, a child
brings talents and energy to a culture, not to mention economic benefits.21
Not only is having a baby beneficial to the species and to society;
having a baby is also a service to God. In Love and Responsibility, when
explaining why “human existence” is not just of biological significance,
Wojtyla speaks of man and woman as being “rational co-creators of a new
human being,” which is not just an “organism” but a spiritual entity.22 A
spiritual entity cannot come to be without the help of God:
For something more than the love of parents was present at the origin
of the new person—they were only co-creators; the love of the Creator
decided that a new person would come into existence in the mother’s
womb. Grace is, so to speak, the continuation of this work. God Himself
takes the supreme part in the creation of a human person in the spiritual, moral, strictly supernatural sphere.23

Through an act of physical love, lovers help transmit existence to a new
person, a new immortal being. Spouses are co-creators with God in bring20 Ibid., 217.
21 Cf. Julian Simon, The Ultimate Resource 2 (Princeton: Princeton University Press,

1998).
22 Love and Responsibility, 55. It is interesting to note that Church documents that

speak of the relationship of the work of the spouses to the work of God in creating new human beings do not speak of them as “co-creators.” Rather, Church
documents speak of spouses as “cooperators” with God, “collaborators” or “coworkers” with God. I suspect the choice of words in Church documents is made
to avoid the metaphysical problems with attributing “creation” to man; to
“create” technically is to bring something into existence from nothing. Only
God can do so; spouses can only provide preexisting material, the ovum and the
sperm, whereas God creates a new human soul out of “nothing.” Yet, I think
there are merits to the term “co-create.” “Cooperate” in English more or less
suggests that one is not resisting and to some extent is helping in the work of
the other. To “collaborate” means to participate in work with another. Father
Louis Madey, a native Polish philosopher, informed me that the Polish words
translated as “create” and “co-create” in Love and Responsibility have more the
sense of “artist” and “coartist”; create was likely chosen as a translation because
both “artistry” and “creation” have a sense of creativity and newness about them,
connotations lacking from “cooperation” and “collaboration.”
23 Ibid., 56.

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935

ing forth a new human soul. It is difficult to think what work of spouses
could be more important than this task.24
Wojtyla observes that the truth about the sexual urge is “not a fundamentally obscure and incomprehensible matter.” He says it is “in principle accessible to, penetrable by the light of human thought,” and one that
revelation makes even clearer.25 Man by the light of his own reason can
realize that human life and thus human sexual acts are not just of biological importance. Man can realize that the good of human life is incomparably greater than any biological purpose; indeed he can recognize
God’s work in creating new human life. Revelation gives us an even fuller
picture of the value of the human soul. If spouses were to understand
their acts of sexual intercourse as acts of “co-creation” with God, they
would not likely see that procreative power of the sexual act as a nuisance
that they must “fix” by technological means.
In the chapter of Love and Responsibility entitled “Justice to the Creator,”
Wojtyla gives attention to the need for couples to “justify” their relationship to others and also to God. And by “justify” he means “make
just.” How can sexual relations be “just”? Wojtyla notes that each person
is truly the property of the Creator and owes the Creator something for
his existence.Wojtyla asserts: “The value of the institution of marriage is
that it justifies the existence of sexual relations between a man and a
woman.”26 And while he notes that marriage is a conglomerate of many
acts and many different kinds of act, all of which should be performed in
a loving fashion and which should serve love, he speaks of the sexual act
as presenting a “particular moral problem, the internal problem of every
marriage.”27 As he did earlier, he makes it clear that the sexual act presents a particular challenge to the personalistic norm, since it is so easy in
the sexual realm for people to use each other “to degrade the act of
mutual love between persons to the ‘utilitarian’ level.”28
Wojtyla speaks of justice to one’s spouse, one’s children, and society as
“horizontal justice” and justice to God as “vertical justice.” He reminds us
24 Cf. §43 of Evangelium Vitae: “A certain sharing by man in God’s lordship is also

evident in the specific responsibility which he is given for human life as such. It
is a responsibility which reaches its highest point in the giving of life through
procreation by man and woman in marriage. . . . [W]e wish to emphasize that God
himself is present in human fatherhood and motherhood quite differently than
he is present in all other instances of begetting ‘on earth.’ ” (AAS 87 (1995),
401–522).
25 Love and Responsibility, 56.
26 Ibid., 224.
27 Ibid., 225.
28 Ibid., 225.

936

Janet E. Smith

that God “too is a Personal Being, with whom man must have some sort
of relationship.”29 He speaks of the “rights” of God, the Creator, and the
“duties” of man, the creature. Man must recognize that God made the
whole of creation, the essences or natures of all things, and the whole
order of nature.Wojtyla instructs, “Man is just towards the Creator when
he recognizes the order of nature and conforms to it in his action.”30 But
since the order of nature is a product of the thought of God, when man
abides by the order of nature, he participates in the thought of God and
becomes a “particeps Creatoris” a partner of the Creator, a sharer of the
Creator).Wojtyla observes,“This participation is an end in itself.The value
of man, a reasonable being, is nowhere more obvious than in the fact that
he is particeps Creatoris, that he shares in God’s thoughts, and His laws.”31
Wojtyla tells us, “Justice towards the Creator, on the part of man,
comprises as we see two elements: obedience to the order of nature and
emphasis on the value of the person.”32 He insists that those who love
God will love their fellow man.When he applies this to conjugal love, he
says that justice to the Creator requires men and women to conduct their
relationships in accord with the personalistic norm, the norm that
dictates that all human beings must be treated with love.33
Wojtyla clearly means that spouses should think of the act of having a
baby as an act of service to the species and as an act of justice towards
God, for God designed sexual intercourse to be the source of new human
life.Wojtyla understands these to be truths based on a metaphysical understanding of the value of the human person and on a religious understanding of the relationship of God to his world. Both ideas may seem
strange to today’s culture because we largely think of sexual intercourse as
an act that is purely physical and simply “for” the pleasure of the spouses—
not one that involves the species or God or even a future child. Indeed,
the modern world is ambivalent about the value of children: on the one
hand, children are often treated as huge economic burdens; on the other
hand, most people truly do love their children as the best thing that has
ever happened to them. The notion that in addition to being a great
source of love, pleasure, and meaning for the parents, children have an
ecological worth and an intrinsic worth, and also are of extreme value to
God are notions largely foreign to the modern mind.Yet these are the very
truths that Wojtyla believes to be essential to the moral use of sexuality.
29 Ibid., 245.
30 Ibid., 246.
31 Ibid., 247.
32 Ibid., 247.
33 Ibid., 40–44.

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937

As we have seen, in Love and Responsibility Wojtyla gives four naturalistic, objective reasons that procreation is a good: (1) it results in a new
human being, which is an inestimable good to the new human being and
foundational for all other goods; (2) it contributes to the survival of the
species; (3) it contributes to the good of the state and the Church; and
(4) it is an act of justice towards God who desires more souls.
The Order of the Person
Wojtyla also gives four personalistic reasons why consciousness of the
multifold goodness of the procreative good is good for spouses: (1) the
realization of the responsibilities that come with procreation assists an
individual in gaining control over the sexual urge; (2) conjugal love is not
possible without acceptance of the importance of the procreative good;
(3) raising a child is the occasion for becoming more self-giving and
loving; and (4) the realization that one is chosen to be a co-creator with
God enables people to realize their intrinsic greatness.
Overcoming the Sexual Urge
As we have noted, Wojtyla repeatedly makes reference to the necessity
that spouses be “conscious” of the natural purpose of the sexual act—the
fact that it leads to a child who benefits the species and the culture—and
of the spouses’ obligations to God in reference to the sexual act. Those
claims remain central to his personalistic evaluation of sexuality. For it is
in respecting the order of nature that the values of the order of the person
can be realized:
The proper way for a person to deal with the sexual urge is, on the one
hand, consciously to make use of it for its natural purposes, and on the
other to resist it, when it threatens to degrade the relationship between
two persons to a level lower than that of love, lower than the level on
which the value of the person is affirmed in a union with a truly
personal character. Sexual (marital) relations have the character of a
true union of persons as long as a general disposition towards parenthood is not excluded from them. This implies a conscious attitude to
the sexual instinct: to master the sexual urge means just this, to accept
its purpose in marital relations.34

Indeed, the goal of Love and Responsibility is to discover and explain how
it is possible to relate to another person sexually without using that
person. Love and Responsibility identifies respect for the procreative end of
the sexual urge as a key to ensuring that sexual attraction does not lead
34 Ibid., 229 (emphasis added).

Janet E. Smith

938

to exploitation of another, but leads rather to loving treatment of another.
Wojtyla states the problem in this way:
Does not a woman constitute for a man, in the sexual relationship,
something like a means to the various ends which he seeks to attain
within that relationship? Equally, does not a man constitute for a
woman the means towards the attainment of her own aims?35

He quite immediately provides an answer to that question; he speaks of
the need for the two to share a common good and to be conscious that
they do.36 He states,
Love between two people is quite unthinkable without some common
good to bind them together. This good is the end which both these
persons choose. When two different people consciously choose a common
aim this puts them on a footing of equality, and precludes the possibility that one of them might be subordinated to the other.37
Man’s capacity for love depends on his willingness consciously to
seek a good together with others, and to subordinate himself to that
good for the sake of others, or to others for the sake of that good.38

Wojtyla then goes on to specify what this common good39 must be
between a man and woman who seek a sexual relationship with each other:
The end, where marriage is concerned, is procreation, the future generation, a family, and at the same time, the continual ripening of the relationship between two people, in all the areas of activity conjugal life
includes.
The objective purposes of marriage create in principle the possibility of love and exclude the possibility of treating a person as a means to
an end and as an object for use.40

Wojtyla clearly states here that the project of having and raising children
together is a project that enables the spouses to redirect their sexual urge
from simply being a matter of seeking selfish pleasure to seeking the good
of others, to seeking the good of giving another person—one’s child—a
new life, and to giving one’s spouse the opportunity to be a parent.
35 Ibid., 26.
36 Michael Waldstein,“The Common Good in St.Thomas and John Paul II,” Nova

et Vetera 3:3 (2005): 569–78
37 Love and Responsibility, 28–29 (italics are Wojtyla’s emphasis; bold is my empha-

sis).
38 Ibid., 29 (bold is my emphasis).
39 Ibid., n. 9, 291–92.
40 Ibid., 30.

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939

We have already spoken of the good of life for a child, and will soon
speak of the good of parenthood for the spouses, but first we need to
look at Wojtyla’s understanding that consciousness of prospective parenthood enables those sexually attracted to each other to emerge from the
sensual and sentimental fog that characterizes sexual attraction to a consideration of the true values of the object of one’s sexual interest.To put it
simply, the project of selecting a person who will be the parent of one’s
children is very different from the project of seeking a sexual partner.
Wojtyla never loses sight of the importance of sexual attraction—which
he calls the “raw material” of love,41 but he insists that for true love to
happen, the lovers must have a true understanding of their beloved, and
that is best gained by having a realistic assessment of their suitability as a
partner in the shared project of raising children.
Wojtyla holds that the sexual urge is something that “happens to” human
beings—it happens without conscious thought.42 Our very dignity, on the
other hand, lies in our ability to use our consciousness to lead us to govern
that urge; we only act freely if we are able to choose the means by which
we allow that urge to achieve its natural end.Wojtyla discusses a “libidinistic interpretation” of the sexual urge which holds that the ultimate purpose
of the sexual urge is pleasure.Against this interpretation,Wojtyla argues that
recognition of the procreative end is essential to correcting this hedonistic
understanding of human sexuality. He notes that the natural purpose of the
sexual act, the ordination of that act to the procreation of another human
person, transforms the sexual urge into something directed towards others
rather than to one’s own selfish pleasure:
If it follows its natural course the sexual urge always transcends the
limits of the ‘I,’ and has as its immediate object some being of the other
sex within the same species and for its final end the existence of the
whole species. Such is the objective purpose of the sexual urge, in the
nature of which there is—and this is where it differs from the instinct
of self-preservation—something that might be called ‘altero-centrism.’
This it is that creates the basis for love.43

Importantly, Wojtyla does not think it sufficient simply to master the
sexual urge; rather the sexual urge should be put to work for the positive
values of sexuality, for the creation of new life and new love:

41 Ibid., e.g., 108.
42 Ibid., 46.
43 Ibid., 65.

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940

For the will does not merely combat the urge: it simultaneously assumes
within the framework of betrothed love responsibility for the natural
purpose of the instinct.This is of course the continuation of the human
race, which concretely requires that a new person, a child, shall be the
fruit of conjugal love between man and woman. The will makes this
purpose its own, and in consciously working towards it seeks greater
scope for its creative tendency.
In this way true love, profiting from the natural dynamic of the will,
attempts to give the relationship a thoroughly unselfish character, to free
their love from utilitarian attitudes. . . . [T]his is the significance of what
we have called here the struggle between love and the sexual instinct.The
sexual instinct wants above all to take over, to make use of another
person, whereas love wants to give, to create a good, to bring happiness.44

Those who have mastered their sexual urges, and this is done by considering the importance of the procreative good, are free to give fuller attention to the values of the person; indeed, should one’s sexual passion
diminish or change, the love will remain:
The sexual values which a man finds in a woman, or a woman finds in
a man, must certainly help to determine the choice, but the person
making it must in doing so be fully aware that what he or she is choosing is a person. So that although the sexual values in the object of
choice may disappear, and however they may change, the fundamental
value—that of the person—will remain. The choice is truly choice of
a person when it treats that value as the most important and decisive
one. So that if we consider the whole process by which a man chooses
a woman or a woman a man, we can say that it is set in motion by
recognition of and reaction to sexual values, but that in the last analysis each chooses the sexual values because they belong to a person, and
not the person because of his or her sexual values.45

It is very clear from the writings of Wojtyla that the choice of a spouse
should very much include the suitability of this spouse to be a parent. He
repeatedly states that those who would be married must be conscious of
the fact that they may become parents with each other:
When a man and woman capable of procreation have intercourse their
union must be accompanied by awareness and willing acceptance of the
possibility that ‘I may become a father’ or ‘I may become a mother.’ . . .
[Sexual union] is raised to the level of the person only when it is accompanied in the mind and the will by acceptance of the possibility of
44 Ibid., 137.
45 Ibid., 133.

Conscious Parenthood

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parenthood.This acceptance is so important, so decisive that without it
marital intercourse cannot be said to be a realization of a personal relationship . . . . Neither in the man nor in the woman can affirmation of
the value of the person be divorced from awareness and willing acceptance that he may become a father and she may become a mother. . . . If
the possibility of parenthood is deliberately excluded from marital relations, the character of the relationship automatically changes. The
change is away from unification in love and in the direction of mutual
or, rather, bilateral,‘enjoyment’.46

Wojtyla states that love, the respect for the person, requires respect for
nature. Wojtyla states this repeatedly: “Acceptance of the possibility of
procreation in the marital relationship safeguards love and is an indispensable condition of a truly personal union.”47 He speaks of the “creative
power of love” expressing itself in procreation.48 He speaks of the acceptance of parenthood serving to “break down the reciprocal egoism—(or
the egoism of one party at which the other connives).”49
Throughout Love and ResponsibilityWojtyla states his view that by rejecting the procreative good, one is also rejecting the good of the person:
The intentions, and attention, of each party to the act should be
directed towards the other person, as a person, the will should be
wholly concerned with that person’s good, the heart filled with affirmation of that person’s specific value. By definitively precluding the
possibility of procreation in the marital act a man and a woman
inevitably shift the whole focus of the experience in the direction of
sexual pleasure as such.50

Wojtyla states that if a couple “rule out even the possibility of parenthood
their relationship is transformed to the point at which it becomes incompatible with the personalistic norm.”51 He notes that the danger arises that
nothing will be left of their relationship except “utilisation for pleasure.”52
Indeed, Wojtyla finds support for his views in Gaudium et Spes. In
“Parenthood as a Community of Persons” (1975) Wojtyla states,
“[Gaudium et Spes 48] makes it perfectly clear that parenthood constitutes the central meaning of the marital community. In the birth and
46 Ibid., 228; see “Parenthood as a Community of Persons,” Person and Community, 331.
47 Ibid., 230.
48 Ibid., 230.
49 Ibid., 230.
50 Ibid., 234–45.
51 Ibid., 228.
52 Ibid., 228.

Janet E. Smith

942

education of offspring, the spouses ‘experience the meaning of their
oneness, which increases day by day.’The meaning of marital communio
personarum and all it involves, particularly conjugal intercourse, is the
child. In other words, the meaning of marriage is the family. One of the
reasons children come into the marital community of husband and wife
is to confirm, strengthen, and deepen this community. In this way, the
spouses’ own interpersonal life, their communio personarum, is enriched.”53

The language of Gaudium et Spes is very strong: the meaning of marriage
is the child, but it is precisely in committing themselves to having children and then in performing the tasks of parenting that the parents
become a communion of persons with each other.
Wojtyla responds to the objection that his claim that spouses must have
a “conscious and willing acceptance” of the possibility of parenthood54
entails that they must “positively desire to procreate on every occasion
when they have intercourse.”55 He speaks of this as being “an exaggeratedly strict ethical position” and maintains it would be “at odds with the
order of nature,” since nature does not necessitate that each sexual act
result in procreation, nor does man need to intend that each sexual act
result in procreation.56 Furthermore, while he approves of timing intercourse in order to enhance the possibility of conceiving, he notes that the
view that spouses should have intercourse only when intending offspring
is possibly to reduce the sexual act—and one’s spouse—to a utilitarian
purpose and thus to violate the personalist norm.57
Not only does Wojtyla speak against using sexual intercourse in a utilitarian way to produce offspring; he insists that the sexual act is also
necessary for expressing love within marriage: “Intercourse is necessary
to love, not just to procreation.”58 The conjugal act uniquely allows
spouses to make a mutual gift of self to each other. In having sexual intercourse spouses should be intent on expressing love and should not
concentrate on the baby-making power of the act to the extent that this
would mean “a diversion of attention from the partner.”59 Wojtyla says it
is sufficient “to say that ‘in performing this act we know that we may
become parents and we are willing for that to happen.’ ”60
53 Ibid., 332–33.
54 Ibid., 232.
55 Ibid., 233.
56 Ibid., 233.
57 Ibid., 233.
58 Ibid., 233.
59 Ibid., 234.
60 Ibid., 234.

Conscious Parenthood

943

Conjugal Love and Conscious Parenthood
We have spoken earlier about how having children helps the parents
grow in self-giving love.The strongest statement that Wojtyla made about
the connection between parenthood and the growth in love of the
spouses is perhaps in “Fruitfulness and Responsible Love,” a speech he
gave commemorating the 10th year anniversary of Humanae Vitae, given
only a few months before he was elected Holy Father:
Parenthood belongs to the nature of this specific love which is conjugal love: it constitutes its essential feature, it forms this love in the sphere
of purpose and intention and signs it finally with the seal of particular
fulfillment. Conjugal love is fulfilled by parenthood. Responsibility for this
love from the beginning to the end is at the same time responsibility
also for parenthood. The one participates in the other and they both
constitute each other. Parenthood is a gift that comes to people, to man
and woman, together with love, that creates a perspective of love in the
dimension of a reciprocal life-long self-giving, and that is the condition
of gradual realization of that perspective through love and action.
Parenthood, the gift, is therefore at the same time a rich task whose
receiving and successive fulfilling is synonymous with receiving a gift:
a gift moreover, which the persons themselves become for each other
in marriage: the woman for the man, the man for the woman. Their
reciprocal offering to each other of what they are as man and woman
reaches its full sense through parenthood, through the fact that as
husband and wife they become father and mother.And this is precisely
the dimension and sense of the responsibility that essentially corresponds to this gift.61

Here we see that counterpoised to conjugal love and intricately wrapped
up with conjugal love is the procreative good, understood not as the
child, but as parenthood. And a great personalist good that comes from
marriage is the love that the spouses have for each other as parents, as
those who have given each other the great gift of parenthood.
Natural Greatness
In the closing pages of Love and Responsibility, Wojtyla returns to the
importance of the procreative good, to the importance that man be
conscious of the importance of this good to make his acts truly loving:
The true greatness of the human person is manifested in the fact that
sexual activity is felt to require such a profound justification [that it can
61 Karol Cardinal Wojtyla, Fruitful and Responsible Love (New York: Seabury Press,

1979), 23–24.

Janet E. Smith

944

lead to a new human being]. It cannot be otherwise. Man must reconcile
himself to his natural greatness. It is especially when he enters so deeply
into the natural order, immerses himself so to speak in its elemental
processes, that he must not forget that he is a person. Instinct alone can
resolve none of his problems, everything demands decisions from his
‘interior self ’, his reason and his sense of responsibility. And this is
particularly true of the love to which human kind owes its continual
renewal. Responsibility for love, to which we are giving particular
attention in this discussion, is very closely bound up with responsibility for procreation. Love and parenthood must not therefore be separated from the other. Willingness for parenthood is an indispensable
condition of love.62

Wojtyla throughout his writings speaks of the need for man to “reconcile himself to his natural greatness”; in respect to sexuality this means
both that man must use his reason and sense of responsibility to control
his instincts and also that he should realize what an enormous honor and
privilege it is to be able to resemble his Creator in his ability to love and
to be able to bring forth new human life.
The themes of the centrality of the procreative good and the necessity
of conscious acceptance of the procreative good to sexual ethics are not
confined to Love and Responsibility. They reappear in Wojtyla’s prepapal
writings, such as the Lublin lectures.They appear as well in Humanae Vitae,
likely as a result of various paths of influence Wojtyla had on the composition of Humanae Vitae.They also appear in many of the speeches Wojtyla
gave about Humanae Vitae after its promulgation. We will not have time
here to look into these many appearances.What we will do is take a quick
look at some of the more important appearances of these themes in
Humanae Vitae, with particular attention to conscious parenthood.
Humanae Vitae
Both themes appear in the very first line of Humanae Vitae, which speaks
of spouses “fulfilling a mission of transmitting human life and thereby
rendering a conscious and free service to God the Creator.”63 Here we
have an echo of Wojtyla’s argument that honoring the procreative good
is a part of a just relationship between man and God. Humanae Vitae does
not speak of spouses as “co-creators” with God of new human life but it
62 Love and Responsibility, 236.
63 I will be using my own translation of Humanae Vitae. It has been published as

appendix 1 to my Humanae Vitae: A Generation Later (Washington, DC: The
Catholic University of America Press, 1991) and as a pamphlet by Catholics
United for Life; it is available online at: www.aodonline.org/aodonline-sqlimages/
shms/faculty/SmithJanet/Publications/HumanaeVitae/Translated.pdf

Conscious Parenthood

945

does speak of marriage as being established by God for the purpose of
bringing forth new life, of all “parenthood” being rooted in the fatherhood of God the Creator, and also of spouses “sharing with God the task
[operam socient] of procreating and educating new living beings.” (§8) And
while the words “order of nature” do not appear in Humanae Vitae, the
encyclical makes many references to “natural law” and the laws of God
written into nature (cf. §§3; 10, 11, 12, 13 (twice); 18, 24, 31). Humanae
Vitae also speaks of the procreative good as a value to the parents in their
loving relationship; section 9 cites a key passage from Gaudium et Spes
(§48):“Marriage and conjugal love are ordained [ordinantur] by their very
nature [indole sua] to the procreating and educating of children. Offspring
are clearly the supreme gift [donum] of marriage, a gift which contributes
immensely to the good of the parents themselves.”64
Talk of laws of nature, of God as creator, and of spouses as those who
cooperate with God come together in a single passage from Humanae Vitae,
section 13:
[Spouses] should acknowledge that it is necessarily true that an act of
mutual love which impairs the capacity of bringing forth life contradicts both the divine plan which established the nature [normam] of the
conjugal bond and also the will of the first Author of human life. For
this capacity of bringing forth life was designed by God, the Creator of
All according to [His] specific laws. Thus, anyone who uses God’s gift
[of conjugal love] and cancels, if only in part, the significance and the
purpose of this gift, is rebelling against either the male or female nature
and against their most intimate relationship and for this reason, then, he
is defying the plan and holy will of God. On the other hand, the one
who uses the gift of conjugal love in accord with the laws of generation, acknowledges that he is not the lord of the sources of life, but
rather the minister of a plan initiated by the Creator.

Thus the naturalistic, teleological argument against contraception is well
represented in Humanae Vitae. Although there is no reference to the
goodness of procreation as a means of continuing the species, the other
three reasons for which Wojtyla extols the procreative good—the inestimable goodness of the life that results, the mutual good of the spouses,
and the service to God—are all clearly present in Humanae Vitae.
“Conscious parenthood,” often translated as “responsible parenthood,”
is a very prominent theme in Humanae Vitae.65 Indeed Wojtyla, in the piece
64 Gaudium et Spes, §50, in AAS 58 (1966), 1070–72.
65 Let me also note that the term “conscious parenthood” is prominent in the

report that was written by a commission set up in Krakow to respond to the
reports that were produced by the special commission set up by Pope Paul VI to

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Janet E. Smith

published in L’Osservatore Romano in 1969, stated:“The analysis of responsible parenthood constitutes the principal theme of the encyclical.”66
Let me clarify the meaning of “conscious/responsible parenthood.”
Section 10 of Humanae Vitae focuses on responsible parenthood; the
words translated as “responsible parenthood” are “conscia paternitas.” The
word “responsible” is not a perfect translation of “conscia” and misses
some of its important connotations. The word “conscia” appears in the
very first line of Humanae Vitae, which speaks of the “free and conscious
service of transmitting life” that spouses render to God.This line is reminiscent of a key passage in Gaudium et Spes that speaks of the dignity of
the human person requiring that he make “conscious and free
choices”—and not act under the influence of blind impulse (§17).67 We
have seen above that the term plays an important role in Love and Responsibility. Fr. Louis Madey68 informed me that in Polish the word
świadomość, which is translated as “conscious” throughout Love and
Responsibility, connotes a deeply personalistic meaning; it means being
vividly aware of some reality; it conveys experiencing something with
one’s emotions as well as one’s intellect. Other words translated as
“conscious” convey different notions: in one instance the word odczuwa
translated means something like “gut feeling,” something deeply experienced or of which one has a deep awareness; in another instance the
word refleksji means “conscious thought.” Wojtyla uses the word
“conscious” frequently, much more frequently than he uses the word
“rational,” a word that also can be used to indicate that one knows the
reality and is accepting of reality. I suspect that Wojtyla speaks of
conscious behavior more frequently than rational behavior because to
speak of consciousness seems to emphasize the act of a particular person
more than rationality does.To think and act rationally for the most part
links the action with some objective universal order; to speak of being
conscious reflects the individual’s personal appropriating of some truth.
The subjective and objective come together more. I believe any work
advise him on “birth regulation.”That report, commissioned by Karol Wojtyla, is
“Le Fondements de la Doctrine de L’eglise concernant Les Principes de La Vie
Conjugale,” Analacta Cracoviensia, 1969, 194–230.The phrase is also prominent in
section 12 of Gratissimam sane,The Letter to Families, AAS 86 (1994) 868–925.
66 “Wojtyla, “The Truth of the Encyclical Humanae Vitae,” 6.”
67 “Dignitas igitur hominis requirit ut secundum consciam et liberam electionem
agat, personaliter scilicet ab intra motus et inductus, et non sub caeco impulsu
interno vel sub mera externa coactione.” Gaudium et Spes, §50, in AAS 58
(1966), 1070–72.
68 Father Maday is a native of Poland; currently he is vice-rector at St. Cyril and
Methodius Seminary in Michigan.

Conscious Parenthood

947

influenced by the thought of John Paul II that includes the word
“conscious” carries many of the connotations of the discussion of
“conscious parenthood” in Love and Responsibility.
Again, the word “responsible” does not truly convey what the word
“conscia” connotes. English speakers when they hear of “responsible parenthood” generally think of parents who perform their duties as parents well.
In the context of Humanae Vitae, it is reasonable for readers to understand
that “responsible parents” are those who realize that they are to raise children to be good citizens in God’s kingdom or those who manage their
family size well. But a close reading of section 10 suggests that Wojtyla’s
notion of the consciousness of the connection betwen sexuality and
procreative good is very much operative there. It includes the senses of
“responsible” just identified but means something much more.
The English word “conscious” is a cognate of “conscia” and is a better
translation of “conscia” than “responsible,” but it too is not quite a match
for what the concept seems to convey for Wojtyla. Certainly the word
“conscious” means that someone is aware of the reality that he holds in
his consciousness.To speak of an agent acting “consciously” indicates that
the agent knows what he or she is doing; it also suggests that he or she is
aware of the consequences of an action and accepts responsibility for
those consequences.The additional element for Wojtyla seems to include
that the agent accepts that reality and the consequences as good; that is,
a person “conscious” that sex leads to parenthood is aware of that reality
and accepts it as a good.
These various meanings of “conscious” appear in Humanae Vitae 10. I
am going to translate the phrase “conscia parternitas” as “conscious parenthood.” Admittedly it sounds awkward at several points, but it helps to
focus our attention on what is being said.We shall look at each instance
where it appears in Humanae Vitae 10.
Humanae Vitae 10 begins with the statement: “Conjugal love requires
that spouses be fully aware of their mission [munus] of conscious parenthood. Today’s society justly calls for conscious parenthood; thus it is
important that it be rightly understood. Consequently, we must consider
the various legitimate and interconnected dimensions [rationibus] of
parenthood.”The first dimension of which spouses should be conscious is
that of the nature of man’s biological processes: “conscious parenthood
means that one knows and honors the responsibilities [munerum] involved
in these processes. Human reason has discovered that there are biological
laws in the power of procreating life that pertain to the human person. If
then we look to the innate impulses and inclinations of the soul, conscious
parenthood asserts that it is necessary that reason and will exercise mastery

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Janet E. Smith

over these impulses and inclinations of the soul.”69 This passage is very
reminiscent of Wojtyla’s discussions in Love and Responsibility, both of the
necessity of respecting the natural order wherein sexual intercourse leads
to offspring and of the necessity of man taking control of his sexual urges.
The next passage speaks of parents consciously planning their family
size. It states:
If we look further to physical, economic, psychological and social
conditions, conscious parenthood is exercised by those who, guided by
prudent consideration and generosity, elect to accept many children.
Those are also to be considered conscious parents, who, for serious
reasons and with due respect for moral precepts, decide not to have
another child either for a definite or an indefinite amount of time.

Some Catholics believe that “just letting the babies come” is the default
position of the Church, but this passage—and other passages in works of
Wojtyla—suggest that parents are to diligently assess their ability to care
for more children. Some may determine that they have the resources to
“just let the babies come” and thus for them doing so would be prudent.
Deliberation about the goodness of having a child should be a regular
practice for most couples. Indeed, this process may lead them to have
more rather than fewer children.What Humanae Vitae is advancing is that
spouses should be intentional about having children.70
The next paragraph reinforces the sense of the earlier one that spouses
should consciously plan their family:
The conscious parenthood of which we speak here has another intrinsic foundation [intimam rationem] of utmost importance: it is rooted in
the objective moral order established by God—and only an upright
conscience can be a true interpreter of this order. For which reason, the
mission [munus] of conscious parenthood requires that spouses recognize
their duties [officia] towards God, towards themselves, towards the family,
and towards human society, as they maintain a correct set of priorities.

Those who are deliberating on whether to have a child or most likely
another child should be considering those who are impacted by that
69 I have retranslated my own translation of Humanae Vitae to highlight the pres-

ence of the word “conscious,” previously translated by myself and others as
“responsible.”
70 For a discussion of what kind of reasons are acceptable for limiting family size, see
Janet E. Smith “The Moral Use of Natural Family Planning” in Why Humanae
Vitae was Right: A Reader, ed. By Janet E. Smith (San Francisco: Ignatius Press,
1993) 305–26.

Conscious Parenthood

949

decision: God, themselves, their family, their society. Mention here of
duties that one has to God, the spouses themselves, their family, and society indicates, I believe, that a pronatalist bias may be the default position:
God, the spouses, the family, and society generally benefit from new life.
Nonetheless there may certainly be times when a new life would make
it difficult for spouses to fulfill their duties to God, their marriage, their
family, and society.
The principles here are very reminiscent of a passage from Love and
Responsibility:
Man is a rational being, and to aspire to the fullest possible participation of his consciousness in all that he does is consonant with his
nature.This applies equally to the aspiration to become a mother or a
father (no distinctions must be made here) with conscious intent. A
man and a woman who have marital relations must know when and
how they may become parents and regulate their sexual life accordingly. They have a responsibility for every conception, not only to
themselves but also to the family which they are founding or increasing by that conception.”71

Man’s ability to think and choose is the source of his dignity; Wojtyla is
simply saying that man’s power of thinking and choosing are rightly
employed in considering what size family to have.
Humanae Vitae also sounds the theme of the benefit that comes to the
spouses from their consciousness of the procreative good and the efficacy
in that consciousness of helping them overcome any tendencies to use
each other.Wojtyla argues that conscious parenthood is a key to achieving self-mastery and that self-mastery is a key to conjugal love. Humanae
Vitae 21 states:
Right and worthy family planning requires that spouses recognize and
value the true goods of life and the family, and also that they acquire
the habit of complete mastery of themselves and their desires.

It goes on to list benefits of attaining self-mastery:
Truly, discipline of this sort—from which conjugal chastity shines
forth—cannot be an obstacle to love. Rather, discipline imbues love with
a deeper human meaning. Although [such control] requires continuous
effort, it also helps the spouses become strong in virtue and makes them
rich with spiritual goods.And this [virtue] fosters the fruits of tranquility
and peace in the home and helps in the solving of difficulties of other
71 Love and Responsibility, 279.

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Janet E. Smith
kinds. It aids spouses in becoming more tender with each other and more
attentive to each other. It assists them in dispelling that inordinate selflove that is opposed to true charity. It strengthens in them a consciousness of their responsibilities. And finally it provides parents with a sure
and efficacious authority for educating their children. As [their] children
advance through life they will come to a correct appreciation of the true
goods of Man and employ peacefully and properly the powers of their
mind and senses.

In fact, it is easy to think that Wojtyla must have been the author of the
above passage, it is so reminiscent of his thoughts about sexual morality.
Veritatis Splendor provides a succinct formulation of a principle John
Paul II enunciates throughout his work:“Although each individual has a
right to be respected in his own journey in search of the truth, there
exists a prior moral obligation, and a grave one at that, to seek the truth
and to adhere to it once it is known.”72 In an essay written a few months
after the promulgation of Humanae Vitae,Wojtyla wrote:
Conjugal love must be fruitful love, that is, “directed toward parenthood”. Parenthood which comes from love between persons is “responsible parenthood”. One could say that in the Encyclical “Humanae
vitae” responsible parenthood becomes the proper name for human
procreation.73

In sum, the truth in respect to sexuality that is key for Wojtyla’s sexual
morality is the truth that sex leads to parenthood.Those who are conscious
of that fact can make moral choices in respect to their sexual behavior, for
that consciousness leads them to achieve self-mastery, and those who have
self-mastery choose better in respect to spouses—they are able to choose
out of love rather than out of a troublesome sexual urge.Those who marry
out of love will desire out of love to have babies, whom they love and
whom God surely loves. And those who are conscious that they are cocreators with God will, as Wojtyla notes, become more conscious of their
natural greatness.
N&V

72 Veritatis Splendor, §34; cf., for instance, Evangelium Vitae, §19.
73 Wojtyla, “The Truth of the Encyclical Humanae Vitae,” 6.

Nova et Vetera, English Edition,Vol. 6, No. 4 (2008): 951–984

951

Book Reviews
Light in Darkness: Hans Urs von Balthasar and the Catholic
Doctrine of Christ’s Descent into Hell by Alyssa Lyra Pitstick (Grand
Rapids, MI:William B. Eerdmans, 2007), xvi + 458 pp.
A LYSSA LYRA P ITSTICK ’ S revised Angelicum dissertation on
Balthasar’s theology of Christ’s descent into hell hardly needs introduction after her debate with the Jesuit Edward Oakes in First Things. Few
newly minted doctors have garnered such attention in the theological
community.Yet the international debate can easily move in one of two
directions: either a polemical war focusing on claims of heresy or orthodoxy, or a much more serious dialogue that centers on how Balthasar’s
key philosophical principles, biblical and patristic exegesis, and theological tools come together in his doctrine of the descent. The nature of
Pitstick’s argumentation places us at this crossroads, whence Balthasar’s
critics and defenders must choose a path.
Perhaps the most disappointing part of the book is the author’s treatment of Scripture and the Fathers. She does not engage contemporary
exegetical studies on the key biblical passages. Rather, she focuses on
select patristic, medieval and magisterial commentators. She does not
adequately acknowledge the immense exegetical difficulties surrounding
1 Peter 3:19 and 4:6. Her treatment of numerous Old Testament texts
tends to focus on the allegorical meaning, with little attention given to
the literal sense (for example, Hosea 13:14). Such a methodology would
be hard to justify even in Thomistic exegesis, where the allegorical sense
depends on the literal sense.
Pitstick also hesitates to acknowledge a real diversity of interpretation
among the Fathers. For St. Justin Martyr and St. Irenaeus, Christ’s descent
into hell was an act of liberation for the deceased righteous persons of
the Old Testament.1 For St. Clement of Alexandria and Origen, 1 Peter
1 Justin Martyr, Dialogue With Trypho 72; Irenaeus of Lyon, Against Heresies, 3.20.4,

4.22.1, 4.33.1, 4.33.12, 5.31.1.

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Book Reviews

3:19 refers to Christ preaching to the deceased of Noah’s generation in
order to convert them, preparing the way for universal salvation.2 For St.
Augustine, it refers to the pre-existent Christ preaching to Noah’s
contemporaries within their lifetimes, whereas the descent of Christ’s soul
into hell was only for the liberation of the just.3 Pitstick hardly mentions
this patristic debate. Rather, she concludes that “the traditional Catholic
doctrine” presents Christ only descending to the limbo of the righteous.
But it could be that Christ’s victory procession through the realm of the
damned (without a final offer of conversion) is the very teaching of 1
Peter 3:19. None of the magisterial documents that Pitstick cites seem to
exclude the latter interpretation proposed by some of the Fathers. Ironically, despite all of their differences, the Fathers agree that Christ’s descent
was triumphant. By acknowledging this diversity, the author actually
would have strengthened her case that Balthasar’s doctrine clashes with
the Fathers on central points. For while they diverge significantly on the
nature of Christ’s descent, none of them comes close to Balthasar’s vision.
The book’s stronger arguments are found in part two, which presents
her synthesis and analysis of Balthasar’s proposal. She consistently points to
the absence of an adequate doctrine of analogy in Balthasar.This absence
can be discerned in multiple theological themes, such as (1) Balthasar’s
original vision of intra-Trinitarian life that remains inexplicable without
three divine intellects and wills (115–24); (2) his tendency to collapse the
immanent and economic Trinity (chapters 7–8); or (3) his perplexing
exegesis of the Letter to the Philippians on the kenosis of the Son and the
Father (148–51). Balthasar’s Barthian vision of kenosis seems to go handin-hand with voluntarist notions of obedience and freedom (150–52,
157–64, 212–13, 227–29, 238). She clearly shows Balthasar’s programmatic
connection between the portrayal of Christ’s experience in hell and the
portrayal of the inner life of the Trinity (chapters 6–8). She demonstrates
the consequences of an event ontology replacing a substance ontology
(chapter 7, esp. 154–55, 198–202, 214–15). For example, Balthasar appears
to transform sin into a positive metaphysical reality, instead of the classical
deficiency of being (122–23). She suggests that for Balthasar, Christ’s charity becomes virtually insignificant for the work of redemption, having
been replaced by an ultra-juridical approach (109, 113). She points to
Balthasar’s apparent willingness to dismiss key elements of the patristic and
artistic traditions on the descent, not to mention the subtle yet immense
2 Clement of Alexandria, The Stromata, 6.6; Origen, On First Principles, 2.5.3; Cf.

W. J. Dalton, Christ’s Proclamation to the Spirits:A Study of 1 Peter 3:18–4:6 (Rome:
Pontifical Biblical Institute, 1965), 29–32.
3 Augustine of Hippo, Epistle to Evodius (Epistle 164), 21.

Book Reviews

953

changes Balthasar introduces into various patristic doctrines (96–97, 113).
Pitstick’s meticulous research also highlights many possible tensions within
Balthasar’s own thought, such as inconsistencies in his theology of
Redemption, where Christ’s suffering goes well beyond solidarity with
sinners and can no longer be imitated by the saints (99–112, 253, 271).
The author’s explicit intention is to deal with the doctrinal issues in
Balthasar’s thought, not its sources.Yet one does wonder to what extent an
archeological approach to the Swiss theologian might advance a doctrinal
analysis. Pitstick hardly mentions two of Balthasar’s crucial sources: Adrienne von Speyr’s private revelations and Martin Luther’s doctrine of
substitution. Granted, the key text on this topic from von Speyr remains
virtually inaccessible. At the heart of his Holy Saturday teaching in
Mysterium Paschale, Balthasar simply mentions in a teaser of a footnote:
“On all this, A. von Speyr, Kreuz und Hölle (privately printed, Einsiedeln,
1966).“4 As Peter Casarella recently pointed out, von Speyr’s influence on
Balthasar’s doctrine of the descent only increased in his later years.5 While
the two colleagues undoubtedly influenced one another, von Speyr’s
proper contribution to their collaboration also greatly influenced
Balthasar’s portrayal of Christ’s experience on the Cross and the dramatic
life of the Trinity, two doctrines that are closely connected to that of the
descent. It would seem that the answer to the question, “where do these
doctrines come from?” could be a tremendous help in pondering the
question,“how tenable are these doctrines?” For example, Pitstick identifies the doctrine of quantitative atonement as a problematic premise in
Balthasar. But is quantitative atonement simply the justification Balthasar
uses for his excessive reliance on one aspect of von Speyr’s private revelations? Does the theology follow the visions, or at least seek its justification
in their concreteness? Or does the theology shape the interpretation of
the visions, which surely cannot be direct windows into Christ’s
consciousness in hell that are easily translatable into human language?
What is the determining factor behind Balthasar’s conclusions?
The author concludes part two with a synthetic interpretation of
Balthasar, showing the close connection between his theology of the
descent and still other key doctrines, including creation, ecclesiology, eschatology, Mariology and especially soteriology.The difficulties she manifests
in Balthasar’s Christology have ripple effects throughout his thought. Still,
4 Hans Urs von Balthasar, Mysterium Paschale, trans. by Aidan Nichols, O.P. (San

Francisco: Ignatius, 2000), 185, fn 87.
5 In his paper “The Descent, Divine Self-Enrichment, and the Universality of

Salvation,” presented at the conference “Love Alone Is Credible: Hans Urs Von
Balthasar As Interpreter Of The Catholic Tradition,” April 14–17, 2005.

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the greatest problems continue to be found in his Christology and Trinitarian theology. But the author’s evaluation of the Swiss theologian is more
analytic than synthetic.Throughout the work, she interrupts her own skillful synthesis of Balthasar’s thought with very pointed critiques. At times,
she seems to leave him little room to speak. In the end, her polemics set up
an obstacle to a just evaluation of Balthasar’s thought. She does not show
how some of his insights might at least highlight the ways in which Christology still needs to develop, even if Balthasar’s original proposal for such a
development is not altogether successful. Does Balthasar really have nothing to teach us about Christ’s suffering and death?
For example, while Balthasar’s vision of the Father’s radical abandonment of the Son on Good Friday and Holy Saturday seems to go too far,
is it not too hasty of a judgment to propose Christ’s constant beatific
vision in via as a settled teaching of “the tradition” (171), when in fact it
was a scholastic consensus that followed a real diversity of patristic positions? Despite Aquinas’s insistence, it is not clear that Christ’s constant
beatific vision is the necessary consequence of the Johannine Prologue,
Ephesus, and Chalcedon, as no less an authority on medieval Christology
as Jean-Pierre Torrell has pointed out.6 Could it be that a lower Christology which refuses some of Balthasar’s more adventurous speculations
might present a more adequate account of the biblical witness as read
through the great Christological dogmas? Was the communion that
Christ’s human soul enjoyed with the Father during the Transfiguration
essentially the same as during the Passion?7
Despite her disappointing treatment of Scripture and homogenous
reading of the patristic tradition, Pitstick’s relentless critique demonstrates
that Balthasar’s doctrine of Christ’s descent into hell is hard to reconcile
with important elements of the liturgical, artistic, theological, and magisterial traditions, both eastern and western. Strangely, a more objective
synthesis of Scripture and the Fathers would lend greater support to
some of her critiques.
6 See his Le Christ en ses mystères: La vie et l’oeuvre de Jésus selon saint Thomas d’Aquin,

vol. 1 (Paris: Desclée, 1999), 135–42; idem.,“Saint Thomas d’Aquin et la science
du Christ : Une relecture des question 9–12 de la ‘Tertia Pars’ de la ‘Somme
Théologie’,” in his Recherches Thomasiennes (Paris:Vrin, 2000), 198–213.
7 See the recent debate between Thomas Joseph White, O.P. and Thomas G.
Weinandy, O.F.M. Cap.: White, “The Voluntary Action of the Earthly Christ and
the Necessity of the Beatific Vision,” The Thomist 69 (2005): 497–534; Weinandy,
“The Beatific Vision and the Incarnate Son: Furthering the Discussion,” The
Thomist 70 (2006): 605–15. The best synthesis of Aquinas’s doctrine of Christ’s
beatific vision during the Passion is found in Matthew Levering’s Christ’s Fulfillment
of Temple and Torah: Salvation according to Thomas Aquinas (Notre Dame, 2002), 58–79.

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One hopes that the Balthasarians will look past the author’s extreme
polemics and recognize a serious, scholarly challenge to various aspects
of their master’s overall theological method, not to mention his Trinitarian theology and Christology. A balanced, critical engagement with
Balthasar by disciples and critics would move the discussion towards an
increasingly fruitful and genuine theology of the Paschal Mystery. N&V
Bernhard Blankenhorn, O.P.
University of Fribourg
Fribourg, Switzerland

Resilience and the Virtue of Fortitude: Aquinas in Dialogue with
the Psychosocial Sciences by Craig Steven Titus (Washington, DC:The
Catholic University of America Press, 2006), xii + 411 pp.
A BOOK of four hundred and seventy pages, with a plenitude of footnotes, synthesizing several disciplines, psychosocial science, philosophy,
and theology is rather daunting and an excellent challenge for the reader
(and this reviewer), Thomist or not. Fr. Benedict Ashley writes on the
back cover that “I know of no other reading of Aquinas’s treatment of
fortitude that is more thorough and nuanced.” He is certainly correct.
Resilience is composed of three parts (ten chapters) all combining
Aquinas’s virtue theory and resilience research. Part one looks to the
issues of resilience as such in tandem with Thomas’s philosophy of the
emotions and moral development. Part two examines more thoroughly
the Thomistic vision of the virtue of fortitude and resilience from a more
philosophical perspective. Finally, part three examines fortitude and
resilience from a theological perspective, not excluding reason but seeing
it from the point of view of revelation.
The beginning of the book, Titus sets up the thematic he will be
covering. Why is it that suffering, difficulties, failures, negative experiences become the stuff of growth or regress in the life of a person? What
is constructive to one person becomes demoralizing to another. Chapter
one takes up the question: what are the causes of either success at integration or disintegration of the human personality? Resilience as a word
comes from steel’s ability to resist destruction. Psychosocial thinkers use
the metaphor to study why and how certain people do not implode
when faced with moral or physical challenges.
After summarizing authors of the field too numerous to mention in
this review,Titus gives a definition of resilience from their point of view:
First, resilience is the ability to cope in adverse conditions; it either
minimizes or overcomes hardships. Second, it consists in resisting

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destructive pressures on the human person’s physiological, psychosocial
and spiritual life; that is, it maintains capacities in the face of challenges,
threats and loss. Third, resilience creatively constructs and adapts after
adversity; it implies recovering with maturity, confidence, and wisdom
to lead a meaningful and productive life. (29)

In chapter two, again summarizing psychosocial thinkers,Titus shows
that temperament, emotion, intelligence, family ties, religion, and the
environmental factors surrounding a child all have a part to play in aiding
or hindering resilience whether in extreme or ordinary cases of trials and
difficulties of life.
Chapter three is a summary review of the fundamental moral theology
of St.Thomas: the ultimate end of human beings, human acts, the role of
the emotions and virtue, human inclinations to good ends, grace and the
presence of the Holy Spirit. Of course, this presupposes faith, but human
experience is also involved in knowing about virtue and character formation. The psychological scientist’s studies and findings become a supplement to moral theology’s conclusions. Aquinas’s virtue theory especially
enables one to understand the moral life far more deeply than a normdriven moral theology, which can lead people into moral minimalism.
In part two,Titus attempts to integrate resilience studies with Aquinas’s
treatment of the virtue of fortitude, which is both a general and a specific
virtue. Resilience can resemble this virtue in many ways. As a general
virtue, it looks to dealing with lesser difficulties of life and is a condition
for all virtues; as a specific virtue, it is courage in the face of death and its
attendant fears. He then gives a schematic calling magnanimity and magnificence the virtues of initiative taking, while calling the virtues of resisting
the traditional patience, longanimity, perseverance, and constancy. In both
cases, he goes on to show that the virtuous person needs strength of mind,
affection and action in pursuing a just cause. From the field of psychosocial science the words used to describe fortitude are hardiness, dauntlessness, intrepidity, pluck, spirit, heroism, daring gallantry, bravery, valor,
bravado, security, self-confidence, self-efficiency. The emotions opposed
would be panic, phobia, rashness, recklessness, and indifference. Mastering
future fears is the stuff of fortitude. Living by unreasonable fear produces
laziness, shamefacedness, shame, amazement, stupor, and anxiety, all of
which are explained by Titus. To overcome fear one needs to act with
reasoned daring or patient endurance, the latter being the primary act of
fortitude. However, experience and calm reflection, friendships and selfconfidence have very important roles to play in overcoming obstacles by
the virtue of fortitude as well.

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Chapter five analyzes Aquinas’s notions of magnanimity and magnificence
in face of achieving great goods in all matters for self and great goods for
others. Truly humble people need doses of these virtues lest they tumble
into doing nothing but self-abasement (which Titus speaks about at length
in chapter eight). It requires confident risk-taking, special concentration
because the objectives are not easy. Later in the chapter,Titus brings out how
the desire for great deeds revolves around the notion of honor and the desire
to pursue excellence according to one’s capacities. In an interesting side-bar
from psychosocial science, Titus summarizes some findings about optimists
and pessimists in this section that aid in understanding success and failure
at certain projects.Taking up Aquinas again,Titus shows how false hopes,
presumption, despair, insecurity, and faintheartedness derail certain projects as
well as the life of virtue itself. Likewise, vainglory, ambition, and false humility bring about over self-confidence, self-complacency, and ultimate failure in
many ventures. In conclusion, resilience or true fortitude is needed to “build
life in the face of difficulty, but also [to] face the difficulty of building.”
One small criticism of this almost perfect book may be in order now.
On page 190, he mistakenly puts the passion of hope in the concupiscible function of the sensible appetite whereas Thomas puts it as part of the
irascible function.
Chapter six leads the reader to consider the challenge of “staying
power” when pain, suffering, loss, loneliness, and the many injustices of life
come upon someone.The solution is learning how to cope with the onset
of anxiety, torpor, apathy, and depression by means of the virtues of
endurance: patience, perseverance, constancy, and longanimity.While these
virtues are distinct, they come down to “holding fast” and not letting
sorrow lead one to give up the challenge of virtue and more immediate
tasks requiring long-term effort. Persisting firmly is not possible for
persons given disproportionately to play, relaxation, and rest, because they
cannot “endure toil.” While resilience researchers rarely use these terms
from Aquinas, their solutions come close to his virtue theory and his solutions to dealing with sadness are also similar to resilience thinkers: reasonable pleasures, emotional venting, receiving sympathy from friends,
contemplation of truth, and refreshment through sleep and baths.
In part three, Titus looks at resilience and fortitude from a faith
perspective, that is, seeing how grace and the theological virtues influence fortitude and resilience. In other word, what happens when God
becomes involved in living out these virtues? Hence, the title for this last
section is “Fortitude and Resilience Transcended.”
Chapter seven makes clear that Titus accepts the Thomistic notion of
infused cardinal virtues that come with grace.As he puts it:“Infused fortitude

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does not make acquired fortitude redundant; nor does acquired fortitude
make infused fortitude superfluous” (280). Rather infused fortitude brings a
supernatural dimension to the natural virtue by giving it a motive, namely,
the love of God, martyrdom being its most profound expression. The
martyr does not commit suicide but rather chooses willingly to die for the
truth of faith, that is, he loves Christ more than the good things of this life.
Chapter eight returns to fortitude as endurance only this time, under
grace that is, the human person imitates God and by grace collaborates
with God in the face of fear or sorrow. That means that a person has to
hope in self and yet “under God withal.” Magnanimity, a virtue of “greatness of spirit” in doing great works, looks to the greatness of grace to
achieve a great work. As Titus knows, Christianity is not all pardon, love
of enemies, and soft love, but also has a corrective here. This is not an
egocentric virtue because it looks outward to others including God. And
it mobilizes one to face risk and the challenges of possible failure by hope
in divine assistance and not mere glory and honor from human beings.
Chapter nine analyzes the Christian response to pain, suffering, and
sorrow, which for Aquinas is patience and perseverance.Titus provides a
Christological explanation of these virtues, as Jesus showed humans how
to endure what is impossible to accomplish by human efforts alone.
Suffering becomes the occasion of patience which endures, though at
times one must also strike out against certain evils.This of course requires
prudence to know when to turn the other cheek and when to attack.
Titus calls it “intelligent” patience.
Chapter ten summarizes his findings and offers a neat and tidy synthesis of his work.
My only quibble with his masterpiece is that from chapter six until the
end of the book, he at times seems to conflate the infused cardinal virtue
of fortitude with the gift of the Holy Spirit called fortitude.The two gifts
are distinguishable. He says as much on pages 291–92.The infused virtue
enables the person to organize his or her actions for the glory of God
under reason and faith’s tutelage, which spiritual theologians will call the
human mode. The gift of the fortitude, on the other hand, is an
impulse/inspiration directly under the Holy Spirit which goes beyond
reason and enables one to do a heroic act of virtue in the divine mode.
This was the reason why Thomas insists that these seven gifts of the Holy
Spirit are necessary for salvation, because we sometimes face impossible
situations requiring more than reason and human effort can understand
and accomplish (cf. ST I–II, q. 68, aa. 1–8).
The excellence of the scholarship and the brilliance of exposition will
make this book a certain read for many years to come. He is to be

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congratulated for his own work of resilience and magnanimity in writN&V
ing such a tome.
Basil Cole, O.P.
The Pontifical Faculty at the Dominican House of Studies
Washington, DC

The Soul of the Person: A Contemporary Philosophical Psychology by Adrian J. Reimers (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of
America Press, 2006), 301 pp.
A DRIAN R EIMERS begins with a familiar story: materialists argue that
matter and the laws of its interaction are all there is; most especially, what
tradition has called the “soul” is nothing more than the visible effects of
the brain,“a physical system different from other physical systems only in
its degree of complexity” (9). Reimers, drawing on Aristotle and Aquinas,
John Paul II, Charles Sanders Peirce, and sympathetic Anglo-American
philosophers like David Braine, responds in The Soul of the Person with a
contemporary reformulation of human nature as both material and spiritual. He hopes thereby to defeat rival materialist accounts (as well as,
though they are not the main target, dualist accounts) and reveal the
essential spiritual characteristics of the human person.
According to Reimers, our distorted contemporary pictures of the
physical and the spiritual hinder our abilities both to understand and to
accept a classical hylomorphic account of the human person. Therefore,
after an introductory chapter, chapters two and three work to give us a
clearer picture of what we ought to mean by the material and the spiritual, preparing the way for understanding human nature as involving
both. Chapters four and five focus on the two most important powers of
the human person, our powers to know and to strive for the good, arguing that their exercise both requires matter and transcends it. Finally,
chapter six focuses on the metaphysical grounds of what has gone before,
and a short epilogue offers a few thoughts on the afterlife.
For Reimers, the material is most properly characterized in terms of
pure reactivity (61): “In virtue simply of a thing’s being material, all we
can say is that it has, at some place and time, interacted with something
else” (47). But a material thing is also one sort of existing thing, and “the
existence of things,” wrote Peirce, “consists in their regular behavior”
(46).Again drawing on Peirce, a habit is “any regular behavior of a thing”
(49). Therefore we can say that the existence of material things consists
in their habits, their regular behavior. This regular behavior is what we
mean by “essence,” and is reflected in scientific laws and classifications

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that bring under the same name material things that manifest the same
behavior. In understanding material things as law-governed (and therefore having essences), we have already gone beyond the crudely material,
but not in a way particularly helpful for belief in the human soul. Indeed,
materialism claims that the existence (regular behavior) of all things is
explicable by the sorts of laws that explain material things; such laws,
reflecting the pure reactivity of material things, govern objects deterministically and, at least in principle, predictably. It will be Reimers’s argument that human beings transcend the reactivity of materiality through
the free and creative development of their habits, leaving at least a part of
human nature ungoverned by the deterministic laws that govern purely
material beings.
To be spiritual, on the other hand, “is to be governed by ideal, rather
than material (or physical) factors.” And ideal means “some sort of desirable future state, condition, or value that guides [i.e. governs] the actions
of those who adopt it” (64). As opposed to the pure reactivity of the
material, the spiritual sees and pursues what is not itself present (what is
in the future and thus itself purely mental, that is, spiritual), whose identification and pursuit therefore transcend mere physical reactivity. Such
activity depends on “two further, fundamental concepts: goodness (or the
good) and truth (or the true)” (66).What is spiritual pursues a particular
future goal (and therefore sees it as good) and must consider this goal as
realizable (as possibly true).The spiritual consists in being related to truth
and goodness, and this relatedness in turn reveals spiritual aspects of reality that transcend pure reactivity and physical laws.
Reimers now turns to human nature as embodied spirituality, focusing
first on our power to know. Knowledge requires belief, and for Reimers
“a belief is a disposition of mind toward action. . . . One holds a belief to
the degree that one is prepared to act in a certain way, according to the
belief ” (96).As such, beliefs are necessarily ordered to truth, for only if the
belief corresponds with reality will the knower succeed in acting upon it.
Although Reimers then outlines a variety of embodied spiritual activities
found in perception, practical work, and reasoning, the central spiritual
activity of human beings is our ability to hypothesize (131). In hypothetical reasoning, we transcend mere reactivity (represented here by deductive reasoning) by leaping to a new creative hypothesis not entailed by any
previous experience. Most importantly, the act of asserting the truth of any
proposition is itself a form of hypothetical reasoning and goes beyond
material reactivity, for “the ability to assert the truth requires more than
the bare mechanisms of material interaction. By asserting truth one joins
to his naturally conditioned experience the general conception of the

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intellect and unifies these in an existential affirmation, one not compelled
by strict deductive [or, we might say, reactive] necessity” (135).
In human pursuit of the good we notice first that human actions are
not determined by our appetites but instead are a result of free choices
among appetites.This is possible because we not only pursue goods, but
pursue them as good and therefore as tending towards the ultimate or
highest good. Further, among the basic human goods towards which we
are attracted and among which we choose is the good of truth, and, as
we saw above, truth is a spiritual good. But if there is at least one nonmaterial good, there might be others. Further, the criteria we use to choose
between material and spiritual goods in our lives cannot themselves be
material: “Human beings value truth, and that means that some spiritual
condition or relationship is a value. If this is so, then the criteria in virtue
of which values may be judged to be authentic goods must refer to the
spiritual as well as the material, for truth is a condition of the human
intellect, not of the body” (197).
Finally, Reimers argues that the ontological foundations of the spiritual
pursuit of truth and goodness consist in the freedom of human choice and
the ideal (and so immaterial) character of human knowing. Reimers argues
that human beings are free, and therefore transcend reactive materiality,
since they universally experience themselves as freely able to act in this way
or that, no law-like (and therefore repeatable) prediction of a meaningful
human choice has ever successfully been made, and history has revealed as
(often violent) failures all previous attempts to control human behavior as
mechanically predictable (228–41). When we consider human knowing,
we see that hypothetical reasoning, assertions of truth (or falsehood), and
the mental ideals that make knowing and willing possible all go beyond
pure reactivity and therefore beyond the material. Reimers now concludes
that, since human beings are rational and rationality (consisting in the
recognition and pursuit of truth and goodness) cannot be reduced to a
mechanical operation, human nature must possess an immaterial principle
of some sort, and this we call the soul.With respect to the afterlife, Reimer’s
notes only that “the human being . . . has a soul that enjoys a certain superiority to or transcendence with regard to the material. It is not unreasonable to grant that this soul can survive the dissolution of the body” (277).
What the “experience” of such a disembodied soul might be, we can only
guess.We go beyond this only with Revelation.
The Soul of the Person is both a rereading of traditional hylomorphism
and an argument against modern materialists. As a rereading, it is often
insightful and inspiring, offering a number of interesting ways to think
about traditional concepts. The defense and explanation of hypothetical

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reasoning is Reimers’s account of abstraction, and the language of “ideas”
and “ideal” rework “form” and “concept.” His use of contemporary
examples and arguments (Gödel and Turing, for instance) make it clear
that Thomistic hylomorphism can be a powerful contemporary position.
On the other hand, it occasionally isn’t clear that Reimers is rereading
rather than rejecting. For example, he insists that every human action is
bodily and physical (91, 111). But Thomistic Aristotelianism has traditionally considered some operations of the human intellect as dependant
upon, but not themselves consisting in, physical activity. If the human
soul can be active after death, as Reimers thinks is possible, wouldn’t he
also require the possibility of such operations?
As an argument against modern materialists, The Soul of the Person is less
successful. The foundations of Reimers’s arguments are human freedom
and the immaterial character of human knowing, and the materialist will
attack both. Here is one possible line against Reimers’s defense of human
freedom: Reimers argues that we must be free because freedom coincides
with our phenomenological experience and has not been demonstrated
false by science or political manipulation (I am leaving out a bit of the
argument. While discussing our experience, he also suggests as a “very
important” argument against determinism that it is theoretically impossible
for me to predict what I shall do in the future; but he refers here to Alasdair MacIntyre’s similar argument in After Virtue, either forgetting or ignoring that MacIntyre ends his discussion of the unpredictability of human
behavior by asserting that it is perfectly compatible with a strong version
of determinism). The determinist, of course, grants Reimers’s points, but
will respond that they do not decide the issue since they neither entail nor
exclude either side of the debate.We must consider a wider range of information (perhaps our Modern Scientific Understanding of the World) that,
they will say, turns out to favor determinism.The same strategy will be used
to respond to the spiritual character of human knowing: it depends on
immaterial essences discovered by the human intellect, and while it might
seem in experience that there are such things, in truth there aren’t. In short,
Reimers’s arguments state clearly and forcefully how reality appears to us,
but the materialist rejects such appearances as illusory.
But if Reimers’s arguments are less conclusive than he often seems to
think, they suggest that the burden of proof lies with the materialist. It is
up to the materialist to offer convincing arguments that our experience and
common sense are wrong, and in the absence of such arguments, we ought
to accept the sorts of considerations Reimers brings forward.The proof that
the Thomistic position is, in the end, correct, will consist not only in the
forceful presentation of its interpretation of reality (what Reimers has

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done), but also in the sustained engagement and refutation from the
Thomistic perspective of the particular rival arguments. And although
Reimers has not done the latter, The Soul of the Person, as a contemporary
N&V
restatement of the Thomistic position, helps make it possible.
Raymond Hain
University of Notre Dame
Notre Dame, Indiana

Trinity, Church and the Human Person: Thomistic Essays by
Gilles Emery, O.P. (Naples, FL: Sapientia Press, 2007), xxii + 303 pp.
T RINITY, Church and the Human Person offers an excellent opportunity
for English-speaking readers to be exposed to one of the finest students
of the theology of Thomas Aquinas—Gilles Emery, O.P. This book
contains ten essays (previously written in French) that are grouped
around three themes: (1) the trinitarian theology of Aquinas, (2) the
sacraments, Church and human person and (3) reception of Thomas’s
teaching on the mystery of God.
The resurgence of interest in the Trinity, with its emphasis upon the
“practicality” of this doctrine, raises a host of questions regarding the
purpose(s) of trinitarian reflection. In chapter one, Emery explores the
purpose of “speculative” trinitarian reflection in Thomas’s theology.That
Thomas’s trinitarian theology is “speculative” does not mean that it is
divorced from the economy of salvation.Thomas is clear that knowledge
of the divine persons is necessary to understand the gospel. Moreover, the
trinitarian treatise in the Summa reaches its climax in a discussion of the
economic missions.To understand rightly the purpose of his “speculative”
reflection, one must grasp Thomas’s intent. Unlike some medieval theologians, his goal was not to establish the necessity of the Trinity apart from
Scripture. By reflecting on “processions,”“relations,” and “persons,”Thomas
wants to show that Christian teaching on the Trinity is reasonable and
that attacks against trinitarian faith can be refuted. In addition, he wants to
invite the faithful into a “spiritual exercise” by which they may contemplate the triune God as a foretaste of the beatific vision.
Several scholars have suggested that significant differences exist
between Augustine and Thomas regarding the goal of their trinitarian
reflection.Whereas Augustine presents his trinitarian theology as a spiritual exercise, Thomas engages in a speculative intellectual project. In
chapter two, Emery contests this claim by arguing that important continuities exist between Augustine and Thomas regarding the purpose(s) of
their trinitarian reflection. Augustine’s approach in De Trinitate may be

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characterized as an “exercise of the mind” designed to reveal to the soul,
albeit in a limited way, something of the mystery of the triune God.
Although important differences exist in their manner of presentation,
Emery argues that “[t]he speculative objective of Thomas Aquinas in
Trinitarian theology must not be opposed to the spiritual objective of
Augustine” (71). Like Augustine, Thomas is quite circumspect about
human knowledge of the Trinity: although humans can grasp that God is,
they cannot grasp what God is. Moreover, for Thomas,“Speculative Trinitarian theology constitutes an exercise, an elevation of the believing
mind, a training in order to see the simple and incomprehensible Triune
God, which procures a foretaste of the beatific vision and makes it possible to give an account of the Trinitarian faith” (72).
In chapter three, Emery argues that a direct (and complex) relationship exists between Thomas’s teaching on truth and his doctrine of the
Trinity—both on the intra-trinitarian and economic levels.This chapter
is structured around an analysis of the Son as “Truth” and the Holy Spirit
as “Spirit of Truth.” Because truth involves a relationship to the intellect,
it “bears an affinity with the intellectual process that characterizes the
generation of the Son as Word conceived by the Father” (76, italics original). Thus, the Word is “Truth begotten.” Moreover, as the “Light” and
“Truth” of the Father, the Word reveals the Father internally to himself
and externally to the world (especially through the incarnation). Finally,
the Word is the source of truth “through whom all things are true and by
whom truth is communicated to the minds of creatures” (89).There are
at least three reasons Thomas associates the Holy Spirit with truth. First,
the Spirit is “Truth” inasmuch as the Spirit is God. Second, the Scriptures
present the Spirit as the “Spirit of Truth” because he proceeds from the
Word, who is Truth. Third, the Spirit is rightly called “Spirit of Truth”
based on his economic work of revealing truth to human beings. Scholars sometimes fail to recognize the “profound Trinitarian dimensions” of
Thomas’s teaching on truth because they do not to engage his commentaries alongside his philosophical discussions of truth (114).
“Western” trinitarian theology, with Thomas Aquinas as a key representative, is sometimes criticized for failing to affirm the “personal”
dimension of the actions of the divine persons. In chapter four, Emery
explores the “personal mode of trinitarian action” in Thomas’s theology.
Emery argues that alongside his insistence that the divine persons act
with one will,Thomas “clearly maintains a relational mode of acting of each
person, a proper and distinct mode that consists in the personal intraTrinitarian relationship qualifying intrinsically the act of the Father, Son
and Holy Spirit” (152–53, italics original). A clear example can be seen

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in Thomas’s claim that the trinitarian processions are the “cause and
reason” for the production of creatures. The processions shape divine
action:“the Father acts through the Son whom he begets and in the Holy
Spirit whom he spirates with the Son” (126).The Father acts “through”
the Son because the Son is begotten by the Father. While the effects of
Father and Son are one, the actors are “personally distinct and their mode
of action is also distinct” (132). In addition, because salvation for Thomas
involves receiving the divine persons, human beings are, through grace,
able “to enter into relation with each person in particular, that is to say,
each person apprehended in a proper and distinct way” (153).
In chapter five, Emery argues that a “profound connection” exists for
Thomas between Church and Eucharist. An ecclesial dimension can be
found in all three levels of the sacrament (the sign, the intermediate reality which is a sign and first effect, and the grace effected and signified in
the sacrament).The bread and wine signify not only the unity of Christ
and the Church but they also bring about this unity “by intensifying
man’s union with Christ and the mutual union of members” (161).
Another link between Eucharist and Church can be seen in Thomas’s
theology of forgiveness. The Eucharist not only offers spiritual food for
growth but it also “contains within itself a reconciling power” by virtue
of the death of Christ (167). Although penance is required for full participation, the Eucharist can bring about the forgiveness of “light” sins
(168). Finally, an ecclesial dimension of the Eucharist can be seen in its
eschatological character: like all sacraments, it looks to the past (Christ’s
passion and resurrection), present (procuring grace) and future (anticipating the ultimate fulfillment of that which they signify).
Whereas medieval theologians treat “inner penance” as the res et sacramentum of the sacrament of penance, contemporary theologians tend to
treat reconciliation with the church as the res et sacramentum. In chapter six,
Emery suggests that Thomas’s discussion of “inner penance” provides a
helpful structure for considering the relationship between “reconciliation
with God” and “reconciliation with the church.” For Thomas the res et
sacramentum is the “inner penance” of the sinner while the res tantum is the
remission of sins.Thus, the sacrament is constituted both by the actions of
the priest (sacramental absolution) as well as the penitent (contrition) such
that no forgiveness is possible apart from a heart-conversion on the part
of the penitent. Emery insists that Thomas’s account of penance in no way
marginalizes the Church. Penance reconciles people both to God and to
the Church. Moreover, it is required for inclusion in the Eucharist.
Thomas, therefore, invites theologians to recognize the res et sacramentum
of penance “as a personal engagement (‘inner penance’) grasped in the

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ecclesial action and recognized and ratified by the Church, so that it
implies readmission to the public worship of the Church” (192).
While some view Thomas’s theology as a foundation for conversation
with the East, others view his theology as an impediment to dialogue.
Chapter seven contains a brief discussion of Thomas’s engagement with
Greek-speaking theologians of the East:“In a conscious and explicit way,
St.Thomas does not intend to compose only a Latin theology, but a Christian ‘ecumenical’ theology . . . which would fully integrate the contribution of the Eastern Fathers into the heart of the Catholic patrimony”
(195).The four Greek authors Thomas cities most frequently (in descending order) are St. John Chrysostom (who appears frequently in his exegetical works), Pseudo-Dionysus (a Platonic influence upon Thomas), Origen
(whom Thomas receives in a critical way) and St. John Damascene. Emery
identifies three areas in which the influence of Greek Fathers upon
Thomas can be clearly seen: (1) Thomas’s concept of “instrument” in his
Christology (in which the humanity of Christ constitutes the “instrumental efficient cause” of grace, forgiveness of sins and divinization of
human beings); (2) his description of the hypostatic union in the Summa
theologiae, and (3) his account of the “literal senses” (plural) of Scripture.
The idea that human beings possess an incorruptible “soul” has come
under criticism because of the assumption that this view is inextricably
linked to a “dualistic” anthropology and Cartesian rationalism.Wanting to
affirm the fundamental unity of the human person, a number of theologians have become reluctant to discuss the soul. Is there a way to affirm that
humans are a composite of body and soul while still maintaining the indissoluble unity of the person? In chapter eight, Emery suggests that Thomas’s
theology provides the basis for a “deeply unified understanding of man that
sacrifices neither the essential link between soul and body nor the primacy
of the spiritual soul in man” (210). Thomas articulates a “hylomorphic”
account of the unity of the human person that is incompatible with every
form of dualism. For Thomas, a person is neither the soul (contra Plato) nor
the body but a composite of the two. Thus, the soul is not a separate
substance but a “subsistent form” or “subsistent principle.” By identifying
the soul as “substantial form” of the body,Thomas secures the unity of the
body (216). In the eschaton, human beings will exist in a composite of soul
and body (which is required for the attainment of happiness).
In chapter nine, Emery explores the interrelationship of evil and the
mystery of God in the writings of Charles Journet. Although he builds upon
the “classic”Thomistic explanation, Journet departs from the latter at three
crucial points: his explanation of God’s knowledge of sin, his account of the
divine decree by which sin is permitted, and his notion of divine suffering.

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Journet does not view God’s permissive decree as the means through
which God knows about sin in his creatures. For Journet, God knows sin
“only in the culpable will that has refused the divine motion to the good and
not in the intervention of divine decree” (245, italics original). Moreover,
although Journet believes that evil must be explained in terms of divine
“permission,” he rejects the Thomistic notion of God’s “antecedent permissive decree” because it does not allow for adequate dissymmetry between
God’s relationship to good and God’s relationship to evil. The permissive
decree, therefore, should not be viewed as “antecedent” but should rather
be seen as following upon “the evil will’s nihilation of the shatterable
motion” (247). Finally, Journet moves beyond traditional Thomistic
approaches to evil in his discussion of “suffering” in God by affirming a
kind of “quasi-suffering” in God (255). At the end of the chapter, Emery
raises a number of questions regarding the viability of Journet’s proposal.
In chapter ten, Emery engages George Lindbeck’s “postliberal” reading
of Thomas Aquinas. Lindbeck developed his “cultural-linguistic” approach
to doctrine in conversation Thomas (who is one of the most frequently
citied theologians in The Nature of Doctrine). After providing an overview
of the Lindbeck’s writings on Thomas, Emery examines Lindbeck’s appeal
to Thomas in The Nature of Doctrine. Appeals to Thomas can be grouped
into three categories: (1) Religion and experience (Lindbeck draws both
upon Thomas’s account of knowledge by “connaturality” as well the
Scholastic distinction between “first intentions” and “second intentions”);
(2) Thomas as “Non-Foundationalist” (Lindbeck appeals extensively to
Thomas in order to criticize post-Cartesian and post-Kantian “foundational” projects); and (3) “Agnosticism” of Thomas and Truth (Lindbeck
draws upon Thomas’s distinction between the “mode of signification” and
the “thing signified” in order to prioritize the “regulative” function of
doctrines over the “cognitive” function).Although the primary purpose of
the chapter was to highlight the originality of Lindbeck’s reading of
Thomas, Emery briefly identifies a number of problems with Lindbeck’s
reading. For example, little support can be found in Thomas’s writings for
the notion that creedal statements should be viewed merely as secondorder “rules.” For Thomas, doctrines have “regulative” force precisely
because they convey “cognitive propositional content” (288).
This collection of essays offers an indirect (yet compelling!) apologetic for
the continuing value of engagement with Thomas’s theology. Emery helps
readers see how the “premodern” theology of Thomas Aquinas addresses a
number of contemporary theological issues in fruitful ways. A clear example of this can be seen in his discussion of the nature of the human person
(chapter eight). Emery adroitly shows how Thomas’s hylomorphic account

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of human unity avoids the pitfalls of dualism and materialism. Another
example can be seen in chapter seven in which Emery presents Thomas as
the source of an “ecumenical” theology that integrates contributions of the
West and the East.
Perhaps the most compelling case for the enduring value of Thomas’s
theology can be seen in Emery’s discussion of Thomas’s trinitarian doctrine
(which build upon an earlier collection of essays published in Trinity in
Aquinas). Critics such as Catherine LaCugna assert that Thomas’s “speculative” reflection on the Trinity exemplifies everything that went wrong in
“Latin”Trinitarian theology inasmuch as he severs the life of the triune God
from the economy of salvation. Emery not only shows why this reading is
wrong but he also helps readers see that Thomas has an important message
for theologians eager to highlight the practical relevance of trinitarian
doctrine—namely, that the “practicality” of this doctrine is not ultimately to
be found in its ability to provide patterns for societal structures but rather in
its ability to draw us into the life of the triune God. In the first volume of
his Church Dogmatics, Karl Barth insists that the doctrine of the Trinity
should be “decisive and controlling for the whole of dogmatics.” Barth was
not the first to recognize that trinitarian doctrine should shape theological
reflection in other areas.Through his discussion of Trinity and truth, Emery
provides a concrete example of the integrative nature of Thomas’s trinitarian theology by examining Thomas’s trinitarian approach to the truth.
Emery’s discussion of trinitarian agency in chapter four is particularly
important for contemporary discussion of divine agency. Eager to highlight
the “personal” character of trinitarian action, a number of contemporary
theologians have expressed dissatisfaction with the traditional Augustinian
account of the unity of the divine persons ad extra. Emery helps us see that
one need not abandon this axiom in order to affirm the “personal” character of trinitarian agency.
Readers will discover little criticism of Thomas in this book. Perhaps
some will view this as a limiting feature; however, it is Emery’s sympathy
with Thomas’s thought that provides the basis for his rich exposition.While
this collection of essays encourages engagement with Thomas, it also underscores the challenge contemporary readers have in properly understanding
Thomas.To understand Thomas, readers must synchronically engage all his
writings (not an easy task!). In particular, Emery suggests that scholars need
to pay more attention to Thomas’s biblical commentaries as they engage his
speculative theological/philosophical writings.
N&V
Keith E. Johnson
Duke University
Durham, North Carolina

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God’s Universe by Owen Gingerich (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 2006), 139 pp. and Chance or Purpose? Creation, Evolution,
and a Rational Faith by Christoph Cardinal Schönborn, O.P. (San
Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2007), 181 pp.
O N N OVEMBER 7, 1492, just before noon, a meteorite fell on farmland
near the Alsatian village of Ensisheim.Three weeks later, the Holy Roman
Emperor Maximilian happened to be passing through Alsace, then a part
of his empire, and so came to hear of this strange visitor from the heavens.After consulting with the experts of his day, he was told by his imperial counselors and court astrologers that it was a miracle, a sign from God
indicating divine favor resting on the imperial crown.
On February 8, 1969, another meteorite fell, this time on the Mexican
village of Pueblito de Allende. No emperor, Mexican or otherwise,
happened to be passing through at the time. But experts galore (now
called scientists, not astrologers) descended on the place soon enough; and
what they discovered was remarkable: the ratio of lead and argon isotopes,
when matched with the known rate of decay of radioactive potassium,
allows the meteorite to be dated to an age of 4.6 billion years, which
means that the Allende meteorite is the oldest known macroscopic object
on earth, indeed by most estimates is slightly older than the earth itself.
Both meteorites are raw facts: the exact dates of their respective falls
are known to history, and both objects are still being exhibited to this day.
But both are also what Aristotle called reasoned facts, and therein hangs
our tale. As a “reasoned” fact, the first rock was taken to be an omen
favorable to the Holy Roman Emperor, the other as evidence for the
genesis and composition of our solar system (and, going back further, of
the universe itself). Two meteorites, then: leaving us with two raw facts,
and two reasoned facts.
The universe, too, is a raw fact, at least in the obvious sense that it
cannot very well be ignored. But is it also a reasoned fact? After all, if we
try to reason back from the universe to God, the validity of the procedure will depend on how genuinely reasonable the “fact” of the universe
is. But why work backwards? Why not just start with the reality of God
and then deduce the universe from God, as René Descartes tried to do?
But if one agrees with Thomas Aquinas that we must work backwards
from the world to God, then we have no choice but to proceed from the
raw reality we know (the world) to the reasoned reality behind it, which
we hope (and maybe can “prove”?) is God.
But what kind of reasoned fact is the universe? Is the world actually
rational, or do we impose rationality on it? Two recent books, one from

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a noted historian of astronomy at Harvard University, Owen Gingerich,
and the other from the Cardinal Archbishop of Vienna (and chairman of
the drafting committee of the Catechism of the Catholic Church ), Christoph
Schönborn, tell us a great deal about how we go from Aristotle’s “reasoned
facts” to the reality of God, without whom the universe would never
have come to be in the first place.
Both books are quite short and can be read in an evening apiece.Yet
both come out of a lifetime of reflections on this issue, albeit from two
different perspectives: while both authors are committed Christians, one is
a scientist and historian of science by training and profession, and the other
is a teacher of the Catholic faith, speaking out of, and on the basis of, the
oracles of Christian revelation, especially here the book of Genesis.
For several reasons, I think it best to begin with Gingerich’s book,
which began as the William Belden Noble Lectures at Harvard’s University Chapel in 2005. I recommend starting with his book because, by
taking them in this order, one can follow the approach recommended by
the great twentieth-century apologist Msgr. Ronald Knox, who held that
if we begin with certain universally recognized enigmas, we will see the
meaning of Christian dogma. Knox pointed out that before we hear of
the mystery of the Trinity and Incarnation we first meet up with the
mystery of personality; before we learn about the mystery of the Real
Presence of Jesus in the Eucharist we come up against the distinction
between reality and appearance in Plato; and before the mystery of the
Holy Spirit there is the mystery of mind: “You may picture human
thought as a place of solid rock,” he says, “but with a crevice here and
there—the places, I mean, where we think and think and it just does not
add up. And the Christian mysteries are like tufts of blossom which seem
to grow in those particular crevices, there and nowhere else.” In that
sense, Gingerich gives us the crevice, Schönborn the blossom.
For Gingerich there is above all this ineluctable crevice—teleology : is
there a point to the universe or not? Is the universe just a brute fact to
be accepted without further ado? Or is it a reasoned fact that can lead,
via its correct interpretation, back to God’s intentions? Gingerich’s
Harvard colleague Ernst Mayr, probably the premier philosopher of
Darwinism in the twentieth century, provides the debate’s opening thesis:
“Cosmic teleology must be rejected by science. . . . I do not think there
is a modern scientist left who still believes in it.”
Maybe, but there are many scientists who think there might be intelligent life on other planets and have great hopes that the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) will someday prove successful. But these
SETI enthusiasts then hit a snag: the very viability of that search rests on

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the plausibility of the same cosmic teleology decried by Mayr. As
Gingerich points out,“astronomers and physicists who assume that extraterrestrial intelligence is inevitable and ubiquitous are essentially saying
that the set is rigged, that in some way it is designed not just to allow for
intelligent life, but to make it likely.” According to physicist Paul Davies,
SETI “implies that mind is written into the laws of nature in a fundamental way.” But if that is true, what has happened to the randomness
touted so loudly by the resolute Darwinians? If intelligence is “written
into” the laws of nature so deeply, are we not approaching Plato’s most
characteristic teaching that form and mind precede matter?
To that worrisome flirtation with crypto-Platonism Darwinians of the
strict observance like Mayr respond that SETI proponents “are almost
exclusively astronomers, physicists, and engineers. They are simply
unaware of the fact that the success of the SETI project is not a matter
of physical laws and engineering capabilities but a matter of biological
and sociological factors.”
So who’s right, Davies or Mayr? Absent the unlikely event of alien
visitors to the UN General Assembly, the issue cannot be resolved. Physicists (as a rule) might set much store by SETI, but their methods are
reductive. Always fond of the Copernican “principle of mediocrity”
(which states that because of the uniformity of the laws of nature, man
and earth cannot be that special), they seek the most parsimonious result:
“Physicists love the principles of uniformity and mediocrity, for they
reduce complexity and tend toward simplicity, a process that helps them
get on with their business,” says Gingerich. “If friction renders the study
of motion too difficult, then consider an idealized world without friction. . . . Isaac Newton made brilliant progress by assuming that celestial
motions are frictionless counterparts of terrestrial motion.”
Biologists, however, are schooled to see contingency everywhere.Take,
for example, man’s bipedalism, which the anthropologist Richard Leakey
holds is essential for the evolution from primate to Homo sapiens. In The
Origin of Mankind he claims that the “origin of bipedal locomotion is so
significant an adaptation that we are justified in calling all species of
bipedal ape ‘human.’ . . .These humans were not like us, but without the
bipedal adaptation they couldn’t have become like us.” But how did
bipedalism become so advantageous to one group of primates? Here at
any rate is Leakey’s answer:
About 12 million years ago, a continuation of tectonic forces further
changed the environment, with the formation of a long, sinuous valley
[in central Africa], running from north to south, known as the Great

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Rift Valley.The existence of the Great Rift Valley has had two biological effects: it poses a formidable east-west barrier to animal populations,
and it further promotes the development of a rich mosaic of ecological conditions. The French anthropologist Yves Coppens believes the
east-west barrier was crucial to the separate evolution of human and
apes . . . [and] dubs this the “East Side Story.”

Well, maybe yes, maybe no. But if Leakey is right, then as Daniel
Dennett points out in Darwin’s Dangerous Idea, searching for alien intelligence makes about as much sense as searching for extraterrestrial kangaroos. Again, none of these purely speculative arguments can settle this
issue. But their continuing presence in the debate over evolution (touted
by people who have no religious agenda whatever and often are extremely
hostile to religion in any guise) only shows, at least for Gingerich, that we
are up against a real enigma, one of Knox’s crevices.
On that basis he has some surprisingly friendly (though critical)
remarks to make about the Intelligent Design (ID) movement. First, he
rightly defends them against the charge of their being “creationists,” if by
that is meant young-earth creationists who hold that the entire world is
scarcely more than ten thousand years old. “ID theorists are much more
sophisticated than that,” he says. “At issue for them is whether random
mutations can generate the incredible amount of information content
required to produce even the simplest of cells; and whether even the
great antiquity of the universe could make this possible. Here science,
dealing with extremely low probabilities balanced against vast numbers
of opportunities, is frankly on very shaky turf.”
That paragraph alone will probably lead most strict-observance Darwinians to dismiss this book in horror, but Gingerich is merely pointing to a
problem that will not go away, despite the angry harumphing and empty
rhetorical excommunications from atheist citadels. That said, Gingerich
must also point to the central flaw in ID theory, its scientific sterility:
Many leading theorists of ID argue that the evidence for intelligent
input into the evolutionary process is overwhelming. With regard to
final causes, those theorists make a good case for a coherent understanding of the nature of cosmos. But they fall short in supplying any
mechanisms to serve as the efficient causes that primarily engage scientists in our age. Intelligent Design does not explain the temporal or
geological distribution of species. Intelligent Design does not help us
understand why Hawaii, in comparison with the older continental
areas, has so few species, and why there would be flightless birds on the
islands. It does not shed any light on why the DNA in yeast is so closely
related to the DNA in human chromosomes. As a philosophical idea,

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ID is interesting, but it does not replace the scientific explanations that
evolution offers.

So how does Gingerich, himself a committed Christian, respond to
this dilemma? I think this passage summarizes his own personal creed as
a Christian scientist best of all (emphases are his):
Whether the mutations are anything other than mathematically random
is a question without answer in a physical or scientific sense. But my subjective, metaphysical view, that the universe would make more sense if a
divine will operated at this level to design the universe in a purposeful
way, can be neither denied nor proved by scientific means. . . . One can
believe that some of the evolutionary pathways are so intricate and so
complex as to be hopelessly improbable by the rules of random chance;
but if you do not believe in divine action, then you will simply have to
say that random chance was extremely lucky, because the outcome is there
to see. Either way, the scientist with theistic metaphysics will approach
laboratory problems in much the same way as will his atheistic colleague
across the hall. And probably both will approach some of the astonishing
adaptations seen in nature with a sense of surprise, wonder, and mystery.

Gingerich readily admits that only faith can make this transition (or
“leap” if you will), a faith that has guided his own life from childhood on.
The fact that few of his colleagues at Harvard are willing to follow him
here does not intimidate him in the least, for this he knows above all:
“The God having the creative force to make the entire observable
universe in a dense dot of pure energy is incomprehensible, beyond
human imagining (apart from the comparatively feeble efforts of theorists
exploring the inner workings of the Big Bang). And yet we can see the
consequences of this unimaginably powerful creative act: a universe
congenial to the ultimate formation of life, life giving rise to intelligence
that can ask questions science cannot answer. It is God’s universe.”
It is God’s universe for Cardinal Schönborn too, I presume it goes
without saying; but with his latest book Chance or Purpose? Creation,
Evolution, and a Rational Faith, readers enter a quite different universe of
argument. First of all, as might be expected, Schönborn writes as a
teacher of the Catholic faith.True, he is not addressing the public in the
strictly magisterial sense, telling Catholics what they must hold by solemn
hierarchical decree. But surely what he asserts, that the universe is God’s
creation, must belong to the essence of the Christian faith, as the opening line of the Apostles’ and Nicene Creeds profess.
Second, Schönborn is entirely biblical throughout this book. In effect,
he is giving an extended meditation on the meaning of several verses of

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the Bible that bear on evolutionary controversies:“In the beginning, God
created . . .” (Genesis 1:1); “He created everything according to its kind”
(Genesis 1:11); “He upholds the universe by his word of power”
(Hebrews 1:3); “You have made him [man] little less than God” (Psalm
8:6); “All things were created for him [Christ]” (Colossians 1:16); and
“Subdue the earth” (Genesis 1:28).
This selection is significant, for all his chosen verses express the crucial
non-negotiables that the Church will always maintain and that scientific
developments can never undermine. True, especially in regard to Genesis, these theological insights were expressed in the language of ancient
Hebrew cosmology and therefore require interpretation.As Pope Pius XII
taught in Divino Afflante Spiritu:
What is the literal sense of a passage is not always as obvious in the
speeches and writings of the ancient authors of the East, as it is in the
works of our own time. For what they wished to express is not to be
determined by the rules of grammar and philology alone, nor solely by
the context; the interpreter must, as it were, go back wholly in spirit to
those remote centuries of the East. . . . For the ancient peoples of the
East, in order to express their ideas, did not always employ those forms
or kinds of speech which we use today; but rather those used by the
men of their times and countries.

But by the same token the interpreter must recognize in those ancient
idioms a revealed message directly relevant today, especially that the intelligibility of the universe comes from God. Almost as if he is speaking of
Gingerich, Schönborn says this of Christian scientists: “Belief in God as
Creator is not an obstacle but rather the opposite.Why should belief that
the universe has a Creator stand in the way of science? . . . There are in
fact an enormous number of scientists who . . . not only make no secret
of their faith, but positively affirm it and see no conflict between science
and their faith.”
That point, of course, makes only a sociological observation. The
teacher of the Catholic faith, however, can go much further; and at a
crucial juncture in his argument, the Cardinal quotes Vatican II’s Gaudium
et Spes (its Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World),
which directly asserts a positive connection between faith and science:
Methodical research in all branches of knowledge, provided it is carried
out in a truly scientific manner and does not overrule the moral law,
can never conflict with the faith, for the things of this world and the
things of faith derive from the same God. Indeed, the humble and

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persevering investigator of the secrets of nature is being led, however
unawares, by the hand of God, who holds all things in existence and
made them what they are.

This assertion, of course, cuts both ways. On the one hand, as Gaudium
et Spes says in the next line (but unquoted by the Cardinal), “Consequently, we cannot but deplore certain habits of mind, sometimes found
too among Christians, which do not sufficiently attend to the rightful
independence of science.” On the other hand, when the results of science
seem to conflict with the faith, the believer can be quite sure that the
conflict is only apparent: either because the evidence is ambiguous; or
because this evidence, even when entirely reliable, does not carry the
philosophical and religious import claimed for it by atheists; or because
Christians have misunderstood their faith by confusing a mode of expression with the truth that mode intends to express.
The first difficulty requires patience, and Church teaching can handle
the last one, as Pius XII did when he clarified that the “literal” meaning
of the Bible refers to the meaning intended by the author of the original
text in its original setting and does not depend on some superimposed
literalism defined by a one-dimensional fundamentalism. But the second
difficulty can only be dispatched through the hard work of spotting the
inevitable contradictions that are bound to crop up whenever scientists
or their atheist popularizers stray beyond their competence.
In that regard, Schönborn can be quite witty. He recounts the story of
one of his brother Dominicans harping at table every day about a book
he planned to write that was going to prove that man is not essentially
different from the other animals. Finally another Dominican got tired of
these obsessive proclamations and asked, “Father, will this be an autobiography?” The rest of the brethren all laughed—except for the putative
author, who kept silent.
But my favorite example comes from an interview Richard Dawkins,
England’s most pious atheist and loudest Darwinian, gave to an Austrian
newspaper, Die Presse ( July 30, 2005), where he made this whopper of a
concession: “No decent person wants to live in a society that works
according to Darwinian laws. . . . A Darwinian society would be a fascist
state.” With that move Dawkins has undercut his whole project, which
requires that Darwinism be made applicable in all areas of life. His ethical
critique of Darwinian dystopias itself testifies to man’s uniqueness, specifically his possession of a conscience independent of evolutionary forces.
But at this point I must wonder if the Cardinal himself does not go a
bit too far in disengaging Darwinian insights from political economy.

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Although hardly the main point of his book, the author concludes with
a swipe against the neo-liberal economist Friedrich von Hayek and even
seems to endorse the economic philosophy of New York Times op-ed
panjandrum Paul Krugman. Admittedly, this view is tucked inside a
quotation from an Austrian economist, but as Schönborn cites him with
approval, I think it bears notice:
The United States economist Paul Krugman is right when he writes
that a textbook on neo-classical micro-economics reads like an introduction to microbiology. In economics, the close relation to biology is
seen especially in the writings of Hayek, . . . [who came from] a family
of biologists, [and who] talks explicitly about a “sifting” by the market.
Hayek holds that a high rate of unemployment—like excess population
in the animal world—is economically desirable, so that natural selection
can have something to work on. . . . Decoded, this amounts to saying
that we have to get rid of the European social model.

I dispute this reading of Hayek at several points. After all, there are
perfectly harmless applications of the term “natural selection” that do not
entail anything nefarious, as when we say that bloated corporations
become “less fit” and thus inevitably lose out in the “struggle” to win
investors. No literal slaughter of corporate managers takes place, nor did
Hayek recommend killing off the unemployed. I do not deny that classical
neo-liberal economics stands in tension with Catholic social doctrine, but
that hardly renders the “European social model” unproblematic either. I am
reminded of a remark Arnold Schwarzenegger made when he was running
for governor of California: he emigrated from Austria to the United States
in his youth, he said, because as soon as Austrians turn eighteen they start
talking about their pensions. (The fact that he is now recommending
universal health care in California is irrelevant to the observation and only
shows he is being a true politician, pandering to an electorate that is
perfectly willing to make use of “free” services as long as they don’t notice
they have to pay for them.) Plus, I think a good argument can be made that
the cradle-to-grave social services provided to most European citizens have
contributed to the demographic lethargy and cultural ennui that worries
so many Christian commentators, on both sides of the ocean.
As I say, the Cardinal’s criticism of neo-liberal economics is but an
aside to an otherwise fine book; but it does show yet again how difficult
it will be to follow the mandate of Vatican II when it calls on Catholics
to attend sufficiently to the rightful independence of science. But truth
has a habit of catching up with us all, despite what the postmoderns say.
So there is no need for believers to worry about the false claims of the

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science-hijackers: “Everything that is, is created,” says Schönborn, this
great teacher of the Catholic faith. “That is the first, fundamental statement the Bible makes about reality.” Which means that everything we
encounter, rightly interpreted, is a gift.“What do you have that you have
not received?” Paul asks rhetorically (1 Corinthians 4:7).This, for Paul—
and for all Christians—is the most significant “reasoned fact” of all:
everything that comes to us is pure gift.
N&V
Edward T. Oakes, S.J.
University of St. Mary of the Lake
Mundelein, Illinois

Answering the Enlightenment: The Catholic Recovery of Historical Revelation by Grant Kaplan (NewYork: Crossroad, 2006), viii +240 pp.
G RANT K APLAN ’ S Answering the Enlightenment presents a movement
within eighteenth- and nineteenth-century German thought that sought
to understand revelation in light of idealist philosophy. The first half of
Kaplan’s book deals with the internal development of this tradition
within the context set by Descartes and Hume. Thinkers of the “High
German Enlightenment” sought to provide a clear and distinct basis for
religion, one that would not be susceptible to an empirical critique.
Kaplan then shows how this Enlightenment tradition was taken up and
appropriated by Catholic theologians at the University of Tübingen.
Kaplan begins his treatment with Gotthold Lessing, whose famous
ditch emphasizes “the gap between historical and dogmatic truth” due to
“doubts about the reliability of historical witness” (12, 11). Lessing puts
forward the claim that Christianity’s historically based teaching served a
purpose, but now should retreat so that humanity may freely progress to
a higher level without outside interference from God (16). In a significant move for the Idealist tradition, he reduces religion to the ethical
realm. Kaplan argues that “by adopting an Enlightenment conception of
history and anthropology, however, Lessing edges closer to a position that
would necessarily conflict with traditional Christian claims about revelation” (14). Lessing introduces a conflict between Christianity and
humanity’s progress by arguing that a revelation from God necessarily
hinders humanity’s own ability to arrive at the content of revelation on
its own.
Kaplan’s treatment of Lessing leads directly into Kant’s thought, which
provides a fuller articulation of human autonomy and religious self-sufficiency. If Lessing points to the need to leave Christianity behind, Kant
actually provides the ground to do so through an a priori system that

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imposed “the same standard of truth” on religion “that holds for ethics and
metaphysics” (27). Just as Kant reduces ethics to an “internal, necessary
communication” accessible to everyone through pure reason, so “he
equates God’s revelation with the moral law in us” (28).The consequences
for religion are drastic: there can be no religious power or revelation
outside of the limits of reason. Kaplan argues that Kant’s thought “shows
how the elimination of historical revelation completely erodes any real
relationship between God and God’s creatures” (34). God simply serves as
a postulate, necessary to connect man’s moral life with happiness (44).
Kaplan presents Johann Gottlieb Fichte as the culmination of the vision
set forth by Lessing and Kant on religion. Fichte argues even more robustly
for the absolute equation of religion and morality. Though Kant clearly
intimates it, Fichte boldly states that God’s existence arises from “the transferring of something subjective into an essence external to us . . . used for
the determination of the will” (47). Fichte must maintain that God is
only a projection of something internal to us, because any external principle influencing the will would deprive human beings of autonomy.
Thus, he equates natural and revealed religion, dissolving the latter into
the former, since what is known a priori cannot be made known in
history (49). Revelation has a place only as an outward proclamation of
what is inward. It cannot exist in its own right since there can be no
possible proof for something contingent and historical. Summarizing the
thrust of these three thinkers, Kaplan describes their shortcoming as “the
search for an autonomy independent from all influences . . . reason that
is ‘pure’ of any divine assistance” (52).
For Kaplan, Friedrich Schelling provides a noticeable departure from
these three thinkers. It is clear that Schelling still stands within the same
idealist tradition, maintaining similar concerns such as freedom and intuition, but he seeks to recover a real notion of God and a positive role for
history. Accordingly, he sees no necessary conflict between the finite and
infinite and subjective knowledge and its object. He argues that history
must no longer stand apart from truth, because it is only as something
occurs within history that one can have real knowledge of it (76).While
thus trying to avoid a priorism, Schelling also seeks to avoid empiricism.
Though there is a unity of the subject and object, this union manifests
the knower’s conscious freedom, which is founded upon God’s own selfmanifestation. Humanity, through “intellectual intuition,” has the luminous presence of the Absolute within, which serves as the means by
which to see reality as a whole (62).
Schelling stresses history to the point that it becomes the very vehicle
for the “unfolding of the Absolute itself ” (80). History plays a crucial role

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in the knowledge of God, finding its place alongside the interior recognition of God and the witness of nature. Intuition provides the foundation necessary to recognize God, and does so initially through the
formation of myths. These myths provide the context through which
God more explicitly reveals Himself by taking an active role in history,
first through Israel and then most fully in Christ. Thus, “for Schelling,
Christianity is primarily a historical religion . . . one cannot remove the
historical from Christianity without also ridding Christianity of its very
essence” (82). Based upon his expanded epistemology and his appreciation of history, Schelling attempts to initiate a philosophy of revelation
that observes how God and humanity mutually seek union, mediated by
the events of history and interior acts within the person.
The newly created Catholic theology faculty in Tübingen cautiously
found Schelling to be a useful partner in its attempt both to critique and
to interact with the prevalent intellectual atmosphere of the day. Kaplan
notes that the key features of Tübingen’s method entail a focus on history
and an engagement of modern thought. Tübingen theologians also
emphasize the Church’s tradition as a living organism in time (99).
Engaging modern philosophy brings its own pitfalls, of course. For
instance, Kaplan notes that Johann Drey fails to distance himself enough
from the Enlightenment in seeing revelation as too closely associated
with religion throughout history (102–10).The crucial figure of Kaplan’s
study, Johannes Kuhn, follows Drey in accepting Schleiermacher’s definition of religion.This definition influences the way that Kuhn characterizes revelation, which he presents as any activity of God in the world
(129). In particular, Kuhn builds upon Schelling’s theory of intuition, in
order to articulate the existence of a primary experience of God which
occurs through an immediate perception that grounds all human knowledge (136). Though it is necessary to see creation and the human mind
as a necessary basis for revelation (141, 147), Kuhn describes them as
revelatory in themselves (138, 146). Thus, even while Kuhn regards
himself as a critic of Schelling, he follows him in accepting a somewhat
generic understanding of revelation.
Kaplan argues that the use of the term “revelation” came about as a
response to the Enlightenment: although the concept belongs to traditional Christian teaching, the use of the technical term arises at this later
point (3). Yet, the way that the Tübingen school describes revelation
could lead one to ask whether revelation has become too generalized and
therefore deprived of important aspects of its traditional meaning. It is
crucial in evaluating Kaplan’s treatment to ask whether the philosophical
tradition of German idealism truly serves as an impetus for a fuller

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account of revelation. Kaplan praises both Schelling and Kuhn, the
former primarily for the retrieval of history and the latter for bringing
this insight into the Catholic tradition. Schelling would certainly be an
essential ally if it were one’s goal to respond to the pitfalls within the
earlier idealist tradition. While one can gladly affirm Schelling’s contributions toward formulating a philosophy of history and the human study
of revelation, nonetheless the risk lies in reducing religion to intuition
and experience, so that Christianity comes to be seen as part of one large
movement of religion. Kuhn’s appropriation of Aquinas points to the
need to remain rooted primarily in the Catholic tradition. On the issue
of nature and grace, Kuhn stayed rooted in the tradition by a careful, if
not completely uncontroversial, reading of Thomas (154). On the issue of
religion and revelation, however, he often seems to follow in the anthropocentric footsteps of Schleiermacher.
In sum, Kaplan’s study provides a helpful window into the efforts of
Catholic thinkers to maintain, not always successfully, the priority of God’s
revelatory action while at the same time valuing the human dimensions
N&V
of revelation.
R. Jared Staudt
Ave Maria University
Ave Maria, Florida