Catholic and Enjoying It!
…with Dawn Eden about the Theology of the Body.
This is a topic people get het up about easily in our sex-crazed culture. The basic problem most of us (including me) face is that arguments about the Theology of the Body are like arguments about who has painted the most accurate likeness of the Snark and the Boojum. Until we see a Snark and a Boojum, we’re not really in a very good position to make the call.
The Theology of the Body was explicated by John Paul II nearly thirty years ago in a long series of talks which were later published–talks which neither you nor I have heard or read. So it’s pretty tough to know if West or whoever is understanding those talks accurately unless we, or somebody we trust who has read JPII’s work tells us. Consequently, arguments about who is right, wrong, or (more likely) a mixture of both tend to get settled by means of personal connections with people proclaiming expertise in JPII’s work on the subject or, (much more often) merely by personal connection with people we happen to like. If your friends think some teacher of TOB is a monster bent on perverting the faith, then you tend to take their view. If they think Christopher West is an anointed prophet, then you tend to take that view. If they think Christopher West seems like a decent bloke with some dubious ideas who is trying to serve the Church, they take that view. But until we actually read the JPII TOB, we don’t really quite know what we’re talking about, because we can’t intelligently compare what everybody is saying with what JPII says.
That’s largely why I don’t have a burning interest in the controversy: because I can’t remark on it intelligently without reading the source materials and I have too many other things to bother with. I live out the Church’s teaching in my marriage. So I’m content and don’t feel a huge need for TOB.
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