THEOLOGY OF THE BODY: "LOVE & RESPONSIBILITY"

FR. THOMAS LOYA – “LOVE AND RESPONSIBILITY” –CHAPTER 3—

“THE PERSON & CHASTITY”
JUNE 11, 2011
[indispensable comments by Sr. Helena in brackets]

(going back a little): P. 138—Lust wants to take over a person to use them. Love wants to create happiness and the other person’s good. “Happiness” isn’t like what we normally think of as happiness. It isn’t that one person is making the other person happy in the moment so that that person’s happiness relies on the other person. It’s willing/working toward the ultimate good of the other. And it has to be “reciprocal”—BJP2G’s concept of “reciprocity.” We have to will GOD for the other person because only God can truly fulfill us. “Only people of faith can state quite clearly that the ultimate good is God.” –BJP2G

Couples need to will getting to heaven for each other!

It’s the awareness of a person’s total value—not just their sexual value. Love is the highest of values, but one needs to know how to transfer that to everyday life. It’s called “the education to love.” Love is a task, it’s not just a given. Love never “is,” it’s always a becoming and depends on the depth of the commitment of the persons involved.

Emotion, sensual desire, attraction is not wrong! It’s the raw material! You MUST have it! We should be attracted, aroused, inspired by the opposite sex, but not just by the visible, but the whole body-person! The invisible as well as the visible dimension of the person. This is very important because there’s a lot of misunderstanding about TOB here. [Like some Muslims think it’s wrong to have any reaction at all to a woman, so she needs to put a bag over her head.] There’s an error being made here. The desire is not wrong in itself. It is good. [It’s what you do with it.] The WILL must take that raw material and develop it into love of the whole person in an integrated way. The task! [The raw material is a starting point!] I choose to love ALL of you and will the good for all of you. Most of our culture just stops at he /sensual and leaves it there. This can fool a couple into thinking they actually LOVE each other. That’s why the relationship sours. There is so much MISSING in the relationship. [Society probably helped the love-task-process by making sexual relations outside of marriage taboo, so they HAD to get to know each other first before any physical relationship, and then, in marriage.] Premature physical relationships confuse, cloud and blind the person as to where the relationship should or should not go. They are no longer free or free to truly choose and choose well. CHASTITY is good for practical reasons because it helps us to perceive, see clearly and be truly free.

Movie “SPANGLISH”—is a good illustration because the couple goes to the brink, but they knew it wasn’t right, right for them (it would have been adulterous), and don’t go any further.

CHAPTER 3—p. 143
“Chastity” is resented because of weakness of will. It demands a higher resolution of will. The Catholic Church, by saying “no” to the wrong and “yes” to the good, becomes the conscience of the world. We all absolutely RESENT saying “no” to ourselves. The Catholic Church is one of the singular voices in the world that knows and sticks to the truth.

When Clinton got into sexual trouble, it was like permission for the rest of us. Someone in this lofty position came down, so that means we don’t have to “go up.” Chastity/virginity is even seen as an evil! Do NOT discount “sloth”! M. Scott Peck’s take on original sin was that it was “sloth,” Adam and Eve didn’t make the effort, they took a shortcut. [All 7 capital sins are connected, superimposed on each other!] Aquinas defines sloth (acedia) as a sadness that the good is so difficult!

Emotions can conceal the lack of true love or egoism even.

[We need to tell people: JUST KEEP GOING in their relationships! Affirm their feelings! But tell them they can have SO MUCH MORE! It can be SO MUCH BETTER! Isn’t that what we all want?]

Father wants a billboard to help people: “To hell with your feelings!” (Our feelings can be leading us to hell, too!) Feelings are like indicators on our dashboard. The greater reality is WHAT they’re indicating. “I feel angry!” Why? Because of thought processes and convictions you have.
In the sexual revolution, people actually thought they WERE being HONEST by FOLLOWING THEIR FEELINGS outside of chastity, outside of marriage, leading them out of religious life/priesthood. [Blessed James Alberione’s JESUS TRUTH, WAY, LIFE spirituality is about developing MIND, WILL, HEART equally. Wow. I never thought of applying his spirituality to TOB!]

We need to tell same-sex attracted people: We’re not denying what you FEEL [it’s real], but what are you going to do with it?

Egoism precludes LOVE and any shared/common good. Concupiscence is the habit of seeing people only sexually. It’s the constant temptation of humans to INVERT the order of values! [It doesn’t mean the spiritual is higher than the physical, it means that because we don’t SEE RIGHTLY, we keep separating out values that belong together: e.g., sexual pleasure and a person’s character. What we should be seeing, the real value, the highest value is the TOTAL INTEGRATED BODY-PERSON.

Neither sensuality or carnal desire is a sin. It’s just the raw material for sin or grace! Wojtyla is careful to base all this stuff on Aquinas, “Captain Catholic” himself! It BECOMES sin when YOU IN YOUR MIND [it’s not the other person’s body out there that’s at fault/to blame!!] DISINTEGRATE the body-person. It starts inside. [And that’s why Jesus said you can commit adultery in your heart.]

P. 162
PROCESS:
I see something…

I have a non-sinful reaction…

and then I either feel shame (but don’t need to!) OR I give in to lust (by willing the arousal to be an end itself—and usually it will be outside the context of a loving marriage!)…

and because I want to be justified/refuse to admit I’m not perfect/I’m proud, not humble…
I wallow in shame/guilt OR I blame the person/image/thing outside of me…

and

become discouraged/despair OR give up trying OR live in denial/double-life OR affirm sin as good
(see p. 170!—results: hypocrisy, unchastity!)
INSTEAD: WE HAVE TO ADMIT THAT WE ARE ALL SCREWED UP. NOT BECAUSE I’M SUCH A BAD PERSON, BUT BECAUSE OF THE FALL. THE WHOLE HUMAN RACE IS SCREWED UP.
WELCOME TO THE HUMAN RACE.
BUT WE ARE ALSO REDEEMED. WE CAN OVERCOME LUST WITH THE GRACE OF GOD.
BUT IT’S NOT EASY. LIFE-LONG TASK/CHALLENGE/BATTLE.

[We have to realize that our interior life is sooo important. Everything starts there. We need purity of heart. We need to will what God wills. Love what God wills. Monica Ashour, TOB evangelizer, puts it this way: We need to work on our purity of heart and then figure out how we will express that through our bodies.]

p. 162—Even if we strongly will not to lust, we CAN’T will not to feel!! And the body will RESIST your attempts to quell/channel arousal!

Being ASEXUAL is NOT purity of heart! We ARE sexual beings, and it’s good and it’s the way we’re made and what God wants for us. It’s how we “are,” how we “be.”

Women tend to put the emotional feelings first. But feelings CAN even be INIMICAL to truth in behavior. “What is pleasant must always be good” is not true! Is your will intent on unconditional pleasure? What’s your goal?
[So what should we be pursuing? Truth, Goodness, Beauty: JESUS TRUTH, WAY, LIFE.]

p. 170--“To be chaste means having a transparent attitude toward the person of the other sex.” “Chastity is often understood as blind inhibition of sex….so we push sex drive down into the subconscious where it’s going to EXPLODE.” –BJP2G (BJP2G uses the word "explode" and "explosion" TWICE.)

“This is when we see chastity as primarily negative! But it’s primarily a positive YES of which some ‘no’s’ are a consequence.” “Sex alone is allowed to reign supreme as the highest value.”

“Chastity is a long term integration of, not denial, of body-sex.”

Chastity=integration of body and soul.
Purity=seeing the glory of God in the human body.

In Eastern Church, they pray over and over during the marriage ceremony for “a chaste marriage.” What this means is: see each other as persons always!!!

[70-year-old woman in class: “But our lives our wasted now! I’m so jealous of these younger people! I can’t create a beautiful marriage!” Everyone encouraged her that she always has her interior life, is heading to the heavenly marriage, can pray for younger people, help them with TOB now.]

Men can get very frustrated by provocatively-dressed women. They are being “sexually assaulted” visually. It can be a form of “reverse rape.” Men are trying to respect women or they wouldn’t be angry about provocatively-dressed women. Women sometimes want that power over men to make them lust, make them fall, even though they deny it. Why make it harder for men to respect you? Why put men “in the occasions of sin”? Many women are also just clueless or in denial about the effect that the sight of women’s bodies have on men.

Comedian David Chappelle said: When women dress provocatively but pretend they don’t want men to look at them or say anything to them or approach them, it’s like dressing up like a cop and then telling people when they come to you for help: “Oh, but I’m not a cop.”

Q: Does virtue get easier?
A: There should be less effort of the will, but there’s always new levels and challenges, and we can’t let our guard down. But it all starts with understanding what’s happening (TRUTH) and willing (WAY) our goal (LIFE)!

The New Evangelization is telling people who they are, what God wants to give them, what He is giving them, what they can have, what God wants them to have AND HOW TO GET THERE.

PICKING UP SECOND SATURDAY IN SEPTEMBER: page 174