Reflection on April 8, 1981

https://www.ewtn.com/library/PAPALDOC/jp2tb58.htm

I don’t know if I have ever thought of our bodies as a task given to us by God. They are a gift from God that we are to respect as stewards, they are not ours to do whatever we want, and so in that light I can see that they establish a task that we are to work out in this life. A way to accomplish that task, the way that we are given the greatest example of, and the way that SJPII would say we learn the most about being human, is to make yourself a gift. If the body is a task, it is accomplished through the gift of self.

When you look at your body as an organism, you are only looking at it from one side. You will treat your body as an object, an “object of manipulation”. We can see this in the world very clearly. When I read this, I thought of the increasing number of stories we are hearing about children, sometimes very young, being allowed to call themselves he when they are a she, or vice versa. Not only is this a manipulation, it is something that a growing number are claiming to be healthy and liberating. If our body is a task, and specifically our gender is part of that task, given by God, what does it mean to try and change that. That is where the world is going. That is treating the body as an object, an object that can be manipulated in any way we choose. It stems from the same attitude that sees a fetus as merely a clump of cells, or an elderly person as a waste of space, time, and money.

SJPII does not discount science, and neither has the Catholic Church. You will never find a document that doesn’t fully understand that the study of science can give human life many benefits, that God created science and uncovering those mysteries is to be encouraged. But science must be pursued in unity with spiritual guidance, “otherwise, such knowledge can have quite the opposite effect”. It becomes obvious when you look at what the world is doing to the body without guidance.

I wondered while reading this, was Vatican II (1962-1965) and Humane Vitae (1968) too late? Was the boulder already heading down the mountain too fast and too big to stop? What if we had those in the 1920’s, when Eugenics and contraception really started to bubble up? Humane Vitae came as a surprise too many because of what the world’s opinion was on contraception and life. The pendulum had already swung, and too many, Humane Vitae confirmed the Catholic Church as a stale and ancient religion living in the past and not able to survive in the modern world. (sound familiar) I do wonder if we will have a Humane Vitae on marriage and homosexuality in the next 5-10 years and whether, like Humane Vitae, many will expect a changing of Catholic teaching and be surprised when the Church sticks to its teaching and if people will ignore it as confirmation of a stale and ancient religion living in the past and not able to survive in the modern world. You wonder if that future Humane Vitae has not been written 10 years ago if things might not have been more affected.

The Church’s reaction time seems very slow. On one hand I understand because they want to get it right, on the other, it seems like they miss the opportunity to be affective. When you look at the contraception issue and Humane Vitae, add the sex abuse scandal and the slow reaction to that, there are 2 or 3 generations that see a Church missing the ball on dealing with a world that is spiraling down a drain. If we count the homosexual push, go back to 1920 and the eugenics push, we are talking about 100 years of moral decay that the Church has been late in standing up and really voicing its opinion and shining its light. All that seems a pretty harsh opinion and to be fair, the teachings of the Church on such issues have not changed and have always been there for those that want to look. But new statements clearly establishing that authority seemed to be lacking and the world drifts further and further away.

Words I looked up.

Pedagogy - the art or science of teaching; education; instructional methods