He then concludes by demonstrating how his study provides a new, winning explanation of Church teaching on sexual morality. Somehow the human body makes this eternal mystery of love visible. Specifically through the beauty of sexual difference and our call to union.
As St. The biblical creation stories use symbolic language to help us understand deep truths about ourselves. The point is that human sexual union differs radically from the mating of animals. How did he know that she too was a person called to love? Her naked body revealed the mystery! Yes, the Pope says if we live according to the truth of our sexuality, we fulfill the very meaning of life.
What is it? How did Jesus love us? God created sexual desire as the power to love as he loves. And this is how the first couple experienced it. What about our experience of the body in the resurrection? It means it will be fulfilled. As a sacrament, marriage is only on earthly sign of the heavenly reality. This means that the body, as an integral part and visible expression of the person, can never be treated as an object or used as a means to an end.
According to John Paul II, "we cannot consider the body as an objective reality outside of man's personal subjectivity. This fundamental theme reflects our vocation as health care professionals to love and to respond to others with charity, the principle of Catholic social teaching that is at the heart of the church's social doctrine.
Charity is love received and given as a gift. Caring, that is, charity, finds its fullest expression when health care professionals become a "sincere gift" for others and promote healing by offering themselves as a gift and by receiving others as a gift entrusted to their care. As John Paul II explains,. In fact, the gift reveals, so to speak, a personal characteristic of personal existence , or even of the very essence of the person [which is realized] only by existing ' with someone ' — and put even more deeply and completely, by existing ' for someone.
The human person is created as a gift and called to be a gift to others. This vocation of self-giving is inscribed in our nature as human persons and described by John Paul II as the "spousal meaning" of the body, that is, to be a gift to others and to receive others as a gift. This spousal meaning of the body applies to all authentically human relationships and interactions. Health care professionals offer themselves as a gift to their patients by engaging in relationships characterized by caring and sensitivity, extending their knowledge and expertise to promote healing.
Patients, by allowing themselves to be cared for and entrusting themselves to health care professionals, offer themselves as a gift, giving their vulnerability and revealing their sickness, infirmity and weakness.
According to John Paul II, the vocation of all human persons is ultimately "the vocation to love. Love, as a sincere gift of self, is what gives the life and freedom of the person their truest meaning.
This respect for human dignity is manifested in and through the body. In Theology of the Body , John Paul II challenges us to respect human dignity by recognizing the body as a "witness to Love " and by speaking the truth with our own bodies as we provide health care that honors, protects and promotes human dignity. This means that health care professionals are called to be guardians of human dignity, servants of human dignity and witnesses to human dignity.
All health care professionals are called to be guardians of human life and, therefore, to be guardians of human dignity. As guardians of human dignity, health care professionals are called to be vigilant advocates for those persons whose dignity is threatened, compromised or violated because of factors including, but not limited to, weakness, disability, illness, age, economic status, culture, ethnicity or perceived lack of quality of life. Health care professionals are also called to advocate for those who are at risk for dehumanizing procedures and technologies that are performed under the guise of health care e.
As guardians of human dignity, health care professionals must act to change those aspects of social structures that detract from health and well-being by promoting a culture of life that ensures all persons have access to health care which respects their dignity from the moment of conception to the point of natural death.
Health care professionals must also distinguish themselves "by service to and advocacy for those people whose social condition puts them at the margins of our society and makes them particularly vulnerable to discrimination" 16 and work to ensure that our health care delivery system provides adequate health care for the poor, the uninsured and the underinsured. As health care professionals, it may become commonplace to assess the body of our patients without fully appreciating how the body reveals the person.
We may fail to recognize the incredible privilege it is to care for others who are exquisitely vulnerable, whether because of illness, age, inability to speak English, lack of health care insurance or disability. How we guard the dignity of those entrusted to our care ultimately reflects our own dignity and our own willingness to enter into a communion of persons with our patients as servants of human dignity.
This patient-centered approach promotes a healing relationship that expresses solidarity with the individual patient, family and community, as well as with other health care professionals engaged in caring for the patient. This patient-centeredness facilitates optimal health outcomes by involving patients and those close to them in decisions about their care. Patient-centeredness also supports the respectful, efficient, safe and well-coordinated transition of the patient through all levels of care and across all health care settings.
As servants of human dignity, health care professionals are also called to be servants of life. By serving those entrusted to our care and reverencing the body as the visible manifestation of the person, we are serving the God who is the Creator and Redeemer of all life, in whose image we have been created and in whose service we have been called. As health care professionals, it is instructive to consider the way Jesus served others and respected human dignity in and through his own body: using touch and speech, responding to the expressed needs of the person, extending his healing touch to those who were considered "unclean" and "untouchable" and healing those who were among the most neglected, vulnerable and powerless members of society.
By collaborating with others, Jesus promoted the dignity of those who were healed as well as those who participated in his healing ministry. The service of health care is an act of the love of God, shown in the loving care for the person. It is an actualization of the healing love of Christ. At the same time it is an expression of love for Christ, for Christ is the sick person who assumes the face of one who is in need of our care: "You did it to me.
As witnesses to human dignity, health care professionals embody Christ's healing compassion in the world. Bearing witness to human dignity means speaking the truth with love. This means that health care professionals choose words that express and promote the transcendent dignity of the human person throughout the lifespan and refuse to use language that denies the humanity of the vulnerable and weak. The words we use to communicate with patients, families, communities and colleagues have the potential to confirm and affirm the dignity of those we care for, especially those who are "at risk for being dismissed as having 'a life unworthy of life.
Our language needs to bear witness to the uniqueness and inestimable worth of every person. Our voices need to bear witness to human dignity for those who have no voice and for those whose voice has been silenced.
In the very act of providing health care, we bear witness to human dignity and the gift of life in all its stages of growth and development. John Paul II's Theology of the Body offers health care professionals a pedagogy of the body that expresses this mystery of Christ revealed in the essential unity of the human person's mind, body and spirit.
This pedagogy of the body enables health care professionals to know the gift of God revealed in themselves and in others as they "share in carrying forth God's life-giving and healing work.
It is the body that enables the health care professional to be a gift to others and to receive the gift of others in caring relationships that promote health, healing and wholeness. Precisely stated, the essential themes addressed in John Paul II's Theology of the Body reflect the gift of our creation in the image and likeness of God.
John Paul II's integrated vision of the human person. The human body has a specific meaning, making visible an invisible reality, and is capable of revealing answers regarding fundamental questions about us and our lives:.
John Paul II between and His reflections are based on Scripture and contain a vision of the human person truly worthy of man. Emphasizing the theme of love as self-gift, they counteract societal trends which view the body as an object of pleasure or as a machine for manipulation.
Instead, the body shows us the call and gives us the means to love in the image of God. His earlier book Love and Responsibility, and other papal documents, such as Familiaris Consortio and Mulieris Dignitatem also touch on these and related themes. John Paul II encourages a true reverence for the gift of our sexuality and challenges us to live it in a way worthy of our great dignity as human persons. His theology is not only for young adults or married couples, but for all ages and vocations, since it sums up the true meaning of being a person.
Throughout this series, Christopher continually stresses the beauty and possibility of truly living as we were called to live in the beginning, as persons made in the image and likeness of God. Listen now on CatholiCasts. CatholiCasts offers hours of talks on the Theology of the Body, marriage, family, and single life, that can be listened to online. Text of St. The Vatican Contains the texts of many of the Papal documents and St. Critiquing art, music, film, television, and literature, interrupting mass media influence, and questioning the sanity of our consumerist lifestyle and debunking the cultural myths that have undercut human dignity, all but destroyed the notions of virtue and morality, and slowly eroded our appetite for transcendence.
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