Cosmos-Liturgy-Sex

The family reunion went very well. It was great to see so many show up. It had been 16 years since our last reunion so a lot had changed and there was a lot to catch up on. Family events like these remind me of the truth that God created us as gifts to one another. But that is a topic for another time. A couple of days ago I mentioned that I thought John Paul the Great’s apparent neglect of men and fatherhood in his papal writings was just that, apparent. Rather, that he implicitly addressed men in his writing on women and motherhood. In fact, in some of his writings on women, he directly addresses men. So why would he talk to men about men and fatherhood so obliquely?

Kate (see comments on previous post) is correct that in his theology of the body catecheses, JP the Great did give balanced treatment to men and women. I was in fact tempted, when I first engaged this issue, to give him a pass based upon his theology of the body. However, I soon realized that even in those catecheses he did not treat the issue of men and fathers in the explicit way that he did women and mothers, especially in Mulieris dignitatem. Still, I believe that he was not oblivious to the crisis of fatherhood and the problems of the absentee father. He makes mention of this problem in Mulieris dignitatem. Rather, I think that he finds the crisis of fatherhood to be a symptom with deeper roots than men just starting to abandon their vocation as husbands and fathers. The clue, I suspect, is given in Gratissimam sane (Letter to Families). In it, he says that the problem of the modern age is a crisis of truth manifested primarily in a crisis of concepts about the human person. This evokes Lumen gentium which says that when God is forgotten man turns against himself. I believe that men and fathers abandoning their roles is, for JP the Great, further down in the line of dominos. The collapse of family life (and therefore society) which we are experiencing begins with all of us forgetting who we are as human persons.

It is clear to most commentators that JP the Great indeed, spent much time discussing the truth of the human person and especially the human person as a sexual being. In his book, Crossing the Threshold of Hope, he provides further insights about what he sees affected first by this loss of understanding of the human person. In Threshold, he says that women in particular have been the victims of thinking which has turned people into utilitarian means; means of economic production but also for pleasure. Now it is not that modernity is the first time that this has ever happened, but it does seem that it is only recently that pornography has become “mainstream.” You no longer have to sneak out to the seedy adult bookstore to get it. The internet and cable TV bring it to your home; what used to be very close to pornography is even on broadcast TV nowadays.

Unfortunately, with our distorted sense of freedom, women choosing to subject themselves to pornography is seen as an exercise of rights. But even the widespread acceptance of pornography and the blind eye turned by many governments to sexual trafficking and slavery, even of young girls and boys, are later manifestations of the loss of sense of the dignity of the human person. While there are many other reasons for this loss of the sense of human dignity, what has made it so critical for the family begins with the oppression of women and the response by many feminists who have rejected their femininity as a weakness which can be exploited. This has had a widespread affect on the way that women and the vocation to motherhood is now perceived. It is no longer a sacred vocation but a source of oppression, or at least a necessary evil which threatens to take women away from their real fulfillment in public life. In Mulieris dignitatem, the late Holy Father emphasized the danger associated with women trying to imitate masculine modes of being. He recognized that this could deform and damage a woman. But he did not say that the public sphere belonged to men; far from it. Rather, he said that women’s gifts are needed in the public sphere, but society needs to be able to accommodate this while at the same time allow women to devote themselves to being mothers.

So what does this have to do with men flying to coop? While he does not make the tie explicit, again in Mulieris dignitatem he discusses the fact that men learn their fatherhood from their wives. In a broader sense, they learn to be men from their wives and mothers who show them feminine love. David Blankenhorn, in his book, Fatherless America, presents sociological data which suggests this is in fact the case. Men are essentially being allowed to be cads by women who allow them to use them as sexual objects, many times in the mistaken notion that sex before marriage will draw the man closer when in fact it does the exact opposite. Of course this is a necessary simplification but the problem starts here.

John Paul, in Mulieris dignitatem, does explicitly say that women have the primary role in demanding that men recognize them and their feminine gifts for what they are—necessary complements to men’s gifts for a healthily functioning family and society. Thus, the late Pope’s writings seem focused at helping us to see the inherent dignity of the human person as made in the image of God. Next to see that our sex, as female and male, are integral to our dignity and our identity as human persons. Also we must recognize that the gift of sex is just that, a gift, not a toy to be used for selfish or profane purposes. I believe that his point is that to fix the problem of wayward men is for women to recognize their unique role as mothers (including spiritual mothers) and their special gift of femininity, as their unique genius in participating with God in creation and His plan of salvation. They must demand that men recognize and respect this dignity and not follow us into the lie that sex is just another form of recreation. This is something that men are more prone to promote than are women, by the way.

However, I must point out that in giving women the leading role he does not say that the current state of affairs (pun intended) is entirely their fault. Perhaps it is even more the fault of men than women. But that does not matter. What does is the road to recovery and that must start with recognizing who we are and why we are here. But, perhaps JP the Great does give too much credit to us men in supposing that we might get the point without things being laid out explicitly for us . . . after all we are largely to blame for letting things get this bad . . .