Short Introduction to John Paul II's
Theology of the Body
In his pastoral and scholarly work Karol Wojtyla who was elected Pope, and canonised Saint, identified the Marxist strategy to undermine Roman Catholicism in Poland. Positions of authority and power engineered by Communist government promoted abortion as a form of birth-control justified by an atheistic-inspired ideology. The aim was to bring Poland’s youth, the future generations, under the complete control of a godless state. An anti-God morality targeting young adults would secure the dominance of a fundamentally atheistic political system.
Wojtyla studied, taught, and preached in this politcally anti-God environment. Gifted with the prophetic vision that would serve his papacy, Wojtyla developed a philosophical and theological anthropology that later marked his papacy. He taught at the Catholic Univeristy of Lublin where he published his first major ethical work, Love and Responsibility (1960). Wojtyla’s studies of the Carmelite mystic, St. John of the Cross under the direction of the Dominican, Fr. Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, brought Wojtyla’s personalism into a interiorised understanding of subjective experience in relation to God, and others.
Elected Pope, starting 1979 John Paul II delivered at his Wednesday audiences a series of 129 catecheses published as the “theology of the body.” These catecheses related over five years John Paul II’s theological anthroplogy: building on the philosophy of Saint Thomas Aquinas, the school of philosophy known as “Personalism,” and Carmelite mysticism. John Paul II takes the objective truths of Paul VI, Humanae Vitae, and applies them the subjective experience of the person, desiring, loving, suffering. Like Paul VI before him, John Paul II exercised a prophetic vision that calls us to live human relations as self-giving, sacrificial, and ultimately sacred.
Wojtyla studied, taught, and preached in this politcally anti-God environment. Gifted with the prophetic vision that would serve his papacy, Wojtyla developed a philosophical and theological anthropology that later marked his papacy. He taught at the Catholic Univeristy of Lublin where he published his first major ethical work, Love and Responsibility (1960). Wojtyla’s studies of the Carmelite mystic, St. John of the Cross under the direction of the Dominican, Fr. Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, brought Wojtyla’s personalism into a interiorised understanding of subjective experience in relation to God, and others.
Elected Pope, starting 1979 John Paul II delivered at his Wednesday audiences a series of 129 catecheses published as the “theology of the body.” These catecheses related over five years John Paul II’s theological anthroplogy: building on the philosophy of Saint Thomas Aquinas, the school of philosophy known as “Personalism,” and Carmelite mysticism. John Paul II takes the objective truths of Paul VI, Humanae Vitae, and applies them the subjective experience of the person, desiring, loving, suffering. Like Paul VI before him, John Paul II exercised a prophetic vision that calls us to live human relations as self-giving, sacrificial, and ultimately sacred.