The author of this book, reprinted recently, is a professor of the John Paul II Institute for Studies in Marriage and the Family in Washington DC, so is well qualified for her task: to provide an introduction to the riches of the Holy Father’s development of Catholic teaching on marriage. This itself is a challenging task for the Pope is a formidable thinker and the Christian anthropology he has developed is the fruit of many different elements: his early life under the dehumanising regimes of Nazism and communism; his pastoral experience as a priest and bishop; his philosophical and theological training; and his participation in the Second Vatican Council. It is a tribute to the author’s clarity and skill that such a complex intellectual position is lucidly compressed in 274 pages.

They make compelling, if not always easy, reading. Central to John Paul II’s new anthropology is the dignity of the human person, redeemed by Christ. In a long series of Wednesday catecheses in the 1980s, the meaning and implications of this dignity, reflected by men and women in marriage, has been developed and explained. Permeating the Holy Father’s thinking is Humanae Vitae, Pope Paul VI’s prophetic encyclical on married love. The Pope has recognised, perhaps more acutely than his contemporaries, that post-modern man, having rejected post-Enlightenment rationality, requires a new kind of discourse, or language, on the meaning of personhood and the nuptial relationship. Thus he has articulated a ‘theology of the body’ through long meditation on its ‘nuptial meaning’.

This has built on the work of his predecessors, Leo XIII, who defended marriage against the threat of divorce, and Popes Pius XI and Paul VI, who responded to the threat of artificial birth control. John Paul II has deepened and widened their theological teaching. Contemporary man, far from God, suffers from ‘alienation’; what transforms him and restores him to the original state God planned for him, is communio personarum; as the author states, ‘The couple are called to reread the language of the body in truth and live their married life as a ‘communion of persons.’

The Pope’s approach places the emphasis, not on the sin of concupiscence that followed the Fall as St Augustine does, nor on procreation alone as the end of marriage, but on the nuptial meaning of the body through man’s Redemption. His chief sources for his reflections are significant Scriptural passages, especially Genesis, the Song of Songs and St Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians.

His reading and interpretations of these key texts is so stimulating, insightful and creative that they will surely be debated and reflected on for decades to come. The author is right to describe it as essentially a ‘new vision’. Her title takes up the title of John Paul II’s own book, Crossing the Threshold of Hope, and demonstrates how this ‘hope’ can fruitfully be reflected in Christian marriage, lived with mutual love, respect and bodily integrity.

The book is divided into two parts: Part I traces and explains papal thinking and Part II draws on extensive research into the practice of natural family planning and examines the modern background to the current 'alienation' which has called forth so profound and rich a theological response. No small part in this sad story has been played by the contraceptive pill which, contrary to the facile optimism with which it was initially embraced, has only succeeded in further dehumanising the relations between the sexes.

Behind ‘the pill’ lies the Malthusians, who want to limit the family’s size; the eugenists, who want to eliminate those children who do not reach a certain standard; the feminists, who wish to prevent or abort children who interfere with their autonomy; and the sexual radicals, who want pleasure without fear of pregnancy.

John Paul II’s anthropology recognises that human beings are biological, emotional, cognitive, social and spiritual entities, who yearn for holistic growth and integrity. Men and women are seen as equal in dignity and as complementary. Although this was implicit in his predecessors’ teaching, the Pope has carried their formulations radically forward and given them a more comprehensive resonance. The vocation of celibacy ‘for the sake of the kingdom of heaven’ - seen as man’s original virginal solitude before God – is integral to the Pope’s vision and itself complements the vocation of matrimony.

This short review cannot remotely do justice either to this book or to the rewards of studying in depth the Holy Father’s teaching on married love. This task is urgent, both by theologians and at diocesan level, so that Catholic couples can relearn the dignity and glory of married life, lived as their Redeemer intended. As the author observes, ‘only by truly living the marital covenant in its twin dimensions of unity and fecundity can a true communion of persons come about.’ John Paul II, referring to Humanae Vitae, has stated, ‘We are in the front line of a lively battle for the dignity of man.’ In this battle Catholics cannot sit on the fence or give only a qualified assent (‘loyal dissent’). Too much is at stake. In his Letter to Families , the Pope said, ‘I speak with the power of his [Christ’s] truth…’. He does indeed, and we need to listen.

© 2004 Francis Phillips

Theotokos Catholic Books - Book Reviews Section - www.theotokos.org.uk