Rev. Richard M. Hogan, The Human Body: a sign of dignity and a gift, Cincinnati, The Couple to Couple League, 2005, 40 pp booklet.
Pope John Paul II produced the Theology of the Body (TOB) in a series of 129 lectures between 1979 and 1984. In this booklet Father Richard Hogan applies his interpretation of the TOB to natural family planning and sexual morality. Our review serves the purpose of these blogs which is to discuss matters related to natural family planning including publications.
Disclosure. This review is critical, so by way of disclosure a few comments are in order. It will become clear to any reader that Fr. Richard Hogan and I are not members of a mutual admiration society. In 2006 Fr. Hogan used his status as a public person to twice publicly dismiss the covenant theology of sexuality that I pioneered. He called it deductive, objective and principled and therefore irrelevant in today’s world of inductive thinking and subjectivism. (I have not seen him criticize John Paul II for incorporating the key concept of the covenant theology into his 1994 Letter to Families.) On December 5, 2006 and again on April 20, 2007 I wrote Fr. Hogan by email for an explanation of his negative judgment but never received a reply. It is my understanding that this booklet is required reading for candidate teachers in the CCL NFP program. In my opinion it is highly inadequate for NFP teacher training, and I will elaborate the reasons for that negative judgment in this review as it unfolds.
Father Hogan is not only an author but is also a member of the CCL Board of Directors. In this booklet, Fr. Hogan several times concludes his treatment of a sinful activity with the sentence, “[This behavior] violates both human dignity and the wondrous vocation of love given to all of us as images of God.” Fr. Hogan was at the Board meeting on December 7, 2003, Pearl Harbor Day. It was at that meeting that Sheila and I received treatment that we believe “violates both human dignity and the wondrous vocation of love given to all of us as images of God.” That played a big part in our decision to resign from the Board of the organization that we had founded 32 years previously. There is much more, but that’s enough to indicate that we are not in a positive relationship, and it is possible that this may color my analysis. You will have to judge for yourself. If you want to see if I am taking anything out of context or otherwise being unfair, you are welcome to obtain a copy of the booklet from its publisher.
The first thing a reviewer will notice is that The Human Body does not list an ecclesiastical “permission to publish”, formerly called an Imprimatur. That’s unfortunate because a good ecclesiastical reader can raise questions, ask for qualifications on statements, and generally help make a work better.
The first paragraph of the booklet is somewhat mysterious. Fr. Hogan writes, “…the thought of the Church on human sexuality, marriage, and family life has undergone a profound development since … Humanae Vitae … in 1968. This development is reflected in the Second Vatican Council…” Vatican II concluded in 1965. How do documents of 1965 reflect something not produced until three years later? They don’t, but perhaps they anticipated it. On the other hand, the Theology of the Body of John Paul II was certainly a reflection of what he helped to write during the Council some 15 years or so previously.
In my opinion, any discussion of the papal theology of the body is seriously incomplete without the following direct quotation from section 24 of Gaudium et Spes (The Church in the Modern World):
“For He [the Lord Jesus] implied a certain likeness between the union of the divine Persons, and in the union of God’s sons in truth and charity. This likeness reveals that man, who is the only creature on earth which God willed for itself, cannot fully find himself except through a sincere gift of himself.” (Emphasis added.) The footnote to that sentence refers to Luke 17:33. That text reads: “Whoever seeks to gain his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life will preserve it” (RSV, Catholic edition). That text has parallel texts in Mt 10:39 and 16:25; Mk 8:35; Lk 9:24, and Jn 12.25. The passage in Luke 9:24 is more Christo-centric: “For whoever would save his life will lose it; and whoever loses his life for my sake, he will save it.” (Emphasis added.) The same is true for Mt 10:39 and 16:25, and Mk 8:35.
Nowhere in the booklet does Fr. Hogan refer to Gaudium et Spes n. 24, and thus nowhere does he tie the papal theology of the body back to Sacred Scripture through GS n. 24. How can one understand the papal TOB without the scriptural foundation that gives it force? Count that as one reason for the inadequacy of this booklet.
Fr. Hogan completes his first paragraph by telling us that “The theology of the body shows us that we should never use ourselves as things.” There’s no argument about using ourselves or others as things, but such a teaching is simply part of the social doctrine of the Church, and Fr. Hogan provides no reference for it in the TOB.
He continues this theme on the second page. “The most important principle of the theology of the body is that human beings—body and soul—have a dignity and value unparalleled and unequaled on earth.” Who says it’s the “most important principle” of the TOB? Did the Pope ever say that? If so, he should have been quoted. It is disturbing that Fr. Hogan puts forth his opinion as fact in a booklet intended for non-theologians. Count that as a second inadequacy of this booklet.
I’m not sure how someone decides what is the “most important principle” of the papal TOB, but I take issue with Fr. Hogan’s interpretation. First of all, the dignity and the unique value of the human person is a traditional teaching of the Church. It is the basis of all its great social teaching and has been repeated in the social encyclicals starting with Rerum Novarum by Pope Leo XIII in 1891 up to the present time. We certainly did not need the TOB to remind us of this basic teaching.
Second, since we are dealing in the area of opinion, I suggest that the most important principle in the Pope’s TOB might be his development of the theology of gift as applied to love, marriage and sexuality. This is clearly a continuation of what he had helped to write in Gaudium et Spes 24 previously quoted, but it does not stand out in a first reading. I read the various lectures that make up the TOB as they appeared or were collected into small paperbacks, and I was one of the many who had difficulty reading them. The papal biographer George Weigel encouraged me a bit by saying that the TOB is very tough reading, and he helped me considerably when he summed up the entire TOB as “the theology of gift.” That had not come through to me in my personal reading. I was somehow seeing only the trees and not the forest, but Weigel helped me see the big picture, the forest. Sometimes a commentary can be helpful.
It could be argued that we didn’t need the Theology of the Body in the light of the gospel texts and the teaching of Vatican II. So why did John Paul II write it or what is special about the TOB? It seems to me that what is unique in the TOB is its application of the gospel texts and Lumen Gentium 24 to the marriage relationship and especially to the marriage act.
Perhaps John Paul II was hinting at this in the very last paragraph of the last of the TOB lectures. “…to face the questions raised by Humanae Vitae, especially in theology, to formulate these questions and seek their reply, it is necessary to find that biblical-theological sphere to which we allude when we speak of the redemption of the body and the sacramentality of marriage. In this sphere are found the answers to the perennial questions in the conscience of men and women, and also to the difficult questions of our modern world concerning marriage and procreation.” (Emphasis added.)
And thus ended the papal Theology of the Body.
I think the emphasized statement above is important. The papal TOB is a long commentary on Sacred Scripture and the Tradition of the Church. It is sprinkled with biblical texts, but it is a commentary and it does not have the teaching authority of either Scripture or Tradition. When people write books and booklets about the papal TOB, they are writing commentaries on a commentary, and these necessarily have less authority then the original commentary. Sometimes they might be just vehicles for expressing one’s opinions. The same applies to commentaries such as this about one of those booklets.
That’s all for this week. There will be more next week as we move into page 3 of Fr. Hogan’s booklet where he writes about “using.”
John F. Kippley
Sex and the Marriage Covenant: A Basis for Morality (Ignatius)
Natural Family Planning: The Question-Answer Book, a short, easy-to-read, free, downloadable e-book available at
www.NFPandmore.org