Loving as God Loves.

The love between husband and wife is similar to the love Christ feels for his Church. This is very difficult to understand in a world that is more selfish, more individualist, and more godless. I am the first one to admit that I have to reflect and pray daily on this mystery to understand it. Loving as God loves is a goal, an aspiration, that we can only achieve through prayers, sacrifice and selfless love for the other person. There is so much suffering that we could avoid in the world if only we understood God's plans for our bodies. I am not implying that marriage with the person you love will be suffering-free, what I am implying is that "no effort is big for those who love." Why do you think couples divorce so much? They do because they find a way out of their commitment. They do not see their marriage as a Holy institution where suffering and sacrifice are necessary. Many couples decide to separate to "fix" their marriage. That is like taking your heart out of your body to treat a heart problem. Pulling your heart out of your body is not only unnecessary but lethal. A marriage that was blessed by God must fight from within the institution of marriage to work out the issues.

It is easier said than done. In order to be willing to save a marriage the couple must love as God loves. This statement begs the question: How does God loves? St Paul in his first letters to the Corinthians, Chapter 13th, provides a description of love that is a pillar in our Christian doctrine: "If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing. Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears."

God does not put conditions to His love. It does not matter how many times we fail Him, God still loves us. It does not matter how sinful we are, God still loves us. When we offend God, he always gives us the opportunity to amend our faults and reconcile with Him. Our relationship with God has ups and downs, it is a bumpy road, however God does not judge us for our weaknesses but rather loves us for who we are. That being said, if husband and wife love each other the way God loves us, then no challenge would be strong enough as to dissolve a marriage. Let's think about it. It's our call, it is our mission, to love every day as God loves.

Original Innocence and The Responsibility of Knowledge

Carol Wojtyla taught us that "if creation is a gift given to man, then its fullness and deepest dimension is determined by grace, that is, by participation in the inner life of Christ himself, in his holiness." This holiness is the foundation of the original innocence. Original innocence belongs to the man's spiritual state in the beginning; this state of original innocence went away when man and woman sinned. Original innocence can be understood as the heart of the human will. Carol Wojtyla emphasized that "original innocence" is the "original righteousness." Original innocence is a sword for us Christians! Wojtyla argued that "original innocence is a particular purity of heart preserving interior faithfulness to the gift according to the spousal meaning of the body." Original innocence in the participation in the eternal and permanent act of God's will. As we can see, original innocence is linked to righteousness, God's will and purity of heart. Can we regain those gifts God granted us in the beginning? Of course we can! Otherwise Jesus wouldn't have called us to be saints and perfect! It takes prayers, it takes abstinence, self control, discipline of life and strength of spirit. Original innocence suggests an inner proportion of spirituality, sensitivity and affectivity. Original innocence is the result of the gifts of the spirit.

In the account of the creation we can see how man was acquiring knowledge of everything around him. He was making sense of the world that God has given him, in other words he was getting his consciousness of the creation and self consciousness of his nature. Because of this knowledge he could name the animals, pair them, he realized he was alone, he knew that Eve was flesh of his flesh, and eventually he realized he was naked and his intended nature suddenly changed. Knowledge has always been a privilege. The love for knowledge has revolutionized the world that we live in. TOB is a precious form of knowledge. It's the knowledge of our bodies and our dignity as God's children created to the image of the Trinity. Knowledge has the power to transform our conscience and change our hearts! The absence of knowledge is ignorance. I understand why Jesus said: "Father forgive them because they know not what they are doing." Jesus forgives because he, himself is love. He also forgives because he understand the lack of the knowledge that these people had. Knowledge is also a big responsibility. I am not talking about the knowledge that I acquire at work or in my doctoral studies, I am talking about the knowledge of God.....specially the knowledge of good and evil which is the first experience of knowledge in the beginning. We have knowledge of good and evil. Because we have this knowledge we have more responsibility.

Freedom in the Beginning

The passage of the scriptures that describes the creation of man can be considered an authentic Christian Anthropology. This anthropology becomes clear in the theological context of male and female created to the image of the God. We are called to live and develop the true sense of our bodies not as mere objects for pleasure but as temples...members of the church through the grace of the Holy Spirit. Carol Wojtyla pointed out that man, bears the image of God impressed in the body "from the beginning." I want to quote St Paul: "Only love, in fact, gives the rise to the good and is well pleased with the good."

In TOB we talk about gift because the creation was a gift! Wojtyla explained that "creation is a gift because man appears in it, who, as an "image of God" is able to understand the very meaning of the gift in the call from nothing to existence." Creation is a gift because when God saw that Adam was lonely He created Eve to accomplish the original unity between man and woman he intended. The Trinity exclaimed "It is not good that the man should be alone" because alone the man does not completely realize his essence. Communion of persons is living in a reciprocal "for" in a relationship of reciprocal gift. Wojtyla then concludes that "this relationship is precisely the fulfillment of man's original solitude!"

Freedom! I am so passionate about the “freedom to be” that an old friend mentioned to me a while ago, in fact I decided to write what he wrote to me in that occasion:

"...God knows that we are not perfect and we needed someone to follow to achieve freedom so He sent Jesus who still gave us more rules but not because we are His slaves, but because he loves us and He wants us to be free to be what we are called to be and praise God Freely in Heaven. So, when I said freedom, I wasn't necessarily talking about "freedom from" but "freedom to"... to be what we are called to be.” I mention freedom here because the gift of ourselves is totally free. In the original nakedness and in the original innocence Wojtyla would emphasize the "freedom from shame" between man and woman in the beginning when they were naked. The freedom of shame can be explained as the as the full freedom from all constraint and distortions about the body and sex. Our bodies have the power to express love. When our bodies become love then we become a gift for each other. Once we become a gift for each other we will have fulfilled the essence of our existence.

Wojtyla argued that "the root of the original nakedness free from shame must be sought precisely in the integral truth about man." This absence of shame is the freedom that makes possible and qualifies the spousal meaning of the body. They did not feel shame during the original nakedness because man and woman -in a state of original innocence- were totally free to be what they were called to be: bodies to the image of God! I can say without fears to be wrong that during the original nakedness Adam and Eve were interiorly free from the constraint of their bodies and of sex, they were free with the freedom of the gift, and they were able to enjoy the whole truth, the whole self evidence, of the human being just as God intended them to be in the creation! Wojtyla wrote a paragraph that deeply touched my heart: "The interior freedom of the gift -the desinterested gift of self- lies at the root of nakedness, then precisely this gift allows both the man and the woman to find each other reciprocally inasmuch as the creator willed each of them for his/her own sake."

Wojtyla continued to say that the human body reveals not only its masculinity or femininity on the physical level but reveals also such a value and such a beauty that goes beyond the simply physical level of sexuality. I want to conclude this idea with the following thoughts: I want to be free to be! If I am free to be what I am called to be it's because I am interiorly free of all distortion about our sexuality. I pray so I can regain my original innocence and I can discover my essence. The freedom to be is very demanding and I love that! We are called to live the highest vocation which is to be holy or constantly aspire, search and pray for our holiness. Would you take this challenge?

Original Solitude, Original Unity and Original Nakedness

God did not create men randomly. He had a plan for men –male and female. Carol Wojtyla focused his audiences on 3 aspects that will give us a clearer context of Theology of the Body. I concluded that Wojtyla referred to the beginning (As Jesus did when questioned by the Pharisees) meaning "as God originally intended." I support the philosophical argument that everything has a purpose in life. Our horrible experiences, our good experiences, our sad moments, our happy moments they all determined the human being we are today. The fact that we are sinner does not mean that we were created to sin. It's totally the opposite, we are created to constantly search for holiness. So if everything has a purpose in life, How could we think God did not create men and women with an original purpose for them? The theological strength of the words "in the beginning" consists of its use by Jesus when asked about marriage according to the law of Moses. Jesus said -"in the beginning...."- twice re-affirming God's original plan for marriage.....so in this context I created the following equation:

Beginning = God's original plan for = God's original intentions for

The first account of the creation of man has a very wide philosophical-theological-anthropological context. Many thinkers has based the reflections on this passage to fully understand the "being and existence" of men. I want to refer to 3 points that make us understand the theological meaning of the beginning: a-) Original Solitude, b-) Original unity and c-) Original nakedness. The scriptures point out that the man was very different from the animals. Even in his state of original innocence the man had "self conscience" that he was different from a horse for example. The scriptures also point out that animals were paired. Adam not only noticed that he was different from the animals, he also noticed that he could not "pair" with any of them. The consciousness of his being and self must have led Adam to realize that he was alone! It is important to understand that the scriptures don't mean that the man was alone. The original solitude must be understood from its deepest meaning and context. The man and the woman would feel alone without each other. It is evident, since the beginning, the relationship between male and female. The original solitude can be understood from an existentialist perspective. Since the moment of his creation the man is in search of his own being. He's looking for his own identity. He wants to understand his existence and his purpose in life. Epistemologically speaking, in his original solitude the man also finds out the "power of knowledge he possesses with respect to the visible world." (By the way, Epistemology is the study of knowledge and its nature). Carol Wojtyla reflected that the man is part of the visible world. And because he's part of the visible world he understands his solitude and that he's a body among bodies! So because of his body the man is aware of his original solitude.

The original unity is explicitly linked to the original solitude. The Trinity said "it's not good that the man should be alone..." because of the conciousness of the original solitude then we understand the original unity. God did not intend to "unite" man with another man. For this purpose he created the woman. The scriptures point out that God made Adam fall asleep and from one of his ribs he created the woman. Why God just did not create the woman out of dust or out of "nothing"? Because God since the "beginning" wanted to express the unity of man and woman. When the man realizes that he is alone then he is aware that he does not want to live his life by or for himself, but instead he needs to share it with somebody of his own kind. Adam's existence stopped being for himself and now it's for him and Eve. Our catholic faith teaches us that husband and woman become one flesh. This unity is expressed in the conjugal act. The conclusion that I get about the original unity is the following: The doctrine of the church about sex does not allow us to remain in the surface of the meaning of the sexual act and it also does not allow us to treat sex outside of the full dimension and meaning of our existence. This communion of persons that our church preaches asks us to see the depth of the unity that man and woman must constitute in the light of the consciousness of their bodies.

The third aspect that I want to share is the Original nakedness. Original nakedness???? The scripture point out -almost intentionally- that Adam and Eve felt ashamed of their nakedness and tried to hide from God. This is only after they sinned and distorted God's original plan for them. Before they sinned, they were naked but they did not feel ashamed. Something changed about their bodies? I don't think so. The consciousness about their bodies was what changed! Our naked bodies represent our dignity as children of God because our bodies were made to the Image of God! We can certainly say that Adam and Eve were in a state of original innocence....or absolute consciousness about their bodies according to God's intended plan for the body. Being ashamed about something is the opposite of being proud about something. Adam and Eve's bodies represented all the dignity God has granted them...but they sinned and now they acquired a new conscience about their bodies. Carol Wojtyla supports this thought by saying that "it is not difficult to understand that nakedness corresponds to that fullness of consciousness of the meaning of the body that comes from the typical perception of the senses (TOB p. 175)." He continues to say that "nakedness signifies the original good of the divine vision." This is because God saw that everything he created was very good! At this point of the book we are still trying to understand the purpose God intended for our bodies. We must totally understand the body to fully understand what the church means when She talks about Mutual self giving of the spouses.

The Gift of "Self"

Carol Wojtyla (I call him like that if he wrote something before he was elected pope in 1978) places the gift of self as the key element of spousal love. This is a key concept....What is that gift? The Self???? What is that? If we asked those questions then we are in the right track to fully understand the sexual revolution proposed by Carol Wojtyla/John Paul II. Before John Paul II the church did not have a deep doctrine about God's plans for human sexuality. The Vatican Council II defined the church as the peoples of God. Even though the church is understood as social entity of millions of members each of us is the church, I mean, "the growth of the church's awareness must take place in the life of the individual persons that constitute it.(TOB, P.81)." So we are individually responsible for our existence and actions. The Vatican Council II was pivotal because the church opened Itself to the world, so it looks at the world and asks each of us the following question: What does it mean to be a believer, a catholic, a member of the church in the context of today's world?

The conciliar fathers were totally aware of the challenges of modernism to religion. The theological debate at the time of the Vatican Council II was very intense because there were two wings: the liberal wing (promimently represented in Swiss theologian Hans Kung) and the right wing which surprisingly for many people ended up perfectly represented in the person of Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger! Joseph Ratzinger was deeply touched by Vatican Council II where he was a Theology advisor. Many post-conciliar theologians focused greatly in the personal experience of the peoples of God for their theological reflections. Many of these modern thinkers considered a dimension of faith never explained before: The faith that must be enriched through our experiences in life! Old school theologians strongly believe that faith is not the subject of human planning or causation....for them faith is an immutable gift from God! BUT men and the church as human community can and must cooperate with the grace of faith and contribute to its enrichment. I personally believe that we are doing this right now. We are "hungry" for enriching our faith. I am looking at myself in a very mystical mirror right now.

Wojtyla is highly influenced by the works of St John of the Cross. He even learned Spanish to read his works and in his doctoral dissertation he quoted Him in Spanish. Wojtyla considers that "human life as whole is directed toward the end of a union of the human person with God through love." Wojtyla, later JP II, discussed about the concept of enrichment of faith and specially the formation of the believer's consciousness. All these reflections departs from the believer's active relationship with God. The analysis of my conscience and the self evaluation of the will that move my actions has led me to the conclusion that it is SO possible to be better! Once we grasp our dignity as persons created to the image of God we participate in the relation of the Son and the Father by the gift of the spirit. A deep knowledge of our self is essential to the understanding of theology of the body. That's why Wojtyla studied:

a-) Francis Bacon and his mechanical view of men and everything that exists.

b-) Rene Descartes and his rational approach to the person

c-) Immanuel Kant and his moral radicalism understood from the duty to moral demands and

d-) Max Scheler -the man of values like I empirically call him- who opposed the personalism of Kant and proposes our personhood from the values perspective.

The first time that somebody mentioned the term Theology of the Body in front of me and briefly explained what it was I wondered: Why a theology of the body if we find all the resources to be saints in every theological reflection not necessarily and exclusively focused on our bodies? (meaning that I thought the scriptures and different ways of theological reflection would accomplish the same ends as theology of the body). Why? If the fathers of the Church clearly defined the church as the peoples of God then the church is integrated by persons. Persons are bodies! The human person is different from the rest of the animals God created. We are rational animals. So the human body can never be reduced to a mere matter. Wojtyla's reflections are outstanding in this field! 30 years ago he argued: "The reason why it is difficult for people in the modern age, and particularly for modern intellectuals, to understand the catholic vision of sex is Biology" Yes! Biology! Biology blinds us and we cannot see the man as the whole -flesh and spirit- but instead we think of the human race as a simple biology reductionism.

This lack of knowledge about our nature leads to a distorted understading of sex. This way of thinking is deeply hammered into the head of our children and we find these wrong teachings in schools, colleges, universities etc. In order to stop this negative trend Wojtyla explains his theology of the body from the meaning of our personhood as intended in the beginning. The original solitude, the original unity, the original nakedness and the conscience about Adam and Eve's nakedness which brought sin and it represented the loss of our dignity as children of God. I love this reflection of Wojtyla about the beginning because then I can quote St Paul: "If for one man sin came into the world, other man brought life into it! Christ is the new Adam!" Jesus restored the dignity that we lost in the beginning. After explaining the nature of our personhood like God intended it to be, Wojtyla's masterpiece about the human person and his analysis of men, sin, concuspiscence etc help us grasp and/or understand what God intended for us as human beings. The third part of JP IIs reflections talk about "the Sacrament." The language of the body ends up being the language of the liturgy. I will share in detail these aspects of theology of the body in future articles. If I put it in one sentence I'd say that TOB presents an integral vision of man.

Max Scheler's Personalism: Carol Wojtyla's Interpretation

The joy of the holy spirit invaded my heart as I was reading the personalism of Max Scheler and his analysis of the values. A life without Christian values is worthless. Many times we -myself included- are led by concuspiscence and we renounce to our system of values and these values are replaced by anti-values. Max Scheler was a German philosopher whose personalism starts by defining the value. Scheler criticizes Kant's moral radicalism and explains that men can not find superior supreme good than the good they find in themselves. Scheler's system of values and understanding of the relationship person-God is incompatible with the christian thought. However, Carol Wojtyla finds points where Scheler's personalism meets Christian personalism. Chastity is not a mere value. Chastity is a gift. A gift we must love and carefully protect. We inherited conscuspiscence from our ancestors Adam and Eve. Ony the healing power of Jesus on the cross can give us the strength to beat this inclinitation to be who we hate to be.

JP II reflections are rich in quotes of Scheler's phenomenology but viewed from a deep theological perspective. Phenomenology is the relationship between the mind with reality. Understanding our minds and understanding our reality lead to understanding our person. Understanding our reality, our mind and understanding God, make us realize our DIGNITY as persons created to the image of God. We are different and worthy of happiness as we live the Christians values we learn from Jesus in the Gospels. Values, according to Scheler, are given to us in the form of feelings. In fact Scheler is so radical about the definition of value as a feeling that he said that Love is the core of the person. The personalism of Scheler, when it comes to love, is not any different from Jesus's commandment: Love one another as I have loved you! To understand God's plan for our bodies and our existence, we must understand what the Christian values mean in our lives. Scheler proposes the example of the statement "This is good!" Max Scheler deducted that things are not valuable because they are good, they are good because they are valuable. The "being" of what is "good" is independent from the value of "good." I put it this way, God created us to his image so we must be good, but I am free to give up the "goodness" of being a son of God. If I give up that goodness, I still exist, but I might not be good. Thus, Christian values, specially love, honesty, compassion, faith, charity, define our persons and confirm our "being good" because of the goodness that comes from God, our creator.

Catholic theological reflection has four pillars: The Scriptures, the doctors of the Church, the "magisterium" of the Church and popular piety. we, as catholics thinkers, have our own theological method clearly defined by the church. This is why we can talk about catholic ethics. Catholic ethics focus on our actions. I have been thiking deeply about my actions, their inner motive and I have analyzed if they respond to "irrational inclinations that look for pleasure." Catholic thinkers agree with Scheler when he proposes that loving the person and imitating an exemplary person have great importance and play a central role in ethical life as a whole (See page 69 of TOB for a detail perspective of this relationship between love, imitating who is exemplary and catholic ethics). Who is the exemplary person to imitate? Jesus the son of God! Wojtyla firmly states that the moral perfection of the person is proposed as a goal. He also considers that love for the person and the imitation of Jesus are central for our moral lives. The Gospel proposes that moral perfection has to be reached by following Jesus. This moral perfection is real, practical and religious.

I want to re-take the idea of us -humans- being fully responsible for our actions. According to Wojtyla and Scheler, persons move themselves to act. Our actions are moved by our will. Our will can be virtious and good or it can be a "bad will." This puts me right in front of the reality of carefully examining my heart before I act. Catholic ethics expresses that "the human person in its acts is the origin of moral good an evil." In addition Wojtyla said that the experience of good as good and the commandmend as norm work together and display the person as a truely responsible agent. If we are truely responsible for our moral good then we can definitely talk about "experiencing God" in our lives. The Cathechism of the Catholic Church talked about "Desire for God." God is our spiritual food and if we are acting according to his commandmends then we will feel the desire for God in our inner being. The experience of God in our lives is no other than Love itself. Love then do as you will….

Theology of the Body and the Human Person

The Theology of the Body must be understood from John Paul II's personalism. The passage where the Lord Jesus prays to the Father that all may be one….as we are one (John 17: 21-22) indicates certain likeness between the union of the divine Persons and the union of God's son in truth and love. In addition the union of husband and wife symbolizes the union of the divine Persons. In order to better understand the union between a man and woman in the holy sacrament of Marriage JP II recognizes 3 characteristics in the spousal union: a-) Love implied a cycle of mutual giving, supremely the gift of self b-) The paradigmatic instance of such self giving in human experience is between a man and a woman and c-) the Trinity is the archetype of such love and gift. Our society walks backwards. The old evil is the good and the old good is the new evil. Most of the distortions in our society regarding our sexual habits started with contraception. When "the pill" came into play, some feminists argued that the pill would liberate women from the oppression of men because women had the right to do with their bodies whatever they want. The feminists were totally wrong. In fact the pill made women an object of pleasure for men more than ever before. It was a free pass for men to use women for pleasure without having to face the consequences of their actions. It's been more than 40 years and the sad reality is that the sexual life that God intended for us has been totally distorted by the search of pleasure.

The union of the persons of the Trinity provides a framework to understand the mutual self giving of the spouses. JP II stated that "the Son of God is the first to say to the father all that is mine is yours and all that is yours is mine. Both the spousal/filial relation to God and the marriage union and surrender between a man and a woman are derived as images from the first cycle of giving from within the Trinity. (Man and Woman God Created Them: A Theology of the Body, p. 33, 2006)." If we'd (meaning our society) only stopped for one second to think about this. I think that I would have avoided so many sufferings if I had understood these issues before.

I realized that the framework to understand the Theology of the Body is very complex. It challenges men and women to discover their intended "being", it challenges us –who have had sex before- to regain our virginity with the power of the Holy Spirit, and it challenges our society to live differently. JP II studied and quoted in his teachings the personalism of Immanuel Kant, which I consider to be the greatest German philosopher of all time and the most influential during the enlightenment. The enlightenment was a period between the XVII and XVIII. It was an age of optimism, tempered by the realistic recognition of the sad state of the human condition and the need for major reforms in thought, the way knowledge was conceived etc. Francis Bacon in the 16th century shaped the way of scientific reasoning but his error was to reduce everything to a "mechanical view" of the universe (everything that exists). Bacon believed that men were created to manipulate the cosmos and everything in it. He did not consider the paradox that the power derived from this type of knowledge (knowledge that allowed men to control nature) would actually subjugate men under the nature. I have quoted Bacon because in order to understand the personalism of Kant as JP II portrays it one must understand Bacon, then Descartes. Bacon was all about power, knowledge and the domination of the cosmos. Descartes was more rational than Bacon. Descartes considered that all the philosophies from Aristotle up to his time were too abstract. Descartes thought that these philosophies needed to be replaced by "technological philosophies" that is a practical approach to knowledge. The fruit of Descartes's reflections: The Discourse of the Method. Descartes claimed "cogito ergo sum" (I think, then I exist) when in fact it should be "sum ergo cogito" (I exist then I think). Descartes also preached metaphysical liberalism when he considered that love would prevent us from being free. With philosophies like Bacon (search for power) and Descartes (everything reduced to scientific knowledge) men were condemned to NOT discover the nature and dignity of their existence. That is being persons created to the image of God.

Kant's moral philosophy opposes the Baconian and Cartesian philosophies about the nature of men, philosophy of ethics and moral values. JP II had already said that "neo-Manichaean culture has led to human sexuality being regarded as more as an area of manipulation and exploitation than as the basis of that primordial wonder which led Adam on the morning of creation to exclaim before Eve: "This is at last bones of my bones and flesh of my flesh (Gen 2:23)" (Cfr. P. 43)." When we study such materials from JP II we discover the Kantian influence in his thought. Kant considered the Cartesian project as the reduction of everything to pleasure. In contrast to Descartes, Kant then argued that "Utilitarianism abandons the holiness of the law in favor of mere calculation of an outcome that serves irrational inclinations, namely, the inclinations toward pleasure and the sum of pleasures, happiness. (Immanuel Kant)."

Kant explained that good will is a will that follows duty and moral conscience rather than the inclination to toward pleasure or happiness. I love Kant's radicalism when he debated that "a morally good will is clearest and most certain when there is a clash between duty and inclination, when devotion to duty overcomes a contrary inclination to pleasure (Cfr p. 49)." Kant considers duty as the way moral law confronts us. Moral law does not suggest of propose a good. It demands a good. Kant continued to discuss that will since it's an ultimately self-moving power, its goodness must lie in the absoluteness with which it moves itself apart from anything other than itself. Will is not only a self moving power, it is also a rational power. So, I conclude that the fruit of our freedom is going to be the consequence of our will. Our will moves freely, it also moves thanks to our rationality, so I wonder: What is the purpose of everything I do? Does it obey my good will and is it bounded by my moral conscience? Am I being what I called to be? Do I want to be what I am called to be (freedom to be)?

I want to finish this blog with two ideas that summarizes the personalism of Immanuel Kant as JP II interprets it in his catechisms. Kant was very firm when he wrote: "Act in such a way that all times you treat human nature in your own person as well as in the person of every other human being simultaneously as a purpose, never as mere means." JP II's interpretation of Kant's categorical imperative is the following: "I can only be consistent with myself in affirming my own dignity and autonomy if I grant the same dignity to other persons." A virtuous person's actions are moved by a virtuous will. Kant argued that a virtuous will must not only be oriented toward duty but toward happiness too. Kant concluded that moral virtue is the supreme value to which everything must be subordinated, including happiness. By being virtuous one becomes worthy of happiness! Theology of the Body is not a mere teaching about sex. It's the re-discovery of our nature as beings created to the image of God. That's why JP II stated that "the human body with the sexual language created by God has a deep kinship with the person. The sentient body is created for the person as an expression of personal love. In fact, the body is immediately and directly personal, because the person is the body."