A Brief Outline of Love & Responsibility by Karol Wojtyla
This introduces and summarizes Love and Responsibility, a book on Catholic sexual morality that John Paul II wrote in 1960 when he was an auxiliary Bishop of Krakow.
The sexual urge has a profoundly religious significance....(due to it) the man and the woman...enter into the cosmic stream by which existence is transmitted.
~ Karol Wojtyla, Love & Responsibility
🍃
By now, most of us know we've been sold a bill of goods. Pleasure for pleasure's sake may lead to cozy post-coital embraces, but more often than not it ultimately ends with couples screaming at each other, treacherous divorces and traumatized children. Yet in a climate where anything goes, entertaining the reverse; notions like modesty, chastity and abstinence; sounds like an anachronism.
In his 1960 book Love and Responsibility, Karl Wojtyla, who became John Paul II upon his election to the papacy in 1978, rectifies ideas that have been roundly ridiculed and trampled by the culture. Chastity and shame aren't suppressive and restrictive, he asserts. They are the building blocks to an integrated love and successful marriage. Contraception subverts natural law, while natural family planning (NFP) affirms it.
Wojtyla's book aims to definitively explain Catholic sexuality morality. It bridges doctrine with experience and evolved out of lectures he gave at Catholic University of Lublin, Poland in the late 1950s. The personalistic norm, a philosophy that affirms a person's intrinsic dignity, forms the premise for many of Wojtyla's assertions. The material is even more relevant today, and the book continues to be widely read and studied six decades after its publication.
Its title states the book's central theme. As humans, reason informs our actions, unlike animals who act on instinct alone. True love is a function of the will, and is measured by the level of responsibility one feels toward another. Attraction, desire, sentiment and emotion are the seedlings of a relationship, and chastity enables them to bloom into mature love, which is a virtue, not an emotion.
Sex is no place for objectification or use, as this violates our inborn human dignity. The only context where sex affirms personal dignity is within marriage, where a man and woman mutually vow themselves to one another in self-gift.
Wojtyla calls for these principles to be normalized and widely taught within a society, and he makes a persuasive case for buy-in. He observes that natural birth regulation (NFP) strengthens a marriage as it develops the virtues of moderation and continence, whereas contraception opens the door to objectification. A relationship founded on the personalistic norm engenders trust, while one founded on utilitarian impulses disintegrates once the other person no longer provides pleasure.
His book contributed to a topical societal debate where many disputed sexual norms, and he acknowledges the challenge of his assertions. Eight years after its publication, the Church chimed in with its magisterial position on the issue of artificial contraception with the encyclical Humane Vitae, in which Pope Paul VI foretold how a widespread use of contraception would lower moral standards, weaken marriages, and objectify women. While Wojtyla corroborated the encyclical's conclusions, his lengthier book takes a more studied and philosophical approach.
During his papacy, John Paul II continued to apologize on human sexuality in a series of audience's at St. Peter's Square, which have come to be known as the Theology of the Body. His teachings on sexuality have been lauded and embraced by many.
Wojtyla writes in a dense academic style, and for those who prefer books with examples, case studies and photographs, it proves to be a real grind. But at under 300 pages, it's palatable for most anyone.
🍃
An Outline of Love and Responsibility
Introduction
Catholic sexual morality originates from Scripture; this book aims to definitively explain this morality as practically as possible. It synthesizes but also analyzes things like sexual urge, marriage and vocation. It necessarily takes a philosophical and not purely medical approach to sex.
Though celibate, a priest is qualified to discuss this topic; through pastoral work, he develops a broad and diverse second-hand knowledge about relationships.
Chapter I: The Person and the Sexual Urge
Summary:
This book, essentially, discusses acts which use another person as an object. The philosophy of utilitarianism; the greatest good for the greatest number; is widely adopted into our culture, including our sexual mores. However, it breaks God's command to Love, as it permits using another person for pleasure.
Our sexual urge is innate and at the crux of who we are. It's the driving force of our existence. Our free will and inner spiritual life elevates us above animal instincts; our will directs this urge toward the right expression. This urge must be evaluated through the lens of divine order, not merely through biological order. Marriage is the right context for sex; it is founded on the personalistic norm, which affirms the dignity of the person. Sex by its nature is both pleasurable and procreative and both these attributes must be affirmed.
Key Points:
Although men and women “use” each other during sex (each wants something and the other is the means), the exchange can be on equal footing. Whenever two people subordinate themselves and work together toward a common goal, there is no use or objectification. This can be the case between an employer and employee, a soldier and officer, a husband and wife.
Emotions largely shape how we choose to act; we seek actions that provide pleasure and avoid those that provide pain. Sex is moral, then, as we can choose whether to use another person for pleasure.
There are two value systems at play in the arena of sex: personalistic and utilitarian. Utilitarianism seeks the greatest pleasure for the greatest number of people. It is founded on false premises. Pleasure first of all is fleeting; it cannot be quantified or predicted. It's also subjective. It permits using then discarding someone when he or she no longer provides pleasure. It's egoism, really. A personalistic system, or norm, says that love is the only proper way to relate to a person. Since God commands us to love, sex cannot be founded on utilitarian values. It must, rather, be evaluated using the personalistic system.
The sexual urge is deeply significant. Via this urge, humans “enter into the cosmic stream by which existence is transmitted.” We participate but do not create spirits. In order to beget with a proper orientation, the urge needs to respect that sex is both pleasurable and fecund. Puritanism treats sex sheerly as a means to procreate and so it's a form of utilitarianism. Worse still is the other extreme: sex purely for pleasure. This is frankly utilitarian. It ignores our reason, our participation in the continuation of the species and reduces us to animals, driven by instinct. Since we are both body and spirit, a physical distortion of sex leads to a spiritual distortion as well.
In solving population issues, we cannot distort our nature and overlook that sex is both pleasurable and procreative.
Marriage has a three-fold purpose, prioritized: continuation of the species, conjugal life, and desire. They are exclusive, and none can be trivialized or ruled out. These purposes make a solid foundation for a family, which stems directly from a marriage.
Chapter II: The Person and Love
Summary:
A relationship develops deep within our psyche; it is psychological and comes into being through attraction, desire and emotion. However, ultimately love is a virtue; it wills the other's good and affirms his or her dignity as a person. The components which comprise the “raw material” for love must become integrated into this personalistic norm. Couples must discern the substance of their love before making vows to each other.
Key Points:
Some of the basic elements that make up a relationship include: attraction, desire, goodwill, reciprocity, friendship, comradeship and betrothal.
-Attraction is at the essence of love, but it has a quality of delusion; it overlooks some things and perceives others that aren't there.
-Desire indicates a need. When it's overpowering, it can become utilitarian.
-Goodwill (agape) is the most pure form of love; it wills the good for the other. This love realizes our fullest possibilities. A marriage includes eros (desire), too, but it cannot overpower goodwill.
Love means reciprocity, it's a synthesis of desire and goodwill. Reciprocal love creates trust, peace and joy. However, if the relationship is utilitarian, then trust vanishes; there is no reciprocity.
-Friendship starts with sharing feelings and perspectives. This initial sympathy just happens, and it develops into friendship which is governed by the will.
-Comradeship, too, can be a component of love; it is shared involvements or goals. It draws people into community, which is a good foundation for a family.
Betrothal is giving one's self to another. Men possess and women give themselves, but it always must be self-gift. It needs to be founded on goodwill and friendship. Self-gift isn't part of the natural order; love makes it possible.
Senses are the means by which love develops; this is the realm of sensuality and sentiment. Two people meeting is a sensual connection. Sensuality can be uninvited (by the person experiencing it), and prompted by imagination and yearnings. Sensuality can turn into a sexual appetite, but in order to not use another, it demands integration. Sentiment is an attraction that isn't physical; it is the attraction to the essence of “man” and “woman.” It seeks closeness and exclusive time with the other person. It's contemplative; not a desire to consume; and is stronger in women. Sentiment can idealize. It's neither good nor bad, but insufficient on its own for a loving relationship.
Although many components of love are subjective, an integrated, complete love is objective and an act of will. It isn't psychological; it's ethical. At its core, we love a person, not a body or agenda. Love is one person fully affirming the truth about the other and isn't founded on shifting sentiments or sensuality.
A loving sexual relationship affirms the dignity of the other person. It's not exclusively passion and emotion. True love is a measure of the amount of responsibility one feels towards the other. The person is the choice when betrothing. The changeable factions produce anxiety (emotion, senses, sexual appeal) but when the choice is objective, these don't matter. True love remains intact even when the other person is difficult.
Although a relationship limits freedom, love makes this positive, joyful and creative. True love stems from the will; freedom exists for the sake of love. It transforms utilitarian selfish proclivities; our sex instinct wants to use, but love wants to give.
Love is mutual self-surrender and so marriage is the only context for intercourse. Sex is a reciprocated gift of self, not the exchange of pleasure. Although it's hard not to give way to eroticism amidst emotion and sensuality, sexual values must be welded to the value of the person. Sheer erotic enjoyment is utilitarian, and an unstable foundation for a relationship.
With just its raw components, love easily disintegrates, as many have found. Love becomes, it develops; and chastity is at the root of this becoming.
Chapter III: The Person and Chastity
Summary:
Chastity has many false and negative connotations, while in fact it establishes a foundation for love. In our fallen state, we're inclined to use others. Chastity develops at the essence of a person and roots out this impulse. Both moderation and shame are components of chastity. All these values require education and integration into societal norms in order to establish a standard of respect for human dignity.
Key Points:
Couples aim to develop an objective love that wills the good of the other person. While emotion plays a large role in this development, this presents a danger. Overpowering emotions (ok in and of themselves) may lead to the singular desire to fulfill sexual urges. While pleasure isn't evil, a fixation on pleasure that disregards the value of the person is evil. Sinful love is full of authentic feelings; in the moment, people don't recognize the distortion of the will toward a subjective aim. Only love establishes truth in behavior.
Chastity precludes false erotic love. It isn't a big “NO” to sex altogether, but a “no” to some sexual urges and “yes” to others. The personalistic norm says you shall love and you shall not use. Chastity says “yes” when sex aligns with this norm. Jesus delineates that chastity doesn't address egoism at a physical level, but deep within a person: “Any man who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” Chastity is an interior transparency; it's a purity of heart. An absence of chastity wastes the potential for the sexual urge in a budding relationship to develop into love.
In our fallen state, we all have carnal desires. Acts of will can't prevent them. Sin is when the will acts freely on carnal desires and the relationship is just about sex, not love of the person. Chastity keeps our carnal desires in check (as can sentiment, because this isn't about carnal love at all.) Moderation is at the heart of chastity. It's about right action and maintains equilibrium amidst concupiscence. Continence is the “how” of moderation. It means becoming your own master and it develops from strength, not from stuffing desires, nor fear. As a man has an inner life, reducing carnality means knowing why it must be reduced; the sense of loss diminishes as the why becomes larger. Sublimation is another component of moderation; it subverts sensual emotions.
Chastity is the long haul; it doesn't bear fruit right away. In all states of life, it affirms the value of the person.
Shame is when something that should be private becomes public. For example, people don't want others to see them having sex because for the participants, sex is both internal and external, but observers only see the external expression. Sexual shame (the avoidance of nakedness) is healthy; it indicates an aversion to being objectified; women cover themselves so men don't see them as objects. Shame is to prevent your own reaction to use, and another's reaction to use you. Modesty carves the way for a true love to spring up that values the person.
Shame gives way reluctantly; it's a moral strength, and eventually is absorbed by mutual love within a marriage. With mature love, there is no need to conceal a disposition to enjoy one another. It doesn't disappear into love; with marriage shame defends the person against objectification.
Shamelessness is a distortion of a person's essence. Physical shamelessness sexualizes a person to the point that it obscures his or her dignity. Emotional shamelessness is lust; it's when someone makes no effort to subvert a compulsion to exploit another person sexually (it is not the same as prudery, which simply disguises one's sexual intentions.) Social customs such as immodest dress encourage shamelessness. And so shame must be taught and integrated into fashion and culture. It's ok to be naked or partially at the doctor's or at the pool, but not when it degrades the person. Pornography also distorts sex and the person; art needs to communicate the truth of human dignity.
Tenderness is a component of relationships. In the right capacity it strengthens couples; women especially need it. It can become egotistical (i.e., wanting to be seen holding hands) but when fully formed, it includes the love of the person.
Chapter IV: Justice Toward the Creator
Summary:
Marriage is the only means to do away with utilitarian sex. Marriage is an institution, a building block for a society.
Within marriage, both personal order and natural order come into play, and observing both gives God his due. Personal order is the intrinsic dignity due to each person; natural order refers to the means by which life is begotten. Openness to children within marriage accords with natural order; not grasping for children nor outright barring conception. While contraception precludes conception, natural family planning (NFP) does not. NFP allows couples to grow in the virtues of moderation and continence, whereas contraception opens the gates to utilitarian impulses.
Vocation means following a course in life founded in love. We all need to give ourselves to another; mystical virginity gives one's self to God.
Key Points:
Although this is not intuitive in modern societies, sex within a marriage is the only context that maintains the dignity due to each person. This is particularly true of women; “sexual relationships outside the framework of marriage is always objectively a wrong done to the women. Always—even when the woman consents to it, and indeed even when she herself actively desires and seeks it.”
Marriage, the joining of man and woman, is an institution and as such, it's established in accordance with the laws of justice. It is strictly indissoluble. Love matures within a marriage, but it must be founded on virtue to begin with. The love of spouses begets a healthy family, which is a small society with a governing order. While monogamy upholds an individual's dignity, polygamy does not.
Both natural order and personal dignity come into play within a marriage. Sex is an elemental process; when man participates he must acknowledge he is a person, not an animal, and a Creature of God. As His creatures, we are subject to God's laws; this means following the objective laws of nature.
We don't overcome natural order; we work within it once we come to understand it. A sex act, by its nature, may beget life. Contraception violates nature as it precludes conception, while a fixation on becoming pregnant distorts in the other direction. NFP respects natural order, and so it's permissible. Married sex is mutual self-gift; with contraception, sex devolves into utilitarianism.
A marriage does right by God in the sphere of nature and of the person, so long as it's monogamous, indissoluble and open to procreation.
NFP and contraception aren't simply two different methods. NFP forces couples to regulate sexual activity, which strengthens the virtue of continence within the marriage. Contraception, on the other hand, removes the procreative element of sex and reduces it to the exchange of pleasure.
While it's difficult for couples to practice NFP, it's the only way to moderate childbirth and maintain the dignity of love in marriage. Moderation of childbirth is a serious issue; for society, the state, the individual. It's ok to use NFP, but it shouldn't be a permanent state; the couple must also have a serious disposition to procreate.
We owe a debt to God and it's unfulfillable. And so justice cannot be the foundation of religion; LOVE is. This is the context of virginity: self-offering in love. Mystical virginity is conjugal love pledged to God. Physical virginity won't necessarily bring about mystical virginity. Celibacy isn't the same as physical virginity; it's simply abstinence from marriage. Giving ourselves to another; a person or to God; is a spiritual instinct. Virginity isn't distorted or bad. It's easier than marriage in some ways.
Vocation is a personal commitment to a purpose that only a human (not an animal or object) can make. A vocation develops through the course of life, and is determined by one's capabilities and the needs outside of the person. “Be ye perfect” means following a course founded in love. Virginity creates a favorable condition for this perfection. Yet perfection also means observing the greatest commandment.
Women are biologically disposed to be mothers whereas men cultivate this disposition. Spiritual paternity and maternity (i.e. teachers) can be just as strong; they're signs of maturity. Fatherhood mirrors God and is a model of spiritual perfection.
Chapter V: Sexology and Ethics
Summary:
There is much confusion about sex today. In order to demystify sex and aright these misunderstandings, it must be taught in such a way that it seems ordinary, natural, yet still deeply significant. Proper sexual education acknowledges that sex means far more than reproduction and physical health. It must be conducted from the plane of the person.
It teaches that the sexual urge is implicit to who we are, and in and of itself neither good nor bad. A mastery over this urge allows us to channel it in the direction of true love. An education around the “how” of sex cultivates strong unions in marriage.
Key Points:
Marriages can suffer from misunderstanding over how sex works. For example, men and women climax differently. Healthy sex climaxes harmoniously; sometimes this requires continence from a man. Practically it must be acknowledged that men can have sex without the consent of women; a marriage can fall apart if a man uses the woman routinely. Men and women need to educate one another about their emotional lives.
Birth control, or “planned motherhood,” is man-focused, as in the majority of cases he makes the decision around when to have sex. While it makes sense in that a rational person is fully conscious of his decisions, birth control moves into the utilitarian space where the woman is used.
Abortion has no place in a discussion of birth control: it wounds women mentally and kills the baby.
Natural sex is spontaneous. There is no need for instruction in technique. While it cannot be utilized in the moment and requires a deep understanding of a woman's cycle, NFP maintains spontaneity. Condoms destroy spontaneity, and give way to utilitarian sex.
What are the physical symptoms from lack of sex? Where is evidence of any? Sexual neurosis arises from a failure of sexually active people to use sex naturally. Sex education serves to curb these neurosis.
🍃
And there you have it. At 3,000 words, this outline attempts to capture the book's essential messages with concision; perhaps an impossible feat, as, to restate above, the writing is dense and the book is about 280 pages long.
What are your thoughts on Love and Responsibility?
🍃