Human ecology and the grammar of life

Chapitre 1 Introduction

Our aim was to provide material to a group of experts attending a meeting devoted to a renewal of youth education about human love and sexuality. Most texts were extracted from a book entitled "Called to love. Approaching John Paul II’s Theology of the Body" written by Carl Anderson and Jose Granados

Human ecology

In addition to the irrational destruction of the natural environment, we must also mention the more serious destruction of the human environment [...]. Too little effort is made to safeguard the moral conditions for an authentic "human ecology"[1].

Alongside the ecology of nature, there exists what can be called a “human” ecology, which in turn demands a “social” ecology.[…] there is an urgent need, […], for a commitment to a human ecology[2].

Grammar of life

The natural environment is […] a wondrous work of the Creator containing a “grammar” which sets forth ends and criteria for its wise use, not its reckless exploitation[3].

In the inflation of its speech, society cannot cease to refer to that “grammar” which all children learn from the looks and the actions of their mothers and fathers, even before they learn from their words[4].

Education for love, its grammar and its syntax[5]

The phenomenon of a growing "affective illiteracy," diffused among the younger generations, has been reported[6]. Young people know only few words related to emotions and affectivity. These words do not allow for subtleties when one searches to define the one's own mood or to understand that of others.  The phenomenon is alarming:  the incapacity to enter into contact with the world of one's own emotions implies an incapacity to communicate and to establish adequate relations with others.

 

This syntax associates or opposes words to enlighten their meaning:

Content of this document

Questioning and Wonder

The gift

Ecology

Masculinity and femininity

Ascent of love

Covenant and transmission of life

A Rift

Maturing the fullness of love

Triptych Creation- Fall-Redemption

Appendix - The new global ethic: challenges for the Church, Marguerite A. Peeters

Chapitre 2 Questioning and wonder

What is the meaning of my own journey through life?

Admittedly, certain difficulties arise when we try to deal with the primordial question:

In the first place, we might wonder about the question itself:  Is it really the first step on a journey toward the meaning of life, or is it just a riddle without an answer?

The question man poses about the natural world spills over into a question about what lies in the depth of his own heart. Man's question about nature is ultimately a question about man himself.

Happiness, wellbeing, wonder

Happiness, wellbeing, wonder: three essential words from the vocabulary of the grammar of life.
Nature is given to us for our happiness: beautiful world of flora and fauna, all this fills our taste for the beautiful and good.


We can be "wonderful" for our environment! Quality of our relations with them, the people around us are also called to participate in our happiness.

 

And Adam said: "This [is] now bone of my bones And flesh of my flesh; She shall be called Woman, Because she was taken out of Man." Gen. 2,23

Now Adam knew Eve his wife, and she conceived and bore Cain, and said, "I have acquired a man from the LORD." Gen. 4,1

O LORD, our Lord, How excellent [is] Your name in all the earth, Who have set Your glory above the heavens!   When I consider Your heavens, the work of Your fingers, The moon and the stars, which You have ordained,  What is man that You are mindful of him, And the son of man that You visit him?

For You have made him a little lower than the angels, And You have crowned him with glory and honor. Psalm 8

 

Psalm 139
O LORD, You have searched me and known [me.]

You know my sitting down and my rising up; You understand my thought afar off.

You comprehend my path and my lying down, And are acquainted with all my ways.

For [there is] not a word on my tongue, [But] behold, O LORD, You know it altogether.

You have hedged me behind and before, And laid Your hand upon me.

[Such] knowledge [is] too wonderful for me; It is high, I cannot [attain] it.

Where can I go from Your Spirit? Or where can I flee from Your presence?

If I ascend into heaven, You [are] there; If I make my bed in hell, behold, You [are there.]

[If] I take the wings of the morning, [And] dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea,

Even there Your hand shall lead me, And Your right hand shall hold me.

If I say, "Surely the darkness shall fall on me," Even the night shall be light about me;

Indeed, the darkness shall not hide from You, But the night shines as the day; The darkness and the light [are] both alike [to You.]

For You formed my inward parts; You covered me in my mother's womb.

I will praise You, for I am fearfully [and] wonderfully made; Marvelous are Your works, And [that] my soul knows very well.

My frame was not hidden from You, When I was made in secret, [And] skillfully wrought in the lowest parts of the earth.

Your eyes saw my substance, being yet unformed. And in Your book they all were written, The days fashioned for me, When [as yet there were] none of them.

How precious also are Your thoughts to me, O God! How great is the sum of them!

 

So why ?

 

 

The harm caused to nature does have serious consequences on people. Think about a seaside or a lake no more suitable for fishing or about the human consequences of desertification, the result of intensive soil exploitation. This harm is always considered with sadness and, sometimes, anger.

Similarly, many people suffer within their families. Family, given to us as a sanctuary of life and love, has sometimes become a focus of tension, torment, and pain! Often, worries about the commitment of marriage or parenthood stem from broken families. Indeed, how could one be certain that his generous gift will be accepted with respect, sensitivity, and loyalty?

This suffering originates from a lack of respect of the laws of life, natural life on one side and family on the other.

Anxiety

Though mankind is stricken with wonder at its own discoveries and its power, it often raises anxious questions about the current trend of the world, about the place and role of man in the universe, about the meaning of its individual and collective strivings, and about the ultimate destiny of reality and of humanity[7].

Chapitre 3 The gift

The gift needs to be accepted.

A gift does not need to be repaid, but it does need to be accepted.

By gratefully acknowledging the gift, the receiver becomes a co-creative partner in the new relationship that the gift establishes. This reciprocity enriches both the one who gives and the one who receives.

                                  

 

Giving and accepting

Giving and accepting the gift interpenetrate in such a way that the very act of giving becomes acceptance, and acceptance transforms itself into giving[8].

Acceptance of the gift creates a relationship

A gift expresses the unique worth of the person who gives it. What the giver seeks from the receiver, in fact, is not repayment, but a personal response. That's why the acceptance of the gift creates a relationship between giver and receiver, a relationship that enriches both of them at once.

Gift and task

Duties come before rights

We really have to go back to the priority of duty. We do not produce ourselves, but receive   ourselves. We do not produce nature, but receive it. We do not produce culture, but receive it. Of course, we do also produce, but our production is based on an original receiving[9].

Forgiveness and dignity

In reciprocal relationships between persons merciful love is never a unilateral act or process. Even in the cases in which everything would seem to indicate that only one party is giving and offering, and the other only receiving and taking (for example, in the case of a physician giving treatment, a teacher teaching, parents supporting and bringing up their children, a benefactor helping the needy), in reality the one who gives is always also a beneficiary. In any case, he too can easily find himself in the position of the one who receives, who obtains a benefit, who experiences merciful love; he too can find himself the object of mercy[10].

Forgiveness and

dignity

 

 

The person who gives becomes more generous when he feels at the same time benefitted by the person accepting his gift; and vice versa, the person who accepts the gift with the awareness that, in accepting it, he too is doing good is in his own way serving the great cause of the dignity of the person [11].

Chapitre 4 Ecology

Environmental ecology

Nature expresses a design of love and truth. It is prior to us, and it has been given to us by God as the setting for our life. Nature speaks to us of the Creator (cf. Rom 1:20) and his love for humanity[12].

 

The fundamental origin of these gifts

The heritage of nature and culture invites us to seek the fundamental origin of these gifts. Life is a gift, and this gift deserves to be received ever anew in freedom from the Creator, who formed our bodies in our mother‘s womb.

A gift and a task

At the root of the senseless destruction of the natural environment lies an anthropological error, which unfortunately is widespread in our day. Man, who discovers his capacity to transform and in a certain sense create the world through his own work, forgets that this is always based on God's prior and original gift of the things that are[13].

In all this, one notes first the poverty or narrowness of man's outlook, motivated as he is by a desire to possess things rather than to relate them to the truth, and lacking that disinterested, unselfish and aesthetic attitude that is born of wonder in the presence of being and of the beauty which enables one to see in visible things the message of the invisible God who created them[14].

A common good

Care for the environment represents a challenge for all of humanity. It is a matter of a common and universal duty, that of respecting a common good, destined for all[15].

Responsibility for the environment, the common heritage of mankind, extends not only to present needs but also to those of the future. “We have inherited from past generations, and we have benefited from the work of our contemporaries: for this reason we have obligations towards all, and we cannot refuse to interest ourselves in those who will come after us, to enlarge the human family”[16].

Human ecology

The book of nature is one and indivisible: it takes in not only the environment but also life, sexuality, marriage, the family, social relations: in a word, integral human development. Our duties towards the environment are linked to our duties towards the human person, considered in himself and in relation to others[17].

Family, cradle of life and love

The first and fundamental structure for "human ecology" is the family, in which man receives his first formative ideas about truth and goodness, and learns what it means to love and to be loved, and thus what it actually means to be a person[18].

The natural family, as an intimate communion of life and love, based on marriage between a man and a woman[19], constitutes “the primary place of ‘humanization' for the person and society”, and a “cradle of life and love”[20].

Indeed, in a healthy family life we experience some of the fundamental elements of peace: justice and love between brothers and sisters, the role of authority expressed by parents, loving concern for the members who are weaker because of youth, sickness or old age, mutual help in the necessities of life, readiness to accept others and, if necessary, to forgive them[21].

Marriage

Here we mean the family founded on marriage, in which the mutual gift of self by husband and wife creates an environment in which children can be born and develop their potentialities, become aware of their dignity and prepare to face their unique and individual destiny[22].

The family is the transmitter of a heritage

On the one hand, the family is the transmitter of a heritage that children are called on to receive with gratitude from their parents and grandparents and to pass on to their own posterity in their turn. The heritage of the past equips man for the future, weaving him into the unbroken intergenerational thread of the human story. The family transforms "conjugal communion [into] a communion of generations"[23] .

Learning to be children, spouses, and parents

The family is the natural habitat in which we live out the fullness of the divine image through the adventure of learning to be children, spouses, and parents.

Learning to be children

See $ Masculinity and femininity

Every child “becomes a gift to its brothers, sisters, parents and entire family. Its life becomes a gift for the very people who were givers of life and who cannot help but feel its presence, its sharing in their life and its contribution to their common good and to that of the community of the family[24].

 

 

Learning to be spouses

See $ Ascent of love

 

Learning to be parents

Human fatherhood and motherhood, while remaining biologically similar to that of other living beings in nature, contain in an essential and unique way a ‘likeness' to God which is the basis of the family as a community of human life, as a community of persons united in love[25].

The desire to be a mother or a father does not justify any “right to children”, whereas the rights of the unborn child are evident.

In the education of children, the role of the father and that of the mother are equally necessary. The parents must therefore work together. They must exercise authority with respect and gentleness but also, when necessary, with firmness and vigor: it must be credible, consistent, and wise and always exercised with a view to children's integral good[26].

The man - even with all his sharing in parenthood - always remains "outside" the process of pregnancy and the baby's birth; in many ways he has to learn his own "fatherhood" from the mother.

 

The mother's contribution is decisive in laying the foundation for a new human personality[27].

Motherhood involves a special communion with the mystery of life, as it develops in the woman's womb. The mother is filled with wonder at this mystery of life, and "understands" with unique intuition what is happening inside her ... This unique contact with the new human being developing within her gives rise to an attitude towards human beings—not only towards her own child, but every human being—which profoundly marks the woman's personality.  It is commonly thought that women are more capable than men of paying attention to another person, and that motherhood develops this predisposition even more[28].

Covenant and contract

 

Utility and the personalistic norm[29]

Utilitarism

The basic norm for utilitarians is that an action ought to produce the maximum of pleasure for the greatest possible number of people, with a minimum of discomfort or pain. Karol Wojtyla exposes the superficiality of which erects the subjective experience of pleasure into the "common good" uniting persons and argues instead that there must be an objective common good as the foundation for true love between persons. Utilitarians at times respond to criticism of this kind by holding that the pleasure they seek to maximize is to be enjoyed subjectively by the greatest number. The trouble with this is that "'love' in this utilitarian conception is a union of egoisms, which can hold together only on condition that they confront each other with nothing unpleasant, nothing to conflict with their mutual pleasure. But this simply means that human beings use each other as means of obtaining their own subjective experience of pleasure. The person becomes a mere instrument to obtaining pleasant experiences.

The Personalistic Norm (Karol Wojtyla)

 According to him, “the commandment does not put into so many words the principle on the basis of which love between persons is to be practiced.” This principle is the personalistic norm, which, in its negative aspect, states that the person is the kind of good which does not admit of use and cannot be treated as an object of use and as such the means to an end. In its positive form the personalistic norm confirms this: the person is a good towards which the only proper and adequate attitude is love".

Production and fecundity

"Procreation" has the advantage of highlighting the difference between the production of objects and the communication of life to beings possessed of unique dignity as unrepeatable, irreplaceable persons whose existence is willed by God for its own sake. It's worth noting here how the presence of divine love within conjugal union enriches our understanding of freedom.

God‘s presence in spousal love brings home to us that freedom cannot exist apart from grateful recognition of the original gift; freedom flourishes only when we realize that the whole of our existence is a free gift.


Chapitre 5 Masculinity and femininity

Masculinity and femininity color how we participate in the world from top to bottom, and they accordingly pervade all of the actions by which we live out that participation.

Masculinity and femininity are the two basic ways of being open to God, to other human beings, and to the world. If we think of masculinity or femininity as the two "channels" through which human love flows, then being a man or a woman is much more than just an aspect or a segment of our existence. Rather, sexuality pervades our whole being from the inside out.

Body and soul

The body isn't just a brute given; it's a fundamental gift, a call to happiness that makes our freedom possible. By the same logic, attraction to the opposite sex, or eros, which is somehow rooted in man's very nature[30], is an original call that enables the free response by which we build a genuinely human culture.

Man is a being made up of body and soul. Man is truly himself when his body and soul are intimately united; the challenge of eros can be said to be truly overcome when this unification is achieved. Should he aspire to be pure spirit and to reject the flesh as pertaining to his animal nature alone, then spirit and body would both lose their dignity. On the other hand, should he deny the spirit and consider matter, the body, as the only reality, he would likewise lose his greatness[31].

The image of God

The language of the body tells us that we are children who are called by that very fact to become spouses whose mutual love is a path to God. The humility of the body is a constant reminder that the Absolute is also a love who calls man to friendship with himself.

The body speaks of God; it reveals his goodness and wisdom. It also speaks of us, of man and woman and our vocation to love. The body is revealing to us the path to take toward human fulfillment: the way of love, in which the original image imprinted in man and woman can be realized and shine forth in a fruitful communion of persons, open to the gift of life.

Gen 1, 26-27

[26] And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the heavens, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.

[27] And God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.

It is not good that the man should be alone

Gen 2, 18

And Jehovah God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a help meet for him.

Diversity

Human beings are indeed diverse, and this diversity is due to things such as race, social status, and a variety of talents or gifts. But diversity does not necessarily imply any inherent reference to other persons or entail any “being face-to-face with the other." A tall man does not need a short one in order to measure his height (a yardstick will do), just as we can understand the customs of African tribes without needing to compare them with how people live in Asia or Europe.

Identity and difference between man and woman; complementarity

Masculinity and femininity are not only diverse. More important, they are complementary.

The word ‘complementarity’ designates the impossibility of understanding each sex without reference to the other and vice versa.

Masculinity and femininity "are, as it were, two different ‘incarnations,’ that is, two ways in which the same human being, created ‘in the image of God' (Gen. 1:27), ‘is a body’ "[32].

Masculinity 'for' femininity and, vice versa, femininity 'for' masculinity

The body, which expresses masculinity 'for' femininity and, vice versa, femininity 'for' masculinity, manifests the reciprocity and communion of persons[33].

NuptiaI meaning of the body

The body is "nuptiaI" because it exists to enable a man to give himself to a woman and to receive her as a gift (and vice versa).

Nuptial meaning of the body isn‘t simply "horizontaI”

It reveals God as a Father who gives us life and surrounds us with his care. Our first task—or, rather, privilege—in life is to accept the original gift of our own existence.

Gender

Advocates of opposition between sex against gender typically use the word "sex" to mean biological masculinity and femininity, the supposedly brute fact that you happen to be either male or female and to possess the corresponding reproductive organs. "Gender," by contrast, is used to indicate the concrete shape a given culture gives to biological sexuality through institutions such as the distribution of male and female "roles."

Behind this stance, then, is the view that "sex" is a universal feature of human bodies, but that it is "merely bioIogicaI," while "gender”’ is properly human but is culturally conditioned and so varies according to time and place.  The opposition between "sex” and "gender" typically bolsters the (false) claim that we can disjoin biology and humanity, which in fact are intimately and inextricably related. There is no such thing as "mere biology," nor is our biology "subhuman." On the contrary, biological masculinity and femininity, along with the body in which they are inscribed, are integral to what makes us truly human in the first place.


Chapitre 6 The Ascent of love

 

See Karol Wojtyla, Love and Responsibility

Sensuality

The most basic level of erotic love for a person of the opposite sex is a rudimentary attraction, “sensuaIity," a response to another's male or female body insofar as it is a “potential object of enjoyment”[34]. Although it is itself "blind to the person," sensuality points beyond itself to a higher dimension of love. It contains a promise of happiness. Of course, this promise of happiness cannot be fulfilled by sensuality alone. Anyone who pursues sexual pleasure as an end in itself will eventually lose even the pleasure he seeks, for sensuality can give real fulfillment only when it is integrated into the broader dimension it points to but cannot attain by itself.

Sympathy

Sympathy enables us to share in the interior world of the beloved. Sympathy brings people close together, into the same orbit, so that each is aware of the other's whole personality, and continually discovers that person in his own orbit. Sympathy lifts the subject to a higher stage beyond the lonely imprisonment of searching to satisfy his own urges. The person is no longer responding simply to the sexual "charge" of the body as a source of pleasure.

Affirming the Person

The love of a man for a woman needs to ripen into an affirmation of the worth that she possesses as a person independently of how he happens to feel about her. True love is not based alone on the woman good qualities or on the splendid feelings she arouses in the man, but on the marvelous fact that she simply is the particular person she is. To love truly is to keep on loving even on the bad days when sadness, annoyance, or ill humor temporarily drives those happier emotions out of our minds.

When we finally learn to accept the beloved‘s dignity as someone other than ourselves, our existence is enriched by the new presence we thereby let into our inner world. Feelings open the prospect of a "we" by enabling us to share a common world with another.

The affirmation of the value of the beloved cements this sharing on a whole new level of stability. Lovers who attain this new level share not only their feelings, but also their whole depth as persons. Firmly rooted in this mutual affirmation, man and woman are ready to join whole lives with each other in marriage.

Betrothed love

The highest stage of love, then, is what Karol Wojtyla calls "betrothed love," in which we find ourselves by giving ourselves to another. Betrothed love is doubly paradoxical: firstly in that it is possible to step outside one‘s own "I" in this way, and secondly in that the "l" far from being destroyed or impaired as a result is enlarged and enriched—of course in a super-physical, a moral sense. The Gospel stresses this very clearly and unambiguously—"would lose—shall find again,” "would save—shall lose." (Matthew 16:25)

Communion of persons

"It is not good that the man should be alone." The divine hands have finished their masterpiece, shaping man into the unity of two beings, a "communion of persons."

The call to love resounding in man's body invites him to go out of himself and to build a world together with another.

Man and woman must exercise their freedom to love by journeying from affective union (which consists in a mutual sharing of feelings) to the total communion of life based on their affirmation of each other as persons.

Truth of love

To begin with, lovers undermine each other's dignity as persons unless they cherish the truth of love. Second, the truth of love is revealed in love's natural aspiration to make a total gift of self. Third, it's only when lovers receive their love as a gift from God that they’re capable of this total self-giving. Fourth and finally, to receive human love as God's gift is to respect the language of the body, in which God, the Author of this language, expresses himself and speaks his generous love.

Holy Spirit

The body is a home, but also a temple. The New Testament compares the body to a temple indwelt by the Holy Spirit (see 1 Cor. 6:19).

Love that unites the man and the woman shares in the Holy Spirit, who eternally unites the Father and the Son in the communion of the Trinity. God's Love can introduce us into the very core of the mystery of his own being because this Love is the Holy Spirit himself, "the Person-gift" who empowers man to accept God's seIf—giving and initiates him into the Trinitarian communion.

 

 

Communion with God

All the aspects of personal existence (sensuality, feelings, the affirmation of the person) direct us toward the ultimate goal of life, which is communion with God.

We need not, in fact, we should not, ignore the lower dimensions of love, or despise our desires and feelings. Rather than rejecting them, we need to integrate them into love's basic movement toward God. When all of our affectivity, all of our bodily desires, are integrated into our affirmation of the value of the person, our sensuality and feelings aren't left behind but become part of our journey to the Absolute. It's precisely because it exists to be incorporated into such a journey that sexuality seems to promise an almost divine ecstasy of fulfillment.

Image of God, communion of love, source of life

Together, man and woman become image of God. The face of God is most fully reflected in the communion uniting man and woman in a shared journey of love.  Man and woman come to resemble God to the extent that they become loving people. For Christ's life and death reveal that God in himself is Love, that he is a communion of persons in which Father and Son are one in the Spirit who personifies divine love.

The original image imprinted in man and woman can be realized and shine forth in a fruitful communion of persons, open to the gift of life.

The complete image of God is a communion of persons open to the gift of life.

 

Love as desire, as goodwill and as friendship

Love as attraction and desire (eros)

Love of desire originates in a need and aims at finding a good which it lacks. For a man, that good is a woman, for a woman it is a man. The sexual urge is oriented in part to this completion of the one sex by the other.

The love between a man and a woman has as one of its components an attraction originating not just in a reaction to visible and physical beauty, but also in a full and deep appreciation of the beauty of the person. Real love doesn't stop with the "gentle voice" or the "sense of pleasant ease." It receives the very existence of the beloved as a gift. True lovers who have attained the maturity of love are able to recognize that the beloved him- or herself is a gift, prior to any of his or her actions. In short, true love is a response to the very fact that the beIoved's existence is itself already a gift.

It is as if lovers said to each other: "It is good that you exist and that we exist together."

Enjoyment must be subordinated to love. If not, the person becomes a mere instrument to obtaining pleasant experiences.

Love as Goodwill (agape)

Love as goodwill is to love between persons. It is unselfish love, for goodwill is free of self-interest and is indeed selflessness in love. It's only when lovers recognize this depth dimension in each other that their love becomes hardy enough to outlast changes in their feelings or alterations in their qualities and attributes.

Love as friendship (uniqueness and particularity)

This is my beloved, and this is my friend" (Song of Solomon 5:16). Friendship consists in a full commitment of the will to another person with a view to that person's good. A good friend shares our feelings and emotions. Friendship differs from mere cameraderie by its interior dimension, by communication which allows and fosters true communion, by its reciprocal generosity and its stability.

This love is an eminently human one since it is directed from one person to another through an affection of the will; it involves the good of the whole person, and therefore can enrich the expressions of body and mind with a unique dignity, ennobling these expressions as special ingredients and signs of the friendship distinctive of marriage[35].

 

Loving another person for his or her own sake doesn’t suppress sensuality and sentiment:

Loving another person for his or her own sake doesn’t suppress sensuality and sentiment. These other dimensions of love remain necessary aids to discovering and nurturing genuine love for another person. They help us to discover the value of the person, although they must also be integrated into, and point toward, this dignity: "So in every situation in which we experience the sexual value of a person, love demands integration, meaning the incorporation of that value in the value of the person, or indeed its subordination to the value of the person"[36].

Good action and joy and pleasure

Delight is a certain perfection of operation[37], “for it perfects operation, as does beauty youth[38]”.

 

 

 

Chapitre 7 Covenant and transmission of life

As for me, behold, my covenant is with thee, and thou shalt be the father of a multitude of nations.

Gen 17,4

Covenant

The mutual attraction of man and woman, rooted in their bodies, draws the two out of themselves and into a covenant with each other. This movement consists of the gradual integration of the following four dimensions of human love : sensuality, sympathy, affirmation of the value of the person and receiving our spouse as a gift from God.

Transmission of life

The covenant of the couple with the very Source from whom their love flows incorporates them in its turn into the larger divine design and transforms them into collaborators with the Creator‘s plan to transmit life through the sequence of the generations. When a husband and wife take up the baton and share the gift of life in their turn, they assume a measure of responsibility, not just for their own children, but for the future of God's whole intergenerational project of communicating life to mankind.

God, source of life:

“We believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty,
maker of heaven and earth, of all that is, seen and unseen.
We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, […]
Through him all things were made. […]
We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life, […]” (Nicene Constantinople creed)

Communion of generations

From matrimony springs the family, in which “different generations meet and help each other to increase in wisdom and to reconcile the rights of persons with other requirements of social life, constitutes the basis of society” (GS, no. 52). The family transforms "conjugaI communion [into] a communion of generations"[39].

Society

The communion of persons constitutes an authentic common good at the foundation of society and makes the civilization of love possible[40].

Why does the sexual relationship find its adequate place only within marriage?

(Guide To Living Christian Love, Marriage and Family, AFLF pp 41-42)

The sexual union between the spouses appears, on the one hand, as a point of expression of the covenant between the members of the couple and thus between their families, an expression opening to pleasure, and, on the other hand, as a point for the transmission of life, giving offspring to the couple and an ancestry to their families.

1. The love to which the man and the woman aspire cannot exist except when man and woman make a covenant

Man and woman are created in the image of God. The love to which the man and the woman aspire is in the image of the love with which God loves; this love is received from God; it is a total love for always. The sexual union expresses this love, carnal and spiritual, between the man and the woman. Such a love cannot exist except when the man and the woman have made a covenant. This covenant is marriage. The covenant, which is marriage, renders visible the covenant of God with the couple. The sexual act reveals the covenant between the man and the woman and inserts the two into an covenant with God. This is why the sexual act outside of marriage is a defacement of the divine covenant. In the conjugal covenant, pleasure is not sought for its own sake, but as a gift which one gives because one gives oneself to the other.

2. The transmission of life also finds an appropriate place only within marriage

The transmission of life also finds an appropriate place only within marriage, the only framework that permits a person to grow and be included in a clearly established line of descent. Sexual union outside of marriage cannot be the expression of a total love for always, because that context does not ensure the permanence of the tie of love. Likewise, the child who might possibly be born from a union outside of marriage will be deprived of the climate of the covenant between the families of his parents that the child would have within the framework of marriage.

 

Why does the Christian stick with natural methods?

(Guide To Living Christian Love, Marriage and Family, AFLF p 56)

One hears it said, “The continence imposed by natural methods is difficult to live, maybe even impossible,” or, “Natural methods are not good for the couple’s harmony, the Church does not realize what she is asking.” Not everyone understands, and many consider them a law, an imposed path, or an obstacle to the love of the couple.

Why choose natural methods, therefore, despite all these hesitations?

The Christian sticks with them because he or she is a child of God, and God the Father, of Whom the person is the image, wanted things that way by linking union and procreation. This link is special

because through it God continues his work of creation, through this human act of conception achieved in love and union. The Creator did not make a mistake in wanting things this way and a person does not make a mistake in following the order established by the Creator. It is in this way that the man and the woman truly become procreators, prolonging in a certain way the creation by calling new children into life.

Chapitre 8 A rift

 

A "rift" threatens to pull asunder everything love has joined: man and the Creator, male and female, parent and child, even man and his very self.

A rift between man and God

According to the Genesis account, the rift originated with man's attempt to cut his ties with God, the Source of every gift. The tree of the knowledge of good and evil stands for a false independence based on the attempt to determine the meaning of existence without God.

Gen. 3,1-12

[1] Now the serpent was more cunning than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made. And he said to the woman, "Has God indeed said, 'You shall not eat of every tree of the garden'?"

[2] And the woman said to the serpent, "We may eat the fruit of the trees of the garden;

[3] "but of the fruit of the tree which [is] in the midst of the garden, God has said, 'You shall not eat it, nor shall you touch it, lest you die.' "

[4] Then the serpent said to the woman, "You will not surely die.

[5] "For God knows that in the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil."

[6] So when the woman saw that the tree [was] good for food, that it [was] pleasant to the eyes, and a tree desirable to make [one] wise, she took of its fruit and ate. She also gave to her husband with her, and he ate.

[7] Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they [were] naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves coverings.

[8] And they heard the sound of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God among the trees of the garden.

[9] Then the LORD God called to Adam and said to him, "Where [are] you?"

[10] So he said, "I heard Your voice in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; and I hid myself."

[11] And He said, "Who told you that you [were] naked? Have you eaten from the tree of which I commanded you that you should not eat?"

[12] Then the man said, "The woman whom You gave [to be] with me, she gave me of the tree, and I ate."

 

Consequences of the refusal of God’s gift

Man's adoption of a new and false standard for gauging his worth gives birth to what John calls "concupiscence," the voice whispering in man's heart that the world is not a gift to be received but a possession to be grasped.

A rift within man

Man and woman no longer regard their bodies as a home or a temple.

A rift between man and woman

The body is the meeting place between husband and wife: "This is flesh of my flesh," the first man says on seeing the first woman. The original unity that enabled the first couple to become one flesh likewise revealed them as the Creator's gift to each other.

Once man ceases to draw from the Source of the gift, he can no longer give himself to another person in the truth of love. Man's emotions no longer reliably attune him to the beloved’s interior world but tend to distort and cloud his perception of it.

Mutual accusation

Human history presents one long account of failing to live up to the creation ideal of “becoming one body.”

Marriage is so frequently changed from conjugal union of equal partners into mutual accusation and domination of one by the other.

“God said to the woman: ‘Your urge shall be for your husband, and he shall be your master’ ” (Gn 3:16).

Thus, we have the start of the sad history of infidelity, adultery, divorce, broken families, and all kinds of sexual disorders that destroy human dignity.

Domination

The man typically seeks to rule over the woman and to measure her worth by the yardstick of his own sexual pleasure. Since men don‘t carry their children in their own bodies, the link between sex and the person tends to remain more "externaI" to their experience. Men are in danger of absolutizing sensuality in isolation from feeling and so of seeking loveless sex devoid of any tender regard for the value of the person.

By contrast, women are much less likely to separate sex from the mystery of the person. They have more built—in protection against this temptation than man, because the link between sexuality and the origin of life is knit into the female body. Nevertheless, women also have to wrestle with a typical temptation of their own. If men are tempted to seek sensual gratification at the expense of feeling, women are in danger of getting trapped in their emotions. To be sure, emotions often help women transcend an exclusive focus on mere sexual pleasure, but feelings can sometimes imprison them in a selfish habit of measuring everything according to their own affections.

That the tendency to domination does not merely wound each partner separately; it also frustrates their unity.

A rift between parents and children

The rift within man's heart, which also divides man and woman, cannot help but affect the children born from their love.  The Creator's intention was to show himself visibly in the love between parents, so that every child could glimpse the divine Fatherhood in his own human father and mother.

Unfortunately husband and wife refuse frequently to accept this awesome responsibility to manifest God's love in their love.

Chapitre 9 Maturing the fullness of love

The desire for happiness[41]

The desire that moves one to act is preceded by an initial gift that serves as a foretaste or promise of a dimly seen fullness. Desire finds its origin in love, and love finds its origin in an experience of particular fullness, in the promise of a personal communion, granted at the very dawn of the moral life.

It is precisely this experience of anticipated fullness that allows man to go beyond the immediate empirical dimension of an attraction toward concrete goods, giving his desire a truly human and personal dimension. Thus, at the origin of our acting is encountered the desire awakened by love in such wise that the will tends toward the realization of the promised fullness by means of the concrete act. Thus is born the practical ideal of a good and happy life, one based on acts that contribute to its realization: good, excellent acts full of meaning insofar as they are, in the ultimate analysis, efforts to realize a fullness of life.

 

 

Values: to think

Virtues: to act

Principles : to act together

 

Values

All social values are inherent in the dignity of the human person, whose authentic development they foster. Essentially, these values are: truth, freedom, justice, love[42].

Psalm 85, 10-11

[10] Mercy and truth have met together; Righteousness and peace have kissed.

[11] Truth shall spring out of the earth, And righteousness shall look down from heaven.

Truth

The quest for truth cannot be ascribed to the sum of different opinions, nor to one or another of these opinions. Men and women have the specific duty to move always towards the truth, to respect it and bear responsible witness to it. When the coexistence of human beings within a community is founded on truth, it is ordered and fruitful, and it corresponds to their dignity as persons.

Freedom

The value of freedom, as an expression of the singularity of each human person, is respected when every member of society is permitted to fulfil his personal vocation; to seek the truth and profess his religious, cultural and political ideas; to express his opinions; to choose his state of life and, as far as possible, his line of work; to pursue initiatives of an economic, social or political nature. This must take place within a “strong juridical framework”, within the limits imposed by the common good and public order, and, in every case, in a manner characterized by responsibility.

Justice

Justice is a value that accompanies the exercise of the corresponding cardinal moral virtue. It consists in the constant and firm will to give their due to God and neighbour. From a subjective point of view, justice is translated into behaviour that is based on the will to recognize the other as a person, while, from an objective point of view, it constitutes the decisive criteria of morality in the intersubjective and social sphere.

Love

Love, often restricted to relationships of physical closeness or limited to merely subjective aspects of action on behalf of others, must be reconsidered in its authentic value as the highest and universal criterion of the whole of social ethics. Among all paths, even those sought and taken in order to respond to the ever new forms of current social questions, the “more excellent way” (cf. 1 Cor 12:31) is that marked out by love.

Hierarchy, articulation

Love and justice

Love presupposes and transcends justice. If justice is “in itself suitable for ‘arbitration' between people concerning the reciprocal distribution of objective goods in an equitable manner, love and only love (including that kindly love that we call ‘mercy') is capable of restoring man to himself”. Human relationships cannot be governed solely by the measure of justice: “The experience of the past and of our own time demonstrates that justice alone is not enough, that it can even lead to the negation and destruction of itself. In fact, justice must be ‘corrected' to a considerable extent by that love which, as St. Paul proclaims, ‘is patient and kind' or, in other words, possesses the characteristics of that merciful love.

Love and truth

We must be aware of the ways in which charity has been and continues to be misconstrued and emptied of meaning, with the consequent risk of being misinterpreted, detached from ethical living.

Hence the need to link charity with truth not only in the sequence, pointed out by Saint Paul, of veritas in caritate (Eph 4:15), but also in the inverse and complementary sequence of caritas in veritate. Truth needs to be sought, found and expressed within the “economy” of charity, but charity in its turn needs to be understood, confirmed and practised in the light of truth. (Caritas in Veritate, Benedict XVI, 1)

 

Virtues, strategies of love[43]

PIaying by the ruIes?

Most of us probably associate virtue with rule keeping; being virtuous, we typically think, means "pIaying by the ruIes."

The kind of person you are

Genuine virtue, by contrast, is not about the Iegalistic observance of rules, but about the kind of person you are. In a word, virtue is an interior quality, and its presence transforms us from the inside out into better people.

Friendship and virtues

In order to understand how we become virtuous persons, we can think of the way a person is educated by the influence of good friends. A true friend does not sit in judgment on his fellows. Rather, he lifts them up; not by being patronizing and lecturing them, but just by being the kind of person he is and sharing with them his own life. True friends teach us by their very presence to reject evil and to embrace the good; they themselves embody the good for us as a living law that we can follow.

Friendship starts with affective union; a good friend shares our emotions and feelings. By the same token, his educative influence touches our emotional life on the inside.

Friendship integrates all the dimensions of our being and empowers us to become agents of our own interior integration in turn. Saint Thomas Aquinas describes the virtues as the fruit of a friendship.

 

Charity

Charity is actually a friendship with God that "has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit which has been given to us" (Rom. 5:5). Charity, in its turn, is like a "mother" that gives birth to all the other virtues.

Temperance, fortitude, justice, and prudence (the four basic virtues) are themselves expressions of love

Saint Augustine, from the character of the Catholic Church, I, 15, 25 :

For the fourfold division of virtue I regard as taken from four forms of love. For these four virtues   I should have no hesitation in defining them: that

Purity[44]

See the note at the end of this document

 

Compendium of CCC :

379. What are the principal human virtues?

The principal human virtues are called the cardinal virtues, under which all the other virtues are grouped and which are the hinges of a virtuous life. The cardinal virtues are: prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance.

380. What is prudence?

Prudence disposes reason to discern in every circumstance our true good and to choose the right means for achieving it. Prudence guides the other virtues by pointing out their rule and measure.

381. What is justice?

Justice consists in the firm and constant will to give to others their due. Justice toward God is called “the virtue of religion.”

382. What is fortitude?

Fortitude assures firmness in difficulties and constancy in the pursuit of the good. It reaches even to the ability of possibly sacrificing one’s own life for a just cause.

383. What is temperance?

Temperance moderates the attraction of pleasures, assures the mastery of the will over instincts and provides balance in the use of created goods.

 

The gift of love has to come first

The upshot of this traditional teaching about the primacy of charity is that we cannot even think about acquiring virtue—and virtue just means the integration of the various dimensions of the heart—unless we already stand within the magnetic field of true love. The gift of love has to come first and take us by surprise, otherwise we lack the wherewithal even to start the work of integrating our hearts. Every effort to attain virtue flows from love and strengthens it in turn.

Nothing to do with self—realization

Striving for real virtue has nothing to do with egotistical perfectionism or self—realization; the true goal is a richer capacity to love and an enhanced ability to give ourselves to others.

The interior shape into which love molds us

Virtue is nothing but the interior shape into which love molds us.

 

1, Cor 13:1-8

Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I have become sounding brass or a clanging cymbal.

And though I have [the gift of] prophecy, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.

And though I bestow all my goods to feed [the poor,] and though I give my body to be burned, but have not love, it profits me nothing.

Love suffers long [and] is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up;

does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil;

does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth;

bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

Love never fails. But whether [there are] prophecies, they will fail; whether [there are] tongues, they will cease; whether [there is] knowledge, it will vanish away.

Principles

Criteria for judgment and guidelines for action

The permanent principles of the Church's social doctrine constitute the very heart of Catholic social teaching. These are the principles of:

Common good

Three aspects of the common good : to Have, to Be, and to Do in common :

Universal destination of goods (principle): The universal right to use the goods of the earth.

Subsidiarity

On the basis of this principle, all societies of a superior order must adopt attitudes of help (“subsidium”) — therefore of support, promotion, development — with respect to lower-order societies. In this way, intermediate social entities can properly perform the functions that fall to them without being required to hand them over unjustly to other social entities of a higher level, by which they would end up being absorbed and substituted, in the end seeing themselves denied their dignity and essential place.

Participation

Activities by means of which the citizen, either as an individual or in association with others, whether directly or through representation, contributes to the cultural, economic, political and social life of the civil community to which he belongs.

Participation in community life is not only one of the greatest aspirations of the citizen, called to exercise freely and responsibly his civic role with and for others[407], but is also one of the pillars of all democratic orders and one of the major guarantees of the permanence of the democratic system.

Solidarity

Solidarity is not a feeling of vague compassion or shallow distress at the misfortunes of so many people, both near and far. On the contrary, it is a firm and persevering determination to commit oneself to the good of all and of each individual, because we are all really responsible for all. Solidarity places itself in the sphere of justice.

 

Principles are interrelated

These principles, in fact, are interrelated and shed light on one another mutually.

The development of the whole man and of all men

The development of the whole man and of all men (a “complete form of humanism”[45]) is the criteria for judgment.

Rooted in human dignity

The person represents the ultimate end of society, by which it is ordered to the person: “Hence, the social order and its development must invariably work to the benefit of the human person, since the order of things is to be subordinate to the order of persons, and not the other way around”.

It is necessary to “consider every neighbour without exception as another self, taking into account first of all his life and the means necessary for living it with dignity”. Every political, economic, social, scientific and cultural programme must be inspired by the awareness of the primacy of each human being over society.

The natural law offers a foundation

The natural law lays the indispensable moral foundation for building the human community and for establishing the civil law.

Diversity of cultures, common principles

In the diversity of cultures, the natural law unites peoples, enjoining common principles. Although its application may require adaptations to the many different conditions of life according to place, time and circumstances, it remains immutable.

Cannot be removed from the heart of man

Even when it is rejected in its very principles, it cannot be destroyed or removed from the heart of man. It always rises again in the life of individuals and societies”. The natural law, which is the law of God, cannot be annulled by human sinfulness.

The help of Grace and Revelation

The natural law precepts are not clearly and immediately perceived by everyone. Religious and moral truths can be known “by everyone with facility, with firm certainty and without the admixture of error” only with the help of Grace and Revelation.


The Image of the Tree

(see :  Guide To Living Christian Love, Marriage and Family, AFLF)

A fruit tree will bear much fruit,

                -- if its roots are planted in good soil

                -- if it receives life-giving rain

                -- and if it receives plenty of sunshine.

Our choices in life will give good fruits,

-- if the criteria we use for making choices (the roots) are “planted” in the good soil of

-- our attraction to the beautiful, the good and the true, which guides our intelligence (our reason),

-- and our desire to respond to the call of God so that our faith guides our reason and our determination to choose and realize the good,

 -- if we have a firm will and if we furnish ourselves with the means to succeed; we need these things to become capable (i.e. to acquire the necessary virtues) of living in accordance with our choices (our values), just as rain is necessary for the growth of the tree;

-- and if we are certain that it is God who gives us the strength and forgiveness that we need to progress despite our weaknesses, like the sun which gently ripens the fruits.

Just as the tree grows little by little, the person moves gradually towards a life which is more in harmony with the call she has received, the call to love in truth[46].

Chapitre 10 Chapter 10 A few complementary biblical elements to focus our thoughts

We present here a few additional references to create a frame to our search.

Triptych Creation- Fall-Redemption

Saint Paul Epistles

These "letters" are structured as follows:

Part 1: our objective relationship with Jesus Christ (belonging to Heaven, co-heirs of Christ heritage, grace, glory…)

Part 2: subjective living and acquisition (through faith) of our position in Christ, especially within the family: man-woman and parent-child relationships.

Here are some examples:

Eph. 5, 22-33 (couple husband/wife)

[22] Wives, [be in subjection] unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord.

[23] For the husband is the head of the wife, and Christ also is the head of the church, [being] himself the saviour of the body.

[24] But as the church is subject to Christ, so [let] the wives also [be] to their husbands in everything.

[25] Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself up for it;

[26] that he might sanctify it, having cleansed it by the washing of water with the word,

[27] that he might present the church to himself a glorious [church], not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish.

[28] Even so ought husbands also to love their own wives as their own bodies. He that loveth his own wife loveth himself:

[29] for no man ever hated his own flesh; but nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as Christ also the church;

[30] because we are members of his body.

[31] For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife; and the two shall become one flesh.

[32] This mystery is great: but I speak in regard of Christ and of the church.

[33] Nevertheless do ye also severally love each one his own wife even as himself; and [let] the wife [see] that she fear her husband.

Eph. 6,1-4 (parents/children)

[1] Children, obey your parents in the Lord: for this is right.

[2] Honor thy father and mother (which is the first commandment with promise),

[3] that it may be well with thee, and thou mayest live long on the earth.

[4] And, ye fathers, provoke not your children to wrath: but nurture them in the chastening and admonition of the Lord.

Col. 3,18-21

 [18] Wives, be in subjection to your husbands, as is fitting in the Lord.

[19] Husbands, love your wives, and be not bitter against them.

[20] Children, obey your parents in all things, for this is well-pleasing in the Lord.

[21] Fathers, provoke not your children, that they be not discouraged.

Man-woman relationships are part of God's creational intentions later reinstated by Jesus Christ.

Gal. 3,28

There can be neither Jew nor Greek, there can be neither bond nor free, there can be no male and female; for ye all are one [man] in Christ Jesus.

In fine, the issue is about being able to live marital life according to God's will.

Rom. 7,19

For the good which I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I practise.

Eph. 2,6 

and raised us up with him, and made us to sit with him in the heavenly [places], in Christ Jesus:

Eph. 5,2

and walk in love, even as Christ also loved you, and gave himself up for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God for an odor of a sweet smell.

Eph. 5,8

For ye were once darkness, but are now light in the Lord: walk as children of light

Eph. 6,11

Put on the whole armor of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil.

Eph. 6,13

Wherefore take up the whole armor of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, and, having done all, to stand

Eph. 6,14

Stand therefore, having girded your loins with truth, and having put on the breastplate of righteousness,

In essence, this is not a moral but a spiritual struggle.

Eph. 6,12 :

For our wrestling is not against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world-rulers of this darkness, against the spiritual [hosts] of wickedness in the heavenly [places].

Rom. 12,1-2 :

[1] I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, [which is] your spiritual service.

[2] And be not fashioned according to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, and ye may prove what is the good and acceptable and perfect will of God.

Chapitre 11 Appendix : The new global ethic: challenges for the Church

Marguerite A. Peeters

Abstract

This booklet offers an overview of the challenges that Christians face in front of the new global ethic that has imposed itself since the end of the cold war. A global cultural revolution took place immediately after the fall of the Berlin wall. New words, paradigms, norms, values, lifestyles, educational methods and governance processes, belonging to a new ethic, spread globally and have by now won the day. The ethical system we are facing is new in the sense that it is postmodern and, in its radical aspects, post-Judeo-Christian. It is, in addition, globally normative: it already rules the world’s cultures. The tendency of the majority of intellectuals and decision-makers has been to follow the new nouns without carefully analyzing their origin and implications, while an ever smaller minority has been reactionary. Discernment has not been made. The content of the new culture is not self-evident. Under the guise of a "soft consensus", the global ethic hides an antichristic agenda rooted in Western apostasy and driven by powerful minorities at the rudder of global governance since 1989. A number of Christians already confuse the paradigms of the new culture with the social doctrine of the Church. The danger of Christian alignment with the new ethic is particularly real in the developing world now confronting head on the effects of globalization. On the other hand, Christians cannot put in doubt God’s providential guidance of world events. They are called to discern the signs of the action of the Holy Spirit in the new culture and to evangelize it, thereby offering an alternative to postmodern deconstruction. Ignorance of the real stakes - be they sociopolitical, cultural or anthropological and theological - is abyssal. Ignorance, however, is always a bad adviser. A serious study of the global cultural revolution, both as content and as process, is in order to enable Christians to exercise their responsibilities. Such an effort belongs to the Church’s mission of evangelization.

A global cultural revolution

Since the end of the cold war, hundreds of new concepts spread like wildfire to the remotest corners of the globe, expressing themselves through the means of a new language. Higgledy-piggledy, let us give a few examples: globalization with a human face, global citizenship, sustainable development, good governance, consensus building, global ethic, cultural diversity, cultural liberty, dialogue among civilizations, quality of life, quality education, education for all, right to choose, informed choice, informed consent, gender, equal opportunity, equity principle, mainstreaming, empowerment, NGOs, civil society, partnerships, transparency, bottom—up participation, accountability, holism, broad-based consultation, facilitation, inclusion, awareness-raising, clarification of values, capacity building, women’s rights, children’s rights, reproductive rights, sexual orientation, safe abortion, safe motherhood, the rights approach, win-win, enabling environment, equal access, life skills education, peer education, bodily integrity, internalization, ownership, agents of change, best practices, indicators of progress, culturally sensitive approaches, secular spirituality, Youth Parliament, peace education, the rights of future generations, corporate social responsibility, fair trade, human security, precautionary principle, prevention. ..

Nobody may any longer deny the predominance of these concepts in contemporary culture — the main feature of which is to be global. This apparent mishmash of words and concepts may not be altogether condemned nor endorsed. Genuine human aspirations and perennial values got entangled with the bitter fruits of Western apostasy, which corrupted the process of globalization from within. The new global language, however, tends to exclude words specifically belonging to the Judeo- Christian tradition, such as: truth, morality, conscience, reason, heart, virginity, chastity, spouse, husband, wife, father, mother, son, daughter, complementarity, service, help, authority, hierarchy, justice, law, commandment, dogma, faith, charity, hope, suffering, sin, friend, enemy, nature, representation. . .

Didn’t Jacques Derrida, the master of postmodern deconstructionism, suggest in an interview by the French newspaper Le Monde, shortly before dying in 2004, to eliminate the word "marriage" from the French civil code so as to resolve the issue of the juridical status of homosexual couples? The exclusion of certain words is a factor that must be taken into consideration when analyzing the challenges of the global ethic.

A certain number of new concepts turned into global paradigms. A spontaneous generation of concepts thus became a normative process, through which the minorities in power imposed on all their ideological interpretation of the new concepts: the normative process was accompanied by a process of ideological radicalization. To speak publicly of homosexuality as a sin, for instance, now amounts to breaching one of the supreme norms of the new culture: the absolute right to choose or the principle of non-discrimination.

The new paradigms reflect dramatic paradigm shifts marking the transition of Western civilization from modernity to postmodernity. The new, postmodern paradigms destabilize the old, modern paradigms. Let us give a few examples of these shifts: from development as growth to sustainable development, from government to governance, from representative democracy to participatory democracy, from authority to the autonomy and rights of the individual, from spouses to partners, from happiness to quality of life, from the given to the constructed, from the family to various forms of families, from parents to reproducers, from objective and measurable material needs to an arbitrary rights approach, from charity to rights, from cultural identity to cultural diversity, from majority vote to consensus, from confrontation to dialogue, from international security to human security, from universal values to a global ethic, and so on.

The cultural changes that have taken place since the end of the cold war have the magnitude of a global cultural revolution. Their implications are extremely complex and must be studied one by one with great care.

The influence of the new norms is not limited to the adoption of a new conceptual framework; the new paradigms became dynamic action principles, which have already led to concrete and irreversible transformations in all sectors of socioeconomic and political life. These transformations affect us all directly, where we are, in our daily lives, especially in the areas that are the most important for personal and social morality, such as education and health; new laws and policies, radical changes in mentalities and lifestyles, codes of conduct for businesses and institutions, changes in the content of curricula and textbooks, new norms and decision-making methods in politics, health care and education systems, new strategic priorities for international cooperation,  radically new approaches to development, fundamental transformation of democratic principles and mechanisms - a new social ethos imposed on all.

The efficiency of the revolutionary process has been such that the new concepts are by now omnipresent. They imbibe the culture of international, supranational and regional organizations, the culture of governments and their ministries, political parties (both left and right) and local authorities, corporate culture, the culture of health and education systems, the culture of the media, the culture of countless networks of NGOs and transnational governance. At various degrees, the new language has also penetrated into world religions - even in Christian NGOs and charities. Everywhere in the world, societies and nations now live in a culture governed by the values of consensus, diversity, partnerships, sustainability, holism, choice, gender equity, bottom—up participation and so on. For better or for worse, whether or not we are aware of it, the global culture educates us all. Let us repeat that the content of this culture, which is externally seducing, is not self-evident. It is not neutral - neutrality being a myth that nobody ever genuinely believed in. The new values are ambivalent. The possibility of a genuine consensus coexists with a radical agenda. Ambivalence does not mean toleration and choice, although the majority would tend to believe so. Ambivalence is a process of deconstruction of reality and truth, which leads to the arbitrary exercise of power, domination and intolerance. The paradox of postmodernity is to seek to deconstruct the modem ways of exercising power while at the same time introducing new, more sophisticated and subtle ways of power-grabbing.

Integrated in a culture, the new concepts are not a jumble. They are in a dynamic, driven by an inner logic. The new concepts are interrelated, interactive, interdependent, indivisible, mutually reinforcing. They belong to a system, a whole in which all is in all. For example, in the new system, good governance, which presupposes consensus-building and bottom-up NGO participation, is the way to implement sustainable development, which goes through gender equity, of which universal access to reproductive health, itself founded on informed choice and the right to choose (i.e. the right to abortion), is the precondition. The new paradigms are themselves holistic - to the point of totally including each other.

A new ethic gives the new paradigms their unifying configuration. This ethic is global. The global ethic has taken the place of the universal values on which the international order had been founded in 1945 and by now considered obsolete. The starting and end points of the global ethic are not those of the traditional concept of universality: the global ethic is marred by radicalization. It is impossible to understand it without relating it to the "new theology" which preceded the cultural revolution and pushed God’s transcendence "on the other side", entrusting immanence to man. Most of the new norms have not yet formally entered international law and therefore are not yet legally binding. Yet the power of the revolution was such that they bind differently, not only governments but, primarily, mentalities and behaviours inside all the cultures of the world. The new ethic is a Diktat, In terms of efficacy and efficiency, it seems more powerful than the rule of law and international law. Which head of state proposed, articulated and spelled out alternatives to the new paradigms? Which organization successfully challenged their underlying principles? Which culture effectively opposed resistance? The fact is that all influential social and political actors all over the world, not only did not resist, but internalized and now own the new paradigms. Alignment has been general.

In spite of its devastating efficiency, the cultural revolution went almost unnoticed. It has been a quiet revolution. lt took place without bloodshed, without open confrontation, without coup d’état or overthrow of institutions. There even never has been, anywhere in the world, an open and sustained democratic debate on the content of the new concepts. No organized opposition or resistance manifested itself. Everything happened by stealth, by way of consensus-building, advocacy, awareness-raising and sensitization campaigns, formal-informals, peer counseling, clarification (the "experts" do it for you and determine what is right), dialogue, partnerships, parallel processes, social engineering, cultural adjustment and other soft techniques of social change that are manipulative insofar as they hide an agenda and are used to impose on the majority the agenda of a few.

The revolution took place both above and under the national level (at the UN and through the NGO movement, abusively called "civil society movement"). The true owners of the agenda are not governments nor the citizens they represent, but pressure groups pursuing special interests which, as we shall see, grabbed global normative power by stealth. These groups were the spearhead of the revolution, the trailblazers, the experts who forged the new, manipulative language, the sensitizers who led “global campaigns", the consensus-builders, the facilitators, the primary partners of global governance, the social engineers, the champions of the global ethic.

Bypassing democratic principles, the revolution did not upset the external structures of political institutions. lt did not yet change their mandate. lt did not bring about a new political regime. Radical changes of mentality and behaviour occurred within institutions, inside enterprises, schools, universities, hospitals, cultures, governments, families — inside the Church. The institutional facade remains standing, while foreigners already occupy the rooms. The enemy must be sought within: inside is the new combat ground.

Historical background

How did the revolution happen? Historical circumstances after the fall of the Berlin wall facilitated the power grab of the agents of the revolution. Historically, the UN played a major but not exclusive role in catalyzing global cultural change in the first half of the 1990s. Today, the partners of the global ethic are so numerous, so diversified and so powerful that their agenda would probably further penetrate the fabric of society, would the UN disappear.

At the end of the cold war, people were ready for change. They aspired to peace, democracy, freedom, religious liberty, reconciliation between peoples, a genuine new consensus, real development, North—South solidarity, bottom-up participation, a holistic view of reality, a conscious integration of human and environmental concerns in policy-making, decentralization, subsidiarity, equity, a person-centered globalization process, an authentic dialogue between cultures and mutual respect. Sustainable development, women’s empowerment, good governance, peace education, dialogue among civilizations and most of the other new paradigms adopted in the 1990s seemed to respond to what humanity was waiting for. But humanity’s aspirations were hijacked. Global ethics, solidarity, altruism and humanitarianism now, more often than not, serve as a cover for an agenda of human and societal deconstruction.

The end of the East—West divide coincided with the fast acceleration of economic globalization. The financial and economic power of multinationals grew exponentially, while the power of nation states seemed to be diminishing. The UN sought to strengthen its institutions and to position itself at the strategic center of global governance. Proclaiming it had received an ethical mandate, claiming for itself a monopoly over ethics in the era of globalization, the UN presented itself as the only institution capable of making globalization human, ethical and sustainable. It offered to counterbalance the global economic power of the market with its “universal moral authority". Furthermore, the UN argued that "global problems" required not only global solutions, but global values - a global ethic that only the UN would be able to forge and to enforce. No sooner was the cold war over that the UN organized an unprecedented series of intergovernmental conferences. The purpose of the conference process was to build a new integrated world vision, a new world order, a new global consensus, on the norms, values and priorities for the international community in the new era: education (Jomtien, 1990); children (New- York, 1990); the environment (Rio, 1992); human rights (Vienna, 1993); population (Cairo, 1994); social development (Copenhagen, 1995); women (Beijing, 1995); housing (Istanbul, 1996); and food security (Rome, 1996). The conferences were conceived as a continuum, and the global consensus as a package integrating all the new paradigms within a new cultural and ethical synthesis.

It took only six years for the new consensus to be built and globally endorsed. The implementation phase started in 1996. Since then, the agents of the revolution have seen to it that no debate reopened or questioned the alleged consensus.

The Internet revolution of the mid-1990s, the mushrooming of partnerships and of informal transnational governance networks (grouping multibillion foundations, like-minded politicians,

NGOs, representatives of the world of finance, enterprises, academics. . .), globalization under all its forms and the decentralization and regionalization strategy of the UN effectively brought the global agenda to the regional, national and local levels.

By its mandate, the UN is an intergovernmental organization. The "global consensus" was supposed to reflect the will of governments, themselves supposed to represent the will of the people. De facto, however, the global norms were constructed by "experts" chosen in function of their ideological slant and like-mindedness.

How was it possible for ideologues to grab global normative power? In 1989, everyone reasoned as if the "end of ideology" had automatically put the world in a state of consensus. According to the new mindset, issues had allegedly become only pragmatic in nature: the “neutrality" of the new issues placed at the center of international cooperation seemed self-evident; environmental degradation, gender inequity, population growth, human rights abuses, rising poverty, lack of access to education and health care and so on. Moreover, the UN argued that these problems were “global" by nature. According to this logic, governments primarily needed, not a democratic debate, but technical expertise and the grass—roots experience of the NGOs. The error of the majority was to adhere to the neutrality myth without paying attention to the fundamental anthropological stakes of these questions.

In reality, the May 68 generation, the powerful population control lobby and its multi-billion dollars industry, eco-feminist and other secular Western NGOs, postmodern academics had occupied key positions at the United Nations and its specialized agencies since the 1960s. While Western governments were busy containing the Soviet threat during the cold war, a minority of like-minded ideologues working within international bureaucracies and operating in networks was acquiring indisputable expertise in the various socio-economic areas addressed at the conferences. After 1989, they emerged as the experts the international community needed to address the new issues at the center of international cooperation. Without encountering opposition, these ideologues exercised global normative leadership under the guise of their expertise. The hidden agenda of a minority of ideological technocrats was to achieve global cultural change according to their social engineering purposes.

The paramount political fact of the cultural revolution is the effective control acquired by self- organized civil society groups (mainly NGOs) over the UN machinery, and by the UN Secretariat over member state governments. The influence of powerful NGOs on the direction of "global" policy-making after the fall of the Berlin wall grew dramatically. "Non-state actors" were the powerhouse of cultural change. NGOs have been the primary partner of the UN Secretariat and UN specialized bodies all the way from agenda setting, to consensus-building, implementation and "monitoring progress”.

The UN-NGO interaction rapidly evolved into a principle — the partnership principle. The principle stipulates that governmental and non-governmental actors are treated as equal partners. The condition to join a partnership is to adhere to the pre-established vision and strategy of the partnership’s drivers: partners must be like minded. Non-aligned forces are excluded outright.

Partnerships are exclusive. In practice, the global ethic and its various components have been the only common vision of all existing partnerships.

It belongs to the logic of the partnership principle to claim ever more political power for the "partners", to the detriment of legitimate power holders. lt is therefore not unreasonable to wonder whether the partnership principle does contribute in a major way to the deconstruction of democrac. Yet the principle imposed itself so powerfully that it produced a global culture of partnerships.

The partnership principle in turn created new political standards: inter alia, good governance,

participatory democracy, multistakeholder consensus and transnational governance networks.

These standards do not start from the principle of democratic representation (itself tied to universal values), but from the partnership principle which de facto depends from the global ethic. The danger of these standards is to redistribute the legitimate moral authority of elected governments to unelected special interests groups which are not only without legitimacy but often radical.

Participatory democracy and good governance are not integrated in representative democracy.

Treated as its complements, they run in parallel, uncontrolled by traditional processes.

The global consensus is, as the UN jargon puts it, multistakeholder. This means that all "global citizens" are to get involved, own the agenda, advocate it, teach it, implement it, enforce it: not only governments, but NGOs, "civil society actors", women’s groups, business and industry, scientific and technological communities, families, children and youth, academia, umbrella organizations, trade unions, experts, local authorities, farmers, indigenous people, the media, imams and pastors...

The global ethic posits itself above national sovereignty, above the authority of parents and educators, even above the teachings of world religions. It bypasses every legitimate hierarchy. It establishes a direct link between itself and the individual citizen — the proper of a dictatorship.

Postmodernity and the radical agenda of the global ethic

The cultural revolution found its balance in postmodernity. Postmodernity destabilizes or deconstructs, first of all, modernity, the cultural synthesis that has prevailed in the West since the treaties of Westphalia (1648). To the extent that postmodernity also deconstructs the abuses of modernity - that is, rationalism, institutionalism, formalism, authoritarianism, Marxism and liberal pessimism, it has a providential character. But postmodernity also advances Western apostasy further than modernity. In postmodernity as in modernity, not everything is black or white.

The upheaval of May 1968, its rejection of morality and authority, its radical exaltation of individual freedom and the fast secularization process that followed precipitated the transition of Western societies to the non-repressive civilization advocated by Herbert Marcuse, the postmodern father of the Western cultural revolution. Postmodernity implies a destabilization of our rational or theological apprehension of reality, of the anthropological structure given by God to man and woman, of the order of the universe as established by God. The basic tenet of postmodernity[47]  is that every reality is a social construct, that truth and reality have no stable and objective content — that in fact that they do not exist. Reality would be a text to be interpreted. It is indifferent to the postmodern culture that the text be interpreted in this or that manner: all interpretations would be equal in value. If there is no "given", then social, political, juridical, spiritual norms and structures can be deconstructed and reconstructed at will, following the social transformations of the moment.

Postmodernity exalts the arbitrary sovereignty of the individual and of his or her right to choose.

The global postmodern ethic celebrates differences, the diversity of choices, cultural diversity, cultural liberty, sexual diversity (different sexual orientations). This “celebration" is in fact that of the "liberation" of man and woman from the conditions of existence in which God has placed them.

But the concept of free will contradicts the normative character of postmodern values and in particular of the right to choose, the supreme value of the new culture. Postmodern radicalism postulates that the individual, in order to exercise his right to choose, must be able to free himself from all nonnative frameworks — whether they be semantic (clear definitions), ontological (being, the given), political (sovereignty of the state), moral (transcendent norms), social (taboos, what is forbidden), cultural (traditions) or religious (dogma, doctrine of the Church). Such an alleged "liberation" becomes an imperative of the new ethic. It goes through the destabilization and the deconstruction (two key words of postmodernity) of clear definitions, the content of language, traditions, being, institutions, objective knowledge, reason, truth, legitimate hierarchies, authority, nature, growth, identity (personal, genetic, national, cultural, religious...), of all that is considered universal, and as a consequence of Judeo-Christian values and divine revelation.

When the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted in 1948, Western culture by and large still recognized the existence of a "natural law", of an order "given" to the universe (and therefore of a “giver"): "all human beings are born free and equal in dignity" (article l). The Universal Declaration hence speaks of the inherent human dignity of all members of the human family. If it is inherent, human dignity needs to be recognized, and human rights must be declared, not fabricated ex nihilo. In 1948, the concept of universality related to the recognition of the existence of these rights. Universality had a transcendent dimension and therefore, moral implications.

Universal human rights became radically autonomous from any objective and transcendent moral framework. The purely immanent principle of the right to choose is the product of that divorce.

Postmodernity claims the right to exercise one’s freedom against the law of nature, against traditions and against divine revelation. It re-establishes the rule of "law" and democracy on the right to choose, in which it includes the right, in the name of a new ethic, to make intrinsically evil choices: abortion, homosexuality, "free love", euthanasia, assisted suicide, rejection of any form of legitimate authority or hierarchy, mandatory "toleration" of all opinions, a spirit of disobedience manifesting itself in multifarious forms. The right to choose so interpreted has become the fundamental norm governing the interpretation of all human rights and the main reference of the new global ethic. It supersedes and "transcends" the traditional concept of universality. It positions itself at a meta level. It imposes itself and claims for itself a globally normative authority.

The absence of clear definitions is the dominant feature of all the words and expressions of the new global language - of all postmodern paradigms. The experts who forged the new concepts explicitly

refused to define them clearly, claiming that definitions would set limits on one’s possibility to choose one’s interpretation and contradict the norm of the right to choose. As a consequence, the new concepts have no stable or single content: they are processes of constant change, enlarging themselves as often as the values of society change, as often as possibilities for new choices emerge. Social engineers say that the new paradigms are "holistic" because they would be inclusive of all possible choices.

Let us give a couple of examples: reproductive health and gender. Reproductive health, the key concept of the 1994 Cairo conference, is "defined" in paragraph 7.2 of the Cairo document. The pseudo definition is one paragraph long, fuzzy, deprived of clear substance, ambivalent, all- encompassing. The absence of clarity is strategic and manipulative. The goal is to allow the coexistence of the most contradictory interpretations: maternity, contraception or abortion; voluntary sterilization or in vitro fertilization, sexual relations within or outside marriage, at any age, under any circumstance, as long as one abides by the triple precept of the new ethic: the partners’ consent; their health security; and respect for the woman’s right to choose. Reproductive health is the Trojan horse of the abortion lobby and of the global sexual revolution. In spite of its eminently incoherent character, reproductive health paradoxically became one of the most applied norms of the new global ethic.

Gender, the key concept of the 1995 Beijing conference, fully integrates the concept of reproductive health.  lt is "defined" as the changeable social roles of men and women, as opposed to their unchangeable reproductive functions. The agenda hiding behind this vague “definition" is the deconstruction of the anthropological structure of man and woman, of their complementarity, of femininity and masculinity. The role of the woman as a mother and spouse and her very nature as a woman would be nothing more than a social construct: “one is not born a woman, one becomes a woman," said Simone de Beauvoir. The deconstruction of the human person as man and woman leads to an asexual society, to a "neutral" society, without masculinity and femininity, which however places the libido at the heart of the law. The deconstruction process eventually leads to a society without love. The gender concept is the Trojan horse of the Western feminist revolution in its most radical aspects - a revolution that has already successfully spread to the four corners of the world. Gender is at the very heart of global development priorities and in particular of the Millennium Development Goals.

There is a direct nexus between gender deconstructionism and the "sexual orientation" ideology (bisexuality, homosexuality, lesbianism, heterosexuality). The global ethic puts all these "choices" on the same level. The Cairo conference introduced the concept of family under all its forms: this allegedly holistic concept includes traditional families, reconstituted families, and "families" made up of same sex "parents". Western nations seem to engage always further and deeper on the path of such a "diversity".

In postmodernity, the individual becomes the "free" creator of his own destiny and of a new social order. He can choose to be homosexual today and bisexual tomorrow (sexual orientation). Children can choose their own opinion, irrespective of the values they receive from parents (children rights).

Treated as equal "citizens", they participate in the political decisions that affect their lives (Youth Parliaments). Students choose their own curriculum at school, educate each other, and teachers become "facilitators" (peer education, education for all, life skills education). Women play the social roles of men (gender equity, unisex society). NGOs make global policy, and governments conform to their values (good governance). Women’s groups "clarify" the doctrine of the Church and democratize the Church (clarification of values, participatory democracy). The euthanasia lobby becomes a staunch advocate of "human dignity". Reproductive health means the right not to reproduce ("safe" abortion, universal access to the "widest range of contraceptives "). We are all equal citizens with equal rights, bound together by contractual relations without love. The world is upside down. What the global ethic deconstructs is the very anthropological structure of the human person.

The postmodern ethic of choice boasts of eliminating hierarchies. Yet by globally imposing the "transcendence" of the arbitrary choice, it engenders a new hierarchy of values. It places pleasure above love, health and well-being above the sacredness of life, the participation of special interests groups in governance above democratic representation, women’s rights above motherhood, the empowerment of the selfish individual above any form of legitimate authority, ethics above morality, the right to choose above the eternal law written in the human heart, democracy and humanism above divine revelation - in a nutshell, immanence above transcendence, man above God, the "world" above "heaven".

The new hierarchies express a form a domination over consciences - what pope Benedict XVI, prior to his election, called a dictatorship of relativism. The expression may seem paradoxical: dictatorship means that there is a top-down imposition, while relativism implies the denial of absolutes and reacts against anything it considers as "top-down", such as truth, revelation, reality, morality. In a dictatorship of relativism, a radical deconstruction of our humanity and of our faith is somehow being imposed on us in "nonthreatening" ways - through cultural transformation,

Relativism wears a mask: it is domineering and destructive.

 

In the past, what the West called "the enemy" (such as Marxism-Leninism or bloody dictatorships) used to be clearly identifiable, single, external to Western democracies, aggressive, centralized, ideological, regional. That "enemy" used top-down, brutal methods, such as power-grab by force, a repressive political regime, imprisonment and killing. It resulted in national or regional totalitarian regimes, In the postmodern world, the enemy is fuzzy, hidden, legions, internal to institutions, "friendly", diffuse, incoherent, decentralized, subtle, quiet, global. Its strategies are soft, bottom-up, cultural, informal, internal. The end result of the global dictatorship of relativism is the deconstruction of man and nature and the cultural propagation of apostasy in the world and in particular in developing countries.

Like the ideological systems of the past, the global ethic will end up deconstructing itself. Replete with inner contradictions, it is not sustainable. Christians should not assume, however, that the emerging global civilization will come back by itself to common sense and traditional values: the new culture must be evangelized.

The specificity of the Christian kerygma

The global civilization is called to be that of love. The new global culture is the culture that the Church is now called to evangelize.

We are, as Jesus says it, in the world but not of the world. Yet the reality is that all over the world,

Christians are tempted, often out of ignorance, to mistake the paradigms and values of the global ethic for the social doctrine of the Church, "culturally sensitive approaches" for the respect of culture, the "equity principle" of the new ethic for the Judeo-Christian concept of justice,

"awareness-raising" and “sensitization" for the moral and theological education of conscience, "gender mainstreaming" and "women’s empowerment" for the Judeo-Christian teaching on the equal dignity of man and woman, "positive living" for living with theological hope, the arbitrary "freedom to choose" for freedom in Christ, human dignity for the eternal law written in the heart of man, "reproductive health" for healthy procreation, "safe motherhood" for healthy mothers and children (whether born or unborn), "behaviour change" campaigns (that are geared towards the use of contraception and condoms) for education to abstinence and fidelity, “human rights", "entitlements" and "nondiscrimination" for the good tidings of God’s merciful love, the agenda of

UN conferences and of the Millennium Development Goals for an integral development respectful of people’s values and cultures - and so on.

Christians sometimes fail to distinguish the new, constructed, allegedly "holistic" ethical system from God’s holistic and eternal design of salvation, not realizing that the two logics lead in different directions. They are implied in countless partnerships, the drivers of which are agents of the global ethic. The Church must have self respect and keep her independence from the radical agenda. A vital line separates the post-Christian humanism of the global ethic from a genuine and complete Christian humanism driven by salvation in Christ and promoted by the Church. In practice, this line no longer clearly appears. To recover Christian identity, disentangle it from ambivalent agendas is an urgent task for the Church.

Confusing the Christian kerygma and the global ethic carries a double danger. First, the new concepts tend to occupy the space that should be occupied by evangelization. Christians preach human rights, sustainability and the Millennium Development Goals instead of preaching the gospel. Little by little, they are seduced by secular values and loose their Christian identity. Didn’t John Paul II, in Redemptoris Missio, speak about the "gradual secularization of salvation"?

Secondly, if Christian leaders use the concepts of the new ethic without explicitly clarifying what distinguishes them from the social doctrine of the Church and from the gospel, as is often the case, the faithful will be at a loss and will tend not to discern the difference. The resulting confusion may lead the Christian flock to a gradual erosion of the faith.

In Novo Millennia Ineunte, John—Paul II invited us to start from Christ: such is the new departure to which we are called now.

For more information

The Institute for Intercultural Dialogue Dynamics studies the key concepts, values and operational mechanisms of globalization.

The Institute produces in-depth analytical reports on these topics and monitors developments at the multilateral and global levels. The Institute also provides didactic materials destined to a wider audience, such as manuals, modules, training kits, one-pagers, slides, and regularly updates an analytical lexicon of the key words of the global ethic. The Institute participates in and organizes conferences, round-tables, awareness-raising seminars and training-of-trainers seminars. It occasionally makes policy prescriptions.

After having painstakingly identified the radical components of global cultural change, the Institute increasingly focuses on exploring the concrete possibilities for a positive alternative responding to the real aspirations of contemporary men and women.

 

Contents

Chapitre 1 Introduction. 1-1

Human ecology. 1-1

Grammar of life. 1-1

Education for love, its grammar and its syntax. 1-2

Content of this document. 1-2

Chapitre 2 Questioning and wonder. 2-3

What is the meaning of my own journey through life?. 2-3

Happiness, wellbeing, wonder. 2-3

So why ?. 2-5

Chapitre 3 The gift. 3-6

The gift needs to be accepted. 3-6

Giving and accepting. 3-6

Acceptance of the gift creates a relationship. 3-6

Gift and task. 3-6

Forgiveness and dignity. 3-7

Chapitre 4 Ecology. 4-8

Environmental ecology. 4-8

The fundamental origin of these gifts. 4-8

A gift and a task. 4-8

A common good. 4-9

Human ecology. 4-9

Family, cradle of life and love. 4-9

Learning to be children, spouses, and parents. 4-11

Covenant and contract. 4-12

Utility and the personalistic norm.. 4-12

Production and fecundity. 4-13

Chapitre 5 Masculinity and femininity. 5-14

Body and soul 5-14

The image of God. 5-14

It is not good that the man should be alone. 5-15

Diversity. 5-15

Identity and difference between man and woman; complementarity. 5-15

Masculinity 'for' femininity and, vice versa, femininity 'for' masculinity. 5-15

NuptiaI meaning of the body. 5-15

Nuptial meaning of the body isn‘t simply "horizontaI”. 5-15

Gender. 5-16

Chapitre 6 The Ascent of love. 6-17

Sensuality. 6-17

Sympathy. 6-18

Affirming the Person. 6-18

Betrothed love. 6-18

Communion of persons. 6-18

Truth of love. 6-19

Holy Spirit. 6-19

Communion with God. 6-20

Image of God, communion of love, source of life. 6-20

Love as desire, as goodwill and as friendship. 6-21

Love as attraction and desire (eros). 6-21

Love as Goodwill (agape). 6-22

Love as friendship. 6-22

Good action and joy and pleasure. 6-23

Chapitre 7 Covenant and transmission of life. 7-24

Covenant. 7-24

Transmission of life. 7-25

Communion of generations. 7-26

Society. 7-27

Why does the sexual relationship find its adequate place only within marriage?. 7-27

1. The love to which the man and the woman aspire cannot exist except when man and woman make a covenant  7-27

2. The transmission of life also finds an appropriate place only within marriage. 7-27

Why does the Christian stick with natural methods?. 7-28

Chapitre 8 A rift. 8-28

A rift between man and God. 8-28

Consequences of the refusal of God’s gift. 8-29

A rift within man. 8-29

A rift between man and woman. 8-29

Mutual accusation. 8-30

Domination. 8-30

A rift between parents and children. 8-30

Chapitre 9 Maturing the fullness of love. 9-31

The desire for happiness. 9-31

Values. 9-32

Virtues, strategies of love. 9-35

Principles. 9-38

The Image of the Tree. 9-43

Chapitre 10 Chapter 10 A few complementary biblical elements to focus our thoughts. 10-44

Triptych Creation- Fall-Redemption. 10-44

Saint Paul Epistles. 10-44

Chapitre 11 Appendix : The new global ethic: challenges for the Church. 11-48

A global cultural revolution. 11-48

Historical background. 11-52

Postmodernity and the radical agenda of the global ethic. 11-56

The specificity of the Christian kerygma. 11-60

For more information. 11-61

 

 

 


Notes

Many sentences of this document come from the book “Called to love. Approaching John Paul II’s Theology of the Body. Carl Anderson and Jose Granados”. For clarity we did not mention it as reference, in this working document.

[1] John-Paul II Centesimus annus, 38

[2] Benedict XVI, Message from Benedict XVI for the celebration of World Day of Peace 1 January 2007

[3] Benedict XVI, Love in truth, 48

[4] Message from Benedict XVI for the celebration of World Day of Peace 1 January 2008, 3

[5] Livio Melina The Prophecy of Humanae vitae and the Truth concerning Spousal Love: Towards a Responsible Procreation. Warsaw, 5-6 September 2009

[6] A. Oliveiro, “Le nostre emozioni alla ricerca di un alfabeto”, in Avvenire, 1 marzo 2001

[7] GS, 3

[8] TOB, 196

[9] Stefano Fontana, who directs Cardinal Van Thuén's International Observatory for the Social Doctrine of the Church

[10] JPII, Dives in misericordia, 14

[11] JPII, Dives in misericordia, 14

[12] Love in truth, Benedict XVI, 48

[13] John-Paul II, Centesimus annus, 37

[14] John-Paul II, Centesimus annus, 37

[15] Compendium of the social doctrine of the Church, 466

[16] Compendium of the social doctrine of the Church, 467

[17] Benedict XVI, Caritas in veritatae, 51

[18] John-Paul II Centesimus annus, 39

[19] Cf. Second Vatican Council, Pastoral Constitution Gaudium et Spes, 48

[20] John Paul II, Apostolic Exhortation Christifideles Laici, 40: AAS 81 (1989), 469

[21] Message from Benedict XVI for the celebration of World Day of Peace 1 January 2008, 3

[22] John-Paul II Centesimus annus, 39

[23] Letter to families, 10

[24] John Paul II, Letter to Families Gratissimam Sane, 11

[25] John Paul II, Letter to Families Gratissimam Sane, 6

[26] Compendium of the social doctrine of the Church, 242

[27] Mulieris Dignitatem, 18

[28] Mulieris Dignitatem, 18

[29] Karol Wojtyla, Love and Responsibility

[30] Benedict XVI, Deus Caritas Est, 11

[31] Benedict XVI, Deus Caritas Est,  5

[32] TOB, 157

[33] John Paul II : General Audience, 9th. January, 1980, Teaching of John Paul II, III-I, 1980, p. 90, n. 4

[34] Karol Wojtyla, Love and Responsibility, 160

[35] Gaudium et Spes, 49

[36] Karol Wojtyla, Love and Responsibility, 123

[37] Thomas d’Aquin Contra Gentiles, 90

[38] Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics

[39] John Paul II, Letter to Families, 10

[40] Livio Melina, Called to love, preface

[41] Sharing in Christ's virtues : for a renewal of moral theology in light of Veritatis splendor,  Livio Melina

 

[42] About values and principles, most of the texts come from the Compendium of the social doctrine of the Church

[43] Sharing in Christ's virtues : for a renewal of moral theology in light of Veritatis splendor,  Livio Melina

 

[44] CCC :

2520 Baptism confers on its recipient the grace of purification from all sins. But the baptized must continue to struggle against concupiscence of the flesh and disordered desires. With God's grace he will prevail

- by the virtue and gift of chastity, for chastity lets us love with upright and undivided heart;

- by purity of intention which consists in seeking the true end of man: with simplicity of vision, the baptized person seeks to find and to fulfill God's will in everything;

- by purity of vision, external and internal; by discipline of feelings and imagination; by refusing all complicity in impure thoughts that incline us to turn aside from the path of God's commandments: "Appearance arouses yearning in fools";

- by prayer:

I thought that continence arose from one's own powers, which I did not recognize in myself. I was foolish enough not to know . . . that no one can be continent unless you grant it. For you would surely have granted it if my inner groaning had reached your ears and I with firm faith had cast my cares on you.

2521 Purity requires modesty, an integral part of temperance. Modesty protects the intimate center of the person. It means refusing to unveil what should remain hidden. It is ordered to chastity to whose sensitivity it bears witness. It guides how one looks at others and behaves toward them in conformity with the dignity of persons and their solidarity.

2522 Modesty protects the mystery of persons and their love. It encourages patience and moderation in loving relationships; it requires that the conditions for the definitive giving and commitment of man and woman to one another be fulfilled. Modesty is decency. It inspires one's choice of clothing. It keeps silence or reserve where there is evident risk of unhealthy curiosity. It is discreet.

2523 There is a modesty of the feelings as well as of the body. It protests, for example, against the voyeuristic explorations of the human body in certain advertisements, or against the solicitations of certain media that go too far in the exhibition of intimate things. Modesty inspires a way of life which makes it possible to resist the allurements of fashion and the pressures of prevailing ideologies.

2524 The forms taken by modesty vary from one culture to another. Everywhere, however, modesty exists as an intuition of the spiritual dignity proper to man. It is born with the awakening consciousness of being a subject. Teaching modesty to children and adolescents means awakening in them respect for the human person.

2525 Christian purity requires a purification of the social climate. It requires of the communications media that their presentations show concern for respect and restraint. Purity of heart brings freedom from widespread eroticism and avoids entertainment inclined to voyeurism and illusion.

2526 So called moral permissiveness rests on an erroneous conception of human freedom; the necessary precondition for the development of true freedom is to let oneself be educated in the moral law. Those in charge of education can reasonably be expected to give young people instruction respectful of the truth, the qualities of the heart, and the moral and spiritual dignity of man.

2527 "The Good News of Christ continually renews the life and culture of fallen man; it combats and removes the error and evil which flow from the ever-present attraction of sin. It never ceases to purify and elevate the morality of peoples. It takes the spiritual qualities and endowments of every age and nation, and with supernatural riches it causes them to blossom, as it were, from within; it fortifies, completes, and restores them in Christ."

 

[45]  Paul VI, Encyclical Letter Populorum Progressio, 42: AAS 59 (1967), 278)

 

[46] “Human lovers love in truth only when they receive themselves from, and give themselves to, God in the very act of receiving themselves from, and giving themselves to, each other.” Called to love. Approaching John Paul II’s Theology of the Body. Carl Anderson and Jose Granados

[47] Among influential postmodern philosophers, let us cite Sigmund Freud, Frederic Nietzsche, Michel Foucault, Herbert Marcuse, Jean-Paul Sartre, Jurgen Habermas, Jean-Francois Lyotard, Richard Rorty, Jacques Derrida, Michel Onfray.