Aquinas and the Theology

of the Body
 t h o m i st i c r e s s ource m e n t s e r i e s
Volume 7

series editors

Matthew Levering, Mundelein Seminary

Thomas Joseph White, OP, Dominican House of Studies

editorial board

Serge-Thomas Bonino, OP, Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas

Lawrence Dewan, OP, Dominican College of Ottawa

Gilles Emery, OP, University of Fribourg

Reinhard Hütter, Duke University

Bruce Marshall, Southern Methodist University

Emmanuel Perrier, OP, Dominican Studium, Toulouse

Richard Schenk, OP, Katholische Universität Eichstätt-Ingolstadt

Kevin White, The Catholic University of America

 Aquinas and the
Theology of the Body
The Thomistic Foundations of
John Paul II’s Anthropology

Thomas Petri, OP

The Catholic University of America Press

Washington, D.C.
 Copyright © 2016
The Catholic University of America Press
All rights reserved

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of

American National Standards for Information Science—Permanence of Paper
for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Petri, Thomas
Title: Aquinas and the theology of the body : the Thomistic foundations
of John Paul II’s anthropology / Thomas Petri, OP.
Description: Washington, D.C. : The Catholic University of America Press, 2016. |
Series: Thomistic ressourcement series ; Volume 7 | Includes bibliographical
references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2015048888 | ISBN 9780813228471 (cloth : alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Human body—Religious aspects—Catholic Church. |
John PaulII, Pope, 1920–2005. Theology of the body. | Thomas, Aquinas, Saint,
1225?–1274. | Sex—Religious aspects—Catholic Church. |
Theological anthropology—Catholic Church.
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Nihil Obstat:
Reverend Christopher Begg, STD, PhD
Censor Deputatus

Imprimatur:
Most Reverend Barry C. Knestout
Auxiliary Bishop of Washington

Archdiocese of Washington
March 26, 2015
The nihil obstat and imprimatur are official declarations that a book or
pamphlet is free of doctrinal or moral error. There is no implication that those
who have granted the nihil obstat and the imprimatur agree with the content,
opinions, or statements expressed therein.

Nihil Obstat:
Reverend John Corbett, OP, STL, PhD
Censor Deputatus

Imprimi Potest:
Very Reverend Kenneth Letoile, OP, STL
Prior Provincial

Dominican Province of Saint Joseph

April 8, 2015
The nihil obstat and imprimi potest are official declarations that a book or pamphlet
is free of doctrinal or moral error and that the author has been given permission
by his major superior to publish the work. There is no implication that those who
have granted the nihil obstat and the imprimi potest agree with the content,
opinions, or statements expressed therein.
 In loving memory of my parents, Jack and
Mary. Dedicated to my Dominican brethren
with fraternal affection and gratitude
 Contents

List of Abbreviations ix
Preface xi

Introduction 1
1. From Thomas Aquinas to the Manualists 11
2. Personalism and the Debate on Marriage
and Contraception 45
3. The Moral Theology of Karol Wojtyła 92
4. Karol Wojtyła’s Ethics of Sexuality 127
5. The Spousal Meaning of the Body in Theology
of the Body 162
6. The Anthropology of Thomas Aquinas 198
7. The Movement of Love in the Summa Theologiae 235
8. Marriage and the Conjugal Act according to
Thomas Aquinas 273
Conclusion 309

Bibliography 315
Index 331

vii
 Abbreviations

AAS Acta Apostolicae Sedis

AS Acta Synodalia Sacrosancti Concilii

Oecumenici Vaticani II

CC Casti Connubii (encyclical of Pope Pius XI)

FC Familiaris Consortio (apostolic exhortation of

Pope John Paul II)

GS Gaudium et Spes (document of Second

Vatican Council)

HV Humanae Vitae (encyclical of Pope Paul VI)

MD Mulieris Dignitatem (apostolic letter of Pope

John Paul II)

PG Patrologiae cursus completus. Series graeca, ed.

Migne

PL Patrologiae cursus completus. Series latina, ed.

Migne

SCG Summa contra Gentiles (Thomas Aquinas)

ST Summa Theologiae (Thomas Aquinas)

TOB Theology of the Body (Pope John Paul II)

ix
 Preface

As a Catholic priest born in 1978, the year of three popes, I lived much
of my young life during the pontificate of Pope John Paul II. Like
many priests my age, John Paul became for me a shepherd larger than
life and a model for my own priesthood. Only after I entered semi-
nary studies and later the Order of Preachers did I come to realize the
significance of his pontificate for so many people in the church and
in the world. How could one not grow in admiration of him? Thom-
as Aquinas, on the other hand, was perennially present in my home
growing up, since my mother had a devotion to him (for reasons I
still do not quite know). But when I began to study Aquinas in semi-
nary and later as one of his brother Dominicans, my devotion both to
him and to his teaching grew. This book grew out of a genuine affec-
tion for these two great saints and a real conviction that their thought
is more connected than is often suggested.
For various reasons, some of which were beyond my control,
this book has taken many years to produce and there are several peo-
ple who must be acknowledged as assisting and supporting its pub-
lication along the way. First among those deserving thanks is John
Grabowski, who directed the writing of an earlier version of this man-
uscript during my doctoral work at the Catholic University of Amer-
ica and later insisted repeatedly that it should be published imme-
diately. John Corbett, OP, and William Mattison were also crucial
reviewers in the early days of the manuscript. I am also grateful for
the CUA Press peer reviewers: Jarosław Kupczak, OP, and Deborah
Savage. The feedback of these great scholars strengthened this book

xi
xii Preface
and I trust the reader will not hold them responsible for any error
they might find herein.
Every book needs editors. Eleanor Nicholson performed above
and beyond all expectation when she agreed to edit this manuscript
in the months just prior to giving birth to her second child, Veroni-
ca Eve. Through the intercession of saints Thomas Aquinas and John
Paul, may Veronica find happiness in this life and know it perfect-
ly in the next. Bianca Czaderna pored over the manuscript to check
the spelling of every Polish word. James Kruggel, John Martino, Paul
Higgins, and the editorial staff at CUA Press were not only constant
supporters of this project, but worked tirelessly to bring it to fruition.
This book would never have seen the light of day without the invalu-
able assistance of its editors.
I am honored that Matthew Levering and Thomas Joseph White,
OP, invited this book to be included in the Thomistic Ressourcement
Series. The series has published some of the best scholars in Thom-
ism, and I am grateful to have my small contribution stand next to
theirs since, like them, I believe Thomas Aquinas has much to con-
tribute to present-day conversations and debates.
Dominic always sent his brethren out two by two; Dominicans
do not engage the world alone, but always together. This book would
also not have been possible without the support of my Dominican
brethren. Fr. Dominic Izzo, OP, and Fr. Brian Mulcahy, OP, as suc-
cessive Prior Provincials during my doctoral studies and the writing
of this book allowed me the time and space necessary to complete
this work. Fr. Kenneth Letoile, OP, and Fr. John Langlois, OP, were
also instrumental in encouraging and promoting my studies. Various
houses throughout the Order welcomed and supported me as I wrote
this book throughout the years: the Dominican House of Studies in
Washington, D.C.; St. Pius V Parish in Providence, Rhode Island;
and St. Thomas Aquinas Priory at Providence College. Their patience
with me and support for this work has been a constant witness of the
fraternal charity that so characterizes Dominican life. This is why I am
dedicating this book, in part, to my Dominican brothers.
The cloistered Dominican nuns at St. Dominic’s Monastery in
Linden, Virginia, welcomed me monthly over the last year as I com-
pleted this book. Dominic founded communities of cloistered wom-
 Preface xiii
en to support the active mission of the friars. The good fruit that
Dominican friars bear to the world is due, in large part, to their inter-
cession for us. Finally, the Dominican Sisters of Mary Mother of the
Eucharist in Ann Arbor, Michigan, provided me the necessary seclu-
sion in the home stretch of this manuscript’s completion. We Domin-
ican friars are always grateful to be co-workers with our active sisters
for the evangelization of the world.
Finally, this book is in memory of my parents, Jack and Mary,
with gratitude for the life they gave me and with a prayer that one day
we will see each other again in the life to come.

Rev. Thomas Petri, OP

Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary
September 8, 2015
Aquinas and the Theology
of the Body
 Introduction

On September 5, 1979, Pope John Paul II began a series of catechet-

ical talks on man, woman, love, marriage, and sexuality during his
Wednesday general audience. These weekly catecheses concluded
on November 28, 1984. They were interrupted only during the pope’s
recovery from an assassination attempt in 1981, during a Holy Year
(1983–84), and for various other intermittent topics. Collectively,
these catecheses have been referred to as a “theology of the body.” De-
livered during a time of exceptional confusion on these matters in the
church and in society, the content of these addresses has become the
focus of a cottage industry of commentaries and popular works. Papal
biographer George Weigel suggested that “these 130 catechetical ad-
dresses, taken together, constitute a kind of theological time bomb set
to go off, with dramatic consequences, sometime in the third millen-
nium of the Church.”1 Only time will prove the veracity of this claim.
Given the richness of these catechetical talks and the dynamic way
John Paul practiced theology in their composition, it is an understand-
able temptation to interpret this work solely on its own terms. But my
proposition is that an authentic understanding of this “theology of the
body” relies on an appreciation of the intersection of the thought of
John Paul II and Thomas Aquinas. The reason for this is to be found
in one of the central concepts of the catecheses: “the spousal meaning
of the body.” According to John Paul, the body necessarily expresses
the gift of self, that is, of the person. This spousal meaning is rooted in

1. George Weigel, Witness to Hope: The Biography of Pope John Paul II (New York:
Harper Collins, 1999), 343.

1
2 Introduction
man’s very being and nature. The spousal meaning of the body is most
apparent in the conjugal act of spouses and is at the heart of many of
the pope’s assertions about man’s existence in the world. This meaning
is not limited to marriage. Rather, it is fulfilled in the communion of
persons, in which even celibates and virgins can participate, and is per-
fected in the beatific vision of God. Still, throughout these catechetical
talks, the spousal relationship between man and woman is the prime
reference for the spousal meaning of the body.
As the opening chapters of this book will show, Pope John Paul II
was a priest very much concerned with the struggles of the faithful to
live the moral teachings of the church. He was particularly convinced
that the objectivistic tendencies that characterized the moral theolo-
gy and philosophy he had learned during his priestly formation were
no longer suitable in communicating and defending these teachings
to the modern world. The scholasticism he had inherited needed to
be supplemented in his view by a more subjective approach.
This is where Thomas Aquinas (d. 1274) traditionally makes his ap-
pearance in a narrative that considers the work of Pope John Paul II.
The scholastic movement that began in the twelfth century had a tre-
mendous impact on the theology and practice of the universal church.2
Though not uninterrupted, Aquinas’s influence has endured through
the centuries. His intellectual progeny often refer to themselves as
Thomists.3 Scholasticism itself experienced a revival of sorts in the

2. “Scholasticism” is here understood to be the movement founded on a particular

method of theological instruction developed at the universities of Paris and Oxford in
the twelfth century. The father of the movement, Peter Abelard (d. 1142), employed the
custom already use at the time by canon lawyers of “grouping opposed authorities on
either side of a clearly established ‘either-or’ question” and settling the matter through
disputation. Gerald A. McCool, The Neo-Thomists (Milwaukee, Wis.: Marquette Univer-
sity Press, 1994), 11.
3. The word “Thomism” refers to a species of scholasticism. The definition of
Thomism has been in dispute for a number of years. Fundamentally, it refers to a move-
ment that is in relation, somehow, to the thought of Thomas Aquinas. However, spe-
cifically delineating who qualifies as a Thomist and who does not has been an area of
contention. See Romanus Cessario, OP, A Short History of Thomism (Washington, D.C.:
The Catholic University of America Press, 2005), 11–28. James Weisheipl has offered a
good working definition. For him, Thomism is “a theological and philosophical move-
ment that begins in the thirteenth century, and embodies the systematic attempt to un-
derstand and develop the basic principles and conclusions of St. Thomas Aquinas in or-
der to relate them to the problems and needs of each generation.” James A. Weisheipl,
 Introduction 3
mid-nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This new scholasticism,
or neo-scholasticism, was situated in opposition to the secularism of
the Enlightenment, which emphasized reason over faith.4 Neo-scho-
lasticism was a broad movement comprising many different strands
of Thomism (hence “neo-Thomism”) as well as the devotees of oth-
er medieval theologians and philosophers. In contradistinction to the
Enlightenment’s subjectivism, they argued that objective moral norms
were sustainable.
Influenced by neo-scholasticism, and neo-Thomism in particu-
lar, moral theologians began to identify objective criteria to evaluate
human action in order to discern the rightness or wrongness of par-
ticular human choices. The impact of their work was significant due
to the importance of the moral theology manuals being used to train
priests at the time. Catholic moral theology and practice was thus
dominated from the seventeenth century to the mid-twentieth cen-
tury by an emphasis on objective moral norms and the evaluation of
human actions by their physical structure. That is to say, the manual-
ist tradition into the twentieth century tended to describe human ac-
tion as it could be observed exteriorly, and without reference to the
interior workings or movements of the person. Additionally, follow-
ing the scholastic emphasis on the absolute authority of nature, the
manualists tended to identify the ends (telê) of human nature with
the physical structures of the body.
Practically, this meant that the moral good in the sexual arena was
synonymous with the finality of the procreative organs. The purpose
or goal (the telos) of these organs is to procreate. Therefore, the man-
ualists held, any act which frustrated this use was intrinsically immor-
al. And so this emphasis on physical structure of the act and its rela-
tionship to nature was easily associated with human biology and its
purposes. In time, this exclusive focus on biology would be referred
to somewhat pejoratively as “physicalism” or “biologism.”5 This fo-
“Thomism,” in The New Catholic Encyclopedia, ed. Bernard L. Marthaler (New York:
McGraw-Hill, 1967), 14:126.
4. “Neo-scholasticism” was a broad movement in the nineteenth and early twen-
tieth centuries that included not only a renewed interest in Thomas, although this was
substantial, but also an interest in the scholastic method generally.
5. Charles E. Curran was among the first to use the word “physicalism” when,
in 1969, he wrote an article responding to Pope Paul VI’s encyclical on birth control,
4 Introduction
cus on biology was most evident in sexual and medical ethics. Mas-
turbation, for example, was thought to be intrinsically evil because it
confounded the natural finality of the generative organ. Similarly, the
manualists explained that contraception is intrinsically immoral be-
cause it also circumvents of the physical or biological telos of the pro-
creative organs.
The limitations of this approach were felt well before the intro-
duction of the birth control pill. The pill uses the hormone proges-
terone, which is natural to a woman’s body. It also imitates the natu-
ral infertility a woman experiences during her menstrual cycle. Thus,
the pill seemingly worked with the biological structures of the body
rather than against them. Additionally, its use would not constitute a
physical barrier in the conjugal act itself.6
In the twentieth century, another philosophical and theologi-
cal movement arose, which would directly respond to physicalism.
Though it is as varied and as multifaceted as scholasticism, person-
alism is a school of thought that emphasizes the person, rather than
nature, as the primary object of moral discourse.7 In the Catholic

Humanae Vitae. He wrote that physicalism is “a natural law methodology which tends to
identify the moral action with the physical and biological structure of the act.” Charles E.
Curran, “Natural Law and Contemporary Moral Theology,” in Curran, ed., Contraception:
Authority and Dissent (New York: Herder and Herder, 1969), 159; see also 160–67.
6. While I will be offering a detailed history of the debate surrounding the birth
control pill, John S. Grabowski offers a succinct analysis of these issues and their rela-
tion to the manuals of theology. See John S. Grabowski, Sex and Virtue (Washington,
D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2003), 1–22.
7. A movement as broad as personalism with so many varied scholars eludes sim-
ple definition. The definition I have offered here is provided only in brief to assist the
reader in categorizing the thinkers who will be presented in the first two chapters of the
book. As J. A. Mann has noted, “any philosophy that insists upon the reality of the per-
son—human, angelic, or divine—may legitimately be classified as personalist, the name
personalism more commonly designates a movement of some significance . . . [that] is
usually theistic in orientation, and places great stress on personality as a supreme val-
ue and as a key notion that gives meaning to all of reality.” J. A. Mann, “Personalism,” in
The New Catholic Encyclopedia, ed. Marthaler, 11:172. Not all personalists were so for the
same reasons. Some were responding to the philosophical materialism of the nineteenth
century, others to evolutionism, and still others to idealism. As will be seen in chapter 2,
many Catholic personalists were responding to what they perceived to be an exclusive
emphasis on human nature at the expense of the human person. What the movements
all have in common is this concern for the human person and the attempt to shift dis-
course to the importance of the human person. Personalism took root in both America
 Introduction 5
church, personalism grew within the larger discussion, which began
in the early 1920s, on the nature of marriage, conjugal love, and pro-
creation. As Catholic theologians and the laity explored new and dy-
namic presentations of the church’s teaching on marriage, the inade-
quacy of the traditional (and somewhat physicalist) presentation of
marriage was apparent.
Perceiving the imbalance of the Catholic teaching on marriage at
the time, some personalists, like Dietrich von Hildebrand, sought to
reemphasize the category of the person in moral discourse. Other per-
sonalists wanted to revise church teaching on marriage, some in more
extreme ways than others, and thus they may be labeled as revision-
ists. As we will see in chapter 2, Herbert Doms would advocate a mod-
erate revision of church teaching by insisting that the traditional teach-
ing on the hierarchy of the ends of marriage (procreative and unitive)
should be reversed, making the unitive aspect of marriage primary.
But he was not a wholesale revisionist as Louis Janssens—and later,
Charles Curran and Bernard Häring—would prove to be. These theo-
logians would argue that the human person has complete authority
over nature and therefore the church’s ban on contraception should be
lifted. This was a position to which Herbert Doms never subscribed.
Initially, the debate in the mid-twentieth century surrounding the
birth control pill began as a debate between the physicalist and per-
sonalist schools. However, as the church gradually adopted a more
personalist approach (as in Gaudium et Spes and Humanae Vitae), the
debate shifted to the more fundamental issue: the relationship be-
tween person and nature. This is the context in which we will consid-
er Karol Wojtyła (d. 2005). Not only was he committed to the subjec-
tivist tendencies of personalism, he in fact relied upon the objective
ontology of Thomism. His unique personalism was apparent in his
early books, Love and Responsibility and The Acting Person, the latter
being an edited form of his 1953 dissertation.8 Wojtyła’s Christian per-
and Europe. For brief histories of personalism, see Mann, “Personalism,” 172–74; John
Cowburn, Personalism and Scholasticism (Milwaukee, Wis.: Marquette University Press,
2005), 47–84.
8. See Karol Wojtyła, Miłość i Odpowiedzialność. Studium etyczne (Lublin: KUL,
1960). English translation: Karol Wojtyła, Love and Responsibility, trans. H. T. Willets
(San Francisco, Calif.: Ignatius Press, 1991), and Karol Wojtyła, The Acting Person, trans.
Andrzej Potocki (Boston: D. Reidel, 1979).
6 Introduction
sonalism is especially dominant in these catechetical talks. Although
many scholars and catechists have read and commented on these
talks, there has been little scholarship on the pope’s Thomistic ped-
igree in this teaching—a critical point that this book seeks to remedy.
One of the concerns of this book is to show that in the 1960s and
early 1970s Karol Wojtyła often incorporated references to Thomas
Aquinas and was seldom critical of Aquinas’s theological positions.
Nevertheless, he was searching for a way to move beyond Thomistic
philosophy and theology in order to include human experience as a
theological category. His study of John of the Cross and Max Schel-
er helped him to do this. The philosophical fruit of that quest was The
Acting Person.
In his articles after the publication of The Acting Person, Wojtyła
was more likely to be respectfully critical of the Angelic Doctor, even
noting, as we will see, that Aquinas’s presuppositions were not suit-
able for a major discussion of human experience and consciousness.
Throughout the 1970s, Wojtyła’s philosophical and theological writ-
ings were more concerned with elaborating the subjective aspect of
the human person. This emphasis was brought to bear in his many
defenses of Humanae Vitae, the culmination of which is the theology
of the body catecheses. According to John Paul, Humanae Vitae was
the catalyst for these catecheses.9 Thus, these talks are best read as a
continuation of Wojtyła’s work on sexual ethics from the 1960s and
1970s. We will study this development in chapter 4.
The pope never renounced metaphysical or ontological catego-
ries. On the contrary, as will be shown in chapter 3, he insisted upon
their absolute necessity, even at the end of his life. Still, because he
presumes ontological conclusions already established in the tradi-
tion, he spends little time, for example, arguing for the stability of hu-
man nature or describing the nature of human action. And this is ap-
parent in his catechesis. So while he argues that man must be true to
the natural spousal attribute of the human body and must convey the

9. See John Paul II, Man and Woman He Created Them: A Theology of the Body, trans.
Michael Waldstein (Boston: Pauline Books and Media, 2006), no. 133 [hereafter, TOB].
Note that I have adopted Waldstein’s citation system. He has numbered the catecheses
consecutively and numbered each paragraph in each catechesis. Thus, “TOB, no. 12:5”
refers to catechesis 12, paragraph 5.
 Introduction 7
meaning of the body, he does not explain exactly how the body has
an intrinsic meaning.
This is the point at which a deeper consideration of the work of
Thomas Aquinas will prove particularly fruitful. During the time of
Pope John Paul’s pontificate, there was a renewed interest in the re-
covery of the thought of Aquinas as distinct from his commentators
and the interpretations of neo-Thomists. This renewal is character-
ized by a focus on the works of Aquinas and on the sources he him-
self used.10 Though he lived in a different historical era than Pope
John Paul and was responding to different issues, Aquinas formulated
a variety of concepts concerning the relationship between person and
nature, of love, of marriage, and of the body. These came to fruition
in his final work, the Summa Theologiae, in which he provides a thor-
ough analysis of key theological ideas.
Pope John Paul had good reason to emphasize consciousness and
experience in the twentieth century. During the twenty-first century
many of the ontological and metaphysical categories in which Wojtyła
was trained, and which are in the background of the theology of the
body, have faded from the discussion of marriage and sex, even in the
excitement over the pope’s theology. Such is the purpose of this study.
A mutual interaction between Aquinas and John Paul’s Theology of the
Body would be beneficial to the thought of both; even further, it is crit-
ical for the full understanding of the pope’s thought.
This study will proceed as follows. Since I am suggesting that John
Paul’s theology of the body is a work of personalism developed in re-
sponse to the manualist tradition rather than to Aquinas’s theology,
the first chapter follows the analysis of several reputable contempo-
rary scholars and historians who have successively shown the shift of
manualist theology away from the work of Aquinas himself. The sec-
ond chapter then turns to the development of personalism within the

10. An example of this renewal is certainly the work of Servais Pinckaers, OP, and
Jean-Pierre Torrell, OP. See, for example, Servais Pinckaers, OP, The Sources of Chris-
tian Ethics, trans. Mary Thomas Noble (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of
America Press, 1995); Servais Pinckaers, OP, The Pinckaers Reader: Renewing Thomis-
tic Moral Theology, eds. John Berkman and Craig Steven Titus (Washington, D.C.: The
Catholic University of America Press, 2005); and Jean-Pierre Torrell, OP, Saint Thomas
Aquinas, 2 vols. (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1996–
2003).
8 Introduction
larger ecclesial discussion on marriage and the debate on birth con-
trol. This chapter traces the development of personalism in the twen-
tieth century as a reaction to the perceived physicalism of the Cath-
olic manuals of moral theology. Chapter 3 surveys Karol Wojtyła’s
moral theory as it exists in his published works before his election to
the pontificate. Chapter 4 then turns to his ethics of sex and marriage,
while chapter 5 offers an exegesis of the spousal meaning of the body
in John Paul’s theology of the body catechesis.
Beginning in chapter 6, the study turns to Thomas Aquinas with
an exegesis of his anthropology by focusing on his treatment of na-
ture, person, and the body in the Summa Theologiae. Chapter 7 then
focuses on Aquinas’s notion of love—principally the various forms
of love—and his teaching that love must be rightly ordered. Finally,
chapter 8 offers an exegesis of the Angelic Doctor’s teaching on mar-
riage and the conjugal act. In this concluding chapter, we see how his
anthropology has ramifications for his view of the relationship be-
tween husband and wife. These chapters, for which the general con-
clusion provides a synthesis, unite to present a reading of the spousal
meaning of the body according to the Summa Theologiae: a Thomistic
spousal meaning of the body, if you will.
Some brief words about organization and methodology are in
order. We will not proceed with a straight chronological approach
(which might have been expected by some readers). In fact, our cho-
sen roadmap will progress through history to the work of Karol Wo-
jtyła before reflecting back in greater depth upon Aquinas. In fact,
this book can serve as a template for what it will, hopefully, inspire—
that is, a theology of the body which is illuminated by and itself illu-
mines elements of Aquinas’s thought.
The first two chapters of this study are essential historical narra-
tives. The chapters concerning my two subjects, Karol Wojtyła and
Thomas Aquinas, are primarily exegetical. Since much of Wojtyła’s
published work addresses a wide variety of topics, I have limited my-
self to those works necessary for our study.11 The corpus of Thomas’s

11. Not all of Wojtyła’s works have been translated into English. The rare times this
book cites a work of his that is not in English, a translation from Polish into another lan-
guage is offered to the reader. References to original Polish works are also offered in the
notes.
 Introduction 9
work is massive. Therefore, I have limited myself to the Summa Theo-
logiae with the presumption that, as his final work, it represents his
settled convictions.
I have referred to his other works only inasmuch as they elabo-
rate what he writes in the Summa Theologiae. These other sources are
especially needed since Aquinas did not finish the Summa Theologiae
and his treatment on marriage was relegated to a supplementum add-
ed to that work posthumously by his students. I have presumed that
Aquinas’s opinion on topics he treats in the supplementum remained
unchanged during his life unless he specifically makes a new argu-
ment in a later work, which he does in regard to indissolubility and
monogamy in the Summa contra Gentiles. When his later works fur-
ther elaborate or modify his opinion in the supplementum, I offer an
exegesis of those texts in this study.
The theology of the body catechetical talks were translated into
various languages by the Vatican newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano.
Pauline Books and Media later published the collection of these 130
catecheses in four volumes.12 Later, the same publishing company
combined these four volumes into one, entitled Theology of the Body:
Human Love in the Divine Plan.13 The primary difficulty with the L’Os-
servatore Romano translations is that different translators translated
different catecheses. As a result, key terms such as the “spousal mean-
ing of the body” are translated differently throughout the text.14
Michael Waldstein discovered in the Vatican archives the original
Polish manuscript on which Theology of the Body was based. Wald-
stein surmises that the original manuscript had been ready for pub-

12. John Paul II, Original Unity of Man and Woman: Catechesis on the Book of Gen-
esis (Boston: Pauline Books and Media, 1981); Blessed Are the Pure of Heart: Catechesis
on the Sermon on the Mount and the Writings of St. Paul (Boston: Pauline Books and Me-
dia, 1983); The Theology of Marriage and Celibacy: Catechesis on Marriage and Celibacy in
Light of the Resurrection of the Body (Boston: Pauline Books and Media, 1986); Reflec-
tions on Humanae Vitae: Conjugal Morality and Spirituality (Boston: Pauline Books and
Media, 1984).
13. John Paul II, The Theology of the Body: Human Life in the Divine Plan (Boston:
Pauline Books and Media, 1997).
14. For a summation of the difficulties with the translation of Theology of the Body,
see Michael Waldstein, introduction to John Paul II, Man and Woman He Created Them,
11–14, and M. Waldstein, “The Project of a New English Translation of John Paul II’s
Theology of the Body on its 20th and 25th Anniversary,” Communio 31 (2004): 345–51.
10 Introduction
lication before Wojtyła’s election to the pontificate. Wojtyła brought
the manuscript to Rome when he began his pontifical ministry.15 This
manuscript included headings for the text that were previously un-
known, as well as additional sections that were never publicly deliv-
ered. In 2006, Michael Waldstein published his own translation of
Theology of the Body. He gave it the title that appeared on the manu-
script, Man and Woman He Created Them.16
This new edition has several benefits over the previous editions.
First, it is translated by a single translator and thus it is translated con-
sistently. Second, Waldstein has included the headings from the orig-
inal manuscript and these reveal the structure of Wojtyła’s argument,
allowing the work to be read systematically rather than disjointedly
as a series of talks. Finally, in some instances the pope modified the
text before delivering it and in some cases he omitted substantial por-
tions. When they differ, Waldstein has included both the original text
and the delivered text, using a side-by-side layout so the reader can
easily identify the changes. In my opinion, Waldstein’s translation is
the best critical edition of these important catecheses now available
in any language.17
This then is our situation and our goal. John Paul II wrote Theolo-
gy of the Body from a Thomistic perspective and so he did not elabo-
rate its ontological and metaphysical foundations explicitly. Aquinas,
on the other hand, did not explore consciousness or human experi-
ence in the same way that John Paul did. Thomas’s anthropology, with
its rich metaphysical foundation, can not only support the concept of
the spousal meaning of the body articulated by the pope in these cat-
echeses but can benefit from it. There is a continuity between Thom-
as Aquinas and John Paul II. Indeed, this exegesis will show that their
thought is mutually enriching.

15. See Waldstein, Introduction, 6–11.

16. See John Paul II, Man and Woman He Created Them.
17. While Waldstein has changed the title of the work, throughout this book I will
continue to refer to the pope’s talks as Theology of the Body rather than Man and Woman
He Created Them to avoid confusion, since the former title is more commonly known.
 1

From Thomas Aquinas

to the Manualists

We begin our study with an outline of the historical discontinuity

between Aquinas’s moral theology and that of the manualist tradi-
tion.1 The manualists and the theologians upon whom they depend-
ed (the neo-Thomists of the late nineteenth and early twentieth cen-
tury) claimed Aquinas as their mentor, though, in fact, as the work of
scholars such as Servais Pinckaers has clearly shown, the manualists
are the intellectual descendants not of Aquinas but of the nominal-
ism introduced by the Franciscan philosopher William of Ockham.
This is a critical point for our study for two reasons: first, it is against
the background of the manualist tradition that the birth control de-

1. This chapter is only a survey of the history; more thorough studies of Catho-
lic moral theology are available. See John Mahoney, The Making of Moral Theology: A
Study of the Roman Catholic Tradition (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987), 1–71; Pinckaers,
Sources, 104–33, 195–215; and Servais Pinckaers, OP, “A Historical Perspective on Intrin-
sically Evil Acts,” translated by Mary Thomas Noble, OP, and Craig Steven Titus, in The
Pinckaers Reader: Renewing Thomistic Moral Theology, eds. John Berkman and Craig Ste-
ven Titus (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2005), 185–235.
See also John A. Gallagher, Time Past, Time Future: An Historical Study of Catholic Moral
Theology (New York: Paulist Press, 1990), 5–28; Albert R. Jonsen and Stephen Toulmin,
The Abuse of Casuistry: A History of Moral Reasoning (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1988), 21–136; and Michael Bertram Crowe, The Changing Profile of the Natural
Law (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1977), 52–135.

11
12 From Thomas Aquinas to the Manualists
bate developed; second, this is precisely the environment in which
Karol Wojtyła’s thought arose.
The current chapter has two sections. In the first, we will briefly
trace the transition from the theological synthesis offered by Aqui-
nas to the nominalism of William of Ockham. The second section
will then identify significant developments in moral theology after
Ockham with the development of the confessional manuals during
the Reformation and the birth of neo-Thomism in the late nineteenth
century. We will conclude the chapter with a modest critique of this
tradition.2 This conclusion serves as preparation for a consideration
of the rise of the birth control debate, which lays the foundation for
Wojtyła’s early work on marriage and the family.

From Thomas Aquinas

to Nominalism
The Early Penitentials and
Confessionals
The history of Catholic moral theology, and of the manualist tradi-
tion in particular, is intrinsically connected to the development of the
sacrament of penance and auricular confession, which precedes both
Aquinas and Ockham by several centuries. John Mahoney provides
a detailed history of the sacrament’s influence along with a thorough
bibliography.3 The Celtic penitential movement, which flourished be-
tween the sixth and tenth centuries, was the catalyst for the develop-
ment of casuistry and the modern manualist tradition. The practice
of repeated individual and private confession between a confessor

2. It is good to recall the words offered by Michael Sherwin before his own his-
torical survey of the manuals: “It is perilous to speak in generalities about the manuals
of moral theology. There was not one monolithic type of moral manual. The Church
contains within it various different traditions of moral reflection and the manuals, as
the product of these traditions, reflect their differences. Also, the perspectives of these
traditions developed over time and the manuals were shaped by these developments.
Nevertheless, there was a dominant perspective and this perspective shaped the most
influential manuals.” Michael P. Sherwin, OP, By Knowledge and By Love: Charity and
Knowledge in the Moral Theology of St. Thomas Aquinas (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic
University of America Press, 2005), 1n1.
3. See Mahoney, Making of Moral Theology, 1–36.
 From Thomas Aquinas to the Manualists 13
and a penitent developed in Ireland and was exported to continental
Europe in various ways from the sixth to the ninth centuries.4
With the increased popularity of private confession, a desire for
universal standards of penance grew among the clergy. This led to the
development of what became known as penitential books or, simply,
the “penitentials.” Given the absence of diocesan or episcopal guid-
ance in this early period of the sacrament, the penitentials were gen-
erally produced by monks.5 The penitentials’ “primary function was
to provide priests with a tariff of penances to be enjoined for various
sins.”6 They contained definitions of specific sins and listed specific
penances to be imposed for said sins.7 As the penitentials developed,
they would include precise formulas for celebrating the sacrament.
Because of their purpose, the penitentials were more concerned
with sin and vice than with beatitude. Still, Mahoney’s criticism seems
excessively hyperbolic when he complains that the penitentials “con-
stitute at best an unsuccessful attempt to apply with some degree of
humanity an appallingly rigid systematized approach to sin, and no
one ever appears to have asked the serious theological question to
what end (other than social order) all this suffering was really be-
ing imposed.”8 This is a classic temptation for any historian: to judge
the past according to a modern standard. John Gallagher, on the oth-
er hand, has observed that the Celtic monastic movement, like Celt-
ic Christianity, is more distinctively influenced by the pre-Christian
Celtic culture than it is by Roman Christianity. In this pre-Christian
Celtic society we find confession, austere repentance, and hymno-
dy: “The religious dimension of the culture also provided for spiritu-
al guides who required persons to perform penances proportionate
to their sins. The primitive legal system provided for compensations
by which restitution could be made to injured parties.”9 The peniten-
4. See ibid., 5. Cf. Gallagher, Time Past, Time Future, 7, and Jonsen and Toulmin,
Abuse of Casuistry, 96–100.
5. See Mahoney, Making of Moral Theology, 5.
6. Ibid., 6.
7. A catalog of medieval penitential books has been gathered in Medieval Hand-
books of Penance: A Translation of the Principal Libri Poenitentiales and Selections from Re-
lated Documents, ed. John T. McNeil and Helena M. Gamer (New York: Columbia Uni-
versity Press, 1938).
8. Mahoney, Making of Moral Theology, 7.
9. Gallagher, Time Past, Time Future, 9.
14 From Thomas Aquinas to the Manualists
tial movement incorporated these elements with the best of Chris-
tian monasticism. In fact, Harold Berman has argued that the peni-
tentials were understood to be primarily concerned with healing the
soul, with reconciliation within society, and with holding all things in
harmony—a basic if unarticulated understanding of virtue.10
The codification of church law, which began with the reforms of
Pope Gregory VII in 1027, provides a background for the second ma-
jor development in Catholic moral theology: the publication of the
Summae Confessorum, or the confessional books.11 The codification
of canon law was accomplished by collecting and synthesizing the
mass of curial decrees that had accrued over the centuries, many of
which were case-specific and thus listed the circumstances that gave
rise to particular legislation and legislative interpretation. The collec-
tion of these cases would directly impinge upon the practice of con-
fession, especially since “clergy needed to be instructed how to match
the complexities of the new canon law to the cases their penitents
presented to them.”12
One of the most influential of such works was authored by the
Dominican Raymond of Peñafort in 1221. His Summa de Poenitentia
focused on sins against God, sins against neighbor, and the duties
attached to various states of life. As Jonsen and Toulmin point out,
“each section of Peñafort’s Summa begins with a proposal about how
the matter will be presented, followed by definitions of the principal
terms, such as lying or simony. He then relates the ‘true and certain
opinions’ on the question under discussion, drawn from earlier writ-
ers, followed by those questions and cases about which the received
answers are more doubtful.”13 Raymond’s method of presentation
would be adopted by most of the canonists of his generation and was
the method to which Aquinas will eventually respond by attempting
to situate morality within the broader context of dogmatic theology
and beatitude.
10. See Harold J. Berman, Law and Revolution: The Formation of the Western Legal
Tradition (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1983), 68–78.
11. For a history of Gregory’s reforms and their historical development and impact,
see Gallagher, Time Past, Time Future, 11–17; Jonsen and Toulmin, Abuse of Casuistry,
101–17; and Berman, Law and Revolution, 199–224.
12. Jonsen and Toulmin, Abuse of Casuistry, 118.
13. Ibid., 120.
 From Thomas Aquinas to the Manualists 15
Peñafort was attempting to implement the reforms established by
the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215. The council, convened by Pope
Innocent III (d. 1216), produced an astonishing seventy constitutions
in under one month and legislated that individuals go to confession
at least annually.14 That particular decree goes on to insist that the
confessor “shall be discerning and prudent, so that like a skilled doc-
tor he may pour wine and oil over the wounds of the injured one. Let
him carefully inquire about the circumstances of both the sinner and
the sin, so that he may prudently discern what sort of advice he ought
to give and what remedy to apply, using various means to heal the
sick person.”15 The council also mandated that provincial councils be
established to monitor the observance of its decrees.16 Bishops were
to ensure that priests were well trained in the practice of caring for
souls.17 With this legislation, the council initiated a series of provin-
cial diocesan synods as well as chapters in various religious orders to
address the implementation of its decrees. This, combined with the
growing maturation of speculative theology within the newly estab-
lished universities, provided the stage for the influence that Aquinas
would have on theology, and, after him, William of Ockham.

The Synthesis of Thomas Aquinas

Born in 1224, Tommaso d’Aquino entered the Order of St. Dominic
when he was twenty years old. He quickly ascended in the intellec-
tual life of the Order, initially studying at the University of Paris and
then teaching there as a bachelor on the Sentences of Peter Lombard
in 1252. He would become a master of sacred theology four years later
in 1256. Throughout his life, he would teach in Paris, Naples, Orvieto,
and Rome. Nearly a decade before his death, Aquinas was appointed
master of friars in formation.18
14. Fourth Lateran Council, De Confessione Facienda, November 30, 1215, in Nor-
man P. Tanner, ed., Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown
University Press, 1990), 1:245 (canon 21).
15. Ibid.
16. Fourth Lateran Council, De Conciliis Provincialibus, November 30, 1215, in Tan-
ner, Decrees, 1:236–37 (canon 6).
17. Fourth Lateran Council, De Instructione Ordinandorum, November 30, 1215, in
Tanner, Decrees, 1:248 (canon 27).
18. Aquinas had been critical of his province’s lack of zeal for study and his posi-
16 From Thomas Aquinas to the Manualists
Aquinas’s work in Rome with his student friars can only rightly be
understood in the context of his work as a master of sacred theology.
A master was, first and foremost, a magister in Sacra Pagina. A master
of the sacred page had three functions: legere, disputare, and praedi-
care.19 The first, legere, was to read the sacred scripture and to com-
ment on it verse by verse. This was the work that Thomas concerned
himself with when he began teaching in Paris in 1256. Many of Aqui-
nas’s scripture commentaries were written during this period. The
disputatio was a form of instruction in which opposing positions were
set against each other and the magister would offer his answer. Finally,
having read and commented on scripture, having considered subtle
and disputed points of theology, the master was ready to preach the
truth. Theological study thus lent itself to pastoral practice.
It was precisely this lack of a connection between pastoral prac-
tice, theology, and scripture that Aquinas sought to remedy in the
Roman province. His task in Rome was to form friars in moral the-
ology and the practice of sacramental confession. Jean-Pierre Tor-
rell notes that Aquinas “had at his disposal the manuals published by
the first generations of Dominicans; but that predominance of prac-
tical theology in the formation of friars . . . gave them only a partial
and narrow view of theology; this resulted in a marked imbalance, to
the detriment of dogmatic theology, which could not help but leave
Thomas dissatisfied.”20 While wanting to maintain the tradition of
providing manuals for the friars, Thomas nonetheless attempted to
present moral theology within a larger theological framework. The
Summa Theologiae is the result of that project.
The Summa is divided into three parts. The first part concerns the
nature of God, the persons of the Trinity, the angels, the work of cre-
tion as a permanent voting member at provincial chapters probably influenced his ap-
pointment. Aquinas was effectively given his own studium in Rome to train the best of
the friars in formation from all over the province. He retained the right to return them
to their priories if they performed less than expected. See Torrell, Saint Thomas Aqui-
nas, 1:142; Thomas Käppelli, OP, and Antione Dondaine, OP, eds., Monumenta Ordinis
Fratrum Praedicatorum Historica, vol. 20, Capitulorum Provincialium Provinciae Romanae
(1243–1344) (Rome, Institutum Historicum Fratrum Praedicatorum, 1941), 20:32; and
Leonard Boyle, The Setting of the Summa theologiae of Saint Thomas, Etienne Gilson Se-
ries (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1982), 5:15.
19. See Torrell, Saint Thomas Aquinas, 1:54.
20. Ibid., 1:144.
 From Thomas Aquinas to the Manualists 17
ation, the nature of man and original sin, and, finally, divine provi-
dence. The first half of the second part begins by discussing the end
(telos) of man, and specifically the beatific vision. Only then does the
prima secundae discuss human action, the passions, habitus, virtue,
law, and grace. The second half of the second part, the secunda secun-
dae, further specifies the work of the first half by devoting particu-
lar attention to the three theological virtues and the four cardinal vir-
tues, along with their corresponding vices and gifts of the Holy Spirit.
The secunda secundae concludes with a treatment of the counsels and
consecrated life. The third part of the Summa, finally, concerns the in-
carnation and person of Jesus Christ, his suffering, death, and resur-
rection, along with the establishment of the church, the seven sacra-
ments, and, ultimately, the last judgment.
The Summa follows the biblical structure of salvation history.
Aquinas brings the student from considering God in himself before
turning to creation and the fall of man to considering man’s destiny
and human action. From there, the Angelic Doctor leads us to con-
sider virtue, law, and grace. But to achieve our goal (telos), the beatif-
ic vision, we need Christ incarnate and the life of grace offered in the
church. Thomas then presents the path to the final consummation of
all things in Jesus Christ.
It is not surprising, therefore, that the very first question of the
secunda pars is on man’s last end, and the first article is “Whether it
belongs to man to act for an end?” It is only after this treatise on be-
atitude that Aquinas addresses human action and the goodness of hu-
man acts, and only upon finishing that discussion does he begin to
speak of passion, habitus, virtue, and vice. Everything that follows in
the secunda pars is, in fact, dependent on the worldview established in
those first few questions. Thomas posits two aspects of human happi-
ness or beatitude: the objective and the subjective.21 Objectively, the
telos or beatitude of man consists in a good.22 Subjectively, there are
21. Throughout this book, I will be using the words “beatitude” and “happiness”
interchangeably for the state Aquinas describes with the word beatitudo. Of course, we
can distinguish between perfect and imperfect happiness, the former only possible in
the beatific vision of God.
22. See Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae (Turin: Edizioni San Paolo, 1999), I-II,
q. 2 [hereafter, ST]. Unless otherwise noted, English translations are from Aquinas,
Summa Theologica (New York: Benzinger Brothers, 1948).
18 From Thomas Aquinas to the Manualists
specific actions that will make a person blessed.23 The final two ques-
tions of the treatise on happiness concern first those subjective ele-
ments of beatitude and then the powers that a person uses to attain
beatitude.24 Servais Pinckaers observes: “Beatitude is both objective
and subjective. It is objective, because it is caused by a good reality,
one which renders [the] person good and blessed. It is subjective, be-
cause it corresponds to the desire of man, which carries him toward
the good and beatitude.”25
The foundation for Thomas’s theory of beatitude rests with his
understanding of human nature. In the tertia pars, when he explains
the relationship between the person of Jesus and his two natures,
Aquinas offers an explanation of the word “nature.”26 Following Ar-
istotle, he distinguishes between four uses of the word: (1) it can sig-
nify the act of generation of living things (since it comes from the
word “nativity”); (2) later it came to signify the source of this gen-
eration; (3) since generation stems from a principle within the gen-
erator, it came to signify an interior principle of movement; and (4)
finally, since the end or telos of a thing is implicated in its generation,
the word “nature” can also signify the thing’s essence. The third and
fourth uses of this term are essential for Thomas. Pinckaers observes
that for Aquinas, “What characterizes ‘natural’ action is that it pro-
ceeds from inner principles or sources. . . . Because of this, nature is
linked with the person in view of all the external causalities that may
affect him. At the core of the person it forms an essential component
of human interiority. This interiority is not only biological or psy-
chological; it is dynamic.”27 For Thomas, it is precisely those interior
principles at the core of human nature that both guide human action
and direct the human person to goodness and truth.28
The line running from these interior principles of human nature
to beatitude is a line directed toward finality. For Thomas, all human

23. See ST I-II, q. 3.

24. See ST I-II, qq. 4–5.
25. Servais Pinckaers, OP, “Beatitude and the Beatitudes in Aquinas’s Summa theo-
logiae,” in Pinckaers Reader, 119.
26. See ST III, q. 2, a. 1.
27. Servais Pinckaers, OP, “Aquinas on Nature and the Supernatural,” trans. Mary
Thomas Noble, OP, in Pinckaers Reader, 361.
28. See ST I-II, q. 63, a. 1.
 From Thomas Aquinas to the Manualists 19
action is directed by the agent toward a goal or end, which the agent
understands to be good.29 Aquinas characterizes all objects of desire
under the rubric of “the good” and “perfection.” For Thomas, the es-
sence of goodness is desirability: to be good is to be desirable, and to
be desirable is to be perfect and, therefore, perfecting of another.30 By
emphasizing the equivalence of being, goodness/desirability, and ac-
tion, Aquinas is placing agency squarely within a metaphysical and
ontological conception of the universe. Daniel Westberg notes the
boldness of the claim, “[Aquinas] is speaking not just of persons or
animals, but in the broadest way possible, of all substances and po-
tency to act. . . . The basis for agency in the universe is that beings can-
not simply exist, nor are they merely the subjects of events and forc-
es which cause change; they desire their perfection.”31 This desire for
perfection is synonymous with a thing’s nature.
Everything but God lacks some perfection. All contingent being
is in a state of becoming.32 The nature of a thing directs it to perfec-
tion, to act in accordance with its abilities—for a plant to grow, for an
animal to hunt and eat, or for a human person to think and to love,
etc.—and in so doing, fulfilling its nature. Aquinas, like Aristotle,
calls this desire for perfection “appetite.” Everything has an appetite
toward the fullness of its own natural form:
Now everything has this aptitude towards its natural form, that when it has
it not it tends toward it; and when it has it, it is at rest therein. It is the same
with every natural perfection, which is a natural good. This aptitude to good
in things without knowledge is called natural appetite. Whence also an in-
tellectual nature has a like aptitude [to the good] as apprehended through
its intelligible form; so as to rest therein when possessed, and when not pos-
sessed to seek to possess it, both of which pertain to the will.33

Thus, Thomas is quite clear that all created beings have fundamental
inclinations that are commensurate with what they are. Everything
acts with a purpose—the fulfillment of its nature—in either a direct-

29. See ST I-II, q. 1, a. 1.

30. See ST I, q. 5, a. 1.
31. Daniel Westberg, Right Practical Reason: Aristotle, Action, and Prudence in Aqui-
nas (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994), 45.
32. See ST I-II, q. 18, a. 1.
33. ST I, q. 19, a. 1.
20 From Thomas Aquinas to the Manualists
ed or self-directed manner, as the case may be. The mere fact that ev-
erything seeks perfection means that no one thing (except God) is
completely perfect in itself. Everything must, therefore, come out of
itself in search of that which perfects it.34
The human person has a rational appetite, the will, and so is able
consciously to direct himself in freedom to his final perfection. In
other words, the human person can understand the relationship of
human action to a final goal. “The difference between the human will
and animal appetite,” Westberg writes, “lies not primarily in a wider
range of objects open for consideration, but in the ability of the hu-
man agent to see actions in relationship to a goal.”35 A human being,
may, in fact, choose something that causes immediate pain (surgery,
for example) for an end which is good (healing). An animal’s action,
on the other hand, is automatically activated by its desires. An animal
will necessarily flee from pain, even if a certain amount of pain would
bring about a good. “A human being, however, is not immediately
moved into action in response to the activation of the sensitive appe-
tite [the passions] (whether to pursue or avoid), but awaits the com-
mand of the superior appetite [the will].”36 Aquinas confirms that
“the lower appetite [the sensitive appetite] is not sufficient to cause
movement [in us], unless the higher appetite [the will] consents.”37
The human person is directed to his goal, to his good, not through
the attainment of immediate goods but through deliberate actions of
mediate goods directing him to his final perfection.
The fundamental interior principles at work here are those de-
fining powers of the human nature, the powers that separate us from
brute animals: reason and will. The powers of the soul, Aquinas says,
are distinguished by their objects, the goals which they each seek.38
As has already been seen, the will, as an appetite, has the good as its
object. The object of the reason is truth and universal being.39 Thom-
as further divides reason into the speculative intellect and the practi-
cal intellect. The former concerns knowledge of truth as such while

34. This movement figures prominently not only in the work of Thomas but also in
the anthropology of Karol Wojtyła.
35. Westberg, Right Practical Reason, 74.
36. Ibid., 80. 37. ST I, q. 81, a. 3.
38. See ST I, q. 77, a. 3. 39. See ST I, q. 16, a. 1.
 From Thomas Aquinas to the Manualists 21
the latter concerns action.40 Since the will is not merely a natural
appetite but a rational appetite it is always in relationship with the
intellect. The will tends toward the good as apprehended by the in-
tellect.41
Aquinas holds that “self-evident first principles” in both the specu-
lative and practical intellects govern all things concerning human ac-
tion and morality. In the speculative intellect, he designates the first
principle as intellectus. Intellectus is the aptitude that all persons have to
understand basic theoretical principles without having to prove them.
They are simply given and understood “at once by the intellect [sta-
tim ab intellectu].”42 These principles are encapsulated in such maxims
as “the whole is greater than its part” and “things equal to the same
thing are equal to one another.” The principle of non-contradiction
is also a maxim of intellectus. These speculative first principles are the
foundation of all scientific reasoning, which progresses from them. A
person simply could not make rational judgments without these first
principles. Think of the absurdity of asserting that something is both
above you and below you at the same time. It violates the principle of
non-contradiction.
Similarly, synderesis is the knowledge of first principles in practi-
cal matters. Thomas writes, “synderesis is said to incite to good, and
to murmur at evil, inasmuch as through first principles we proceed
to discover, and judge what we have discovered.”43 Synderesis is the
capacity to measure our actions as for or against the good of our na-
ture. As such, it is the catalyst of moral action, directing action ac-
cording to the primary principle of practical reason: “do good and
avoid evil.”44 The importance of synderesis cannot be overestimated
in Aquinas. Pamela Hall rightly notes that synderesis ensures that “an
agent cannot completely lack guidance in the moral life. He or she
has even initially some root, an inerrant apprehension of a good with

40. See ST I, q. 79, a. 11.

41. See ST I, q. 82, a. 3. The fascinating relationship between the intellect and the
will in human action is not of immediate concern to us here, though it is essential for
understanding Thomas’s moral theory. We are concerned here with the fundamental or
first principles of each of these powers.
42. ST I-II, q. 57, a. 2. Cf. Sherwin, By Knowledge and By Love, 55.
43. ST I, q. 79, a. 12.
44. See ST I-II, q. 94, a. 2. Cf. ST I, q. 79, a. 12; II-II, q. 47, a. 6.
22 From Thomas Aquinas to the Manualists
which to begin the moral life and moral deliberation. We begin with
at least the necessary conceptual equipment.”45 Thus, as Aquinas sees
it, the human person is built to desire the good and to seek truth, and
is hardwired with the basic faculties for fulfillment of these desires.
Subjectively, however, the spiritual faculties of the human per-
son can be and are mistaken about concrete goods. The “conceptual
equipment” to do good and avoid evil is not always fully or proper-
ly developed in a particular person. The will can be led to seek only
what is an apparent good. Original sin also plays a role in the oper-
ation of the faculties. We are no longer sure of our final end.46 Still,
Thomas asserts that original sin does not destroy the fundamental in-
clinations of human nature, without which human nature could no
longer be defined as such.47
One can glean two important observations from this survey of
Thomas’s position. First, goodness is, for Thomas, something that ev-
eryone desires. That which is truly good is that which fulfills human
nature. As Pinckaers notes, “for Thomas, as for Augustine, the term
bonum combines inseparably the ideas of the good and of beatitude:
what is good is what makes one blessed.”48 Second, since a nature is
defined by its proper inclinations, and since the inclinations proper
to the human being are the inclinations of reason and will, the moral
life is deeply embedded in a person’s interior life. It is less about the
exterior activity and obligations of the person than it is about the ful-
fillment and perfection of the person himself. A brief word about this
last observation is necessary.
45. Pamela Hall, Narrative and Natural Law: An Interpretation of Thomistic Ethics
(Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1994), 31.
46. Thomas held that in original justice, Adam and Eve lived with their “reason be-
ing subject to God, the lower powers to reason, and the body to the soul” (ST I, q. 95,
a. 1). This original state was a unique gift of grace and a good of nature. In the Quaestio-
nes disputatae de malo, written at the same time as the Summa Theologiae, Aquinas goes
on the say that because man is a composite being of body and spirit, his intellect could
identify several “final ends” when it is hindered by the desires of the flesh. But this is the
case only after original sin (see Aquinas, De malo, q. 5, a. 1, co.). In original justice, Adam
and Eve were completely in harmony with their bodies through the unique gift of grace
in which they were created. The rupture in the relationship with God introduces dishar-
mony into their lives. Men and women now find themselves pursuing many different
ends as if these were their true and ultimate good.
47. See ST I-II, q. 85, a. 1.
48. Pinckaers, “Beatitude and the Beatitudes,” 119.
 From Thomas Aquinas to the Manualists 23
Servais Pinckaers notes that the term “intrinsece malum” did not
occur in Christian moral theory until the sixteenth century.49 Though
the debate surrounding contraception centered on whether it was to
be counted among “intrinsically evil acts,” Pinckaers argues that pri-
or to the sixteenth century, theologians were more concerned with
the beatitude of man than with categorized lists of actions. This is not
to say that the early Christians were not concerned with evil actions.
Rather, as Pinckaers has effectively argued, they were concerned with
delineating actions which were conducive either to beatitude or to
wickedness.
Servais Pinckaers summarizes the point:
For St. Thomas, reason (or intelligence) and will precede and engender free
will and its act, choice. The source of freedom lies in the natural inclinations
to truth and to goodness or beatitude, which constitute our spiritual nature
and confer on us an opening onto infinite truth and goodness, rendering us
free in regard to all limited good. We are free, not in spite of, but because of our
natural inclination to truth and beatitude. The attraction of the true and the
good are the foundation of our freedom and orientate it. We can therefore
call it freedom for excellence.50

In this view, the role of the law, natural or otherwise, is to serve as

“the expression of God’s wisdom and benevolence, revealing to us
our spiritual nature orientated to truth and beatitude and prescrib-
ing the paths leading thereto.”51 All of this, however, is on the subjec-
tive side of beatitude—discerning which human actions and princi-
ples contribute to human happiness. On the objective side, only God
himself can fully satisfy the human person. But God is infinitely be-
yond us and therefore we cannot achieve a relationship with God by
our own efforts. That God deigns to offer the grace of communion
with him is utterly gratuitous and cannot be forced.52
As capacities for growth in freedom and perfection, the basic in-
clinations of human nature constitute a capax Dei, a “passive capacity

49. See Pinckaers, “Historical Perspective,” 186.

50. Ibid., 212 (emphasis added).
51. Ibid.
52. See ST I, q. 19, a. 4; I-II, q. 112, aa. 3 and 5. Cf. Matthew Levering, Predestination:
Biblical and Theological Paths (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), and Daria Spez-
zano, The Glory of God’s Grace: Deification According to St. Thomas Aquinas (Washington,
D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2015).
24 From Thomas Aquinas to the Manualists
to receive the vision of God.”53 Our desire for the universal good and
the universal truth, this “natural desire to see God” provides the par-
adox of grace: “the human person is both capable and incapable of
God. We are capable of receiving the vision of God, and absolutely
incapable of attaining it by ourselves.”54 Grace builds on nature. And
the structure of the Summa itself reveals that the virtues and gifts of
the Holy Spirit give our natural inclinations, and especially synderesis,
a new source for action at the very core of our being to effect union
with God by God’s own gift.
The second half of this book will explore more closely the impor-
tance of these facts for Aquinas’s theology of love, marriage, and the
relationship of the body to the soul. For now, we turn our attention
to the subsequent breakdown of Thomas’s synthesis with the rise of
Ockham and nominalism.

William of Ockham and Nominalism

At the risk of oversimplifying the dispute between the Franciscans
and the Dominicans, one can observe that the Franciscans of the me-
dieval era were generally devoted to Augustine’s theology and Plato’s
philosophy. The difference between Plato and Augustine, on the one
hand, and Aristotle, on the other, led to an overarching disagreement.
“Where St. Thomas affirmed the primacy of the intellect, defining the
first and formal element of beatitude in terms of this faculty, as the
vision of God, the Franciscans maintained the primacy of the will
and made love the essential element of beatitude.”55 In the thirteenth
century, these “neo-Augustinians” were considered the institutional
“conservatives” at the University of Paris; the Aristotelians were the
“radical liberals.” For all intents and purposes, Aristotelianism was re-
garded as heterodox.
Not long after Aquinas’s death, the bishop of Paris condemned
several of Thomas’s theses. If not for the defense offered by his then
aged-teacher, Albert the Great, the interregnum following the death
of Pope John XXI, and the fact that the college of cardinals forbade
53. Servais Pinckaers, OP, “Aquinas on Nature and Supernature,” in Pinckaers Read-
er, 362.
54. Ibid., 363.
55. Pinckaers, Sources, 240.
 From Thomas Aquinas to the Manualists 25
the bishop of Paris from proceeding further, Thomas’s work might
have been formally and universally censured in 1277.56 In response,
the Dominican Order decreed that no Dominican was to speak ill of
Thomas and that his works were to be held in high honor. Political
and theological struggles ensued until the Dominican Order made
“Thomism” its official doctrine in 1309. Thomas’s reputation was fi-
nally restored in 1323 when he was canonized by Pope John XXII,
who praised the saint’s teaching. In 1325, a new bishop of Paris with-
drew the condemnations issued in 1277.57
William of Ockham was born in 1288, joined the Franciscan Or-
der at a young age and studied at Oxford, probably from 1309 to 1321,
although (perhaps reflecting the disposition of the chancellor of the
university) he never attained the degree master of sacred theology,
hence his honorific title as the “Venerable Inceptor.”58 Ockham came
to prominence at approximately the same time that Aquinas’s repu-
tation was being rehabilitated. Just a year after Thomas’s canoniza-
tion, Ockham was summoned to Rome by Pope John XXII to defend
some of his questionable teachings. Knowing that the pope espoused
Thomas’s theology, Ockham knew his case was compromised and fled
to Germany where he entered the service of the emperor, Louis of Ba-
varia, who was having his own political struggles with the pope.59
Ockham is widely credited for initiating the movement eventu-
ally called “nominalism,” although his Franciscan elder brother John
Duns Scotus (1266–1308) has been labeled a moderate nominalist
by some.60 Nominalism takes its name from Ockham’s denial of the
existence of universal forms independent of human reason. In clas-
sical Aristotelian philosophy, reason was the contact-point between
the knower and the known, between the person and reality. Ockham,
however, maintained that there was no such thing as universal nature
existing outside of the mind. In his commentary on Peter Lombard’s

56. For an analysis of these condemnations, see John F. Wippel, “Thomas Aquinas
and the Condemnation of 1277,” Modern Schoolman 72 (1995): 233–72.
57. For a more detailed history of this period, see Simon Tugwell, OP, “Introduc-
tion to the Life and Work of Thomas Aquinas,” in Simon Tugwell, OP, ed., Albert and
Thomas: Selected Writings (New York: Paulist Press, 1988), 234–44; Torrell, Saint Thom-
as Aquinas, 1:298–326.
58. See Pinckaers, Sources, 241. 59. Ibid.
60. Crowe, Changing Profile, 192–201.
26 From Thomas Aquinas to the Manualists
Sentences, he writes: “No universal is anything existing in any way out-
side the soul; but everything which is predicable of many things is of
its nature in the mind, whether subjectively or objectively; and no uni-
versal belongs to the essence or quiddity of any substance whatever.”61
This text is part of a larger argument in Ockham’s system in which he
argues that the distinctive qualities we ascribe to existing things do
not adhere to the things themselves but exist only in the mind. There-
fore, according to Ockham, our identification of common natures in
reality is a contradiction.62
For Ockham and those that followed him, freedom became the
primary category of import for the human person. Freedom here is
“conceived as the will’s power to choose between contraries, between
the yes and the no, at each instant—at least in theory.”63 The Vener-
able Inceptor defines freedom as the power “by which I can indif-
ferently and contingently produce an effect in such a way that I can
cause or not cause that effect, without any difference in that power
having been made.”64 Whereas for Aquinas freedom stems from the
mutual interaction between reason and will, for Ockham, the will
became the center of the human person and absolute freedom of
the will became the locus of morality. Pinckaers has called this con-
cept of freedom a “freedom of indifference,” which is exercised “in-
dependently of all other causes except freedom, or the will itself.”65
Ockham thus interpreted Lombard’s dictum, “Free choice is the fac-
ulty of reason and will [Liberum arbitrium est facultas rationis et volun-
tatis]” in a way radically opposed to Aquinas and his predecessors.66
Ockham understood freedom as the power to reason and to will, and
therefore understood freedom as preceding those two important spiri-
tual faculties of the human person.
61. William of Ockham, Super quattuor libros sententiarium subtilissimae quaestiones
I, dist. 2, q. 8 (author’s translation).
62. Some have insisted that Ockham’s position is much more subtle than this. See
the noted Ockhamist, Marylin McCord Adams, William Ockham (Notre Dame, Ind.:
University of Notre Dame Press), 1:3–69, 109–41. She argues for the logical consistency
of Ockham’s objection against Aristotelian realism.
63. Servais Pinckaers, OP, “Conscience and the Christian Tradition,” trans. Mary
Thomas Noble, OP, in Pinckaers Reader, 335.
64. William of Ockham, Quodlibeta, q. 1, a. 16 (author’s translation).
65. Pinckaers, Sources, 242.
66. Peter Lombard, Sententiae in IV Libris Distinctae II, dist. 25, a. 1, q. 2.
 From Thomas Aquinas to the Manualists 27
Since freedom precedes the two characterizing faculties of the
human person, the intellect and the will, and since he has already de-
nied the existence of extramental universal natures, it is not surpris-
ing to learn that Ockham insisted that the person can choose to dis-
regard any sort of natural inclination. Whereas Aquinas grounded the
morality of human action in the natural inclinations of the intellect to
truth and the will to goodness as well as in the human desire for be-
atitude and happiness, Ockham insists that the will is free even in re-
gard to these:
I say that the will in this state is able to refuse the ultimate end, whether the
end is presented in a general sense or in a particular sense. This can be proved
thus. The will is able to reject that which the intellect says ought to be reject-
ed. (This is obvious.) But the intellect can believe that nothing is the ultimate
end or happiness, and as a consequence, can dictate that an ultimate end or
happiness is to be rejected. Secondly, anyone who can reject the antecedent
can reject the consequent. A person is able to desire not to be. Therefore, he
is able to reject the happiness that he believes follows upon his existence. Fur-
thermore, I say that the intellect can judge a certain thing to be the ultimate
end, but the will can reject that end. This is so because a free power [poten-
tial libera] is capable of contrary acts. It can order itself in one way or another.
The will, as a free power, is capable of rejecting or choosing any object. There-
fore, it can choose God, but for the same reason, it can reject God.67

This was William of Ockham’s decisive claim, effectively reorienting

his moral theology away from human nature and toward human free-
dom absolutely. The majority of the tradition before him measured
the goodness or wickedness of human action in reference to that ac-
tion’s appropriation of the good sought by the agent, on the subjec-
tive side, and the true good of the human person, communion with
God, on the objective side. Ockham theorized that persons are free,
in fact, not to desire their own good.
This creates an immediate problem when discussing human ac-
tion. The finality of the human person and the relationship of an ac-
tion’s immediate end to that finality were central to Aquinas’s theory
of morality. By eliminating the influence of the natural inclinations
and the importance of the interaction between intellect and will, ac-
tion for Ockham neither stems from interior principles at the core of

67. Ockham, Super quattuor libros sententiarium IV, q. 15 (author’s translation).

28 From Thomas Aquinas to the Manualists
the human being nor leads to a goal. There is no other cause of hu-
man action than self-determination. In Pinckaers’s words, “From this
it followed that each of our voluntary acts becomes a single reality,
isolated in time by the very power that enables us to choose between
contraries. We could not be bound by a past action or obliged to a fu-
ture one without losing the radical freedom that is ours at each mo-
ment.”68 Human conduct is nothing but “a succession of individual
actions.”69 Considering human action only in isolated moments with
no connection between one action and the next is the immediate pre-
cursor for casuistry and the manualist tradition, which emphasized
the study of isolated cases of conscience.
Assessing the intrinsic morality of particular actions once free-
dom is separated from human nature and its inclination to perfection
is a contradiction. When our natural inclinations no longer provide
the telos of human action, only some extrinsic principle can deter-
mine the morality of action. Hence, Ockham turns to law and ob-
ligation, where law is understood not as stemming from nature but
from the will of the divine legislator, God. He writes, “Evil is nothing
else than to do something when one is under an obligation to do the
opposite. Obligation does not fall on God, since he is not under any
obligation to do anything.”70 And, like the human will, the unbound-
ed power of the divine will precedes divine reason. On the contrary,
God can impose seemingly irrational obligations upon us. For exam-
ple, Ockham insists: “Every will can conform itself to divine precept,
but God can command that the created will hate him, and the cre-
ated will can do this. Therefore, that which can be a right act in this
life, can be so in the next [in patria], thus just as to hate God can be
a right act in this life, if it be commanded by God, so can it be a right
act in the next life [in patria].”71 Ockham thus establishes the two pri-
mal realities of morality: the divine will and the human will. Pinck-
aers writes: “The origin of morality resides in the law, the expression
of the free and sovereign will of God the Creator, which is imposed
upon man under the form and with the force of obligation. Human

68. Pinckaers, Sources, 243.

69. Ibid.
70. Ockham, Super quattor libros sententiarum II, dist. 5 (author’s translation).
71. Ibid., IV, dist. 15 (author’s translation)
 From Thomas Aquinas to the Manualists 29
acts, indifferent in themselves, become moral through their connec-
tion with legal obligations.”72 The divine law of God is here consid-
ered to be antagonistic to a person’s freedom. We are not permitted to
choose what God forbids simply because he forbids it, even if he for-
bids it for seemingly irrational reasons.
If human freedom, on the one hand, and law and the divine will,
on the other, stand at the polar extremes of absolute freedom, con-
science for Ockham is the median between the two. Moral discern-
ment “revolves around assessing the relation of each free act with
the law, and this is done primarily through a consideration of the ob-
ject of the act which harmonizes best with the law as it is verbally ex-
pressed.”73 The relationship between law and freedom will thus be
marked by a certain tension which is at the heart of Ockham’s free-
dom of indifference and his obligation-based morality: “Freedom and
law are opposed to each other, like two landowners, disputing over
the territory of human acts. . . . The principal task of conscience, as
of moralists, will therefore be to mark off the limits between the do-
main of the law and the domain of freedom. It is a question of what
is allowed, what is forbidden; what is obligatory, what remains free.”74
The primary virtue in such a system is the virtue of right action in ac-
cordance with law. It is merely “a habit of obeying the law.”75
Due to this perpetual tension with the law and the clash of wills,
human freedom is unable and unwilling to be obedient to the divine
will at all times. Since it is both objective (dictating the law) and sub-
jective (within the person), conscience inevitably “fluctuate[s] be-
tween zeal for the law, capable of turning into rigorism, and exces-
sive concern for the subject, which can lead to laxity.”76 By definition,
the human will is prone to sin if only to affirm occasionally its own
self-determination.
To be fair, a more sympathetic reading of Ockham is possible, es-
pecially when his political writings are considered; they hint of an un-
72. Pinckaers, “Conscience,” 336; cf. Pinckaers, “Aquinas on Nature,” 365; Pinckaers,
Sources, 247.
73. Pinckaers, “Historical Perspective,” 213.
74. Pinckaers, “Conscience,” 336; cf. Pinckaers, “Historical Perspective,” 213.
75. Pinckaers, “Morality and the Movement of the Holy Spirit,” trans. Craig Steven
Titus, in Pinckaers Reader, 392.
76. Pinckaers, “Conscience,” 344.
30 From Thomas Aquinas to the Manualists
derstanding of natural law.77 Some authors argue that, for Ockham,
God’s divine will is manifest in right reason and that when the will
chooses to follow right reason, it chooses to follow God’s will. God
has thus established the structures of right reason and nature accord-
ing to his will, but, they argue, this does not mean that God is mere-
ly arbitrary. Rather, in order to find some logic to God’s action, one
“would have to be able to point to some external standard according
to which the will of God is bound to operate.”78 Otherwise, we run
the risk of imposing upon God our own limited human understand-
ing. Those who sympathize with Ockham simply insist that we can-
not impose our own logic upon God.
Yet, even those who are trying to rehabilitate Ockham’s thought
admit not only that Ockham argues that there is no external standard
known to us with which we can measure God’s will, but also that he
believes there is no such standard in fact. God’s freedom is not bound
by even his own reason. Thus, they admit that while God has willed
creation to exist in the way it does, he could just as easily willed a
world in which it was righteous to hate him.79
We can agree, therefore, with Pinckaers that there are three long-
lasting effects of Ockham’s nominalism on the history of moral theol-
ogy.80 First, since for Ockham every human act is the movement of a
freedom that can always and everywhere choose equally between con-
traries, human action is atomized and no longer considered within a
larger trajectory stemming from interior principles to finality. “This is
the logical origin of casuistry, of moral theology viewed as a study of
cases.”81 Second, morality has come to be considered primarily as an
obligation determined by the relation between freedom and law. This
necessarily focuses on the exterior principles of action, which, in turn,
leads to physicalism. Pinckaers writes: “Because he is watching the tra-

77. See Crowe, Changing Profile, 202; Kevin McDonnell, “Does William of Ockham
Have a Theory of Natural Law?” Franciscan Studies 34 (1974): 383–92; and Marilyn Mc-
Cord Adams, “The Structure of Ockham’s Moral Theory,” in Context of Casuistry, ed.
James F. Keenan, SJ, and Thomas A. Shannon (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown Univer-
sity Press, 1995), 25–52.
78. McDonnell, “Does William of Ockham Have a Theory of Natural Law,” 387.
79. See ibid., 392; Adams, “Structure of Ockham’s Moral Theory,” 43.
80. See Pinckaers, “Historical Perspective,” 216–17.
81. Ibid., 216.
 From Thomas Aquinas to the Manualists 31
jectory of the legal obligation, the moralist will in fact fix his attention
on what St. Thomas called the external act in its relation to its matter
or object, insofar as it can be directly touched by the law in its impera-
tive or prohibitive expression.”82
Finally, as Thomists react against nominalism they will, nonethe-
less, be influenced by it as they attempt to argue for acts which are in-
trinsically evil based on an understanding of natural law. Unable to
escape the influence of this freedom of indifference, “they will not be
able to escape the irreducible opposition it establishes between the
subject on the one hand, with its radical demand for freedom, and
on the other hand the object, law, nature, other subjects as well, and
society, which oppose the subject by restricting its freedom.”83 In at-
tempting to establish hard boundaries on freedom, moralists will fo-
cus less on the human person and interiority, and more on exteriori-
ty, law, and nature as the objective norms of morality.

After William of Ockham

The Development of Casuistry after
the Thirteenth Century
The work of both Aquinas and Ockham would influence the confes-
sionals and the manuals down to the twentieth century. Confession-
al summas were not sufficient to implement fully the reforms of the
Fourth Lateran Council. A true renewal of the priesthood through
systematic training and formation of the clergy was needed.84 How-
ever, the formation of the clergy would not be formalized until the
Council of Trent in the sixteenth century. At the same time, scholas-
ticism experienced its own renewal. Since the sacrament of penance
was administered by a semi-literate and ill-formed clergy, Martin Lu-
ther’s “double charge of perverse laxity in penance and oppressive ri-
gidity in the hearing of confessions” was not unwarranted.85

82. Ibid.
83. Ibid., 217.
84. Both John Mahoney and William Pantin make this point. See Mahoney, Mak-
ing of Moral Theology, 21, and William A. Pantin, The English Church in the Fourteenth
Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1955), 218.
85. Mahoney, Making of Moral Theology, 22, citing John T. McNeil, A History of the
32 From Thomas Aquinas to the Manualists
The fifteenth and sixteenth centuries saw no improvement in the
practice of confession. The growth of speculative scholastic theol-
ogy in the universities, while beneficial in many ways, would prove
even more alienating to the pastoral work of ordinary clergy. “The-
ology developed in the universities along the lines of an intensifica-
tion of the rational procedures of scholasticism: a wider use of dialec-
tic and logic, a stress on speculative orientation, and a proliferation
of distinctions, questions, and arguments. A technical vocabulary and
specialized terminology developed, along with a penchant for ab-
straction and a growing complexity of problems and discussions.”86
Theology was thus relegated to the universities and was the field of
specialized clerics who had pursued higher studies.
While speculative theology flourished in the realms of higher ed-
ucation, spiritual or mystical theology concerned “the experience of
the life of faith [and] attempted to disclose the divine realities per-
ceived in the interior life and the growth of the believing soul.”87 The
spiritual authors of the period spoke concretely rather than abstract-
ly, and appealed to all Christians, not just to clergy and academics.
Pinckaers believes that the separation between moral theology and
mystical theology was crystallized with the separation between pre-
cepts of the law and the counsels. “Moral theory dealt essentially with
precepts, which determined obligations in various sectors of human
activity and were imposed on all without distinction. The counsels
were supplementary and dealt with supererogatory actions let to each
individual’s free initiative. By this very fact, they were reserved to the
chosen few who sought perfection; this was the terrain of asceticism
and mysticism.”88 This division between the ordinary and obligatory,
on the one hand, and the extraordinary and the phenomenal, on the
other, contributed to the neglect of the universal call to holiness so
prevalent in the church before the Second Vatican Council.
The Protestant Reformation in the sixteenth century prompted
the Council of Trent to legislate the establishment of the seminary

Care of Souls (New York: Harper, 1951), 165–66. See Mahoney, Making of Moral Theol-
ogy, 22n89, for his interesting observations on Aquinas’s defense of the friars’ work in
confession as markedly superior to that of the secular clergy.
86. Pinckaers, Sources, 255. 87. Ibid.
88. Ibid., 256.
 From Thomas Aquinas to the Manualists 33
system to train young men to become priests. The men, the council
decreed, were to “study grammar, singing, keeping church accounts
and other useful skills; and they should be versed in holy scripture,
church writers, homilies of the saints, and the practice of rites and
ceremonies, and of administering the sacraments, particularly all that
seems appropriate to hearing confessions.”89 The necessity of text-
books and manuals for new seminary classes on confession empha-
sized the need for moral theology manuals and confessionals.
A second significant development during the Reformation was
the flourishing of the Society of Jesus in the latter half of the sixteenth
century, and, with it, the renewal of scholasticism.90 The Jesuits want-
ed to meet the needs of the time by preparing men to engage in pasto-
ral work, and especially in spiritual direction and confession. To that
end, a ratio studiorum for the Jesuit Order was drawn up and imple-
mented at the end of the sixteenth century. A commission was estab-
lished in 1586 to discuss what the ratio should contain. Thirteen years
later, in 1599, a draft was implemented. Albert Jonsen and Stephen
Toulmin report that the long debate centered on the relationship be-
tween cases of conscience and speculative theology. “Some commen-
tators felt that the rigid separation of practical casuistry from specula-
tive moral theology, as taught from the Summa Theologiae, was to the
detriment of both. The final Ratio struck a balance, requiring both an
explanation of principles and a study of casuistry for students in the
long and short courses alike.”91
Jonsen and Toulmin go on to explain the pedagogy employed by
the Jesuits of this milieu: “The rules of the professor of cases estab-
lished the format: avoidance of speculative questions, succinct pre-
sentation of principles, acceptance of probable opinions, and resolu-
tion by solid argument. Every member of the Society became familiar
with this technique; practiced it in case conferences as a student;
heard it weekly for his entire career in the Society and made use of it
in his ministry.” 92 Pinckaers observes that on the speculative side of

89. Council of Trent, Decreta Super Refromatione, July 15, 1563, in Tanner, Decrees,
2:751 (canon 18).
90. See Pinckaers, Sources, 259; Jonsen and Toulmin, Abuse of Casuistry, 146–51.
91. Jonsen and Toulmin, Abuse of Casuistry, 150.
92. Ibid.
34 From Thomas Aquinas to the Manualists
the ratio only those elements that were necessary for moral theology
were taught, and these became known as “fundamental moral theol-
ogy.” Thus, those areas of theology that were deemed too speculative
were dropped from the curriculum. The treatises on beatitude and
the end of man, grace, and the gifts of the Holy Spirit were among
the topics dropped.93 The more concrete treatises on human action,
habitus, virtue, law, conscience, and sin were retained, of course. In
addition, the commandments and the precepts of the church were
studied and, eventually, the curriculum included the obligations nec-
essary for each state of life.
The Spanish Jesuit and professor Juan Azor (1536–1603) was a
singularly important influence in this tradition.94 From 1600 to 1611,
Azor’s massive Institutionum Moralium was published bearing the
subtitle “in which all questions of conscience are briefly treated.”95
Azor introduced a fourfold division of moral theology: first, the ten
commandments; second, the seven sacraments; third, ecclesiasti-
cal censures, penalties, and indulgences; and, fourth, states of life
and the last things.96 Azor also included seven general topics which
he claimed were borrowed from Thomas’s Summa: first, human acts;
second, the division of action into good and bad; third, the passions
or affections; fourth, habitus; fifth, virtues in general; sixth, sins in
general (understood as infractions against law and rights); seventh,
law in all its senses (human, divine, and natural along with the pre-
cepts of the church).97 Not surprisingly, given the ratio of the Jesuit
Order, there was no mention of beatitude, grace, or the Holy Spirit.
The influence of Azor’s syllabus is evident in most of the manuals
that followed him. Even in the nineteenth century, Jean Gury, the em-
inent Jesuit casuist, said that Azor “is, among authors, the most com-
mendable for his wisdom, learning and the weight of his reasoning.”98
The success of the syllabus was due first to the authority of the So-
ciety but also to the fact that Azor systematically organized the pre-
93. See Pinckaers, Sources, 260.
94. See ibid., 260–62, 265–66.
95. Jonsen and Toulmin, Abuse of Casuistry, 149.
96. Pinckaers, Sources, 261.
97. The preceding was outlined by Pinckaers in Sources, 261–62.
98. Jonsen and Toulmin, Abuse of Casuistry, 155, quoting Jean Gury in “Azor,” Dic-
tionnaire de Théologie Catholique (Paris: Letouzey et Ané, 1930), I, col. 2653.
 From Thomas Aquinas to the Manualists 35
sentation of moral theology. His logic was clearly in line with what
Pinckaers has identified as a morality of obligation. By emphasizing
the exteriority of action in its relation to the law, Azor had no concern
for the end of man and beatitude or the internal workings of grace
and the Holy Spirit. Azor’s method was generally accepted without
question. We lament with Pinckaers that
many believed, with Azor, that in it the moral teaching of St. Thomas, the
Catholic moral teaching of all times lay revealed. A mere glance at the Sum-
ma theologiae and the Church Fathers, a smattering of critical sense, would
have shown the profound differences. But the new system was so cogent, its
appeal to contemporary ideas so direct, that the possibility of any other line
of thought had become quite unimaginable.99

There was a proliferation of manuals of moral theology, all based

on this casuistic style, into the seventeenth century. Jonsen and Toul-
min report that by the end of the sixteenth century there were ap-
proximately six hundred volumes of moral theology manuals, all ca-
suistic and all remarkably similar.100 Between the seventeenth and
twentieth centuries, all moral theology textbooks adopted the same
structure outlined by Azor for fundamental theology, providing trea-
tises on human acts, conscience, law, and sin. In his review of the
manuals, Pinckaers observes that there were some minor variations
and some manualists even included a treatise on virtue and man’s fi-
nal end, but these were included only superficially and had no im-
pact on the structure of the manuals. The primary concern was ex-
terior human action in relation to obligations imposed by law. The
only difference one can note among moral theologians of this period
is their position with regard to questionable opinions of the authori-
ties in the resolution of cases of conscience: whether they were laxist,
rigorist, probabilist, probabiliorist, or equiprobablist.101 There is no
need to explain these movements here, only to say that they all con-
cern the licit course of action in the face of doubts about the obliga-
tions of law. Even Alphonsus Ligouri, the doctor of moral theology,
was caught in the mindset of his time and so situated his own theol-
99. Pinckaers, Sources, 266.
100. Jonsen and Toulmin, Abuse of Casuistry, 150.
101. For a summary of these different modes of casuistry, see Mahoney, Making of
Moral Theology, 135–43; Pinckaers, Sources, 273–77.
36 From Thomas Aquinas to the Manualists
ogy within this framework when he coined the equiprobablist posi-
tion. This methodology would govern Catholic moral theology well
into the twentieth century.

The Birth of Neo-Thomism

In his history of neo-Thomism, Gerald McCool offers a broad defi-
nition: “The term Neo-Thomism is generally employed to designate
the movement in philosophy and theology which assumed a leading
place in Catholic thought in the latter portion of the nineteenth cen-
tury and retained its dominance until the middle of the twentieth.”102
Neo-Thomism was a part of a third wave of scholasticism. The second
scholastic movement of Trent had fallen to the Enlightenment in the
eighteenth century. Jesuit Thomism led by Francisco Suarez (d. 1617)
virtually disappeared after the suppression of the Jesuits in 1772. But
even the Thomism based on the commentatorial tradition, the more
speculative theological descendants of Thomas, was disdained in the
face of the rationalism and the secularism of the Enlightenment.103
While there were several different reactions in the church to En-
lightenment rationalism (within the church), the renewal of Thom-
ism in the face of European rationalism can be attributed to a group
of scholars in Italy, many of whom joined the Jesuit Order upon its
reestablishment in 1814. One of the most significant of these, Serafino
Sordi (d. 1865), “came to recognize the value of Thomism for refut-
ing those philosophical positions that, since they exemplified for the
most part either a developed Kantianism or an accommodated Hege-
lianism, proved ill-suited to elucidate Christian theology.”104 Sordi’s
own manuals were still in use well into the mid-twentieth century. In
1824, Pope Leo XII returned the Gregorian University to the newly
re-founded Society of Jesus and its new rector, the young Luigi Tapa-
relli d’Azeglio, and attempted to unify the faculty by encouraging the
study of Thomas. But the faculty strongly resisted, following the lead
of their champion theologian Giovanni Perone who “felt none of the
hostility toward modern German theology.”105 Thus, the initial effort
to spark a Thomistic revival in Rome failed.

102. McCool, Neo-Thomists, 9. 103. See ibid., 26–27.

104. Cessario, Short History, 83. 105. McCool, Neo-Thomists, 32.
 From Thomas Aquinas to the Manualists 37
The interaction between the neo-Thomists and those some came
to call the “traditionalists” (who emphasized faith over reason) was
nowhere more clear than a half century later, at the First Vatican
Council. The neo-Thomist Jesuit Joseph Kleutgen and the tradition-
alist Jesuit Johannes Franzelin were commissioned to draft the coun-
cil’s document on faith and reason. Franzelin had little concern for
scholasticism or Thomism: “He did not wish to make mediaeval
theology the norm for all theology. That might upset the balance of
Catholic theology, and it might diminish the important role which
the Fathers of the Church should play in it.”106 Still, Kleutgen’s Thom-
istic influence can be recognized in the council’s constitution on faith
and reason.107
While a Jesuit revival of Thomism failed in both Rome and later
in Naples, D’Azeglio was very influential on a young student, Gioac-
chino Pecci, who “in 1828 was prompted to send home for a copy of
the Summa theologiae that he remembered seeing on the shelves of
his family library.”108 After the death of Pope Pius IX on February 7,
1878, Cardinal Gioacchino Pecci was elected pope the following April.
He took the name Leo XIII. It was this pope who issued the land-
mark encyclical Aeterni Patris in 1879, which initiated the institution-
al revival of Thomism in the Catholic church. The document bore the
subtitle, “On the Restoration of Christian Philosophy according to
the Mind of St. Thomas Aquinas, the Angelic Doctor.” After offering a
history of philosophy and its use by Christian theologians, including
the Church Fathers, in responding to the needs of their day, this doc-

106. Ibid.
107. The final paragraph of the chapter on faith and reason in the Dogmatic Consti-
tution on the Catholic Faith (De Fide Catholica) explains the relationship between faith
and reason in much the same way that the first question of the Summa Theologiae does.
Specifically, the chapter concludes with the observation that the human sciences should
be left to operate upon their own principles and methods. Nevertheless, the role of faith
is to prevent these sciences from extending beyond their limits or from conflicting with
the faith. The principles and conclusions of other science, rightly practiced, can be as-
sumed into the faith by confirming theology’s own fundamental principles: those truths
revealed by God. See Vatican Council I, De Fide Catholica, April 24, 1870, in Tanner, De-
crees, 1:809 (chap. 4); ST I, q. 1, aa. 1, 2, 5, 8; and Lawrence J. Donohoo, OP, “The Nature
and Grace of Sacra Doctrina in St. Thomas’s Super Boetium de Trinitate,” The Thomist 63
(1999): 343–401.
108. Cessario, Short History, 85.
38 From Thomas Aquinas to the Manualists
ument extols the wisdom of Thomas and highlights his useful con-
tribution for church doctrine even in the present day. The encyclical
praises movements that seek to restore the Angelic Doctor’s teaching
to its former importance. The pope goes on to insist that the philoso-
phy of Thomas would respond most suitably to the needs of the time
and, therefore, he instructed all universities to offer his teaching.
McCool reports that the reaction to Aeterni Patris was generally
favorable by the bishops of the world. They had grown weary of the
eclectic and variant forms of philosophy and theology being taught in
seminaries and houses of study.109 Pope Leo XIII made strategic ap-
pointments to guarantee the success of his encyclical. He forced the
appointments of Thomists to the official Jesuit journal, Civiltà Cattol-
ica, and Joseph Kleutgen’s appointment as prefect of studies for the
Society of Jesus. A form of Thomism was thus established in the Soci-
ety of Jesus before the turn of the century.
The manuals of the twentieth century, some published even on
the eve of the Second Vatican Council, took their cue from this re-
vival of Thomism. The twentieth century manualists seem to have lit-
tle knowledge or concern for the challenges to this initial revival of
Thomism that were offered by Etienne Gilson, Jacques Maritain, or
Joseph Marechal. Rather, these later manuals assumed many of the
hallmarks of neo-Thomist theology: the distinctions between the nat-
ural and supernatural, nature and grace, faith and reason, body and
soul, philosophy and theology, on the one hand, and the unifying
theological theme which they took to be Thomas’s, “the idea of God,
considered, in his inner being and his exterior creative and redemp-
tive work.”110
John Gallagher provides a helpful synopsis of the major manu-
alists published in the twentieth century.111 He notes six theological
themes found in most of the manuals of the twentieth century, all of
which were imported from the neo-Thomist theology popular in the
109. See McCool, Neo-Thomists, 40.
110. See Gallagher, Time Past, Time Future, 40, quoting Gerald McCool, SJ, Catholic
Theology in the Nineteenth Century (New York: Seabury Press, 1977), 196.
111. The manuals Gallagher surveys include those by John A. McHugh, OP, and
Charles J. Callan, OP; Aloysio Sabetti, SJ, and Timotheo Barrett, SJ; Marcellinus Zal-
ba, SJ; F. Hürth, SJ, and P. M. Abellan, SJ; Francis J. O’Connell, CSSR; and Dominic
Prümmer, OP.
 From Thomas Aquinas to the Manualists 39
day.112 The first theme is that moral theology is its own theological
discipline. Here, he notes two distinct ideas running through most of
the manuals: first, that moral theology has as its goal the attainment
of man’s end, even though the manuals spoke very little of the con-
tent of that end, and second, that moral theology’s primary task was
“the determination of sins and duties in order to prepare seminari-
ans for the proper administration of the sacrament of penance.”113 In
the post-Vatican I church, the sources of moral theology were not just
scripture and tradition but also the teachings of previous moralists
and the teachings of the church (for example, the responsia ad dubia
issued by various offices in the Holy See). In this period, the papacy
and the Holy See were clearly in control of theological discussion, as
evidenced by the plethora of official responses to theological ques-
tions offered in the first half of the twentieth century.114
The second theological theme of the manuals that Gallagher
identifies concerns the goal of humanity, which “could be adequate-
ly known only through revelation and was primarily mediated to
the Catholic community through dogmatic theology.”115 Gallagher
notes that the end of the human person was defined so as to empha-
size “the religious significance of human acts.”116 There is, however,
no mention of interiority or the growth in virtue and holiness that
was so central to Thomas’s moral theology. In fact, the end of human
nature is itself defined in terms of obligation. Gallagher says that the
for most of the manuals, “the end of human beings is both an obliga-
tion of and a perfection of their nature, but its achievement is totally a
consequence of God’s gratuitous grace.”117 Here lies the conundrum
of the neo-Thomist manualist tradition: the relationship between na-
ture’s obligations and supernatural grace. Hence, the third theme pre-
occupying the manuals is the question of the relationship between
merit and grace, nature and supernature.

112. Gallagher, Time Past, Time Future, 50–62.

113. Ibid., 50.
114. See Mahoney, Making of Moral Theology, 116–74, for a historical review of the
impact that magisterial authority had on theologians from the end of the nineteenth
century through the twentieth century.
115. Gallagher, Time Past, Time Future, 54.
116. Ibid.
117. Ibid., 55.
40 From Thomas Aquinas to the Manualists
The fourth concern, the theological virtues, was also elucidated in
terms of obligation and exteriority, even if interior necessity was ac-
knowledged. Here, Gallagher uses the Dominic Prümmer’s manual,
one of the last manuals before the council, to summarize the point:
The gift of the [theological] virtues imposed upon their recipient the obli-
gation of eliciting acts of faith, hope, and charity, as well as the obligation of
performing external acts consistent with each of the virtues. An elicited act
is one which remains within the will; in itself it does not require any exter-
nal act. Thus Prümmer argued that there was an obligation to elicit interior
acts of faith when God’s revelation had been sufficiently proposed to one,
when a dogma of faith was proposed by the church, frequently during life,
and probably at the moment of death. The same author proposed that, since
human nature was embodied, there were also external acts of faith incum-
bent upon a Christian: a positive duty to worship and to profess one’s faith
when questioned by public authority as well as the negative duty to deny
one’s faith. Similar interior and exterior acts, elicited and commanded, were
also entailed by the virtues of hope and charity.118

This conception of theological virtues and grace figured prominent-

ly in the manualists’ view of the new law, the fifth theme identified
by Gallagher. The new law of the gospel has both interior and exte-
rior elements. The interior elements are the grace of the Holy Spir-
it and the theological virtues. The exterior elements are the required
and commanded external acts of the Christian life: works of mercy,
the sacramental life of the church, etc. Gallagher notes the obvious
fact that “as one studies the special moral theology of the manualists
one begins to suspect that the primacy of the inner aspect of the new
law was being obscured by the requirements of the external law.”119
The new law of the manualists was plagued with duty and obligation.
Finally, as noted earlier, sin was a major preoccupation. In true
scholastic form, the manualists were certain to distinguish between
actual and habitual sin, personal and original sin, mortal and venial
sin, and formal and material sin. For the manualists, sin is evil for
two reasons: first, because it is a turning away from God as the per-
son’s ultimate end and second, because it frustrates the divine order,
which was the eternal law of God (though the manualists seemed to
accept the voluntarist conception that law was primarily in the will

118. Ibid., 57. 119. Ibid., 60.

 From Thomas Aquinas to the Manualists 41
of God).120 The theological presuppositions that influence the man-
ualist moral theory are in continuity with the tradition of casuistry
(traceable more to the nominalist Ockham than to Aquinas); even
though the twentieth-century manualists aligned themselves with the
neo-Thomist movements of the time, or perhaps because of this fact,
they were still steeped in a morality of obligation.

Conclusion
As we have seen, Servais Pinckaers, Romanus Cessario, John Mahoney,
and John Gallagher all share the same critique of the manualist tradi-
tion. In our exploration of Pinckaers’s widely-known critique, we gave
special focus (as he does) to Juan Azor’s syllabus in the sixteenth cen-
tury. Azor, who was among the first to exclude a treatise on beatitude
and the happiness of man from his moral system, has served as one
of our primary examples of the shift in outlook, whereby the topic of
beatitude was increasingly seen as too speculative for moral theology.
Pinckaers sees a deeper reason “unclear perhaps to Azor but nonethe-
less operating in influencing him and his followers. . . . [Namely, Azor]
could no longer see the importance of the treatise on beatitude with-
in the context of his conception of a morality of obligation.”121 Despite
the fact that Azor apparently intended to include beatitude in the final
section of his study on the ends of man but died before completing the
work, had he done so he would have inverted the order that Thomas
himself had followed: “St. Thomas placed the question of happiness
at the beginning of moral theology, considering it to be primary and
principal. . . . Finality no longer held a preponderant place in this sys-
tem. The end, henceforth, was only one element of a moral action—
one among others.”122
The manualists certainly mentioned man’s last end, and believed
it was God himself, but an action was judged according to its extrin-
sic relationship to norm and law. Obedience, law, and norm were the
primary referents when considering man’s end. For example, morali-
ty was, according to John McHugh and Charles Callan’s manual, “the
agreement or disagreement of a human act with the norms that regu-
120. Ibid., 62. 121. Pinckaers, Sources, 262.
122. Ibid., 262–63.
42 From Thomas Aquinas to the Manualists
late human conduct with reference to man’s last end.”123 Similarly, the
Aloysio Sabetti and Timotheo Barrett manual instructs: “The essence
of morality consists primarily in the condition of the human act to
the eternal law which is the divine plan, the will of God ordering nat-
ural order to be preserved and condemning its perturbation. . . . The
secondary essence of morality consists in the relation of human acts
to right reason.”124 Even when manualists attempted to introduce a
transcendent conception of man’s end, it was still under the rubric
of norm and obligation. Gallagher writes, “[Francis] O’Connell pro-
posed that morality meant ‘a transcendental relation of a human act,
either of agreement or disagreement, to a norm or rule of goodness
and evil, based on man’s nature in its entirety.’”125 The manualists were
more concerned with whether a particular act violated God’s divine
will expressed primarily in the norms of nature (such as biological
processes) or revealed in revelation, than with the question of the rea-
sons why an act would be evil and, therefore, why it would be against
nature and God’s will.
This view of morality as obligation is the direct result of the free-
dom of indifference that views the will as the primary locus of morali-
ty and freedom as the fundamental ability to choose between contrar-
ies. This in turn was precipitated and confirmed by nominalism which,
as we have seen, held that natures were convenient labels of the mind,
but do not exist in reality. The only means of circumscribing freedom
in such a view is the imposition of law. Thomas’s idea that natural law
was an intrinsic image of the eternal law, the ratio of God, in the hu-
man person had no place in the manualist tradition. Rather, as Cessa-
rio says, “all law represents something extrinsic to the human person
and constitutes a limitation on the person’s God-given autonomy.”126
123. Gallagher, Time Past, Time Future, 76, quoting John A. McHugh, OP, and
Charles J. Callan, OP, Moral Theology: A Complete Course Based on St. Thomas Aqui-
nas and the Best Modern Authorities (New York: Joseph F. Wagner, 1929), 1:23 (empha-
sis added).
124. Gallagher, Time Past, Time Future, 76, quoting Aloysio Sabetti, SJ, and Tim-
otheo Barrett, SJ, Compendium Theologiae Moralis, ed. Daniel F. Creeden, SJ, 34th ed.
(Neo Eboraci: Frederick Pustet, 1939), 27.
125. Gallagher, Time Past, Time Future, 77, quoting Francis J. O’Connell, CSSR, Out-
lines of Moral Theology (Milwaukee, Wis.: Bruce Publishing Company, 1953), 18.
126. Romanus Cessario, OP, Introduction to Moral Theology (Washington, D.C.: The
Catholic University of America Press, 2001), 238.
 From Thomas Aquinas to the Manualists 43
This bracketing of beatitude in Catholic moral theory and the ex-
altation of absolute freedom of indifference led to what both Cessar-
io and Pinckaers have referred to as the atomization of moral action.
Since this system “does not directly envision man as set between God
as the first principle and God as our beatitude, casuistry does not ad-
equately cognize or explain the dynamism of the moral life.”127 Each
human act is an absolute choice between contraries and has no bear-
ing on the acts which follow. Morality was simply the evaluation of
particular acts in their relationship to the divine law. Thus, the extrin-
sic aspects of those acts were emphasized to the detriment of the in-
terior life of the human person. Pinckaers observes, astutely:
The distinction between interior and exterior acts was blurred. The ethicist
lost sight of the interior dimension, for he felt that it was necessary to study
only the exterior aspects of human acts as found in the legal ordinances. The
ethicist focused on the material elements covered by the law; for him, this was
objectivity. Whence the danger of objectivism, or the reduction of the mor-
al act to its material object as opposed to all that emanated from the agent.128

The concern the manualists had with sin and cases of conscience con-
firms these criticisms. Identifying sin and human acts in relationship
to the law through cases of conscience is a chief identifying character-
istic of a system concerned primarily with exteriority.
Finally, the primacy of the freedom of the will in this method-
ology fostered a dualist anthropology. If the will must be absolutely
free and under no constraint, then aside from the virtue of obedience
to the law, the primary virtue for the human person is stoicism: the
command of all forces that might sway the will. This necessarily in-
cludes the passions. Cessario speculates that this explains casuistry’s
“disproportionate interest in regulating sexual morality. No greater
threat to the liberty of indifference could be imaged than the sudden
upsurge of lust. So every precaution had to be taken to maintain the
serene ‘indifference’ of the will in the face of some de facto, especial-
ly unexpected, compelling good.”129 Excessive attempts to keep the
will in control of all emotion would contribute, at least in part, to the
widespread dismissal of traditional moral theology during the sexual
revolution of the 1960s.
127. Ibid., 237. 128. Pinckaers, Sources, 271.
129. Cessario, Introduction, 238.
44 From Thomas Aquinas to the Manualists
We have seen how the manuals departed from the theology of
Aquinas. Thomas articulated a moral theory that was grounded on
God as man’s beatitude and end. This fact, he believed, was written
into man’s nature and provided the sources for human action in the
form of natural inclinations that seek the good and the true, that is,
that seek God himself. Aquinas’s synthesis was displaced by William
of Ockham’s nominalism and voluntarism. Ockham’s rejection of re-
alism—the idea that there are any universal natures outside of the
mind—corroborated his exaltation of the will over the intellect. In
his view, the will is unfettered from human nature and natural inclina-
tion. It becomes simply the power to choose at any given moment be-
tween absolute contraries. The only locus of morality in such a world-
view is the divine will to which the human will must be obedient. The
divine will issues norms that simply must be obeyed. These norms
can be seen in revelation and in the structures of nature, which is it-
self often understood in purely biological terms.
Thus, morality was reoriented from its former concern with beat-
itude and growth in virtue through a succession of acts to a concern
for the evaluation of particular and isolated actions and the relation-
ship of those actions with the law. This meant that moral theologians
and confessors were solely concerned with the exterior aspects of
the human act, which could be identified and evaluated. This led to
a separation between the interior and exterior aspects of the human
person, and ultimately to an emphasis on human nature above the
human person, with human nature “dissolved or reduced to sheer bi-
ological facticity.”130 The narrative we have developed here and will
develop further in the next chapter suggests that this overemphasis
on biological facticity would be exposed as insufficient in the debate
on the birth control pill in the twentieth century. In the next chap-
ter, we move to that debate itself, principally as it is articulated in the
light of a growing school of thought that would be particularly im-
portant for the work of Karol Wojtyła—personalism—and in Pope
Paul VI’s critical 1968 encyclical Humanae Vitae.
130. Grabowski, Sex and Virtue, 16.
 2

Personalism and the Debate on

Marriage and Contraception

In this chapter, we will see how the methodology of moral theology

and ethics, presented in chapter 1, was challenged substantially in the
twentieth century. The manualist tradition emphasized the physical
structure of human action and strict obedience to law (as manifested
in nature and in scripture) in moral evaluation. In the centuries that
followed, the natural telos of biological processes began to give way to
scientific progress, which was increasingly efficient in altering those
processes for the perceived good of the human person. Responding
to this development and the perceived insufficiency of the manuals,
some Catholic moral theologians began to favor the notion of the
acting person rather than the purposes of nature as the category of
theological discourse. This trend was particularly evident in the birth
control movement at the turn of the century, which found sympathy
within the church in the 1960s. At this same time, there was a renewal
in the understanding of marriage in the Catholic church, particularly
within the personalist school of thought. These two trends were piv-
otal in the debate among theologians and laity both before and after
the promulgation of Pope Paul VI’s 1968 encyclical Humanae Vitae.
By considering all of these issues, this chapter will thus conclude the
historical background necessary to appreciate Pope John Paul’s con-

45
46 Marriage and Contraception
tribution to the discussion on marriage and sexuality that culminated
in Theology of the Body and the notion of a “spousal meaning of the
body.”
The chapter consists of four sections. The first section outlines
the stirrings for change in the church’s teaching on sex and marriage
before 1953. The second section concentrates on what William Shan-
non calls the first phase of the birth control debate, beginning with
the introduction of the birth control pill in 1953. The third section re-
views the second phase of that debate, which begins with John Rock’s
book The Time Has Come (1963), arguing for the permissibility of the
birth control pill, and lasts until completion of the work by the pa-
pal commission on birth control in 1966. Finally, the fourth section
provides a glimpse of the immediate aftermath of Humanae Vitae’s
publication. In a way, the Catholic church is still experiencing the af-
termath of the encyclical as a strong majority of Catholic couples re-
portedly practice contraception. To report the complete reaction to
the encyclical from 1968 to the present would be its own study. Rath-
er, the fourth section of this chapter offers the immediate setting for
Karol Wojtyła’s unique contribution to these debates as a bishop and
eventually as Pope John Paul II.

The Stirrings for

Change before 1953
The Anglican Communion and
Casti Connubii
When a papal commission was formed by Pope John XXIII to discuss
the issue of birth control, eminent historian John Noonan was invited
to give a lecture on the history of the church’s teaching on contracep-
tion.1 In his book on contraception, Noonan shows that historically
the Christian church has, at least until 1930, always taught that con-
traception was immoral. He summarizes his findings in the introduc-
tion: “The teachers of the Church have taught without hesitation or

1. See Robert McClory, Turning Point: The Inside Story of the Papal Birth Control
Commission, and How Humanae vitae Changed the Life of Patty Crowley and the Future of
the Church (New York: Crossroad, 1995), 68–69.
 Marriage and Contraception 47
variation that certain acts preventing procreation are gravely sinful.
No Catholic theologian has ever taught, ‘Contraception is a good act.’
The teaching on contraception is clear and apparently fixed forever.”2
Noonan, however, closes this same introduction with a suggestion
that the doctrine might change given “the circumstances in which the
doctrine was composed, the controversies touching it, [and] the doc-
trinal elements now obsolete.”3 Janet Smith observes that Noonan’s
prejudice in favor of reversing the prohibition on artificial contra-
ception makes his historical conclusion “particularly forceful,” as he
is clearly suggesting a departure from the teaching of the historical
church.4 This tradition was ruptured on August 14, 1930, when the
Lambeth Conference of the Anglican Communion permitted the use
of contraception for its members.
Noonan reports that the birth rate per thousand persons had
been steadily falling since 1771, when it was 38.6 in France, to 1860,
when it was just 26.3.5 The birth control movement had gone inter-
national as early as 1900 with the First International Birth Control
Congress in Liège.6 By 1935 there were some two hundred mechanical
contraceptive devices employed in most Western countries. A vast ar-
ray of chemical solutions were also used.7 Standard medical practice
began to approve the use of contraception as early as 1905 in France
and 1922 in England. This trend was coupled with the overpopula-
tion movement, which took its cue from the now-discredited work of
Thomas Malthus (d. 1834) who argued that population was increas-
ing faster than the world’s resources for human subsistence (partic-
ularly agricultural resources). The competition for basic subsistence,
he argued, leads to many of society’s ills.8 The 1925 international con-
2. John T. Noonan, Contraception: A History of Its Treatment by the Catholic Theo-
logians and Canonists, rev. ed. (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1986), 6.
3. Ibid.
4. See Janet E. Smith, Humanae vitae: A Generation Later (Washington, D.C.: The
Catholic University of America Press, 1991), 3. Noonan would later explicitly argue for a
development in the doctrine on contraception. See John T. Noonan, A Church That Can
and Cannot Change: The Development of Catholic Moral Teaching (South Bend, Ind.: Uni-
versity of Notre Dame Press, 2005).
5. Noonan, Contraception, 387.
6. See ibid., 407.
7. See ibid., 408.
8. See Thomas R. Malthus, An Essay on the Principle of Population (New York:
48 Marriage and Contraception
gress on birth control held in New York had precisely this theme:
“Overpopulation produces war.”9
These trends definitely had an influence on Christians. The Angli-
can Communion experienced a rapid shift in its teaching. In 1908 and
again in 1920 the Lambeth Conference condemned contraception.10
But in 1930, with a vote of 193 to 67, the Anglican bishops approved
the following resolution:
Where there is a clearly felt moral obligation to limit or avoid parenthood,
the method must be decided on Christian principles. The primary and obvi-
ous method is complete abstinence from intercourse (as far as may be nec-
essary) in a life of discipline and self-control lived in the power of the Holy
Spirit. Nevertheless in those cases where there is such a clearly-felt moral
obligation to limit or avoid parenthood, and where there is a morally sound
reason for avoiding complete abstinence, the conference agrees that other
methods may be used, provided that this is done in the light of the same
Christian principles. The Conference records its strong condemnation of the
use of any methods of conception control from motives of selfishness, luxu-
ry, or mere convenience.11

The statement provided no methodology for determining when con-

traception is illicit other than to insist that contraception cannot be
used for impure motives.
The Catholic response was swift. Less than five months later,
Pope Pius XI issued his landmark encyclical Casti Connubii on Chris-
tian marriage.12 In his encyclical, Pius XI implicitly refers to the An-
glican bishops when he writes: “Openly departing from the unin-

Oxford University Press, 1993), originally published in 1798; Samuel Hollander, The
Economics of Thomas Robert Malthus (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1997);
William Peterson, Malthus: Founder of Modern Demography, 2nd ed. (Piscataway, N.J.:
Transaction Publishers, 1998). Malthus had developed the idea of the “Malthusian di-
saster.” He theorized that a series of natural disasters and human troubles eventually
equalizes population vis-à-vis resource and thus balancing the supply and demand ra-
tio. Since its publication, Malthus’s controversial view has been rebutted. For a recent
example, see Antony Trewavas, “Malthus Foiled Again and Again,” Nature 418 (August
8, 2002): 668–70.
9. Noonan, Contraception, 408.
10. See Edward M. East, Mankind at the Crossroads (New York: Charles Scribner’s
Sons, 1923), vii, 167, 340; Noonan, Contraception, 409.
11. Quoted in Noonan, Contraception, 409.
12. See ibid., 410–14.
 Marriage and Contraception 49
terrupted Christian tradition some recently have judged it possible
solemnly to declare another doctrine regarding this question.”13 In di-
rect contradiction to the Lambeth Conference, Pius XI wrote: “No
reason, however grave, may be put forward by which anything intrin-
sically against nature may become conformable to nature and mor-
ally good. Since, therefore, the conjugal act is destined primarily by
nature for the begetting of children, those who in exercising it delib-
erately frustrate its natural power and purpose sin against nature and
commit a deed which is shameful and intrinsically vicious.”14
Casti Connubii defends the intrinsic integrity of the conjugal act
according to the same principles common to the manualist tradition:
The Catholic Church, to whom God has entrusted the defense of the in-
tegrity and purity of morals, standing erect in the midst of the moral ruin
which surrounds her, in order that she may preserve the chastity of the nup-
tial union from being defiled by this foul stain, raises her voice in token of
her divine ambassadorship and through our mouth proclaims anew: any use
whatsoever of matrimony exercised in such a way that the act is deliberately
frustrated in its natural power to generate life is an offense against the law of God
and of nature, and those who indulge in such are branded with the guilt of a grave
sin.15

On the one hand, the tone of this paragraph reveals a contra mundum
tendency. The church is depicted as “standing erect in the midst of
the moral ruin which surrounds her.” On the other hand, when read
as a whole, I think the encyclical does more than simply rehash man-
ualist principles.
The 1917 Code of Canon Law had declared: “The primary end of
marriage is the procreation and education of children; the secondary
[end] is mutual support and a remedy for concupiscence.”16 Interest-

13. Pope Pius XI, Casti Connubii, Encyclical Letter, December 31, 1930, par. 56 [here-
after, CC]; the official Latin text is found in Acta Apostolicae Sedis (Cittá del Vaticano:
Typis Polyglottis Vaticanis, 1909–), 22 [hereafter, AAS]: 539–92; all English translations
are drawn from www.vatican.va.
14. CC, par. 54 (emphasis added).
15. CC, par. 56 (emphasis added).
16. Codex Iuris Canonici (Cittá del Vaticano: Typis Polyglottis Vaticanis, 1917), can.
1013, §1. This passage is on page 352 in the unofficial English translation: Edward N. Pe-
ters, The 1917 Pio-Benedictine Code of Canon Law in English Translation with Extensive
Scholarly Apparatus (San Francisco, Calif.: Ignatius Press, 2001).
50 Marriage and Contraception
ingly, the code mentioned nothing of the mutual love of the spouses
as either a primary or a secondary end. Unlike the Code, Pope Pius
XI includes a third object among the secondary ends of marriage,
“the cultivating of mutual love.”17 He says the love between husband
and wife “pervades all duties of married life and holds pride of place
in Christian marriage.”18
[The] mutual molding of husband and wife, this determined effort to perfect
each other, can in a very real sense . . . be said to be the chief reason and pur-
pose of matrimony, provided matrimony be looked at not in the restricted
sense as instituted for the proper conception and education of the child, but
more widely as the blending of life as a whole and the mutual interchange
and sharing thereof.19

John Gallagher has argued that while Pope Pius XI uses physical-
ist language to condemn contraception, he is not using the language
in the same mode as the manualists and older moral theologians. “In
the content of the whole encyclical, however, it seems that what is ‘ac-
cording to nature’ is to be determined not by considering the physical
aspect by itself but by looking at the nature and purpose of matrimo-
ny.”20 Indeed, the encyclical speaks more of the nature of marriage as
established by God and unalterable by man than it does about the na-
ture of the conjugal act.21
This is why Pope Pius XI explicitly accepted that couples could
engage in sexual intercourse even when they know they will not con-
ceive. There are other goods to be gained—mutual aid, the cultiva-
tion of mutual love, and the quieting of concupiscence—that the
couple are permitted to seek “so long as they are subordinated to
the primary end [the procreation and education of offspring] and so
long as the intrinsic nature of the act is preserved.”22 Gallagher may
be right that Pius XI was attempting to express an idea for which the

17. CC, par. 59. 18. CC, par. 23.

19. CC, par. 24.
20. John Gallagher, “Magisterial Teaching from 1918 to the Present,” in Human Sex-
uality and Personhood, Proceedings of the Workshop for the Hierarchies of the United States
and Canada Sponsored by the Pope John Center Through a Grant from the Knights of a Co-
lumbus (Braintree, Mass.: Pope John Center, 1990), 196.
21. See CC, pars. 6, 49, 50, 95.
22. CC, par. 59.
 Marriage and Contraception 51
theology of his day did not yet have an adequate vocabulary.23 In ef-
fect, Pius XI’s attempt to articulate the importance of the spouses’ life
of love, even as he was committed to the terminology of primary and
secondary ends, was just the beginning of a shift to an emphasis on
the personalist value of marriage.

Personalism and Marriage:

Dietrich Von Hildebrand and
Herbert Doms
The shift to a personalist understanding of marriage began some years
before the promulgation of Casti Connubii. One of the most notable
lay scholars on marriage in the twentieth century was Dietrich von
Hildebrand, a professor of philosophy at the University of Munich.
While a detailed review of von Hildebrand’s theology of marriage is
beyond the scope of this study, it should be noted that von Hildeb-
rand stood diametrically opposed to the physicalist methodology
which he thought was at work in most of the Catholic theology of his
day.24 He lamented that “our epoch is characterized by a terrible an-
ti-personalism, a progressive blindness toward the nature and dignity
of the spiritual person. . . . Human life is considered exclusively from a
biological point of view and biological principles are the measure by
which all human activities are judged.”25
In 1928, he wrote that the marital act is “not only a function, the
generation of children; it also possesses a significance for man as a
human being—namely to be the expression and fulfillment of wed-
ded love and community of life—and, moreover, it participates after a
certain fashion in the sacramental meaning of matrimony.”26 Noonan
notes that “for the first time, a Catholic writer taught that love was
a requirement of lawful, marital coition. He tied this novel demand

23. See Gallagher, “Magisterial Teaching,” 195.

24. See Dietrich von Hildebrand, In Defense of Purity: An Analysis of the Catholic
Ideals of Purity and Virginity (Baltimore: Helicon Press, 1962). For an excellent analysis
of von Hildebrand’s thought on this matter, see Kevin Schemenauer, Conjugal Love and
Procreation: Dietrich Von Hildebrand’s Superabundant Integration (Lanham, Md.: Lexing-
ton Books, 2011).
25. Dietrich von Hildebrand, Marriage (New York: Longmans, Green, 1942), v.
26. Von Hildebrand, Defense, 20.
52 Marriage and Contraception
to an ancient term—fides, fidelity. Fidelity required that person meet
person in a giving of self.”27 For von Hildebrand, the conjugal act has
not only an objective end (the procreation of children) but also an in-
trinsic significance for the couple: “The act of wedded communion
has indeed the object of procreation, but in addition the significance
of a unique union of love.”28 He argued that conjugal love is not sim-
ply an advancement on the love of friendship that now included sen-
suality, but rather he suggested that conjugal love is a unique self-gift
of one person to another, an “I-thou communion.”29 Marriage estab-
lishes the community in which this communion is fully actualized,
while the conjugal act expresses the meaning of that communion.30
Von Hildebrand’s obvious disposition in favor of the implications
of the conjugal act for the persons involved did not deter him, how-
ever, from condemning contraception, which he viewed as a rup-
ture between the biological objective and the personal significance of
the act.31 Thus, von Hildebrand was one of a new breed of Catholic
scholars who, in the words of John Grabowski, “strove to balance the
primacy of procreation as the end of marriage by delineating a new
category—that of meaning—in which love could be accorded pri-
macy. Each value was seen as having primary importance in its own
sphere. Hence the natural value of procreation was balanced by the
new focus on personal self-giving love.”32 The interaction between
the meaning of personal self-giving love and the natural ends of mar-
riage, traditionally understood, would occupy the thought of many
Catholic moral theologians in the twentieth century concerned with
marriage and contraception.
This shift in thinking about marriage was not an enterprise restrict-
ed to professional theologians and philosophers. William Shannon has
pointed out that the laity increasingly viewed marriage as a vocation,
their love expressed through sexual intercourse as a means to sanctity,

27. Noonan, Contraception, 495.

28. Von Hildebrand, Defense, 22. 29. See ibid., 5–8.
30. See ibid., 25.
31. Dietrich von Hildebrand, The Encyclical Humanae vitae—A Sign of Contradic-
tion: An Essay on Birth Control and Catholic Conscience (Chicago: Franciscan Herald
Press, 1969).
32. John S. Grabowski, “Person or Nature? Rival Personalisms in 20th Century
Catholic Sexual Ethics,” Studia Moralia 35 (1997): 306.
 Marriage and Contraception 53
and were increasingly realizing that marriage was better characterized
as self-gift rather than merely a juridical contract. This sentiment was
catalyzed by various lay movements of the time.33 Shannon concludes:
“In the context of this growing appreciation of the personal values of
married life and married love, it seemed increasingly unrealistic to
think that the nature of marriage could be adequately expressed in the
impersonal categories of primary and secondary purposes.”34
Publishing after von Hildebrand, Herbert Doms further advanc-
es the personalist view of marriage, but in a way perhaps unforeseen
by von Hildebrand. Doms was critical of the emphasis placed on the
procreation and education of children as the primary meaning of
marriage. While not denying this end or purpose of marriage, he be-
lieved the meaning of marriage—the union of the spouses—was pri-
mary.35 “The principal and primary purpose of marriage is not the
child, but the mutual forming and perfecting of husband and wife in
the metaphysical, natural and, above all supernatural orders.”36 There-
fore, he argued that the church should abandon all reference to pri-
mary and secondary ends in marriage.37
For Herbert Doms, marriage and sexual desire are fundamental-
ly about the completion and fulfillment of persons.38 The sexual in-
stinct, although natural, is not simply natural; it is personal. More-
over, he suggests, “the sexual act is always a result of the power of the

33. The Family Renewal Association was founded in the early 1940s in New York
City by Fr. John P. Delaney, SJ. During their meetings, married couples heard confer-
ences on the vocation of marriage, the love of spouses, and the meaning of sexuality in
marriage. This initial association was followed upon by the Cana Conference Movement
and the Christian Family Movement. All of these movements tended to emphasize the
personalist dimensions of marriage instead of juridical notions. See William H. Shannon,
The Lively Debate: Response to Humanae vitae (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1970), 15–17.
34. Shannon, Lively Debate, 16–17.
35. Doms, Meaning of Marriage, 87. He says here, for example, “Marriage . . . fulfills
its primary and secondary purposes through the realization of its meaning.” In Love and
Responsibility, Karol Wojtyła would argue along similar lines that love should not be
confused with the purpose of mutual help of the spouses (mutuum adiutorium) lest it
be set in competition with the primary purpose of procreation. Rather, he said, love is
what “norms” the ends or purposes of marriage (see Wojtyła, Love and Responsibility,
68–69). Doms likewise insisted that the union of the spouses not be confused with mu-
tuum adiutorium (see Doms, Meaning of Marriage, 88).
36. Doms, Meaning of Marriage, 87. 37. See ibid., 88.
38. Ibid., 36.
54 Marriage and Contraception
personality to make a free gift of itself.”39 It is able to communicate
the total gift of self in an act that creates the “two-in-oneship” of the
couple.40
John Noonan has identified the benefits of Doms’s approach.41
However, John Grabowski has showed that Doms’s view in The Mean-
ing of Marriage was not entirely consistent or complete.42 While in
some places Doms suggests personal union is primary only in the
subjective sphere, leaving open the possibility that procreation is pri-
mary in the biological sphere, ultimately Doms argues that given the
time separation between intercourse and conception, procreation
cannot be a primary end.43 By reversing the order of the ends of mar-
riage, and in some way abolishing them, Grabowski believes Doms
“anticipates the trajectory of much revisionist personalism over the
course of the century.”44
Regarding family planning and contraception, Doms generally re-
sorts to a voluntarist defense of the integrity of the sexual act. Since
the human person cannot control the natural processes of insemina-
tion once the act is complete, “we have to recognize that nature it-
self imposes certain limits on human rights. . . . If they [the married
couple] do interfere with these [natural] movements, they are pre-
suming that state of sovereignty which God has manifestly reserved
for Himself.”45 Though Doms attempts to argue that there is a rela-
tionship between the biological end of sex and the personalist mean-
ing, Grabowski notes he does not use this argument consistently.46
In many parts of his book Doms appeals to the voluntarist defense
such as the one just mentioned.47 His voluntarist appeal “is clearly a
weak defense of many of the conclusions which he attempts to de-
fend. Such arguments would unravel quickly when subjected to the
pressure of later developments.”48 The most significant challenge to
39. Ibid., 32. 40. See ibid., 33.
41. See Noonan, Contraception, 498.
42. See Grabowski, “Person or Nature,” 287.
43. See Doms, Meaning of Marriage, 175–76, 183–84.
44. Grabowksi, “Person or Nature,” 288.
45. Doms, Meaning of Marriage, 72; see also 88, 165–66; Grabowski, “Person or Na-
ture,” 288.
46. See Grabowski, “Person or Nature,” 288.
47. See also Doms, Meaning of Marriage, 88, 165–66.
48. Grabowski, “Person or Nature,” 288; see also 307.
 Marriage and Contraception 55
this view will be the development of the progesterone pill in 1953,
which seemingly does, in fact, work with the biological processes of
a woman’s body. Doms’s argument simply could not respond to such
a challenge.

The Roman Rota and Pope Pius XII

On January 22, 1944, the Roman Rota issued a decree on the nature
of marriage.49 The document clarifies the meaning of the word “end”
(finis) in the church’s language about marriage. When the word finis is
used in canon law, it “is taken in a technical sense and means a benefit
which is meant to be obtained both on the part of nature and by the
deliberate intention of the agent.”50 Following traditional Thomistic
language, the decree goes on to speak of both a finis operis and a finis
operantis in marriage. The finis operis in marriage “is that good (bo-
num) which matrimony tends of its very nature to obtain, and which
God the Creator gave to the institution of matrimony.”51 The finis ope-
rantis is that which the person intends in any action. This is the sub-
jective aspect of marriage, why people choose to marry, and can be as
varied as the couples themselves: personal fulfillment, a desire for a
family, economic advantage, etc.
The secondary ends mentioned in the Code of Canon Law—mu-
tual help and the remedy for concupiscence—are each also a finis
operis, but they are secondary ends contingent upon the primary end
of procreation and the education of children. The procreation and ed-
ucation of children cannot properly be carried out without the mu-
tual life of the spouses and a remedy for concupiscence.52 The decree
of the Roman Rota is here primarily concerned with the relationship
between the various ends of marriage—the primary and secondary
ends (fines operis) and the intention of the spouses (finis operantis).
The finis operantis need not always coincide with the fines operis. In-
deed, the decree recognizes that the two are not often aligned. Some-

49. See AAS 36 (1944): 179–200. The whole of this document is not pertinent to
the discussion on marriage. The relevant texts were extracted and translated by Odile
Liebard in Love and Sexuality (Wilmington, N.C.: McGrath Publishing Company, 1978),
71–83.
50. Liebard, Love and Sexuality, 71–72. 51. Ibid.
52. See ibid., 77.
56 Marriage and Contraception
times the “finis operantis is completely extra or praeter to the finis ope-
ris.”53 However, a marriage entered into in which the finis operantis is
contrary to any of the three fines operis is invalid and immoral, as is
any conjugal act.54 A responsio ad dubium by the same Roman Rota
on April 1, 1944, would confirm that when the ends of marriage are
equated, the relationship between them becomes confused.55 The
whole thrust of the Roman Rota’s response is that the conjugal act
has multiple ends, but also that there is a hierarchy among those ends.
Though Pope Pius XII never wrote an encyclical on marriage, a
number of his addresses to various groups concerned marriage and
sexuality.56 The limited scope of this chapter prevents a full summa-
ry of each address.57 Nevertheless, some significant themes are ap-
parent in his allocutions. For example, in one of his central address-
es on the topic, an October 1951 address to midwives, he emphasizes
the importance of the secondary ends of marriage but insists they
have “been placed by the will of nature and the Creator at the ser-
vice of the offspring.”58 Sometimes he uses biologistic or physicalist
language to argue for non-interference in the conjugal act as when
he speaks early in his pontificate, in 1944, to the Italian Medico-
Biological Union of St. Luke.59 However, in the 1951 address he argues
from the nature of marriage itself.60
53. Ibid., 72. 54. See ibid.
55. See AAS 36 (1944): 103.
56. English translations of most of these addresses are collected in Liebard, Love
and Sexuality, 84–134, 160–243.
57. For a summary of Pius XII’s teaching on marriage, see Paulette Huber, AdPPS,
The Teachings of Pius XII on Marriage and the Family (PhD diss., The Catholic University
of America, 1950); Noonan, Contraception, 451–75; Donald P. Asci, The Conjugal Act as a
Personal Act (San Francisco, Calif.: Ignatius Press, 2002): 45–61; Gallagher, “Magisterial
Teaching,” 199–200; Shannon, Lively Debate, 24–39.
58. Pope Pius XII, “Address to Midwives,” October 29, 1951, in Liebard, Love and Sex-
uality, 117. Original Italian text available in AAS 43 (1951): 850. See also Pope Pius XII,
“Address to the Second World Congress on Fertility and Sterilitym” May 19, 1956, AAS
48 (1956): 469–70; unofficial English translation in Liebard, Love and Sexuality, 175–76.
During his pontificate, Pope Pius XII gave several audiences to newlywed couples. The
collection of these insightful addresses have been collected in Pope Pius XII, Dear Newly-
weds: Pope Pius XII Speaks to Young Couples (Kansas City, Mo.: Sarto House, 2001).
59. See Pope Pius XII, “Address to the Italian Medical-Biological Union of St. Luke,”
November 12, 1944, in Liebard, Love and Sexuality, 84–95. Official Italian text: Discorsi e
Radiomessaggi di Sua Santita Pio XII (Rome: Tipografia Poligotta Vaticana, 1944), 6:192.
60. See Pope Pius XII, “Address to Midwives,” in Liebard, Love and Sexuality, 116.
 Marriage and Contraception 57
Pope Pius XII repeats Pope Pius XI’s suggestion that it is legiti-
mate for couples to have sexual intercourse during the woman’s infer-
tile period for “serious reasons” such as “medical, eugenic, economic
and social grounds, [which] can exempt from that obligatory service
[of procreation] even for a considerable period of time, even for the
entire duration of marriage.”61 He warns, however, that if there are no
serious objective reasons “deriving from external circumstances” then
“the habitual intention to avoid the fruitfulness of the union, while at
the same time continuing fully to satisfy sensual intent, can only arise
from a false appreciation of life and from motives that run counter to
true standards of moral conduct.”62
Finally, he mentions to the midwives the development of a the-
ology grounded on “personal values” in which “the bodily union is
the expression and actuation of the personal and affective union.”63
He concludes that if the rise of personalism is only a matter of em-
phasis, then it is a welcome contribution. His concern is apparently
not with personalism itself but with the conclusions of some person-
alists who place the mutual affection of spouses over the procreation
of children.64 The primary end God instituted for marriage is the pro-
creation and education of children. All other ends are subordinate to
that primary end. Even sterile couples are ordered to that primary
end regardless of the condition which renders them incapable of re-
production.65 We can presume that couples who struggle with fertil-
ity demonstrate, nonetheless, the primacy of children in the marital
relationship precisely because they desire children.

61. Ibid., 113. 62. Ibid.

63. Ibid., 115.
64. Though Pius XII does not mention Herbert Doms, it was Doms’s position that
he was criticizing.
65. See Pope Pius XII, “Address to Midwives,” in Liebard, Love and Sexuality, 115–17.
58 Marriage and Contraception

The First Phase of

the Debate (1953–62)
The Hesperidin Pill and the Principle
of Double Effect
Benjamin Sieve developed the first commercially available oral con-
traceptive in the form of a pill.66 This first pill was phosphorylated
hesperidin, an enzyme that occurs naturally in many citrus fruits. In
Sieve’s study, three hundred couples experienced a suspension of fer-
tility if both the men and women took the pill as directed. He hy-
pothesized that the pill worked by making the ovum impenetrable,
thus eliminating the possibility of fertilization.67
The Jesuit John Lynch was one of the more prominent critics of
Sieve’s pill. In an August 1953 article, he not only condemned this pill
as direct sterilization, but insisted it was a violation of the fifth com-
mandment.68 A more thorough reading of Lynch’s argument reveals a
moral viewpoint excessively dependent on the exteriority of human
action, the finality of biological mechanisms, and the sovereign will
of God. Citing Casti Connubii, which says that persons have limited
dominion over their bodies, Lynch offers a rebuttal grounded in the
purposes (or telê) of nature.
Lynch rightly argues that we are stewards of our lives and our
bodies as well as our bodies’ members.69 He continues: “As stewards
therefore we must respect the exclusive right of God over bodily in-

66. Much has been written on the origins of the controversy surrounding the
birth control pill and contraception in the Catholic church in the mid-twentieth cen-
tury. John Noonan’s book, Contraception, is an invaluable resource. Other books written
in the same era include Shannon, Lively Debate, and Ambrogio Valsecchi, Controversy:
The Birth Control Debate 1958–1968, trans. Dorothy White (Washington, D.C.: Corpus
Books, 1968). See also Robert Blair Kaiser, The Politics of Sex and Religion (Kansas City,
Mo.: Leaven Press, 1985). Valsecchi’s book is especially helpful for the impressive bibli-
ography he catalogues and analyzes. The next two sections are indebted to these schol-
ars’ historical review.
67. Benjamin Sieve, “A New Anti-Fertility Factor,” Science 116 (October 10, 1952):
373–85.
68. See John Lynch, SJ, “Fertility Control and the Moral Law,” Linacre Quarterly 20
(1953): 83–89.
69. See ibid., 85.
 Marriage and Contraception 59
tegrity, guarding as His, and not as our own, the members and fac-
ulties with which we have been entrusted.”70 Only if the body as a
whole is threatened may a faculty or member be sacrificed in virtue of
the principle of totality. Lynch’s definition of mutilation is consistent
with this perspective. Inasmuch as mutilation violates God’s domin-
ion over life, it violates the fifth commandment. While acknowledg-
ing the existence of possible therapeutic uses for the pill, and accept-
ing the possibility of its use according the principle of double effect,
Lynch nonetheless equates the oral contraceptive with the much more
physical procedures of sterilization and mutilation.71
Hesperdin was never widely used as a contraceptive pill. There
was no evidence that it worked as reliably as Sieve had hoped. Its fate
on the commercial market was sealed by the more successful and
more widely promoted progesterone pill, which was developed in
1953 and was legalized in the United States in 1960. Because its pri-
mary mechanism was the hormone progesterone, the introduction
of this second contraceptive pill would prove to be a catalyst for the
debate on birth control and the subsequent interventions of Pope
Pius XII and Pope Paul VI.

The Therapeutic Uses of the Progesterone Pill

In its first stage, the debate on progesterone revolved primarily around
legitimate therapeutic uses for the pill in virtue of the principle of dou-
ble effect. The primary concern of this period of the debate was de-
termining the appropriate use of biology in the service of the person.
Some moral theologians were more permissive than others, though all
agreed that direct sterilization was immoral because of its intentional
circumvention of the natural finality of the procreative process. There-
fore, they were concerned with identifying those legitimate reasons in
which the good of the person might justify the temporary sterilization
caused by the pill.
John Lynch had already accepted the possibility of therapeutic
uses for contraceptive pills, although he did not identify any use in

70. Ibid.
71. See John Lynch, SJ, “Another Moral Aspect of Fertility Control,” Linacre Quar-
terly 20 (1953): 120–22.
60 Marriage and Contraception
particular.72 In 1957, another Jesuit, William Gibbons, further argued
that the pill must be distinguished from physical contraception pre-
cisely because it does not interfere with copulation as such.73 While
he himself does not support direct contraception, this is the first sug-
gestion that the pill will have to be rebutted using argumentation that
does not solely rely on the finality of the sexual act.
Returning to the debate in 1958, John Lynch maintained his ear-
lier distinction of the licit therapeutic uses of the pill from the illicit
contraceptive uses.74 In addition, he identifies several infertility disor-
ders that might legitimize the use of the pill. Lynch argued that these
treatments could not be considered the suspension of sterility, in any
sense of the word, since the woman would have already been proven
to be sterile in the first place.75
The correction of menstrual and fertility disorders were not the
only licit therapeutic uses of the pill that were identified by the litera-
ture of the time. Two other possibilities were mentioned, but without
universal agreement. The first, generally more accepted, suggested the
use of the pill for the regulation of a woman’s ovulatory cycle. Though
Gibbons had suggested the validity of such a use, to my knowledge,
its first explicit endorsement came from Louvain theologian Louis
Janssens in a 1958 article.76 Mentioning nothing of the contraceptive
purposes of the pill, Janssens focuses entirely on its possible thera-
peutic uses and identifies a principle whereby the pill corrects pathol-
ogies to the natural mechanisms of a woman’s body. He writes, “Sal-
vo medilore iudicio, I am inclined to believe that this saying is realized

72. In agreement with Lynch’s observation, but likewise not identifying any partic-
ular therapeutic uses were: André Snoeck, “Fecundation inibée et morale Catholique,”
Nouvelle Revue Theologique 75 (1953): 690–702, and Francis J. O’Connell, CSSR, pro-
vides the same simple moral criteria in “The Contraceptive Pill,” The American Ecclesias-
tical Review 137 (1953): 50–51.
73. See William J. Gibbons, SJ, “Antifertility Drugs and Morality,” America 98
(1957): 346–48.
74. See John Lynch, SJ, “Progestational Steroids: Some Moral Problems,” Linacre
Quarterly 25 (1958): 93–99.
75. See ibid., 98. For a brief summary of the preceding articles, see Valsecchi, Con-
troversy, 1–11.
76. See Louis Janssens, “L’inhibition de l’ovulation est-elle moralement licite?”
Ephemerides Theologicae Lovanienses 34 (1958): 357–60; Gibbons, “Antifertility Drugs
and Morality,” 348.
 Marriage and Contraception 61
when one intervenes to support natural mechanisms which are defective or
to correct pathological situations.”77 That being the case, the pill could
legitimately be used, he argued, to regularize a women’s fertility cycle.
Janssens suggested another, more controversial, therapeutic use.
In his article, he noted that typically a woman is sterile during the
period of lactation following a pregnancy. This “natural mechanism”
is sometimes lacking in women, who then experience fertility while
nursing their new infants. Janssens argues, therefore, that the use of
the progesterone pill after childbirth and during the period of lacta-
tion is therapeutic and morally licit in order to ensure the new moth-
er is, in fact, sterile during those months following the birth of her
child.78 He identified this as an exercise of the principle licit corrigere
defectus naturae. The position was not universally supported.79
Valsecchi summarizes the debate as it existed in September 1958:
Almost all the authors agree in rejecting the deliberately anti-ovulatory use
of progestational drugs, which they deem to be direct sterilization: Janssens
alone is silent about this. All agree in justifying their therapeutic use (con-
cerning which an interesting discussion is now taking place) on the grounds
of the two principles of double effect and total good. The therapeutic use,
moreover, is enlarged to include interventions aiming and the regulation of
the female cycle, at least when the irregularities in question are of a patho-
logical nature. But the opinion is being put forward that it is licit to admin-
ister progestational drugs also in order to effect what nature herself requires but
which for some unknown reason she seems unable to procure [as in the case of
sterility during lactation].80

Pope Pius XII’s address to the Seventh International Congress of He-

matology takes up these issues.81 Pius XII accepts the legitimacy of
reasoning from the principle of double effect and the principle of to-
tality to allow the use of progesterone drugs for therapeutic purposes
as long as the sterilization is not within the intention of the person.

77. Ibid., 359 (author’s translation).

78. See ibid.
79. For a summary of the responses to Janssens’s position, see Valsecchi, Contro-
versy, 1–6.
80. Ibid., 6 (emphasis added).
81. See Pope Pius XII, “Address to the Seventh International Hematological Con-
gress” (September 12, 1958), AAS 50 (1958): 732–40; unofficial English Translation in
Liebard, Love and Sexuality, 234–43.
62 Marriage and Contraception
He warns, however, that it is “necessary to reject the view of a number
of doctors and moralists who permit these practices when medical in-
dications make conception undesirable . . . . In these cases the use of
medication has as its end the prevention of conception by preventing
ovulation. They are instances, therefore, of direct sterilization.”82
Pope Pius XII furthermore cautions against the use of the prin-
ciple licet corrigere defectus naturae in what seems to be an implicit
warning against the use of progesterone to suspend sterility during
lactation: “In an attempt to justify such sterilization, a principle of
morality, correct in itself but badly interpreted, is often cited: ‘licet
corrigere defectus naturae.’ And since in practice it suffices, for the ap-
plication of this principle, to have a reasonable probability . . . it is still
necessary to examine the means by which natural defects are correct-
ed and to avoid the violation of other principles of morality.”83 The in-
tervention of Pope Pius XII did nothing to quell the debate that had
begun in the early 1950s. Since the address was imprecise, many mor-
al theologians proceeded along the same paths upon which they had
begun. The late 1950s and early 1960s would see the emergence of the
distinction between the good of the person and the finality of human
nature in the debate regarding various uses of the birth control pill.
This trend would achieve its full import in the years leading to and
following upon Humanae Vitae.

The Emergence of Personalist Arguments

in the Birth Control Debate
The emergence of personalist arguments in the birth control de-
bate was the result of continued discussion of the possible therapeu-
tic uses of the pill. Most moral theologians supported the use of the
progesterone pill to increase fertility.84 A much different case was the
possibility of using the pill to regulate a woman’s menstrual cycle. In
this case, the woman was not already sterile and so the temporary
suspension of ovulation would in theory be required to regularize her
82. Pius XII, “Address to the Seventh International Hematological Congress,” in Li-
ebard, Love and Sexuality, 238.
83. Ibid.
84. See Valsecchi, Controversy, 16–17. Notably, at that time, it was still unknown
whether the progesterone would serve this purpose.
 Marriage and Contraception 63
cycle. A number of moral theologians were against such therapeutic
use since it required the frustration of the finality of biological pro-
cesses.85
Valsecchi reports that the arguments for or against the imposition
of order on a woman’s menstrual cycle were fundamentally about
“whether this kind of action belongs to a human being’s legitimate
control over his own body, or whether it exceeds this and constitutes
an illicit interference in ‘natural’ bio-physical processes.”86 This ques-
tion was especially important in the ongoing debates about proges-
terone therapy during lactation and the suspension of fertility in the
case of cyesophobia, which is the fear of pregnancy. The position par-
ticular Catholic scholars would ultimately take on the question of ar-
tificial contraception was largely determined by his or her answer to
this prior question of what constitutes legitimate control over the bi-
ological processes of one’s own body.
Using the pill to defer menstruation when convenient would be
condemned by those theologians who disagreed with the suspen-
sion of sterility except in cases of true pathology. Others, however,
saw the intervention as simply the suspension of menstruation (that
is, the pill was simply suspending the shedding of the endometri-
um). Marcelino Zalba was the most forthright in his suggestion that
the human person has complete control over the nature of his sexu-
al organs. He wrote that “no intervention is forbidden to man.”87 For
Zalba, Valsecchi observes, “the sexual organs, although given to man
‘primarily for the sake of the species and not for his own personal and
individual use’ do in fact exist in the individual as a part to be con-
trolled for the good of his own person.”88
The physicalist methodology that so dominated Catholic moral
theology at the beginning of the twentieth century, which tended to-
ward a moral evaluation based on the physical structure of human ac-
tion and an identification of the purposes of nature with biophysical
processes, had underemphasized the notion of the person. Retrieving
85. See ibid., 17–21.
86. See ibid., 19.
87. Marcelino Zalba, SJ, “Casus de usu artificii contraceptive,” Periodica de re morali,
canonica et liturgica 51 (1962): 176 (author’s translation).
88. See Valsecchi, Controversy, 25, citing Zalba, “Casus de usu artificii contracep-
tive,” 176–77.
64 Marriage and Contraception
the notion of the person as a concrete instance of human nature, Jans-
sens, Zalba, and others were defending what they believed to be legit-
imate therapies that placed the purposes of nature at the service of the
person. In this first period of the debate, those who maintained a tra-
ditional stance against contraception, except in the most absolutely
pathological necessity, were arguing with an older methodology. Even
the American Jesuit Paul Quay, who in a 1961 article attempts to make a
solidly personalist defense of the traditional teaching, inevitably resorts
to an implicit emphasis upon nature’s purposes instead of the person.89
Before 1963, the increased interest in the person vis-à-vis nature
dominated the debate and the conclusions reached by those theolo-
gians prepared for the position proclaimed by John Rock in his 1963
book The Time Has Come that the progesterone pill and its contracep-
tive effects were natural.

The Second Phase

of the Debate (1963–68)
John Rock and the Widening of the Birth Control Debate
In 1963, John Rock, a Catholic medical doctor, explicitly rejected the
exclusive emphasis on the biophysical processes of the human body
in favor of an emphasis on the needs of the person and of the cou-
ple.90 He had already expressed support for anti-ovulant use of the
progesterone pill, which he helped to develop.91 His position was
criticized by a number of theologians, including John Lynch, yet he
was undeterred.92
89. See Paul Quay, “Contraception and Conjugal Love,” Theological Studies 22
(1961): 18–40. For a summary and a critique of Quay’s argument, see Grabowski, “Per-
son and Nature,” 297–300, 308. Grabowski shows that while Quay evokes the language
of personalism, he ultimately believes the person is only fulfilled by working in virtue of
his nature (see Quay, “Contraception,” 26). Grabowski’s critique is subtle and penetrat-
ing. Nevertheless, given the era in which Quay wrote this article, his idea of sex as lan-
guage was prescient of similar ideas in Pope John Paul’s own thought.
90. See John Rock, The Time Has Come: A Catholic Doctor’s Proposals to End the
Battle over Birth Control (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1963).
91. See John Rock, “We Can End the Battle over Birth Control,” Good Housekeeping
( July 1961): 44–45, 107–9.
92. See John Lynch, SJ, “Notes on Moral Theology,” Theological Studies 23 (1962):
242. See also Shannon, The Lively Debate, 44.
 Marriage and Contraception 65
In his book, The Time Has Come, Rock’s argument in favor of
the use of the pill to regulate births begins with a redefinition. Rath-
er than a contraceptive or artificial birth control, he said that using
the pill was analogous to the rhythm method, which was already ap-
proved by Pope Pius XI in 1930. Progesterone is the natural hormone,
secreted by the ovaries, which suspends ovulation during the “safe
period” of a woman’s menstrual cycle. Rock, therefore, concluded
there is no moral difference between the natural safe period and the
pill-induced safe period.93 Even though the pill was synthetic, by not-
ing the “naturalness” of the pill, John Rock was responding to a phys-
icalist or biologist view of morality. Effectively Rock used physicalist
terminology against the physicalist arguments for the traditional con-
demnation of contraception. Furthermore, he notes, “the pills, when
properly taken, are not all likely to disturb menstruation, nor do they
mutilate any organ of the body, nor damage any natural process.”94
Both Pope Pius XI and Pope Pius XII supported periodic conti-
nence—the abstinence from intercourse during the “safe period” of
a woman’s cycle—in certain circumstances.95 Since the discernment
of the presence of these conditions in a couple’s life is the role of the
intellect, Rock writes, “it is difficult not to believe that God gave man
his intellect to safeguard him whenever his inner biology is inade-
quate.”96 Thus, John Rock furthered the distinction between person
and nature by highlighting the traditional Catholic emphasis on the
uniqueness of human reason.
Rock’s book was met with immediate criticism in the United
States.97 John Lynch’s response was emblematic. He argued that im-

93. See Rock, Time Has Come, 168. 94. Ibid., 169.
95. See CC, par. 59; Pius XII, “Address to Midwives,” in Liebard, Love and Sexuality,
113. Pope Pius XI does not mention periodic continence specifically as a means of birth
regulation, nor does he countenance the idea that a couple may have reason to avoid
giving birth. He does, however, make clear that couples are free to make use of their
“marital right” to the conjugal act even if they know that procreation is not possible “on
account of natural reasons either of time or of certain defects” (CC, par. 59).
96. Rock, Time Has Come, 169.
97. See Joseph S. Duhamel, “The Time Has Come” (book review), America 108
(April 27, 1963): 610; John J. Lynch, “The Time Has Come” (book review), Marriage
45 ( June 1963): 16–17; John C. Ford and Gerald Kelly, Contemporary Moral Theology
(Westminster, Md.: The Newman Press, 1964), 2:376–77. See also Shannon, Lively De-
bate, 46–47; Noonan, Contraception, 468–69.
66 Marriage and Contraception
itating natural occurrences is not always within our rights, as in the
case of the natural circumstances surrounding death. “It is quite ob-
vious, for example, that death from natural causes is a very common
occurrence. But that biological fact does not justify one’s anticipat-
ing nature in this respect by deliberately and directly terminating in-
nocent human life.”98 But if Rock’s ideas were initially rejected in the
United States, they would receive a more than fair reception in Eu-
rope.
On March 21, 1963, just months before the publication of The
Time Has Come, William Bekkers, the bishop of the diocese of Den
Bosch in Holland, gave a televised speech in which he suggested that
a marriage must be morally evaluated within the entire “kaleido-
scope” of a life lived together in love. From this perspective, the regu-
lation of births can be seen as a responsibility of a couple to each oth-
er and to their children. The means used, the bishop said, should be
left to the couple.99
Louis Janssens also resurfaced in 1963 with a lengthy article argu-
ing that the anti-ovulant use of the pill to regulate child births was al-
ready permissible.100 Following a long exposition of the history of the
church’s teaching from Augustine to his own time, he argues that the
use of the pill is no different than sexual intercourse during a wom-
an’s infertile period of her menstrual cycle. The permissibility of the
rhythm method reveals, says Janssens, that procreation need not be a
positive intention in every act of sexual intercourse provided the act
itself maintains its own integrity.
The distinction between periodic continence and the use of
chemical or physical contraceptives is the difference they make for
the integrity of the sex act. Janssens writes: “It suffices to note that
the practice of periodic continence positively excluded procreation:

98. Lynch, “The Time Has Come” (book review), 17.

99. Excerpts from this televised speech along with excerpts from an article which
the bishop published in his diocesan paper the same month can be found in Leo Pyle,
ed., The Pill and Birth Regulation (Baltimore, Md.: Helicon Press, 1964), 5–8. See also
Shannon, Lively Debate, 47–49, and Noonan, Contraception, 469.
100. See Louis Janssens, “Morale conjugale et progesogènes,” Ephemerides Theolog-
icae Lovanienses 39 (1963): 787–826. Abstracts translated into English can be found in
Pyle, The Pill, 14–19. See also Valsecchi, Controversy, 38–41; Shannon, Lively Debate, 50–
51; Noonan, Contraception, 470–72.
 Marriage and Contraception 67
it creates an obstacle in the temporal order through the choice to en-
gage in sexual relations exclusively during the periods of infertili-
ty. Similarly, the use of artificial conception constitutes an obstacle
in the spatial order by erecting a material wall between the organs of
the spouses.”101 Precisely because the church has already accepted the
possibility of intentionally excluding procreation in a particular con-
jugal act for specific reasons, Janssens argues, therefore, the nature of
the act itself is more than simply procreative. It is rather an “expres-
sion and incarnation of conjugal love.”102
This conjugal love is a mutual self-giving of the spouses, “without
reserve and without restriction” (sans resérve et sans restriction). The
incarnation of this unreserved and unrestricted love is the “intrinsic
meaning” (le sens intrinsèque) of the conjugal act. To introduce any
reservation, any restriction, any barrier is to vitiate the act by aban-
doning this intrinsic meaning.103 The pill introduces no barrier nor
does it interfere with the self-gift of the spouses. In this way, Janssens
argues, it is no different than the rhythm method.104 Janssens was not
alone in his early support of the use of anti-ovulant pill to regulate
childbirth.105
The initial response to Janssens’s position in Europe was favor-
able, even if some authors expressed reservations about the logi-
cal conclusions that might be drawn from it.106 In the United States,
however, the initial response was as critical to Janssen’s article as it
had been to the work of John Rock.107 The Americans rejected Jans-
101. Janssens, “Morale conjugale et progesogènes,” 817 (author’s translation).
102. Ibid., 819 (author’s translation). 103. Ibid.
104. Ibid., 820–21.
105. See W. van der Marck, OP, “Vruchtbaarheidsregeling. Poging tot antwoord op
een nog open vraag,” Tijdschrift voor Theologie 3 (1963): 379–413; J. M. Reuss, “Eheliche
Hingabe und Zeugung: Ein Diskussionsbeitrag zu einem differenzierten Problem,” Tub-
inger Theologische Quartalschrift 143 (1963): 454–76. An English translation of abstracts
from the latter appears in Pyle, The Pill, 8–13. For a concise summary of the arguments
of these two articles see Valsecchi, Controversy, 41–45, and Noonan, Contraception, 470–
71. Louis Janssens is the most often cited of the three Belgian theologians supporting an
expanded use of the pill.
106. See Valsecchi, Controversy, 47–48, for a bibliography and summary of argu-
ments.
107. See Gerald Kelly, SJ, “Confusion: Contraception and ‘The Pill,’” Theology Di-
gest 12 (1964): 123–30; John Lynch, SJ, “Notes on Moral Theology. The Oral Contra-
ceptives,” Theological Studies 25 (1964): 237–49; Francis J. Connell, CSSR, “Is Contra-
68 Marriage and Contraception
sen’s tenuous link between periodic continence and the pill. An edi-
torial in the April 25, 1964, issue of America provided a standard re-
ply. The difference between the rhythm method and the pill was
“non-performance of the conjugal act during the fertile period. . . . No
amount of word juggling can make abstinence from sexual relations
and the suppression of ovulation one and the same thing.”108 Respon-
dents to the editorial likewise all commented that the church’s teach-
ing had not changed and, therefore, that Catholics were not free to
use the contraceptive pill.
A younger generation of Catholic moral theologians, more favor-
able to contraception, also began publishing at this time. Many of
these would play a significant role in the aftermath of the promulga-
tion of Humanae Vitae.109

The Second Vatican Council

Three months after the close of the Second Vatican Council’s first ses-
sion, in March 1963, Pope John XXIII established a commission to
examine the question of contraception. The Pope died three months
later but his successor, Pope Paul VI, decided that the commission
should continue its work. It would meet periodically from 1963 to
1966.110
In the fall of 1965, during its fourth and final session, the Sec-

ception Intrinsically Wrong?” The American Ecclesiastical Review 150 (1964): 434–39. See
also Shannon, Lively Debate, 52–54; Noonan, Controversy, 49–53.
108. “Time Bomb” (editorial), America (May 25, 1965): 563.
109. The most notable of these was Charles Curran. See Charles Curran, “Christian
Marriage and Family Planning,” Jubilee 12 (August 1964): 8–13.
110. There have been few detailed histories of the commission’s work. Shannon de-
votes a chapter in his book, The Lively Debate, to the commission and correlates all the
material published up to the time of the book’s publication (see 76–104). Janet Smith
offers a brief outline of the commission’s work and an analysis of the two reports issued
by the commission (see Smith, Humanae Vitae, 11–35). Finally, Robert McClory offers a
popular history of the “inside story of the papal birth control commission.” Besides his
own research, McClory follows the account offered by Patty Crowley, a founder of the
Christian Family Movement and among the lay married persons added to the commis-
sion in 1964. According to McClory’s own depiction, Crowley makes no secret of her
disappointment with Humanae Vitae and accepts the legitimacy of dissent to the papal
teaching. McClory agrees with her sentiments, which is a prejudice that colors his pre-
sentation of the commission (see McClory, Turning Point, 38–137).
 Marriage and Contraception 69
ond Vatican Council was reviewing Schema XIII, the document on
the church in the modern world that would eventually be known as
Gaudium et Spes. The council fathers were divided regarding wheth-
er the schema should reference the traditional primary and second-
ary ends of marriage. In his historical survey of this session of the
council, Gilles Routhier notes that “a number of the fathers did re-
gard conjugal love as the reality that ought to be the basis for thinking
about marriage.”111 The struggle between those who wanted a more
personalist approach to marriage, which emphasized conjugal love
as primary, and those who wanted a more traditional approach that
would reference primary and secondary ends was central to the de-
bate on marriage.
The council’s subcommission on marriage completed its work
on the final draft of the schema on November 20 and thus began a
tumultuous time of debate in the mixed commission, which was re-
sponsible for the agenda of the council.112 On November 24, as the
mixed commission began to consider the final draft of the schema,
a letter arrived from the Vatican’s Secretary of State, Amleto Cardi-
nal Cicognani. It proposed “in the name of a higher authority” four
amendments (modi) to the text, one of which included a reference
to the hierarchy of ends. It was clear to everyone in the room that the
higher authority was Pope Paul VI.113 When the mixed commission

111. Gilles Routhier, “Finishing the Work Begun: The Trying Experience of the
Fourth Period,” in History of Vatican II, ed. Giuseppe Alberigo and Joseph A. Komon-
chak, trans. Matthew J. O’Connell (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of
America Press, 2006), 5:155.
112. See Peter Hünermann, “The Final Weeks of the Council,” in History of Vatican
II, ed. Alberigo and Komonchak, 5:406, 408.
113. See Shannon, The Lively Debate, 85. For a summary of the papal modi, their his-
tory, the debate in the mixed commission, and its resolution, see Hünnerman, “Final
Weeks,” 408–19; Shannon, The Lively Debate, 84–87; Kaiser, Politics, 115–21; McClory,
Turning Point, 83–85. The text of Cicognani’s letter and the four papal modi are avail-
able at Acta Synodalia Sacrosancti Concilii Oecumenici Vaticani II (Vatican City: Typis
Polyglottis Vaticanis, 1970–92), V/3, 604–6 [hereafter, AS]. In article 47 of the sche-
ma, practices such as polygamy, divorce, free love, selfishness, and hedonism would be
condemned as against the nature of married love. The first papal modus asked that con-
traceptive practices (artes anticonceptionales) be included in this list. The second mo-
dus wanted a phrase on the preeminent place the gift of children has for a marriage.
The third modus wanted the document to condemn all birth control practices that “are”
proscribed or “will be” proscribed, as well as a direct reference to Casti Connubii and
70 Marriage and Contraception
descended into argument on the papal modi, a second letter from
Cicognani arrived only two days later, which indicated that the four
amendments were only “counsels” and the commission was free to
discern their merit and their incorporation into the text.114
Rather than include birth control in the list of dangers against
marriage found in the early paragraphs of the schema, as the pope
suggested, the commission used instead the words “illicit practices
contrary to conception.”115 The mixed commission agreed with the
pope that a paragraph of the schema was ambivalent on the ends of
marriage, so the mixed commission accepted the pope’s advice to in-
sert a reference to children as the preeminent gift of marriage. With-
out mentioning the ends of marriage, the commission added that
sharing lovingly in the work of God as creator and redeemer was the
orientation of marriage “without prejudice to the other ends of mar-
riage.”116 The text thus refers to the ends of marriage but does not in-
clude a hierarchy of those ends.117
In deference to the papal modi, a footnote reference to Casti Con-
nubii and to Pius XII’s address to midwives was added to the schema’s
discussion of legitimate methods of birth control. Additionally, anoth-
er footnote (the famous footnote 14) was added that referred directly
to the papal commission on birth control. The council deferred to the
pope’s decision on birth control once the papal commission conclud-
ed its work and, therefore, the footnote said “the council is not aiming
immediately to propose specific solutions.”118 Finally, “the commis-
sion wanted to avoid giving the impression that conjugal chastity was
the only possible means of birth control. For this reason the reference
to conjugal chastity that the pope had requested in his fourth modus
was introduced at a different place than the one called for.”119

Pius XII’s address to midwives. The final modus wanted chastity discussed in the section
of the document that concerns the difficulties married couples face.
114. For the text of this second letter, see AS V/3, 610.
115. See Vatican Council II, Gaudium et Spes, December 7, 1965, par. 47 [hereafter,
GS], in Decrees, ed. Tanner, 2:1100: “illicitis usibus contra generationem.” The official
Latin text of GS is available in AAS 58 (1966): 1025–1115.
116. See GS, par. 50, in Decrees, ed. Tanner, 2:1103.
117. See Hünermann, “Final Weeks,” 415.
118. See Decrees, ed. Tanner, 2:1104.
119. Hünermann, “Final Weeks,” 415.
 Marriage and Contraception 71
Once the mixed commission completed its work, the finalized
amended text was presented to the fathers of the council and was
promulgated on December 7, 1965. Gaudium et Spes was the final doc-
ument the council issued. The chapter on marriage, while not over-
turning the traditional teaching on marriage, offers a fresh presenta-
tion. The central point of the constitution’s treatment of marriage is
the notion of conjugal love. John Gallagher notes that “as a matter
of human will, this love is much more than physical desire, but it in-
cludes physical expression.”120 Conjugal love, the council said, “em-
braces the good of the entire person and is therefore capable of en-
dowing human expressions with a particular dignity and of ennobling
them as special features and manifestations of married friendship.”121
It is this conjugal love and the institution of marriage that is di-
rected to the procreation of children:
The institution of marriage and conjugal love are, of their nature, directed to
the procreation and education of children and they find their culmination in
this. Thus it is that a man and a woman, who “are no longer two but one
flesh” (Mt 19:6) in their marital covenant, help and serve each other in their
intimate union of persons and activities, and from day to day experience and
increase their sense of oneness. Such intimacy, as a mutual giving of two per-
sons, as well as the good of their children require complete faithfulness be-
tween the partners, and call for their union being indissoluble.122

Here, Gallagher rightly notes, “the council fathers are arguing not
from a narrowly biological basis. It is the nature of marriage itself and
of conjugal love to be oriented toward procreation.”123 One could
go further and say that the council has insisted that while marriage
and conjugal love are directed to the procreation of children, the ex-
istence of children in the marriage further confirms and strengthens
that love. This is why Gaudium et Spes reaffirms later that marriage
and married love are “directed towards the begetting and bringing up
of children” and goes on to say that “children are the supreme gift of
marriage and they contribute greatly to the good of their parents.”124

120. Gallagher, “Magisterial Teaching,” 201.

121. GS, par. 49, in Decrees, ed. Tanner, 2:1112.
122. GS, par. 48, in Decrees, ed. Tanner, 2:1101.
123. Gallagher, “Magisterial Teaching,” 201.
124. GS, par. 50.
72 Marriage and Contraception
While the primary concern of Gaudium et Spes is conjugal love and
the institution of marriage, the conjugal act and procreation are cer-
tainly not absent from the document. Rather, these are presented in
their relationship to conjugal love and marriage.
The document does not present an argument against contracep-
tion, though it does speak against “illicit practices against conception”
at the request of Pope Paul VI. It simply said that methods of birth
regulation should be decided by objective criteria according to “the
nature of the person and his acts” with the understanding that the
faithful may not choose a means proscribed by the magisterium.125
More importantly, Gaudium et Spes does not mention the distinction
between the primary and secondary ends of marriage. Nor does it
mention the idea of mutual help of spouses as subordinate to the pro-
creation and education of children. Some have speculated that this
omission means that the council intended to overturn the traditional
teaching of the church by according equal status to the ends of mar-
riage.126 Others have said that the document does not overturn the
traditional hierarchy of ends, but only reformulates its expression.127
The promulgation of Gaudium et Spes with its dynamic presentation
of marriage and the inclusion of footnote 14 increased speculation on
the results of the work of the papal commission on birth regulation.
The world awaited eagerly the pope’s decision on the matter.

125. GS, par. 51, in Decrees, ed. Tanner, 2:1104.

126. See James P. Hanigan, What Are They Saying about Sexual Morality? (New York:
Paulist Press, 1982), 33; Grabowski, “Person and Nature,” 308n107. While the other au-
thors argue generally from silence, Grabowski offers a cogent argument in three points.
“First, it is not the reading of most scholars [that Gaudium et Spes did not repudiate the
hierarchy of the ends marriage utilized in the 1917 Code of Canon Law]. Second, it ig-
nores the theology of covenant present within the Pastoral Constitution which serves
as the vehicle for its embrace of personalist ideas. Third, it overlooks the fact that sub-
sequent magisterial documents, including Humanae Vitae (esp. par. 12), effectively set-
tle the question by treating the two ends as not only equally important but inseparable.”
127. See Janet Smith, Humanae Vitae, 47–48; Ramón García de Haro, Marriage and
the Family in the Documents of the Magisterium: A Course in the Theology of Marriage,
trans. William E. May (San Francisco, Calif.: Ignatius Press, 1989): 195–98, 241–45; Wil-
liam E. May, Marriage: The Rock on Which the Family Is Built (San Francisco, Calif.: Igna-
tius Press, 1995): 109–15; and Asci, Conjugal Act, 68–71. Pope John Paul II suggested that
the hierarchy was reaffirmed by both Gaudium et Spes and Humanae Vitae but reorient-
ed their relationship by orienting the ends to conjugal love. See TOB, no. 127.
 Marriage and Contraception 73

The Reports of the Papal Commission

The papal commission on birth control met five times between 1963
and 1966. At each meeting, more members were added to the group.128
Its final meeting began on April 18, 1966, and concluded three months
later on June 25. The structure of the group for this final meeting had
been reconstituted. In February, Pope Paul VI appointed sixteen bish-
op members to form an executive committee to the commission.129
Only these bishops would have a vote on the deliberations of the com-
mission. In effect, those members of the commission who had labored
in the previous four meetings were reconstituted as advisers (periti)
to this executive committee. The work of the papal commission came
to an end on June 25, 1966. On June 28, Cardinal Julius Doepfner and
Fr. Henri de Riedmatten presented the commission’s work to Pope
Paul VI.
Three principal documents emerged from the papal commission.
All three were subsequently leaked to the media. First, there was a
minority report written by four theologians who were against revers-
ing the church’s condemnation of contraception. Second, a schema,
which was approved by a majority of the bishops on the executive
committee, advocated a change of the teaching. Finally, there was a
majority rebuttal of the minority report.130 Very brief observations

128. For a list of the various members added for each meeting, see McClory, Turn-
ing Point, 188–90.
129. See Shannon, Lively Debate, 88; McClory, Turning Point, 96–97. The sixteen
members of the executive committee were Archbishop Leo Binz (United States), Bish-
op Carlo Colombo (Vatican), Archbishop John Dearden (United States), Juilies Car-
dinal Doepfner (Germany), Archbishop Claude Dupuy (France), Valerian Cardinal
Gracias (India), John Cardinal Heenan (England), Joseph Cardinal Lefebvre (France),
Archbishop Thomas Morris (Ireland), Alfredo Cardinal Ottaviani (Vatican), Lawrence
Cardinal Shehan (United States), Leo Joseph Cardinal Suenens (Belgium), Archbishop
José Rafael Pulido-Méndez (Venezuela), Bishop Joseph Reuss (Germany), Archbishop
Karol Wojtyła (Poland), and Archbishop Jean Baptiste Zoa (Cameroon). Wojtyła, how-
ever, did not attend this final meeting, having been denied an exit visa by the Commu-
nist government in Poland (see Weigel, Witness to Hope, 207).
130. The shorthand references to these three documents vary depending on the au-
thors consulted. For the sake of clarity, I will be following Janet Smith’s nomenclature.
In this study, the paper drafted by the minority theologians will be referred to as the
“minority report”; the paper intended as a draft of a final document will be referred to
as “the schema”; and the rebuttal prepared by the majority theologians will be referred
74 Marriage and Contraception
on each of the reports are in order before we discuss of the encyclical.
The minority report relies fundamentally on the strength of the
church’s tradition in condemning contraception. After defining the
terms of the question, the report goes on to provide a brief survey of
the church’s teaching on contraception and marriage, focusing espe-
cially on the twentieth century. Referencing Noonan’s book, the re-
port states: “One can find no period in history, no document of the
Church, no theological school, scarcely one Catholic theologian,
who ever denied that contraception was always seriously evil. The
teaching of the Church in this matter is absolutely constant. Until the
present century this teaching was peacefully possessed by all other
Christians.”131 Acknowledging that the church’s presentation of mar-
riage and sexuality had moved away from an excessively juridical em-
phasis toward a more personalist view that sees marriage as its own
means to holiness, the minority report then responds to the typical
arguments advanced in favor of changing the church’s teaching on
contraception.
When the minority report addresses positive arguments in favor of
the church’s teaching, it admits: “If we could bring forward arguments
which are clear and cogent based on reason alone, it would not be nec-
essary for our commission to exist, nor would the present state of af-
fairs exist in the Church as it is.”132 It is in this section that the minority
theologians defend the church’s teaching against the charge of physi-
calism. The inviolability of intercourse has always been taught because
it is generative, and “this inviolability is always attributed to the act
and to the process, which are biological; not inasmuch as they are bio-
logical, but inasmuch as they are human, namely inasmuch as they are
the object of human acts and are destined by their nature to the good
of the human species.”133 The report also argues that the teaching can-

to as the “majority rebuttal.” All three of these reports were never meant for public con-
sumption, but they were leaked and published in the spring of 1967 in both The Tablet
and The National Catholic Reporter. The translation published in the National Catholic
Reporter is available in Pope and Pill: More Documentation on the Birth Regulation Debate,
ed. Leo Pyle (Baltimore, Md.: Helicon Press, 1969): 257–305. All references to these re-
ports in this book will be from Pyle’s compilation.
131. See “Minority Report,” in Pope and Pill, ed. Pyle, 275–76.
132. Ibid., 278–79.
133. “Minority Report,” in Pope and Pill, ed. Pyle, 279.
 Marriage and Contraception 75
not be based on a faulty medieval notion of “nature,” because “the
teaching of the Church was first fully formulated and handed down
constantly for several centuries before scholastic philosophy was re-
fined.”134 Also, theology has never argued for the inviolability of na-
ture generally, but the inviolability of human generative process “pre-
cisely because they are generative of new human life.”135 The reason the
teaching is irreformable, according to the report, is that the teaching
has been stated as true by the church constantly and consistently. If
error is admitted, “the authority of the ordinary magisterium in moral
matters would be thrown into question.”136 This is why, the minority
theologians suggest, that those who seek to change the teaching have
redefined the notions of the magisterium and its authority.
The report then summarizes the philosophical foundations for
those arguments in favor of changing the church’s teaching. Here we
find a brief summary of the debate of the twentieth century present-
ed from the perspective of those defending the traditional teaching.137
The foundations are by now familiar: a reverence for God, an empha-
sis on the person over nature, and the duty of humanizing nature ac-
cording to reason. The report is critical of the view that nature is “a
complex of physical and psychic powers in the world, granted to the
dominion of man, so that he can experience them, foster change, or
frustrate them for his own earthly convenience.”138 The minority re-
port concludes by suggesting the consequences of changing the teach-
ing on contraception: an increase in premarital sex, masturbation, il-
licit acts of copulation within marriage, and sterilization.
The majority rebuttal begins by placing the condemnation of
contraception in Casti Connubii in its historical context. Specifically,
the majority theologians suggest that the tone of that encyclical was
appropriate for the context in which it was issued, that is, immedi-
ately following the Anglican declaration at the Lambeth Conference
and amid fears of the possibility of population decline with the use
of contraception. It says: “Today no one holds that the solemn dec-
laration of the encyclical Casti Connubii constitutes a true doctrinal
definition.”139 Similarly, the rebuttal seeks to contextualize the con-
134. Ibid., 278. 135. Ibid.
136. Ibid., 281. 137. See ibid., 285–89.
138. Ibid., 289–90. 139. Ibid., 297.
76 Marriage and Contraception
stant condemnation of contraception in the church’s history, insisting
those condemnations were made for larger dogmatic concerns that
are no longer problematic in the church.140 The problem with the nat-
ural law argument offered against contraception is that “the gifts of
nature are considered to be immediately the expression of the will of
God, preventing man, also a creature of God, from being understood
as called to receive material nature and to perfect its potentiality.”141
The rebuttal notes that in fact the church’s teaching on marriage
and the conjugal act had evolved over recent decades with an empha-
sis on conjugal love as expressed in the act of intercourse. The rebut-
tal offers many reasons in favor of change: social changes in marriage,
the differing roles of women, advances in science, and the grow-
ing consensus of the faithful, to name just a few. A change in teach-
ing would be nothing more than an acknowledgement of this evolu-
tion.142
The rebuttal’s rejection of any natural law argument rests upon
the authors’ emphasis on the person and human freedom over na-
ture. The dignity of man consists in “that God wished man to share in
his dominion. God has left man in the hands of his own counsel . . . .
Therefore the dominion of God is exercised through man, who can
use nature for his own perfection according to the dictates of right
reason.”143 Thus, man recognizes his dignity “when he uses his skill to
intervene in the biological processes of nature so that he can achieve
the ends of the institution of matrimony in the conditions of actu-
al life, than if he would abandon himself to chance.”144 For all that,
though, the rebuttal insists that there are moral criteria that must be
respected. Specifically, actions must be in conformity with rational
nature and respect the ends to which nature has things ordered. Un-
doubtedly, the rebuttal is vague as to its meaning on this point.145
In a decisive shift in favor of the notion that the human person
rather than human nature should be considered normative, the rebut-
tal argues that persons, not natures, are the sources of life. It is up to
married persons to exercise reason in appropriate planning of chil-
dren. “In virtue of this decision [on the planning of children] they

140. See ibid., 298. 141. Ibid.

142. See ibid., 300. 143. Ibid., 301.
144. Ibid. 145. Ibid.
 Marriage and Contraception 77
use the sexual organs to gain the predetermined goal, but the organs
themselves are not per se the sources of life. The biological process-
es in man are not some separated part (animality) but are integrated
into the total personality of man.”146 After recounting the now typical
emphasis on the conjugal act as an expression of conjugal love, the
rebuttal concludes there is no difference between acts that are fertile
and acts that are infertile. From this perspective, the rebuttal argues
that reasonable intervention in fertility is completely within the lim-
its of classical doctrine. A person using the pill is not excluding fertili-
ty permanently but only regulating it reasonably in order to direct the
whole marriage toward conjugal union and fecundity.147 The rebuttal
concludes by disagreeing with the minority report’s grim predictions
of a future with contraception. It reaffirms the majority’s condemna-
tion of both abortion and the unreasonable or selfish use of contra-
ception.
With Janet Smith, then, we can identify four major areas of funda-
mental disagreement between the two documents.148 First, the docu-
ments disagree on the meaning and purpose of the church’s tradition-
al condemnation of contraception. Second, they differ on the impact
a change in the teaching would have on the moral authority of the
church. Third, the understanding of natural law differs in the docu-
ments. Finally, they each offer their own outlook on a future in which
contraception is universally accepted and practiced.
The schema begins with a striking observation: “In creating the
world God gave man the power and the duty to form the world in
spirit and freedom and, through his creative capacity, to actuate his
own personal nature.”149 Here it is clear: nature is subject to human
freedom. In the first part, then, the schema turns to the impact this
lofty vocation of man has on marriage. Emphasizing the value of
conjugal love as mutual self-giving, the schema nevertheless asserts
that married life is not complete merely by self-gift. “Married peo-
ple know well,” it says, “that they are only able to perfect each other
146. Ibid., 302.
147. See ibid., 302–5.
148. See Smith, Humanae Vitae, 14. For a thorough comparison of the minority re-
port and the majority rebuttal from the perspective of a scholar supportive of Humanae
Vitae, see Smith, Humanae Vitae, 14–30.
149. “The Majority View,” in Pope and Pill, ed. Pyle, 257.
78 Marriage and Contraception
and establish a true community if their love does not end in a merely
egotistic union but according to the condition of each is made truly
fruitful in the creation of new life.”150 In this view, the procreation and
education of children is only reasonable when the community of self-
gift already exists in the parents, a community which the presence of
children confirms and strengthens. Thus, “conjugal love and fecundi-
ty are in no way opposed, but complement one another in such a way
that they constitute an almost indivisible unity.”151
The schema goes on to suggest the many ways in which parent-
hood has become a more difficult responsibility. One of the major
difficulties presented to conjugal love and parenthood is the “new
possibilities for the education of children.”152 Other conditions may
be economic, psychological, and physical. Regulation of fertility ap-
pears, therefore, to be necessary. Because the good of the children
requires the existence of a stable and loving familial community, the
schema argues that “the morality of sexual acts between married peo-
ple takes its meaning first of all and specifically from the ordering of
their actions in a fruitful married life, that is one which is practiced
with responsible, generous and prudent parenthood. It does not then
depend upon the direct fecundity of each and every particular act.”153
The schema follows this argument with an explanation of the rea-
sons for the development of the doctrine, following the arguments
of the majority rebuttal. Then, before concluding the section on the
fundamental principles, the schema offers four criteria to discern the
various means of contraception.154 First, following upon Gaudium et
Spes (par. 51), the “action must correspond to the nature of the per-
son and of his acts so that the whole meaning of the mutual giving
and of human procreation is kept in a context of true love.”155 Second,
the means chosen “should have an effectiveness proportionate to the
degree of right or necessity of averting a new a conception tempo-

150. Ibid., 260.

151. Ibid. (emphasis added). The strength of the union between the procreative
and unitive aspects of the conjugal act was precisely what was at issue. The Majority be-
lieved that the two aspects were only “almost” indivisible. Pope Paul VI will disagree in
Humanae Vitae (par. 12) by insisting that the two are simply inseparable.
152. “The Majority View,” in Pope and Pill, ed. Pyle, 261.
153. Ibid., 263. 154. See ibid., 267.
155. Ibid.
 Marriage and Contraception 79
rarily or permanently.”156 Third, the means chosen should be the one
“which carried with it the least possible negative element, according
to the concrete situation of the couple.”157 The schema here refers to
a certain amount of “physical evil” which the couple “more or less”
seriously feels. The evil can be biological, hygienic, or psychologi-
cal, among other things. Finally, the choice often “depends on what
means may be available in a certain region or at a certain time or for
a certain couple; and this may depend on the economic situation.”158
Exactly how this final statement qualifies as a moral criterion and not
a mere indicative statement is unclear.
The second part of the schema on pastoral necessities concerns
only the need for various reforms and renewals in the church and in
society, which while important, does not offer any new insight into
the majority’s thinking on the morality of contraception itself. The
commission’s report was presented to Pope Paul VI in June, 1966. It
would be two years before he would make a decision on the issue.

Humanae Vitae
and the Aftermath
The Encyclical
Humanae Vitae was signed by Pope Paul VI on July 25, 1968, and re-
leased to the public four days later.159 The document represents the
careful and prudent reflection of the pontiff upon the report of the pa-
pal commission. The encyclical follows the same structure as the sche-
156. Ibid. It is unclear what exactly this criterion means. What is clear, however, is
that it represents a furtherance of the position put forth by many progressive theolo-
gians that the permanent prevention of conception would be immoral, a position that
was seemingly adopted earlier in the same schema which insisted that married life can-
not be entirely complete without the complement of children. Janet Smith’s rhetorical
suggestion that the second criterion “seems to mean that if the spouses are very deter-
mined not to have a child, they should use the most effective means possible” is proba-
bly misplaced (Smith, Humanae Vitae, 33).
157. “The Majority View,” in Pope and Pill, ed. Pyle, 267.
158. Ibid.
159. See Pope Paul VI, Humanae Vitae, Encyclical Letter, July 25, 1968, in AAS 60
(1968): 481–503 [hereafter, HV]; all English translations of encyclicals are drawn from
www.vatican.va. Another English translation is available in print: Paul VI, “On Human
Life (Humanae Vitae)” (Boston: Daughters of St. Paul, 1968).
80 Marriage and Contraception
ma submitted by that commission. It is divided into three parts: first,
an introduction; second, a presentation of the relevant doctrinal prin-
ciples; and third, some pastoral directives.
After reaffirming the authority of the church to interpret mat-
ters of the natural moral law and alluding to the difficulty of his own
discernment of the question which was compounded by the lack of
unanimity on the papal commission, the second part of the encyc-
lical on doctrinal principles begins in such a way that Paul VI sug-
gests fundamental agreement with the personalist view of marriage
which had begun in the 1920s and which many were using to advo-
cate for the use of contraception.160 In these opening paragraphs, he
writes that marriage is a “provident institution of God the Creator.”161
It is in marriage that “husband and wife, through that mutual gift of
themselves, which is specific and exclusive to them alone, develop
that union of two persons in which they perfect one another, coop-
erating with God in the generation and rearing of new lives.”162 Mar-
ried love, he says, is “fully human” and not merely a question “of nat-
ural instinct or emotional drive.” It is a total and “very special form of
personal friendship.”163 Married love is “faithful and exclusive of all
others, and this until death.”164 Finally, married love is fecund. “It is
not confined wholly to the loving interchange of husband and wife; it
also contrives to go beyond this to bring new life into being.”165 Here,
the pope inserts a direct quote of Gaudium et Spes (par. 50).
A discussion of responsible parenthood follows.166 The pope ad-
dresses biological processes and says that “responsible parenthood
means an awareness of, and respect for, their proper function. In the
procreative faculty the human mind discerns biological laws that ap-
ply to the human person.”167 The encyclical acknowledges the neces-
sity of rational control over “innate drives and emotions” along with
the possibility of not having “additional children for either a certain
or an indefinite period of time.”168 It encourages couples to maintain

160. See HV, pars. 6, 8–9. 161. Ibid., par. 8.

162. Ibid. 163. Ibid., par. 9.
164. Ibid. 165. Ibid.
166. See ibid., par. 10.
167. Here the encyclical cites ST I-II, q. 94, a. 2.
168. HV, par. 10.
 Marriage and Contraception 81
the “right order of priorities, [and] recognize their own duties toward
God, themselves, their families and human society.”169
So similar are the sentiments that are expressed in these early
paragraphs of the encyclical to those of the papal commission schema
that William Shannon observes “up to this point, i.e., the second last
paragraph of Article 10, the encyclical could have moved in either di-
rection—toward a change in the Church’s teaching on contraception
or toward a reaffirmation of the norms of the past.”170 But the encycli-
cal makes a decisive shift in the final paragraph of article ten:
From this it follows that they [the married couple] are not free to act as they
choose in the service of transmitting life, as if it were wholly up to them to
decide what is the right course to follow. On the contrary, they are bound
to ensure that what they do corresponds to the will of God the Creator. The
very nature of marriage and its use makes His will clear, while the constant
teaching of the Church spells it out.171

The pope shifts to the traditional argument from the ends of nature,
both the ends of the conjugal act and the ends of marriage itself.
Then Pope Paul VI offers a brief summary of natural law.172 There,
the pope acknowledges that involuntary infertility does not affect the
moral status of the conjugal act because of “its natural adaptation to
the expression and strengthening of the union of husband and wife
is not thereby suppressed.” He also acknowledges the fact that “new
life is not the result of each and every act of sexual intercourse.” These
natural occurrences are the result of God, who “has wisely ordered
laws of nature and the incidence of fertility in such a way that succes-
sive births are already naturally spaced through the inherent opera-
tion of these laws.” Nevertheless, the encyclical reaffirms the church’s
teaching that “each and every marital act must of necessity be intrin-
sically ordered [per se destinatus] to the procreation of human life.”173
Here the pope footnotes both Casti Connubii and Pope Pius XII’s 1951
address to midwives.
The following article, article 12, has been the subject of much
speculation and disagreement. In full, it reads:

169. Ibid. 170. Shannon, Lively Debate, 108.

171. HV, par. 10 (emphasis added). Here the encyclical refers again to GS, pars. 50–51.
172. See HV, par. 11. 173. Ibid.
82 Marriage and Contraception
This particular doctrine, often expounded by the magisterium of the Church,
is based on the inseparable connection, established by God, which man on
his own initiative may not break, between the unitive significance and the
procreative significance which are both inherent to the marriage act. The rea-
son is that the fundamental nature of the marriage act, while uniting hus-
band and wife in the closest intimacy, also renders them capable of gener-
ating new life—and this is a result of laws written into the actual nature of
man and of woman. And if each of these essential qualities, the unitive and
the procreative, is preserved, the use of marriage fully retains its sense of true
mutual love and its ordination to the supreme responsibility of parenthood
to which man is called. We believe that our contemporaries are particular-
ly capable of seeing that this teaching is in harmony with human reason.174

This article is significant for a number of reasons, not the least of

which is that Paul VI here definitively decides against the majority of
bishops and theologians on his own commission. Whereas the sche-
ma had indicated the connection between the two aspects of the con-
jugal act were “almost indivisible,” Paul VI’s draws a different conclu-
sion. The two ends of the conjugal act are not simply indivisible sides
of a personal choice, but rather inseparable ends of an act specified
by the nature of man and woman. This is precisely the issue of the de-
bate—the connection between the unitive and procreative aspects of
the conjugal act—and the encyclical offers a centrally unique contri-
bution to the discussion.
Article twelve of Humanae Vitae is a capstone of the development
of the church’s presentation of marriage, which began in the 1920s
and was implicitly manifest in Gaudium et Spes. Donald Asci has not-
ed that the novelty is evident in the lack of any citation in the arti-
cle to previous magisterial teaching.175 John Gallagher’s observation
that Pope Paul VI’s rejection of the commission and his affirmation
of the ban on contraception is primarily the result of a loyalty to the
magisterium is thus misplaced.176 The encyclical as a whole reveals
that Paul VI had taken a turn toward a more personalist presentation
of marriage while maintaining the traditional position on one issue:
the inseparability of the procreative and unitive ends of the conjugal

174. HV, par. 12.

175. See Asci, Conjugal Act, 111.
176. Gallagher, “Magisterial Teaching,” 206–7.
 Marriage and Contraception 83
act.177 He expresses his fundamental disagreement with the majori-
ty of the theologians of his commission who held only that conjugal
love and fecundity were almost an indivisible unity.178 Paul VI thus
espouses a view of the conjugal act that is at once both personalist
and faithful to the natural law, even though he does not fully elabo-
rate how the two views coincide.
The pope offers no arguments for why it is the case that the uni-
tive and procreative meanings of the conjugal act are inseparable. He
simply states that an honest reflection on the nature of marriage will
reveal “that an act of mutual love which impairs the capacity to trans-
mit life which God the Creator, through specific laws, has built into
it, frustrates His design which constitutes the norm of marriage, and
contradicts the will of the Author of life . . . and is consequently in op-
position to the plan of God and His holy will.”179
Paul VI clearly sides with the minority theologians on a num-
ber of other points. First, he agrees that reason does not have abso-
lute dominion over nature. Man does not have complete dominion
over his body let alone his sexual faculties because “these are con-
cerned by their very nature with the generation of life, of which God
is the source.”180 Second, no action can be chosen “which either be-
fore, at the moment of, or after sexual intercourse, is specifically in-
tended to prevent procreation—whether as an end or as a means.”181
Third, against the majority’s invocation of the principle of totali-
ty, the encyclical asserts that a lesser evil cannot be chosen in pref-
erence to a greater one. Nor can it be held that contraceptive inter-
course could “merge with procreative acts of past and future to form a
single entity, and so be qualified by exactly the same moral goodness

177. In his general audience on July 31, 1968, the pope stated that when he was writ-
ing the encyclical he “willingly adopted the personalist concept which is proper to the
Council’s doctrine on conjugal society and which gives to the love that generates and
nourishes it the preeminent place that befits it in the subjective evaluation of marriage.”
AAS 60 (1968): 529; English translation from “Church in the Word,” The London Tablet
222 (August 10, 1968): 803.
178. It should be noted here that Paul VI introduces the word “unitive” to describe
the conjugal meaning of the sexual act. Donald Asci has provided a thorough investi-
gation of this development as well the difference between the notions of end, purpose,
and meaning. See Asci, Conjugal Act, 240–69.
179. HV, par. 13. 180. Ibid.
181. Ibid., par. 14.
84 Marriage and Contraception
as these.”182 Humanae Vitae considers contraceptive intercourse evil
and, traditionally, one may never do evil that good may come of it.
“Consequently, it is a serious error to think that a whole married life
of otherwise normal relations can justify sexual intercourse which is
deliberately contraceptive and so intrinsically wrong.”183
After recognizing the moral permissibility of therapies that result
in (but do not intend) infertility, the encyclical promotes recourse
to infertile periods as a legitimate means for spacing births. More-
over it identifies the difference between this method and contracep-
tion. “In the former the married couple rightly use a faculty provided
them by nature. In the latter they obstruct the natural development
of the generative process.”184 The encyclical then turns to the conse-
quences of the use of artificial contraception.185 It restates the con-
sequences written in the minority report: a rise in marital infidelity,
a lowering of moral standards, an irreverence toward women, and
government-sponsored population control. Limits on man’s reason
and power “are expressly imposed because of the reverence due to
the whole human organism and its natural functions.”186
Before turning to the pastoral directives, with which this study is
not properly concerned, the doctrinal section concludes by anticipat-
ing that “not everyone will easily accept this particular teaching.”187
Nevertheless, the church cannot change the moral law. “It could nev-
er be right for her to declare lawful what is in fact unlawful, since that,
by its very nature, is always opposed to the true good of man.”188 The
pope clearly understood the ramifications of the encyclical, but it is
difficult to know whether he anticipated the heated reaction it would
receive.

Reactions to the Encyclical

Immediately following upon the encyclical’s release, episcopal con-
ferences around the world issued supplemental statements.189 Just

182. Ibid. 183. Ibid.

184. Ibid., par. 16. 185. See ibid., par. 17.
186. Ibid. 187. Ibid., par. 18.
188. Ibid.
189. In a popular summary of the debate surrounding birth control, Robert Hoyt
reports that Humanae Vitae included a cover letter from Cardinal Cicognani in which he
 Marriage and Contraception 85
under half of the episcopal conferences that issued statements ex-
pressed clear and unmitigated agreement with the encyclical. Other
conferences emphasized the priority of conscience and that the con-
tent of the encyclical was not infallible. Still other statements seemed
uncertain in their approach.190 Since Monsignor Ferdinando Lam-

asked the bishops to give their full report. Hoyt quotes the letter as stating, “And now,
he (the Pope) turns to his brothers, the bishops of the Catholic world, asking them to
stand beside him more firmly than ever . . . and to help present this delicate point of the
church’s teaching to the Christian people, to explain and justify its reasons.” Robert G.
Hoyt, ed., The Birth Control Debate: The Interim History from the Pages of The Nation-
al Catholic Reporter (Kansas City, Mo.: National Catholic Reporter Publishing, 1968),
143. Unfortunately, Hoyt does not cite his source for this letter and I have been unable
to locate the original text even in the AAS.
190. Most of these statements are collected in John Horgan, ed., Humanae Vi-
tae: The Encyclical and the Statements of the National Hierarchies (Shannon: Irish Uni-
versity Press, 1972). In his doctoral dissertation, Joseph Selling categorizes the various
episcopal conference statements into three categories based on their reaction to Hu-
manae Vitae. There were statements which exhibited “clear acceptance” of the encycli-
cal; statements which offered “clear mitigation”; and statements which were “uncertain”
and offered elements of both of the previous categories. Though some conferences is-
sued more than one statement with variant positions, ultimately Selling identifies six-
teen conferences in the category of “clear acceptance,” thirteen in “clear mitigation,” and
eight that are “uncertain.” Joseph Selling, The Reaction to Humanae vitae: A Study in Spe-
cial and Fundamental Theology (PhD diss., Catholic University of Louvain, 1973): 26–27,
appendix B3. Philip Kaufman disagreed with both Selling’s approach and conclusion.
He thinks it is too simplistic to assert that forty-two percent of the world’s episcopal
conferences clearly accepted the encyclical. Rather, he suggests that Selling’s study be
interpreted as though the conferences were an electoral college. Thus, Poland’s clear ac-
ceptance would be mitigated in the light of the Latin American Episcopal Conference
(CELAM) which is an umbrella organization of over twenty national episcopal con-
ferences. Poland’s twenty-six dioceses (and, therefore, twenty-six votes) would pale in
comparison to CELAM’s 442 dioceses/votes. Additionally, Kaufmann challenges Sell-
ing’s categorization of the United States as “uncertain” and he places the U.S. (with its
159 dioceses/votes) in the category of “critically mitigating.” Furthermore, he subsumes
Brazil (192 dioceses/votes), Colombia (45 dioceses/votes), and Mexico (66 dioceses/
votes) under the CELAM mitigation vote. Selling had placed none of these three con-
ferences in that category. Using this process, he concludes that only seventeen percent
of the world’s bishops clearly accepted Humanae Vitae. Philip S. Kaufmann, Why You
Can Disagree and Remain a Faithful Catholic, rev. ed. (New York: Crossroad, 1995), 96.
However, Kaufmann’s conclusion is questionable. He not only shuffles the conferences
differently than Selling without explanation, his method is fundamentally flawed. Epis-
copal conferences do not normally issue statements with unanimous approval. Some-
times a statement requires only a simple majority to be approved. Suggesting that be-
cause a conference has issued a statement, therefore all of its bishops were in agreement
with that statement is akin to suggesting that every voter in a particular state voted for
86 Marriage and Contraception
bruschini, one of the Vatican spokesmen who introduced the encyc-
lical to the press, specifically noted that the encyclical is not infallible,
many argued that for serious reasons a Catholic may dissent from its
teaching in good conscience—provided his conscience was properly
and honestly formed.191 This distinction between fallible and infalli-
ble teaching, along with the priority of conscience, significantly af-
fected the responses offered by various theologians around the Unit-
ed States.
For theologians around the world who had disagreed with the
conclusions of the encyclical, freedom of conscience and the right
to dissent from non-infallible magisterial teaching were used to but-
tress their more fundamental objections to the document. The case
of the American theologians led by Charles Curran, then professor
of moral theology at the Catholic University of America, is the most
well known. Having obtained a copy of the encyclical on the day
of its publication, by three o’clock in the morning he had obtained
the signatures of eighty-seven theologians from around the country
for a statement expressing dissent from the encyclical.192 Citing the
non-infallible nature of the encyclical, the statement goes on to say
that “history shows that a number of statements of similar or even
greater authoritative weight have subsequently been proven inade-
quate or even erroneous.”193 It ends with the observation: “It is com-

a presidential candidate simply because the candidate received all the state’s electoral
votes.
191. Ten episcopal conferences of the twenty that Selling studied had made this
distinction: Holland, Germany, Belgium, Austria, Canada, Scotland, Scandinavia, the
United States, and Switzerland. An English translation of extracts from Lambruschini’s
speech on the presentation of the encyclical is available in Pope and Pill, ed. Pyle, 101–5.
192. For a history of the drafting of this statement and its repercussions for those
involved, see Charles E. Curran, Robert E. Hunt, et al., Dissent In and For the Church:
Theologians and Humanae vitae (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1969), and Larry Witham,
Curran vs. Catholic University: A Study of Authority and Freedom in Conflict (Riverdale,
Md.: Edington-Rand, 1991). The statement was presented to the press on July 30, 1968,
and was subsequently published in various media outlets. The full text of the statement
is still available in numerous books on the topic of the response to the encyclical. Quo-
tations from the text in this study are taken from Charles Curran et al., “Statement by
Catholic Theologians, Washington, D.C., July 30, 1968,” in Charles Curran, and Richard
A. McCormick, eds., Readings in Moral Theology, no. 8, Dialogue about Catholic Sexual
Teaching (New York: Paulist Press, 1993), 135–37.
193. Curran, “Statement,” 135.
 Marriage and Contraception 87
mon teaching in the Church that Catholics may dissent from author-
itative, non-infallible teachings of the magisterium when sufficient
reasons for so doing exist,” and, therefore, that Catholic couples
should feel free to decide according to their own conscience the path
they would take.194
The statement offers many reasons for dissent. First, the theo-
logians believe that the ecclesiology of the encyclical is deficient. It
does not take into consideration the experience of Catholic couples
or non-Catholic Christians. Second, by rejecting the findings of the
papal commission and “the conclusions of a large part of the inter-
national Catholic theological community,” the encyclical betrays a
positivistic view of papal authority. Third, the conclusion on contra-
ception is “based on an inadequate concept of natural law.”195 Addi-
tionally, the statement includes a paragraph, which reads more as an
angry diatribe, that includes no less than six faults of the encyclical.
One of those faults is the “overemphasis on the biological aspects of
conjugal relations as ethically normative.”196 In subsequent days, the
statement was sent to theologians and teachers of theology all over
the United States. The list of signatures grew to over six hundred.197
In addition to this statement and the debate it generated in the
pages of the National Catholic Reporter, a number of theologians ini-
tially began publishing articles in theological journals expressing
their dissent.198 Generally, the articles dissenting from the teaching

194. Ibid., 136.

195. Ibid.
196. Ibid. The National Catholic Reporter served as a sounding board for scholars
on both sides of the American theologians’ statement. These statements were collect-
ed by Robert G. Hoyt in his book, The Birth Control Debate (181–97). John T. Noonan,
Albert C. Outler, and Richard A. McCormick each offered the National Catholic Report-
er analyses in support of the Curran’s statement. Austin Vaughn and Charles R. Meyer
published responses to the dissenting theologians. This was an interesting discovery for
me personally; Fr. Meyer was still on faculty at the University of St. Mary of the Lake/
Mundelein Seminary when I was student there in the early 2000s, and was still highly
regarded among the seminarians as a professor with an unmatched Thomistic intellect.
197. See Shannon, Lively Debate, 150.
198. For initial articles, see Richard A. McCormick, “Notes on Moral Theology,”
Theological Studies 29 (1968): 732–41; Bernard Häring, “Statement in the National Cath-
olic Reporter,” National Catholic Reporter (August 7, 1968), 8; and Louis Janssens, “Con-
siderations on Humanae Vitae,” Louvain Studies 2 (1969): 231–53. See also the collection
of essays edited by Charles Curran, Contraception: Authority and Dissent (New York:
88 Marriage and Contraception
of Humanae Vitae focused on two overarching themes. First, many
of the theologians argued for the right to conscientious dissent, with
good reason, from non-infallible magisterial teaching. Second, some
theologians said that the methodology employed in the encyclical
was based on a faulty view of natural law that emphasizes the physical
structure of the conjugal act to the detriment of personal and famil-
ial obligations.
The second of these themes concerns this study more directly.
Two principal proponents of this theme in particular were Charles
Curran and his teacher Bernard Häring.199 Häring praises the encycli-
cal for recognizing the “positive value of the marital act as expressive
of conjugal love” and thus dismissing the necessity for every conju-
gal act to include the specific intention to procreate.200 Nevertheless,
Häring questions the internal consistency of the encyclical’s conclu-
sion on birth control since it also accepts the positive value of the sex-
ual act for infertile couples. As he sees it, Humanae Vitae argues from
the presupposition that “biological laws . . . [are] absolutely binding
on the conscience of men.”201 But this would seem to reduce human
action to a mere natural instinct shared with animals. Like most per-
sonalists arguing for change, Häring argues that man’s reason elevates
him above natural instinct. “The absoluteness of biological laws can
apply to the human person to the extent that he knows them.”202 The
basic question is whether man is subject absolutely to biological laws
or if he is, rather, their steward.
Medicine, Häring says, is “generally based on the principle that
biological functions may be interfered with and even destroyed if it
is necessary for the well being of the person. It is evident that the fi-
nal perspective of an anthropologically grounded medicine is not
the mere restoration of the organism but the wholeness of a person
in community.”203 The Catholic solution to personal difficulties with-

Herder and Herder, 1969). The collection includes essays by Curran himself, Joseph
Noonan, Joseph A. Komonchak, Daniel C. Maguire, and Bernard Häring.
199. See Charles E. Curran, “Natural Law and Contemporary Moral Theology,” in
Contraception: Authority and Dissent, 151–75, and Bernard Häring, “The Inseparability of
the Unitive-Procreative Functions of the Marital Act,” in Contraception: Authority and
Dissent, 176–92.
200. Häring, “The Inseparability,” 177. 201. Ibid., 180.
202. Ibid. (emphasis added). 203. Ibid., 193.
 Marriage and Contraception 89
in a marriage through recourse to periodic continence already ac-
knowledges that the human person has some authority over his use
of nature. From this personalist perspective, the prohibition against
the birth control pill is incomprehensible to society. “Today man
thinks much more in terms of the good of the whole person than in
terms of absolutely sacred but often dysfunctional ‘natural laws and
rhythms.’”204
Finally, Häring argued that had the relationship between the uni-
tive and procreative aspects of the conjugal act received more atten-
tion in theology in the decades before 1968, the encyclical may have
been worded differently. In line with the majority of the theologians
on the papal commission, he states: “There is and must be a close
linkage of the two meanings, and great care must be exercised never
to separate them unduly or totally in any aspect of sexual morality.”205
Again, the pope thought that the two aspects of the conjugal act were
always inseparable.
Charles Curran carries Häring’s dispute with the encyclical’s nat-
ural law methodology further by naming it “physicalism.” Curran
writes: “Christian ethics cannot absolutize the realm of the natural as
something completely self-contained and unaffected by any relation-
ships to the evangelical or supernatural.”206 A Christian theory of nat-
ural law, he argues, must include reference to creation and sin, on the
one hand, and the incarnation and redemption of Christ, on the oth-
er. Natural law is, for the Christian, Christocentric.207 The encyclical
fails in this regard by not recognizing the corrupting influence of sin
on human reason and nature, both of which are the foundational to
any natural law theory.
Curran claims that Humanae Vitae employs a physicalist meth-
odology “which tends to identify the moral action with the phys-
ical and biological structure of the act.”208 Curran thus condemns
the methodology of the manualist tradition, especially in the area of
medical ethics, sexuality, reproduction, moral conflicts, killing, abor-
204. Ibid., 185. 205. Ibid., 188.
206. Curran, “Natural Law,” 154–55.
207. See ibid., 155. Curran no doubt learned this from Häring himself, who was his
professor. See, for example, Bernard Häring, The Law of Christ: Moral Theology for Priests
and Laity, 3 vols., trans. Edwin G. Kaiser (Paramus, N.J.: Newman Books, 1961–66).
208. Curran, “Natural Law,” 159.
90 Marriage and Contraception
tion, euthanasia, and divorce. The manualists “have tended to define
the moral action in terms of the physical structure of the act consid-
ered in itself apart from the person place the act and the communi-
ty of persons within which he lives.”209 Actions which the manualists
prohibit definitively because of their intrinsic immorality are usual-
ly grounded in the physical structure of the act. Curran suggests that
the harsh reaction to Humanae Vitae is a result of its physicalist ap-
proach. It is in response to physicalism, Curran believes, that theolo-
gians have adopted a personalist approach which “always sees the act
in terms of the person placing the act.”210 These new approaches are
not simply added to the natural law theory but affect the conclusions
arising from that theory. These new approaches “logically lead to the
conclusion that artificial contraception can be a permissible and even
necessary means for the regulation of birth within the context of re-
sponsible parenthood.”211
Thus, Curran effectively set the boundaries for the birth control
debate. Those who wanted to preserve the church’s traditional prohi-
bition against artificial contraception and to defend the conclusions
of the encyclical were thus required to rearticulate their natural law
methodology. Otherwise, they would easily be dismissed as “physi-
calist,” a word whose negative connotations were quickly assumed by
scholars. Nobody would want to be labeled a physicalist.

Conclusion
This was the highly-charged arena in which Karol Wojtyła began to
develop his own personalist approach to defending Humanae Vitae.
As we have seen, prior to the advent of nominalism in the fourteenth
century, Catholic moral theologians were primarily concerned with
the virtue and beatitude of the person. The influence of nominalism
led to a more juridical understanding of the moral life based funda-
mentally on law, obligation, and conscience. With the spiritual princi-
ples of the human person thus reduced, the manualists were left with
only the manifest physical structure of the human action and its re-

209. Ibid., 161. 210. Ibid., 172.

211. Ibid., 175.
 Marriage and Contraception 91
lationship to natural finality to determine the morality of human ac-
tion.
Although after the council most moral theologians turned almost
exclusively to the category of person and saw the good of the person
superseding natural finality, Karol Wojtyła articulated a personalist
philosophy that respected the natural law. This was part of his larg-
er ambition to reconnect theology with the subjective experience of
the human person while exploring the relationship between the cate-
gories of human nature and the human person. This was a project he
would pursue throughout his pontificate. As we move forward, keep
in mind that in this study we are focusing on Theology of the Body and,
specifically, on Wojtyła’s notion of the spousal meaning of the body
as a particularly poignant contribution to that project.
 3

The Moral Theology of

Karol Wojtyła

Born in 1920 in Wadowice, Poland, Karol Wojtyła lived through some

of the worst horrors not only in the history of his native land but in
the history of the world. In the course of his youth, Poland fell, first,
under Nazi occupation during World War II, and later, under the con-
trol of the Soviet Communist regime. Wojtyła’s young life was filled
with a depth of experience, both rich and tragic. His innate ability to
articulate those experiences in the arts—poetry, prose, and theater—
proved a saving grace for both him and his friends. While the pur-
pose of this chapter is not to provide a historical narrative of Wojtyła’s
life, these early experiences profoundly affected the man who would
be Pope John Paul II.1 He became a man dedicated to the dignity of
1. This work has already been done. George Weigel has written what many con-
sider to be the definitive biography of Pope John Paul II. See Weigel, Witness to Hope.
Weigel’s follow-up effort should not be missed: The End and the Beginning: Pope John
Paul II—The Victory of Freedom, the Last Years, the Legacy (New York: Image, 2011). An-
other important biography of note was written by Wojtyła’s childhood friend and sem-
inary classmate. It provides several personal accounts known to the biographer alone.
Its only weakness is that it was written shortly after Wojtyła’s election to the papacy.
See Mieczyslaw Malinksi, Pope John Paul II: The Life of Karol Wojtyła, trans. P. S. Falla
(New York: Seabury Press, 1979). Several books have been written which are less bi-
ographical and more concerned with the development of Wojtyła’s thought. This chap-
ter is indebted, in part, to the work of these scholars. See Rocco Buttiglione, Karol: The

92
 The Moral Theology of Karol Wojtyła 93
the human person, having personally witnessed atrocities committed
against that dignity.
Consequently, Wojtyła’s interest in love and marriage, his defense
of Humanae Vitae, and his explication of the spousal meaning of the
body in the Theology of the Body catecheses, while concrete matters,
are not isolated elements of his thought. They are practical applica-
tions of his general moral theory. Moreover, his moral theory bears
the influence of the thought of Thomas Aquinas. Karol Wojtyła was
just as concerned as other theologians, philosophers, and pastors
with the experience of human persons in the context of love and mar-
riage, but he was not willing to abandon magisterial teaching or meta-
physical ontology in favor of those experiences. He was unwilling to
disconnect the philosophical category of the human person from the
category of human nature. On the contrary, though he spent much
of his life before his pontifical election focusing on the philosophical
categories of experience and the human person, he never abandoned
ontology—specifically, Thomistic ontology. He cannot be accused of
subjectivism however much he focuses on subjective experience.
This chapter outlines the development of Wojtyła’s thought from
his first studies of Thomism to his encounter with phenomenology
of Max Scheler and his final works on philosophy and ethics before
his election to the papacy. What this survey will show is that Wo-
jtyła consistently attempts to connect ontology and phenomenology.
Though his emphasis shifts to one or the other at various moments in
his career, he abandons neither.

Thought of the Man Who Became Pope John Paul II, trans. Paolo Guietti and Francesca
Murphy (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1997); Kenneth L. Schmitz, At the Center of
the Human Drama: The Philosophical Anthropology of Karol Wojtyła/Pope John Paul II
(Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1993); Jarosław Kupczak,
OP, Destined for Liberty: The Human Person in the Philosophy of Karol Wojtyła/John Paul
II (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2000); and, George
Hunston Williams, The Mind of John Paul II: Origins of His Thought and Action (New
York: Seabury Press, 1981).
94 The Moral Theology of Karol Wojtyła

Karol Wojtyła’s Early Studies

Experience and Theology: Wojtyła Studies
St. John of the Cross
The first chapter of this study recounted briefly the trends in twenti-
eth-century Thomism, which, in different ways, attempted to respond
to the Enlightenment and modernity. Wojtyła’s first encounter with
Thomism occurred during his years in the underground seminary in
Cracow led by Cardinal Adam Sapieha. In September 1942, he was as-
signed to read Kazimierz Wais’s book on metaphysics, Ontologia czy-
li metafizyka (Ontology and Metaphysics).2 Wais’s text was influenced
by the transcendental Thomism of Louvain’s Désiré Mercier, which
attempted to place Thomas’s thought in relation to that of Immanuel
Kant.3 It was unlike anything Wojtyła had read before and it initial-
ly presented a significant challenge.4 Wojtyła’s background in the hu-
manities had not prepared him to handle the difficult scholastic the-
ses he was expected to learn. Nevertheless, he would later admit that
the metaphysics he learned in that text gave confirmation to what he
had previously only known intuitively by experience.5
The young Wojtyła was ordained a priest on November 1, 1946,
and was immediately sent to the Angelicum in Rome for doctoral stud-
ies. While there, he continued to develop his conviction that Thomis-
tic philosophical and theological categories can aid in both confirming
and articulating experience. The topic for his doctoral dissertation was
the question of faith according to John of the Cross.6 His director was

2. Kazimierz Wais, Ontologia czyli metafizyka ogólna (Lwów: Biblioteka Religijna,

1926).
3. See Williams, The Mind of John Paul II, 87; Buttiglione, Karol Wojtyła, 31; Weigel,
Witness to Hope, 69–71.
4. Malinski, Pope John Paul II, 47.
5. John Paul II and André Frossard, Be Not Afraid! Pope John Paul II Speaks Out on
His Life, His Beliefs, and His Inspiring Vision for Humanity, trans. J. R. Foster (New York:
St. Martin’s Press, 1984), 17.
6. Karol Wojtyła, Doctrina de fide apud S. Joannem a Cruce (STD diss., Pontifical
University of St. Thomas Aquinas, 1948); English translation: Karol Wojtyła, Faith Ac-
cording to Saint John of the Cross, trans. Jordan Aumann, OP (San Francisco, Calif.: Igna-
tius Press, 1981). Wojtyła had been introduced to the Carmelite mystics long before en-
tering the seminary by Jan Tyranowski, a layman who eventually led the youth group of
young Wojtyła’s parish (see Weigel, Witness to Hope, 58–62). But it was Fr. Ignacy Róży-
cki, a professor of Sapieha’s underground seminary, who first suggested to Wojtyła not
 The Moral Theology of Karol Wojtyła 95
Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, OP, who was himself an expert on John.7
Wojtyła’s dissertation follows closely not only upon Garrigou-La-
grange’s work but also upon that of two other authors who were con-
cerned with the differences between John of the Cross and the scho-
lastics on the nature of faith: Jane Baruzi and Michel Labourdette, OP.
Whereas scholasticism viewed faith as a virtue residing in the intellect,
John’s emphasis on the dark night of faith, in which the intellect can
say nothing about God, placed more emphasis on the experience of
God. The difference here is that between dogmatic faith (or intellectu-
al propositions about God) and mystical faith (the experience of God).
In his dissertation, Wojtyła had hoped to show that mystical faith
and dogmatic or intellectual faith were not opposing concepts but
different aspects of a single virtue. In the introduction to the disserta-
tion, he writes:
The doctrine we shall study is a testimony of experience. It is expressed in
scholastico-mystical language, using words and concepts well known in Scho-
lastic theology, but its primary value and significance is a witness of personal
experience. It is there, in fact, that we can discover the living and dynamic re-
ality of the virtue of faith, its activity in the human intellect, its corollaries and
the effects on the movement of the soul toward union with God. For that rea-
son we take the experiential witness of St. John of the Cross as the material for
our investigation. It will be our task to discover the concept of faith that can be
gleaned from that witness and the theological precisions that are latent in it.8

Later in the same introduction, he writes: “We should emphasize that

the texts not only expound a theology based on experience, but to a
great extent they do so in a descriptive manner. The description is of-
ten couched in Scholastic terminology, but the experience that is de-
scribed will often give a different nuance or a new meaning to that
technical terminology.” 9
Faith according to St. John of the Cross is divided into two parts.
The first and more substantial part analyzes the passages concerning
only that he was competent to write a doctoral dissertation but that it should be on the
subject of faith according to John of the Cross (see Malinski, Pope John Paul II, 88–89).
7. Garrigou-Lagrange had published several books and articles on the relationship
between faith and experience, and one book, in particular, on John of the Cross’s under-
standing of the relationship between faith and experience. For a brief summary of these
works and a bibliography, see Williams, The Mind of John Paul II, 103–4.
8. Wojtyła, Faith according to St. John of the Cross, 23.
9. Ibid., 25.
96 The Moral Theology of Karol Wojtyła
faith and love in John’s four major works (The Ascent of Mount Car-
mel, The Dark Night of the Soul, The Spiritual Canticle, and The Living
Flame of Love), while the second offers a synthesis of his conclusions
on the nature of faith in these works. The dissertation also includes a
very brief appendix, which attempts to correlate John of the Cross’s
understanding of faith with that of Thomas Aquinas.
According to Wojtyła, faith for John of the Cross is itself an “es-
sential likeness” to God, which by the power of an “excessive light”
is able to create a proportion between man’s intellect and God so
that man can be united to God.10 Our union with God exists both
ontologically and psychologically, he says. Ontologically, the virtue
of faith alters the natural operation of the intellect. Following the
thought of Aquinas, Wojtyła notes that the intellect naturally attains
knowledge through the senses and the formation of intentional spe-
cies. There is, he says, an “incapacity of the intellect to attain such
knowledge of the divine object by means of an intentional species.”11
God cannot be known through sense impressions, and the intellect
cannot contain the divine as an object of knowledge.
Faith therefore provides an ontological transcendence in which
the intellect is proportioned so as to be capable of uniting with
God.12 Faith, however, is not union with God, not even intellectual-
ly. Faith involves “no clear apprehension of the divine essence in the
intentional order, no ‘substance as understood.’”13 Does John of the
Cross believe that the intellect is therefore frustrated by the virtue of
faith? No, Wojtyła responds:
The senses fail to form a species because that which is given in revelation is
totally inaccessible to the senses. As a result, the agent intellect lacks mate-
rial or sense species on which it can focus, so that the revealed truths seem
doomed to remain only words or meaningless names of an unknown object.
But the virtue of faith is infused into the intellect, and with faith the intellect
receives the excessive light by which it is attracted to the revealed truths and
united with them. This was explained in chapter 3, book II of The Ascent.14

This ascent to revealed truths, however, cannot provide a clear and

distinct object to the intellect principally because the intellect re-
10. See ibid., 238–39, 265. 11. See ibid., 242.
12. See ibid., 245. 13. Ibid., 241.
14. Ibid., 245.
 The Moral Theology of Karol Wojtyła 97
mains limited, even with the virtue of faith, by its natural tendency
toward conceptual knowledge. So this adherence is always somewhat
obscure and dependent on a more general knowledge since “adher-
ence to particular and clear truths introduces a natural element of
knowledge that is psychologically satisfying, but precisely because
of that, it lacks the required proportion to the substance of revealed
truths [which is the divine essence].”15
In the brief appendix, Wojtyła collects references from Aquinas’s
works to illustrate his theory that both John of the Cross and Thom-
as had a similar understanding of faith. Faith is a means of union for
Aquinas, not directly, but through adhering to revealed truths.16 Wo-
jtyła also observes that faith, for Aquinas, likewise involves an element
of purgation.17 However, where John of the Cross places the complete
intellectual purification from intentional species in the realm of the
faith as commanded by charity, Aquinas “with greater theological pre-
cision” identifies this task with the gift of understanding.18
Wojtyła’s engagement with John’s texts shows his belief that
union with God is more than an intellectual enterprise of theologi-
cal expertise; it is a dynamic process. He writes, “all the elements that
contribute to union will be discovered, not through an abstract and
theoretical consideration, but as actuated in the unifying process it-
self.”19 Wojtyła elucidates, and seems to agree with, John’s preference
for love over faith which draws the person into a real ontological and
psychological union with God.20 We may also note Wojtyła’s obser-
vation that for John of the Cross, God is objective but not objectiv-
izable to the intellect, which naturally lends itself to the personalis-
tic norm that will eventually hold pride of place in Wojtyła’s thought.
Like the person of God, no human person can ever be a mere object
of our actions but must be understood in relationship.21
15. Ibid., 253.
16. See ibid., 269–71. See also ST II-II, q. 1, a. 2 and ad 2; De Veritate, q. 14, a, 8, ad 5;
q. 14, a. 12; In III Librum Sententiarum, dist. 24, a. 1, q. 2, ads. 1 and 2; In VI Metaphysica,
8 and ad 3.
17. See Wojtyła, Faith according to St. John of the Cross, 271. See also ST II-II, q. 7, a.
2 and ad 2.
18. See Wojtyła, Faith according to St. John of the Cross, 272. See also ST II-II, q. 8, a. 7.
19. Wojtyła, Faith according to St. John of the Cross, 110.
20. For example, see ibid., 99.
21. This is the insight of Rocco Buttiglione (Karol Wojtyła, 52).
98 The Moral Theology of Karol Wojtyła

Experience and Philosophy: Wojtyła

Studies Max Scheler
Wojtyła furthered his interest in experience and the person in his
habilitation thesis, An Evaluation of the Possibility of Constructing a
Christian Ethics on the Basis of the System of Max Scheler, which ad-
dresses Scheler’s work Der Formalismus in der Ethik und die material
Wertethik.22 Scheler was primarily responding to Immanuel Kant’s
ethical system, which was founded upon a pure rationalism and the
notion of duty. With his assertion that the person cannot perceive
the foundation behind reality (the noumena) but only phenomena
passing through a priori categories in the mind, Kant effectively dis-
allowed for any experience of reality apart from these rational cate-
gories. To put it simply, the philosophical school of phenomenology
sought to reconnect experience with access to the world beyond the
mind.23 The fact that he opposed Kant and emphasized the mind’s
access to reality made Scheler a natural candidate for Catholic moral
theologians struggling to respond to Kant’s system.24
In the opening section of the thesis, Wojtyła is emphatic that
Scheler’s system is not Christian even though he at times employs

22. Karol Wojtyła, Ocena możliwości zbudowania etyki chrześcijańskiej przy założe-
niach systemu Maksa Schelera (Lublin: Towarzystwo Naukowe KUL, 1959). There is no
English translation of this work available. In this study, I will be using the Spanish trans-
lation: Karol Wojtyła, Max Scheler y la etica cristiana (Madrid: Biblioteca de Autores
Cristianos, 1982). It is not entirely clear why Wojtyła chose Scheler as the subject of his
habilitation thesis. It was most likely Fr. Ignacy Różycki, the same professor who had
recommended John of the Cross to Wojtyła, who suggested Scheler. Różycki was him-
self influenced by Roman Ingarden, who like Scheler, was a student of Edmund Husserl.
Through Ingarden, Rozycki would have been aware of the attractiveness of Scheler’s
philosophy for Catholic moral theologians (see Williams, The Mind of John Paul II, 115,
124). Wojtyła was not entirely unfamiliar with Scheler, however. He had heard at least
one lecture by Max Scheler in 1938, his first year at the Jagiellonian University; see Tad
Szulc, Pope John Paul II: The Biography (New York: Scribner, 1995), 88. The principal
work of Scheler is Der Formalismus in der Ethik und die materiale Wertethik (Bern: Fran-
ke Verlag, 1966); English translation: Max Scheler, Formalism in Ethics and Non-Formal
Ethics of Values, trans. Manfred S. Frings and Roger L. Funk (Evanston, Ill.: Northwest-
ern University Press, 1973).
23. See Williams, The Mind of John Paul II, 116, for a brief description of the agenda
of phenomenology.
24. See Buttiglione, Karol Wojtyła, 55–57; William, The Mind of John Paul II, 124.
 The Moral Theology of Karol Wojtyła 99
New Testament texts. Interestingly, he says the role of the Catho-
lic moralist is to present revealed truths using philosophy. Wojtyła
writes that Scheler’s is “a philosophical system, constructed accord-
ing to the premises of phenomenology and axiology, in order to de-
scribe and explain all moral facts and ethical problems.”25 Scheler is
not interested in defending the norms of Christian morality. Wojtyła,
on the other hand, wanted to know whether Scheler’s system could
be used by a Christian philosopher for that purpose. This is the goal
of his habilitation thesis.26
As Wojtyła sees it, the New Testament presumes that the person
is the cause of his actions.27 Moreover, actions have a direct effect on
the person’s character. Good actions make man good, bad actions
make him bad.28 In Wojtyła’s reading, Scheler does not and cannot
acknowledge this fact—an assertion in which we see a hint of Aqui-
nas’s moral theory at work in Wojtyła.
Nevertheless Wojtyła thinks that Scheler, by grounding his ethi-
cal system upon experience, which he thinks is accessible to the fac-
ulties of the human person, was attempting to situate ethics within
an objective realm without the rigor of Kant’s formalism. “For Schel-
er, the subject recognizes value in the experience of objects. What
we have here is a materialist ethics of values.”29 In the Formalismus,
Scheler identifies two types of values: material values and ethical val-
ues. Jarosław Kupczak summarizes the difference: “Values that stand
as goals for intentional acts of a person are material values. Right and
wrong are ethical values.”30
Interestingly, as Kupczak understands him, it seems Scheler did
not believe that ethical values should be chosen for their own sake.
Scheler insisted that only material values could be actively chosen.
Ethical values can only be experienced and even then, only acciden-
tally.31 Ethical values are always experienced under the rubric of love
or hate, with varying intensity.32 For Wojtyła, this understanding of
ethical value is the direct result of Scheler’s emotionalist reaction

25. Wojtyła, Max Scheler, 40 (author’s translation).

26. See ibid. 27. See ibid., 109.
28. See ibid. 29. Buttiglione, Karol Wojtyła, 55.
30. Kupczak, Destined for Liberty, 11. 31. Ibid.
32. See ibid.; Williams, The Mind of John Paul II, 126.
100 The Moral Theology of Karol Wojtyła
to Kant’s ethics of duty.33 Since value is only experienced emotive-
ly, the desire for an ethical value is, for Scheler, the desire “to experi-
ence one’s own ethical righteousness.”34 Scheler refers to this as moral
“pharisaism” and he rejects it.35 This presented somewhat of a para-
dox since Scheler set out to present an ethical system for the moral
perfection of the person.
Wojtyła isolates the problem of the paradox in Scheler’s inabili-
ty to explain human causality. In the Thomistic system, the intellect
presents goods to the will for selection.36 But Scheler’s system re-
duces the role of the intellect by strongly emphasizing the role of the
emotions and the will, which together discern value. Thus, intellec-
tual representation has no role to play in human action for Scheler.37
As Wojtyła reads him, since Scheler identifies love as an ethical
value, it cannot be part of any causal tendency in the person, and,
therefore, there is no way left to inform the will in human choice.
Wojtyła writes: “An intentional emotional feeling of value is a sort
of knowledge that originates in the depth of the person’s emotional
life. The source of this knowledge is love, in which the subject expe-
riences values in a purely emotional way. Precisely for this reason, ac-
cording to Scheler’s teaching, love has absolutely nothing in common
with any element of tendency.”38 This has several ramifications in Wo-
jtyła’s view. “As a result of this understanding, any element of choice
or decision disappears from Scheler’s account of human action. Since
the will’s participation in the acts of willing is totally passive, the hu-
man person cannot be a cause of his own actions. . . . One does not
know how the person can become morally right or wrong.”39
Furthermore, since emotion alone discerns value, Scheler al-
lows the conscience no role in ethical action. Indeed, the role of con-
33. See Wojtyła, Max Scheler, 117–19. 34. Kupczak, Destined for Liberty, 11.
35. See Wojtyła, Max Scheler, 117–19.
36. While there are disagreements between Thomists on the interpretation of mi-
nor points in Aquinas’s theory of action, all are agreed on this point. For a detailed anal-
ysis on action according to Aquinas, see Lawrence Dewan, OP, “St. Thomas and Moral
Taxonomy,” in Wisdom, Law, and Virtue: Essays in Thomistic Ethics (New York: Fordham
University Press, 2008), 444–77; Joseph Pilsner, The Specification of Human Actions in
St. Thomas Aquinas (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006); Westberg, Right Prac-
tical Reason.
37. See Wojtyła, Max Scheler, 121–22. 38. See ibid., 123–24.
39. Kupczak, Destined for Liberty, 13.
 The Moral Theology of Karol Wojtyła 101
science is nothing more than the guardian of a person’s ethical ideal.40
The point is summarized by Kupczak: “The individual will choose
his own moral goods from the moral values he encounters, making
them part of his own ethical ideal and moral ethos. The moral values
that the person chooses as his own are summarized in the conscience.
Therefore, the conscience guards and preserves the moral identi-
ty of the person and ethical ideal.”41 This is in stark contrast to the
New Testament understanding of conscience which is presented as
an “inner conviction about the moral goodness or badness of a spe-
cific deed.”42 For Christians, the judgment of conscience is a subjec-
tive norm for the morality of human action.43 It is this subjective con-
viction concerning the goodness or badness of an action that obliges
the person to perform or to avoid the action, as the case may be. Thus
“the conscience as a conviction shows us the practical character of
moral values; the conscience as an obligation shows directly the caus-
al relation of the person in respect to the good and the bad.”44
Such is the legacy that Wojtyła sees in Scheler’s reaction to Kant’s
theory of moral obligation. As Wojtyła writes: “Scheler attempts to
suppress obligation from his ethical system because he wants to sup-
press any source of negativism from ethics.”45 Since Scheler reduced
causality to a passive willing of material value, he was unable to as-
cribe a positive role to obligation. For Scheler, the human person is
nothing more than one who experiences values, and since values in-
dicate no tendency toward human fulfillment, the Christian notion
of obligation as a pedagogical means toward human perfection is
simply absent. Wojtyła notes that “an obligation always manifests it-
self when we experience the nonexistence of a specific positive value
that ‘should be,’ or the existence of a negative value that ‘should not
be’ in our experience.”46 But this description of positive values that
“should be” or negative values that “should not be” is simply not pos-
sible without a robust conception of the human person dependent
on something more than emotion and feeling.

40. See Wojtyła, Max Scheler, 132–33.

41. Kupczak, Destined for Liberty, 14.
42. Wojtyła, Max Scheler, 136 (author’s translation).
43. See ibid., 136–37. 44. Ibid., 138 (author’s translation).
45. Ibid., 139 (author’s translation). 46. Ibid., 144 (author’s translation).
102 The Moral Theology of Karol Wojtyła
Wojtyła offers two theses in the conclusion of his study of Schel-
er. The first is: “The ethical system of Max Scheler is fundamentally
inadequate for the scientific formulation of the Christian ethic.”47 Re-
vealed Christian ethics identify the human person as the source of his
own actions, and, moreover, Wojtyła insists that persons actually ex-
perience themselves as the agents of their actions, both the good and
the bad.48
Nevertheless, while Scheler’s phenomenology may be inadequate
to justify and defend Christian ethics, it may still serve as “an aid in a
scientific study of the Christian ethic. Concretely, it facilitates for us
the analysis of the ethical facts in the phenomenological and experi-
ential plane.”49 Phenomenology, Wojtyła argues, allows us to explore
the dynamism of experiencing values and how they mold the human
person. Mary Shivanandan has isolated Wojtyła’s point: “Through
the phenomenological experience we are able to discover how moral
good and bad shape the experience of the person but we cannot de-
fine through the phenomenological method what makes an act of the
person morally good or bad.”50
In the closing pages of his thesis, Wojtyła asserts that it is the task
of ontology and metaphysics to identify objectively what makes an
act good or bad “in the light of an objective principle.”51 Though phe-
nomenology has a vital role in identifying the values present in a giv-
en experience, it is secondary to ontology’s role, which is to discover
the objective moral value of human actions.52 Thus, at the end of his
first major study of phenomenology, Wojtyła shows himself favorable
to its method but keenly aware of its limitations. He is fully aware of
the need for ontology and metaphysics and he will reaffirm this at the
very end of his life in his last published work.53 As with his doctoral
47. Ibid., 206 (author’s translation).
48. See ibid., 206–8. Wojtyła would explain the human person’s experience of his
own action further in The Acting Person.
49. Wojtyła, Max Scheler, 214 (author’s translation).
50. Mary Shivanandan, Crossing the Threshold of Love: A New Vision of Marriage in
the Light of John Paul II’s Anthropology (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of
America Press, 1999), 27.
51. Wojtyła, Max Scheler, 217 (author’s translation).
52. See ibid., 218.
53. John Paul II, Memory and Identity: Conversation at the Dawn of a Millenium
(New York: Rizzoli, 2005), 12.
 The Moral Theology of Karol Wojtyła 103
dissertation on John of the Cross, he reveals an interest in the theo-
logical and philosophical system of Thomas Aquinas and in supple-
menting it with a system more concerned with experience.

Wojtyła’s Early Teachings

The Lublin Lectures: The Relationship
of Phenomenology and Ontology
By the fall of 1953, Wojtyła had completed the thesis and all require-
ments for receiving the university degree of docent. The Communist
regime, however, began to forbid the granting of degrees by the Jagi-
ellonian University in Cracow in early 1954, and months later it dis-
banded the faculty.54 This formality notwithstanding, Wojtyła went
on to teach at the Catholic University of Lublin. As we will see, in
the early lectures and articles of this time, Wojtyła further clarifies his
concerns about phenomenology, the use of its method, and the need
for ontology in ethics.
Karol Wojtyła began teaching at the Catholic University of Lu-
blin in the fall semester of 1954. That academic year he delivered the
first of his Lublin lectures, “Ethical Act and Ethical Experience.” The
following year, he delivered another lecture entitled “Good and Val-
ue.” Finally, in the 1956–57 academic year, he turned his attention to
“The Problem of Norm and Happiness.”55 At the time, the universi-
ty’s department of philosophy was developing a new school of Thom-
ism under the Dominican Mieczysław Albert Krapiec. Jarosław Kup-
czak nicely summarizes the principles of this new school of “Lublin
Thomism”: “First, all [the contributors to Lublin Thomism] were
convinced that metaphysics had primacy of place in the realm of phi-
losophy. Second, they emphasized the importance of anthropologi-
cal reflection. Third, they strongly opposed irrational trends in con-

54. See Kupczak, Destined for Liberty, 23.

55. Though they bear the name “lectures,” these lectures were more akin to courses.
Thus the first lecture is fifty-three pages of published text. These three lectures, or cours-
es, by Wojtyła were later published. See Karol Wojtyła, Wykłady lubelskie (Lublin: Wy-
dawnictwo Towarzystwa Naukowego Katolickiego Uniwersytetu Lubelskiego, 1986). A
German translation is available: Erizehung zur Liebe (Munchen: Wilhelm Heyne Ver-
lag, 1981).
104 The Moral Theology of Karol Wojtyła
temporary philosophy. And fourth, they all felt a need for historical
analysis of philosophical problems.”56 Wojtyła would find a sounding
board in this school in which he could continue the development of
his own vision of the human person, action, and morality.57 It should
be noted that as early as 1949, Wojtyła was already publishing articles
in two Catholic journals: Tygodnik Pwoszechny and Znak.58 He was
not entirely unknown when he arrived at the university.
The first year’s lecture, “Ethical Act and Experience,” developed
many of the same themes that Wojtyła had already established in
his dissertation thesis. In the first part of the lecture, he summariz-
es Scheler’s philosophy of ethics and then offers a critique similar to
that found in his habilitation thesis. He goes further in the lecture,
however, by incorporating modern psychology’s empirical observa-
tion that human persons experience their own volition (hence we
use words, “I want,” “I should,” or “I must”).59 Wojtyła believed that
Scheler’s system denies even the possibility of experiencing efficacy
of causing one’s actions, and he was somewhat stunned by that con-
clusion. Wojtyła argues, every person experiences himself or herself
to be engaging the will in human action. This experience seems to be
ignored by Scheler in what, according to Wojtyła, is an overly emo-
tionalistic view of the human person.60 This failure to recognize hu-
man causality is precisely why Scheler does not and is not able to ex-
plain what makes an act good or bad. Wojtyła is opposed to any ethic
that is based on experience, subjectivity, or value.
In the conclusion of his first lecture at Lublin, Wojtyła notes the
similarities between Aquinas’s approach to the will and the approach
found in contemporary psychology. Granted, there are differences in

56. Kupczak, Destined for Liberty, 28.

57. Kenneth Schmitz has suggested that Wojtyła’s habilitation thesis and his Lub-
lin lectures are important hermeneutical keys to understanding Wojtyła’s later work. He
expresses disappointment at their dismissal by most scholars of John Paul’s work, es-
pecially in the English speaking world. Yet, this dismissal by English-speaking scholars
is likely due to the fact that neither has been published in English. See Schmitz, At the
Center, 41.
58. Most of these articles have been collected and translated into French. See Karol
Wojtyła, En esprit et en vérité: Recueilde texts 1949–1978, trans. Gwendoline Jarczyk (Par-
is: Le Centurion, 1978).
59. See Karol Wojtyła, Wykłady, 35.
60. Ibid., 32.
 The Moral Theology of Karol Wojtyła 105
suppositions between the two. Contemporary psychology studies the
act of the will phenomenologically and empirically as an experiential
living experience.61 Thomas, on the other hand, is much more meta-
physical when he discusses the will and human action.62 He contin-
ues by outlining Aquinas’s understanding of the interplay between
reason and will in human action.63 Specifically, while the will is at-
tracted to the good as to its exercise (quod exercitium), it still requires
the representations of specific goods by the intellect so as to be speci-
fied by those goods (quod specificationem).64
Wojtyła is quick to assert that Aquinas is not giving reason pow-
er over the will, as Kant had done. For Thomas, the command of rea-
son alone would not be enough since the will is what rouses the rea-
son to act (quod exercitium). The reason presents various goods to the
will (as reason apprehends those goods). This, according to Wojtyła,
is what permits the will to realize its own natural inclination to the
good.65 It is this relationship between reason and will that Wojtyła
identifies as the proof that the human person always seeks ethical val-
ues, that is to say ethical fulfillment, in each human action, contrary
to what Scheler thought.

Development from the

Lublin Lectures to Love and
Responsibility
From the time he began delivering his lectures in Lublin until he pub-
lished Love and Responsibility in 1960, Wojtyła produced several arti-
cles that advance the project begun in the habilitation thesis and the
Lublin lectures.66 In all but one of these articles, Wojtyła summariz-

61. Ibid., 36. 62. Ibid.

63. See ibid., 64–65.
64. Wojtyła cites ST I-II, q. 1 and q. 10; q. 9, a. 3, ad 3 and a. 5.
65. Wojtyła, Wykłady, 66 (trans. McDonald).
66. These articles have been translated into English in Karol Wojtyła, Person and
Community: Selected Essays, trans. Teresa Sandok (New York: Peter Lang, 1993). The fol-
lowing are the articles that I am concerned with here (all page numbers within this foot-
note refer to Person and Community). “The Problem of the Will in the Analysis of the
Ethical Act,” 3–22; “The Problem of the Separation of Experience from Act in Ethics
in the Philosophy of Immanuel Kant and Max Scheler,” 23–44; “In Search of the Basis
of Perfectionism in Ethics,” 45–56; “On the Directive or Subservient Role of Reason in
106 The Moral Theology of Karol Wojtyła
es his view of Scheler’s philosophical system of an ethics based on val-
ue.67 In each of these articles, Scheler’s thought is presented in contra-
diction to Immanuel Kant’s. Generally, he contrasts Immanuel Kant
with Scheler, but at least once Scheler is presented on his own terms.68
Only once does Wojtyła use the language of contemporary psycholo-
gy to criticize Kant and Scheler, and that was in the first article pub-
lished after he began his professorship at Lublin.69 It reads as a sum-
mary of Wojtyła’s first Lublin lecture, “Ethical Act and Experience.”
But in every one of these early articles following his habilitation thesis,
Wojtyła judges Scheler’s, Kant’s, and, in one place, David Hume’s var-
ious philosophies of ethics to be inadequate in the face of Aristotle’s,
and especially Aquinas’s, philosophy of being.70
In these articles, Wojtyła identifies in Kant’s system a separation be-
tween experience and reality in his famous phenomena-noumena dis-
tinction. Wojtyła writes: “Kant believes that empirical knowledge pro-
vides us with only a chaos of impressions, whereas it gives us no basis
for such concepts as substance or cause. These are, in Kant’s opinion,
categories that derive solely from reason, and so they are completely
a priori.”71 Anything we experience in human action is subject to this
distinction for Kant, and thus in our empirical experience “we find no
trace of . . . free will in the human being.”72 For Kant, the a priori cate-

Ethics in the Philosophy of Thomas Aquinas, David Hume, and Immanuel Kant,” 57–
72; “On the Metaphysical and Phenomenological Basis of the Moral Norm in the Phi-
losophy of Thomas Aquinas and Max Scheler,” 73–94; “Human Nature as the Basis of
Ethical Formation,” 95–99.
67. See Wojtyła, “The Problem of the Will,” 8–11; “The Problem of the Separation,”
32–39; “In Search of the Basis,” 51–54; “On the Metaphysical and Phenomenological Ba-
sis,” 81–87.
68. See Wojtyła, “The Problem of the Will,” 7–8; “The Problem of the Separation,”
25–32; “In Search of the Basis,” 49–51; “On the Directive or Subservient Role of Rea-
son,” 67–69.
69. See Wojtyła, “The Problem of the Will,” 4–7, 12.
70. See Wojtyła, “The Problem of the Will,” 14–21; “The Problem of the Separa-
tion,” 24, 40–43; “In Search of the Basis,” 46–49, 53–55; “On the Directive or Subservi-
ent Role of Reason,” 58–61, 69–70; “On the Metaphysical and Phenomenological Basis,”
74–81, 88–93. The sixth article, “Human Nature as the Basis of Ethical Formation” (94–
99), is a short summation of a lecture Wojtyła delivered in February 1959 and is con-
cerned mostly with Aquinas. It does not mention Scheler or Kant.
71. Wojtyła, “The Problem of the Separation,” 26.
72. Ibid.
 The Moral Theology of Karol Wojtyła 107
gories of theoretical reason are simply given and through them reason
organizes all empirical data. Practical reason, too, has an a priori catego-
ry—duty to law.73
Wojtyła isolates two problems in Kant’s system. The first is that
he “removed the very essence of ethical life from the realm of per-
sonal experience and transferred it to the noumenal, trans-empirical
sphere.”74 Second, “he crystallized the whole ethical experience of
the personal subject into a single psychological element: the feeling
of respect for the law.”75
Wojtyła’s criticism of Scheler is now familiar. Scheler thought he
was rejecting only Kant’s exaltation of moral duty and denigration of
experience. In fact, by emphasizing value as emotion, Wojtyła thinks
“he did not manage effectively to extricate himself from Kant’s as-
sumptions, which entails the divorce of experience from the norm
and the reduction of the whole of ethics to logic and psychology.”76
For Scheler, “ethical value manifests itself in the background, and the
very act, the very realization, in which (if we go by experience) this
value actually arises remains outside this experience of ethical val-
ue.”77 Wojtyła wonders outright whether there are, in fact, “remnants
of Kantian noumenalism in his [Scheler’s] ethics.”78
Wojtyła employs the ethics of Aristotle, and moreover of Thom-
as, to refute the fallacies of Kant and Scheler. He claims numerous
times that Aristotle’s and Aquinas’s view of human action is both dy-
namic and correct. He even says that “their view of the ethical act is
the only proper and adequate description of ethical experience.”79 Just
as in his lectures in Lublin, Wojtyła explains again the will’s dual mo-
tion (quod exercitium and quod specificationem) in relationship to rea-
son and the emotions in Thomas’s work.80
The importance of the Aristotelian-Thomistic ontological distinc-
tion between act and potency cannot be underestimated in Wojtyła’s
reading of the Angelic Doctor. Wojtyła observes: “A conscious hu-

73. See ibid., 27. 74. Ibid., 31.

75. Ibid. 76. Ibid., 42.
77. Ibid. 78. Ibid.
79. Wojtyła, “The Problem of the Separation,” 43 (emphasis added). Cf. ibid., 24;
“The Problem of the Will,” 16.
80. See Wojtyła, “The Problem of the Will,” 14; “In Search of the Basis,” 47.
108 The Moral Theology of Karol Wojtyła
man act is for St. Thomas not merely a stage upon which ethical expe-
rience is enacted. It is itself an ethical experience because it is an act
of the will. An act of the will is for St. Thomas a passage from poten-
cy, since the will is a faculty (potentia) of the soul.”81 It is this dyna-
mism in the human person—the movement from potency to act—
that Wojtyła identifies as the purpose of human action.82 This is why
Wojtyła also insists, contrary to Scheler, that “human fulfillment is
brought about by moral perfection.”83
A series of short articles on “Elementary Ethics” published in the
weekly Catholic journal, Tygodnik Powszechny, represent another step
in Karol Wojtyła’s intellectual project, which sought to reconcile on-
tology and phenomenology.84 For example, in the second article of
the series, “The Problem of Scientific Ethics,” Wojtyła notes that it is
only by “an honest reflection on the human being and on his final-
ity” that a true scientific ethic, based on an authentic knowledge of
good and evil, can be achieved.85 Wojtyła goes on to say that revealed
Christian principles do not contradict reason but must, nonetheless,
be given a “character of science” by incorporating within them “all
that human thought has gained or is gaining in the domain of eth-
ics.”86 Wojtyła singles out Aquinas’s incorporation of Aristotle as a
particularly fine example of such a project.87
Wojtyła maintains the observation from his habilitation thesis
that ethics is fundamentally a system of norms.88 Still, this system of
norms must be grounded in reality. In fact, the whole system must
stem from the basic principle, “in all your activity be in accord with
objective reality.”89
This reality is made up, on the one hand, of the acting subject endowed with
a rational nature, and on the other hand, it is made up of the whole series of
objective beings which this subject encounters in his activity, each one of

81. Wojtyła, “The Problem of the Will,” 20.

82. Wojtyła will clarify this point in The Acting Person.
83. Wojtyła, “In Search of the Basis,” 47.
84. These articles were collected and published in 1979. See Karol Wojtyła, Aby
Chrystus się nami posługiwał (Cracow: Znak, 1979). French translation: Wojtyła, En es-
prit et en vérité, 103–59.
85. Wojtyła, En esprit et en vérité, 108 (author’s translation).
86. Ibid., 110 (author’s translation). 87. Ibid.
88. See ibid., 111. 89. Ibid., 114 (author’s translation).
 The Moral Theology of Karol Wojtyła 109
which has its own nature. This fundamental principle, the principle of being
in accord with reality, both objective and subjective reality, is the guarantee
of realism in the whole of practical philosophy, and in particular ethics. Ethi-
cal norms are based in reality.90

Wojtyła reveals here a fundamental trust, contrary to many of his

contemporaries, in the ability of reason to grasp reality. As a Thomist,
he is a realist moral theologian, that is, a theologian who believes that
the human mind can know objective reality.
Wojtyła’s understanding of natural law (in his short essay “The
Law of Nature”) is understandably similar to that of Aquinas.91 Natu-
ral law has for its purpose the perfection of man. Here we see Wojtyła
beginning to incorporate in his published works the notion of hu-
man perfection. The essay, “Nature and Perfection,” proves an excel-
lent summary of the prima secundae of Thomas’s Summa Theologiae,
namely the treatise on happiness and human action.92 Here Wojtyła
provides a lucid and succinct analysis of the role of reason and activi-
ty in the perfection of being. He writes: “The being acts and becomes
to a greater degree itself. In this process of the being’s becoming more
itself there is contained the fundamental good of every being.”93 The
same process occurs in man through his activity. “Various kinds of
goods become the end of his desires and activities in the measure
that they contribute to man’s perfection in one or another respect. . . .
Among all these goods only the moral good perfects human nature it-
self: through the moral good a man becomes simply a better man.”94
Wojtyła also clarifies the distinction between perfectionism and
normitivism in ethics in a scholarly article written contemporaneous-
ly with his “Elementary Ethics” texts.95 The perfectionist aspect of
ethics “consists in emphasizing that the person who acts well is per-
fected morally. . . . [It] is not identical in ethics with the normative as-
pect, which concerns only the definition of what is morally good and

90. Ibid. (author’s translation).

91. See ibid., 123–26.
92. See ibid., 116–19. I am grateful to Schmitz, At the Center, 55, for suggesting the
similarities between these two articles and Thomas’s thought.
93. Wojtyła, En esprit et en vérité, 117 (author’s translation).
94. Ibid., 117–18 (author’s translation).
95. See Wojtyła, “In Search of the Basis,” 45–56.
110 The Moral Theology of Karol Wojtyła
evil.”96 All ethical norms should always concern perfection. “Ethics
is always in some way about the human being. . . . Norms, therefore,
do not have full meaning apart from the human being, who, by liv-
ing according to them, simply lives in a good way and is perfected as
a human being, or, in the opposite case, deteriorates and loses val-
ue.”97 In this essay, Wojtyła goes on to argue that the connection be-
tween norm and perfection is adequately understood only when the
assumptions of ontology are accepted in ethics.
Wojtyła’s ontological assumptions mean that, for him, any action
in and of itself is not necessarily perfective and fulfilling. In the Thom-
istic philosophy of being “the good is that which constitutes the ob-
ject of an aim, i.e., an end—the good is that which perfects a being.”98
Thus for Aquinas, ethics “is a science about human beings, who, in
striving for various goods, must seek above all the good most suit-
ed to their rational nature.”99 Aquinas reinforces the strict connection
between goodness and being. As Wojtyła reads Aquinas, the empha-
sis on moving from act to potency results from Aquinas’s perspective
that “the actualization of potency consists in the real coming-into-
existence of something previously only existed in potency.”100 There-
fore, “every perfection or good consists in existence.”101 Thus, a being
is only truly good (bonum simpliciter) when it not only exists (ens sim-
pliciter) but when it is brought to perfection with all the qualities nec-
essary for fulfillment (entia secundum quid).102

Love and Responsibility

Even though in this early period Karol Wojtyła had clearly concluded
that ontology (and the ontology of Aristotle and Thomas specifical-
ly) is necessary for ethics, he had certainly not given up his project of
developing an understanding of the human person and human expe-
rience. His 1960 book, Miłość i Odpowiedzialność (Love and Responsi-
bility), brings these moral categories—the person and experience—
back to the fore of Wojtyła’s thought as he further attempts to do that
which he vowed to do when he was studying in Rome: to move be-

96. Ibid., 46. 97. Ibid.

98. Ibid., 47. 99. Ibid.
100. Ibid., 48. 101. Ibid.
102. See ibid.
 The Moral Theology of Karol Wojtyła 111
yond Thomas to his own philosophy.103 Rocco Buttiglione notes that
in Love and Responsibility we find “Wojtyła’s first positive attempt to
build an ethic which would create an organic synthesis of ontology
and phenomenology.”104
Unlike the previous published works of Wojtyła considered thus
far in this section, Love and Responsibility is concerned with the par-
ticular issues surrounding love and marriage rather than general mor-
al theory. But this aspect of the book will be considered more thor-
oughly in chapter 4. Presently I want to follow Buttiglione’s lead and
show that Love and Responsibility marks the first positive step on the
part of Wojtyła to synthesize ontology with an experience-based
methodology (that is, phenomenology).
Wojtyła’s opening chapter, an analysis on the verb “to use,” be-
gins with an important observation on the world. After noting that
the world we live in is a world of many objects and the word “object”
is the same as “entity,” Wojtyła writes:
This is not the proper meaning of the word, since an “object,” strictly speak-
ing, is something related to a “subject.” A “subject” is also an “entity”—an
entity which exists and acts in a certain way. It is then possible to say that
the world in which we live is composed of many subjects. It would indeed
be proper to speak of “subjects” before “objects.” If the order has been re-
versed here, the intention was to put the emphasis right at the beginning of
the book on its objectivism, its realism. For if we begin with a “subject,” es-
pecially when that subject is man, it is easy to treat everything which is out-
side the subject, i.e., the whole world of objects, in a purely subjective way,
to deal with it only as it enters into the consciousness of a subject, establish-
es itself and dwells in that consciousness. We must also, then, be clear right
from the start that every subject also exists as an object, an objective “some-
thing” or “somebody.”105

103. Wojtyła, Love and Responsibility. While studying at the Angelicum in 1947,
Wojtyła wrote to a friend regarding Aquinas: “His entire philosophy is so marvelously
beautiful, so delightful, and, at the same time, so uncomplicated. It seems that depth of
thought does not require a profusion of words. It is even possible that the fewer words
there are the deeper the meaning. . . . But I still have far to travel before I hit on my own
philosophy.” George Blazynski, John Paul II: A Man from Krakow (London: Weidenfeld
and Nicolson, 1979), 57.
104. Buttiglione, Karol Wojtyła, 83.
105. Wojtyła, Love and Responsibility, 21.
112 The Moral Theology of Karol Wojtyła
In this opening paragraph, Wojtyła immediately sets himself against
all modern philosophies that draw a hard distinction between subject
and object.106 Here, Wojtyła’s appropriation of Thomas’s philosophy
of being serves him well as he seeks a delicate balance between a per-
sonalist ethic and a moral theory grounded in objective norms.
In his closing sentence, Wojtyła clarifies that some objects (which
are also subjects) that occupy the world are not only “somethings”
(as a philosophy of being tends to imagine them) but are occasionally
“somebodies.” This is the beginning of a philosophical method that is
deeply personalist. While all things in the world of being can be cate-
gorized as members of genus and species, for man such a taxonomy is
not entirely satisfactory. This is the case since
there is something more to him, a particular richness and perfection in the
manner of his being, which can only be brought out by the use of the word
“person.” The most obvious and simplest reason for this is that man has the
ability to reason, he is a rational being, which cannot be said of any other en-
tity of the visible world, for in none of them do we find any trace of concep-
tual thinking.107

Therefore, Wojtyła believes that Boethius’s definition of the person as

an “individual substance of a rational nature” (individua substantia ra-
tionalis naturae) captures the distinctive character of the human person
and differentiates him from “the whole world of objective entities.”108
Wojtyła then turns to the experience of the human person by not-
ing that the presence of reason means “the person as a subject is dis-
tinguished from even the most advanced animals by a specific inner
self, an inner life, characteristic only of persons.”109 Cognition and de-
sire come together in the human person in a spiritual manner, Wo-
jtyła says, assisting in the formation of a “genuine interior life.”110 For
him, the interior life is the spiritual life, and it is centered upon truth
and goodness. The two central questions for man’s the interior life are
(1) the ultimate cause of everything and (2) the way to be good. The
first of these concerns cognition. The second concerns desire.111

106. Buttiglione summarizes just a few of the positions to which Wojtyła’s opening
comment responds. See Buttiglione, Karol Wojtyła, 84–86.
107. Wojtyła, Love and Responsibility, 22. 108. Ibid.
109. Ibid. 110. Ibid.
111. Ibid., 23.
 The Moral Theology of Karol Wojtyła 113
The interior life of the human person is primary for Wojtyła. He
does not ignore the world of objects, but the person’s contact with
the world must go beyond the natural or physical contact he has
through his body:
It is true that a human person’s contact with the world begins on the “nat-
ural” and sensual plane, but it is given the form proper to man only in the
sphere of his interior life. Here, too, a trait characteristic of the person be-
comes apparent: a man does not only intercept messages which reach him
from the outside world and react to them in a spontaneous or even purely
mechanical way, but in his whole relationship with his world, with reality, he
strives to assert himself, his “I,” and he must act thus, since the nature of his
being demands it.112

Wojtyła goes on to say that the nature of man’s being fundamental-

ly differs from animals because of free will. Free will entails a self-
determination flowing from choice.113
This insight provides Wojtyła with the foundation for the maxim
that the person is alteri incommunicabilis. He is expanding on Aqui-
nas on this point. The reason the person is incommunicable, Wojtyła
says, “is not that a person is a unique and unrepeatable entity, for this
can be said just as well of any other entity. . . . The incommunicable,
the inalienable, in a person is intrinsic to that person’s inner self, to
the power of self-determination, free will. No one else can want for
me.”114 This observation flows directly to Wojtyła’s articulation of the
personalistic norm: “Nobody can use a person as a means toward an
end—no human being, not even God the Creator. On the part of
God, indeed, it is totally out of the question, since, by giving man an
intelligent and free nature, He has thereby ordained that each man
alone will decide for himself the ends of his activity.”115
Integrating the Kantian categorical imperative, now understood
through the lens of a realist ontology and the biblical commandment
of love of neighbor, Wojtyła offers a basic axiom that will guide his
moral thought: “Whenever a person is the object of your activity, re-
member that you may not treat that person as only a means to an end,
as an instrument, but must allow for the fact that he or she, too, has,
or at least should have, distinct personal ends. This principle, thus
112. Ibid. 113. Ibid., 24.
114. Ibid. 115. Ibid., 27.
114 The Moral Theology of Karol Wojtyła
formulated, lies at the basis of all the human freedoms, properly un-
derstood, and especially the freedom of conscience.”116 This is an im-
portant insight that provides a key to much of Wojtyła’s moral writ-
ings, both before his election to the pontificate and after. He does not
make forceful exhortations that seek to impose but rather to convert.
Buttiglione observes:
Whereas the objectivist view, holding as it does to the idea of the primacy
of objective truth, can go so far as wanting to impose it on those who do not
recognize it, the personalistic view, which is rooted in a genuine philosophy
of being, maintains that while the person indeed has the moral duty to ad-
here to the truth, he cannot be made to do so by overriding the choice of his
freedom and his conscience.117

As we will see in chapter 4, for Wojtyła the ethical substance of love

consists of the union of two wills, two freedoms, in the pursuit of a
common good.

A Philosophy Matures
The Shift after Love and Responsibility
Following the publication of Love and Responsibility, Wojtyła’s arti-
cles bear a different tone concerning the ontology of Thomas than
before. While maintaining a reverence for the Angelic Doctor, Wo-
jtyła is more likely to point to what he perceives to be Aquinas’s de-
ficiencies in confronting the modern world.118 For example, in an ar-
ticle published the year following Love and Responsibility, Wojtyła
suggests what a “Thomistic personalism” might look like.119 Wojtyła
explains succinctly that Thomas’s understanding of the person, devel-
oped in a different historical era, depends more on theology than phi-

116. Ibid., 28.

117. Buttiglione, Karol Wojtyła, 90–91.
118. This shift already began in Love and Responsibility. For example, while Wojtyła’s
analysis of sexual desire follows Aquinas’s treatises on the concupiscible appetite and
the passions (see Love and Responsibility, 147–54), he nonetheless believes Aquinas is
mistaken to place chastity under the virtue of temperance rather than under charity (see
Love and Responsibility, 166–74).
119. See Wojtyła, “Personalizm tomistyczny,” Znak 13 (1961): 664–75; English trans-
lation: “Thomistic Personalism,” 165–75.
 The Moral Theology of Karol Wojtyła 115
losophy. Indeed, Thomas uses the word “person” only in treatises on
the Trinity and the incarnation in the Summa Theologiae. Neverthe-
less, Wojtyła says, Aquinas’s understanding of the person as an indi-
vidual substance of a rational nature along with his understanding of
the compositum humanum allows later Thomists to identify the con-
crete human individual as a person.120
Still, in what appears to be his first explicit critique of Aquinas, Wo-
jtyła says that a Thomistic view of the human person is often too objec-
tivistic and it allows no room for consciousness and self-consciousness.
Wojtyła writes: “According to St. Thomas, consciousness and self-con-
sciousness are something derivative, a kind of fruit of the rational na-
ture that subsists in the person, a nature crystallized in a unitary ra-
tional and free being, and not something subsistent in themselves. If
consciousness and self-consciousness characterize the person, then
they do so only in the accidental order, as derived from the rational na-
ture on the basis of which the person acts.”121 While Aquinas presents a
full view of the objective activity of the human person, accomplished in
the faculties of the soul, Wojtyła believes that in Aquinas’s “objectivistic
view of reality” there is no place to examine the subject.122
Four years later in “The Problem of Catholic Sexual Ethics,” Wo-
jtyła will openly declare that because modernity has withdrawn from
teleology, an ethical theory based on the notion of final ends, such as
the theories found in Aristotle and Thomas, is no longer tenable.123
The contemporary shift was caused “on the one hand, by a new, more
critical attitude toward metaphysics, and, on the other—and this, in
my opinion, is the more important cause—by a more basic grasp of
the moral facts themselves, by a reestablished contact with moral ex-
perience.”124 The dialogue with modernity requires moral theology
likewise to move to the normative approach of ethics that character-
izes this shift away from metaphysics and toward moral experience.

120. See Wojtyła, “Thomistic Personalism,” 167–69.

121. Ibid., 170.
122. Ibid.
123. See Wojtyła, “The Problem of Catholic Sexual Ethics: Reflections and Postu-
lates,” 279–80. This is Theresa Sandok’s English translation of Karol Wojtyła, “Zagad-
nienie katolickiej etyki seksualnej: Refleksje i postulaty,” Roczniki Filozoficzne 13, no. 2
(1965): 5–25.
124. Ibid., 280.
116 The Moral Theology of Karol Wojtyła
Wojtyła does not argue for the abandonment of teleology in eth-
ics. Yet, during this period of his life, Wojtyła is going to argue that
ethics needs a more normative approach.125 When moral theology
assumes the methodology of normative science, it concerns prop-
erly the “norms of morality contained in divine revelation and pro-
claimed by the magisterium of the Church in solemn and ordinary
teachings.”126 The task of the moral theologian, Wojtyła continues
strikingly, “is to scientifically interpret these norms and, above all, to
justify them in the light of reason and revelation. A justification of the
norms of morality is more than interpretation of them. . . . To justify
the norms of morality means to give reasons for their rightness.”127
Wojtyła calls this process a “justifying interpretation.”128 He goes on
to say that the justification requires a complete vision of the reality of
revelation in which the norms are situated.
Two years later, Wojtyła will argue that teleology is not enough
to justify revealed norms.129 Though scripture testifies to the possi-
bility of knowing some revealed norms by reason alone, Wojtyła will
by then argue that “such a purely rational interpretation of revealed
norms involves a certain ‘compression’ and ‘abbreviation’ of them.”130
Only a full view of revelation can provide a substantial justification
of Christian moral norms. Wojtyła writes: “Without theology, there
is no way to give a fully adequate interpretation of moral norms or
of the so-called theological virtues.”131 Here we see Wojtyła explic-
itly turning away from any sort of purely naturalistic or ontological
morality to one dependent primarily, if not exclusively, on revealed
principles. However, it was still necessary for him to present his un-
derstanding of the human person. He did this with the publication in
1969 of Osoba i Czyn (Person and Act), published in English in 1979
under the title The Acting Person.132

125. Ibid. 126. Ibid.

127. Ibid. 128. Ibid.
129. See Karol Wojtyła, “Etyka a teologia moralna,” Znak 19 (1967): 1077–82; En-
glish translation: “Ethics and Moral Theology,” 101–6.
130. Wojtyła, “Ethics and Moral Theology,” 105.
131. Ibid.
132. Wojtyła, The Acting Person.
 The Moral Theology of Karol Wojtyła 117

The Acting Person

In The Acting Person we see the full fruition of Karol Wojtyła’s many
years of labor of studying the phenomenology of Max Scheler and
contrasting it with ontology. There is no doubt that Wojtyła intended
this work to be a synthetic presentation of phenomenology and on-
tology. He writes in one of the two prefaces to the English edition:
“The first question which was born in the mind of the present stu-
dent of St. Thomas (certainly a very poor student) was the question:
What is the relationship between action as interpreted by the tradi-
tional ethic actus humanus, and the action as an experience. This and
other similar questions led me gradually to a more synthetic formu-
lation in the present study The Acting Person.”133 Unlike his previous
work, which seemed to portray phenomenology and ontology in op-
position, The Acting Person is an explicit attempt to synthesize the two
philosophies into a coherent whole that will compensate for the lim-
itations of each.
Thus, we find our author less critical of Scheler in this work. In
the preface, he writes: “Granted the author’s acquaintance with tra-
ditional Aristotelian thought, it is however the work of Max Scheler
that has been a major influence upon his reflection.”134 But this is not
a reversal of his previous position on Scheler, for Wojtyła’s appropri-
ation of Scheler is a critical one. Though there is less explicit refer-
ence to Aquinas in The Acting Person, Wojtyła’s criticisms of Scheler
remain. The prime issue of the post-Cartesian era, according to Wo-
jtyła, is the fracturing of the human person from reality, even the real-
ity of what it means to be a person.135
He believes, therefore, that it is imperative for every philosopher to
seek the unity of the human person. Modernity had been unsuccessful
in that project thus far. “In fact, in spite of the fundamental Scheleri-
an, and for that matter generally phenomenological, efforts conducive
to the cognition of the complete man, this unity, its basis, as well as
its primordial manifestation, are still missing in the present-day phil-
osophical conception of man.”136 Wojtyła goes on to say that for Ar-

133. Ibid., xiii–xiv. 134. Ibid., viii.

135. See ibid., vii. 136. Ibid., viii.
118 The Moral Theology of Karol Wojtyła
istotle, “it was the very conception of the ‘human act’ which was seen
as the manifestation of man’s unity as well as its source.”137 Essentially,
he reverses the traditional analysis of Aristotelian-Thomistic philoso-
phy (or any philosophy of being, for that matter), which begins with
metaphysical presuppositions about the agent before moving to ac-
tion. Wojtyła begins with analyzing action in order to reveal the per-
son who acts. But in doing so, he also reacts to the Cartesian subjec-
tivism, which held that only in thinking does man know his existence.
Wojtyła wants to say that it is in all sorts of actions that the person is
revealed, both to the world and to himself.
Wojtyła maintains a Thomistic realist perspective by insisting, in
opposition to Kant, that experience has a direct connection with ob-
jective reality. It need not pass through Kantian a priori categories.138
Moreover, experience includes a basic understanding without first
having to pass through consciousness.139 Here we see Wojtyła pur-
posefully separating himself from a facet of Edmund Husserl’s phe-
nomenology, which runs strikingly close to viewing consciousness as
constitutive of both experience and reality.
For Wojtyła, cognition is distinct from consciousness. Experi-
ence and cognition stem from an “intrinsic cognitive dynamism.”140
Wojtyła’s presentation of cognition appropriates the Aristotelian-
Thomistic theory of apprehension. This cognitive dynamism consists
in the “comprehension and knowledge [which] contribute in an in-
tentional way to the formation of the object.”141 Whereas for the phe-
nomenologists consciousness is always intentional—which is to say
constituting the object to be experienced—for Wojtyła this process
is left to cognition itself, which identifies and grasps the object expe-
rienced.142 Consciousness, therefore, is not intentional for Wojtyła.
On the contrary, consciousness is “the understanding of what has
been constituted and comprehended” by cognition.143 Wojtyła thus
brings the role of consciousness, exalted by the phenomenologists
and largely ignored by the scholastics, into alignment with the other
faculties of the soul.
137. Ibid. 138. See ibid., 6–7.
139. See ibid., 3–5. 140. Ibid., 32.
141. Ibid.
142. Wojtyła explains this nicely in ibid., 303n16.
143. Ibid.
 The Moral Theology of Karol Wojtyła 119
In this system, consciousness has two primary functions: mir-
roring and reflectivity. Consciousness “mirrors” objects that are ap-
prehended through cognition. This mirroring is more than simple
duplication. The consciousness “interiorizes in its own specific man-
ner what it mirrors, thus encapsulating or capturing it in the person’s
ego.”144 In my view, this mirroring in Wojtyła’s phenomenology does
much of the same work that phantasms and abstraction do in the
Aristotelian-Thomistic epistemology. The reflective aspects of con-
sciousness concern our action. The reflexive function of conscious-
ness allows one “to experience one’s self as the subject of one’s own
acts and experiences.”145 This experience, Wojtyła says, is quite differ-
ent from being the subject of action, on the one hand, and cognizing
one’s self as the subject of one’s action, on the other. In some ways,
being the subject of action is the result of our natural dynamisms.146
To cognize one’s self as a subject of action is to reflect upon one’s self
as an object of knowledge. Reflection, therefore, bears upon the expe-
rience of being a subject.
The reflective function of consciousness reveals two types of ex-
periences. The experience of action (agere) and the experience of be-
ing acted upon (pati). “When acting I have the experience of myself
as the agent responsible for this particular form of the dynamization
of myself as the subject. When there is something happening to me,
then the dynamism is imparted without the efficacious participation
of my ego.”147 The possibility of experiencing these dynamisms, both
acting and being acted upon, flows from our very being.148 It is the
potentialities of our nature, in the Aristotelian-Thomistic sense, that
give rise to the various dynamisms we experience.149
It is our human nature that yields the cognitive dynamism that
allows us to apprehend the world. Consciousness and its reflective
function depends on objective reality: an objective world and an ob-
jective nature. Left to itself, Wojtyła argues, phenomenology would
not be able to hold the two fundamental dynamisms (agere and pati)
together.150 Edmund Husserl’s thinking evolved from understanding
144. Ibid., 35. Wojtyła also notes that emotions and passions can affect the con-
sciousness, interfering with this mirroring function. See ibid., 50–56.
145. Ibid., 44. 146. Ibid., 44–45.
147. Ibid., 66. 148. See ibid., 72–73.
149. See ibid., 88–87. 150. See ibid., 80.
120 The Moral Theology of Karol Wojtyła
the self as stream of consciousness to understanding the self as a tran-
scendental ego as experiencing that consciousness.151 Still, Wojtyła
was not satisfied with the notion of the transcendental ego as it still
seemed to him to reify too absolutely the separation of self from ex-
perience. For Wojtyła, when the person acts, the ego “has the expe-
rience of its own efficacy in action.” When it is acted upon, the ego
“does not experience its own efficacy . . . but it does have the expe-
rience of the inner identity of itself.”152 This experience of unity and
identity is the experience of being, and it is more basic than a mere
collection of experiences, as Husserl seemed to suggest.153 The fact
that nature grounds this experience eliminates, for Wojtyła, any hard
separation between nature and person, even if both concepts must be
suitably distinguished.154
In the middle section of The Acting Person, Wojtyła outlines his
vision of human action and self-determination in an analysis of the
transcendence of the human person.155 The very act of willing some
good means that the agent is himself also somehow determined. Self-
determination is not willed but is the “return” from what is willed back
on to the agent.156 This is to say that action somehow determines and
molds us. This idea classically belongs to Aristotelian-Thomistic vir-
tue theory. This understanding of self-determination is protected from
falling into relativism by Wojtyła’s constant insistence that volition is
guided by self-knowledge and a knowledge of reality, which is provid-
ed by cognition.157 The role cognition plays also guarantees that both
consciousness (which provides a subjective experience of action) and
reality (objectivized by cognition) are always in relation.158 By calling
attention to the transcendence of the person, Wojtyła means only to
assert that the person is more than volition, since no one action per-
fects the human person.159
151. For an analysis of this development, see David Woodruff Smith, “Mind and
Body,” in The Cambridge Companion to Husserl, ed. Barry Smith and David Woodruff
Smith (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 323–93.
152. Ibid. 153. See ibid., 81, 91.
154. See ibid., 80–83. 155. See ibid., 105–16.
156. See ibid., 109. 157. See ibid., 113–14.
158. See ibid., 114. Truth is always the criterion for moral choice according to Wo-
jtyła (See ibid., 135–43). The function of conscience is to provide the truth of the value
of the goods presented by the cognition to the will (see ibid., 151–61).
159. See ibid., 111.
 The Moral Theology of Karol Wojtyła 121
In Wojtyła’s anthropology, integration complements transcen-
dence. Since the human person experiences more than agency, tran-
scendence “does not . . . exhaust all the contents of the dynamic real-
ity of the person.”160 The person is also acted upon. The person must
integrate the experiences of being acted upon, especially when the
person is acted upon by the natural dynamisms of the body or of the
psyche.161 As we will see in the next chapter, integration will play a
significant role in Wojtyła’s sexual ethics.
The Acting Person closes with a brief chapter on the idea of inter-
subjectivity and participation in community.162 As Wojtyła sees it,
participation in community avoids both individualism and collectiv-
ism, neither of which respect the value of the person upon which so-
ciety and community must be based.163 Kenneth Schmitz identifies
Wojtyła’s point: “Human relationships are possible only insofar as
personal reality is present and operative in the relationships.”164
Wojtyła is interested to show in this final chapter that action is
always within a community of persons and so there is a “genuinely
personalistic structure of human existence in a community.”165 The
personalist value of action must always, therefore, be respected. For
Wojtyła, this personalist value is the self-fulfilling aspect of action
that he has spent the whole of the book developing.166 In concluding,
Wojtyła turns to the commandment of love and to the idea of neigh-
bor, insisting that the interaction between persons is more than the
interaction of a group of individuals within in community but rather
an interaction of individuals identified in terms of love and neighbor-
liness.167

160. Ibid., 189.

161. See ibid., 191–92, for an understanding of this integration; see 196–202 for psy-
chosomatic unity and 220–31 on the psyche and the soma. Wojtyła also has something
to say in this section of The Acting Person (203–6) on the relation of the body to action
and as an expression of the person, but this will be more properly dealt with in the next
chapter.
162. See ibid., 261. The English edition of The Acting Person provides two versions of
this last chapter since Wojtyła was unable to review modifications made by the edition’s
editor, Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka. The literal translation of the final chapter as in the
1969 Osoba i Czyn can be found on 317–57.
163. See Wojtyła, The Acting Person, 271–76.
164. Schmitz, At the Center, 87. 165. Wojtyła, The Acting Person, 282.
166. See ibid., 270. 167. See ibid., 292–99.
122 The Moral Theology of Karol Wojtyła
In the short postscript to the book, the author acknowledges that
the final chapter is a mere sketch of an ongoing project. Wojtyła ad-
mits to some limitations given the limited scope of his project which
was “to extract from the experience of action everything that would
shed some light on man as a person, that would help, so speak, to vi-
sualize the person.”168 His aim, he says, “was never to build a theo-
ry of the person as a being, to develop a metaphysical conception of
man. Even so, the vision of man who manifests himself as the person
in the way which we have tried to disclose in our analyses seems to
confirm sufficiently that his ontic status does not exceed the limits of
his contingency—that he is always a being.”169

After The Acting Person

In December 1970, the Catholic University of Lublin held a conference to
discuss Osoba i Czyn. The conference included nineteen commentators who
were given permission by the author himself to discuss the issues freely and
frankly. The basic critiques of the commentators were as follows:

That the book was neither a rounded anthropology nor a developed ethics
of action; that it mingled without due care to discrimination the intersect-
ing vocabularies of two philosophical languages, Thomist and phenomeno-
logical; that the author too readily equated Aristotle and Thomas on man in
the phrase Aristotelian-Thomist, not giving full recognition to the differenc-
es between the historic Aristotle and the historic Thomas free from gloss-
es; that the author was, despite the two sets of terminology, Aristotelian-
Thomist and phenomenological, often more involved in “the etymological
hermeneutics of words than in the hermeneutics of the realities signified” . . .
and, indeed, that the author was not himself clear or consistent in his efforts
to integrate the two main philosophical terminologies of the book.170

The difficulties with Osoba i Czyn would become more pronounced

with the problematic English translation. The connection with Thom-
ism is no longer readily apparent, since traditional Aristotelian-Thom-
istic language is paraphrased or transliterated rather than translated.171

168. Ibid., 300. 169. Ibid.

170. Williams, The Mind of John Paul II, 196.
171. Oceans of ink have been poured on the English translation of Osoba i Czyn.
Most often The Acting Person was criticized for not rendering faithfully Wojtyła’s Polish
(and when he uses it, Latin) into English. Wojtyła’s English collaborator, Anna-Teresa
 The Moral Theology of Karol Wojtyła 123
Given Wojtyła’s phenomenological style, it is difficult to follow his line
of argument. Perhaps most frustrating of all is that he never actually ex-
plains what good and evil are, and how properly to evaluate particular
human actions as good and evil.172 At the conclusion of his introduc-
tory remarks, Wojtyła surprisingly renounced “any attempt at combin-
ing these two philosophies [Thomism and phenomenology]. . . . Such a
melding is completely out of the question.”173 He may, however, be of-
fered some latitude in this final criticism because his scope was more
anthropological and epistemological rather than ethical and moral.
Much of Wojtyła’s writing after The Acting Person sought to fur-
ther the project of the final chapter of that book: a phenomenological
description of the human person within community and as the sub-
ject of his own self-determination.174 For our present purposes, three
articles merit special mention. Wojtyła published two articles in 1969
following upon the publication of Osoba i Czyn: “The Problem of Ex-
perience in Ethics” and “The Problem of the Theory of Morality.”175

Tymieniecka, often bears much of the brunt of this criticism, and is charged with over-
ly paraphrasing key concepts in Wojtyła’s original. As a result, the intellectual ancestry
of Wojtyła’s terms is not readily apparent to the English reader. For more details on this
dispute, as well as a bibliography of articles and sources on the translation, see Kupz-
cak, Destined, 67n55; Schmitz, At the Center, 58–60; Williams, The Mind of John Paul II,
197–218, 378–81.
172. See Williams, The Mind of John Paul II, 203.
173. Williams, The Mind of John Paul II, 196. This is a surprising comment, as Wo-
jtyła seemingly claims otherwise in prefaces to the English edition, as I reported above.
See ibid., 378n23: “Analecta Cracoviensia, Vols. 5 and 6 (1973–74), pp. 49–272, with re-
sumés in French, pp. 256–77; the quoted renunciation of a melding is on p. 249.” Wil-
liams’s summary appears on 196–97.
174. See the following articles by Karol Wojtyła: “Uczestnictwo czy alienacja,” Sum-
marium 7, no. 27 (1978): 7–16 (this paper was written in 1975); English translation: “Par-
ticipation or Alienation?,” in Person and Community, 197–207. “Podmiotowość i to, co
nieredukowalne’ w człowieku,” Ethos 1, nos. 2–3 (1988): 21–28 (this paper was written
in 1975); English translation: “Subjectivity and the Irreducible in the Human Being,”
in Person and Community, 209–17. “Osoba: Podmiot i wspólnota,” Roczniki Filozoficzne
24, no. 2 (1976): 5–39; English translation: “The Person: Subject and Community,” in
Person and Community, 219–61. “The Intentional Act and the Human Act, that is, Act
and Experience,” Analecta Husserliana 5 (1976): 269–80. “Problem konstytuowania się
kultury poprzez ludzką ”praxis,” Ethos 2, no. 8 (1989): 38–49 (this paper was written in
1977); English translation: “The Problem of the Constitution of Culture Through Hu-
man Praxis,” in Person and Community, 263–75.
175. See Karol Wojtyła, “Problem doświadczenia w etyce,” Roczniki Filozoficzne 17,
no. 2 (1969): 5–24; English translation: Karol Wojtyła, “The Problem of Experience in
124 The Moral Theology of Karol Wojtyła
In the first of these articles, he recounts much of the argument from
Osoba i Czyn on the nature of experience in the life of the human per-
son. He goes on to argue that morality is grounded in the experience
of self-determination, that is, the subjective experience of our action
and its effects on our person.
In the second article, however, Wojtyła moves beyond experience
itself in an attempt to identify the source of moral norms for good
and bad actions. He locates the validity of these norms in the expe-
rience of happiness and guilt.176 We experience happiness when our
actions are good and make us good. We experience guilt or shame
when they are evil, and make us evil. The articulation of moral norms
are beyond experience and result from teleology, but without consid-
ering the experience of the human person, Wojtyła fears that teleolo-
gy becomes too objectivist.177
Finally, in the 1974 article, “The Personal Structure of Self-Deter-
mination,” Wojtyła makes direct reference to the December 1970 col-
loquium on Osoba i Czyn discussed above.178 He notes that the com-
mentators at the Catholic University of Lublin were most concerned
with his appropriation of Thomism in the book. In this short article,
Wojtyła asserts that his phenomenology remains connected to Aqui-
nas’s ontology.179 He suggests that Aquinas would agree with the con-
cept of action affecting not only the object but also the subject.180 As
will be shown in my discussion in chapter 4 of Aquinas’s notion of vir-
tue, I would have to agree.

Ethics,” in Person and Community, 107–27. Karol Wojtyła, “Problem teorii moralnosci,”
in W nurcie zagadnień  posoborowych, ed. Bohdan Bejze (Warszawa: Sióstr Loretanek,
1969), 3:217–49; English translation: Karol Wojtyła, “The Problem of the Theory of Mo-
rality,” in Person and Community, 129–61.
176. See Wojtyła, “The Problem of the Theory of Morality,” 137–39.
177. See ibid., 147–50.
178. See Karol Wojtyła, “The Personal Structure of Self-Determination,” 187. This is
the Theresa Sandok’s English translation of Karol Wojtyła, “Osobowa struktura samos-
tanowienia,” Roczniki Filozoficzne 29, no. 2 (1981): 5–12 (this article was written in 1957).
179. See Wojtyła, “The Personal Structure,” 190.
180. See ibid., 191.
 The Moral Theology of Karol Wojtyła 125

Conclusion
As we have seen, Karol Wojtyła cannot be understood properly if he
is seen as a philosopher concerned only with the philosophical cate-
gories of the human person and human experience. Indeed, he un-
derstands the modern situation and the alienation of persons from
their selves. For that reason, he argues repeatedly that Christian eth-
ics must restore a sense of personal experience in its justification of
moral norms.
However, to assume that for this reason Wojtyła abandons ontol-
ogy would be to misinterpret grossly his published writings. Though
he had clearly begun to emphasize the phenomenological method
and the human person in his writings immediately before his election
to the pontificate, he always felt the need to refer to the basic neces-
sity of Thomas’s philosophical system. He knew that without a realist
ethic grounded in a philosophy of being, we cannot properly evaluate
good and evil.
He would hold this position throughout his life. In his last pub-
lished work, Memory and Identity: Conversations at the Dawn of a Mil-
lennium, Pope John Paul II wrote:
If we wish to speak rationally about good and evil, we have to return to Saint
Thomas Aquinas, that is, to the philosophy of being. With the phenomeno-
logical method, for example, we can study experiences of morality, religion,
or simply what it is to be human, and draw from them a significant enrich-
ment of our knowledge. Yet we must not forget that all these analyses implic-
itly presuppose the reality of the Absolute Being and also the reality of being
human, that is, being a creature. If we do not set out from such “realist” pre-
suppositions, we end up in a vacuum.181

It is a different question, beyond the scope of this study, whether Wo-

jtyła was ultimately successful in incorporating Thomism into phe-
nomenology, or whether the two schools can, in fact, be reconciled.
However, what this final quote reveals is Wojtyła’s conviction that the
realist philosophical presuppositions include not only a philosophy
of being but also an acknowledgement of a divine creator.
It is this conclusion that propels Wojtyła’s moral work. For Wo-

181. John Paul II, Memory and Identity, 12.

126 The Moral Theology of Karol Wojtyła
jtyła, the task of the moral theologian is to justify moral norms re-
vealed in scripture and taught by the magisterium. The theologian is
to use whatever philosophical and theological tools are at his dispos-
al to present a “justifying interpretation” of these norms. The church’s
teaching on sexual morality provided an apt opportunity for Wojtyła
to put his theory into practice. In the next two chapters, we will sur-
vey Wojtyła’s grand defense of the church’s norms on love and mar-
riage, culminating in his notion of the spousal meaning of the body.
 4

Karol Wojtyła’s Ethics

of Sexuality

Now that we have discussed the context in which Karol Wojtyła be-
gan his scholarly and pastoral work, this chapter advances the line
of argument by introducing Wojtyła’s ethics of sexuality. Over the
course of this chapter, it will become clear that Wojtyła’s sexual ethics
are a practical application of his general moral theory. He clearly be-
lieved that the church’s difficulty in defending Christian sexuality was
due not only to cultural trends but also to what might be described as
the rigid objectivistic method of the manualist tradition.
This chapter is intended to show the intellectual lineage in Kar-
ol Wojtyła’s pre-pontificate publications for the concept of spousal
meaning of the body in his papal Theology of the Body catecheses. Love
and Responsibility, The Acting Person, and articles written from 1953 to
1978 all demonstrate, as we will see, that the relevant themes present
in Theology of the Body more or less occupied the mind of Wojtyła
from his earliest published writings on love, sexuality, and marriage.
To that end, we will explore the following particular themes:
the personalistic norm, the sexual instinct, the gift of man and
woman to each other (and the related impact on parenthood), the
role of the conjugal act in this gift, and the body as a means of self-
communication. What we will see is that in his ethics of sexuality,
Wojtyła continues his larger project of balancing personalism with its

127
128 Karol Wojtyła’s Ethics of Sexuality
attendant focus on the human person with a realist Thomistic ontolo-
gy and its focus on human nature.
We will first survey Wojtyła’s thought on sexuality and marriage.
We will then consider his thought on the human body in these early
works of his career. Finally, we will explore Wojtyła’s vigorous defense
and exegesis of Pope Paul VI’s encyclical on birth control, Humanae
Vitae. This final section will bring this study to the year of Wojtyła’s
election to the papacy, the tenth anniversary of Humanae Vitae.

Sexuality and Marriage

The Personalistic Norm and Sexual Instinct
In chapter 3, I mentioned Wojtyła’s use of the personalistic norm
only briefly. This norm can be found in the opening pages of his
1960 book, Love and Responsibility. The human person’s rich inner
life, which stems from the gift of reason and free will, distinguish-
es him from all other animals.1 This is the foundation for Wojtyła’s
insistence that each person is incommunicable (alteri incommunica-
bilis). It is not that the person is simply ontologically unrepeatable;
this is true of every being. Rather, he is referring to “the incommu-
nicable, the inalienable, in a person [that] is intrinsic to that person’s
inner self, to the power of self-determination, free will. No one else
can want for me.”2 In one place, Wojtyła formulates the personalistic
norm in a way that is reminiscent of Kant: “Whenever a person is the
object of your activity, remember that you may not treat that person
as only the means to an end, as an instrument, but must allow for the
fact that he or she, too, has, or at least should have, distinct personal
ends.”3 He explains further:
The personalist norm rests on the unique interior life of the human person:
A person must not be merely the means to an end for another person. This

1. See Wojtyła, Love and Responsibility, 22, 24. George Williams argues that this
reveals an Aristotelian-Thomistic connotation in Wojtyła’s notion of person (see Wil-
liams, The Mind of John Paul II, 152).
2. Wojtyła, Love and Responsibility, 24.
3. Ibid., 27. Wojtyła also asserts that not even God can use a person as a means to
an end. He writes, “On the part of God, indeed, it is totally out of the question, since, by
giving man an intelligent and free nature, he has thereby ordained that each man alone
 Karol Wojtyła’s Ethics of Sexuality 129
is precluded by the very nature of personhood, by what any person is. For
a person is a thinking subject, and capable of making decisions: these, most
notably, are the attributes we find in the inner self of a person. This being so,
every person is by nature capable of determining his or her aims. Anyone
who treats a person as the means to an end does violence to the very essence
of the other, to what constitutes its natural right.4

In his excellent summary of Pope John Paul’s vision of love and mar-
riage, Walter Schu provides a necessary conclusion for this norm in
the context of love. “A young man may come to fall deeply in love
with a young woman and reach the conclusion that he can never be
happy without her. But if he truly loves her, he realizes that he must
respect who she is as a person, what she desires in life. He cannot
treat her simply as a means to his own happiness. He cannot com-
pel her to love him or to marry him.”5 Between persons, love must
replace use. Love is the positive reformulation of the personalistic
norm: “the person is a good towards which the only proper and ade-
quate attitude is love.”6
According to Wojtyła, love begins between persons when both
accept a common end. “If this happens,” he writes, “a special bond
is established between me and this other person: the bond of a com-
mon good and of a common aim. This special bond does not mean
will decide for himself the ends of his activity, and not be a blind tool of someone else’s
ends. Therefore, if God intends to direct man towards certain goals, he allows him to
begin to know these goals, so that he may make them his own and strive towards them
independently. In this amongst other things resides the most profound logic of revela-
tion: God allows man to learn His supernatural ends, but the decision to strive towards
an end, the choice of course, is left to man’s free will. God does not redeem man against
his will” (ibid.). This understanding of the verb to use (as a means to an end) is only the
first sense that Wojtyła describes. He goes on to describe as second sense of the verb in
which something is used (i.e., enjoyed) for the purposes of pleasure (ibid., 31). In this
sense, too, if a person of the opposite sex is used only to obtain pleasure and avoid pain,
“then that person will become only the means to an end,” which reverts to use in the first
sense (ibid., 33).
4. Ibid., 26–27.
5. Walter J. Schu, The Splendor of Love: John Paul II’s Vision of Marriage and Family
(New Hope, Ky.: New Hope Publications, 2002), 57.
6. Wojtyła, Love and Responsibility, 41. Wojtyła also compares Christ’s command-
ment to love with the personalistic norm, in which he states that only the personalis-
tic norm can justify such a commandment (ibid., 31). He will return to this theme five
years later in an article on Catholic sexual ethics. See Wojtyła, “The Problem of Catholic
Sexual Ethics,” 279–99.
130 Karol Wojtyła’s Ethics of Sexuality
merely that we both seek the common good, it also unites the per-
sons involved internally, and so constitutes the essential core round
which any love must grow.”7 For Wojtyła, the pursuit of a common
good puts two people on the equal footing necessary to build a rela-
tionship. This, of course, is identical with the Aristotelian-Thomistic
view of friendship which will be explored in chapter 7.
The pursuit of a good, however, does not guarantee that a particu-
lar person is capable of love or that a relationship is grounded in love.
This instinct to the good is present even in animals.8 “Man’s capaci-
ty for love depends on his willingness consciously to seek a good to-
gether with others, and to subordinate himself to that good for the
sake of others, or to others for the sake of that good. Love is exclu-
sively the portion of human persons.”9 This is an important element in
Wojtyła’s sexual anthropology. For Wojtyła, marriage is the realm in
which the principle of seeking the common good is applied to the re-
lationship of a man and a woman. But not every common pursuit can
be the foundation for an authentic and lasting love.
Pursuing certain ends prevents a man and a woman from using
each other, even in the relationship of marriage. There are certain
common pursuits, certain common ends, that guarantee authentic
love. The ends that a couple pursue should exclude the possibility
of selfishness. “Such an end, where marriage is concerned, is procre-
ation, the future generation, a family, and, at the same time, the con-
tinual ripening of the relationship between two people, in all the ar-
eas of activity which conjugal life includes. These objective purposes
of marriage create in principle the possibility of love and exclude the
possibility of treating a person as a means to an end and as an object
for use.”10 Though Wojtyła articulates these conclusions in personal-
ist terms, in chapter 8 we will see that they are essentially the same
conclusions reached by Aquinas—one of many correlations between
the thought of John Paul and the Angelic Doctor.
The drive of man toward woman and woman toward man in the
pursuit of a common good and the relationship of love manifests it-
self in what Wojtyła refers to as the “sexual urge.”11 The sexual urge

7. Wojtyła, Love and Responsibility, 28. 8. See ibid., 29.

9. Ibid. 10. Ibid., 30.
11. See ibid., 45.
 Karol Wojtyła’s Ethics of Sexuality 131
in man is more than instinct. Since man has reason and free will, he
is capable of self-determination. Therefore “man is by nature capable
of rising above instinct in his actions.”12 When he speaks of the sexual
urge, Wojtyła is speaking less of an innate instinct than “a certain ori-
entation in man’s life implicit in his very nature.”13 This is a key con-
clusion for what Wojtyła will later refer to as the “spousal meaning of
the body.”
The sexual urge and the directionality which it entails is rooted
in the division of humanity into two sexes: male and female. The per-
son recognizes specific values in a person of the opposite sex. Wojtyła
says that “we may therefore speak of sexual values which are connect-
ed with the psychological and physiological structure of man and
woman.”14 The sexual urge, therefore, compels the person not to the
other sex abstractly but to a particular human being. “It is because
it is directed towards a particular human being that the sexual urge
can provide the framework within which, and the basis on which, the
possibility of love arises.”15 Since a person cannot be used, even for
self-completion, love of the other must transcend this urge.16
The sexual urge is not properly satisfied in the absence of anoth-
er person (as in the case of the solitary sin of masturbation) or in vi-
olence to another person (as in the case of sexual assault).17 For Wo-
jtyła, the sexual urge is only rightly understood in the light of the
existential significance of the complementarity of two sexes and the
orientation of the two to each other. Indeed, the reason sexual rela-
tions are often difficult “is certainly the fact that in his mind, in his
reason, man often accords the sexual urge a merely biological signif-
icance and does not fully realize its true, existential significance.”18
12. Ibid., 46. 13. Ibid. 14. Ibid., 48.
15. Ibid., 49. 16. See ibid., 50.
17. See ibid., 52.
18. Ibid., 53. The theme of the existential significance of sexuality reappears during
Wojtyła’s pontificate. It is explicitly mentioned in his 1981 apostolic exhortation on the
family in the modern world: “Sexuality, by means of which man and woman give them-
selves to one another through the acts which are proper and exclusive to spouses, is not
something simply biological, but concerns the innermost being of the human person as
such. It is realized in a truly human way only if it is an integral part of the love by which
a man and woman commit themselves totally to one another until death.” John Paul
II, Familiaris Consortio, Apostolic Exhortation of November 22, 1981, par. 11 [hereafter,
FC]; the official Latin text is available in AAS 74 (1982): 81–191.
132 Karol Wojtyła’s Ethics of Sexuality
Unless man and woman consciously recognize the importance of
love as the goal (telos) of both the sexual urge and that urge’s natural
disposition to procreation, their love will not grow according to the
natural and metaphysical order.19 It will rather denigrate into selfish-
ness which uses the other as a means to personal satisfaction.

Love and the Gift of Self

Wojtyła begins his metaphysical analysis of love with the observation
that “love is always a mutual relationship between persons.”20 Since this
relationship is directed toward the good, Wojtyła suggests that some
metaphysical distinctions on the nature of love are necessary before
exploring the psycho-physiological or bio-psychological aspects of
love. He writes of love in three aspects: love as attraction, love as de-
sire, and love as goodwill. Although these elements are accessible in
love between various persons, our author limits himself to the love
between man and woman.
As the name implies, love as attraction is the recognition of an-
other person as a good. The sexual urge catalyzes attraction as a nat-
ural force which is raised to the consciousness of one person for an-
other person.21 Attraction entails seeing the other person not only
as a good, but as a certain good to be possessed.22 This attraction
need not be merely erotic or sexual. Alluding to the Aristotelian-
Thomistic theory of cognition and discernment of goods, Wojtyła
notes that attraction is more than mere cognition; it involves the
emotions and the will.23
The richness of a person’s emotional life lies precisely in the dy-
namic at work in attraction. Specifically, a person finds himself, more
or less, attracted to various goods of the other person and not just
one aspect of this person. Hence, “Attraction is of the essence of love
and in some sense is indeed love, although love is not merely attraction.”24
In fact, attraction can be entangled by emotive reactions such that
values may be projected on to the person who is the object of our at-
traction. These projected values may not in fact actually exist in this
19. See Wojtyła, Love and Responsibility, 53.
20. Ibid., 73. 21. See ibid., 74.
22. See ibid., 75. 23. See ibid.
24. Ibid., 76.
 Karol Wojtyła’s Ethics of Sexuality 133
person.25 This is why Wojtyła will insist that attraction be measured
by the truth of the other person’s reality, not merely by the genuine-
ness of emotion for the other.26
Love as desire differs from the love of attraction. Love of attrac-
tion identifies goods as such. Love as desire includes love as attrac-
tion but is directed toward the lover’s own completion. This distinc-
tion is especially manifest in the relationship between the sexes:
The human person is a limited being, not self sufficient and therefore—put-
ting it in the most objective way—needs other beings. Realization of the
limitation and insufficiency of the human being is the starting point for an
understanding of man’s relation to God. . . . A human being, a human per-
son, is either man or woman. Sex is also a limitation, an imbalance. A man
therefore needs a woman, so to say, to complete his own being, and woman
needs man in the same way. This objective ontological need makes itself felt
through the sexual urge.27

Unlike love as attraction, love as desire “originates in a need and aims

at finding a good which it lacks.”28 Wojtyła goes on to note that love
as desire is different from sensual desire itself. Sensual desire recog-
nizes deficiency and seeks to remedy that lack. In the case of per-
sons, this can devolve into the use of another for one’s own satisfac-
tion (which is contrary to the personalistic norm). Love as desire, on
the other hand, moves beyond mere sensuality to the whole person,
to whom the lover says “I want you because you are good for me.”29
Wojtyła continues his analysis, finally, with the love of goodwill.
He writes: “Love between man and woman would be evil, or at least
incomplete, if it went no farther than love as desire. For love as desire
is not the whole essence of love between persons. It is not enough
to long for a person as a good for oneself, one must also, and above
all, long for that person’s good.”30 Wojtyła says that the love of good-
will is completely selfless. It has no ulterior motive, and as a complete
act of selflessness, perfects both the lover and the beloved.31 The love
between man and woman necessarily includes the love of desire, but
for Wojtyła this love must eventually move to a love of goodwill. Ev-

25. See ibid., 78. 26. See ibid.

27. Ibid., 80–81. 28. Ibid., 81.
29. Ibid. 30. Ibid., 83.
31. See ibid.
134 Karol Wojtyła’s Ethics of Sexuality
ery personal love should develop into a love of goodwill and this, he
says, is especially true in marriage. It is important to note that love of
goodwill does not compete with desire but purifies it.32
Authentic love demands reciprocity for its durability and securi-
ty. It is only when love is returned that two persons become an act-
ing “we.” Love exists not only in a subject but also between two sub-
jects. Wojtyła writes: “The fact is that a person who desires another
as a good desires above all that person’s love in return for his or her
own love, desires that is to say another person above all as co-creator
of love, and not merely as the object of appetite.”33 The very interper-
sonal character of love means for Wojtyła that to seek reciprocity is
not, in fact, an act of selfishness since reciprocity is in the very nature
of love.
This reciprocity must be tied to an enduring good. Reciprocity
may not be self-interested or pragmatic; it cannot tend simply toward
mutual sensual pleasure. Wojtyła astutely notes:
A woman and a man can afford each other pleasure of a sexual nature, can
be for each other the source of various enjoyment. However, mere pleasure,
mere sensual enjoyment is not a good which binds and unites people for
long. . . . A woman and a man, if their “mutual love” depends merely on plea-
sure or self-interest, will be tied to each other just as long as they remain a
source of pleasure or profit for each other. The moment this comes to an
end, the real reason for their “love” will also end, the illusion of reciprocity
will burst like a bubble.34

For Wojtyła, love must be understood not only according to its psy-
chological aspects but also according to its ethical import. Ignoring
the importance and dignity of the human person results in a less than
stable form of reciprocity.35 Ultimately, couples need to move from
an emotive love of one another (what Wojtyła calls “sympathy”) to
true friendship in which each can say to the other, “I desire your good
as if it were my own good.”36 To this point, Wojtyła has followed the
Aristotelian-Thomistic understanding of love exclusively.
But he will move beyond the obvious Thomistic view when he
begins to connect love to the incommunicability of the person. When

32. See ibid., 84. 33. Ibid., 85.

34. Ibid., 87. 35. See ibid., 88.
36. Ibid., 90.
 Karol Wojtyła’s Ethics of Sexuality 135
a couple has moved into the “love of goodwill,” charged by a love of
desire and friendship, they find themselves at the threshold of be-
trothed love which is distinct from all other forms of love. Betrothed
love exists when a man and a woman become gift to one another.
This does not necessarily contradict Wojtyła’s earlier claim that the
person is incommunicable. He confirms that “the very nature of the
person is incompatible with such a surrender.”37 However, he goes on
to say, “what is impossible and illegitimate in the natural order and in
a physical sense, can come about in the order of love and in a moral
sense. In this sense, one person can give himself or herself, can sur-
render entirely to another, whether to a human person or to God.”38
The gospels, in fact, call for such a self-gift—see, for example,
Matthew 10:39. For Wojtyła, it is an uncompromising gift of love in
which the inalienable “I,” incommunicable and non-transferable, is
surrendered to the other.39 This self-gift is more than sexual. A sexual
offering without the gift of self is vacuous and utilitarian, whereas an
authentic sexual offering, as we will see, becomes a means of expres-
sion of the true gift of self.40

The Nature of Marriage

In Wojtyła’s sexual ethics, the mutual self-gift of a man and woman,
along with the sexual relationship it entails, is only properly ordered
within the institution of marriage.41 Marriage is not only an intraper-
sonal reality but a social institution. As an institution, marriage pro-
tects not only the persons involved from becoming objects one to
the other, but it also justifies the consequence of their relationship:
their progeny.42 Society is itself dependent upon marriage for its ex-
istence and, therefore, it is interested (or at least should be interest-
ed) in protecting the family.43 The institution of marriage legitimizes
and protects the unique love between a man and a woman. As their

37. Ibid., 96.

38. Ibid.
39. See ibid., 96. He argues on this same page that such an act cannot be taken. It is,
rather, an act of the whole person, determined to dispose himself in love in a particular
way to another.
40. See ibid., 99. 41. See ibid., 211.
42. See ibid., 216. 43. See ibid., 217.
136 Karol Wojtyła’s Ethics of Sexuality
love matures through courtship, it “must also gain acceptance by oth-
er people.”44 This is why marriage is necessary, “to signify the matur-
ing of the union between a man and a woman, to testify that there is a
love on which a lasting union and community can be based.”45
Wojtyła recalls the order of nature and its relationship to reason.
Reason allows each person to understand his dependence on the cre-
ator for his existence. The justification of marriage is that “it creates
an objective framework for a lasting union of persons.”46 This justifi-
cation is not only for the union itself, but also for each sexual act be-
tween the spouses. “Every such act must have its own internal justifi-
cation, for unless justice is done there can be no question of a union
of persons.”47 Each sexual act between the spouses cannot violate his
or her personal dignity; it cannot violate the personalistic norm.
Wojtyła insists that in the sexual act the order of nature and the
personal order meet. By the order of nature, Wojtyła means more
than simply a biological order. For him, “the order of nature is above
all that of existence and procreation.”48 In the order of nature, the pri-
mary purpose of the sexual act is procreation. “Looked at objectively
the marital relationship is therefore not just a union of persons, a re-
ciprocal relationship between a man and a woman, but is essentially
a union of persons affected by the possibility of procreation.”49 The
two orders cannot be separated since they depend on each other.50
This conclusion is reminiscent of Wojtyła’s earlier analysis of the sex-
ual urge and the difference between animals and human persons.
The correct attitude to procreation is a condition of the realization of love.
In the animal world there is only reproduction, which is achieved by way
of instinct. In that world there are no persons, hence there is no personal-
istic norm to proclaim the principle of love. In the world of persons on the
other hand instinct alone decides nothing, and the sexual urge passes, so to
speak, through the gates of the consciousness and the will, thus furnishing
not merely the conditions of fertility but also the raw material of love.51

Following this passage, Wojtyła goes on to say that consciousness and

free choice are the foundation of love and procreation between per-

44. Ibid., 219. 45. Ibid., 220.

46. Ibid., 225. 47. Ibid.
48. Ibid., 226. 49. Ibid.
50. See ibid. 51. Ibid.
 Karol Wojtyła’s Ethics of Sexuality 137
sons. Spurred on by the sexual urge, when a couple chooses to marry
they are also choosing the possibility of procreation.
Parenthood, therefore, is intricately bound to the unique love that
exists between a man and woman. Becoming a parent, Wojtyła says,
is “not merely a biological fact but also a personal significance. . . . It
has profound effects upon the ‘interior’ of a person. . . . For human
parenthood implies the whole process of conscious and voluntary
choice connected with marriage and with marital intercourse in par-
ticular.”52 The full value of sexual relations between the two persons
is not fully guaranteed, Wojtyła argues, unless there is conscious ac-
ceptance of the possibility of procreation. The two orders, the per-
sonal order and the order of nature, thus reaffirm each other.53 In fact,
when the possibility of procreation is excluded from the marital re-
lationship, the “danger arises that objectively speaking there will be
nothing left except ‘utilization for pleasure,’ of which the object will
be the person.”54
Wojtyła further clarifies the relationship between the order of na-
ture and the order of the person in his 1965 article, “The Problem of
Catholic Sexual Ethics: Reflections and Postulates.”55 In chapter 3, I
noted that this article was among those written after Love and Respon-
sibility that called for a more normative approach to Catholic sexu-
al ethics without abandoning a teleological view.56 Admittedly, the
task of incorporating the personalistic norm is more difficult in the
realm of sexual ethics as it is very easy only to consider the biological
or physiological aspects of sex itself.57 The fact that the sexual urge is
rooted in human nature is itself not remarkable for Wojtyła. What he
does find significant, however, is the fact that “human nature actually

52. Ibid., 227. 53. See ibid.

54. Ibid., 228.
55. See Wojtyła, “The Problem of Catholic Sexual Ethics,” 279–99.
56. Recall that for Wojtyła, “Moral theology is a science that, in the light of revelation,
makes justified statements concerning the moral value, or goodness or badness, of human ac-
tions” (“The Problem of Catholic Sexual Ethics,” 279). His project is to justify revealed
norms using whatever philosophical system (or combination of different systems)
serves that end. As the previous chapter showed, over the course of his early career, he
became increasingly interested in presenting a phenomenological and personalist justi-
fication combined with an ontological realism.
57. See ibid., 284.
138 Karol Wojtyła’s Ethics of Sexuality
exists always in a concrete suppositum that is a person. Consequently,
the sexual properties and the sexual urge in humans are always and in
every instance attributes of a person.”58 It is the person who acts sexu-
ally, not the human nature that acts. Wojtyła reaffirms here that mar-
riage is the consequence of this fact.59
Revelation reveals that marriage “is not just a sexual union of a
man and a woman in which these persons use the urge to realize the
ends of marriage, particularly its primary end—procreation. Marriage
is also a genuine union of persons, a union that, according to revela-
tion, bears the mark of indissolubility. This union arises from a mutu-
al choice, and, according to Catholic teaching, the interpersonal rela-
tionship expressed and realized in this choice ought to be true love.”60
Again, in this article, Wojtyła affirms the need for free and conscious
acceptance of both the natural purpose of the sexual urge (procre-
ation) and the personal purpose of the sexual urge (love). This accep-
tance must be “ongoing, systematic, [and] habitual.”61 Accepting one
without the other renders the sexual relationship loveless, as it there-
by denigrates into mutual use of one person by the other.62
In chapter 3, I noted that for Wojtyła norms are vacuous if they
are not grounded in an ontological view of reality. This remains true
for sexual norms as well. Without a view of the human person as a
substance (as is the case in the Kantian or Schelerian anthropology),
Wojtyła says, the person becomes merely a “‘source’ of experiences,
and not really even a source, but just a background.”63 Ontological-
ly speaking, “every being—or, more precisely, the essence, or nature,
of every being—can serve as the basis of an ethical norm and of the
positing of norms. A being’s essence, or nature, determines how free
we are to behave with respect to that being, how we should or ought
to behave when that being is an object of our activity.”64
Recalling that the human person is a highly organized being
with reason, Wojtyła understands “all norms, including the person-
alistic norm, as based on the essences, or natures, of beings, are ex-
pressions of the order that governs the world. This order is intelligi-

58. Ibid. 59. See ibid., 285.

60. Ibid. 61. Ibid.
62. See ibid., 290. 63. Ibid., 286
64. Ibid., 287.
 Karol Wojtyła’s Ethics of Sexuality 139
ble to reason, to the person.”65 Wojtyła makes appropriate use here
of the scholastic adage that the person participates in the eternal law
and is conscious of a natural law (particeps legis aeternae et conscia legis
naturae).66 The person is able to perceive the normative force of his
human nature, and therefore the natural purpose of the sexual urge:
procreation.
But this natural purpose is necessarily supplemented by the per-
sonalistic norm as the sexual urge requires a person of the opposite
sex for its fulfillment. Wojtyła writes:
The necessity of combining these two norms into one—which involves, of
course, the necessity of properly situating the norm that emerges from an
understanding of the purpose of the sexual urge within the objective content
of the personalistic norm—is indispensible for preserving the order of na-
ture. . . . In integral theological (as well as philosophical) reasoning in Catho-
lic sexual ethics, the aims of nature must always come together with the val-
ue of the person.67

Thus, it is easy to understand why in Love and Responsibility Wojtyła

insisted that “the proper way for a person to deal with the sexual urge
is, on the one hand, consciously to make use of it for its natural pur-
poses, and on the other to resist it, when it threatens to degrade the
relationship between two persons to a level lower than that of love,
lower than the level on which the value of the person is affirmed in a
union with a truly personal character.”68 Far from subordinating the
person to nature, Wojtyła argues that instead this challenge assists the
person in adapting himself to the dynamic of nature. Nature, he in-
sists, is not conquered by violating its laws.69
Any Catholic presentation that fails to incorporate the personal-
istic norm runs the risk of slipping into a physicalism, or what Wo-
jtyła calls “naturalism” which would reduce ethical discourse to mere
biological and physiological requirements.70 Finally, incorporating
the personalistic norm in our understanding of the sexual urge re-
quires that the person be considered in any explanation of the tra-
ditional ends of marriage. The primary end of marriage, procreation,

65. Ibid. 66. See ibid. Cf. ST I-II, q. 91, a. 2.

67. Wojtyła, Love and Responsibility, 288. 68. Ibid., 229.
69. See ibid.
70. Wojtyła, “The Problem of Catholic Sexual Ethics,” 290.
140 Karol Wojtyła’s Ethics of Sexuality
is the natural purpose of the sexual urge. Likewise, the two second-
ary ends—the mutual aid of the spouses and the remedy of concupis-
cence—cannot be understood by a wholly naturalistic or excessively
juridical interpretation.71 Rather, the gospel’s command of love must
“shape the realization of all the ends of marriage—and it must do so
according to that objective hierarchy over which the Church keeps
watch.”72
Before turning to the particular difficulty of contraception in the
early thought of Karol Wojtyła, and particularly to his early exegesis
71. In this article, Wojtyła notes that the hierarchy of these ends has not changed
and that the church has resoundly rejected any attempt to do so. Attempting to place
the mutual aid of the spouses above procreation, he writes, “would not be in keeping
with the plan of the Creator either in the order of nature and in the light of reason or
in the order of grace and in the light of revelation” (see ibid., 291). This article, howev-
er, was published the same year that Gaudium et Spes was promulgated by the Second
Vatican Council. I noted in chapter 2 of this study that some have argued that the coun-
cil intended to overturn the church’s traditional language of the hierarchy of the ends
of marriage. Wojtyła’s statement here cannot in any way be read as a response to such
arguments. Indeed, in this article Wojtyła gives no evidence of having read Gaudium et
Spes. However, as pope, he suggested that the hierarchy was reaffirmed by both Gaudi-
um et Spes and Humanae Vitae, but that it was deepened by referring it to conjugal love.
See TOB, no. 127. In 1979, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith issued a noti-
fication against the book, Human Sexuality: A Study Commissioned by the Catholic Theo-
logical Society of America, edited by Anthony Kosnik for, among other things, claiming
that Vatican II had relativized the ends of marriage. See Congregation for the Docrine of
the Faith, “Observations about ‘Human Sexuality: A Study Commissioned by the Catholic
Theological Society of America,’” Origins (December 7, 1979): 1–2.
72. Wojtyła, “The Problem of Catholic Sexual Ethics,” 291. Wojtyła goes on to dis-
pute any theologian who would translate mutuum adiutorium as “love” and thereby es-
tablish a competition between procreation, love, and a remedy of concupiscence (see
ibid.). One wonders if he has in mind here the attempt made by Herbert Doms in the
1930s, which was discussed in the first chapter of this study. Interestingly, in his 1969
article, “The Teaching of Humanae Vitae on Love,” he seems to reverse this position
by referring to mutuum adiutorium explicitly as “conjugal love,” while maintaining his
insistence that the ends of marriage cannot be placed in opposition to each other: “I
should also point out at the very outset that neither the conciliar constitution nor the
encyclical anywhere explicitly mentions the traditional view concerning the hierarchy
of the ends of marriage. In that view, the primacy of procreatio (procreation) over mu-
tuum adiutorium (which today we would call conjugal love) was always emphatically
stressed. Neither the conciliar constitution nor the encyclical appeals to such a hierar-
chy of the ends of marriage, much less places these ends in opposition to one another.” Wo-
jtyła, “The Teaching of Humanae Vitae on Love,” in Person and Community, 302; origi-
nally published as Karol Wojtyła, “Nauka encykliki ‘Humanae vitae’ o miłości,” Analecta
Cracoviensia 1 (1969): 341–56.
 Karol Wojtyła’s Ethics of Sexuality 141
of Humanae Vitae, it will be necessary to explore the role the human
body plays in Wojtyła’s early works on sexual ethics.

The Body in Wojtyła’s

Early Works
The Religious Experience of Purity
One of the earliest published articles by Karol Wojtyła discussing
the importance of the body appeared in 1953: “The Religious Experi-
ence of Purity.”73 It has been suggested recently that this article “con-
tains the nucleus of The Theology of the Body, which our author would
develop thirty years later.”74 It also shares many themes in common
with Love and Responsibility. The article begins by noting that Chris-
tianity is fundamentally a personal religion in which a personal God
reveals his interior life to man and engages man in a personal relation-
ship with himself.75 According to Wojtyła, only the personalistic view
of religion can clarify the virtue of purity.76
Just as God is a person who is inviolable and incommunicable, so
also is the human person. The locus of the connection between reli-
gion and purity is this notion of the person:
Anybody can easily confirm the fact that man experiences in a profound way
the fundamental inviolability of his person. He is conscious of belonging to
himself, of possessing his own interior world of things, of plans, of decisions
and of feelings, a whole interior life of which he is the owner and to which
nobody else has access. He experiences his own personal individuality, au-
tonomy, and unique character, and all come together in the profound con-
sciousness of the inviolability of the person. For this reason, we can speak of

73. See Karol Wojtyła, “Religijne przeżywanie czystości,” Tygodnik Poweszechny 6

(1953): 1–12; French translation: “L’expérience religieuse de la pureté,” in Wojtyła, En
Esprit et en Vérité: Recueil de texts 1949–1978, trans. Gwendoline Jarczyk (Paris: La Cen-
turion, 1980), 46–55; Spanish translation: “La experiencia religiosa de la pureza,” in Wo-
jtyła, El don del amor: escritos sobre la familia, 2nd ed., trans. Antonio Esquivias and Ra-
fael Mora (Madrid: Ediciones Palabra, 2001), 69–81. I am grateful to a recent doctoral
dissertation by Ailbe Michael O’Reilly for suggesting this article’s importance in under-
standing the importance of the body in Wojtyła’s later works. See “Conjugal Chastity in
Pope Wojtyła” (PhD diss., Pontifical University of St. Thomas, 2007).
74. O’Reilly, “Conjugal Chastity,” 195.
75. See Wojtyła, “La experiencia religiosa de la pureza,” 69–70.
76. See ibid., 70.
142 Karol Wojtyła’s Ethics of Sexuality
the virginity of the human person. Man is a virgin by nature, in the sense that
he possesses his own interior world, his own interior life which he himself
shapes and which he alone is responsible.77

In this passage, there is an initial but expanded formulation of what

Wojtyła eventually refers to as the personalistic norm. Each person has
his own rich interior world which is unique and unrepeatable. No oth-
er person has a right to access that world or is even able to access it.78
In his doctoral study, Ailbe Michael O’Reilly notes that for Wo-
jtyła man’s interior life is inviolable not because he is man but be-
cause he is a person.79 According to Wojtyła, the uniqueness of the
human person’s inviolability (vis-à-vis that of God and of the angels)
is located, at least in part, in the body: “The totality of the human per-
son also includes the body, where, on the one hand, the acts of the
interior life have their origin and, on the other hand, find expression
and resonance. Because of this strict union between the human body
and the person, the natural virginity of man, his claim to this natural
inviolability that he experiences interiorly, finds a particular mode of
expression.”80 It is clear that for Wojtyła the interior life of the person
begins with the body and is expressed by the body, but he does not
here explain exactly how the interior life originates in the body.
The import of this observation for Wojtyła’s later work in sexu-
al ethics is clear. This union between the body and the soul means
“that physical relations between man and woman acquire an interi-
or motivation. The unity that exists between the human person and
his body implies that physical (sexual) relations should always be an
expression of that which is truly interior, of that which is personal.”81
The relationship between the person and the body in sex must be one
of gift.82 When the two, person and body, are not aligned in self-gift,
that is to say, when the offering of one’s person is not the interior mo-
tivation of sex, the other person experiences the worst violence done

77. Ibid., 76 (author’s translation).

78. Wojtyła goes on to say, however, that God, as the “Infinite Person,” has the right
to possess the content of a lesser person’s inviolable world (ibid., 77).
79. See O’Reilly, “Conjugal Chastity,” 197.
80. Wojtyła, “La experiencia religiosa de la pureza,” 76 (author’s translation).
81. O’Reilly, “Conjugal Chastity,” 197.
82. See Wojtyła, “La experiencia religiosa de la pureza,” 77.
 Karol Wojtyła’s Ethics of Sexuality 143
to “the entire human person, and not only on his body.”83 This, Wo-
jtyła says, suggests that “man experiences in his body the fundamen-
tal right to virginity and to personal inviolability.”84
The remainder of the article is devoted, then, to the conclusion
that the self-gift of man and woman to each other in marriage nec-
essarily includes the gift of their bodies to each other. He goes on to
contrast this with the gift of physical virginity that the religious per-
son makes to God as personal gift of self. It is precisely the gift of the
body in conjugal consummation that is not accessible to the person
giving himself over to God in vowed celibacy or consecrated virgini-
ty.85 The point here is that though a human person is inviolable in his
interior life and in his body, he is able to communicate his interior life
through the body to another. In that unique betrothed relationship
between a man and a woman, a person “can allow another person to
enter into his or her most physically intimate sphere. Through per-
sonal consent, there can exist total personal self-giving in the sphere
of human sexuality.”86 In Theology of the Body, Wojtyła will expand on
the corporal aspects of the self-gift between husband and wife, espe-
cially those aspects that can illegitimate or obscure the meaning com-
municated by the body.

The Body in Love and Responsibility

Wojtyła’s understanding of the body is a key theme in Love and Re-
sponsibility. The sexual urge discussed above, which provides the ini-
tial foundation upon which love is based, finds its origin in the body
as a certain natural instinct.87 The instinct is directed toward particu-
lar persons of the opposite sex; it is a primal recognition of the com-
plementarity of the sexes.88 This orientation toward the other is the
foundation for what Wojtyła calls “love as attraction.”89 However, for
love to be authentic, it has to move beyond simple attraction to the
body and find its true terminus in love of the person.90 For love of at-

83. Ibid. (author’s translation). 84. Ibid. (author’s translation).

85. See ibid., 77–81. 86. O’Reilly, “Conjugal Chastity,” 199.
87. See Wojtyła, Love and Responsibilty, 45–51.
88. Wojtyła notes that attraction to persons of the same sex is the homosexual devi-
ation (see ibid., 49). Further, see ibid., 106–7.
89. Ibid., 74. 90. See ibid., 123.
144 Karol Wojtyła’s Ethics of Sexuality
traction to grow into that betrothed love in which the gift of self in
sexual relations is authentically manifest, it has to be integrated by
the virtue of chastity. Wojtyła notes that man is blessed above all of
material creation with the faculties of reason and free will. The inte-
gration of attraction into reason and freedom is the work of chastity,
and this is a difficult work.
Wotyla’s reliance on Aristotelian-Thomistic anthropology is evi-
dent in his explanation of sensuality as sensory experience and im-
pression. He writes: “Any immediate contact between a woman and a
man is always the occasion of a sensory experience for both of them.
Each of them is a ‘body,’ [and] is therefore exposed to the senses of
the other and creates some impression.”91 Wojtyła further states that
sensuality is directed to the enjoyment of the other as body. It is a
“‘consumer orientation’—it is directed primarily and immediately
towards a ‘body’: it touches the person only indirectly, and tends to
avoid direct contact.”92 When sensuality and love as attraction are al-
lowed to progress unchecked and in a disintegrated fashion, a person
is not loved but only objectified. True beauty is, for Wojtyła, an ob-
ject of “contemplative cognition” which, although apprehended sen-
sually, is integrated by the virtue of chastity.93
Love will not mature if it “is dominated by an ambition to possess,
or more specifically by concupiscence born of sensual reactions, even
if these are accompanied by intense emotion.”94 Love “develops on the
basis of the totally committed and fully responsible attitude of a person to
a person, erotic experiences are born spontaneously from sensual and emo-
tional reactions.”95 Chastity is the ability to transcend the spontaneity
of erotic reactions that develops in the attraction of man and woman
to each other. The virtue of chastity takes hold of these spontaneous
reactions so that the other person may not be used merely for the en-
joyment of his or her body but actually loved for who he or she is. Far
from suppressing the value of the body, Wojtyła writes, the “essence
of chastity consists in quickness to affirm the value of the person in
every situation, and in raising to the personal level all reactions to the
value of ‘the body and sex.’”96
91. Ibid., 104. 92. Ibid., 105.
93. See ibid., 105–6. 94. Ibid., 145.
95. Ibid. 96. Ibid., 171.
 Karol Wojtyła’s Ethics of Sexuality 145
All of this means that for Wojtyła the gift of self has deeper ori-
gins than sexual differentiation and the sexual urge. The innate de-
sire of each person to offer himself is first of all found in the spiritual
and metaphysical nature of the person created in the image of a God
who is love.97 Only in betrothed love, the love between husband and
wife, is the innate desire for the other fulfilled in this world. In be-
trothed love, neither the man nor the woman wishes to possess the
other. Rather, in betrothed love “the lover ‘goes outside’ the self to
find a fuller existence in another.”98
This mutual self-surrender is an interior movement of the will. In
this 1960 book, then, Wojtyła continues the theme from his 1953 ar-
ticle, “The Religious Experience of Purity.” What is happening in the
body, sensually and emotionally, should correspond to the interior
movements of the person. “The sensual and emotional experiences
which are so vividly present in the consciousness form only the out-
ward expression and also the outward gauge of what is happening,
or most certainly should be happening, deep inside the persons in-
volved.”99 Sexual intercourse finds its proper place within marriage,
the institution that guarantees the mutual self-surrender of spouses,
because it serves as an expression of betrothed love.100
In 1960, Wojtyła reaffirmed his conclusions from 1953: that love
involves the body but must transcend its mere sensual urges, inte-
grate it, and grow into self-gift; and that sexual intercourse is morally
legitimate only when it serves as an expression in marriage of the be-
trothed love of the spouses. He also reaffirmed the incommunicabil-
ity of the person and the possibility of radical self-communication in
sexual intercourse. Still, he had yet to concern himself with the possi-
bilities of miscommunication, so to speak, with the sexual act and the
elements that might hamper or alter exactly what is communicated in
the conjugal act.

The Body in The Acting Person

In chapter 3, I briefly described Wojtyła’s understanding of human ac-
tion and dynamism in The Acting Person.101 For Wojtyła, the human

97. See ibid., 249–55. 98. Ibid., 126.

99. Ibid. 100. See ibid., 126–27.
101. See pages 117–22.
146 Karol Wojtyła’s Ethics of Sexuality
person has two basic experiences: action (agere) and passion or being
acted upon (pati).102 When the person is acting, he acts intentionally
and his act moves outward, but when he is acted upon he is the sub-
jective ego receiving the action.103 When a person is acted upon, vari-
ous potentialities (which Wojtyła refers to as “dynamisms”) are actu-
alized and the person finds himself in one way or another in a state of
becoming.104
Chapter 3 also showed that for Wojtyła personal agency also in-
vokes a certain dynamism in the subject. Wojtyła writes, “When act-
ing I have the experience of myself as the agent responsible for this
particular form of the dynamization of myself as the subject.”105 What
is willed by the agent is reflected back on the agent so that what is
willed affects not only an object exterior to the person but also affects
the person himself.106 In this second half of the book, we will see that
this is precisely Aquinas’s theory regarding action, habitus, and virtue.
For Wojtyła, self-determination is the unique hallmark of the tran-
scendence of the human person. The human person is determined
not only by the purposes of nature but also by his own free actions.107
Nevertheless, in the latter chapters of The Acting Person, Wojtyła
goes on to write: “The notion of the ‘transcendence of the person in
action’ does not, however, exhaust all the contents of the dynamic re-
ality of the person.”108 The self-determination that characterizes tran-
scendence requires, according to Wojtyła, that the person have both
self-possession and self-governance. This is the case since “only the
things that are man’s actual possessions can be determined by him; they
can be determined only by the one who actually possesses them.”109
When Wojtyła speaks of the pati of the human person, of things
happening to him, he is referring not only to action upon the person
from the outside but also things that happen within man. These dyna-
misms are intrinsically bound up with the body. Jaroslaw Kupczak ex-
plains:
102. See Wojtyła, The Acting Person, 66, 71.
103. See ibid., 71.
104. For Wojtyła’s understanding of dynamism as potentiality, see ibid., 86–87. For
the actualization of dynamism as “becoming” see ibid., 96.
105. Ibid., 66. 106. See ibid., 105, 109.
107. See ibid., 105–16. 108. Ibid., 189.
109. Ibid., 106.
 Karol Wojtyła’s Ethics of Sexuality 147
Wojtyła’s theory of transcendence led him into a dialogue with the nine-
teenth- and twentieth-century German philosophy of human freedom. He
was aware, however, that a large part of this philosophy treats the human
person from a dualistic and idealistic perspective. What is required, there-
fore, for a complete and successful explication of his theory of the acting per-
son is an account of the human body and an explanation of the role that hu-
man biology and physiology play in actus humanus.110

In Love and Responsibility, Wojtyła introduced the notion of integra-

tion of the body with human action and love, in The Acting Person he
further explains the dynamisms present in the body and their neces-
sary integration in action.
Wojtyła identifies two dynamisms that are beyond the control
of the human person: the somato-vegetative dynamism and the psy-
cho-emotive dynamism.111 The somatic refers directly to the human
body. The dynamisms of the soma, Wojtyła writes, are primarily reac-
tive to stimuli.112 The somatic dynamisms have two aspects because
the body has two aspects: an interiority and an exteriority. When he
writes of the exteriority of the body, Wojtyła means that “the body is
material, it is a visible reality, which is accessible to sense; the access
to it is first of all from the ‘outside.’”113 This exteriority serves a two-
fold purpose. On the one hand, the image of the body contributes
to the self-image of the person, but the body is also the means of the
person’s expression and communication. Wojtyła writes: “It is gener-
ally recognized that the human body is in its visible dynamism the
territory where, or in a way even the medium whereby, the person ex-
presses himself.”114 This will become the overriding theme of Theolo-
gy of the Body.
Any description of the body, or of the somatic dynamisms, is not
exhausted by the material appearance of the body. The body also has
its own interior dynamisms which constitute what we call the “hu-
man organism” according to Wojtyła.115 He chooses this specifical-
ly biological language because the interiority of the body refers to
“the system and the joint functioning of all the bodily organs.”116 The

110. Kupczak, Destined for Liberty, 132.

111. See Wojtyła, The Acting Person, 88–90.
112. See ibid., 200. 113. Ibid.
114. Ibid., 204. 115. See ibid., 201.
116. Ibid., 201; see 207.
148 Karol Wojtyła’s Ethics of Sexuality
functioning of this interior somatic dynamism is largely beyond the
person’s consciousness unless the organism of the body breaks down
in some way or another.117
Wojtyła incorporates an understanding of nature in his treatise on
the acting person:
Because of his body, the man-person genuinely belongs to nature. This im-
plies, on the one hand, his similarity to the rest of nature and, on the oth-
er, his partaking in the whole of the external conditions of existence that we
also refer to as “nature”. . . . The close connection existing between the human
organism and nature, so far as nature constitutes the set of conditions of ex-
istence and life, helps us to define the somatic dynamism of man. It seems
that this dynamism may be contained and expressed in the concept of reac-
tivity and also by the attribute reactive. . . . The human body has the ability to
react like other bodies in nature.118

The body is reactive both to other bodies and to the transcendent vo-
lition of the person (that is, in the willed movements and expressions
of the body). It is also, in a certain sense, reactive to natural instincts,
which concern more than just the soma but also the psyche.119
The words psyche or psychical, according to Wojtyła, “apply to the
whole range of manifestations of the integral human life that are not
in themselves bodily or material, but at the same time show some de-
pendence on the body, some somatic conditioning.”120 The psyche for
Wojtyła is not the equivalent of the soul. The psyche, although imma-
terial, is dependent on the soma. For Wojtyła, psyche is the conscious
awareness of emotion in the human person.121
Wojtyła is very concerned to explain the soma’s (and by neces-
sary connection, the psyche’s) reaction to the natural instincts of self-
preservation and reproduction. He writes that these “instinctive re-
actions are indicative of a dynamization that is appropriate to nature
itself, while instinct with its inherent drive tells of nature’s dynamic
orientation in a definite direction.”122 Self-preservation and reproduc-
tion have a specific “emotive urge” in the psyche.123 They are of partic-
ular import because they concern the human being as a whole. The

117. See ibid., 89–90. 118. Ibid., 208.

119. See ibid., 15. 120. Ibid., 201.
121. See ibid., 222–23. 122. Ibid., 215.
123. See ibid., 216.
 Karol Wojtyła’s Ethics of Sexuality 149
instinct for self-preservation, for example, governs and motivates all
aspects of the somatic-psychical life of the human person—feelings
of hunger, urges to eat, to defend oneself, as well as somatic functions
that enable these, such as eating, digestion, and bodily movement.124
Wojtyła claims that the instinct for reproduction lies deeper than
the soma, as even a brief analysis of sexuality reveals.125 Recalling his
conclusions from Love and Responsibility, our author reaffirms that
“the drive of sex, which relies on the momentous division of mankind
into male and female individuals, stems from the somatic ground and
also penetrates deeply into the psyche and its emotivity, thereby af-
fecting even man’s spiritual life.”126 He goes on to say that while the
instinct for self-preservation arises from a basic desire to maintain
personal preservation, the sexual instinct develops from “the desire
for sharing with another human being.”127 Simultaneously, the sexual
instinct is the source of reproduction and a drive to the other.128 The
sexual urge is powerful. However, it is not beyond our control. Wo-
jtyła writes:
The reproductive, procreative trait is most clearly manifested at the somatic
level of the instinctual dynamism, the dynamism manifesting itself in strict-
ly defined reactions of the body that to some extent automatically or sponta-
neously happen in man. In spite of all their specificity and automatism, how-
ever, these reactions remain sufficiently conscious to be controllable by man.
Essentially, this control consists in the adaptation of the body’s instinctual
dynamism of sex to its proper end.129

Here, Wojtyła claims that like other dynamisms, the sexual instinct
must be directed by the person to its proper end. The sexual dyna-
mism presents itself to the consciousness by passing through the psy-
che so that the person is aware of the sexual instincts within. Con-
trolling this sexual instinct is implicit in the larger process of the
integration of the human person.
The integration of the person is, according to Wojtyła, neces-
sary for the transcendence of the human person. In fact, without in-
tegration, the self-determination that characterizes transcendence is

124. See ibid., 217–18. 125. See ibid., 218.

126. Ibid. 127. Ibid.
128. See ibid. 129. Ibid.
150 Karol Wojtyła’s Ethics of Sexuality
not possible.130 In Wojtyła’s system, integration is synonymous with
self-possession and self-governance.131 Integration’s sine qua non rela-
tionship to transcendence is clear: one cannot determine that which
one neither possesses nor governs. Integration is the “subordination of
the subjective ego to the transcendent ego—that is to say, the synthe-
sis of efficacy and subjectiveness.”132 The self-governance and self-pos-
session that characterizes integration primarily regards the dynamisms
of the psyche and the soma, and brings those dynamisms into line with
human action.133 The importance of integration in Wojtyła’s thought
cannot be overstated.134
Finally, failure to achieve self-governance and self-possession gen-
erally leads to the disintegration of the person. Although personal dis-
integration may manifest itself in varying degrees of intensity, a disin-
tegrated person “appears to be completely destitute of the specifically
‘personal’ structures manifested in and with the action.”135 The action
of the disintegrated person is vacuous. Disintegration is the “‘insub-
ordinativeness’ or ‘unpossessibility’ of the subjective ego.”136 This in-
subordination of the psychosomatic element of the person impinges
upon his cognitive function, making him unable to make the correct
associations and this, in turn, leads to an inability to make correct
choices.137

130. See ibid., 106, 189–90, 220. 131. See ibid., 189–99.
132. Ibid., 196. 133. See ibid., 198–99.
134. Kenneth Schmitz notes that in Wojtyła’s thought, “The structure of the hu-
man person . . . is such that the individual human being is called to integrate his or her
complex dynamisms and to redeem the promise of what is both a received human na-
ture and a unique personal project. The realization of the value of one’s person comes
through actions that are responsible, that are self-determined and yet responsive to the
enlarged sense of reality in which both the subjective and objective sides of human exis-
tence are in play” (Schmitz, At the Center of the Human Drama, 89).
135. Wojtyła, The Acting Person, 193–94.
136. Ibid., 195.
137. Ibid. Here we see another indication of Wojtyła’s attempt to bring Thomas
Aquinas and Max Scheler into dialogue: “Regarding Aquinas, Wojtyła shares with him
the conviction that emotions should be subjected to the will guided by the intellect and
that this subjection is the function primarily of proficiencies and virtues. Scheler, on the
other hand, helped Wojtyła to appreciate the richness of human emotions and their role
in the process of value cognition. Balancing the Thomistic emphasis on human rational-
ity and Scheler’s emphasis on human affectivity, Wojtyła, in The Acting Person, presents
a convincing understanding of soma and psyche” (Kupczak, Destined for Liberty, 140).
 Karol Wojtyła’s Ethics of Sexuality 151
The understanding of self-possession, self-governance, and self-
determination is important for the purposes of this study. It is now
apparent that according to Wojtyła persons can act without first inte-
grating their nature. This is to say that persons can, and do, act in con-
tradiction to the purposes of nature, but such action is disintegrated.
Moreover, in an article following upon the publication of the origi-
nal Polish edition of The Acting Person, Wojtyła notes that “both self-
possession and self-governance imply a special disposition to make a
‘gift of oneself,’ this is a ‘disinterested’ gift. And only if one governs one-
self can one make a gift of oneself.”138 In my exegesis (below) of the
spousal meaning of the body in the Theology of the Body catecheses, this
theme will be repeated and amplified: the authentic spousal meaning
of the body can be subverted by a disintegrated use of sexuality.

Karol Wojtyła’s Analysis

of Humanae Vitae
With his publication of Love and Responsibility in 1960, Karol Wo-
jtyła inserted himself into the debate on love and sexuality. Pope Paul
VI was aware of the book and had appointed Wojtyła to the papal
commission on birth control before its final meeting in 1966, but he
could not attend the meeting because he was denied a passport by
the Polish Communist government.139 Throughout the 1960s, he was
aware of the difficulties in the church’s understanding of sexual eth-
ics.140 In 1966, he established his own diocesan commission in Cra-
cow to study the question of birth control and conjugal love. When
that commission completed its work, a memorandum entitled “The
Foundations of the Church’s Doctrine on the Principles of Conjugal
Love” was sent to Paul VI by Wojtyła in February 1968.141

138. Karol Wojtyła, “The Personal Structure of Self-Determination,” 194; in the

original Polish: “Osobowa struktura samostanowienia,” Roczniki Filozoficzne 29, no. 2
(1981): 5–12.
139. See Weigel, Witness to Hope, 207. Weigel reports this based on a personal con-
versation with John Paul II. This account contradicts Tad Szulc’s claim that Wojtyła had
purposely missed the meeting. See Szulc, Pope John Paul II, 254.
140. One example of this is his 1965 article, “The Problem of Catholic Sexual Ethics.”
141. Karol Wojtyła et al., “Les fondements de la doctrine de l’Eglise concernant les
principles de la vie conjugale,” Analecta Cracoviensia I (1969): 194–230; English transla-
152 Karol Wojtyła’s Ethics of Sexuality
As early as January 1969, almost six months after the publication
of Humanae Vitae, Wojtyła began publishing a series of articles that
both defended and explained the document’s teaching.142 On the oc-
casion of the tenth anniversary of Humanae Vitae, the same year he
would be elected to the papacy, Wojtyła published two important ar-
ticles on the document.143 These were his last published works on the
issue of conjugal love before beginning the Theology of the Body cat-
echeses.144
In his exegesis of Humanae Vitae, we see two basic elements of
Wojtyła’s anthropology and ethics come together in practical con-
clusions on love and marriage. First, conjugal love and responsible

tion: “The Foundations of the Church’s Doctrine Concerning the Principles of Conju-
gal Life: A Memorandum Composed by a Group of Moral Theologians from Krakow,”
trans. Thèrése Scarpelli Cory, Nova et Vetera 10 (2012): 321–59.
142. See Karol Wojtyła, “La verità dell’Enciclica «Humanae Vitae»,” L’Osservatore
Romano ( January 5, 1969): 1–2; Spanish translation: “La verdad de la Encíclica Humanae
Vitae,” in Wojtyła, El don del amor, 185–99; French translation: “Réflexions sur la vérité de
l’encyclique «Humanae Vitae»,” in Pour relire «Humanae Vitae»: Déclarationes épiscopal-
es du monde entire, ed. Philippe Delhaye, Jan Grootaers, and Gustave Thils (Gembloux:
Éditions Duculot, 1970), 185–93. See Wojtyła, “Wprowadzenie do Encykliki «Humanae
Vitae»,” Notificationes e curia Metropolitana Cracoviensi 1–4 (1969): 1–3; Spanish trans-
lation: “Introducción a la Encíclica Humanae Vitae,” in El don del amor, 201–4. See also
Wojtyła, “The Teaching of the Encyclical Humanae Vitae on Love,” in Person and Com-
munity, 301–14; Spanish Translation: Karol Wojtyła, “La enseñanza sobre el amor de la
encíclica Humanae Vitae,” in Wojtyła, El don del amor, 163–83. Finally, see Wojtyła, “Cri-
sis in Morality,” in Crisis in Morality: The Vatican Speaks Out (Washington, D.C.: United
States Catholic Conference, 1969), 1–7. I have been unable to ascertain whether this fi-
nal article is a translation of an original. The edition does not mention whether this is a
translation. However, I have not found this article in any of the collected works of John
Paul in English, French, Spanish, or German to which I have access.
143. The first article was an address given to an international congress in Milan. See
Karol Wojtyła, “Amore fecondo responsabile, a dieci anni della Humanae Vitae, in Atti
del Congresso Internazionale a Milano, 21–25 Guigno 1978 (Milan: Centro Internazionale
Studia Famiglia, 1979), 9–18; English translation: “Fruitful and Responsible Love,” in
Wojtyła, Fruitful and Responsible Love (New York: Seabury Press, 1979), 12–34. See also
Wojtyła, “La vision anthopologica della Humanae Vitae,” Lateranum 44 (1978): 125–45;
English translation: “The Anthropological Vision of Humanae Vitae,” trans. William E.
May, Nova et Vetera 7 (2009): 731–50.
144. If Michael Waldstein’s research is accurate, Wojtyła may indeed have had the
manuscript of Man and Woman He Created Them finished by the time these articles
were published. This manuscript was left unpublished after Wojtyła’s election to the
pontificate and became the basis for the Theology of the Body catecheses. See Michael
Waldstein’s introduction to Man and Woman He Created Them, 6–11.
 Karol Wojtyła’s Ethics of Sexuality 153
parenthood are ontologically connected. Second, a man and woman
must be fully integrated to understand the significance and meaning
of the conjugal act.

Conjugal Love and Responsible Parenthood

Reading Humanae Vitae, Wojtyła notes that Paul VI acknowledged
the difficulties of the family by placing conjugal morality squarely with-
in an ontologically integral vision of man in order to resolve the ques-
tion of artificial contraception and parenthood (see HV, par. 8).145 It is
not that this ontology is purely philosophical; in fact, it begins with the
love of God. Wojtyła notes that Paul VI begins the document with the
fundamental premise that God is love and that conjugal love enables
spouses to participate in that love.146
In his analysis, Wojtyła focuses on Humanae Vitae’s emphasis on
the connection between conjugal love and responsibility (see HV,
pars. 7 and 14), since he treated a similar theme in Love and Respon-
sibility. The connection between conjugal love and responsible par-
enthood is found in the notion of the gift of self that comprises love
(see HV, par. 8).147 The responsibility that is inherent in conjugal
love, Wojtyła writes, “finds its expression in an abiding consciousness
of having received that gift of love and at the same time in discern-
ing and appreciating the tasks which accompany the gift.”148 Love
comes to us as both a gift and a task in response to the gift. Marriage
is a communion of persons (HV, pars. 8 and 9). Moreover, this con-
jugal love “requires in husband and wife an awareness of their mis-
sion of ‘responsible parenthood’” (HV, par. 10). Here, Wojtyła notes,
“The proper parenthood of the love between persons is a responsible par-
enthood. We can say that in the encyclical Humanae Vitae responsible
parenthood becomes the proper name of human procreation.”149

145. See, for example, Wojtyła, “The Teaching of the Encyclical Humanae Vitae,”
313; Wojtyła, “The Anthropological Vision,” 733.
146. See “The Teaching of the Encyclical Humanae Vitae,” 303; Wojtyła, “La verdad
de la Encíclica Humanae Vitae,” 194; Wojtyła, Fruitful and Responsible Love, 16.
147. See also GS, par. 51.
148. See Wojtyła, Fruitful and Responsible Love, 19.
149. Wojtyła, “La verdad de la Encíclica Humanae Vitae,” 188–89 (author’s transla-
tion).
154 Karol Wojtyła’s Ethics of Sexuality
Responsible parenthood is not simply about procreation. Ac-
cording to Humanae Vitae, responsible parenthood is “either . . . the
thoughtful and generous determination either to have a large fami-
ly, or . . . the decision to avoid a new birth provisionally or even for an
indeterminate time” (HV, par. 10). From this Wojtyła draws the con-
clusion that
if conjugal love is a fecund love, that is to say orientated to parenthood, it is
difficult to think that the meaning of responsible parenthood . . . can become
identified only with the limitation of births. Responsible parenthood can be
achieved by the couple who, by their thoughtful and generous decision, de-
cide to bring up numerous offspring, but equally so by those who determine
to restrict this parenthood “for serious motives and respecting moral law”
(HV, 10).150

Given the communion of persons that comprises conjugal love and

orients it to responsible parenthood, one of the central tasks of conju-
gal love according to Wojtyła is to “resolve itself into an incessant ef-
fort which tries to personalize sexual values, and not the opposite.”151
Responsible parenthood and the values from which it stems, val-
ues grounded in the person and in the communion between persons,
cannot be exchanged for a scientific technique.152 In fact, the conjugal
act loses its character as a personal act between persons with the in-
tervention of artificial methods of contraception. The conjugal act as
such is deeply personal but also deeply interpersonal. Man cannot re-
nounced the attitude of self-control in this act. Wojtyła insists, “If he
[man] thinks that he can be replaced by artificial methods and means,
he ought to know at the same time that he is ridding himself of his
basic values, namely, those values which determine his dignity as a
person and the authenticity of his love for the other person and their
mutual communion.”153
The importance of this assertion is fully apparent when we recall
what Wojtyła had already written on the values of the human person,
that is, self-determination and self-possession vis-à-vis the gift of self as

150. Ibid., 189 (author’s translation).

151. See Wojtyła, “Crisis in Morality,” 5.
152. See Wojtyła, “La verdad de la Encíclica Humanae Vitae,” 189–90; Wojtyła, Fruit-
ful and Responsible Love, 26; Wojtyła, “Crisis in Morality,” 6.
153. See Wojtyła, “Crisis in Morality,” 6.
 Karol Wojtyła’s Ethics of Sexuality 155
articulated in The Acting Person. Wojtyła argues that an “integral view”
of the person is necessary to understand responsible parenthood.154
More than that, however, a person himself must be integrated in order
to experience conjugal love and responsible parenthood fully.

Integration and the Conjugal Act:

Its Signification and Meaning
Karol Wojtyła’s analysis is particularly focused on Pope Paul VI’s reli-
ance on the meanings of the conjugal act and their inseparable unity.
Recall that Paul VI asserts there is an “inseparable connection, willed
by God and unable to be broken by man on his own initiative, be-
tween the two meanings of the conjugal act: the unitive meaning and
the procreative meaning” (HV, par. 12). The encyclical’s reference to
the will of God certainly represents for Wojtyła a nod to the purpos-
es of nature.155
However, it is important to note that in this paragraph, Pope Paul
VI does not emphasize the purposes of nature in the conjugal act.
Wojtyła notes:
By appealing to the meaning of the conjugal act, the Pope places the whole
discussion not only and not so much in the context of the nature of this act,
but also and even more in the context of human awareness, in the context
of the awareness that should correspond to this act on the part of both the
man and the woman—the persons performing the act. One can detect in
this part of the encyclical a very significant passage from what some might call a
“theology of nature” to a “theology of the person.”156

As Wojtyła reads it, Humanae Vitae, while not dismissing the nature
of the act, brings, rather, the subjectivity of the acting persons into
the discussion. The meanings of the conjugal act must be present in
the consciousness of the couple.
For Wojtyła, Humanae Vitae, par. 12, finds its intellectual lineage
in Gaudium et Spes, par. 51, which speaks of the “nature of the human
person and his acts” in reference to conjugal morality, insisting upon
the preservation of “the integral sense of mutual donation and of hu-

154. See ibid.

155. See Wojtyła, “The Teaching of the Encyclical Humanae Vitae,” 308.
156. Ibid.
156 Karol Wojtyła’s Ethics of Sexuality
man procreation in the context of true love.”157 Both the Second Vati-
can Council and Humanae Vitae encourage an analysis not only of the
nature of action but also of the acting human person. He writes: “If
we wish to analyze this action, we cannot do this without detaching
it from the person as the subject who is conscious of the meaning of
his own acting.”158
Wojtyła thinks that Pope Paul VI is “not only writing about the
meaning of the conjugal act, which results from its nature, he is also
writing on the intended meaning and the sign [of the conjugal act].”159
In fact, Wojtyła believes that “a man or a woman is not only conscious
of this meaning [of the conjugal act], but that in realizing this act, can
and must give it this precise meaning and no other, can and must in-
tend this sign and no other.”160 While the authentic meaning of the
conjugal act follows from its nature, and it is this meaning that should
be in the couple’s intention, they can, nonetheless, give the act some
other purely subjective meaning.
In his 1978 article, “The Anthropological Vision of Humanae Vi-
tae,” Wojtyła further explains the difference between the objective
meaning and the intended meaning. For Wojtyła, par. 12 of Humanae

157. GS, par. 51. See Tanner, Decrees, 2:1104.

158. Wojtyła, “The Anthropological Vision,” 742.
159. Wojtyła, “La enseñanza sobre el amor de la encíclica Humanae Vitae,” 174. I
have chosen to provide my own translation of the Spanish version of this article be-
cause I believe the phraseology of this English translation is confusing. Throughout his
writing, Wojtyła speaks of the nature of the conjugal act and the objective meaning that
stems from that nature, on the one hand, and here he introduces the possibility of oth-
er meanings intended by the couple. There is nothing to suggest in his writing, or in the
Spanish, that when he speaks of the nature of the act and its objective meaning (rather
than the subjective meaning intended by the couple) that this meaning results from the
couple’s “understanding of its nature” as the English phraseology implies, but which is
not present in the Spanish.
160. Wojtyła, “La enseñanza sobre el amor de la encíclica Humanae Vitae,” 174.
Again, I revert to a translation of the Spanish, but here even the English translation con-
firms my observations of the English phraseology in the previous note: “The personal
subject of this act—a man or a woman—is not only aware of its meaning, but in per-
forming this act can and should give it precisely this and not some other meaning, can
and should signify only this and not something else by it” (Wojtyła, “The Teaching of
the Encyclical Humanae Vitae,” 308). The English here suggests that the objective mean-
ing of nature does exist apart from the couple’s understanding and, therefore, that they
should align their subjective meaning with this objective meaning. This is, in fact, what
Wojtyła argues as the article proceeds.
 Karol Wojtyła’s Ethics of Sexuality 157
Vitae advances the anthropological vision of Gaudium et Spes. He
writes: “Indeed, it seems that by engaging in an analysis of the act,
or rather the cooperation of the spouses in the act we call the ‘conju-
gal act,’ Humanae Vitae 12 emphasizes even more the subjectivity of
the cooperating persons [than Gaudium et Spes, par. 51, does].”161 Hu-
manae Vitae, in Wojtyła’s reading, presupposes the objective dimen-
sion of the “action-cooperation” of the spouses while stressing the
“subjective moment proper to this action-cooperation.”162
The objective dimension of the action-cooperation is the unitive
and procreative meaning of love and the conjugal act is naturally a
sign signifying both these meanings.163 But Wojtyła insists that Hu-
manae Vitae is concerned just as much, if not more, with the conju-
gal act “realized subjectively by concrete persons—a man and a wom-
an—as an act effected and experienced together.”164 In his very lucid
analysis, Wojtyła writes:
The author of Humanae Vitae does not limit himself to ascertain, therefore,
what that act, that singular act-cooperation of man and woman, objectively,
“signifies” (significa) but broadens his analysis to the “meaning” (significato)
that the man and the woman can and must attribute to themselves as acting
and cooperating subjects. The author of the encyclical Humanae Vitae there-
fore affirms that, in this subjective dimension of the act-cooperation, “man
may not break on his initiative [the bond] between these two meanings
(significati) of the act.” There must be actualized a harmony between what
the act objectively “signifies” (significata) and the “meaning” (significato)
that the spouses . . . confer on it in the subjective dimension of their action-
cooperation.165

This harmony is achieved when the couple intends the authentic

(or objective) meaning (the union of procreative and unitive) of the
conjugal act. In 1969, Wojtyła wrote the same thing: “They can and
should intend by it precisely what it means essentially. It means both
a special union of persons and, at the same time, the possibility (not
the necessity!) of fecundity, of procreation. If, in acting jointly, this is
precisely what they intend to signify by their activity , then the activity is
intrinsically true and free of falsification.”166
161. Wojtyła, “The Anthropological Vision,” 742.
162. Ibid. 163. Ibid.
164. Ibid., 743. 165. Ibid.
166. Wojtyła, “The Teaching of the Encyclical Humanae Vitae,” 309. This idea reap-
158 Karol Wojtyła’s Ethics of Sexuality
Periodic continence as a means of ethical regulation of birth dif-
fers from contraception in precisely this way. “The former does not
undermine the order of meanings contained in the conjugal act,
whereas the latter does. . . . In the ethical regulation of birth, spouses can
signify by their activity in the conjugal act what this activity essentially
means, whereas contraception makes this impossible.”167 Since the mean-
ing of union cannot be separated from the meaning of procreation,
when procreation is intentionally limited from the act, the meaning
of union is not properly expressed. An “active undermining of the
‘meaning and purpose’ that corresponds to the plan of the Creator
must work against the ‘intimate union’ of the spouses. One could say . . .
the conjugal act then lacks the value of a true union of persons.”168 Un-
dermining the objective significance or meaning of the conjugal act
necessarily undermines whatever subjective meaning the spouses in-
tend. They are acting at cross purposes with nature.
This subjective element in the conjugal act, as with all of the con-
jugal life and responsible parenthood, “above all implies a more pro-
found relationship to the objective moral order established by God,
of which a right conscience is the faithful interpreter” (HV, par. 10).
Recalling themes from The Acting Person, Wojtyła insists that a right
conscience “makes its decisions from the maturity and fullness of hu-
man subjectivity; it determines (judges) because it is the ‘faithful in-
terpreter’ (one would rather say, ‘the truthful interpreter’) ‘of the
objective moral order established by God.’”169 He believes that this
mature subjectivity entails “equitable objectivity” in keeping the hier-
archy of values in conjugal life.170

pears in FC: “The innate language that expresses the total reciprocal self-giving of hus-
band and wife is overlaid, through contraception, by an objectively contradictory lan-
guage, namely, that of not giving oneself totally to the other. This leads not only to a
positive refusal to be open to life but also to a falsification of the inner truth of conjugal
love, which is called upon to give itself in personal totality. . . . The difference, both an-
thropological and moral, between contraception and recourse to the rhythm of the cy-
cle . . . involves in the final analysis two irreconcilable concepts of the human person and
of human sexuality” (par. 32).
167. Wojtyła, “The Teaching of the Encyclical Humanae Vitae,” 309–10.
168. Ibid., 311. Wojtyła is here commenting on HV, par. 13. See also Wojtyła, “La
Verdad,” 194–95.
169. Wojtyła, “The Anthropological Vision,” 743.
170. See ibid.
 Karol Wojtyła’s Ethics of Sexuality 159
More importantly, Wojtyła concludes that it is the true objectiv-
ity of a right conscience that “allows the spouses to establish an au-
thentic harmony between what the conjugal act objectively ‘signifies’
(significa) and the ‘meaning’ (significato) that the spouses themselves
attribute to it in their own inner attitude, in their subjective action
and in their intimate experience.”171 The two aspects, the objective
and the subjective (otherwise referred to by Wojtyła as the ethical
aspect and the psychological aspect, respectively) must be integrat-
ed.172 In fact, for a love to be a truly honest and human love, “its psy-
chological value must be integrated with its ethical value.”173
When he speaks of integration, Wojtyła is referring once again
to the composite of the human person—body and soul—and insist-
ing that the somatic processes must be included in such integration.
The body cannot be regarded simply as biological organism that may
be manipulated by technique.174 Humanae Vitae, he argues, under-
stands the body not as an autonomous being but “as a component
of the whole man in his personal constitution. . . . The respect due to
the body, particularly in its procreative functions—functions rooted
in the whole specific somatic quality of sex—is respect for the hu-
man being, that is, for the dignity of the man and the woman.”175
Only with this integrated view of the human person, in which the
soma, the psyche, and the soul are understood as united in one per-
son, can the scientific interventions of bio-physiological techniques
be evaluated, “those techniques that interfere efficiently in the bio-
physiological processes themselves.”176 This imposes a limit on man’s
dominion over his own body which is rooted “in the profound struc-
ture of personal being.”177
Here, finally, Wojtyła has recourse to the theme of self-mastery
(self-governance and self-possession). He writes: “Man cannot exercise
power over his own body by means of interventions or techniques that,
at the same time, compromise his authentic personal dominion over

171. Ibid.
172. See Wojtyła, “The Teaching of the Encyclical Humanae Vitae,” 311; Wojtyła,
“The Anthropological Vision,” 743.
173. Wojtyła, “The Teaching of the Encyclical Humanae Vitae on Love,” 312.
174. See Wojtyła, “The Anthropological Vision,” 746.
175. Ibid. 176. Ibid.
177. Ibid.
160 Karol Wojtyła’s Ethics of Sexuality
himself and that even, in a certain way, annihilate this dominion.”178
Artificial contraception subverts that self-mastery. And self-mastery is
necessary for the authentic gift of self to another person.179

Conclusion
In this chapter, I have sought to provide a glimpse of the intellectual
pedigree of John Paul’s notion of the spousal meaning of the body as
articulated in the Theology of the Body catecheses. The salient themes
that have emerged here are: (1) his understanding of the relationship
of conjugal love as a self-gift and responsible parenthood in the in-
stitution of marriage; (2) the possibility of the body serving in the
self-communication of that self-gift in the conjugal act; (3) the idea
that there is both an objective meaning or significance and a subjec-
tive meaning or significance in the conjugal act; and (4) his view that
integration of the psyche and soma is necessary for an authentic self-
gift and the proper alignment of meanings in the conjugal act.
Wojtyła knew the difficulties the church’s teaching on contracep-
tion presented to the world. He knew the anxieties married couples
faced.180 In his view, Humanae Vitae was an exercise of the magisteri-
um’s vocation to serve the faithful in distinguishing between opinion
and truth.181 In 1965, three years before the publication of Humanae
Vitae, Wojtyła argued that four circumstances militated against the
church’s presentation of the issue: “1) The habit of thinking and judg-
ing in a utilitarian way; 2) the inclination to judge the value of an act
solely on the basis of its effects; 3) the enormous pressure exerted by
the subjective, emotional element; and 4) the whole set of difficul-
ties, real or illusory, connected with the use of natural methods of
birth control.”182
After reading Humanae Vitae, he saw that “a comprehensive on-
tology of marriage, an integral vision of the human being, a vision

178. Ibid.
179. See ibid., 748; Wojtyła, “La verdad de la encíclica Humanae Vitae,” 195.
180. See, for example, Wojtyła, “La verdad de la encíclica Humanae Vitae,” 197–99;
Wojtyła, “Crisis in Morality,” 3–4; Wojtyła, Fruitful and Responsible Love, 32–34.
181. See Wojtyła, “Introducción a la Encíclica Humanae Vitae,” 202–3.
182. Wojtyła, “Problem of Catholic Sexual Ethics,” 294.
 Karol Wojtyła’s Ethics of Sexuality 161
of man and woman as persons” was absolutely necessary.183 He be-
lieved that Humanae Vitae was a first step to this presentation inas-
much as “it points to the possibility and even necessity, of in some
way transforming the optics of the issue, while at the same time pre-
serving—and even for the sake of preserving—a more precise identi-
ty of doctrine.”184 One way of reading Theology of the Body is to read
it as Karol Wojtyła’s attempt to transform “the optics of the issue” at
work in Humanae Vitae and in the twentieth century ecclesial debate
on marriage and sexuality in general. And, indeed, in the very last cat-
echesis of the Theology of the Body series, John Paul suggests this in-
terpretation.185 The next chapter will offer an exegesis of one of the
central themes of those catecheses, one of the principal subjects of
this study, namely, the spousal meaning of the body.

183. Wojtyła, “The Teaching of the Encyclical Humanae Vitae,” 314.

184. Ibid.
185. See TOB, no. 133.
 5

The Spousal Meaning of the Body

in Theology of the Body

As I mentioned in the introduction to this book, Pope John Paul II’s

Wednesday catecheses, which eventually became known as Theology
of the Body, were largely based on an unpublished manuscript enti-
tled Man and Woman He Created Them. In a new critical translation
of the catechetical lectures, Michael Waldstein has incorporated the
original headings from that unpublished manuscript. These headings
reveal the systematic nature of Wojtyła’s project by offering an out-
line of the work as a whole. For the first time, readers can approach
Theology of the Body not as a work of disjointed talks but as a unified
whole.1
The headers of the manuscript divide the work into two parts.
The first part concerns the words of Christ. Here, the pope focuses on
1. Charles Curran can be excused for his criticism to the contrary since it was made
before the publication of Waldstein’s translation. See Charles Curran, The Moral Theol-
ogy of Pope John Paul II (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 2005), 167:
“The talks occasionally cite philosophers and other secular thinkers; the talks also come
complete with footnotes. But the theology of the body is not developed in a systemat-
ic way. The very nature of short talks presented every week to a different audience mil-
itates against a totally systematic approach. Because the talks are not a complete and
systematic presentation of the pope’s teaching on marriage, many aspects remain some-
what unclear and certainly less developed than they would be in a truly systematic pre-
sentation.”

162
 The Spousal Meaning of the Body 163
three “words”: the beginning, the human heart, and the resurrection.
In the first chapter, John Paul offers a catechesis on creation, particu-
larly addressing Christ’s assertions that divorce was not present in the
beginning (Mt 19:3–8) and that adultery may be committed in the
heart and not only in the flesh (Mt 5:27–28). Building upon his analy-
sis of Genesis, the pope then lays out his moral teaching on concupis-
cence and love. The third chapter of this first part concerns Christ’s
words about the body and the resurrection (Mt 22:24–30), and ad-
dresses the role of the body in the resurrection and continence for
the kingdom of God.
The second part of Theology of the Body is about the sacrament of
marriage itself. It also is divided into three chapters. The first chap-
ter is an exegesis on the words of scripture, primarily of the proph-
ets, the gospels, and Paul on the dimension of the covenant and grace
at work in the sacrament. The second chapter concerns the dimen-
sion of sign, specifically the sign of consent in marriage and the sign
or language of the body. The final chapter is a direct commentary on
Humanae Vitae in light of the language of the body that John Paul de-
velops throughout the work. This final chapter is central to the whole
work.2 Indeed, Humanae Vitae was central to the pope’s thought
when writing the catecheses.3 As the pope himself put it, the whole of
Theology of the Body is intended to “face the questions raised by Hu-
manae vitae above all in theology, to formulate these questions, and
to look for an answer to them.”4
The previous two chapters of this book have surveyed Wojtyła’s
thought on a number of relevant issues: nature, the person, the body,
and the conjugal act. Given the trajectory of his thought and the tur-
moil after the promulgation of Humanae Vitae, it is not surprising
that Wojtyła was prepared to publish a book not only defending the
1968 encyclical but, in a sense, rereading it in the light of a biblical
and theological anthropology. In this work, John Paul clarifies several
2. It should be noted that in his final Wednesday audience, Pope John Paul II iden-
tified three main parts to his catechetical lecture. The first two mentioned above, and
the part concerning Humanae Vitae (see TOB, no. 133:1–2, 4). This differs from the
headings of the unpublished manuscript upon which the audiences were based. For an
analysis of this difference, see Waldstein, “Introduction,” 105–28.
3. See TOB, no. 133:4.
4. Ibid.
164 The Spousal Meaning of the Body
aspects of his moral theology which are central to an understanding
of his view of the spousal meaning of the body. Further, many of the
themes found in Theology of the Body recur throughout the pontifi-
cate of John Paul II in his writings on marriage and the family.5
The purpose of this chapter is not to provide a complete survey
of Theology of the Body. As I mentioned in the general introduction of
this book, that task has largely been accomplished. Rather, this chap-
ter will elucidate John Paul’s understanding of several key features im-
portant to this study, not the least of which is his articulation of the
spousal meaning of the body. Since the pope nowhere provides a pre-
cise definition of the spousal meaning of the body, it will be neces-
sary for this chapter to provide an exegesis of the key concepts under-
pinning John Paul’s use of the term, including man’s unique position
in creation, the role and language of the body in this position, the im-
pact of sin on the human person and the body, the redemption of the
body by Christ, and, finally, the import of all this for understanding
Humanae Vitae and the spousal union of a married couple.
Therefore, this chapter is composed of a four-part exegetical read-
ing of Theology of the Body. First, we discuss John Paul’s analysis of
creation and man’s place in it. In the second section, we turn to the
fall and redemption: the effects of sin, shame, and concupiscence on
the body along with the impact that the redemption of Christ has on
the body. In the third section, we explore John Paul’s understanding
of the language of the body as it is lived in marriage and articulated
in Humanae Vitae. In the conclusion of this chapter, then, we offer a
summary view of what Pope John Paul means by the spousal mean-
ing of the body so that it will be evident exactly which elements of his
understanding stem from Thomas Aquinas.

5. The second part of FC (written in 1981) follows the same outline as TOB. See
FC, pars. 11–17. Similar themes can also be found in his apostolic letter on the dignity
and vocation of women: John Paul II, Mulieris Dignitatem, Apostolic Letter of August 15,
1988 [hereafter, MD], in AAS 80 (1988): 1653–1729. The following two texts also contain
themes culled from these Wednesday catecheses: John Paul II, Gratissimam Sane, Apos-
tolic Letter of February 2, 1994, in AAS 86 (1994): 868–925; and John Paul II, “Mulieri-
bus ex Omnibus Nationibus Missus,” June 29, 1995; official Italian text: AAS 87 (1995):
803–12.
 The Spousal Meaning of the Body 165

The Analysis of Creation

Creation and Original Solitude
At the very beginning of his catechetical talks, John Paul continues
a trend that he began with his doctoral dissertation on John of the
Cross. Namely, he continues to emphasize the subjective element of
human experience while respecting the objective and ontological cat-
egories of the Christian theological tradition. For example, he writes
that the first scriptural account of creation (Gn 1:1–2:4) “is concise,
free from any trace of subjectivism: it contains only the objective
fact and defines the objective reality.”6 And again, “The first account
of the creation of man . . . contains hidden within itself a powerful
metaphysical content.”7 After explaining the traditional metaphysical
distinction between being (ens) and existence (esse), the pope con-
cludes “that the first chapter of Genesis has formed an incontrovert-
ible point of reference and solid basis of a metaphysics and also for an
anthropology and an ethics according to which ‘ens et bonum conver-
tuntur’ [being and good are convertible]. Of course, all of this has its
own significance for theology as well, and above all for the theolo-
gy of the body.”8 As God brings creatures into existence, he declares
them good. Metaphysics and ontology are consistently implicit in
Theology of the Body, even if they are not always fully explained. Creat-
ed from nothingness, declared good, man is directed to communion
with God.
Regarding the second account of creation (Gn 2:4–25) and the
story of the fall (Gn 3:1–24), however, John Paul is clear. The accounts
differ from the first account in more ways than their authorship. He
writes, “We must observe that the whole text, in formulating the truth
about man, strikes us with its typical depth, different from that of the
first chapter of Genesis. One can say this depth is above all subjective
in nature and thus in some way psychological. Chapter 2 of Genesis
constitutes in some way the oldest description and record of man’s
self-understanding and, together with chapter 3, it is the first witness
of human consciousness.”9

6. TOB, no. 2:4. 7. Ibid., no. 2:5.

8. Ibid. 9. Ibid., no. 3:1.
166 The Spousal Meaning of the Body
It is this subjective and psychological aspect, the biblical record
of human consciousness, with which John Paul is concerned in Theol-
ogy of the Body. The pope declares that “theology has built the overall
image of man’s original innocence and justice before original sin by apply-
ing the method of objectivization specific to metaphysics and meta-
physical anthropology. In the present analysis, we are trying rather to
take into account the aspect of human subjectivity.”10 Here John Paul
states explicitly that he is purposely not employing a metaphysical
and teleological method in Theology of the Body. This is not surpris-
ing since, as I noted in chapter 3, in the 1970s he began to turn to phe-
nomenology as a means of discourse on moral norms, even though
he continued to assert the value of natural teleology and metaphysics
for any moral theory.
If the previous two chapters of this study have shown anything, it
is that John Paul does not deny the importance of objective and meta-
physical categories. One of the motivating aspects of this chapter is to
highlight the places in Theology of the Body where that which is ob-
jective, metaphysical, and ontological is necessary for the account of
the spousal meaning of the body even though John Paul is more con-
cerned to incorporate human experience into theology. John Crosby
has astutely noted that Wojtyła spent much time explaining and de-
fending the norms of Humanae Vitae from an experiential perspec-
tive because the encyclical represents a vast truth about man and be-
cause the faithful more easily follow the truth when they understand
the truth.11 From this perspective, it is true, John Paul presents mod-
est critiques of theologians who rely primarily on a metaphysical ac-
count, including Aquinas.12 In the Theology of the Body catecheses, he
is more concerned with the “biblical, theological sphere.”13
The primal experience of man revealed in the second Genesis nar-
rative is solitude, or “original solitude” as John Paul calls it. In Genesis
2:18, God speaks the words that identify this solitude: “It is not good
10. Ibid., no. 18:1.
11. See John F. Crosby, “The Personalism of John Paul II as the Basis of His Ap-
proach to the Teaching of ‘Humanae vitae,’” Anthropotes 5 (1989): 48–49.
12. In TOB, no. 54, for example, John Paul disagrees with Aquinas’s conception that
purity “consists above all in holding back the impulses of sense-desire.” See also ibid.,
no. 130.
13. Ibid., no. 133:4.
 The Spousal Meaning of the Body 167
that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.”14
And God brings all the animals to the man. The pope draws two con-
clusions from this. First, “created man finds himself from the first mo-
ment of his existence before God in search of his own being, as it were;
one could say, in search of his own definition; today one would say, in
search of his own ‘identity.’”15 Here, John Paul brings together both
the objective and the subjective elements of his study by introducing
the subjective search for the identity of one’s objective being. His “an-
thropology calls man to become what or who he is by accepting and
living out the identity and vocation that God has inscribed in his very
being.”16
The second conclusion is this:
Self-knowledge goes hand in hand with knowledge of the world, of all visible
creatures, of all living beings to which man has given their names to affirm
his own dissimilarity before them. Thus, consciousness reveals man as the
one who possesses the power of knowing with respect to the visible world. With
this knowledge, which makes him go in some way outside his own being,
man at the same reveals himself to himself in all the distinctiveness of his being
. . . . Man is alone because he is “different” from the visible world, from the
world of living beings.17

This idea that man is unique in all of creation and that he is in search
of his own identity will play a significant role in John Paul’s under-
standing of the conjugal act and the spousal meaning of the body. It
also relies on the blending of the two categories: the objective and
the subjective. As John Paul sees it, this experience of original soli-
tude in creation is the effect of man’s ontological uniqueness. But that
uniqueness is itself the direct result of man being created in the im-

14. Unless otherwise stated, all English passages of scripture are taken from the
Holy Bible, Revised Standard Version, Second Catholic Edition (San Francisco, Calif.:
Ignatius Press, 2005).
15. TOB, no. 5:5. This theme of man finding himself appears throughout Pope John
Paul’s theological writings. A leitmotif of his pontificate was the theological idea that in
man’s search for his identity, Christ reveals not only God but also man to himself. This
idea was explicitly stated in GS, par. 22. This is one of the principal themes of the Pope’s
first encyclical, published in 1979, Redemptor Hominis, in AAS 71 (1979): 257–324. See
also John Paul II, Gratissimam Sane, par. 9.
16. Asci, The Conjugal Act, 124.
17. TOB, no. 5:6.
168 The Spousal Meaning of the Body
age of God and brings with it a subjective urge for self-definition and
self-identity.
The pope argues that being created in the image of God is the
equivalent of being called to a community of persons (communio per-
sonarum).18 Mary Shivanandan has effectively shown the uniqueness
of John Paul’s thought on this point. Man’s solitude in creation re-
veals a directionality to the other, to a communio, and to a capacity for
union with others. This directionality, as we will see, is part and par-
cel of man’s fundamental existence. Here the pope does not disparage
the tradition of seeing the imago Dei only in the intellectual faculties
of intellect and will. Rather, he supplements the tradition by incor-
porating a biblical anthropology which he has drawn from a reading
of the Genesis narrative.19 The communio personarum to which man
is called is ultimately the Trinitarian communion of Father, Son, and
Holy Spirit. John Paul is clear that though man has self-consciousness
and even self-determination, these exist as parameters within his rela-
tionship with God.
The nature of the relationship is expressed in the primordial com-
mand not to eat of the tree of knowledge (Gn 2:16–17). According
to the pope, because man is made in the image of God, he is “a sub-
ject constituted as a person, constituted according to the measure
of ‘partner of the Absolute,’ inasmuch as he must consciously discern
and choose between good and evil, between life and death. . . . Man is
‘alone’: this is to say that through his own humanity, through what he is, he
is at the same time set into a unique, exclusive, and unrepeatable relation-
ship with God himself.”20 Self-determination exists within a covenantal
relationship with God. Freedom is not absolute or autonomous. This is
a foundational point in John Paul’s anthropology and moral theology.
18. See ibid., no. 9:2–3.
19. See Mary Shivanandan, Crossing the Threshold of Love: A New Vision of Marriage
in the Light of John Paul II’s Anthropology (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of
America Press, 1999), 72–80.
20. TOB, no. 6:2. The final sentence here hints at GS, par. 24, in which the council
declares, “Man is the only creature on earth whom God has willed for his own sake, he
is unable to find himself except through a sincere gift of himself ” (Tanner [ed.], Decrees
of the Ecumenical Councils, 2:1083–84). This paragraph of the council’s Pastoral Constitu-
tion is another theme of the Pope’s pontificate. See Pascal Ide, “Une théologie du don:
Les occurrences de Gaudium et spes, n. 24, §3 chez Jean-Paul II,” Anthropotes 17 (2001):
149–78, 313–44.
 The Spousal Meaning of the Body 169
The body plays a significant role in man’s awareness of solitude, of
being alone in the world. The pope writes: “The body, by which man
shares in the visible created world, makes him at the same time aware
of being ‘alone.’ Otherwise he would not have been able to arrive at
this conviction, which in fact he reached (as we read in Gen 2:20), if
his body had not helped him to understand it, making the matter evi-
dent to him.”21 Man learns his own solitude by recognizing the struc-
ture of his body, through which he recognizes that his being differs
from other creatures.

The Body in Creation

At the beginning of creation, John Paul says, the body was a visible
sign of man’s transcendence, of being different from the animal king-
dom.22 But the body’s structure also reveals man’s subjectivity just
as much as self-consciousness and self-determination do. He writes:
“Man is a subject not only by his self-consciousness and by self-
determination, but also based on his own body. The structure of the
body is such that it permits him to be the author of genuinely human ac-
tivity. In this activity, the body expresses the person.”23 This is the leit-
motif of John Paul’s catecheses: the body expresses the person.24 It re-
appears in different ways throughout the Wednesday audiences. For
example, he says later that “the body, as the expression of the person,
was the first sign of the presence of man in the visible world. In that
world, from the very beginning, man was able to distinguish himself,
to identify himself, as it were—that is, to confirm himself as a per-
son—also through his body.”25

21. TOB, no. 6:3; cf. no. 27:3. 22. See ibid., no. 27:3.
23. Ibid., no. 7:2.
24. This is repeated several times throughout the catechetical lectures, in some way
or another. The body “expresses” the person, it “manifests” man. See, for example, TOB,
nos. 12:4, 12:5, 14:5, 27:3, and 123:4. It also appears throughout John Paul’s other magis-
terial writings. See, for example, FC, par. 11; Gratissimam Sane, par. 19; Veritatis Splendor,
Encyclical Letter of August 6, 1993, pars. 46 and 48, in AAS 85 (1993): 1133–1228; Evange-
lium Vitae, Encyclical Letter of March 25, 1995, par. 23. See also Richard A. Spinello, The
Genius of John Paul II: The Great Pope’s Moral Vision (New York: Sheed and Ward, 2007),
57–88, for an illuminating study of the pope’s attempt to reconnect the human person
with human nature and the body.
25. TOB, no. 27:3.
170 The Spousal Meaning of the Body
In the previous chapter, I surveyed the importance of the body in
Wojtyła’s moral theory, especially his account of sexual ethics. That
the body expresses the person was already present in his writings be-
fore Theology of the Body. This is not surprising given his own Thom-
istic background. Throughout these catecheses, the pope routinely af-
firms the importance of the body and obedience to nature as morally
normative. Yet part of the delicate balance of John Paul’s method in
Theology of the Body is not to subordinate the freedom of the human
person to the dynamics of nature so that he becomes guilty of the
same pure naturalism or physicalism that he had criticized in the past.
He wants to insist upon man’s uniqueness but at the same time the
pope articulates man’s indebtedness to the creator of nature who has
given him the gift of existence. This indebtedness to nature is key not
only to a proper understanding of the spousal meaning of the body
but also to its effective communication between persons.
The recognition of the first man’s uniqueness, of his solitude,
leads to the creation of the woman (Gn 2:21–22).26 The man’s imme-
diate reaction—“this at last is bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh”
(Gn  2:23)—is instructive. The man recognizes not the somatic dif-
ferences between him and the woman, but that she is a person. This
means that “bodiliness and sexuality are not simply identical. Although
in its normal constitution, the human body carries within itself the
signs of sex and is by its nature male or female, the fact that man is a
‘body’ belongs more deeply to the structure of the personal subject than the
fact that in his somatic constitution he is also male or female.”27
The solitude experienced by man is experienced by both males
and females. They are “two ‘incarnations’ of the same metaphysical
solitude before God and the world—two reciprocally completing ways
26. In ibid., no. 5:2, and in 8:3, John Paul notes that until the creation of the woman,
the biblical word for “man” is ‘adam, which denotes the whole human race. The words
for “male” and “female,” ‘is and ‘issah, are not employed until after the creation of the
woman. On the creation of the woman, the pope observes that the “sleep” into which
Adam is cast is less “sleep” as it is torpor—an almost going out of existence—so that the
creation of the woman is, in fact, a reemergence of man in his “double unity as male and
female” (TOB, no. 8:3). In Genesis, ‘Adam is recreated as ‘is and ‘issah.
27. TOB, no. 8:2; cf. FC, par. 11. This passage is somewhat problematic, it seems to
contradict the point of the Theology of the Body catecheses, which is to emphasize the
complementarity of man and woman in the spousal meaning of the body. This is an iso-
lated statement in the catecheses and should be considered in that context.
 The Spousal Meaning of the Body 171
of ‘being a body’ and at the same time of being human—as two com-
plementary dimensions of self-knowledge and self-determination
and, at the same time, two complementary ways of being conscious of the
meaning of the body.”28 Here, John Paul introduces the concept of re-
ciprocal complementarity between the sexes, which he articulated in
his earlier writings.29
When the two sexes unite in the conjugal act, the union “carries
within itself a particular awareness of the meaning of that body in the re-
ciprocal self-gift of the persons.”30 The catalyst of self-gift is deeper than
sexual difference. Self-gift lies in the metaphysical fact that creation
itself is a gift: “Creation is a gift, because man appears in it, who, as an
‘image of God,’ is able to understand the very meaning of the gift in the
call from nothing to existence.”31 One of the ways the pope speaks
about the body is as “a witness to creation as a fundamental gift, and
therefore a witness to Love as the source from which this same giving
springs. Masculinity-femininity—namely, sex—is the original sign of
a creative donation and at the same time <the sign of a gift that> man,
male-female, becomes aware of as a gift lived so to speak in an origi-
nal way. This is the meaning with which sex enters into the theology
of the body.”32 This gift has a directionality to it. It is the gift mani-
fest in a creature sprung from nothingness into existence and directed
toward the other, and, ultimately, toward God himself. The somatic
(that is, bodily) differences between men and women are not unim-
portant in Theology of the Body. He writes that “sex is not only deci-
sive for man’s somatic individuality, but at the same time it defines
his personal identity and concreteness.”33 Later, he writes: “Woman’s
constitution differs from that of man; in fact, we know today that it is
different even in the deepest bio-physiological determinants.”34

28. TOB, no. 10:1.

29. This concept is also present in FC, par. 19, and “Letter to Women,” Apostolic
Letter of June 29, 1995, par. 7, in
AAS 87 (1995): 803–12. Vatican translation found in Boston: Pauline Books and
Media, 1995.
30. TOB, no. 10:4. See also FC, par. 18; MD, par. 7; Gratissimam Sane, par. 11.
31. TOB, no. 13:4.
32. Ibid., no. 14:4 (text in angled brackets supplied by Waldstein from the Polish
manuscript).
33. Ibid., no. 20:5.
34. Ibid., no. 21:4.
172 The Spousal Meaning of the Body
The somatic difference of the sexes concerns procreation, it is
true. But for John Paul the body’s meaning and value goes beyond bi-
ological procreation to the expression of love, of communion: “The
human body, oriented from within by the ‘sincere gift’ of the person
[Gaudium et Spes, par. 24:3], reveals not only its masculinity or fem-
ininity on the physical level, but reveals also such a value and such a
beauty that it goes beyond the simply physical level of ‘sexuality.’”35 The
value that the pope speaks of here is the spousal meaning of the body,
which is itself connected to the procreative aspect of the body.36 Mar-
riage is intended not only for biological procreation, but to propagate
the gift of creation from nothingness through the gift of self from one
generation to the next.37
This is why the pope insists that from the beginning the union
of husband and wife was intended to be subordinate to procreation
and fruitfulness of life. He writes: “This communion had been in-
tended to make man and woman mutually happy through the search
of a simple and pure union in humanity, through a reciprocal offer-
ing of themselves, that is, through the experience of the gift of the
person expressed with soul and body, with masculinity and feminin-
ity—‘flesh of my flesh’ (Gen 2:23)—and finally through the subor-
dination of such a union to the blessing of fruitfulness with ‘procre-
ation.’”38 I note the pope’s use of quotation marks around the word
“procreation” to distinguish his meaning from a mere biologism.
How does it differ? For John Paul, procreation continues the divine
donation, the generation of new persons from nothingness and grant-
ing them the urge to seek others and to seek God himself.
It is instructive how John Paul describes the “spousal meaning of
the body” the first time the word appears in his catechetical lectures.
Referring to the original condition in which man and woman felt no

35. Ibid., no. 15:4. See also FC, par. 11; “Letter to Women,” par. 8.
36. See TOB, nos. 14:6, 15:1.
37. See ibid., no. 96:7: “As for marriage, one can deduce that—instituted in the con-
text of the sacrament of creation in its totality, or in the state of original innocence—it
was to serve not only to extend the work of creation, or procreation, but also to spread
the same sacrament of creation to further generations of human beings, that is, to
spread the supernatural fruits of man’s eternal election by the Father in the eternal Son,
the fruits man was endowed with by God in the very act of creation.”
38. TOB, no. 30:3.
 The Spousal Meaning of the Body 173
shame in their nakedness, which John Paul calls “original innocence,”
he writes:
Seeing and knowing each other in all the peace and tranquility of the inte-
rior gaze, they “communicate” in the fullness of humanity, which shows it-
self in them as reciprocal complementarity precisely because they are “male”
and “female.” At the same time, they “communicate” based on the commu-
nion of persons in which they become a mutual gift for each other, through
femininity and masculinity. In reciprocity, they reach in this way a particular
understanding of the meaning of their own bodies. The original meaning of
nakedness corresponds to the simplicity and fullness of vision in which their
understanding of the meaning of the body is born from the very heart, as
it were, of their community-communion. We call this meaning “spousal.”39

From this passage, two points are evident. First, for John Paul,
there must be an awareness of the meaning of the body in the un-
derstanding of the acting person. Crosby clarifies the importance of
this: “Spousal self-donation [self-gift] is by its very nature something
consciously lived through; spouses could not possibly perform this
self-donation without being aware of it; they are necessarily present
to themselves as donating themselves to each other.”40 Indeed, imme-
diately after the passage above, John Paul notes that “the man and the
woman in Genesis 2:23–25 emerge, precisely at the very ‘beginning,’
with this consciousness of the meaning of their own bodies.”41 Lat-
er in this chapter, I consider the pope’s insistence that this original
consciousness of the spousal meaning of the body is lost with sin and
must be reacquired through a “rereading” of the body in the truth.42
The fact that meaning must be in the consciousness of the act-
ing person does not mean that nature and the body have no objec-
tive qualities that contribute to the meaning (whether the spousal
meaning of the body or any other meaning). The body itself, accord-

39. Ibid., no. 13:1.

40. Crosby, “The Personalism of John Paul II,” 52.
41. TOB, no. 13:1. See also ibid., no. 19:1: “If ‘they did not feel shame,’ this means
that they were united by the consciousness of the gift, that they had reciprocal awareness
of the spousal meaning of their bodies, in which the freedom of the gift is expressed and the
whole inner richness of the person as subject is shown.”
42. See, for example, ibid., no. 19:2: “After original sin, man and woman were to lose
the grace of original innocence. The discovery of the spousal meaning of the body was
to cease being for them a simple reality of revelation and of grace.”
174 The Spousal Meaning of the Body
ing to Wojtyła, contains “the ‘spousal’ attribute, that is, the power to
express love: precisely that love in which the human person becomes a gift
and—through this gift—fulfills the very meaning of his being and ex-
istence.”43
This brings me to a second conclusion of John Paul’s understand-
ing of the spousal meaning of the body. Because man is free, he is not
entirely dominated by nature. Somatic sexual difference is only the
beginning in understanding the uniqueness of each human person:
“One must keep in mind that each of them, the man and the wom-
an, is not only a passive object, defined by his own body and his own
sex, and in this way determined ‘by nature.’ On the contrary, precise-
ly through being man and woman, each of them is ‘given’ to the oth-
er as a unique and unrepeatable subject, as ‘I,’ as person.”44 Precisely
because the “body manifests man” and allows for the communication
of a communion between man and woman, “any ‘naturalistic’ criteri-
on is bound to fail, while the ‘personalistic’ criterion can be of great
help.”45 From this standpoint, he notes that Genesis tells us “relative-
ly little about the human body in the naturalistic and contemporary
sense of the word.”46 Nevertheless, the third section of this chapter
argues that John Paul still insists, as he did in Love and Responsibility,
that the person must be obedient to nature in order to communicate
love.47
The shape of the pope’s project in these catecheses now begins to
be clear. The human person, man and woman, is created in the im-
age of God through a gratuitous divine gift. This gift, imprinted with-
in the imago Dei in which they are made, gives men and women a
uniqueness in all of creation as free persons since they are called to
communion with each other and with God (who is himself a com-
munio Personarum). Human existence, while characterized by an
original solitude separating man from all other creatures, is nonethe-
less marked by this drive from nothingness to the other. This drive

43. TOB, no. 15:1. 44. Ibid., no. 20:5; cf. no. 21:1.
45. Ibid., no. 12:5; cf. 55:2. 46. Ibid., no. 23:4.
47. This insight is argued forcefully in the work of Mary Shivanandan and Michael
Waldstein. See Shivanandn, Crossing the Threshold of Love, 107, and Waldstein, “John
Paul II: A Thomist Rooted in St. John of the Cross,” Faith & Reason 30 (2005): 199. Cf.
Wojtyła, Love and Responsibility, 30.
 The Spousal Meaning of the Body 175
is manifest in the human body just as much as it is written in man’s
very existence. This drive for the other, the capacity for love and self-
giving, is this spousal meaning of the body which is the fulfillment of
man’s existence. But this capacity for self-giving, in John Paul’s view,
is threatened by sin and concupiscence. The spousal meaning of the
body, the capacity for self-giving, was redeemed by Jesus Christ.

The Meaning of
the Body after the Fall
Sin, Shame, and Concupiscence
One of the fundamental tenets of Theology of the Body, detailed above,
is that the body expresses the person, bearing a meaning both in itself
and in the consciousness of the person. The conjugal union is more
than sexuality; it is an expression of love. In John Paul’s own words,
the body is a sort of “primordial sacrament” of the image of God at
work in the human person.48 He goes on to say: “The body, in fact,
and only the body, is capable of making visible what is invisible: the
spiritual and the divine. It has been created to transfer into the visi-
ble reality of the world the mystery hidden from eternity in God, and
thus be a sign of it.”49
After the Fall, the relationship between male and female changes
with the introduction of concupiscence. The body ceases to express
the person simply. John Paul notes that in the lapsarian state
the body is not subject to the spirit as in the state of original innocence, but
carries within itself a constant hotbed of resistance against the spirit and
threatens in some way man’s unity as a person, that is, the unity of the mor-
al nature that plunges its roots firmly into the very constitution of the per-
son. The concupiscence of the body is a specific threat to the structure of
self-possession and self-dominion, through which the human person forms

48. See TOB, no. 19:4.

49. Ibid. To my mind, the Pope in no way intends to denigrate the sacraments of
Christ and his church. Rather, he is suggesting that “in man, created in the image of
God, the very sacramentality of creation, the sacramentality of the world, was thus in
some way revealed” (ibid., no. 19:5). The sacraments “work” as they do because the
body-soul composite of men and women. The Catholic principle of sacramentality is
that invisible grace is communicated through material signs. For John Paul, man is the
primal example of this.
176 The Spousal Meaning of the Body
itself . . . . In any case, the man of concupiscence does not rule his own body in the
same way, with the same simplicity and “naturalness” as the man of original in-
nocence.50

The threat to self-possession and self-dominion means also that con-

cupiscence threatens the self-mastery which, as Wojtyła had written
previously and as he reaffirms in these catecheses, is necessary for
the self-gift that characterizes spousal union.51 Concupiscence brings
about “the loss of the interior freedom of the gift.”52 Concupiscence
“limits and restricts self-mastery from within, and thereby in some
sense makes the interior freedom of the gift impossible.”53
Analyzing the effects of original sin from the scriptural perspec-
tive, John Paul takes special note of Genesis 3:16 (“Your desire shall
be for your husband, and he shall rule over [dominate] you”). The
pope writes: “On the one hand, the ‘body,’ which is constituted in the
unity of the personal subject, does not cease to arouse the desires for
personal union, precisely due to masculinity and femininity (‘Your
desire shall be for your husband’); on the other hand, concupiscence
itself simultaneously directs these desires in its own way; this is con-
firmed by the expression, ‘he will dominate you.’”54 Whereas in orig-
inal innocence the man and woman existed in a state of communion,
with concupiscence this relation “is replaced by a different mutual rela-
tionship, namely, by a relationship of possession of the other as an ob-
ject of one’s own desire.”55
The relationship of domination carries with it the further conse-
quence that the conjugal union becomes unsatisfying. The man and
the woman “are no longer only called to union and unity, but are
also threatened by the insatiability of that union and unity, which does
not cease to attract man and woman precisely because they are per-
sons.”56 Since the union is both insatiable and redefined as domina-
tion, the body becomes a “‘terrain’ of appropriation of the other per-
son.”57
In the union of their bodies, and in their relationship with each

50. Ibid., no. 28:3.

51. See ibid., no. 15:2, on the relationship of self-mastery to self-gift.
52. Ibid., no. 32:6. 53. Ibid.
54. TOB, no. 31:3. 55. Ibid. See also MD, par. 10.
56. TOB, no. 30:5. 57. Ibid., no. 33:3.
 The Spousal Meaning of the Body 177
other, the man and the woman now experience a fundamental dis-
order in their humanity. This disorder, caused by concupiscence, is
marked by shame. “That shame,” the pope writes, “which shows it-
self without any doubt in the ‘sexual’ order, reveals a specific difficulty
in sensing the human essentiality of one’s own body, a difficulty man had
not experienced in the state of original innocence.”58 The inability to
recognize the humanity of one’s own body, or the essential relation-
ship between soul and body (that both together constitute the “I” of
the person), results in an alienation of the person from his body.59
Later, John Paul will argue that this separation between person and
the body is the fundamental reason that secular culture does not un-
derstand the church’s teaching on marriage and contraception.60
In his opening catecheses on the theology of the body, Pope John
Paul II insists that there is continuity between the original order of in-
nocence and the fallen order of sin and concupiscence. He draws this
conclusion based on our Lord’s words in Matthew 19:1–12, in which
Jesus references the “beginning” to answer the Pharisees’ question
about divorce.61 More importantly, in his answer to the Pharisees’
question, Jesus notes that Moses had allowed divorce only because
of the hardness of the human heart (Mt 19:8). John Paul asserts that
Jesus’s movement to go behind the Mosaic law “means that this order
[the original order of innocence] has not lost its force, although man
has lost his primeval innocence. Christ’s answer is decisive and clear.
For this reason, we must draw the normative conclusions from it.”62
In original innocence, the body communicates the person and
the spousal meaning of the body simply. But after original sin “the
discovery of the spousal meaning of the body was to cease being for

58. Ibid., no. 28:2.

59. See ibid., no. 29:4: “‘That which is in the world,’ namely, concupiscence, brings
with it an almost constitutive difficulty in identifying oneself with one’s own body, not only
in the sphere of one’s own subjectivity, but even more so in regard to the subjectivity of the
other human being, of woman for man and man for woman.”
60. See FC, par. 32: “In the context of a culture which seriously distorts or entirely
misinterprets the true meaning of human sexuality, because it separates it from its es-
sential reference to the person, the Church more urgently feels how irreplaceable is her
mission of presenting sexuality as a value and task of the whole person, created male
and female in the image of God.”
61. See TOB, no. 3:2–3.
62. Ibid., no. 3:4.
178 The Spousal Meaning of the Body
them a simple reality of revelation and grace.”63 The spousal meaning
of the body, however, is not entirely lost. It is only distorted. “In fact,
in the whole perspective of his own ‘history,’ man will not fail to con-
fer a spousal meaning on his own body. Even if this meaning does un-
dergo and will undergo many distortions, it will always remain [on]
the deepest level, which demands that it be revealed in all its simplici-
ty and purity and manifested in its whole truth as a sign of the ‘image
of God.’”64 An individual person’s experience and assimilation of this
truth will affect the meaning he expresses with his body even as the
body maintains a definite structure in itself.
The communion of man and woman “had been intended to make
man and woman mutually happy through the search of a simple and
pure union in humanity, through a reciprocal offering of themselves
. . . and finally through the subordination of such a union to the bless-
ing of fruitfulness with ‘procreation.’”65 After the Fall, man no longer
intuits or experiences the simple meaning of his own body, and so it
becomes difficult to communicate its spousal meaning to the other.
“What disappears is the simplicity and ‘purity’ of their original ex-
perience, which helped to bring about a singular fullness of mutual
self-communication. Obviously, the first parents did not stop com-
municating with each other through the body and its movements, ges-
tures, and expressions; but what disappeared was the simple and
direct self-communion connected with the original experience of re-
ciprocal nakedness.”66 Similarly, the procreative attribute of the union
was darkened by original sin.67 Thus, after sin, “man and woman must
reconstruct the meaning of the reciprocal disinterested gift with great
effort.”68 This is both the gift and the task of redemption.

The Redemption of the Body

In Matthew 19, the foundational passage for John Paul’s reflections,
Christ appeals to the beginning of creation to emphasize the force of
the order of original innocence even though historical man lives with
the effects of original sin. But the Lord Jesus, the pope insists, brings
hope because historical man “participates not only in the history of hu-
63. Ibid., no. 19:2. 64. Ibid., no. 15:5.
65. Ibid., no. 30:3. 66. Ibid., no. 29:2.
67. See ibid., no. 97:1. 68. Ibid., no. 22:4.
 The Spousal Meaning of the Body 179
man sinfulness, as a hereditary, and at the same time personal and un-
repeatable, subject of this history, but he also participates in the his-
tory of salvation, here too as its subject and co-creator. He is thus not
merely shut out from original innocence due to his sinfulness, but
also at the same time open to the mystery of the redemption realized
in Christ and through Christ.”69 In fact, John Paul goes on to say here
that had Christ only spoken of the beginning, of original innocence,
without opening up the possibility for redemption, his answer would
have been incomprehensible. Historical man would have been left
with no resources to recapture the order of original innocence. But
Christ reveals in his own person, and especially in his suffering and
resurrection, the possibility of redemption for man and a redemption
for the body. In fact, it is “precisely this perspective of the redemption of
the body [that] guarantees the continuity and the unity between man’s
hereditary state of sin and his original innocence, although within
history this innocence has been irremediably lost by him.”70
Pope John Paul clarifies that the Christian idea of the “redemp-
tion of the body” in no way legitimizes the Manichean notion that
the body is evil.71 Rather, the redemption “points only to man’s sinful-
ness, by which he lost, among other things, the clear sense of the spou-
sal meaning of the body, in which the interior dominion and freedom
of the spirit expresses itself.”72 This follows logically from John Paul’s
anthropology in which there is not only “the objective reality of the
body” but also a “subjective consciousness as well as the subjective
‘experience’ of the body.”73
The scriptural warrant for John Paul’s understanding of the re-
demption of the body is the well known passage from Paul’s letter to
the Ephesians (5:21–33) where we read that the relationship of Christ
to his church is analogous to the relationship of husband and wife.
Simply put, Christ’s gift of himself on the cross for his bride, the
church, reveals the true nature of the self-gift of marriage. The pope
writes: “That gift of self to the Father through obedience to the point
of death (see Phil 2:8) is at the same time, according to Ephesians,

69. Ibid., no. 4:3.

70. Ibid. This conclusion also finds its way into FC, par. 13.
71. See TOB, nos. 44:5–45:5. 72. Ibid., no. 45:2.
73. Ibid., no. 60:1.
180 The Spousal Meaning of the Body
an act of ‘giving himself for the Church.’ In this expression, redeeming
love transforms itself, I would say, into spousal love.”74
What this means, according to Wojtyła, is that the resurrection of
Christ and the redemption of the body concerns more than mere bo-
diliness:
The resurrection, according to Christ’s words reported by the synoptics,
means not only the recovery of bodiliness and the reestablishment of human
life in its integrity, through the union of body and soul, but also a wholly
new state of human life itself. . . . There is no doubt that already in the answer
given to the Sadducees [concerning marriage in the Kingdom of God; cf. Mt
22:30], Christ reveals the new condition of the human body in the resurrec-
tion, and he does so precisely by proposing a reference to and a comparison
with the condition in which man shared from the “beginning.”75

Later, the pope says that in this new human reality the spousal and
redemptive dimensions of love “penetrate together with the grace of
the sacrament [of matrimony] into the life of the spouses.”76 He goes
on to say: “The spousal meaning of the body in its masculinity and
femininity, which manifested itself for the first time in the mystery
of creation on the background of man’s original innocence, is unit-
ed in the image of Ephesians with the redemptive meaning, and in
this way it is confirmed and in some sense ‘created anew.’”77 This un-
derstanding of the redemption of the body is one of the aspects of
John Paul’s vision of marriage and family that appeals to scholars like
Mary Shivanandan. Theology of the Body is less concerned with con-
cupiscence than it is with the restoration of the spousal meaning of
the body through redemption.78
This presents a unique challenge to mankind, both male and fe-
male. Man today is not exempt from the quest of discovering his own
existence. The fallen condition necessitates that quest all the more.
John Paul insists that man “must seek the meaning of his existence
and the meaning of his humanity by reaching all the way to the mys-
tery of creation through the reality of redemption. There he finds also
the essential answer to the question about the meaning of the human

74. Ibid., no. 90:6. See MD, pars. 23–25, for a similar exegesis of Ephesians.
75. TOB, no. 66:3. 76. Ibid., no. 102:4.
77. Ibid. Cf. FC, par. 15.
78. See Shivanandan, Crossing the Threshold of Love, 138.
 The Spousal Meaning of the Body 181
body, about the meaning of the masculinity and femininity of the hu-
man person.”79
As I have already noted above, John Paul wants to emphasize
man’s freedom in relation to nature but without suggesting that na-
ture is unimportant. On the contrary, man’s freedom means he is all
the more responsible for his actions. For this very reason, John Paul
identifies the challenge of Christ’s words. The Lord teaches that adul-
tery is more subtle than bodily action and that, in fact, one can com-
mit adultery in the heart simply by a lustful look. Lustful desire ob-
jectifies the body of the other. As the result of concupiscence, lust
eliminates both the spousal meaning and the procreative meaning
of the body, which for the pope are organically linked.80 John Paul
draws the conclusion: “Christ’s words are severe. They demand that in
the sphere in which relationships with persons of the other sex are
formed, man has full and deep consciousness of his own acts, and
above all of his interior acts, and that he is conscious of the inner im-
pulses of his own ‘heart’ so that he can identify and evaluate them in
a mature way.”81 Man must be “the authentic master of his own in-
nermost impulses” which contributes to the freedom for gift.82 This
whole section of Theology of the Body, with its focus on interior im-
pulses and interior as well as exterior action recalls the pope’s earlier
Thomistic training.
In order for man to live the challenge of the redemption of the
body, to live in purity and freedom, John Paul insists that “he must
learn with perseverance and consistency what the meaning of the
body is, the meaning of femininity and masculinity. He must learn it
. . . in the sphere of the interior reactions of his own ‘heart.’”83 By mas-
tering his interior instincts, man “rediscovers the spiritual beauty of
the sign constituted by the human body in its masculinity and fem-
ininity.”84
The spiritual beauty of the body spoken of here by John Paul is
fulfilled ultimately in the spiritualization of the body in the kingdom
of God. The Lord tells the Sadducees that in the kingdom to come,
men will be like angels (Lk 20:26). This does not mean that the hu-

79. TOB, no. 102:8. 80. See ibid., no. 39:5.

81. Ibid., no. 48:3. 82. Ibid.
83. Ibid., no. 48:4. 84. Ibid., no. 48:5.
182 The Spousal Meaning of the Body
man body will be transformed to an ethereal constitution. This would
render the resurrection pointless. Rather, it will consist of a “spiritu-
alization of his somatic nature, that is, by another ‘system of powers’
within man. The resurrection signifies a new submission of the body
to the spirit.”85 Unlike “historical” man, “eschatological” man will be
free of the various oppositions at work in his faculties.86
At the end of time, the redemption of Christ will culminate in
“participation in the divine nature, participation in the inner life of
God himself, penetration and permeation of what is essentially hu-
man by what is essentially divine. . . . This new spiritualization will be
a fruit of grace, that is, of God’s self-communication in his very divinity,
not only to the soul, but to the whole of man’s psychosomatic subjectiv-
ity.”87 This is why the Lord teaches that there is no marriage in the
world to come (Lk 20:35). It seems, according to Wojtyła, that bib-
lical eschatology leads to “the discovery of the ‘spousal’ meaning of the
body above all as the ‘virginal’ meaning of being male and female in
the body.”88 This is true because God will give himself completely to
“eschatological” man, and man will make of himself a complete gift
to God. In one of the most beautiful passages of the catecheses, John
Paul writes:
In this reciprocal gift of self by man, a gift that will become completely and
definitively beatifying as the response worthy of a personal subject to God’s
gift of himself, the “virginity” or rather the virginal state of the body will
manifest itself completely as the eschatological fulfillment of the “spousal”
meaning of the body, as the specific sign and authentic expression of per-
sonal subjectivity as a whole. In this way, then, the eschatological situation
in which “they will take neither wife nor husband” has its solid foundation in
the future state of the personal subject when, as a consequence of the vision
of God “face to face,” a love of such depth and power of concentration on God
himself will be born in the person that completely absorbs the person’s whole
psychosomatic subjectivity.89

The spousal meaning of the body is fulfilled in the virginal meaning

of a pure and complete mutual gift between the person and God.
Though Theology of the Body is preeminently concerned with the

85. Ibid., no. 66:5. 86. See ibid., no. 67:1.

87. Ibid., no. 67:3. 88. Ibid., no. 67:4.
89. Ibid., no. 68:3.
 The Spousal Meaning of the Body 183
spousal meaning of the body as it is lived in the marital union, it is
apparent now that Pope John Paul does not ignore vocations of con-
tinence (that is, celibacy) and virginity. Indeed, continence “for the
kingdom of God” is a “sign that the body, whose end is not death,
tends toward glorification. . . . This charismatic sign of the ‘other world’
expresses the most authentic power and dynamics of the mystery of the
‘redemption of the body.’”90 This is why, he says, those who embrace
charismatic continence as a way of life should understand not only
the nature of sexual instinct but, more importantly, they must have
“the awareness of the freedom of the gift, which is organically connected
with the deep and mature consciousness of the spousal meaning of the
body.”91 Only in this awareness can voluntary continence “find a full
guarantee and motivation.”92
Precisely because the spousal meaning of the body entails free-
dom for a self-gift in love, it is not entirely surprising that the pope
holds that vocations other than marriage are capable of living out
that spousal meaning in a non-conjugal way. The spousal meaning of
the body can be lived in these various ways of life because Christ’s
redemptive love is a spousal love. His redemptive love embraces all
these vocations, and each mirrors that love in its own way.93 Though
virginity and celibacy are eschatological signs of the authentic and
complete spousal meaning of the body, this does not diminish the
fact that this spousal meaning of the body is normally expressed in
marriage in this life. Thus, when the pope turns to the question of the
language of the body, he focuses intently on marriage, consent, and
procreation.94

90. Ibid., no. 75:1. 91. Ibid., no. 80:5.

92. Ibid.
93. See TOB, no. 102:8. See also FC, par. 16, on virginity and celibacy. While John
Paul does not go to great lengths to treat every possible vocation in the church (he does
not mention widows, for example), Charles Curran’s contention that Theology of the
Body has nothing to teach single (presumably non-consecrated, non-celibate) persons
and widows seems excessive. See Curran, Moral Theology of Pope John Paul II, 168.
94. William Mattison has offered a salient critique of popular presentations of The-
ology of the Body which focus entirely on marriage and sexuality as the normative ex-
pression of the spousal meaning of the body. His concern is that such emphasis redi-
rects the pope’s thought away from Christian tradition, which has more heavily focused
on eschatological virginity and the resurrection of the body. Marriage may be the nor-
mative way that men and women live out the spousal meaning of the body in this life,
184 The Spousal Meaning of the Body

The Language of
the Body in Marriage
Consent, the Body, and Truth
When John Paul reads scripture, especially the prophets (for exam-
ple, Mal 2:14; Is 54:5–6, 10; Hos 1:2; Ezek 16 and 23), he is able to re-
affirm his fundamental conviction that “the human body speaks a
‘language’ of which it is not the author. Its author is man, as male or
female, as bridegroom or bride: man with his perennial vocation to
the communion of persons. Yet, man is in some sense unable to express
this singular language of his personal existence and vocation without
the body.”95 Here, the pope introduces a new concept in his writing on
meaning and the body.
Man, he says, must “reread” the language of the body to commu-
nicate the spousal meaning:
He [man] thus rereads that spousal meaning of the body as integrally in-
scribed in the structure of the masculinity or femininity of the personal sub-
ject. A correct rereading “in the truth” is an indispensable condition for pro-
claiming this truth or instituting the visible sign of marriage as a sacrament.
The spouses proclaim exactly this “language of the body,” reread in the truth,
as the content and principle of their new life in Christ and in the Church.96

but it is not the definitive or only way for doing so. Mattison disagrees with the “ulti-
macy” of marriage some promoters of Theology of the Body espouse but he argues that
the catecheses lend themselves to this misinterpretation. See William Mattison, “‘When
they rise from the dead, they neither marry nor are given to marriage’: Marriage and
Sexuality, Eschatology, and the Nuptial Meaning of the Body in Pope John Paul II’s The-
ology of the Body,” in Sexuality and the U.S. Catholic Church: Crisis and Renewal, ed.
Lisa Sowle Cahill et al. (New York: Crossroad, 2006), 32–51. I agree with his concerns
that popular writers are over-romanticizing marriage and sexuality. However, I would
suggest that if there are elements in Theology of the Body that contribute to this confu-
sion, it is because the focus of Theology of the Body, as I see it, is to articulate an experi-
ential, biblically centered, defense of the notion of marriage and conjugal life found in
Humanae Vitae.
95. TOB, no. 104:7.
96. Ibid., no. 105:2. Following the line of John Paul’s thought, Walter J. Schu sug-
gests that “re-reading” the body means reading the intrinsic meaning the body possesses
in itself. Schu offers two helpful analogies to explain: “We are called to reread the lan-
guage of the body in truth—the truth of the intrinsic meaning it possesses in itself and
its acts. In a similar way Shakespeare made use of the English language already consti-
tuted. If our intentions correspond to the inner meaning of the language of the body,
 The Spousal Meaning of the Body 185
Man remains the author of the meanings he communicates through
the language of the body, but in the pope’s anthropology, only “after
having reread the ‘language of the body’ in truth.”97 It will become
increasingly clear below that for John Paul the body communicates
with a language that is inherent to nature and the structure of the hu-
man person. Normally, this language should communicate the spou-
sal meaning of the body (which is the gift of self in love), but because
of the effects of sin, this language is often corrupted by individuals
and by spouses acting together.
If this is true, it is not surprising that John Paul again says that the
body does not act on its own behalf but on behalf of the person. It
will speak “in the name and with the authority of the person.”98 Through
their bodies, the couple engages in “the conjugal dialogue, which is
proper to their vocation and based on the language of the body, con-
tinually reread on the right occasion and at the proper time: and it
is necessary that it is reread in the truth!”99 This dialogue of bodies
includes more than the conjugal act. The pope writes, “Given that a
complex of meanings corresponds to the language, the couple—through
their conduct and behavior, actions and gestures (‘gestures of ten-
derness,’ see Gaudium et Spes, [par.] 49)—are called to become the
authors of these meanings of the ‘language of the body,’ from which
they then build and continually deepen love, faithfulness, conjugal
integrity, and the union that remains indissoluble until death.”100 Lat-
er in his catecheses, John Paul will reference these gestures of tender-
ness in his defense of periodic continence within marriage.
Simply put, “man is the causal origin of actions that have through
themselves (per se) clear-cut meanings. He is thus the causal origin of
actions and at the same time the author of their meanings.”101 The man
and the woman appropriate the meanings of the language of the body

we are living in the truth. If, on the other hand, we attempt to confer on our actions a
meaning that contradicts the significance they possess in themselves, we are falsifying
the language of the body. We are telling a lie with our bodies. In the Garden of Gethse-
mane, Judas greeted Christ with a kiss of friendship. But he meant that kiss to betray his
Master. Everyone recognizes immediately the terrible nature of violating in this way the
language of the body” (Splendor of Love, 144).
97. TOB, no. 107:4. 98. Ibid., no. 106:2.
99. Ibid. 100. Ibid.
101. Ibid., no. 105:6.
186 The Spousal Meaning of the Body
(reread in the truth) in their communion with each other when they
consciously ascribe those meanings to their behavior and action.
According to Wojtyła, “There is an organic link between rereading the
integral meaning of the ‘language of the body’ in the truth and the
consequent use of that language in conjugal life.”102 Thus “if the hu-
man being—male and female—in marriage (and indirectly also in all
spheres of mutual life together) gives to his behavior a meaning in con-
formity with the fundamental truth of the language of the body, then he
too ‘is in the truth.’ In the opposite case, he commits lies and falsifies
the language of the body.”103
The fundamental truth that the language of the body is supposed
to communicate within marriage for Wojtyła is contained in the words
of consent exchanged by the couple on their wedding day.
The structure of the sacramental sign [of marriage] remains, in fact, in its es-
sence the same as “in the beginning.” What determines it is in some sense “the
language of the body,” inasmuch as the man and woman, who are to become
one flesh by marriage, express in this sign the reciprocal gift of masculinity
and femininity as the foundation of the conjugal union of persons. The sign
of the sacrament of Marriage is constituted by the fact that the words spo-
ken by the new spouses take up again the same “language of the body” as at
the “beginning” and, at any rate, give it a concrete and unrepeatable expres-
sion.104

He goes on to say that the language of the body is, therefore, “not
only the ‘substratum,’ but in some sense also the constitutive content of the
communion of persons.”105 The man and the woman give themselves
to each other precisely in their masculinity and their femininity. The
couple is called to use the language of the body to express both the
unitive meaning and the procreative meaning of love.106

102. Ibid., no. 106:3.

103. Ibid.
104. Ibid., no. 103:4–5. All of these ideas are included in the “Letter to Families,”
pars. 7, 8, and 10. With these reflections, John Paul resituates the discussion of the ra-
tio et consumatum of marriage within the context of language and self-gift. The question
of what constitutes a marriage was heavily debated in the medieval church. For a brief
history of this discussion see Theodore Mackin, SJ, The Marital Sacrament (New York:
Paulist Press, 1989), 285–93.
105. TOB, no. 103:5.
106. See ibid., no. 106:4.
 The Spousal Meaning of the Body 187
The words of consent “confirm the essential ‘truth’ of the language
of the body and (at least indirectly, implicitly) they also exclude the
essential ‘untruth,’ the falseness of the language of the body.”107 The
body speaks the truth of consent through “conjugal love, faithful-
ness, and integrity,” while “untruth or falsity is expressed through all
that negates conjugal love, faithfulness, and integrity.”108 When John
Paul here speaks of untruth in the language of the body, he first of all
means the untruth that is adultery.109 Below, it will become apparent
that he believes contraception is also a lie, a falsification of the lan-
guage of the body. Falsification in the language of the body is the re-
sult of concupiscence: “The one who rereads this ‘language’ and then
expresses it not according to the needs proper to marriage as a cov-
enant and sacrament, is naturally and morally the man of concupis-
cence.”110
However, when a man and woman reread the language of the
body in the truth and use that language rightly, they are once again in-
voking the spousal meaning of the body as it was in the beginning and
as it has been redeemed in Christ.111 In the penultimate audience be-
fore turning, finally, to the moral norm of Humanae Vitae, Pope John
Paul insightfully notes: “The ‘language of the body’ reread in the truth
goes hand in hand with the discovery of the inner inviolability of the per-
son. At the same time, precisely this discovery expresses the authentic
depth of the reciprocal belonging of the spouses, the beginning and
growing consciousness of belonging to each other, of being destined for
each other: ‘My beloved is mine and I am his’ (Song  2:16).”112 This
brings redemption of the body back in a full circle to the beginning.
The spousal meaning of the body surpasses concupiscence by recog-
nizing the inviolability of the other. Through their consent and the
language of the body, the couple, Wojtyła will insist, is called to bear
witness both to a spousal love and a procreative love.113

107. Ibid., no. 105:1.

108. Ibid.
109. See, for example, ibid., no. 104:8: “The body tells the truth through faithfulness
and conjugal love, and, when it commits ‘adultery’ it tells a lie, it commits falsehood.”
110. Ibid., no. 107:1. 111. See ibid., no. 105:5.
112. Ibid., no. 110:8. 113. See, for example, ibid., no. 106:4.
188 The Spousal Meaning of the Body

The Moral Norm of Humanae Vitae

Almost five years after he began his catecheses on the theology of
the body, Pope John Paul admits: “The reflections about human love
in the divine plan carried out so far would remain in some way in-
complete if we did not try to see their concrete application in the
area of conjugal and familial morality.”114 The theology of the body
is not only speculative. It is also practical. And now the pope turns
to Humanae Vitae, especially to pars. 11 and 12 of that encyclical. Yet,
and this should be clear, in writing the final part of these catecheses
on Humanae Vitae, the pope does not wish these to be considered a
mere appendix: “If I draw particular attention precisely to these final
catecheses, I do so not only because the topic discussed by them is
more closely connected with our present age, but first of all because it
is from this topic that the questions spring that run in some way through
the whole of our reflections. It follows that this final part is not added
to the whole, but is organically and homogenously united with it.”115
These were among the last words of John Paul’s five-year catechetical
project. The norms of Humanae Vitae are the formal cause of the The-
ology of the Body catecheses.116
John Paul follows upon his earlier observation that the sacra-
ment of marriage is based on the language of the body “reread” in
the truth, and the truth is the self-gift first expressed in the words
of consent that are exchanged in the liturgy. Now he goes on to say
that this truth is constantly reaffirmed: “We are also dealing with a
truth that is, so to speak, always affirmed anew. In fact, as man and
woman live in marriage ‘until death,’ in some sense they continuously
re-propose the sign they themselves gave—through the liturgy of the
sacrament—on the day of their wedding.”117 The conjugal act is the
moment “so rich in meaning” that it is “particularly important that the
‘language of the body’ be reread in the truth. This reading becomes
an indispensable condition for acting in the truth or for behaving in
conformity with the value and the moral norm.”118 The moral norm he

114. Ibid., no. 118:1.

115. Ibid., no. 133:4. See also FC, pars. 29 and 31.
116. See TOB, no. 133:4 117. Ibid., no. 118:4.
118. Ibid..
 The Spousal Meaning of the Body 189
defends here is the norm that the conjugal act must remain open to
procreation.
The pope notes that the moral norm, expressed in Humanae Vitae
(par. 12), that the two meanings of the conjugal act (the procreative
and the unitive) are inseparable is immediately defended by Paul VI
with the following sentence: “By its immediate structure, the con-
jugal act, while most closely uniting husband and wife, capacitates
them for the generation of new lives, according to laws inscribed in
the very being of man and woman” (HV, par. 12). Wojtyła is fascinat-
ed with Pope Paul VI’s twin notions of the “innermost structure” of
the conjugal act (which he takes to be synonymous with the nature
of the act), on the one hand, and the “laws inscribed in the very being
of man and woman,” on the other. He writes: “The encyclical leads
one to look for the foundation of the norm determining the morality
of the actions of man and woman in the conjugal act, in the nature of
this act itself and more deeply still in the nature of the acting subjects
themselves.”119
Thus, John Paul is certain that the nature of the conjugal act must
be understood by the couple.
The “innermost structure” (or nature) of the conjugal act constitutes the nec-
essary basis for an adequate reading and discovery of the meanings that must
be carried over into the conscience and the decisions of the acting persons.
It also constitutes the necessary basis for grasping the adequate relationship
of these meanings, namely, their inseparability. Since “the conjugal act”—
at one and the same time—“deeply unites husband and wife” and together
“makes them able to generate new lives,” and since the one as well as the oth-
er thing comes about “by its innermost structure,” it follows (with the ne-
cessity proper to reason, logical necessity) that the human person “should”
read, at one and the same time, the “two meanings of the conjugal act” and also
the “inseparable connection between the two meanings of the conjugal act.”120

Here, finally, we see John Paul’s concern for the nature of the conju-
gal act on full display. He argues that meaning is not arbitrary but is
dependent on ontology. He even says that “what is at stake here is
the truth, first in the ontological dimension (‘innermost structure’) and
then—as a consequence—in the subjective and psychological dimen-

119. Ibid., no. 118:5.

120. Ibid., no. 118:6, quoting HV, par. 12.
190 The Spousal Meaning of the Body
sions (‘meaning’).”121 Meaning “is born in consciousness with the re-
reading of the (ontological) truth of the object. Through this rereading,
the (ontological) truth, enters so to speak, into the cognitive, that is,
subjective and psychological dimension.”122 The ontological precedes
the psychological and the subjective.
When Paul VI referred to the “reasonableness” of the moral norm
(cf. HV, par. 12), John Paul thought he was referring not only to the
ontological dimension of the conjugal act but also to the psychologi-
cal and subjective dimension. Nevertheless, the reasonableness of the
subjective dimension is dependent on “the right understanding of the
innermost structure of the conjugal act, that is, the adequate rereading
of the meanings that correspond to this structure and their inseparable
connection in view of morally right behavior. . . . In this sense, we say
that the norm is identical with rereading the ‘language of the body’ in
the truth.”123 The subjective dimension can be neither properly under-
stood nor communicated without reference to the ontological.
John Paul is clear that the conjugal act has its own moral qualifica-
tion. Thus even if a couple is morally right in deciding not to procre-
ate, “the moral problem of the way of acting in such a case remains, and
this mode expresses itself in an act that—according to the Church’s
teaching transmitted in the encyclical—possesses its own intrinsic mor-
al qualification, positive or negative. The first, positive, corresponds to
the ‘natural’ regulation of fertility; the second, negative, corresponds
to ‘artificial contraception.’”124 Later, he says that natural regulation of
fertility is in conformity with the natural law. Conformity with natural
law is not legalistic but personal and virtuous for Wojtyła:
By “natural law” we understand here the “order of nature” in the field of pro-
creation inasmuch as it is understood by right reason: this order is the ex-
pression of the Creator’s plan for the human person. And it is exactly this
that the encyclical [that is, Humanae Vitae], together with the whole tradi-
tion of Christian teaching and practice, particularly underlines: the virtuous
character of the attitude expressing itself in the “natural” regulation of fer-
tility is determined, not so much by the faithfulness to an impersonal “natu-
ral law,” but to the personal Creator, the source and Lord of the order that is
shown in this law.125
121. TOB, no. 118:6. 122. Ibid., no. 119:1.
123. Ibid., no. 119:2. 124. Ibid., no. 122:3.
125. Ibid., no. 124:6.
 The Spousal Meaning of the Body 191
The language of the body includes not only masculinity and femi-
ninity but also “the inner structures of the organism, of somatic and
psychosomatic reactivity. All this should find its fitting place in the
language with which the spouses dialogue as persons called to com-
munion in the ‘union of the body.’”126 Since the person is inseparable
from his body, self-gift includes the true communion of the body in
relationship to the laws inscribed by the Creator of the body.
In Familiaris Consortio, John Paul is clear that the body has its
own “innate language.”127 When the couple act at cross purposes
from the body’s innate language they introduce an “objectively con-
tradictory language” into their self-donation.128 John Paul’s reference
to an “innate language” recalls his commitment to the idea that man’s
activity should be obedient to nature. John Crosby sees this as a deci-
sive rebuttal of dualism:
Their bodies have a nuptial [that is, spousal] meaning, and their bodily union
has the meaning of self-donation, independently of any subjective act of confer-
ring which they might perform. This is why the bodily union of man and wom-
an in the absence of spousal self-donation and of spousal belonging to one
another (that is, the bodily union of fornication or adultery) has something
untruthful, it “says” as it were too much, more than is really meant. . . . We
find, then, that the nuptial meaning of the body does not exist merely as con-
ferred by the spouses, it is rather pre-formed in the nature of man and wom-
an, and is so strong a reality that it constitutes a norm for their subjective in-
tentions; and it cannot be ignored without persons misusing each other.129

This is exactly what John Paul makes explicit in Familiaris Consortio.

The couple that uses artificial contraception set themselves as “‘arbi-
ters’ of the divine plane” and they “‘manipulate’ and degrade human
sexuality—as well as themselves.”130 Whereas those who respect the
language of the body “are acting as ‘ministers’ of God’s plan and they
‘benefit from’ their sexuality according to the original dynamism of
‘total’ self-giving, without manipulation or alteration.”131
As in The Acting Person, Love and Responsibility, and Humanae
Vitae, self-mastery is here still presented as necessary for the proper
126. Ibid., no. 125:1. 127. FC, par. 32.
128. Ibid.
129. Crosby, “The Personalism of John Paul II,” 66.
130. FC, par. 32.
131. Ibid.
192 The Spousal Meaning of the Body
rereading of the language of the body.132 John Paul repeats his earli-
er observation that self-mastery is not always the same as the dom-
ination of the forces of nature. In fact, he is concerned that the ex-
tension of the means which dominate nature “threatens the human
person for whom the method of ‘self-mastery’ is and remains specif-
ic. . . . The transposition of ‘artificial means’ . . . breaks the constitutive
dimension of the person, deprives man of the subjectivity proper to
him, and turns him into an object of manipulation.”133 The language of
the body is “more than mere sexual reactivity.”134 It is “an authentic
language of persons, [which] is subject to the demand for truth, that
is, to objective moral norms.”135
By now, it should be clear that the criterion of truth for conjugal
life is the total self-gift. This is the truth that is expressed in consent,
and it is the truth reaffirmed in the language of the body. The pope
writes: “According to this criterion of truth . . . the conjugal act ‘means’
not only love, but also potential fruitfulness, and thus it cannot be de-
prived of its full and adequate meaning by means of artificial interven-
tions.”136 It is not licit to separate these two meanings “because the
one as well as the other belong to the innermost truth of the conjugal
act. The one is realized together with the other and, in a certain way,
the one through the other.”137 John Paul is not clear here whether he is
referring to the ontological dimension of the conjugal act or the psy-
chological dimension. The strength of his tone would suggest the for-
mer: “When the conjugal act is deprived of its inner truth because it is
deprived artificially of its procreative capacity, it also ceases to be an act
of love.”138 A real bodily union is brought about, but it “does not corre-
spond to the inner truth and dignity of personal communion.”139
Since natural regulation of fertility requires self-mastery, it requires

132. See TOB, no. 123:5. 133. Ibid., no. 123:1.

134. Ibid., no. 123:4. 135. Ibid.
136. Ibid., no. 123:6. 137. Ibid.
138. Ibid.
139. Ibid., no. 123:7. John Paul provides a strong defense of the inseparability of the
unitive and procreative meanings of the conjugal act. He never identifies the unitive
meaning of the conjugal act with the spousal meaning of the body. In fact, though he
says that the procreative meaning and the spousal meaning are organically united, he
routinely speaks of spousal meaning of the body expressed in the conjugal act as only
“potentially procreative” (see, for example, TOB, no. 132:2). Protecting the dignity of the
 The Spousal Meaning of the Body 193
also continence. And continence is not simply a technique but a “defi-
nite and permanent moral attitude, it is a virtue, and thus the whole
mode of behavior guided by it becomes virtuous.”140 For the pope,
continence is the virtue that opposes concupiscence of the flesh. Con-
tinence is “the ability to master, control, and orient the sexual drives (con-
cupiscence of the flesh) and their consequences in the psychosomatic
subjectivity of human beings.”141 Elsewhere, continence is said to be
“the spiritual effort aimed at expressing the ‘language of the body’ not
only in the truth, but also in the authentic richness of the ‘manifesta-
tions of affection.’”142 Here he seems to refer back to the gestures of
tenderness.
With Humanae Vitae (par. 20), Pope John Paul affirms that this ef-
fort is possible, that it requires that man be viewed as person with his
or her own subjectivity, with his or her own choices. Another person
should not be viewed as simply a means to an end.143 The personalis-
tic norm, articulated in his earlier writings, is fully articulated in John
Paul’s Theology of the Body.

Conclusion
The development of Karol Wojtyła’s thought on love, sex, and mar-
riage began with his published articles in the 1950s and reached its
culmination in these Theology of the Body catecheses. Here he brought
the insights he had developed in his previous work, which were dis-
cussed in chapters 3 and 4 of this book, to bear on an extended ex-
planation and defense of Paul VI’s 1968 encyclical Humanae Vitae. In
Familiaris Consortio, John Paul invited theologians to develop an or-
ganic presentation of the teaching established in Humanae Vitae.144
He led by example with his Theology of the Body.

two inseparable meanings of the conjugal act protects the potential of the procreative
expression of the spousal meaning (see TOB, no. 132:2). I believe he makes this distinc-
tion to separate the modes of the spousal meaning’s expression. The spousal meaning of
the body is expressed in the conjugal act, but it is also expressed in other gestures of af-
fection which are not potentially procreative (see ibid., no. 129:6).
140. Ibid., no. 124:4. This was developed in more detail in Love and Responsibility, as
I noted in the previous chapter.
141. Ibid., no. 128:1. 142. Ibid., no. 129:1.
143. See ibid., no. 129:2. 144. See FC, par. 31.
194 The Spousal Meaning of the Body
His presentation in these catecheses is based upon a scriptural ex-
egesis, most notably of Genesis, the gospels, and Paul’s letter to the
Ephesians. In doing so, John Paul provides a systematic explanation
of creation as gift and of man called to find himself by giving himself
to another in self-gift.145 The body, all the while, is manifesting the
person who is created in the image of God, and contains within itself
a spousal attribute directing the person to the other. When the per-
son “rereads” the language built into his body and his actions, he is
able to ascribe meaning to those actions that are congruent with his
nature. Such is the proper expression of spousal love as self-gift: the
body truly speaks the offering of one person to another. When the
body is prevented from communicating this meaning, as in the case
of contraception, or when the person intends to communicate some-
thing different from the body, as in the case of adultery, then the per-
son’s actions are a lie.
John Paul’s emphasis on subjective consciousness, of living the
truth in love, provided a breath of fresh air in what otherwise had
become a rather stale debate in the twentieth century regarding
the theological and philosophical categories of nature and person.
Richard Spinello is right that Wojtyła’s moral vision moves beyond
a Thomistic anthropology in his emphasis on consciousness and
self-determination along with his focus on the communitarian nature
of the human person.146 There is a cottage industry of popular com-

145. I disagree with Charles Curran, who, while he notes that Theology of the Body
has a generally positive understanding of marriage and sexuality, nonetheless believes
the catecheses do not provide a systematic treatment of love. This is clearly not the case.
Love, for Pope John Paul, is the gift of self. Curran wrote this criticism before the pub-
lication of Michael Waldstein’s translation of the catechetical talks and the introduction
of the headers found in the original manuscript. Curran’s larger criticism is that Theology
of the Body in general is not a systematic treatment, since it was delivered piecemeal in
the form of general audiences. As I mentioned in the general introduction of this study,
Waldstein’s research has shown this is not the case. Perhaps Curran would view the is-
sue more favorably in light of this new development. See Curran, The Moral Theology of
Pope John Paul II, 167, 170.
146. Spinello, Genius of John Paul II, 75. Mary Shivanandan lists a series of unique
contributions made by John Paul to the understanding of the human person: the incom-
municability of the person yet with a call to communion; the application of Trinitarian
theology of communio personarum to anthropology; male and female complementari-
ty; and the relationship of gift and love, to name a few (see Shivanandan, Crossing the
Threshold of Love, 141–70). The constraints of this study have prevented me from ad-
 The Spousal Meaning of the Body 195
mentaries, study guides, and explanations of this vision of marriage
and love.147 It has been argued that the pope’s emphasis on the com-
munion of persons effectively responded to a culture dominated by
the “‘relationship marketplace’ . . . in which we instrumentalize oth-
ers, rather than loving them.”148 I think this is true.
There are some Catholic theologians, however, who have been
critical of the pope’s theology of sex, marriage, and the family, espe-
cially as it is articulated in Theology of the Body. Some have argued, for
example, that the idea of a self-gift manifest in each sexual act is sim-
ply too romantic. Interestingly, this criticism is articulated not only
by the feminist theologian, Lisa Sowle Cahill, but it is also held by
David Matzko McCarthy, each for different reasons. Cahill thinks
that John Paul’s theology is too romantic and does not take into con-
sideration what she perceives to be the harsh social circumstances of
women.149 McCarthy, on the other hand, is concerned that the over-
ly romantic personalist view of marriage espoused by John Paul lifts
sexuality out of the normal routine of married life.150 Unlike Cahill,
who is more interested with the role of women in society, McCarthy
believes that John Paul’s thought runs the danger of isolating the fam-
ily from its larger social vocation.151 I tend to agree with McCarthy’s
critique here, but only if Theology of the Body is read as a work that
stands sufficiently on its own as some of its interpreters are unfortu-

dressing all of these aspects John Paul’s thought. It would be an interesting study to as-
certain the true uniqueness of some of these components of pope’s thought vis-à-vis the
Christian tradition.
147. The most popular of these is Christopher West, Theology of the Body Explained:
A Commentary on John Paul II’s Man and Woman He Created Them, rev. ed. (Boston:
Pauline Books and Media, 2007).
148. David Cloutier, “Heaven Is a Place on Earth? Analyzing the Popularity of Pope
John Paul II’s Theology of the Body,” in Sexuality and the U.S. Catholic Church, ed. Cahill
et al., 19. Also arguing from a self-described feminist perspective, Charles Curran criti-
cizes John Paul for overemphasizing women’s maternal role while showing no concern
for their role in the world and in the social sphere. Given the social condition of women
throughout history, he thinks it is a danger to overemphasize women’s self-gift and ser-
vice (see Curran, Moral Theology of Pope John Paul II, 193).
149. See Lisa Sowle Cahill, Sex, Gender, and Christian Ethics (Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press, 1996), 201
150. David Matzko McCarthy, Sex and Love in the Home, rev. ed. (London: SCM
Press, 2004), 43.
151. See ibid., 8, 118.
196 The Spousal Meaning of the Body
nately prone to do. I have argued in this chapter that the pope’s task
with the catecheses was much more narrow than it seems: to defend
Humanae Vitae with a biblical and experiential perspective.
Moreover, both Cahill and Charles Curran argue that John Paul’s
interpretation of scripture is too much indebted to the hierarchical
teaching of the church, and particularly to Humanae Vitae.152 They
both contend that this has hindered his interpretation of scripture
on its own terms. Curran also complains that the pope does not ap-
peal adequately to the experience of the lay faithful; he does not con-
sult the wisdom of the sensus fidelium. A more popular and somewhat
more visceral version of this criticism is one offered by Notre Dame
law professor, Cathleen Kaveny.153
Despite the criticisms it has received, Theology of the Body has
taken hold in the Catholic church. Through the work of Christopher
West and others, more and more of the lay faithful, especially en-
gaged and married couples, are exposed to its principal tenets. This
study, too, will hopefully serve as a small contribution to the massive
secondary material now available on Pope John Paul’s wonderful cat-
echetical lectures.
For the present purposes of this study, then, it is important to
summarize John Paul’s view of the spousal meaning of the body in or-
der to identify which components and characteristics can be support-
ed by Aquinas’s mature thought. First, human existence is itself a gift
from God out of nothingness. The gift of existence is constitutive of
human nature and personhood. Secondly, precisely because they are
created in the image of a God who is himself a communion of divine
persons, John Paul argues that human existence is inherently directed
to the other. Namely, the life of man is characterized by a drive to self-
gift—a drive from nothingness to the other.
Third, since man is an embodied person, the human body par-
ticipates in this spousal character of human existence. The spousal
152. See Lisa Sowle Cahill, “Catholic Sexual Ethics and the Dignity of the Person:
A Double Message,” Theological Studies 50 (1989): 148; Curran, Moral Theology of Pope
John Paul II, 177.
153. See Cathleen Kaveny, “What Women Want: ‘Buffy,’ the Pope, and the New
Feminists,” Commonweal 130, no. 19 (November 7, 2003): 18–24; Cathleen Kaveny,
“The ‘New’ Feminism? John Paul II and the 1912 Encyclopedia,” Commonweal 135, no. 6
(March 28, 2008): 8.
 The Spousal Meaning of the Body 197
meaning of the body is the capacity to express the person’s gift of self
to another human person and, ultimately, to God. Since human per-
sons are male or female, this spousal meaning is complementarily and
equally expressed in both a masculine and feminine manner. This ex-
pression most often occurs in the relationship of marriage, in which
there is complete conjugal self-giving, but the spousal meaning of the
body is more fundamental than the marital relationship. The spousal
meaning of the body is manifest even in (and perhaps especially in)
celibate vocations as expressions of the virginal and redemptive as-
pects of that spousal meaning.
Fourth, because man is a free rational animal, he is not entirely
subservient to nature but nonetheless must be obedient to it in or-
der to properly express the meaning of his existence, which is the gift
of self to another. This is to say that men and women are not arbi-
trary authors of the language of the body. However much they may
be free to misuse the body (and distort its accompanying communi-
cative value), ultimately they are only truly fulfilled when they com-
municate love, life, and fidelity in accordance with the body’s inner-
most truth: the spousal meaning.
We will now turn our attention to the anthropology of Thomas
Aquinas—and, as will soon be apparent, we will not be turning far
from our consideration of Theology of the Body. In fact, our investi-
gation of Thomas will prove particularly illuminative of the spousal
meaning of the body as expressed above.
 6

The Anthropology of
Thomas Aquinas

Long before the events of the fourteenth century precipitated the

downward spiral in moral theology, Aquinas discovered the thought
of Aristotle. His incorporation of Aristotle’s hylomorphic view of the
human person as a composite being of soul (form) and body (matter)
has important consequences for his anthropology. Since the human
being is a composite of soul and body, both are involved in man’s call
to fulfillment, to beatitude. According to both Thomas Aquinas and
Pope John Paul II, both are involved in human thought and action.
Both shared in the original innocence of our first parents and both
suffered the consequences of original sin. For Aquinas, both are re-
deemed but continue to suffer from the wounds of sin.
This chapter offers a survey of Thomas’s anthropology and how
it relates to sexual difference and sexuality. The first section consists
of an exegesis of Aquinas’s conception of man as a composite person.
The second section explores the importance of sexual difference and
the relationship of sexuality to human flourishing. Finally, the third
section reviews Aquinas’s understanding of original innocence and
original sin.
The purpose of this chapter is to identify the salient character-
istics of Thomas’s anthropology, which is contingent upon a robust
union between body and soul. Far from being concerned with “bi-

198
 The Anthropology of Thomas Aquinas 199
ological facticity,” Aquinas’s hylomorphism was evident in every as-
pect of his description of man: from the interaction of body and soul,
to sexual difference, to human flourishing and original sin. Aquinas
holds that the body is neither unimportant nor a mere instrument of
the human person.

Man: A Composite Person

A Body and Soul Composite
Aquinas introduces his treatise on man with the following note:
“Having treated of the spiritual and of the corporeal creature, we now
proceed to treat of man, who is composed of a spiritual and corpore-
al substance [qui ex spirituali et corporali substantia componitur].”1 In
the first several questions of this treatise, he lays out his vision of man
as a composite being, a substantial unity between body and soul. He
understood himself to be taking a different philosophical approach to
human nature than his predecessors and perhaps even his contempo-
raries.2 This is clear from the interlocutors he employs in various arti-

1. ST I, prologue to q. 75. Gilles Emery, OP, notes that in recent decades “the no-
tion of man as a composite of soul and body often raised a concern over the possibili-
ty of dualism” (“The Unity of Man, Body and Soul, in St. Thomas Aquinas,” in Trinity,
Church, and the Human Person: Thomistic Essays [Naples, Fla.: Sapientia Press, 2007],
209). This is undoubtedly true. The mere mention of “two principles” comprising hu-
man nature (body and soul) strikes many as dualist. As a result, Emery notes, we are left
with two options: either to embrace a Greek anthropology which separates soul from
body or to embrace a biblical anthropology that sees man as “a bodily person existing
in indissoluble unity” (ibid.). Joseph Ratzinger has offered an insightful critique of re-
cent movements in theology which casts aside any understanding of an immortal soul
in favor of an indissoluble unity in which man, body, and soul perish at death. He even
notes that the new Roman Missal has largely suppressed the word “soul [anima]” from
its prayers, even from the funeral rites. See Joseph Ratzinger, Eschatology: Death and
Eternal Life, 2nd ed., trans. Michael Waldstein (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic Uni-
versity of America Press, 2007), 105–61. This is interesting because Aquinas himself was
concerned to defend a real unity of the body and soul in which neither could be under-
stood without the other and both were part and parcel of the definition of man, both
as a species and as an individual. Nevertheless, the connection is not indissoluble. The
soul separates from the body at death and returns to it at general resurrection.
2. For an excellent survey of conception of the body and soul in Thomas vis-à-vis
his contemporaries, see Anton Pegis, St. Thomas and the Problem of the Soul in the Thir-
teenth Century (Toronto: St. Michael’s College, 1934); Richard C. Dale, The Problem of
the Rational Soul in the Thirteenth Century (Leiden: Brill, 1995); Edouard-Henri Wéber,
200 The Anthropology of Thomas Aquinas
cles throughout the treatise.3 The antiqui philosophi to whom Thom-
as often refers in these articles are the pre-Socratics, who each held
some material body or another (wind, fire, air, and water) as the prin-
ciple of life.4 Aquinas makes two moves in response.
First, he writes that “it is manifest that not every principle of vi-
tal action is a soul, for then the eye would be a soul, as it is a princi-
ple of vision and the same might be applied to the other instruments
of the soul: but it is the first principle of life, which we call the soul.”5
For Aquinas, by definition that not every vital action is a soul, for we
do not call an eye or any other instrument of vital action a soul. The
soul by definition is the first principle of life that gives rise to all these
vital actions.
In his second move, Aquinas appeals to our experience of the
world.6 The Angelic Doctor notes that if a soul were a body, then all
bodies would be alive. In effect, the fact that some bodies are living
and other bodies are not means that there must be some principle to
distinguish a living body from a non-living body aside from corpore-
ality as such. This principle, Aquinas says, is act. A body is alive when

OP, La person humaine au XIIIe siècle: L’avènement chez les Maîtres parisiens de l’acception
moderne de l’homme (Paris: J. Vrin, 1991).
3. Cf. ST I, q. 75, a. 1, co.
4. Robert Pasnau, Thomas Aquinas on Human Nature: A Philosophical Study of Sum-
ma theologiae Ia 75–89 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 30–34. Pasnau’s
exegesis of Aquinas’s treatise on human nature is generally well done from an analyti-
cal standpoint. However, following Aquinas’s theory of delayed hominization, he con-
cludes that a “vast majority of abortions, though they may be unfortunate and immor-
al, are not tantamount to murder” (ibid., 120). There are many Thomists who argue in
favor of delayed hominization. See, for example, Joseph Donceel, “Abortion: Mediate
v. Immediate Animation,” Continuum 5 (1967): 167–71, and Donceel, “Immediate Ani-
mation and Delayed Hominization,” Theological Studies 31 (1970): 76–105; William Wal-
lace, “Nature and Human Nature as the Norm of Medical Ethics,” in Catholic Perspec-
tives on Medical Morals, ed. Edmund D. Pelligrino, John P. Langan, and John C. Harvey
(Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1989), 23–52. Some Thomists have been successful in updating
Aquinas’s scientific viewpoint. See Stephen J. Heaney, “Aquinas and the Presence of the
Human Rational Soul in the Early Embryo,” The Thomist 56 (1992): 19–48, and Nica-
nor Austriaco, OP, “Immediate Hominization from the Systems Perspectives,” National
Catholic Bioethics Quarterly 4 (2004): 719–38. For a brief introduction to the anthropol-
ogy of the pre-Socratics, see Joseph Torchia, OP, Exploring Personhood: An Introduction
to the Philosophy of Human Nature (New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 2008), 17–38.
5. ST I, q. 75, a. 1, co.
6. Ibid.
 The Anthropology of Thomas Aquinas 201
it is a certain type of body that is brought to act, and the actuality of
this body which gives it life is called the soul.
In the first article of the first question in his treatise on man,
Aquinas concludes that the soul is not a thing. It is a principle of act
and the principle of life. But the soul is also much more than a prin-
ciple. For Thomas, the soul is also subsistent. At first glance, this may
be surprising. Since, as an objector points out: “That which subsists is
said to be this particular thing. Now this particular thing is said not of
the soul, but of that which is composed of soul and body.”7 If the soul
is not a thing per se, how can it be subsistent?
Aquinas bases his answer in the human experience of knowledge:
“It is clear that by means of the intellect man can have knowledge of
all corporeal things.”8 Aquinas concludes, therefore, that the intellec-
tual principle (the soul) has an operation (understanding) which is
per se apart from the body.9 Corporeal things cannot coexist in the
same place at the same time. Knowledge, which assimilates the thing
known to the knower, requires that there is a faculty of knowledge
that is not corporeal. It is important to note that Aquinas also tele-

7. ST I, q. 75, a. 2, obj 1.
8. ST I, q. 75, a. 2, co. Aquinas, it should be noted, is writing well before the episte-
mological breakdown introduced by the methodical doubt of Rene Descartes in which
human understanding was separated from reality. In the Summa Theologiae, the Angelic
Doctor is not concerned with the epistemological problem of whether our intellect ad-
equately perceives reality or not. Indeed, he presumes it does. This is one of the many
ways in which his intellectual milieu differs from Karol Wojtyła, whose work on Max
Scheler was an attempt to reconnect knowledge with reality in an age of epistemolog-
ical doubt. For a concise overview of Thomas’s relationship with modern theories of
knowledge, see Paul T. Durbin, “St. Thomas and the History of Theories of Knowledge,”
appendix 6, in Thomas Gilby, ed. Summa Theologiae (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1968),
12:181–84; Paul T. Durbin, “Naïve Realism,” appendix 7, in Aquinas, Summa Theologiae,
ed. Gilby, 12:185–87; John F. Peifer, The Concept in Thomism (New York: Bookman Asso-
ciates, 1952). For a historical survey of epistemological trends from Descartes, Imman-
uel Kant, and Karl Marx, see Benedict Ashley, OP, Theologies of the Body: Humanist and
Christian (Braintree, Mass.: The Pope John Center, 1985), 51–100. Charles Taylor has
also provided an important and thorough history of secularism. See Charles Taylor, A
Secular Age (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2007). An-
other recent work has outlined the encounter of Thomas’s moral theory with the mod-
ern separation of practical reason and speculative reason represented in the thought of
Immanuel Kant and John Locke. See Luis Cortest, The Disfigured Face: Traditional Nat-
ural Law and Its Encounter with Modernity (New York: Fordham University Press, 2008).
9. ST I, q. 75, a. 2, co.
202 The Anthropology of Thomas Aquinas
graphs his full anthropology in this question, namely, that although
the intellect understands apart from the body, the body is necessary
for the action of the intellect because the body provides the object
of the intellectual action, which is the phantasm.10 It is because the
souls of brute animals have no operations apart from the body, be-
cause a sensitive soul’s operation corresponds to some change in the
body, that their souls are not subsistent.11
Even though the human soul is subsistent, Thomas is clear: the
soul itself is not man. Man is more than his soul. Here, Aquinas em-
phasizes the importance he ascribes to matter (the body) in the defi-
nition of a species. “To the nature of the species belongs what the
definition signifies; and in natural things the matter is part of the spe-
cies; not, indeed, signate [that is, designated or particular] matter,
which is the principle of individuality; but the common matter. For
as it belongs to the notion of this particular man to be composed of
soul, flesh, and bones; so it belongs to the notion of man to be com-
posed of soul, flesh, and bones.”12 The definition of man, whether as a
species or as an individual, always includes the body.
Aquinas acknowledges that there are operations in man that be-
long not only to the soul but also to the body. Sensation, for exam-
ple, belongs to the soul and to the body.13 For Aristotle, the principle
of potency is matter (ultimately prime matter), which is brought into
act by an agent who brings form to that matter (ultimately this pro-
cess is grounded in the first act of the Prime Mover). How then, if the
soul is not a body, if it has no matter, can it move from potency to act?
Aquinas circumvents a cosmic antithesis between primordial matter
and the first act by noting that there cannot be only one potentiality
but must be many potentialities. For if there were only one potential-
ity to receive the infinite act of the first act then that one potentiality
would be brought to infinite act itself and by definition there cannot
be two infinite acts. Rather, the processions of the infinite act bring-
10. See ST I, q. 75, a. 2, ad 3. 11. See ST I, q. 75, a. 3.
12. ST I, q. 75, a. 4.
13. See ST I, q. 75, a. 4, co., and q. 75, a. 3. For a brief overview of Plato’s contrasting
anthropology, see Torchia, Exploring Personhood, 39–69. It would be difficult to find a
better summation of how bodily sense perception requires the activity of the soul work-
ing on raw sense data than Nicholas Lombardo, The Logic of Desire: Aquinas on Emotion
(Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2011), 20–74.
 The Anthropology of Thomas Aquinas 203
ing other potentialities to act are multiple and, one might say, poly-
valent. Primary matter (and matter in general) receives individual
forms. The intellect, however, receives absolute forms. For Aquinas,
there are different modes of moving from potentiality to actuality.
When Aquinas speaks about the union of the soul and body, he
begins by insisting that the soul (the intellectual principle) is the
form of the body, which follows upon his earlier statement that the
soul is the first principle act of the body.14 As Gilles Emery states:
“For St. Thomas, the principle of intellectual activity is the first prin-
ciple of all other activities: biological, sensitive, motive, and so on.”15
It will be clear below that Aquinas is not reducing all the activity of
the human person to intellectual activity—far from it.
For Aquinas, “the intellectual soul is united by its very being to the
body as a form.”16 In fact, he also insists that “although it [the soul]
may exist in a separate state, yet since it ever retains its unibility [with
the body], it cannot be called an individual substance . . . as neither
can the hand nor any other part of man.”17 And so, Aquinas says, those
who say the soul is united to the body in any way other than as its form
must explain the experience each person has of understanding him-
self.18 Since the soul is the form of the body there are no intermediar-
ies between the soul and the body. It is a direct union.19 His insistence
that the soul is the substantial form of the body is what put Thomas in

14. ST I, q. 76, a. 1, co.

15. Emery, “The Unity of Man,” in Emery, Trinity, Church, and the Human Person, 215.
16. ST I, q. 76, a. 6, ad 3.
17. ST I, q. 29, a. 1, ad 5.
18. See ST I, q. 76, a. 1, co.: “But if anyone says that the intellectual soul is not the
form of the body he must first explain how it is that this action of understanding is the
action of this particular man; for each one is conscious that it is himself who under-
stands.” In this article, Aquinas goes on to argue against both Averroes and Plato, who
had both separated the principle of understanding from the body (albeit in different
ways).
19. See ST I, q. 76, aa. 4–7. In each of these four articles, Aquinas defends his an-
thropology based on a substantial union between the soul and body against a different
objection. In article 4, he argues against the idea that the body requires another form
(apart from the intellectual form), since this would suggest that the intellectual soul is
not the first principle of life. In the fifth article, he argues that this is a proper union, that
the body is not corrupt matter united to a pure spirit. In the sixth article, Aquinas ar-
gues that this union is not the result of accidental dispositions. Finally, in article seven,
he concludes that the soul is not united to the body through other intermediary bodies.
204 The Anthropology of Thomas Aquinas
contradiction with university and ecclesial authorities of his day, all of
whom were committed Platonists.20 He also stands against the mod-
ern tendency to see the body as nothing but a tool for the soul.
Anticipating what he will eventually say about the intellectu-
al power of understanding, Aquinas writes that it was necessary for
the soul to be united to such a body.21 While the body “needs” the
soul for life, the soul “needs” the body because its nature requires the
sense impressions only the body can provide. The human body is
particularly apt for the needs of the human soul. Thus it is clear that
Aquinas’s strict hylomorphism inherently asserts that the body is vi-
tally important for the life of the soul and the soul for the body. He
goes on to define in greater specificity the role the body plays in the
functions of the soul, as we will see below.

The Powers of a Soul United to a Body

Having stated that the soul is the form of the body, Aquinas’s expla-
nation of the various powers of the soul reaffirms the importance of
the body. At least in this life, while the body and soul are united in the
human composite, the soul needs the body for all of its operations. In
this life, the body is implicated in even the intellect’s highest opera-
tion of understanding since these operations are completed through
the assistance of the body even if not in virtue of the body. Lawrence
Dewan writes: “As beings at home in the world of material, corporeal
things, we humans have a mind that finds its nourishment in the con-
sideration of such corporeal things.”22
Following Aristotle, Thomas says that there are several powers

20. Aquinas argues that there could be no multiplicity of forms in man. As the
body’s substantial form, the intellectual soul subsumes the powers of the vegetative and
sensitive souls (see ST I, q. 75, a. 5; q. 76, a. 3). For a summary of the debate on the plu-
rality of forms, see Pasnau, Thomas Aquinas on Human Nature, 126–30. The debate is re-
lated to the development of Aquinas’s position on delayed hominization. For a history
of the controversies surrounding Aquinas’s work especially following upon his death,
see Jean-Pierre Torrell, OP, Saint Thomas Aquinas, vol 1., The Person and His Work, trans.
Robert Royal (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2005),
296–316; Emery, “The Unity of Man,” 216–17; Tugwell, “Aquinas: Introduction,” 224–43.
21. ST I, q. 76, a. 5, co.
22. Lawrence Dewan, “St. Thomas, Metaphysics, and Human Dignity,” in his Wis-
dom, Law, and Virtue, 63.
 The Anthropology of Thomas Aquinas 205
in the soul.23 Each of these powers is directed to a particular act. For
Aquinas and Aristotle, acts are distinguished according to their ob-
jects.24 However, because he is committed to the composite view of
human nature, the Angelic Doctor insists that not all the powers of
human nature exist in the soul as their subject. This is to say, the soul
is not the exclusive agent of all the powers of human nature.25
Aquinas (again, following Aristotle) identifies five genera of pow-
ers “in the soul.”26 These are: the vegetative, the sensitive, the appeti-
tive, the locomotive, and the intellectual.27 The vegetative power “is
a power the object of which is only the body that is united to that
soul . . . [it] acts only on the body to which the soul is united.”28 Be-
yond the vegetative powers, “there is another genus in the powers of
the soul, which genus regards a more universal object—namely, ev-
ery sensible body and not only the body to which the soul is unit-
ed.”29 These are the sensitive powers of the soul. Beyond this genus,
“there is yet another genus in the powers of the soul, which regards a
still more universal object—namely, not only the sensible body, but
all being universally.”30 These are the intellectual powers.
Both the sensitive and the intellectual powers are directed toward
some body extrinsic to the soul and extrinsic to the body to which the
soul is united. Accordingly, Thomas writes that these extrinsic bodies
must be related to the soul in two ways. First, “inasmuch as this some-
thing extrinsic has a natural aptitude to be united to the soul, and to
be by its likeness in the soul”;31 secondly, inasmuch as the soul has an
“inclination and tendency to something extrinsic” there are two more
powers in the soul.32 The first is the appetitive in which the soul “is

23. See ST I, q. 77, a. 2. Cf. Aristotle, De Anima, II.3.414a31.

24. See ST I, q. 77, a. 3. Cf. Aristotle, De Anima, II.4.415a18.
25. ST I, q. 77, a. 5, co.
26. Aquinas’s inconsistent use of language should be noted. He says powers are in
the soul and not in the human composite. But he also says that some powers need the
body to function and hence later he will say that after the soul separates from the body,
these powers are in the soul virtually but not actually (see ST I, q. 77, a. 8, co.).
27. See ST I, q. 78, a. 1. 28. ST I, q. 78, a. 1, co.
29. Ibid. 30. Ibid.
31. Ibid. Here, Aquinas is recalling his earlier observation that the likeness or spe-
cies of forms are in the soul, not the forms in their natural mode of existence, that is, as
the forms exist in objects.
32. Ibid.
206 The Anthropology of Thomas Aquinas
referred to something extrinsic as to an end.”33 The second is the lo-
comotive in which the soul “is referred to something extrinsic as to
the term of its operation or movement.”34
Aquinas, in fact, divides all created living things into three clas-
sifications based upon how each living thing’s soul relates to extrin-
sic bodies. The vegetative souls (plants and the like) have no such re-
lation to extrinsic bodies; they are related only to their own bodies.
Sensitive souls (brute animals) are related not only to their own souls
(and so have the vegetative powers) but are related to other sensible
bodies. Intellectual souls have these two powers but also can consider
universal being.35
Human beings share the sensitive power’s mode of apprehension
with brute animals, and for Aquinas the sensitive powers are the be-
ginning of the action of the intellectual power: understanding. For
this reason, it is important to analyze precisely how Thomas under-
stands the sensitive powers. The first thing to note is that the sensitive
powers are divided between the exterior senses and the interior sens-
es, all of which involve the body (or some “corporeal organ” of the
body in some way).
The exterior senses that Thomas identifies are those we all learn
in grammar school: sight, hearing, smell, touch, and taste.36 These
are all considered powers by Aquinas, who says that “sense is a pas-
sive power, and is naturally altered by the exterior sensible. Where-
fore the exterior cause of such alteration is what is per se perceived by
the sense, and according to the diversity of that exterior cause are the
sensitive powers diversified.”37 The diversity of powers corresponds
to the modes in which exteriorly sensible causes affect bodies. These
exteriorly sensible causes are any mixture of visibility, aurality, scent,

33. Ibid. I refer the reader to the first chapter of this book, in which I offered an anal-
ysis of Thomas’s understanding of appetite and the good. See also ST I, q. 78, a. 1, ad 3, in
which Aquinas distinguishes natural appetite and animal appetite. The natural appetite is
“that inclination which each thing has, of its own nature for something; wherefore by its
natural appetite each power desires something suitable to itself.” Animal appetite, on the
other hand, “results from the form apprehended.” This is the difference between the nat-
ural appetite and the animal appetite. The natural appetite of the eye, for instance, is to
see. The eye desires to see the visible object. But the animal appetite desires the visible
object “not merely for the purpose of seeing it, but also for other purposes.”
34. ST I, q. 78, a. 1, co. 35. See ibid.
36. See ST I, q. 78, a. 3. 37. ST I, q. 78, a. 3, co.
 The Anthropology of Thomas Aquinas 207
tactility, and delectability. The sensitive powers are affected by the ex-
terior sensible causes in five different ways, and therefore there are
five different exterior senses.38
Corporeal organs are needed to experience and perceive sensible
bodies. The body is necessary to see, to smell, to hear, to taste, and to
touch. Four interior senses supplement the five exterior senses. Aqui-
nas says there must be interior senses because “nature does not fail
in necessary things” and “we must observe that for the life of a per-
fect animal, the animal should apprehend a thing not only at the ac-
tual time of sensation, but also when it is absent. Otherwise, since
animal motion and action follow apprehension, an animal would not
be moved to seek something absent.”39 Again, Thomas’s argument is
based on experience. In this same article, he writes that we observe
animals seeking goods they do not presently possess. Therefore, he
argues, there must be interior senses: the common sense, imagina-
tion, the estimative power, and the memorative powers.
The common sense is that interior sense that is “the common root
and principle of the exterior senses.”40 Each exterior sense has a prop-
er sense which “judges of the proper sensible by discerning it from
other things which come under the same sense; for instance, by dis-
cerning white from black or green.”41 But Aquinas goes on to say that
the five proper senses are useless in comparing exterior sensible bod-
ies since each proper sense only knows its own proper object. Thus,
“neither sight nor taste can discern white from sweet.”42 The task of
interpreting the alterations across all the proper senses is left to the
common sense.43
The sensible forms are received in the exterior senses when an ac-
tual agent is directly impinging upon one or more of those five sens-
38. Ibid. Thomas goes on to explain that while all sense operations involve some
spiritual change in the sense organ, some senses involve natural alteration in the causing
object itself, and still other senses involve a concomitant alteration in a particular sense
organ. For example, in sight, there is no natural alteration in the object seen that is nec-
essary for it be seen. But for an object to be heard, some natural alteration is necessary
to produce sound. Aquinas says the same is true for smell. For tasting and touching, on
the other hand, there is both a spiritual alteration and a natural alteration in the sense
organs “for the hand that touches something hot becomes hot.”
39. ST I, q. 78, a. 4, co. 40. ST I, q. 78, a. 4, ad 1.
41. ST I, q. 78, a. 4, ad 2. 42. Ibid.
43. In the sed contra of ST I, q. 78, a. 4, Aquinas cites Avicenna as the authority for
his list of interior senses.
208 The Anthropology of Thomas Aquinas
es. We hear a thing when it is actually making noise. We cease to hear
it when it no longer produces noise. Yet in Aquinas’s anthropology
animals have an imagination which is for “the retention and pres-
ervation of these forms . . . as it were a storehouse of forms received
through the senses.”44 Human beings and brute animals can recall
the sounds of particular things which they have already heard, even
if they do not currently hear them. The same is true for the other four
senses. Man’s imagination, however, goes beyond animals because he
is able not only to recall sensible forms but to combine them. He can
recall the form of gold and the form of a mountain to imagine a gold
mountain though he has never seen one.45
Brute animals have another interior power, not directly connect-
ed to the exterior senses, “for the apprehension of intentions which
are not received through the senses.”46 Sheep have an natural estima-
tive instinct that the wolf means them harm. In human beings, how-
ever, intentions are not perceived through a purely natural instinct
but “by means of coalition of ideas. Therefore the power which in
other animals is called natural estimative, in man is called the cog-
itative, which by some sort of collation discovers these intentions.
Wherefore it is also called the particular reason.”47
Finally, animals and human beings have an interior memorative
sense which stores the intentions received by the natural estimative
(or the cogitative, in the case of man) sense. Aquinas says that we can
notice that animals are able to routinely avoid that which they know
to be harmful. According to Thomas, however, memory works dif-
ferently in human beings than it does in animals. Animals only have
what he calls a “sudden recollection of the past.”48 Man also has as
part of his memory the power of reminiscence in which he syllogis-
tically recalls the past “by the application of individual intentions.”49
The human cogitative and memorative powers, Aquinas writes, “owe
their excellence not to that which is proper to the sensitive part; but
to a certain affinity and proximity to the universal reason, which, so
to speak, overflows into them.”50

44. ST I, q. 78, a. 4, ad 2. 45. See ibid.

46. Ibid. 47. Ibid.
48. Ibid. 49. Ibid.
50. ST I, q. 78, a. 4, ad 5.
 The Anthropology of Thomas Aquinas 209
This is the first hint of the importance of the relationship of the
sensitive part of the human soul with the rational part. This relation-
ship elevates the sensitive (that which man shares with all the an-
imals) in dignity. But as I have already said, the relationship is also
important for the intellectual powers of the soul, yet for Aquinas the
intellect can also work beyond the corporeal sensitive: “The opera-
tion of the intellect has its origin in the senses: yet, in the thing appre-
hended through the senses, the intellect knows many things which
the senses cannot perceive.”51 This is most especially true in ratiocina-
tion, the process of syllogistic argument from premise to conclusion.
Aquinas appeals to this process in explaining exactly how natural rea-
son can know of God’s existence even though our senses cannot per-
ceive him.52
When he begins to discuss the intellect of man specifically, Aqui-
nas immediately notes that the intellect is a passive power in man.53
This is not surprising given what he has already said about the powers
of the soul being moved from potency to act even though there is no
matter within the soul. In Thomistic metaphysics, only God is pure
act.54 Every created being, whether an intellect or an atom, is moved
from potency to act by some agent other than itself.
The importance of the body for human knowledge in Aquinas’s
thinking cannot be underestimated. Indeed, it will soon be evident
that the body has a lasting legacy on virtually all intellectual activi-
ty. The pursuit of knowledge is not the sole purview of a disembod-
ied Cartesian soul inhabiting the material instrument of the body. On
the contrary, below I will show that Aquinas thinks the body is so in-
volved in human knowledge that he necessarily admits that the soul’s
disembodied state in the hereafter is, in a certain sense, unnatural until
the soul reunites with the body at the general resurrection of the dead.

The Body and Knowledge

“According to the opinion of Plato,” Aquinas writes, “there is no need
for an active intellect in order to make things actually intelligible. . . .
For Plato supposed that the forms of natural things subsisted apart
51. ST I, q. 78, a. 4, ad 4 (emphasis added).
52. See ST I, q. 12, a. 12; q. 1, a. 8. 53. See ST I, q. 79, a. 2.
54. See ST I, q. 3, a. 1.
210 The Anthropology of Thomas Aquinas
from matter, and consequently that they are intelligible: since a thing
is actually intelligible from the very fact that it is immaterial.”55 Aris-
totle, on the other hand, held that the forms of natural things do not
exist apart from matter, and as forms in matter they are not intelligi-
ble. Therefore, Aquinas says:
It follows that the natures or forms of the sensible things which we under-
stand are not actually intelligible. Now nothing is reduced from potentiali-
ty to act except by something in act; as the senses are made actual by what is
actually sensible. We must therefore assign on the part of the intellect some
power to make things actually intelligible, by abstraction of the species from
material conditions. And such is the necessity for an active intellect.56

The Angelic Doctor goes on to say that this agent intellect is in the
soul itself.57 He says that “we know this by experience, since we per-
ceive that we abstract universal forms from their particular condi-
tions, which is to make them actually intelligible.”58 He does admit,
however, that there must be a separate higher intellect which brings
our own agent intellect from potency to act. “The separate intellect,
according to the teaching of our faith, is God Himself, who is the
soul’s Creator, and only beatitude. . . . Wherefore the human soul de-
rives its intellectual light from Him.”59 The light of reason participates
in God’s own reason.
Aquinas definitively rejects any sort of body-soul dualism in his
account of knowledge. He is especially critical of Plato’s theory that
“man’s intellect is filled with all intelligible species, but that, by be-
ing united to the body, it is hindered from the realization of its act.”60
This is unreasonable, Thomas says, because it seems impossible for a
soul to forget all of its knowledge. Secondly, “if a sense be wanting,
the knowledge of what is apprehended through that sense is wanting
also: for instance, a man who is born blind can have no knowledge of
colors.”61 The analogy is clear. Just as a blind man would not know the
very concept of color, had the soul forgotten all knowledge of imma-
terial forms, no man (not even Plato) would even know the concept
of knowledge and hence would not be able to explain it to another.
55. ST I, q. 79, a. 3, co. 56. Ibid.
57. See Aristotle, De Anima, III.5.430a10. 58. ST I, q. 79, a. 4, co.
59. Ibid. 60. ST I, q. 84, a. 3, co.
61. Ibid.
 The Anthropology of Thomas Aquinas 211
The principal reason that Aquinas cannot accept Plato’s position
is that he rejects Plato’s position that the soul merely uses the body.
For Aquinas, the soul is the form of the body and is naturally unit-
ed to the body. Thus “it is unreasonable that the natural operation of
a thing be totally hindered by that which belongs to it naturally.”62
Aquinas is fully committed to the concept of a body-soul unity in the
acquisition of knowledge. He places the power of human knowledge
midway between the sensitive power of animals and the intellect of
angels. All three, he says, are cognitive powers.63 The sensitive pow-
er is “the act of a corporeal organ. And therefore the object of every
sensitive power is a form as existing in corporeal matter. And since
such matter is the principle of individuality, therefore every power of
the sensitive part can only have knowledge of the individual.”64 The
angelic intellect is a “cognitive power which is neither the act of a
corporeal organ, nor in any way connected with corporeal matter. . . .
The object of [this] cognitive power is therefore a form existing apart
from matter: for though angels know material things, yet they do not
know them save in something immaterial, namely, either in them-
selves or in God.”65
The human intellect holds the middle place, “for it is not the
act of an organ; yet it is a power of the soul which is the form of the
body.”66 This has consequences for knowledge. Plato held that imma-
terial knowledge had nothing to do with sensible objects. Aristotle,
on the other hand, chose another way.67 Aristotle and Aquinas agree
with Plato that the corporeal cannot make an impression on the in-
corporeal. The corporeal cannot bring the incorporeal to act. There-
fore, Aristotle postulated the active intellect which “causes the phan-
tasms received from the senses to be actually intelligible, by a process
of abstraction.”68 Following this logic, Aquinas concludes: “On the
part of the phantasms, intellectual knowledge is caused by the senses.
But since the phantasms cannot of themselves affect the passive in-
tellect but it necessary that they become actually intelligible through
the agent intellect, it cannot be said that sensible knowledge is the to-

62. Ibid. 63. See ST I, q. 85, a. 1, co.

64. Ibid. 65. Ibid.
66. Ibid. 67. ST I, q. 84, a. 6 (emphasis added).
68. Ibid.
212 The Anthropology of Thomas Aquinas
tal and perfect cause of intellectual knowledge, but rather that it is in
a way the material cause.”69
So important is the union of the intellectual soul with the body
for Aquinas that he insists that the intellect can actually understand
nothing in this life without making use of the sensitive powers of the
soul, which depend on the body. The intellectual soul depends on
the interior senses of the imagination and memory even to consider
knowledge already acquired and to render judgments. This is because
“the proper object of the human intellect, which is united to a body,
is a quiddity or nature existing in corporeal matter; and through such
natures of visible things it rises to a certain knowledge of things invis-
ible.”70 Aquinas again appeals to experience to explain this. He writes
that when we attempt to understand something, we generate phan-
tasms to serve us by way of examples in helping us to understand. In
order for the intellect actually to understand its proper object (a na-
ture existing in corporeal matter), it must always turn to sense images
(phantasms).71
Certainly in this life the body and its dispositions are important
for our pursuit of truth and for our contemplation. Aquinas writes
that some people understand things better simply because their bod-
ies have a better disposition.72 Perhaps they are more imaginative in
the phantasms they create to lead them syllogistically from one con-
clusion to another, or maybe they have a better memory. The reverse
is also true when the imagination is faulty (as in the case of mental
disorder) or the memory is lacking (as in the case of amnesia or la-
ziness), where our understanding is hindered and perhaps even sus-
pended.73
The Angelic Doctor acknowledges that his insistence on a strong
unity of body and soul in his anthropology creates a tension in hold-
ing that the soul continues to live after it is separated from the body,
and that it can continue to operate even after death.74 He writes: “If
we admit that the nature of the soul requires it to understand by turn-
ing to the phantasms, it will seem, since death does not change its na-
ture, that it can then naturally understand nothing; as the phantasms

69. Ibid. 70. ST I, q. 84, a. 7, co.

71. See also ST I, q. 85, aa. 1–2. 72. See ST I, q. 85, a. 7.
73. See ST I, q. 84, aa. 7–8. 74. See ST I, q. 89, a. 1, co.
 The Anthropology of Thomas Aquinas 213
are wanting to which it may turn.”75 His resolution is simple: “The
soul, therefore, when united to the body, consistently with that mode
of existence, has a mode of understanding, by turning to corporeal
phantasms, which are in corporeal organs; but when it is separated
from the body, it has a mode of understanding by turning to simply
intelligible objects, as is proper to other separate substances.”76 This
other mode of understanding that does not make use of corporeal
phantasms is, however, “not in accordance with its [the soul’s] nature,
and likewise to understand without turning to the phantasms is not
natural to it.”77
The separated soul understands by means of “a participated spe-
cies arising from the influence of the Divine light, shared by the soul
as by other separate substances [that is, the angels]; though in a less-
er degree.”78 This participation in the divine light is an act of grace,
for Aquinas, not an act of nature. However, while it is not natural for
the soul to understand in this way, this is not an unnatural mode of
knowledge since “God is the author of the influx both of the light of
grace and of the light of nature.”79

75. Ibid.
76. Ibid.
77. Ibid. In this same article, Aquinas also explains that while it may be more noble
to understand by turning directly to intelligible objects without the use of phantasms,
the perfection of the universe requires a gradation of being and intellectual power. The
human soul holds the lowest place among intellectual substances.
78. ST I, q. 89, a. 1, ad 3.
79. Ibid. Aquinas goes on to say that the divine light will allow the separated soul
to know singulars (ST I, q. 89, a. 4) and to know intelligible species learned in this life
without having to resort to phantasms (ST I, q. 89, aa. 5–6). However, he does say that
in this state the soul will have knowledge only in a confused and general manner be-
cause the soul is not united to its body (see ST I, q. 89, aa. 2–3). Aquinas’s solution to
the existence the separated soul is not completely satisfying to many of his readers, es-
pecially to strict Aristotelians. See, for example, Pasnau, Thomas Aquinas on Human
Nature, 366–93. Eleanor Stump offers a more favorable reading in Aquinas (New York:
Routledge, 2005), 200–216. For a more detailed treatment on this question, see An-
ton C. Pegis, “The Separated Soul and Its Nature in St. Thomas,” in St. Thomas Aquinas
1274–1974: Commemorative Studies, ed. Armand Maurer (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of
Medieval Studies, 1974), 1:131–58; Montague Brown, “Aquinas on the Resurrection of
the Body,” The Thomist 56 (1992): 165–207.
214 The Anthropology of Thomas Aquinas

Person in Aquinas
Our consideration of the Angelic Doctor’s anthropology must next
consider his notion of personhood. We immediately face a challenge:
Aquinas does not use the word “person” in his treatise on man. Aqui-
nas writes of personhood exclusively in his treatise on the Trinity and
his treatise on the incarnation of Christ.80 However, what he says in
these two treatises is instructive for his notion of the human person.
Commenting on Aquinas’s notion of personhood, Joseph Torchia
writes: “Thomistic personhood . . . comprises the spiritual dimension
of the rational soul, the corporeal dimension of the human body, and
the metaphysical dimension of being or esse. By virtue of this multi-
dimensionality, the person is the ontological center of a whole range
of operations.”81 A brief survey of Thomas’s understanding of person
will show this to be true.
When Aquinas begins his discussion of the definition of person-
hood, he notes that substances, by definition, are individualized.82
We speak of this substance. Thomas gives the name hypostasis or “first
substance” to individual substances. The desk upon which the stu-
dent writes is, according to Aquinas, a hypostasis or first substance. It
is individualized and distinguishable from other first substances, and
even from every other desk with which it would share a certain com-
monality and nature. But there is something more particular than first
substances. Aquinas continues: “Further still, in a more special and
perfect way, the particular and the individual are found in the rational
substances which have dominion over their own actions; and which
are not only made to act, like others; but which can act themselves;
for actions belong to singulars. Therefore also the individuals of the
rational nature have a special name even among other substances;
and this name is person.”83 A person, therefore, is an individual sub-
stance of a rational nature, which is Boethius’s classic definition.
In this definition, Aquinas is using the word “substance” in a sec-

80. See ST I, qq. 27–43, on the Trinity and ST III, q. 22, on the personhood of Je-
sus Christ.
81. Torchia, Exploring Personhood, 143.
82. See ST I, q. 29, a. 1.
83. ST I, q. 29, a. 1, co.
 The Anthropology of Thomas Aquinas 215
ondary way—as a concrete thing (a first substance).84 Just as “a thing
of nature,” “subsistence,” and “hypostasis” signify all subjects (par-
ticular substances, that is, first substances), “person” signifies the
same thing for all rational substances.85 It is important to understand
Thomas’s explanation of the relationship of first substances, that is,
concrete substance (whether rational or irrational) with the concept
of nature or essence (the term “substance” in its primary sense). Es-
sence, nature, or substance refer to the “quiddity of a thing, signified
by its definition, and thus we say that the definition means the sub-
stance of a thing.”86 In his small but influential work, De ente et essen-
tia, Aquinas highlights the importance of matter in the multiplication
of individuals within a species or nature.87 Matter is the principal of
individuation among substances composed of matter and form (ra-
tional or otherwise). Accidental qualities are inherent in the indi-
viduation of substances. Aquinas says that an accident is an essence
which is apt to exist in a subject.88 Whiteness does not exist in the
abstract but exists in white things; whiteness is an accidental quality.
Thomas goes on to distinguish between accidents that are proper
to matter and accidents that are proper to form. Accidents that char-
acterize matter distinguish individuals of one species from another,
while accidents attributed to form characterize the species as a whole.
The former he calls the “individual’s accidents,” while he refers to the
latter as “proper attributes [accidents].”89 Proper accidents are found

84. See ST I, q. 29, a. 2, co. In the pages below, we will see that Aquinas will slight-
ly modify this definition when he speaks of the personhood of God and of Jesus Christ.
85. See ibid. Aquinas acknowledges the Latin and Greek differences in the term
“hypostasis.” See also ST I, q. 29, a. 2, ad 2.
86. ST I, q. 29, a. 2, co.
87. This small work on being and essence is usually dated to the 1250s, roughly fif-
teen years before Aquinas began writing the Summa Theologiae. On this particular
point, however, there is no evidence that he ever changed his thought on the nature of
accidents and essence, as it is borrowed from Aristotle, to whom Aquinas was indebted
for much of his life. See Torrell, St. Thomas Aquinas, 47–50.
88. See ST III, q. 77, a. 1, ad 2.
89. See Aquinas, De ente et essentia, chap. 6: “As everything is individuated by mat-
ter and placed in a genus or species by its form, accidents following upon matter are the
individual’s accidents, and it is by these that individuals of the same species differ one
from another. But accidents which are consequent upon form are proper attributes of
the genus or species. Hence, they are found in everything sharing the nature of the ge-
nus or species. The capacity for laughter, for instance, comes from man’s form, since
216 The Anthropology of Thomas Aquinas
in every individual of a species or nature, while individual accidents
the individualizing attributes of material difference. All accidents dis-
tinguish primary matter from designated (signate or particular) mat-
ter. Aquinas says that maleness and femaleness are individual acci-
dents consequent upon matter.90 In contrast, risibility or laughter is
a proper accident of the human species because it is attributed to the
form, the human soul—and risibility occurs as an act of knowledge.91
This important distinction between individual accidents and proper
accidents cannot be forgotten in any discussion of Aquinas’s view of
the body, and, I argue, his view of sexual difference, which I will pres-
ent below.
Hypostasis and “person” refer to these individual substances (sub-
stances individualized by matter designated by individual accidents).
In the visible world, according to Aristotelian-Thomistic metaphysics,
matter is the distinguishing principle of substance. Thus, in the mate-
rial world, matter and form are part of the definition (or essence) of
things: “In things composed of matter and form, the essence signi-
fies not only the form, nor only the matter, but what is composed of
matter and the common form, as the principles of the species.”92 But
in the invisible world, in the angelic realm, angels are differentiated
from each other not by matter but by differences in their powers and
missions.93 They too fit the definition of an individual hypostasis of a
rational nature, and so can rightly be called persons.94
The human person is an embodied person. This is why the soul
separated from its body after death cannot be called a person. Aqui-
laughter occurs because of an act of knowledge on the part of man’s soul.” English trans-
lation from Thomas Aquinas, On Being and Essence, trans. Armand Maruer (Toronto:
Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 1949).
90. Ibid.: “Among those accidents deriving from matter we find a certain diversi-
ty. Some are consequent upon matter in accordance with the relation it has to a special
form; for example, among animals, male and female, whose diversity comes from mat-
ter.” Cf. Aristotle, Metaphysics, X.9.1058b21.
91. I am grateful to Paul Gondreau for highlighting the importance of this passage
for Thomistic sexual anthropology. See Paul Gondreau, “The ‘Inseparable Connection’
between Procreation and Unitive Love (Humanae Vitae, §12) and Thomistic Hylomor-
phic Anthropology,” Nova et Vetera (English Edition) 6 (2008): 738–39.
92. ST I, q. 29, a. 2, ad 3.
93. See ST I, q. 50, aa. 2, 4.
94. See Aquinas, De ente, chap. 5, for more of his thoughts on the principle of indi-
viduation both for God and for the angelic creatures.
 The Anthropology of Thomas Aquinas 217
nas writes: “The soul is part of the human species; and so, although
it may exist in a separate state, yet since it ever retains its nature of
unibility [with the body], it cannot be called an individual substance,
which is the hypostasis or first substance, as neither can the hand nor
any other part of man; thus neither the definition nor the name of
person belongs to it.”95 For Aquinas, the human person is not a part,
but the composite of soul and body. The soul is a part of the compos-
ite; it is part of human personhood. Aquinas’s commitment to hylo-
morphic unity between soul and body is resolute.96 In Thomas’s an-
thropology, the category of personhood is not in contradistinction to
the category of nature. Rather, the person is the perfection and man-
ifestation of nature. Strictly speaking, we do not know human na-
ture; we know persons. We make abstractions about human nature
as a principle of action, but it is a human person who acts. Yet God
is a person despite having no principle of limitation. “Person signifies
what is most perfect in all nature—that is, a subsistent individual of
a rational nature. Hence, since everything that is perfect must be at-
tributed to God, forasmuch as His essence contains every perfection,
this name person is fittingly applied to God; not, however, as it is ap-
plied to creatures, but in a more excellent way.”97
Thomas agrees with an objector that God is not individualized by
matter. He writes: “God cannot be called an individual in the sense that
His individuality comes from matter; but only in the sense which im-
plies incommunicability.”98 He writes approvingly of Richard of St. Vic-
tor’s addendum to Boethius’s definition: “Person in God is the incommu-
nicable existence of the divine nature.”99 God is a person not only because

95. ST I, q. 29, a. 1, ad 5.
96. See Emery, “The Unity of Man,” 230: “The existence of the separated soul must
be conceived of in terms of a twofold relation: first, a relation to the earthly existence in
which the soul was united to the body in the dignity of a person (the soul did not exist
before its union with the body); and second, a relation to the resurrection, which is held
by faith, since the general resurrection will restore to the dead the human completeness
of the person. The separated soul subsists in this twofold ‘tension.’” See also Dewan,
“St. Thomas, Metaphysics, and Human Dignity,” 60–62.
97. ST I, q. 29, a. 3, co. (emphasis added).
98. ST I, q. 29, a. 3, ad 4.
99. Ibid. (emphasis added). Cf. Richard of St. Victor, De Trinitate, in Patrologiae
cursus completus. Series Latina, ed. J.-P. Migne (Paris, 1844–64), 196:945 [hereafter, PL].
See also ST I, q. 29, a. 4, ad 3.
218 The Anthropology of Thomas Aquinas
he is supremely incommunicable, but also because the Father, Son, and
Holy Spirit are persons within the Godhead. This is the case for Aqui-
nas because there are real relations in God that are coincident with the
divine essence.100 These relations are really distinguished from each
other.101 For Aquinas, some sort of distinction is the sine qua non of
personhood.102
Unfortunately, Aquinas nowhere speaks in more detail about the
incommunicability of the person. In the above-cited passage, Aqui-
nas states that God is an individual (and thus a person) “only in the
sense which implies incommunicability.”103 Here Aquinas suggests
that individuality is defined not only by being a particular substance
but also by being incommunicable. This raises two questions that
Aquinas does not answer explicitly.
The first question is whether incommunicability is a property
of individuality or a property of personhood. When Thomas speaks
about incommunicability and individuality in this reply to his objec-
tor, does he mean to suggest that all individual substances are incom-
municable? Is it because God is incommunicable that he is therefore
an individual even though he is not comprised of matter and form?
Certainly, Aquinas would agree that when nonrational substances are
seen, they are, in some sense, communicating their existence to those
who see. It would seem then that Thomas is using the word “individ-
ual” in a more strict sense: an individual rational substance. If this is
the case, then what does it mean to be incommunicable?
And this is the second question: what does it mean for Aquinas
to say that God is incommunicable? What is incommunicable in per-
sons, whether human or divine, is not a matter of verbal communi-
cation or the exchange of information in any way. What is incommu-
nicable, for Aquinas, is one’s own distinctive being, one’s particular
concrete instantiation of one’s nature. What is incommunicable (and,
I might add, non-transferable) is one’s own subsistent reality. And

100. See ST I, q. 28, aa. 1–2.

101. See ST I, q. 28, a. 3.
102. Cf. Gilles Emery, The Trinity in Aquinas (Washingon, D.C.: The Catholic Uni-
versity of America Press, 2008); Emery, The Trinitarian Theology of St Thomas Aquinas,
trans. Francesca Murphy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010).
103. ST I, q. 29, a. 3, co.
 The Anthropology of Thomas Aquinas 219
this, in turn, means that one’s own operations and actions in nature
are just that: one’s own.104
We have thus progressed through our account of Aquinas’s hylo-
morphism, on the one hand, and his understanding of personhood,
on the other. Because Aquinas never fully articulated the incommu-
nicability of the person, the thought of Karol Wojtyła (and later of
Pope John Paul II) will be seen to move beyond the limitations es-
tablished by Aquinas’s method and concern. Still, Thomas’s strong
account of the human person as a body-soul composite is situated
within the rich metaphysical categories of matter and form, act and
potency. However, precisely because Aquinas is so committed to the
material aspect of the body-soul composite that is the human per-
son, it is necessary for him both to offer an account of the purpose of
bodily sexual difference and the impact this difference makes on the
flourishing of the human person.

Sexuality and Human

Flourishing
Sexual Difference in the Summa Theologiae
For Thomas, bodily sexual difference is natural and serves a purpose.
The primary purpose in his view is the generation of offspring.105
However, he does not believe that sexual difference is solely for the
purposes of procreation. In a number of places, he distinguishes the
manner in which human beings beget and raise their children from
the manner in which brute animals do.106 The command to “be fertile
104. In ST III, q. 19, a. 1, ad 4, Aquinas writes, “Being and operation belong to the
person by reason of the nature; yet in a different manner. For being belongs to the very
constitution of the person, and in this respect it has the nature of a term; consequently,
unity of person requires unity of the complete and personal being. But operation is an
effect of the person by reason of a form or nature.”
105. See ST I, q. 92, a. 1.
106. See, e.g., ST I, q. 92, a. 2; II-II, q. 154, a. 2; Supp., q. 41, a. 1; Summa contra Gen-
tiles [hereafter, SCG] III.122. On December 6, 1273, while celebrating Mass on the feast
of St. Nicholas, Thomas had some sort of mystical experience after which he told his
friend and associate, Reginald, these famous words: “I cannot do any more. Everything
I have written seems to me as straw in comparison with what I have seen.” After that, the
Angelic Doctor never wrote or dictated anything again. He died three months later on
March 7, 1274 (see Torrell, Saint Thomas Aquinas, 289–95). Until the day of the vision,
220 The Anthropology of Thomas Aquinas
and multiply” (Gn 1:28), while given to both man and animals, is sim-
ply not fulfilled by man in the same way as it is by animals.107 Indeed,
Aquinas remarks that “the human male and female are united, not
only for generation, as with other animals, but also for the purpose
of domestic life, in which each has his or her duty, and in which the
man is the head of the woman.”108 The nature of married domestic
life, its relationship to the love of the couple, and the raising of their
children will be more fully explored in chapter 7. In addition, I will
there address some of the aspects of the complex position of Thom-
as regarding the nature of biological difference (for example, with re-
gard to Aristotle’s assertion that “the female is, as it were, a mutilated
[misbegotten] male”).109 What will be clear is that Aquinas’s faith in
God’s act of creation and in human dignity will force him to temper
Aristotle’s position.
For Aquinas, the image of God in each human person resides in
the soul, not in the body. The human body, like all other created re-
alities, bears a trace of God’s presence (inasmuch as it is created and
sustained by God) but it is not in the image and likeness of God.110
God himself does not have sexual parts.111 The soul is the seat of the
powers that make us like God: knowledge (reason) and choice (will).
Thomas had been working on the tertia pars of the Summa Theologiae, which had in-
cluded treatises on the incarnation, the sacraments, the resurrection, and the last things.
Because he did not finish, his students culled responses from his early commentary on
Peter Lombard’s Sentences (begun in 1252) to complete the Summa (see Torrell, Saint
Thomas Aquinas, 332–34). This became known as the supplementum to the Summa Theo-
logiae. This supplement includes the questions on marriage. Though I will cite the sup-
plementum in this study because it is treated by most Thomists as a canonical exten-
sion of the Summa, I will corroborate Thomas’s arguments found in the supplementum
with arguments from his other summa, the Summa contra Gentiles, which was completed
only a few years before he began working on the Summa Theologiae. To assist the read-
er, when the supplementum is cited in this study, if a corresponding passage exists in the
Summa contra Gentiles, it will be listed in parentheses after the ST reference.
107. See ST, Supp., q. 42, a. 2, ad 4 (SCG III.136).
108. ST I, q. 92, a. 2. It is beyond the purview of this study to engage in an exegesis
of Aquinas’s use of the traditional Christian household code in which the husband was
understood to be the head of the woman. Here he is following a long line of Christian
thinkers who, until modern times, held for such a code following the practice of early
Christianity witnessed by the apostle Paul’s writings in the New Testament.
109. Aristotle, On the Generation of Animals, II.3.737a27.
110. See ST I, q. 93, a. 6.
111. See ST I, q. 3.
 The Anthropology of Thomas Aquinas 221
He understands Genesis 1:28 “not to imply that the image of God
came through the distinction of sex, but that the image of God be-
longs to both sexes, since it is in the mind, wherein there is no sexual
distinction.”112 The female sex along with the male sex belongs to the
“perfection of human nature.”113
God’s will is that the human species reproduce through the union
of the two sexes. There would have been reproduction even in orig-
inal innocence, not for the preservation of the species (since death
had not yet entered in human history), but, Aquinas says, for the mul-
tiplication of the species, which is a good. If this were not the case, we
would have to say that original sin would have been necessary for ac-
cess to this natural good.114 Even in original innocence, procreation
would have been through sexual intercourse.115
This does not mean, however, that sexual difference is meaning-
less for Aquinas or that it is relegated only to procreation. It is part of
our integrity. After the general resurrection, there will no longer be
procreation since “the human race will already have the number of
individuals preordained by God.”116 Nonetheless, there will be sexual
difference after the resurrection.117 The body will rise in its integrity
and with all its members.118
This means that sexual difference is inherent in nature itself be-
cause it is an accidental quality within signate matter. John Grabows-
ki’s caution against overstating that sexual difference is located in na-
ture is well taken.119 It should not be suggested that sexual difference

112. ST I, q. 93, a. 6, ad 2. Recall that when Aquinas uses the word “mind,” he means
the soul (see ST I, q. 75, a. 2). When Aquinas comments on Augustine’s position that
man is in the image of God but woman is in the image of man, he agrees, but only in a
secondary sense: “The image of God, in its principal signification, namely the intellectu-
al nature, is found both in man and in woman. . . . But in a secondary sense the image of
God is found in man, and not in woman: for man is the beginning and end of woman; as
God is the beginning and end of every creature” (ST I, q. 93, a. 4, ad 1).
113. Ibid. (emphasis indicates author’s altered translation): “Sicut autem ad perfec-
tionem universi pertinent diversi gradus rerum, ita etiam diversitas sexus est ad perfec-
tionem humanae naturae.”
114. Ibid.
115. See ST I, q. 99, a. 2.
116. ST, Supp., q. 81, a. 4, co. (SCG IV.83).
117. See ST, Supp., q. 81, a. 3 (SCG IV.88).
118. See ST, Supp., q. 80, a. 1 (SCG IV.84).
119. See Grabowski, Sex and Virtue, 109.
222 The Anthropology of Thomas Aquinas
in men and women is so profound so as to delineate two separate spe-
cies or natures, each with its own inclinations (and, Grabowski warns,
its own moral code). Surely, this is not Aquinas’s intention as he indi-
cates that the soul (the seat of the image of God) is without sexual dif-
ference and that the proper accidents which flow from the soul deter-
mine the species, whereas the accidents of matter (such as maleness
and femaleness) determine only the individuals of the species.120
When he first introduces the concept of sexual difference for pro-
creation, Aquinas goes on to say that “man is yet further ordered to a
still nobler vital action, and that is intellectual operation.”121 The no-
bility of intellectual operation is central to Aquinas’s understanding
of the relationship of sexuality to human happiness (beatitude), yet
this intellectual operation, as I have already shown, is in some way
contingent upon the body. Sexuality and the passions that it entails
must be incorporated into an account of human flourishing.

Sexuality and Human Flourishing

For all of his emphasis on sexual difference, Thomas writes virtually
nothing about the conjugal act. He writes in the Summa that the gen-
eration of offspring is “a great blessing” (bonum consectum).122 In the
Summa contra Gentiles, he writes that carnal union produces a “sweet
association” (suavem societatem) between the sexes.123 Aquinas res-
olutely disagrees with the Gregory of Nyssa and John Chrysostom,
120. Grabowski’s solution is to draw a solid distinction between person and nature,
locating maleness and femaleness in the human person analogous to the relationality
which distinguishes the divine persons of the Trinity (see Grabowski, Sex and Virtue,
109–11). Recently, Paul Gondreau has criticized Grabowski’s approach as effectively re-
ducing maleness and femaleness to one relation among many. He argues that the dis-
tinction between the divine persons can only analogously be compared to the relation-
ship between men and women. See Paul Gondreau, “The ‘Inseparable Connection,’”
739n23. I am grateful to Paul Gondreau for allowing me to preview the manuscript of
his forthcoming book, Sex and the Human Good: Principles of a Realist (Thomist) Sexual
Anthropology. It provides more detail than the article cited. Gondreau’s salient criticism
deserves a response that lies beyond the constraints of this book. Many of his points are
valid, but I do not think John Grabowski intends in his work to make maleness and fe-
maleness pure accidental properties equivalent to all other relationships. Quite the con-
trary, if anything, it seems to me that he defines these as essential relationships of the
human person.
121. ST I, 92, a. 1, co. 122. See ST I, q. 98, a. 1.
123. See SCG III.123.
 The Anthropology of Thomas Aquinas 223
both of whom said that there would have been no sexual activity in
original innocence.124 In fact, Thomas goes so far as to say that sexual
delight would have been greater in Eden: “Indeed would sensible de-
light have been greater in proportion to the greater purity of nature
and the greater sensibility of the body.”125
The above reflection on Aquinas’s anthropology reveals that he
would place the pleasure that comes from sexual intercourse in the
sensitive appetite since it includes bodily affectation, but it also in-
cludes delight in the mind. Every created being tends toward its own
perfection, the fulfillment of its nature.126 The good is that which is
perfective. Particular objects manifest particular goods which are per-
fective of other objects.127 That this is true both of the sensitive souls
of brute animals, who are guided by their nature to their own perfec-
tion, and of the intellectual soul is vital for any discussion of human
sexuality in the Summa Theologiae because, for Aquinas, the delight of
sex is fundamentally a passion in the sensitive appetite that should be
guided by reason.
For Thomas, the appetitive drives in man and in brute animals
are principally directed ad extra, to things in themselves. In fact, he
speaks of passion (the drive of the sensitive appetite) as “being drawn
to the agent.”128 Aquinas writes: “Now the soul is drawn to a thing by
the appetitive power rather than by the apprehensive power: because
the soul has, through its appetitive power, an order to things as they
are in themselves: hence the Philosopher says that good and evil, i.e.,
the objects of the appetitive power, are in things themselves.”129 It
should be recalled how this differs from the apprehensive power as
described earlier in this chapter, which is directed to the likeness or
species of things as they exist in the one who perceives.
The will (the intellectual appetite) differs from the sensitive appe-
tite in this respect. The will is not directed to things as they exist in
themselves. Rather, the will is directed to the good of things in them-

124. See Gregory of Nyssa, De hominis opificio, in Patrologiae cursus completus. Se-
ries graeca, ed. J.-P. Migne (Paris, 1857–66), 44:189 [hereafter, PG]. See also John
Chrysostom, Homilae in Genesis (PG 53:126).
125. ST I, q. 98, a. 2, ad 3. 126. See ST I, q. 19, a. 1.
127. See ST I, q. 16, a. 1. 128. ST I-II, q. 22, a. 1, co.
129. ST I-II, q. 22, a. 2, co. Cf. Aristotle, Metaphysics VI.4.1027b25.
224 The Anthropology of Thomas Aquinas
selves as those things are apprehended by the intellect.130 The sen-
sitive soul, on the other hand, is affected by things in themselves. In
sensitive apprehension, as I noted earlier, extrinsic objects cause a cor-
poreal transmutation which allows the sensitive soul to apprehend the
presence of the thing (and to remember the thing). The same is true
for the sensitive appetite. The sensitive appetite is moved by an agent
by way of bodily transmutation.131 This is why passion is not properly
intellectual.132 This does not mean that man, because he is an intellec-
tual creature, is without passion. Indeed, while passion may not be es-
sentially in the human soul, it is a part of the soul accidentally because
the soul is the form of the body, and, therefore, has sensitive functions
(both apprehensive and appetitive). Passion is in the human compos-
ite, according to Aquinas.133
However, because of man’s higher status as an intellectual crea-
ture, he experiences his passions differently, or rather, passions af-
fect him differently. Men and women differ from animals in exactly
how they respond to their passions. For Aquinas, all passions must
be governed by reason. In irrational animals this does not happen by
following intellectual reason but rather they “are led by a kind of es-
timative power, which is subject to a higher reason, i.e., the Divine
reason.”134 Earlier in the Summa Theologiae, Thomas explains that “in
other animals the sensitive appetite is naturally moved by the estima-
tive power; for instance, the sheep, esteeming the wolf as an enemy, is
afraid.”135 But in man, the estimative power is replaced with practical
reason.136
Aquinas holds that passions in themselves are not moral. They
are neither good nor evil when considered only as corporeal trans-
mutations affected by extrinsic agents. The sensitive appetite, like
sensitive apprehension, is, on its own terms, irrational.137 Neverthe-
less, the sensitive appetite is related to reason. Thus, Thomas writes:
“If, however, they [the passions] be considered as subject to the com-
mand of reason and will, then moral good and evil are in them.”138

130. See ST I, q. 82, a. 3. 131. See ST I-II, q. 22, a. 1.

132. ST I-II, q. 23, a. 1, co. 133. See ST I-II, q. 22, a. 1, co. and ad 3.
134. ST I-II, q. 24, a. 4, ad 3. 135. ST I, q. 81, a. 3, co.
136. See ibid. 137. See ST I-II, q. 24, a. 1.
138. ST I-II, q. 24, a. 1, co.
 The Anthropology of Thomas Aquinas 225
The Angelic Doctor disagrees with the Stoics, who viewed all pas-
sions as evil.139 The problem with the Stoics was not that they identi-
fied passion as evil because it exceeded the limits of reason, but rather
that they did not understand that the will moves apart from the sen-
sitive and irrational appetite. Aquinas himself says that “the passions
of the soul, in so far as they are contrary to the order of reason, incline
us to sin: but in so far as they are controlled by reason, they pertain
to virtue.”140 Men and women must govern their passions rationally.
Elsewhere, Aquinas writes that the lower appetite, while sufficient
to move irrational animals immediately, is not sufficient to move man
unless the higher appetite (the will) concedes.141 This is why in the
treatise on the passions, Aquinas will insist that “the passions, in so
far as they are voluntary [consented to by the will], [may] be called
morally good or evil.”142 Daniel Westberg notes: “Though it is often
convenient for people to excuse their eating habits or sexual behav-
ior on the basis of the strength and irresistibility of sensation and
the natural sequence of desire and action, Thomas will have none of
this.”143 The will must consent to the direction of the passions.
Here, again, we see the importance of reason in Aquinas’s work,
especially in his moral theory. Reason is important in the determi-
nation of good and evil in human action because the human soul’s
specific difference from other souls is that it is a rational soul, which
is man’s natural form.144 Proper human actions are those actions of
which man is the master through reason and free will. This is to dis-
tinguish free actions from other general acts of man that do not in-
volve freedom (for example, the beating of the heart or the inadver-
tent scratching of a beard).145
It is God’s own reason that governs the universe. To act in accord
with his reason is to be good; Aquinas calls this the eternal law.146 An-
imals participate in the divine reason inasmuch as their natural form
and even their estimative power are created by divine reason to oper-
ate in a certain manner. Human beings, on the other hand, participate

139. ST I-II, q. 24, a. 2, co. 140. ST I-II, q. 24, a. 2, ad 3.

141. ST I, q. 81, a. 3, co. 142. ST I-II, q. 24, a. 1, co.
143. Westberg, Right Practical Reason, 80. 144. ST I-II, q. 18, a. 5, co.
145. See ST I-II, q. 1, a. 1.
146. See ST I-II, q. 91, a. 1.
226 The Anthropology of Thomas Aquinas
in divine reason through their own God-given power to reason. This
is the basis of the natural law.147 By following the dictates of right rea-
son (which Aquinas calls the natural law), we find the fulfillment of
our nature, of our created being, as designed by divine reason.148
The sensitive appetite and its passions are only properly ordered
when they are governed by reason.149 In fact, inasmuch as the passions
are subject to reason, they are subject to the natural law.150 While it is
true that passions have an “inborn aptitude” to obey reason, they do
not always obey due to the effects of original sin.151 This topic is dis-
cussed in depth in chapter 7; for now, I will explore briefly Aquinas’s
understanding of Adam and Eve’s unique original state in order to con-
trast that with love, marriage, and concupiscence in our fallen state in
chapters 7 and 8. That men and women live with the wounds of origi-
nal sin cannot but affect their mastery of their passions and their rela-
tionship with each other. Aquinas is not a Kantian. Sin affects reason’s
ability to function and to perceive morally upright paths of action.

Original Innocence
and Original Sin
Thomas writes that original justice, the state in which Adam and Eve
were created, “consisted in [man’s] reason being subject to God, the
lower powers to reason, and the body to the soul.”152 He adds that
“the first subjection was the cause of both the second and the third;
since while reason was subject to God, the lower powers remained
subject to reason.”153 It is only when man is in right relationship with
God that he is in right relationship with himself.
It is important to note that this threefold submission is not a nat-
ural endowment. In fact, the Catholic tradition has long held that

147. ST I-II, q. 91, a. 2, co. 148. ST I-II, q. 94, a. 3, co.

149. See ST I-II, q. 17, a. 7. 150. See ST I-II, q. 94, a. 2, ad 2.
151. See ST I-II, q. 50, a. 3, ad 1; I-II, q. 17, a. 7. For a brief analysis of our how actions
and habits can ingrain in us unnatural behaviors that are contrary to our natural inclina-
tions, see J. Budziszewksi, “The Natural, the Connatural, and the Unnatural,” in The Line
Through the Heart: Natural Law as Fact, Theory, and Sign of Contradiction (Wilmington,
Del.: ISI Books, 2009), 61–77.
152. ST I, q. 95, a. 1, co.
153. Ibid.
 The Anthropology of Thomas Aquinas 227
Adam and Eve were endowed “with grace and other gifts surpassing
what is due to human nature by itself.”154 For Aquinas, original justice
is a grace. He writes that “such a subjection of the body to the soul
and of the lower powers to reason, was not from nature; otherwise it
would have remained after sin. . . . The primitive subjection by virtue
of which reason was subject to God was not a merely natural gift, but
a supernatural endowment of grace; for it is not possible that the ef-
fect should be of greater efficiency than the cause.”155 The first man
and woman were created in grace and this grace is the cause of origi-
nal righteousness, the state of original justice.156
The subjection of the lower powers to the higher powers is nec-
essary for happiness in Aquinas’s anthropology. He explains why in
the Quaestiones dispuatae de malo, written contemporaneously with
the Summa Theologiae.157 In De malo, Thomas provides a key insight:
Every rational creature without exception needs a particular divine help,
namely, the help of sanctifying grace, in order to attain perfect happiness. . . .
But in addition to this necessary help, human beings needed another super-
natural help because of their composite nature. For human beings are com-
posed of soul and body, and of an intellectual and sensory nature. And if the
body and the senses be left to their nature, as it were, they burden and hin-
der the intellect from being able to freely attain the highest reaches of con-
templation. And this help was original justice, by which the mind of human
beings would be so subject to God that their powers and their very bodies
would be completely subject to them, nor would their reason impede them
from being able to tend toward God. . . . And original sin takes away this help
of original justice.158

The situation of original justice was wholly unique. Our first parents
were uniquely blessed with unmerited grace, which perfected human

154. O’Brien, “Original Justice,” in Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, ed. Gilby, 26:144.
155. ST I, q. 95, a. 1. See also ST I, q. 100, a. 1, co. and ad 2; I-II, q. 81, a. 2.
156. It should be noted that another grace of the original state was immortality. As
Thomas understands it, death entered the world through sin not inasmuch as humanity
was naturally immortal before sin, but rather human nature has always been mortal. But in
the state of original justice, grace preserved the body from corruption (see ST I, q. 97, a. 1).
157. For the historical context of these two works, see Torrell, Saint Thomas Aqui-
nas, 1:142–59, 197–223, 327–29.
158. Thomas Aquinas, De malo, q. 5, a. 1, co. Unless otherwise noted, all English
translations from De malo are from Thomas Aquinas, On Evil, trans. Richard Regan
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003).
228 The Anthropology of Thomas Aquinas
nature on a natural level and eliminated deficiencies connatural to that
nature (such as suffering and death).159 In Thomas’s view, this was
God’s plan for us from the beginning. The sensitive appetites pull the
creature in various directions toward various goods. This can distract
man from his higher pursuits unless the lower appetites are channeled
by reason.
In the state of innocence, concupiscence (a desire for sensible
pleasure) would have been moderated by reason. This is why Aquinas
can say that sexual delight would have been greater in Eden than af-
ter the Fall. Reason’s role “is not to lessen sensual pleasure, but to pre-
vent the force of concupiscence from cleaving to it immoderately. By
immoderately I mean going beyond the bounds of reason, as a sober
person does not take less pleasure in food taken in moderation than
the glutton, but his concupiscence lingers less in such pleasures.”160
Indeed, the Angelic Doctor does not intend to remove passion from
the moral life. He insists “just as it is better than man should both will
good and do it in his external act; so also does it belong to the perfec-
tion of moral good, that man should be moved unto good, not only in
respect of his will, but also in respect of his sensitive appetite.”161 The
fact he that devotes his longest treatise in the Summa Theologiae (27
questions and 132 articles) to the passions, longer than even his trea-
tise on beatitude, and places it in the heart of the prima secundae in-
dicates the seriousness with which he considers human emotion.162

159. See ST I, q. 97, aa. 1–3, for Aquinas’s understanding of the various remedies of
grace provided human nature in paradise. See also O’Brien, “Original Justice,” in Aqui-
nas, Summa Theologiae, ed. Thomas Gilby, 26:146: “Original justice does perfect human
nature on a natural level. While a gift and exceeding the claims of human nature, origi-
nal justice met its wants. Freedom from suffering and death was in keeping with the nat-
ural immortality of the soul. The tranquility in the lower appetites was in accord with
the control the reason is meant to achieve; man was given that habitual conformity of
passion to reason expected after the acquisition of moral virtues. The will itself received
a perfection that matched its bent towards God the author of nature and the fulfillment
of natural law. By a supernaturally bestowed gift, then, the defects connatural to human
nature as composed of body and spirit were overcome; original justice perfected man in
his natural and moral well-being.”
160. ST I, q. 98, a. 2, ad 3.
161. ST I-II, q. 24, a. 3, co.
162. The work of the passions in the moral life is often undervalued by Thomists.
Some have attempted to retrieve this important aspect of Aquinas’s work. For example,
see G. Simon Harak, SJ, Virtuous Passions: The Formation of Christian Character (New
 The Anthropology of Thomas Aquinas 229
According to Thomas, original sin “is an inordinate disposition,
arising from the destruction of the harmony which was essential
to original justice.”163 Rather than living in the harmony of nature-
perfecting grace that was original justice, in the fallen state we live
disintegrated lives: “As bodily sickness is partly a privation, in so far
as it denotes the destruction of the equilibrium of health, and part-
ly something positive, viz. the very humors that are inordinately dis-
posed, so too original sin denotes the privation of original justice,
and besides this, the inordinate disposition of the parts of the soul.
Consequently, it is not a pure privation but a corrupt habit.”164
Original sin is not a pure privation because the grace of original
justice was not naturally due to man. Since it was grace that gave har-
mony to human nature in original innocence, original sin is less a pri-
vation and more a simple continuation of human existence without
the nature-perfecting endowments of grace—a privation that inevi-
tably leads to disorder. Thomas O’Brien puts it this way: “Human na-
ture with its powers as derived from Adam is now just itself, left to
itself; this is how it is disordered.”165 Original sin is not a positive in-
clination to moral evil added to human nature following our first par-
ents’ sin. If original sin were, in fact, a positive inclination to evil, then
God himself would be implicated in evil’s cause as the one who in-
flicted this positive inclination in punishment for sin. Rather, original

York: Paulist Press, 1993); Servais Pinckaers, OP, “Reappropriating Aquinas’s Account
of the Passions,” trans. Craig Steven Titus, in Pinckaers Reader, 273–87. Harak’s book
represents an admirable attempt to recover a Thomistic understanding of passion in
moral action and character development. Unfortunately, it is hindered by several incor-
rect citations of Aquinas and a selective interpretation of the passages he cites. Pinck-
aers’s essay purports only to be an initial offering. See also Diana Fritz Cates, Aquinas on
Emotions: A Religious-Ethical Inquiry (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press,
2009); Diana Fritz Cares, Choosing to Feel: Virtue, Friendship, and Compassion for Friends
(South Bend, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1999); Paul Gondreau, The Passions
of Christ’s Soul in the Theology of St. Thomas Aquinas (Scranton, Penn.: University of
Scranton Press, 2009); Robert Minder, Thomas Aquinas on the Passions: A Study of Sum-
ma theologiae, 1a2ae 22–48 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009); Nicholas
Lombardo, OP, The Logic of Desire: Aquinas on Emotion (Washington, D.C.: The Catho-
lic University of America Press, 2010).
163. ST I-II, q. 82, a. 1, co.; see also ad 2.
164. ST I-II, q. 82, a. 1, ad 1.
165. O’Brien, “Original Justice,” in Summa Theologiae, ed. Gilby, 26:152. See also ST
I-II, q. 82, a. 1, ad 1 and ad 3; a. 2, ad 2; a. 4, ad 1 and ad 3.
230 The Anthropology of Thomas Aquinas
sin is the rupture of man’s relationship with God and therefore the
loss of his own integration. We were made to be in relationship with
God; without that relationship we are left entirely to ourselves and to
our own devices.
This has important consequences for Aquinas’s view of fallen hu-
man nature. For example, while Thomas holds that man can still know
truth without grace (but not without the divine light at work in his rea-
son as mentioned earlier in this chapter), and while he can still work
some particular goods, he can no longer achieve the complete good
proportionate to his human nature due to the disordering and disin-
tegration of the soul’s powers.166 This disintegration is properly called
the “wounding of nature,” where “all the powers of the soul are left, as it
were, destitute of their proper order, whereby they are naturally direct-
ed to virtue; which destitution is called a wounding of nature.”167
However, human nature retains some goodness even after origi-
nal sin. Aquinas identifies three goods of human nature, even in the
fallen state: “First, there are the principles of which nature is consti-
tuted, and the properties that flow from them, such as the powers of
the soul, and so forth. Secondly, since man has from nature an incli-
nation to virtue, as stated above ([I-II], q. 60, a. 1; q. 63, a. 1), this in-
clination to virtue is a good of nature. Thirdly, the gift of original jus-
tice, conferred on the whole human nature in the person of the first
man, may be called a good of nature.”168 He eventually concludes that
it is only the third good of nature, the gift of original justice, that is
absolutely destroyed by original sin.
The first good, the principles of nature, is neither destroyed nor
diminished. The principles of nature are determinative attributes of
nature. To argue that they are destroyed would be to argue that na-
ture itself is destroyed by sin, and we know this is not the case. We
have retained our nature; we have retained the use of our faculties. The
second good, however, the natural inclination to virtue, is diminished
even if it is not destroyed. Our wounded inclination to virtue now re-
quires healing grace (gratia sanans) for complete natural fulfillment.169
Virtue is the perfection of a power.170 Thomas calls the inclination

166. See ST I-II, q. 109, aa. 2–3. 167. ST I-II, q. 85, a. 5.

168. ST I-II, q. 85, a. 1. 169. Ibid.
170. See ST I-II, q. 55, a. 1.
 The Anthropology of Thomas Aquinas 231
to virtue a “middle term” between the principles of rational nature
and the perfection of those principles brought about by virtue.171 He
notes that “the good of nature, that is diminished by sin, is the natu-
ral inclination to virtue, which is befitting to man from the very fact
that he is a rational being; for it is due to this that he performs actions
in accord with reason, which is to act virtuously.”172 The human incli-
nation to virtue is precisely the tendency in each of us to become ful-
ly human, the measure of which is determined by the very principles
of our nature.173 It should be asked: if the inclination to virtue is the
midpoint between the principles of our nature and their fulfillment,
and if those principles are undiminished by sin, how then is the incli-
nation diminished?
Thomas responds by suggesting that diminution can be consid-
ered in two ways: either in reference to the root (the principles of hu-
man nature, that is, the powers of the soul) or in reference to those
principles’ ends (telê). The diminution cannot stem from the root,
because the principles are not diminished by sin. Aquinas notes that
if the root is diminished, then the human being is no longer ratio-
nal but quasi-rational. If the root is completely destroyed, then fallen
man is not rational at all and ceases to be man.174
The diminution of our inclination to virtue occurs in the second
way, he writes, “in so far as an obstacle is placed against its attaining its
term.”175 The diminution of the inclination to virtue can, moreover,

171. See ST I-II, q. 85, a. 2.

172. Ibid.
173. See O’Brien, “Fallen Nature,” in Summa Theologiae, ed. Gilby, 26:156: “The prin-
ciples of his [man’s] nature, as is true of any reality, make man to be what he is. By the
same token they include a direction towards the full realization of this way of being. Be-
cause he is human, man by his very nature is bent towards being fully human. This direc-
tion is called an inclination—or tendency to act towards the full realization of himself
and the perfection of which he does not possess simply by existing. But the principles of
his nature are the true index to what fulfillment of himself should be. Again, man is what
he is through the principles of his nature. These principles themselves then bespeak of an
inclination, an order to human perfection. Since virtue ensures that actions are in con-
formity to this order of nature, the principles also of themselves mean an inclination to
virtue. Nature in its essential principles and in its bent to virtue, then, is not two distinct
realities. The distinction is simply between the principles as establishing man in existence
and as providing the spring for operations by which he will achieve completion.”
174. See ST I-II, q. 85, a. 2.
175. Ibid.
232 The Anthropology of Thomas Aquinas
be indefinite, “because obstacles can be placed indefinitely inasmuch
as man can go on indefinitely adding sin to sin: and yet it [the incli-
nation] cannot be destroyed entirely, because the root of this inclina-
tion always remains.”176 These obstacles are initially the result of the
fact that our various powers are no longer directed by reason but are
left to themselves.177 But vices, which are habitual dispositions tend-
ing to more vicious actions, also become further obstacles.178 When
this conclusion is combined with Aquinas’s insight that original sin is
the privation of the harmony of the grace of original justice leading to
disintegration, two connected conclusions are apparent.
First, original sin does not direct human nature to failure or im-
perfection. But rather, failure remains a possibility precisely because
the very obstacle to our perfection is the multiplicity of conflicting
ends available in the principles of human nature—the lower appe-
tites can have ends at variance with the higher appetite. Deviation
from our true and proper end is a genuine possibility in the principles
of human nature itself, given free will. This is confirmed by the very
definition of a sinful or vicious act as an act which does not conform
to human reason, itself participating in the eternal law.179
For this study, it is important to understand that in Thomas’s an-
thropology sexual delight (now a function of the fallen sensitive ap-
petite) can impinge upon our higher pursuits if not tempered with
the virtue of chastity. The next chapter will discuss this in more de-
tail. Any consideration of virtue and natural law must include a con-
sideration of the wounds of human nature caused by original sin.
Similarly, any consideration of the great goods of love, sexuality, and
marriage must not forget the difficulty fallen men and women have in
integrating their desires with reason.

176. Ibid. 177. See ST I-II, q. 85, a. 3.

178. See ST I-II, q. 54, a. 3.
179. See ST I, q. 63, a. 1, in which Aquinas speaks about sin as deviation from the
rectitude of nature. See also ST I-II, q. 71, a. 6, regarding human actions not in conformi-
ty with reason. In this reply to the fourth objection of this same article, Aquinas notes
that what is sinful—contrary to eternal law and natural law—is contrary to reason be-
cause it is inordinate. Finally, see ST I-II, q. 85, a. 6, for a discussion on the natural cor-
ruptibility of man’s composite human nature which, in turn, engenders a multiplicity
ends for the various principles at work in the composite.
 The Anthropology of Thomas Aquinas 233

Conclusion
Thomas Aquinas developed a strong hylomorphic anthropology in
which the body and soul are united in a composite human person. He
insisted that this unity was immediate, that is, without the mediation
of other souls or forms. In his view, the unity is so strong that one can
legitimately insist that the soul needs the body just as much as the
body needs the soul.
Moreover, Thomas provides us with a metaphysical understand-
ing not only of substance in general but of individual substances. He
calls individual substances “first substances.” In the visible world, these
first substances are concretized or individualized from other first sub-
stances through the composition of matter and form. Matter is speci-
fied and designated by accidental qualities; one member of a species
differs from another materially. Species, on the other hand, are distin-
guished from one another in virtue of proper accidental qualities ad-
hering to the form. One man may be taller than another, but both are
capable of laughter, sorrow, and anger since these qualities stem from
the substantial form: the human soul.
The Angelic Doctor located sexual difference among those indi-
viduating accidents adhering in matter. And though he followed Ar-
istotle in assuming that women were “misbegotten males,” his faith
in the providence of God allowed him to make the initial steps to-
ward sexual complementarity by insisting that the difference of sexes
was part of God’s providential plan for the human race. In Aquinas’s
anthropology sexual differences are individuating material attributes
and so there is no sexual difference in the soul itself. Because of this,
men and women share in a common human nature without separa-
tion from one another.
Aquinas does not address human personhood as such, though he
says that personhood is the perfection of nature and the term applied
to an individual (that is, a first substance) of a rational nature. Fur-
ther, he leaves several questions unresolved in his treatment on per-
sonhood in God vis-à-vis personhood in men and women. For exam-
ple, while he says that God is a person because he is incommunicable,
he does not entirely explain what he means by incommunicability
or how this might apply to human persons. Of course, incommuni-
cability is a foundational point for Karol Wojtyła’s understanding of
234 The Anthropology of Thomas Aquinas
the human person. It also remains to be seen what Thomas thinks of
the relationship between men and women in the domestic life that he
says is so necessary for the upbringing of human children. If sexual
difference is only a material accident, how does it affect the comple-
mentarity of sexes in living life beyond sexual procreation? This is a
question that will be addressed in chapter 7.
The key point of this chapter is that Thomas possessed a strong
ontological understanding of human nature and human personhood.
He combined this ontological view with the revelation that there is a
provident creator who designed men and women for the purposes of
the perfection of the universe. In addition, it is already beginning to
be clear that Aquinas is not the naturalist theologian or philosopher
that many of the manualists and twentieth-century moral theologians
presumed he was.
Additionally, he was not unaware of the impact original sin had
on the human composite. Since men and women are no longer bene-
ficiaries of the nature-perfecting grace that Adam and Eve had in par-
adise, their passions are more capable of leading reason astray. Be-
cause of this wounding of nature, men and women experience sexual
delight in a different way than Adam and Eve would have before the
Fall. Indeed, before the Fall, Aquinas argues, they would have expe-
rienced the goodness of sexual pleasure in a way far more excellent
than men and women do today. Since men and women now live with
a fallen human condition, there is all the more reason for them to di-
rect to reason those passions and delights inherent in their compo-
sition as body and soul. In the next chapter, we will see exactly how
Aquinas proposes that this reality relates to the movement of love in
the Summa Theologiae.
 7

The Movement of Love in

the Summa Theologiae

The focus of the previous chapter on the anthropology of Thomas

Aquinas provided the foundation for an examination in this chapter
(as well as the next) of the metaphysical notions of love and marriage
in Aquinas’s mature work, the Summa Theologiae. We continue to il-
lustrate the fact that Thomas’s anthropology is the implicit but nec-
essary foundation for the spousal meaning of the body as articulat-
ed in Pope John Paul’s Theology of the Body. The goal of this chapter
is to show that Thomas situated love within the broad metaphysical
framework of every being’s attraction to the good. The importance
which the Angelic Doctor ascribes to the appetitus, a being’s incli-
nation to the good, cannot be overstated. Just as John Paul argues
that the spousal meaning of the body directs the human person out
of himself to complete fulfillment in the gift of self, appetite is the
phrase Thomas uses to describe the fact that all created beings are di-
rected from nothingness out of themselves in the pursuit of perfec-
tion. Given man’s fallen nature, this drive out of oneself is only prop-
erly ordered through the virtues, especially the virtues of prudence,
temperance, and charity.
For these purposes, the chapter has three sections. The first sec-
tion, on the metaphysical foundation of love, explores the notion that
love is an attraction to the good and that there are different types of

235
236 Love in the Summa Theologiae
loves according to Aquinas, followed by an analysis of the role that
nature plays in our attraction to the good. The second section focus-
es on the role of prudence and temperance in human love. Finally, the
third section highlights the love of God, or the friendship with God,
which is the theological virtue of charity.

The Metaphysical
Foundation of Love
Love: Attraction to the Good
Thomas’s thought on the good and our attraction to the good are
foundational for understanding his theory of love. For Aquinas, as we
have noted before, every agent acts for an end.1 The end is that which
is suitable to the agent’s form: “Everything, insofar as it is in act,
acts and tends towards that which is in accordance with its form.”2
In Aquinas’s worldview, beings act in pursuit of the fullness of their
form. He recognizes that created beings are imperfect.3 It belongs to
the form of a bird to have two wings and to fly. If a bird lacks either
of these (or any of the other characteristics of what it means to be a
bird), it is good inasmuch as it exists but it is not perfect. This is why
God is God: he has no imperfections.4
Each natural thing has an “aptitude toward its natural form, that
when it has it not it tends towards it; and when it has it, it is at rest
therein.”5 Aquinas writes that “all desire their own perfection,” and
that which is desired by a being is desired because it is perfect vis-à-
vis the agent in some respect or another.6 This is why created beings
are drawn outside of themselves. Their potencies are actualized only
by other beings and ultimately by the supreme good, who is God.
Aquinas notes that “in natural things, everything which, as such, nat-
urally belongs to another, is principally and more strongly inclined to
1. See ST I-II, q. 1, a. 2. 2. ST I, q. 5, a. 5.
3. Ibid.
4. See ST I, q. 4, aa. 1–2; q. 6, aa. 1–2. Cf. ST I, q. 2, a. 3: “Now the maximum in any
genus is the cause of all in that genus; as fire, which is the maximum of heat, is cause of
all hot things. Therefore there must be also something which is to all beings the cause of
their being, goodness, and every other perfection; and this we call God.”
5. ST I, q. 19, a. 1.
6. See ST I, q. 5, a. 1.
 Love in the Summa Theologiae 237
that other to which it belongs, than towards itself.”7 Created beings
have a drive or tendency to the perfection of their natural form. In the
Summa Theologiae, Aquinas calls this tendency to perfection (to the
good) “appetite” (appetitus).8 All things, even those without knowl-
edge, have an appetite.9
For the Angelic Doctor, love is intrinsically bound to the appetite
for the good, for the fullness and perfection of one’s being. He begins
his discussion of love in the prima secundae by grounding the notion
of love squarely in this drive of a being to the good: “Love is some-
thing pertaining to the appetite since good is the object of both.”10
In the most basic sense, love is “the principle of movement towards
the end loved.”11 The word love, therefore, can be applied even to the
natural appetite since “the principle of this [natural] movement is the
appetitive subject’s connaturalness with the thing to which it tends.”12
Natural appetite means, first and foremost, the inclination each
thing has to “something like and suitable to the thing inclined.”13 The
natural appetite inclines each thing to something suitable to its nat-
ural form, to that which is connatural to it.14 Aquinas says explicitly:
“Natural love is not only in the powers of the vegetal soul, but in all

7. ST I, q. 60, a. 5. 8. See ST I, q. 19, a. 1.

9. Ibid.
10. ST I-II, q. 26, a. 1. For other relevant exegeses on the inclination to the good
and love, see Jordan Aumann, “Thomistic Evaluation of Love and Charity,” Angelicum
55 (1978): 533–41; David M. Gallagher, “The Will and Its Acts (Ia IIae, qq. 6–17),” in The
Ethics of Aquinas, ed. Stephen J. Pope (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press,
2002), 70–73; Thomas Gilby, “Acting for a Purpose,” in Summa Theologiae, ed. Gilby,
16:144–46; Robert Miner, Thomas Aquinas on the Passions: A Study of Summa Theologi-
ae 1a2ae 22–48 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 126–32; Paul J. Wadell,
The Primacy of Love: An Introduction to the Ethics of Thomas Aquinas (Mahwah, N.J.:
Paulist Press, 1992), 36–43.
11. ST I-II, q. 26, a. 1. Robert Pasnau’s overly analytical reading of Aquinas reveals its
limitations when he suggests that Aquinas’s idea that love is a movement sounds rath-
er mechanical (see Thomas Aquinas on Human Nature, 242). Following the lead of Josef
Pieper, Robert Miner suggests that Aquinas’s use of the word amor in a variety of ways
reveals a fundamental dynamism between appetite and appetible object—see Miner,
Thomas Aquinas on the Passions, 118, citing Josef Pieper, Faith, Hope, and Love (San Fran-
cisco, Calif.: Ignatius Press, 1997), 146–47. It is my hope that my exegesis of Aquinas’s
notion of love in the Summa Theologiae will serve as a helpful response to Pasnau’s re-
mark.
12. Ibid. 13. ST I-II, q. 8, a. 1.
14. See ST I-II, q. 26, a. 1.
238 Love in the Summa Theologiae
the soul’s powers, and also in all the parts of the body, and universally
in all things . . . since each thing has a connaturalness with that which
is naturally suitable to it.”15 Elsewhere, he writes:
It is common to every nature to have some inclination; and this is its natu-
ral appetite or love. This inclination is found to exist differently in different
natures; but in each according to its mode. Consequently, in the intellectual
nature there is to be found a natural inclination coming from the will; in the
sensitive nature, according to the sensitive appetite; but in a nature devoid
of knowledge, only according to the tendency of the nature to something.16

Michael Sherwin notes that Aquinas’s “method here is significant.

By introducing rational love in the context of natural love, he is pre-
senting rational love’s relationship to cognition as part of a larger and
more general dynamic. All appetitive principles of action presup-
pose knowledge. This is true even for non-rational creatures.”17 In
Thomas’s anthropology, appetite follows cognition: since “in order
for a thing to be done for an end, some knowledge of the end is nec-
essary.”18 Love requires knowledge. This is important. It means that
“human action presupposes a voluntary receptivity to reality. At its
most basic level, love is a response to the goodness of reality, a re-
sponse to the real as it is or as it could be.”19
Love is the principle of movement toward the end; appetite pur-
sues an end in virtue of the fact that end is somehow connatural to the
appetite. On the other hand, “the aptitude of the sensitive appetite or
of the will to some good, that is to say, its very complacency in good
[complacentia boni], is called sensitive love, or intellectual or rational
love.”20 Michael Sherwin calls this complacency in the good “a pleas-
ant affective affinity.”21 Aquinas delineates a threefold interaction be-
tween the appetite and the object loved (the appetible object).22
15. ST I-II, q. 26, a. 1, ad 3. See also ST II-II, q. 141, a. 1, ad 1: “Nature inclines every-
thing to whatever is becoming to it. Wherefore man naturally desires pleasures that are
becoming to him. Since, however, man as such is a rational being, it follows that those
pleasures are becoming to man which are in accordance with reason.”
16. ST I, q. 60, a. 1.
17. Sherwin, By Knowledge and By Love, 72.
18. ST I-II, q. 6, a. 1; cf. q. 15, a. 3. See also SCG II.23.
19. Sherwin, By Knowledge and By Love, 95.
20. ST I-II, q. 26, a. 1.
21. Sherwin, By Knowledge and By Love, 70.
22. See ST I-II, q. 26, a. 2.
 Love in the Summa Theologiae 239
First, the appetible object gives the appetite “a certain adaptation
to itself, which consists in complacency in that object; and from this
follows movement towards the appetible object . . . . Accordingly, the
first change wrought in the appetite by the appetible object is called
love, and is nothing else than complacency [complacentia] in that ob-
ject.”23 The appetible object introduces a pleasant affective affinity
into the appetite. The soul’s apprehension (whether sensitive or ra-
tional) recognizes something pleasing in the object, something which
perfects the agent in one respect or another, and this produces a com-
placency in the object.24 “From this complacency results a move-
ment towards that same object, and this movement is desire; and last-
ly, there is rest which is joy.”25 There is a difference between sensitive
love and rational or intellectual love, and this will be discussed fur-
ther below, but here it is enough to note the relationship between the
object loved and the appetite.26 What separates the love of the will
from all other loves is exactly free choice (electionem). Aquinas calls
rational love, the love that is freely chosen, dilectio.27

Passion, Reason, and Will

Since Aquinas understands love as the appetitive movement of creat-
ed being out of itself in search of the perfection of its form, it remains
to be seen how man’s free will and intellect affect this drive. This is to
say, if man is a free rational animal as Aquinas says he is, then man is
also free in some sense to determine what he loves, to determine that
in which he believes he will find his perfection and fulfillment: wheth-
er it be another human person, or God, or some created good. To un-
derstand this further, it is now necessary to explore Aquinas’s view of
human love as a unique interaction between passion and freedom.
Strictly speaking, for Aquinas, sensitive love is the love that is a

23. Ibid. 24. See ST I-II, q. 27, a. 1.

25. ST I-II, q. 26, a. 2.
26. This is a marked difference from Aquinas’s early work. In his commentary on
Peter Lombard’s Sentences, Thomas states that the form of the beloved actually moves
into the appetite of the lover, and moves the appetite itself. Aquinas’s mature thought
sees the complacency (in which the lover’s reason plays a role) as moving the appetite
toward the beloved. For a history of the development of this theme in Aquinas’s work,
see Sherwin, By Knowledge and By Love, 64–81.
27. See ST I-II, q. 26, a. 3.
240 Love in the Summa Theologiae
passion. In chapter 6, I noted that passions exist only in the sensitive
appetite, as passions entail a corporeal transmutation. Only the sen-
sitive appetite is affected by corporeal transmutation.28 The sensitive
appetite only knows individual objects, that a particular concrete be-
ing is blue, soft, etc. Reason, however, is able to abstract universal
forms from particular conditions.29
Unlike animals, which are moved immediately by their passions,
men and women are moved only when the superior intellectual ap-
petite moves to the object following upon the apprehension of prac-
tical reason.30 Love that is in the will is an intellectual love inasmuch
as the intellectual appetite follows the reason of the subject himself.31
Thomas writes, “in the intellectual appetite, love is a certain harmony
of the appetite with that which is apprehended as suitable.”32
The will loves that which is apprehended as good (the bonum ra-
tionis).33 The Angelic Doctor admits that “sometimes the will tends
to something which is apprehended as good, and yet is not real-
ly good.”34 Moreover, since in this life goods are complex, most be-
ings are desirable and good in one respect but not in another. Choc-
olate may be desirable for its taste, but not for its effects on skin and
weight. Thus, in reference to the goodness of an object, “there may a
distinction according to the consideration of reason; so does it hap-
pen that one and the same thing is desired in way, and not desired in
another.”35 An object may be suitable in one respect, but unsuitable
in another. The reason and the will work in a tandem relationship in
pursuit of their ends. The object of the will is the good, and therefore

28. See 204–9 above. Cf. ST I-II, q. 22, aa. 1 and 3. In a response to the objection that
scripture speaks of love, joy, and anger in God and the angels, all of which are passions,
Aquinas writes: “When love and joy and the like are ascribed to God or the angels, or to
man in respect of his intellectual appetite, they signify simple acts of the will having like
effects, but without passion” (ST I-II, q. 22, a. 3, ad 3; cf. q. 24, a. 3, ad 2).
29. See ST I, q. 85, a. 1; q. 79, a. 4. Cf. Simo Knuuttila, Emotions in Ancient and Me-
dieval Philosophy (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2004), 239–47, 251; Miner, Thomas Aquinas
on the Passions, 19–41.
30. See ST I, q. 81, a. 3. 31. See ST I-II, q. 27, a. 2, ad 3.
32. ST I-II, q. 29, a. 1.
33. ST I-II, q. 8, a. 1 (emphasis added). Cf. ST I-II, q. 5, a. 8, ad 2; q. 6, a. 2, ad 1; q. 46,
a. 5, ad 1; I, q. 19, a. 1; q. 82, a. 3.
34. ST I-II, q. 13, a. 5, ad 2.
35. ST I-II, q. 5, a. 8, ad 2. Cf. Sherwin, By Knowledge and By Love, 96–97.
 Love in the Summa Theologiae 241
the will moves all the powers of the soul to their proper acts.36 The
will commands the exercise of all the soul’s powers, including the in-
tellect.37
Nonetheless, the intellect plays its own role since, after all, the
intellect presents the object of desire to the will which pursues the
bonum rationis (the good as apprehended). The intellect thus deter-
mines or specifies the will’s command.38 Since the will is the principle
of action and the power moving all others powers of the soul to exer-
cise their respective acts, sin is in the will as its subject.39 But because
the will is determined by the apprehension of the intellect, the object
that the will sinfully pursues also presupposes a deficiency in the in-
tellect’s apprehension. Thomas notes: “Since the object of the will is
a good or an apparent good, it is never moved to an evil, unless that
which is not good appear good in some respect to reason; so that the
will would never tend to evil, unless there were ignorance or error in
the reason.”40
Sometimes ignorance is truly antecedent to the will, as when a
person is really ignorant of knowledge he is not bound to know. Act-
ing from this antecedent ignorance is not culpable.41 Ignorance be-
comes the catalyst of sin only when it is chosen by will. In such a case,
the will commands the intellect to remain in ignorance or in partial
ignorance regarding the object of action. The good of sexual plea-
sure, for example, may be pursued but the will commands the rea-
son away from considering the undesirability of intercourse outside
36. ST I-II, q. 9, a. 2.
37. See also ST I, q. 81, a. 4.
38. ST I-II, q. 9, a. 2. See ST I-II, q. 9, a. 2, ad 3: “The will moves the intellect as to the
exercise of its act; since even the true itself which is the perfection of the intellect is in-
cluded in the universal good as a particular good. But as to the determination of the act,
which the act derives from the object, the intellect moves the will; since the good itself
is apprehended under a special aspect as contained in the universal true. It is therefore
evident that the same is not mover and moved in the same respect.” Cf. ST I, q. 82, a. 4,
co. and ad 1–2.
39. See ST I-II, q. 74, a. 1.
40. ST I-II, q. 77, a. 2. For detailed studies of the cause of evil as beyond the inten-
tion (praeter intentionem) of the will, see Stephen L. Brock, Action and Conduct: Thomas
Aquinas and the Theory of Action (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1998), 216–42; Lawrence De-
wan, “St. Thomas and the First Cause of Moral Evil,” in Wisdom, Law, and Virtue, 186–
96; Daniel Westberg, Right Practical Reason, 198–215.
41. See ST I-II, q. 6, a. 8.
242 Love in the Summa Theologiae
of marriage. This ignorance is consequent upon an act of the will.42
A man who simply chooses not to ask whether the merchandise he
buys from the back of van in a city alley is stolen, even though he
has a good sense that it is, is choosing to act from affected ignorance.
Whereas the man who chooses not to consider the ramifications of
extramarital sex in order to engage in the act with a woman he meets
in the pub is acting from the ignorance of evil choice. This ignorance
is caused either from passion (in this case a sensitive love that is ac-
tualized by sensuality, hormones, and perhaps alcohol, all corpore-
al transmutations) or perhaps even from a vice.43 In either case, the
chosen ignorance is disordered just as much as the action.44 This is
why elsewhere Aquinas writes that the “right inclination of the will
is required antecedently for happiness, just as the arrow must take a
right course in order to strike the target.”45 The will must be properly
aligned to the true good.
In Aquinas’s epistemology, something is apprehended as good
and thus desirable in the relationship between the thing itself and its
inherent goodness, on the one hand, and the disposition of the agent
on the other.46 The sensitive appetite, which is to say the passions,
affect the disposition of the agent.47 Whereas brute animals and hu-
man beings both have imaginations, only man is able to call upon his
imagination at will. Fixation in the midst of passion, whichever pas-
sion, is a common experience among men and women in which a
particular good becomes the focus of our attention to the exclusion
of other goods. At other times, the sensitive appetite might be so in-
tent on its object that the other powers of the soul are simply unable
to be attentive to their own proper objects. The passions can thus dis-
tract the other powers.48 Aquinas says persons often act contrary to
their habitual knowledge, to what they know to be true and good, be-
cause “nothing prevents a thing which is known habitually from not

42. Ibid.
43. Vices are habitual dispositions to actions which are not befitting the agent’s na-
ture (see ST I-II, q. 71, a. 1). But it should still be noted that a person who sins through
habit, or in this habitually acts from chosen ignorance, does so with a certain malice in
Aquinas’s view (see ST I-II, q. 78, a. 2).
44. See ST I-II, q. 74, a. 1, ad 2. 45. ST I-II, q. 4, a. 4, ad 2.
46. See ST I-II, q. 9, a. 2. 47. ST I-II, q. 9, a. 2. Cf. ST I-II, q. 10, a. 3.
48. See ST I-II, q. 77, a. 1.
 Love in the Summa Theologiae 243
being considered actually.”49 Even though a man knows adultery is
wrong, generally, he may fail to apply this knowledge in a certain in-
stance for any number of reasons. Perhaps he is lustful or has an im-
pairing illness; perhaps because of drunkenness he is unable to see
that the woman with whom he sleeps is not his wife.
More often than not, passions inhibit reason either by distraction,
or by inclining reason to something contrary to the true good, or by
some corporeal transmutation “the result of which is that the reason
is somehow fettered so as not to exercise its act freely; even as sleep
or drunkenness, on account of some change wrought on the body,
fetters the use of reason. . . . Sometimes, when the passions are very
intense, man loses his reason altogether: for many have gone out of
their minds through excess of love or anger.”50 When emotions are in-
tense, the heart beats quicker, adrenaline begins to flow in the body,
and these biological changes (in Aquinas’s language, corporeal trans-
mutations) affect the reason. What is known habitually (that adultery
is wrong) is unattended to in the heat of the moment.
While the imagination, at the command of reason, can present an
object to the sensitive appetite, since the sensitive appetite depends
on the body for its actualization it retains something of an indepen-
dence from reason. Although the intellectual appetite must consent
in order for man to act, nonetheless the sensitive appetite does not
depend on the reason for its object when the object is presented by
the body and not by the reason.51 This is the difference between fan-
tasy and reality. Even though the sensitive appetite is inclined to obey
reason, the “condition or disposition of the body is not subject to the
command of reason: and consequently in this respect, the movement
of the sensitive appetite is hindered from being wholly subject to the
command of reason.”52 Aquinas says that reason governs the sensi-
tive appetite “not by a despotic supremacy, which is that of a master
over his slave; but by a politic and royal supremacy, whereby the free
are governed, who are not wholly subject to command.”53 In this life,
we are often subject to unwanted thoughts, fantasies, and mental dis-
tractions that we ourselves do not initiate. They simply arise in our

49. ST I-II, q. 77, a. 2. 50. Ibid.

51. See ST I-II, q. 17, a. 7. 52. Ibid.
53. Ibid.
244 Love in the Summa Theologiae
mind’s eye. When we fixate on them, however, we are, in fact, choos-
ing them.
Of course, in man’s original state the passions were entirely sub-
ject to reason.54 The passions are not themselves inherently sinful.
They become so only inasmuch as they incline us toward action that
is contrary to reason.55 In this life, rational love requires the right or-
dering of our passions so that which we love, the persons we love, are
loved for who they are and not entirely for passionate purposes. Our
rational love must be rightly ordered and it must include passion. It is
the whole person who loves. Jordan Aumann once wrote that “pure-
ly spiritual or volitional love without any resonance in the emotion of
love is not a truly human love.”56

Friendship and Concupiscence

Thomas says that rational love is properly divided into love of friend-
ship (amor amicitiae) and love of concupiscence (amor concupiscen-
tia).57 Love is not divided against itself but rather the “the movement
of love has a twofold tendency.”58 The first, the love of friendship, is
the movement “towards the good which a man wishes to someone,
to himself or to another.”59 The second, the love of concupiscence,
are the goods he wishes for another.60 That which is loved with amor
amicitiae is loved for its own sake. That which is loved with amor con-
cupiscentiae is loved secondarily and relative to something else, name-
ly, the person, perhaps oneself, for which it is loved.61
Thomas will later cite the authority of Aristotle for his under-
standing of friendship: “According to the Philosopher, not every love

54. See ST I, q. 95, a. 2. Cf. ST III, q. 15, a. 4.

55. See ST I-II, q. 24, a. 4.
56. Aumann, “Thomistic Evaluation of Love and Charity,” 540. Servais Pinckaers
has also noted the need to reappropriate a proper understanding of passion in moral
theology; see Pinckaers, “Reappropriating Aquinas’s Account of the Passions,” 273–87.
57. See ST I-II, q. 26, a. 4.
58. Ibid.
59. Ibid. See ST I-II, q. 26, a. 4, ad 1: “For a friend is, properly speaking, one to
whom we wish good: while we are said to desire, what we wish for ourselves.”
60. See ST I-II, q. 26, a. 4.
61. Ibid. See Aumann, “Thomistic Evaluation of Love and Charity,” 542–46; Min-
er, Thomas Aquinas on the Passions, 122–26; Sherwin, By Knowledge and By Love, 74–77.
 Love in the Summa Theologiae 245
has the character of friendship, but that love to which is together with
benevolence, when, to wit, we love someone so as to wish good to
him.”62 He goes on to say that benevolence is not enough for friend-
ship: “Neither does well-wishing suffice for friendship, for a certain
mutual love is requisite, since friendship is between friend and friend:
and this well-wishing is founded on some kind of communication.”63
Friendship is a certain communication of goodness between friends.
Since friendship requires communication between friends, amor
amicitiae cannot be directed to irrational creatures.64 We are unable
to share good things with an irrational creature, which “is not com-
petent, properly speaking, to possess good, this being proper to the
rational creature which, through its free-will, is the master of its dis-
posal of the good it possesses.”65 Moreover, friendship “is based on
some fellowship of life; since nothing is so proper to friendship as to live
together, as the Philosopher proves. Now irrational creatures can have
no fellowship in human life which regulated by reason.”66 We can
love irrational creatures not as friends but rather as goods directed to
friendship. We can love them with amor concupiscentiae.
Aquinas notes that the difference between the love of things
(amor concupiscentiae) and the love of persons (amor amicitiae) is this:
“When we love a thing, by desiring it, we apprehend it as belonging
to our well-being. In like manner when a man loves another with the
love of friendship, he wills good to him, just as he wills good to him-
self: wherefore he apprehends him as his other self, in so far, to wit, as
he wills good to him as to himself.”67 The Angelic Doctor makes the
point that “the love which a man loves himself is the form and root of
friendship.”68 The manner in which man loves himself will determine
the character of his friendships.
62. ST II-II, q. 23, a. 1, citing Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics VIII.2.1155b31. Unless
otherwise noted, all English translations of this text are from Nicomachean Ethics, trans.
Terence Irwin, 2nd ed. (Indianapolis, Ind.: Hackett, 1999).
63. ST II-II, q. 23, a. 1. 64. ST I, q. 20, a. 2, ad 3.
65. ST II-II, q. 25, a. 3.
66. Ibid. (emphasis added), citing Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics VIII.5.1157b19.
67. ST I-II, q. 28, a. 1. Elsewhere, Aquinas qualifies this point. He notes, “We must
hold that, properly speaking, a man is not a friend to himself, but something more than
a friend, since friendship implies union. . . . Whereas a man is one with himself which is
more than being united to another” (see ST II-II, q. 25, a. 4).
68. ST II-II, q. 25, a. 4.
246 Love in the Summa Theologiae
Man’s love for himself must be properly ordered. It is a fault to
love one’s self in a disordered way. “Those who love themselves are to
be blamed, in so far as they love themselves as regards their sensitive
nature, which they humor. This is not to love oneself truly accord-
ing to one’s rational nature, so as to desire for oneself the good things
which pertain to the perfection of reason.”69 When self-love is dom-
inated by the concupiscible appetite, not only do we love ourselves
primarily as sensual beings, but friendship becomes more focused on
pleasure and utility. “When friendship is based on usefulness or plea-
sure, a man does indeed wish his friend some good: and in this re-
spect the character of friendship is preserved. But since he refers this
good further to his own pleasure or use, the result is that friendship of
the useful or pleasant, in so far as it is connected with love of concu-
piscence, loses the character of true friendship.”70
Aquinas further clarifies this point when he speaks about ecsta-
sy as an effect of love. Ecstasy, he says, “means to be placed outside of
oneself.”71 He says that, on the one hand, ecstasy can sometimes be
in the apprehensive power: when a person is raised above his com-
prehension and sensation to apprehend a higher knowledge or when
a person’s reason is overcome by violence or madness. But precisely
because the appetite is also an outward movement, the appetite also
experiences the ecstasy of love.
In the love of concupiscence the lover is carried out of himself
but only in a certain sense, inasmuch “as not being satisfied with en-
joying the good he has, he seeks to enjoy something out of himself.
But since he seeks to have this extrinsic good for himself, he does not
go out from himself simply, and this movement remains finally with-
in him.”72 The concupiscent person’s pursuits ultimately remain con-
cerned only with himself. With the love of friendship, on the other
hand, “a man’s affection goes out from itself simply; because he wish-
es and does good to his friend, by caring and providing for him, for
his sake.”73
That love is a movement follows upon Aquinas’s metaphysical
principles and his anthropology, namely, on the relationship between

69. ST II-II, q. 25, a. 4, ad 3. 70. ST I-II, q. 26, a. 4, ad 3.

71. ST I-II, q. 28, a. 3. 72. Ibid.
73. Ibid.
 Love in the Summa Theologiae 247
the reason and the will, between truth and goodness. For Aquinas,
the intellect creates a certain type of union between the knower
and the known. The known is in the knower according to the mode
of the knower.74 There is also a union of the appetite, a union of love,
which moves the lover to the beloved.75 While the union of love can
exist in different stages (whether the beloved is present or absent to
the lover), what is clear is that for Aquinas the union of the lover with
the beloved is real rather than notional. The union of love is with the
beloved herself, it is not just a union to the idea of the beloved.76
Aquinas offers a distinction when the union of love is greater
than the union of knowledge, that is, when it is better to love than to
know.77 It concerns the relative mode of comparison between the in-
tellect and the will.
When . . . the thing in which there is good is nobler than the soul itself, in
which is the idea understood; by comparison with such a thing, the will is
higher than the intellect. But when the thing which is good is less noble than
the soul, then even in comparison with that thing the intellect is higher than
the will. Wherefore the love of God is better than the knowledge of God;
but, on the contrary, the knowledge of corporeal things is better than the
love thereof.78

Those things that are inferior to the soul are given simpler (and,
hence, more noble) existence once they are known abstractly and
simply by the intellect. Those things that are superior to the soul,
however, cannot really be apprehended in the proper sense of the
term. They can be deduced through cause-effect reasoning but the in-
tellect cannot attain an understanding of their essence that would not
in some way be less noble than as they exist in themselves.79
74. See ST I, q. 16, a. 1. 75. See ST I-II, q. 28, a. 1.
76. See ST I-II, q. 32, a. 3.
77. I am grateful to an insightful article written by Russell Hittinger on this topic.
Hittinger fails to note the development of Aquinas’s notion of love between the time he
wrote his commentary on Peter Lombard’s Sentences and the time he wrote the Sum-
ma Theologiae (discussed in Sherwin, By Knowledge and By Love, 96–97). However, he
does provide an excellent explanation of Thomas’s understanding of the relationship be-
tween knowledge and love. See Russell Hittinger, “When It Is More Excellent to Love
Than to Know: The Other Side of Thomistic ‘Realism,’” Proceedings of the American
Catholic Philosophical Association 57 (1983): 171–79.
78. ST I, q. 82, a. 3.
79. Aquinas arrives at this same conclusion in his disputed questions on the truth,
248 Love in the Summa Theologiae
Because the will is free, it is possible for it to love something in-
ferior to the soul—to love it as an end in itself, and not as a means to
a greater good. In doing so, love would go against reason which, in
the union caused by knowledge, would possess the form of that thing
more simply, and thus more nobly, than the thing itself. On the oth-
er hand, when we love that which the intellect cannot fully grasp, our
love is noble since our beloved is nobler than the idea of our beloved.
This is why it is degrading and blameworthy for a person to love a
tree, a stone, or merely carnal pleasure: these things are beneath our
nobility as rational creatures.
Happiness, for Aquinas, is that which every man and woman de-
sires as their perfection, their end.80 Although each person may dif-
fer in his opinion about what the ultimate end of life is, nonetheless
every person naturally desires contentment and perfect fulfillment.81
Thomas himself argues that some ends commonly pursued by people
cannot be our final end. He picks wealth, honor, fame, glory, power,
and pleasure as common examples of ends pursued that are ultimate-
ly unsatisfying.82 Carnal pleasure will not bring us happiness be-
cause it is limited to the body and senses. I noted in chapter 6 that the
senses are limited to the apprehension of singulars in Aquinas’s an-
thropology. Singular goods participate in the ultimate and universal
good.83 No single carnal pleasure can fully satisfy the human person,
as Aquinas reaffirms here, even though the body is required for per-
fect and complete happiness since soul and body are ordered to one
another.84 But neither can delight be our ultimate end, as (he says) “it
results from the perfect good, the very essence of happiness . . . as its
proper accident.”85 Delight is a consequence of perfect happiness. We
delight in the good once it is possessed.
In Aquinas’s metaphysics, happiness must be an operation pre-
cisely because the good is that which perfects, and that which per-
fects is that which is actualizes.86 The final end of man must be an op-
eration of man’s most noble part, that which separates him from the

where he notes that “the intellect takes on the forms of things superior to the soul in a
way inferior to that which they have in the things themselves.” See DV, q. 22, a. 11.
80. See ST I-II, q. 1, aa. 1–2. 81. See ST I-II, q. 1, a. 7, co. and ad 2.
82. See ST I-II, q. 2, aa. 1–6. 83. See ST I-II, q. 1, a. 4, co. and ad 1.
84. See ST I-II, qq. 2 and 4, a. 6. 85. ST I-II, q. 2, a. 6; see q. 3, a. 4.
86. See ST I-II, q. 3, a. 2.
 Love in the Summa Theologiae 249
animals and makes him what he is: a rational animal. Thus, happiness
is a good of the rational soul.87 It is the operation of the speculative
intellect, that part of our reason that contemplates reality and uni-
versal being.88 Ultimately, in the Angelic Doctor’s view, God is man’s
true last end. He is the supreme uncreated good in which all other
created goods participate.89 He argues that man can attain an imper-
fect happiness in this life by his own powers, but can only achieve
perfect happiness with God through a supernatural and divine gift
(that is, grace, discussed below).90
The goods that we pursue and love are subordinated to the high-
est good: God.91 All other goods, all other loves, are true and right
inasmuch as they direct us to the first good, God, and to love of him.
Love must be properly ordered. For Aquinas, “virtue is the order or
ordering of love . . . because in us love is set in order by virtue.”92 From
the Angelic Doctor’s perspective, the sad truth about humanity is
that the gift of freedom (of a rational appetite) and its accompanying
drive to love coupled with man’s intellectual capacities means that he
is radically capable of selling himself short. He is capable of investing
himself entirely in goods that, when not properly ordered to the su-
preme good, are beneath his dignity. Later Karol Wojtyła will refer to
this as “disintegration.” This is the perennial possibility of disintegra-
tion inherent in man’s constitution. This is why love and the spousal
meaning of the body require virtue and self-mastery.
87. See ST I-II, q. 2, a. 7.
88. See ST I-II, q. 3, a. 5. Aquinas also notes that the will plays a role in happiness
inasmuch as it desires the ultimate good and takes delight once happiness is attained.
However, happiness is not found in the operation of the will because that which is de-
sired is present in the will already in the desire itself, inasmuch as that which is desired
is conforming the will to itself. If happiness were an operation of the will, all men would
be happy simply by desiring the good, and this is not the case (see ST I-II, q. 3, a. 4).
89. See ST I-II, q. 2, a. 8; q. 3, aa. 1 and 8.
90. See ST I-II, q. 5, aa. 1, 3, 5. The relationship of nature to the supernatural, of hap-
piness to the beatific vision of God, was furiously debated in the twentieth century. The
debate began with publication of Henri de Lubac’s Surnaturel in 1946. See p. 271, note
231, for a more detailed discussion on the issues at play in this debate.
91. Aquinas says: “Those who sin turn from that in which their last end really con-
sists: but they do not turn away from the intention of the last end, which intention they
mistakenly seek in other things” (ST I-II, q. 1, a. 7, ad 1). Later in the Summa, he suggests
that when a child comes to the age of reason, he is responsible for using his discretion to
direct himself to his due end—God. See ST I-II, q. 89, a. 6, co. and ad 3.
92. ST I-II, q. 55, a. 1, ad 4.
250 Love in the Summa Theologiae

Virtuous Love
Love Is Prudent
The Angelic Doctor’s presentation of the virtues in the Summa can
be analyzed in a number of ways: the relationship between virtue and
vice, the difference between acquired and infused virtue, or the ne-
cessity of the theological virtues for perfect happiness, to name just a
few methods. In this chapter, I am concerned with virtue, inasmuch
as virtue properly orders love. Given the relationship of love to rea-
son and to the concupiscible appetite, it seems fitting, therefore, to
explore the two virtues ascribed to these two principles: prudence
and temperance. The virtue of justice will be of concern in the next
chapter on Aquinas’s view of marriage.
To understand prudence and virtue properly, it is necessary to un-
derstand what a virtue is for Aquinas. He defines virtue in two dif-
ferent ways. First, he says virtue is “a certain perfection of a power.”93
However, he also borrows and agrees with a definition of virtue com-
mon at the time: “Virtue is a good quality of the mind, by which we
live righteously, of which no one can make bad use, which God works
in us, without us.”94 Some powers, such as biological powers, are per-
fected in their activity (unless they are unhealthy) because they are
naturally determined to a single object. However, some powers, such
as the intellectual powers of man, are fundamentally indeterminate to
concrete objects, even though they are determined to universal ob-
jects (for instance, the true and the good in the reason and the will,
respectively). Intellectual powers can be determined to a wide variety
of objects and to actions of varying goodness. We have seen that Aqui-
nas’s view of original sin is that man’s intellectual powers are now dis-
ordered precisely because they are left to themselves and are, there-
fore, sometimes directed to conflicting goods or even false goods.
In Aquinas’s view, man’s powers are not destroyed by original sin
but maintain an inclination to virtue, however difficult it may be to
achieve that virtue.95 The inclination to perfection is the middle term

93. See ST I-II, q. 55, a. 1.

94. ST I-II, q. 55, a. 5, obj. 1.
95. See ST I-II, q. 109, aa. 2–3; q. 60, a. 1; q. 63, a. 1; q. 85, a. 1.
 Love in the Summa Theologiae 251
between our powers and virtue because “the good of nature . . . is the
natural inclination to virtue, which is befitting to man from the very
fact that he is a rational being; for it is due to this that he performs
actions in accord with reason, which is to act virtuously.”96 This incli-
nation in man is precisely his tendency to become fully human, the
measure of which is determined by the principles of human nature.97
Even without additional grace, Aquinas believes that we can ac-
quire virtue, although acquired virtue is fragile and precarious.98 Sim-
ply put, the continued and repeated exercise of moral action pro-
duces a certain quality of the soul which he terms habitus (habit) or
“a disposition whereby what which is disposed well or ill, and this,
either in regard to itself or in regard to another.”99 A habitus can be
acquired through a series of actions or it can be directly infused by
God.100 A habit is an interior ordering of a power to action.101 Habits
that order action in accordance with nature are virtues; habits that re-
fer us to evil are vices.102 A habitus “is a principle of progress and re-
sourcefulness through full commitment.”103 According to Romanus
Cessario: “Habitus supposes a conception of the human person as
open to development and modification from both natural and divine
96. ST I-II, q. 85, a. 2.
97. See O’Brien, “Fallen Nature,” 156: “The principle of his [man’s] nature, as is true
of any reality, makes man to be what he is. By the same token they include a direction
towards the full realization of this way of being. Because he is a human, man by his very
nature is bent towards being fully human. This direction is called an inclination—or
tendency to act towards the full realization of himself and the perfection of which he
does not possess simply by existing. But the principles of his nature are the index to
what the fulfillment of himself should be. Again, man is what he is through the princi-
ples of his nature. These principles themselves then bespeak of an inclination, an order
to human perfection. Since virtue ensures that actions are in conformity to this order of
nature, the principles also of themselves mean an inclination to virtue. Nature in its es-
sential principles and in its bent to virtue, then, is not two distinct realities. The distinc-
tion is simply between the principles as establishing man in existence and as providing
the spring for operations by which he will achieve completion.”
98. See ST I-II, q. 65, a. 2; q. 109, aa. 2–3 and 8. See Cessario, Introduction, 196–200.
99. ST I-II, q. 49, a. 1, citing Aristotle, Metaphysics V.20.1022b4.
100. See ST I-II, q. 51, aa. 2 and 4. 101. See ST I-II, q. 54, a. 2.
102. See ST I-II, q. 54, a. 3.
103. See Pinckaers, Sources of Christian Ethics, 225. See also ibid., 364: “Virtue is not
a habitual way of acting, formed by the repetition of material acts and engendering in
us a psychological mechanism. It is a personal capacity for action, the fruit of a series of
fine actions, a power for progress and perfection.”
252 Love in the Summa Theologiae
causes.”104 Grace, our actions, and our sufferings all have a true effect
on our personality.
Technically speaking, virtues are those habits that dispose us to
do good. In this sense, then, Aquinas allows that there are such things
as intellectual virtues (science, wisdom, understanding, and art), but
that these are only virtues relatively speaking and not absolutely. An
artist or a scientist, after all, may not be a morally good person.105
Even the preeminent intellectual virtue of understanding whereby
the speculative intellect is perfected in its consideration of truth it-
self (the very object of the intellect) is not enough to guarantee mor-
al rectitude.106 In addition to the possibility of passion overruling
judgment, Aquinas says that concrete actions, the means to the fixed
end of human nature, are manifold and infinite.107 It is not enough to
know truth itself, to know the good—we must be able to act and ap-
ply what we know to action.
The virtue of prudence is properly an intellectual virtue but it
might be better understood as the virtue that bridges the intellectu-
al virtues (and specifically the virtue of understanding) with right
action.108 Prudence perfects the practical reason (which makes con-
crete rather than speculative judgments). Aquinas defines prudence
as “right reason about things to be done.”109 It is concerned primari-
ly with the means to the ends apprehended by the speculative reason
(both the ultimate end the person pursues and ends to action imme-
diately considered).110 This is why prudence is the most necessary of
the four cardinal virtues.111 It establishes the mean and measure of
justice, fortitude, and temperance.112
By definition, prudence is the virtue whereby the multiplicity of
means to any given end are discerned and chosen. But in Aquinas’s
104. See Romanus Cessario, The Moral Virtues and Theological Ethics, 2nd ed.
(South Bend, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 2009), 36.
105. See ST I-II, q. 56, a. 3; cf. q. 58, a. 5.
106. ST I-II, q. 58, a. 5.
107. See ST I-II, q. 47, aa. 3 and 15; q. 49, a. 7.
108. See ST I-II, q. 57, a. 4, ad 1.
109. See ST I-II, q. 56, a. 3.
110. See ST I-II, q. 14, a. 2; q. 58, a. 5; II-II, q. 47, aa. 1–3.
111. See ST I-II, q. 57, a. 5; II-II, q. 47, a. 5, ad 3. Even the theological virtue of charity
needs prudence; see Westberg, Right Practical Reason, 251.
112. See ST I-II, q. 64, a. 3; II-II, q. 50, a. 1, ad 1; q. 51, a. 2.
 Love in the Summa Theologiae 253
worldview, this does not mean that prudence is relativist or purely sub-
jective. On the contrary, prudence is grounded in reality. He writes: “To
prudence belongs not only the consideration of the reason, but also the
application to action, which is the end of the practical reason.”113
This is why understanding is needed for moral virtue.114 We act
based on our understanding of reality, on the one hand, and our ex-
perience on the other. Our experience is important in Aquinas’s view.
Past experience helps us to know what to expect from reality amid
the infinite possible results from our actions. “It is because the infinite
number of singulars cannot be comprehended by human reason, that
our counsels are uncertain (Wis. 9:14). Nevertheless experience reduc-
es the infinity of singulars to a certain number which occur as a gen-
eral rule, and the knowledge of these suffices for human prudence.”115
It is precisely in virtue’s connection between the universal and
the singular, epitomized in and catalyzed by the virtue of prudence,
that frees Aquinas’s virtue theory from mere abstraction. Servais
Pinckaers writes: “Virtue cannot be reduced to a simple idea or prop-
osition, however precise. It is a specific reality and is only revealed in
the experience of action and life.”116 The focus on experience and the
need for right experience is the reason, Pinckaers argues, that Aristot-
le insisted that the young should not study morality.117

113. ST II-II, q. 47, a. 3.

114. See ST I-II, q. 58, a. 5.
115. ST II-II, q. 47, a. 3, ad 2 (emphasis added). Several scholars over the last two de-
cades have attempted to recover the role of prudence in reasoning about right human
action and in natural law theory. These scholars have taken a decided position against
the precept-oriented natural theory of philosophers like John Finnis and Germain Gri-
sez. See, for example, Hall, Narrative and Natural Law; Daniel Mark Nelson, The Prior-
ity of Prudence: Virtue and Natural Law in Thomas Aquinas and the Implications for Mod-
ern Ethics (University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1991); Westberg,
Right Practical Reason. These works are generally welcomed by many moral theologians
for drawing attention to a fuller view of Aquinas’s virtue theory and its relationship to
natural law. However, they are not without their limitations. For a salient critique of
these and other studies on Aquinas’s virtue ethics, see Jean Porter, “Recent Studies in
Aquinas’s Virtue Ethic: A Review Essay,” Journal of Religious Studies 26 (1998): 191–215.
See also Romanus Cessario, “Moral Realism and the Natural Law,” in his Introduction to
Moral Theology, 52–99.
116. Pinckaers, “The Role of Virtue in Moral Theology,” in Pinckaers Reader, 298–99.
117. See Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics I.3.1095a1; Pinckaers, “The Role of Virtue in
Moral Theology,” 300–301.
254 Love in the Summa Theologiae
Aquinas insists that in order to grow in prudence a person must
not only grow in experience but must also be docile to learning from
others. He must take counsel from prudent men and women.118 With
his emphasis on prudence, Thomas is insisting that morality is more
than abiding by rules. The moral systems of casuistry so prominent
from the seventeenth to the twentieth centuries represented an at-
tempt to gain too much certitude in matters that are often too specif-
ic. One of the difficulties with the freedom of indifference described
by Pinckaers is the reduced role not only of prudence but also the re-
duced emphasis on the authority of the community and one’s elders
in the formation of this virtue.
Early in his explicit treatment of prudence in the secunda secun-
dae, Aquinas embraces the definition of Augustine: “Prudence is love
discerning aright that which helps from that which hinders us in tending
to God. Now love is said to discern because it moves the reason to dis-
cern.”119 This is an important observation. Prudence is not love “es-
sentially” since love is in the will and prudence is a virtue of the prac-
tical intellect. However, inasmuch as the will commands the powers
of the soul to exercise their act, the love in the will commands the
act of prudence. According to one Thomist, here “we find in the very
heart of the Thomistic intellect and will an act giving being to an act.
The act of love in the appetite calls into being the act of knowledge in
the intellect.”120
It is not surprising then that Aquinas holds that “every sin is op-
posed to prudence.”121 The direct cause of every sin according to
Aquinas is an affective adherence to a mutable good, an adherence
which is contrary to the nature and dignity of man.122 Such adher-
ence develops from an inordinate self-love.123 Precisely because pru-
118. See ST II-II, q. 47, a. 15; q. 49, a. 3. Even those who have divinely infused pru-
dence know, at the very least, that they must prudently take the counsel of others (see
ST II-II, q. 47, a. 14, ad 2).
119. ST II-II, q. 47, a. 1, ad 1 (emphasis added).
120. Charles O’Neil, Imprudence in Aquinas (Milwaukee, Wis.: Marquette Univer-
sity Press, 1955), 106. See especially 103–7 on the relationship of love and prudence in
Aquinas; see also O’Neil, “Is Prudence Love?,” The Monist 58 (1974): 119–39.
121. ST II-II, q. 55, a. 2, ad 3. Every vice is also contrary to prudence (see ST II-II,
q. 119, a. 3, ad 3).
122. See ST I-II, q. 75, a. 1.
123. See ST I-II, q. 77, a. 4; cf. II-II, q. 153, a. 5, ad 3.
 Love in the Summa Theologiae 255
dence is about the means to the end loved, a defect concerning the
end is the “worst of all.”124 In fact, the primary vice that Thomas be-
lieves resembles the virtue of prudence is a “prudence of the flesh”
in which a man “looks upon carnal goods as the last end of his life,”
and so constructs an architecture of means to achieve those carnal
goods.125 This is self-love gone awry.
While prudence is the measure of the other cardinal virtues, pru-
dence itself needs the other virtues, and perhaps especially the virtue
of temperance. The many vices of imprudence arise from lust.126 This
is why Aquinas insists that the moral virtues are connected one to an-
other through prudence.127 Moral virtues protect the reason against
inordinate passions that compromise judgment and inordinately af-
fect love.128

Love Is Temperate
In Aquinas’s moral theory, the virtue of temperance moderates the
soul’s appetite for “sensible and bodily goods.”129 To repeat: men and
women have a sensitive appetite, which they have in common with
brute animals. This sensitive appetite has concupiscible attractions
to sensible and bodily goods, on the one hand, and flees (irascibly)
from sensible and bodily evils.130 The sensitive appetite, the locus of

124. See ST II-II, q. 47, a. 1, ad 3: “The worth of prudence consists not in thought
merely, but in its application to action, which is the end of the practical reason. Wherefore
if any defect occur in this, it is most contrary to prudence, since, the end being of most im-
port in everything, it follows that a defect which touches the end is the worst of all.”
125. See ST II-II, q. 55, a. 1; cf. ad 2: “The flesh is on account of the soul, as matter
is on account of the form, and the instrument on account of the principal agent. Hence
the flesh is loved lawfully, if it be directed to the good of the soul as its end. If, however,
a man place his last end in a good of the flesh, his love will be inordinate and unlawful,
and it is thus that prudence of the flesh is directed to the love of the flesh.”
126. ST II-II, q. 54, a. 6. See also ST II-II, q. 54, a. 6, ad 3: “Carnal vices destroy the
judgment of reason so much the more as they lead us away from reason.” Cf. ST II-II,
q. 153, a. 5, ad 1.
127. See ST I-II, q. 65, a. 1.
128. See ST II-II, q. 123, a. 12; q. 136, a. 1.
129. See ST II-II, q. 141, a. 3. For an analysis of Aquinas’s understanding of the virtue
of temperance, see Diana Fritz Cates, “The Virtue of Temperance (II IIae, qq. 141–170),”
in Ethics of Aquinas, ed. Pope, 321–39; Cessario, The Virtues, 177–97; Pieper, The Four
Cardinal Virtues, 143–206.
130. See ST I-II, q. 23, a. 1.
256 Love in the Summa Theologiae
the passions in the soul, is the locus of virtue inasmuch as it is or-
dered to reason, or ought to be so but for the fallen state of man.
Aquinas argues that temperance must concern the greatest of
pleasures, and, he says, these are the pleasures of touch. This is the
case, he says, because “pleasure results from a natural operation, it is
so much the greater according as it results from a more natural opera-
tion.”131 In this category, he locates pleasures of food, drink, and sex-
ual activity.132 These are the most pleasurable natural operations in
man because they are consistent with the preservation of the individ-
ual and of the species.133
In fact, pleasure is so much a part of human life and flourishing
that Aquinas considers it a vice absolutely “to reject pleasure to the
extent of omitting things that are necessary for nature’s preserva-
tion.”134 Since man shares these same pleasures and operations with
animals, it is necessary that he experience them with the excellence
proper to the rational person he is.135 Immoderate pleasure, precisely
because it concerns things lower than the simple and abstract objects
of contemplation, can easily distract us from reason, divine law, and
contemplation.136
The virtue of temperance moderates the passions according to
the mean between excess and deficiency of pleasure.137 This is why
the virtue of prudence is so necessary. The mean shifts from situation
to situation. What is the mean (and therefore what is virtuous) in one
situation may be excessive or deficient in another situation.138 The
role of prudence is to discern the mean in every situation.139 Tem-
perance makes use of sensual pleasure “according to the demands

131. ST II-II, q. 141, a. 4.

132. See ST II-II, q. 141, aa. 4–5.
133. See ST II-II, q. 141, a. 5. Aquinas, however, also allows that temperance con-
cerns unnecessary pleasures, provided those pleasures are not a hindrance to the body
and to health (see ST II-II, q. 141, a. 6, ad 2). This is due to his anthropology which
sees the body as necessary for the operations of the soul since even knowledge requires
sense impressions in some way (cf. ST I, q. 78, a. 4; q. 80, aa. 6–8).
134. ST II-II, q. 142, a. 1.
135. See ST II-II, q. 142, a. 4; cf. q. 141, aa. 2–3.
136. See ST II-II, q. 142, a. 2, ad 1; a. 4; q. 141, a. 4.
137. See ST I-II, q. 59, a. 1. Cf. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics II.5.1105b28.
138. See ST I-II, q. 64, a. 1, ad 2; a. 2.
139. See ST I-II, q. 64, a. 3; q. 50, a. 1, ad 1; q. 51, a. 2.
 Love in the Summa Theologiae 257
of place and time, and in keeping with those among whom one
dwells.”140 Because prudence determines the mean of temperance, as
one author puts it, it is the habit “that assists persons in choosing how
to feel.”141
Since temperance is concerned primarily with food, drink, and
sex, Aquinas treats abstinence, sobriety, and chastity as subjective
parts of temperance. The virtue of chastity concerns matters relat-
ing to “venereal pleasures” and sexual intercourse.142 Aquinas writes
that “venereal pleasures are more impetuous, and are more oppres-
sive on the reason than the pleasures of the palate: and therefore they
are in greater need of chastisement and restraint, since if one con-
sent to them this increases the force of concupiscence and weakens
the strength of the mind.”143 Venereal pleasure is stronger than oth-
er pleasures precisely because it motivates man to a greater good: the
preservation of the species. Furthermore, “the movement of the or-
gans of generation is not subject to the command of reason, as are
the movements of the other external members.”144 Because of orig-
inal sin, Josef Pieper writes, “the human self is capable of throwing
itself into disorder to the point of self-destruction.”145 Within sexu-
al intercourse, the pleasure is so great “that the free act of reason in
considering spiritual things is incompatible with the aforesaid plea-
sure.”146 Unrestrained venereal pleasures “work the greatest havoc in
man’s mind.”147 In fact, when a man finds himself overly distracted by
carnal pleasures, he no longer seeks spiritual pleasures because they
have become “distasteful to him.”148 Thomas says that venereal temp-
tations are so strong that “of all a Christian’s conflicts, the most diffi-
cult combats are those of chastity; wherein the fight is a daily one, but
victory rare.”149
The virtue of chastity disposes a person “to make moderate use
of bodily members in accordance with the judgment of his reason

140. ST II-II, q. 142, a. 6, ad 2.

141. Cates, “The Virtue of Temperance,” 325. Cf. ST II-II, q. 47, a. 7, ad 2–3; I-II, q.
15, a. 3; q. 57, a. 5.
142. See ST II-II, q. 151, aa. 1 and 4. 143. ST II-II, q. 151, a. 3, ad 2.
144. ST II-II, q. 151, a. 4.
145. Pieper, The Four Cardinal Virtues, 148.
146. ST II-II, q. 153, a. 2, ad 2. 147. ST II-II, q. 153, a. 1, ad 1.
148. ST II-II, q. 153, a. 5. 149. ST II-II, q. 154, a. 3, ad 1.
258 Love in the Summa Theologiae
and the choice of his will.”150 Chastity orders venereal acts to be per-
formed “in due manner and order.”151 Unlike his treatments of ab-
stinence and sobriety, Aquinas omits any suggestion that the mean
of chastity shifts according to circumstances.152 Thomas argues, on
the one hand, that venereal pleasure is not subject to the command
of reason, but on the other, he says that chastity disposes us toward
moderate use of bodily members according to the judgment of rea-
son. Aquinas clarifies his position in a question on lust as to wheth-
er a venereal activity can exist without sinfulness—he says it can.153
Yet, unlike the other pleasures of touch, Thomas suggests that venere-
al pleasure essentially impairs reason in the midst of the sexual act. In
this way, it is not dissimilar to sleep.
Precisely because the reason is not able to moderate the experi-
ence of pleasure in the moment of sexual activity, the act of reason
must be virtuous before it sets out to be interrupted by sex. This is
why there is no talk of shifting circumstances for sexual pleasure. The
mean of reason in regard to sexual activity is not contingent on ac-
cidental circumstances because, as Aquinas sees it, there is nothing
about the circumstances or situation that can moderate the overpow-
ering nature of venereal pleasure. Engaging in the sexual act, like en-
gaging in sleep or in taking food, must be proportioned to the order
of reason, which directs things to their end.154 Since “it is no sin if
one, by the dictate of reason, makes use of certain things in a fitting
manner and order for the end to which they were adapted, provided
this end be something truly good. . . . The preservation of the nature
of the human species is very great good . . . [and] the use of venere-
al acts [is] directed to the preservation of the whole human race.”155
Throughout the treatise on temperance, the mean for sexual ac-
tivity is to engage in venereal acts primarily for procreation. The vice
of lust stems from a repeated intention to enjoy venereal pleasures

150. ST II-II, q. 151, a. 1, ad 1. Given that Aquinas uses the phrase “delectationes ven-
erae” throughout the treatise on chastity, it is certain that here, when he uses the term
“bodily members,” he means the sexual organs.
151. ST II-II, q. 153, a. 2.
152. I am grateful to Cates for pointing this out. See Cates, “The Virtue of Temper-
ance,” 333.
153. ST II-II, q. 153, a. 1, ad 2. 154. See ST II-II, q. 141, a. 6.
155. ST II-II, q. 153, a. 2.
 Love in the Summa Theologiae 259
alone without an intention for procreation.156 As Aquinas sees it, ve-
nereal acts are properly used in accordance with reason, and reason
dictates that they be used for their purpose, which is procreation. The
vice of lust and its acts is the use of the sexual organs contrary to rea-
son, which is contrary to their purpose, for the sake of venereal plea-
sure alone.157 Aquinas holds that the sexual act for procreation is le-
gitimate only within the marital relationship in which the offspring
will receive the best upbringing.158
I will say more on Aquinas’s view of marriage in chapter 8. Pres-
ently, I am concerned only with the virtues of prudence and temper-
ance in their relationship with love. In this light, it makes sense that
the treatise on temperance is not much concerned with the prop-
er relationship between man and woman, husband and wife. The
virtue of temperance is concerned only with the person’s passions
and their moderation according to reason: “From the very fact that
a man holds [tenet se] to that which is in accord with reason, he is
said to contain himself [se tenere].”159 Although he may not use this
term, self-possession is certainly a goal of Aquinas’s virtue theory and
this means being in control of one’s concupiscible passions. Pieper
writes: “Temperance is selfless self-preservation. Intemperance is self-
destruction through the selfish degradation of the powers which aim
at self-preservation.”160
It is a common mistake to view the virtue of temperance as a sort
of repression of sexuality, as if Thomas seeks to govern all passion and
feeling through the rubric of a cold and hard Aristotelian logic dis-
guised as moderating reason.161 Nothing could be further from the
truth. For Aquinas, the virtue brings tranquility and joy to the soul,
not a conflicted battle of repression.162 In fact, this is the difference
between the continent person and the temperate person. The conti-
nent person experiences the vehement passions in the sensitive ap-

156. ST II-II, q. 154, a. 11, ad 3. 157. See ST II-II, q. 153, aa. 3–4.
158. See ST II-II, q. 154, a. 2. 159. ST II-II, q. 155, a. 1, ad 1.
160. Pieper, The Four Cardinal Virtues, 148.
161. Pasnau, following Martha Nussbaum’s theory of emotion, states that Aquinas
has a relatively negative view of the passions. See Pasnau, Thomas Aquinas on Human
Nature, 262–64. Cf. Martha Nussbaum, Love’s Knowledge: Essays on Philosophy and Liter-
ature (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990).
162. See ST II-II, q. 141, a. 2, ad 2.
260 Love in the Summa Theologiae
petite, which he must continually struggle to moderate.163 It is pre-
cisely because the passions are rightly ordered that they were not
suppressed in the paradise of Adam and Eve. This is why Aquinas says
that sexual pleasure was even greater then than it is now.164 The tem-
perate person experiences delight in food, in drink, and in sexual ac-
tivity in a way fitting to the dignity, beauty, and honor of the human
person.165

Charity: The Friendship of God

Grace and Nature
No discussion of the topic of love in the Summa Theologiae is com-
plete without an exegesis of Thomas’s conception of the theological
virtue of charity. For Thomas, the theological virtue of charity is a
certain friendship with God.166 As we have seen, every act of the will
is preceded by an act of the intellect because the will is a rational ap-
petite. While the will tends to the good, it is the good apprehend-
ed by reason (the bonum rationis).167 For its part, the intellect has by
nature an understanding (intellectus) of first principles (such as the
principle of non-contradiction and that whole is greater than a part)
that are simply understood without deductive argumentation.168 All
movement in the human person is the result of the interaction be-
tween these two faculties: intellect and will.
However, to avoid an infinite regress of interaction (the intellect
specifying the will and the will exercising the intellect), Aquinas says
there is an exterior mover who is above human nature that puts the
process into act.169 In his treatise on grace, for example, he notes:
“Man is master of his acts and of his willing or not willing, because of
his deliberate reason, which can be bent on one side or another. And
although he is master of his deliberating or not deliberating, yet this
can only be by a previous deliberation; and since it cannot go on to

163. See Cates, “The Virtue of Temperance,” 323, and Cates, Aquinas on the Emotions.
164. See ST I, q. 98, a. 2, ad 3. 165. See ST II-II, q. 141, a. 2, ad 3.
166. See ST II-II, q. 23, a. 1.
167. ST I, q. 19, a. 1; q. 80, a. 2; q. 82, a. 1; I-II, q. 8, a. 1; q. 13, a. 5, ad 2.
168. See ST I, q. 79, a. 8.
169. See ST I, q. 2, a. 3; q. 82, a. 4, ad 3; I-II, q. 9, a. 4; q. 17, a. 5, ad 3.
 Love in the Summa Theologiae 261
infinity, we must come at length to this, that man’s free-will is moved
by an extrinsic principle, which is above the human mind, to wit by
God.”170 This is why Thomas can say that God’s agency remains pres-
ent even to our fallen nature, even though without grace we can have
no direct experience or knowledge of it.171 He is the Prime Mover
and formal cause of the intellect and will.
In the very first question of his treatise of grace, Aquinas writes
that man knows whatever he knows through God’s own efficient cau-
sality, which brings the intellect to act in the first place and gives it
its form as an intellectual power.172 The form God bestows on hu-
man understanding (an intelligible light, the Angelic Doctor calls
it) is sufficient “for knowing certain intelligible things, viz., those we
can come to know through the senses.”173 For higher things, howev-
er, the human intellect needs “a stronger light, viz., the light of faith
or prophecy which is called the light of grace.”174 In the will, too, in
all that we pursue we are pursuing God, who is the supreme good,
whether we are conscious of this fact or not. God is the end (telos) of
all created beings, the supreme good is that which is all satisfying for
which every individual longs.175
The difficulty is that because of God’s infinite greatness and the
vast expanse between him and mankind, man is unable to know,
without divine assistance, anything more about God other than that
he exists and that he is the first cause.176 A particular man can come
to this knowledge through the natural light of his reason only after a
long life of philosophical reasoning and, even then, not without some
error in his thinking.177
If the vision of God is the telos of man, and if the vision of God
surpasses all human powers, can man achieve his happiness?178 Thom-
as says that any happiness that man can achieve in this life on his own

170. ST I-II, q. 109, a. 2, ad 1.

171. See ST I, q. 8, a. 3; cf. ad 3: “No other perfection, except grace, added to sub-
stance, renders God present in anything as the object known and loved; therefore only
grace constitutes a special mode of God’s existence in things.”
172. See ST I-II, q. 109, a. 1. 173. Ibid.
174. Ibid. (emphasis added).
175. See ST I-II, q. 1, aa. 4 and 6; q. 3, a. 8; q. 34, a. 3.
176. See ST I, q. 13, a. 12. 177. See ST I, q. 1, a. 1; II-II, q. 2, a. 4.
178. See ST I, q. 12, a. 4; I-II, q. 3, a. 8.
262 Love in the Summa Theologiae
power is necessarily imperfect.179 However, because the beatific vision
of God is our telos, our nature has a natural receptivity to the grace of
God, which alone can bring about true and perfect happiness: “The
beatific vision and knowledge are to some extent above [supra] the
nature of the rational soul, inasmuch as it cannot reach it of its own
strength; but in another way it is in accordance with [secundum] its na-
ture, inasmuch as it is capable of it [capax eius] by nature, having been
made in the likeness of God. . . . But the uncreated knowledge is in ev-
ery way above [supra] the nature of the human soul.”180 Elsewhere in
the Summa, he clarifies that, yes, “the reason and will are naturally di-
rected to God, inasmuch as He is the beginning and end of nature, but
in proportion to nature. But the reason and will, according to their na-
ture, are not sufficiently directed to Him in so far as he is the object of
supernatural happiness.”181
So it seems, in Aquinas’s view, that “God ordained human nature
to attain the end of eternal life, not by its own strength, but by the
help of grace.”182 Nevertheless, we are not permitted to conclude that
God is bound to offer grace to every human person. His will cannot
be forced by our actions or preparations. Grace is an entirely gratu-
itous gift from God.183 In this life, we can only know with certain-
ty that we have received grace if we receive a special revelation from
God confirming the fact. Otherwise, we must live with mere conjec-
ture that we are receiving the grace of God through certain known

179. See ST I-II, q. 5, a. 7.

180. ST III, q. 9, a. 2, ad 3. This is a theme repeated throughout the Summa Theolo-
giae. See ST I, q. 62, a. 6, ad 1: “As grace comes of God’s will alone, so likewise does the
nature of the angel: and God’s will ordained nature for grace, so did it ordain the vari-
ous degrees of nature to the various degrees of grace”; q. 95, a. 1, s.c.: “Man and angel
are both ordained to grace”; I-II, q. 113, a. 10: “In certain miraculous works it is found
that the form introduced is beyond the natural power of such matter, as in the resur-
rection of the dead, life is above the natural power of such a body. And thus the justifi-
cation of the ungodly is not miraculous, because the soul is naturally capable of grace;
since from its having been made to the likeness of God, it is fit to receive God by grace.”
Cf. De malo, q. 2, a. 11: “As the sun pours light into air, so God pours grace into the soul.
And grace is indeed superior to the nature of the soul, and yet there is in the nature of
the soul and any rational creature an aptitude to receive grace, and the grace received
strengthens the soul to perform requisite acts.”
181. ST I-II, q. 62, a. 1, ad 3.
182. ST I-II, q. 114, a. 2, ad 1.
183. See ST I, q. 19, a. 3; I-II, q. 112, aa. 1–3.
 Love in the Summa Theologiae 263
facts—among other things, if we delight in God, despise worldly
things, and are not conscious of having committed a mortal sin.184
In Aquinas’s theological anthropology, grace exists in the soul as
a sort of quality.185 Thomas wants to be clear. Grace does not effect
a substantial change in the soul. Rather it is a substantial quality. If
grace were its own substantial form, it would inherently alter the sub-
stance of nature. This would constitute a most extreme discontinui-
ty between the human nature of the pagan and the believer.186 Grace
does not normally move the soul as if by efficient causality. God does
not force a man or woman to accept grace. Rather, grace acts on the
human person formally.187 This is a recurrent theme when Aquinas
speaks about charity and the other theological and infused virtues.
Grace, which heals and elevates human nature, is more than a dis-
position added to the powers of the soul to reach out for the divine;
it is in the very essence of the soul itself: “For as man in his intellec-
tual power participates in the divine knowledge through the virtue of
faith, and in his power the will participates in the divine love through
the virtue of charity, so also in the nature of the soul does he partic-
ipate in the divine nature, after the manner of a likeness, through a
certain regeneration or re-creation.”188 Grace creates a new relation-
ship between the rational creature and his Lord and God—“friend-
ship with God.” This is the theological virtue of charity.189

Charity: The Love Ordering All Loves

The relationship with God, brought about through grace, corresponds
to the pursuit of man’s supernatural happiness.190 Aquinas concludes:
“Hence it is necessary for man to receive from God some additional
principles, whereby he may be directed to supernatural happiness. . . .
Such like principles are called theological virtues; first, because their ob-
ject is God . . . secondly, because they are infused in us by God alone;
thirdly, because these virtues are not made to known to us, save by Di-
vine revelation, contained in Holy Writ.”191

184. See ST I-II, q. 112, a. 5. 185. ST I-II, q. 110, a. 2.

186. See ST I-II, q. 110, a. 2, ad 2. 187. See ST I-II, q. 110, a. 2, ad 1.
188. See ST I-II, q. 110, a. 4.
189. See ST I, q. 38, a. 1; q. 43, a. 3; III, q. 23, a. 3.
190. ST I-II, q. 62, a. 1.
191. Ibid (emphasis added). For excellent exegeses on the theological virtue of char-
264 Love in the Summa Theologiae
The three theological virtues—faith, hope, and love—are princi-
ples added to the reason and the will. In Thomas’s theological sys-
tem, they respect human nature: “First, as regards the intellect, man
receives certain supernatural principles, which are held by means of
a Divine light: these are the articles of faith.—Secondly, the will di-
rected to this end, both as to the movement of intention, which tends
to that end as something attainable—and this pertains to hope—and
as to a certain spiritual union, whereby the will is, so to speak, trans-
formed into that end—and this belongs to charity.”192 Since Aquinas
insists that grace works with nature, he also insists that although the
three theological virtues are infused in the human soul together, their
acts are distinct. And in the order of generation, the act of faith pre-
cedes that of hope, which, in turn, precedes the act of charity. This is
the case because “the movement of the appetite cannot tend to any-
thing, either by hoping or loving, unless that thing be apprehended
by the sense or by the intellect.”193 For this reason, the virtues of faith
and hope can exist when charity is lost (by mortal sin), although they
will be lifeless, but charity can never exist in this life without faith and
hope.194
The theological virtue of faith is not only an intellectual exer-
cise. The assent given to the articles of faith is not the intellectual as-
sent of science; rather, it is an intellectual assent commanded by the
will.195 It is the lack of absolute clarity that separates opinion and be-
lief from scientific reasoning. Unlike angelic substances, who know
truths simply and intuitively, the human person must come to know
truth through a process of reasoning. This process cannot regress ad
infinitum but is always grounded on the self-evident first principles of
understanding, which are then verified and further illumined.196 Sci-
ence is “derived from self-evident and therefore seen principles.”197
When, however, the scientific reasoning process falters precisely be-

ity and the infused moral virtues, see Cessario, Moral Virtues, 94–125; Cessario, The Vir-
tues, 61–95; Eberhard Schockenhoff, “The Theological Virtue of Charity (IIa IIae, qq. 23–
46),” in Ethics of Aquinas, ed. Pope, 244–58.
192. ST I-II, q. 62, a. 3. Aquinas appeals to 1 Cor 13:13 in I-II, q. 62, a. 4, s.c., for the
list of the three theological virtues.
193. ST I-II, q. 62, a. 4. 194. See ST I-II, q. 65, aa. 4–5.
195. ST II-II, q. 2, a. 9. 196. See ST I, q. 79, a. 8.
197. ST II-II, q. 1, a. 5.
 Love in the Summa Theologiae 265
cause of lack of clarity, the will is necessarily engaged: “It is proper to
the believer to think with assent: so that the act of believing is distin-
guished from all other acts of the intellect, which are about the true
or the false.”198 Thus the act of belief elicited by the theological virtue
of faith is meritorious because it is an “act of the intellect assenting to
the Divine truth at the command of the will moved by the grace of
God, so that it is subject to the free-will in relation to God.”199 There-
fore, it seems that the grace bestowed upon the believer is not only
the light of faith but a grace that moves and shapes a corresponding
inclination of the will.
This inclination is a sort of “inward instinct” given by grace: “The
believer has sufficient motive for believing, for he is moved by the au-
thority of Divine teaching confirmed by miracles, and, what is more,
by the inward instinct of the Divine invitation [interiori instinctu Dei
invitantis].”200 In another place, he writes rather plainly: “Some act of
the will is required before faith, but not an act of the will quickened by
charity. This latter act presupposed faith, because the will cannot tend
to God with perfect love, unless the intellect possess right faith about
him.”201 In fact, what distinguishes living faith from lifeless faith is pre-
cisely whether faith lives quickened by charity.
The object of faith, the first truth, “is directed to the object of the
will, i.e., the good, as to its end: and this good which is the end of
faith, viz., the Divine Good, is the proper object of charity. Therefore,
charity is called the form of faith in so far as the act of faith is perfect-
ed and formed by charity.” Indeed, “the distinction of living from life-
less faith is in respect of something pertaining to the will, i.e. charity,
and not in respect of something pertaining to the intellect.”202 This is
why Aquinas insists that with respect to their acts, faith necessarily
precedes hope and charity, but, with regard to perfection, charity pre-
cedes both faith and hope.203 Again, the will only tends to a good as
apprehended.

198. ST II-II, q. 2, a. 1. 199. ST II-II, q. 2, a. 9.

200. ST II-II, q. 2, a. 9, ad 3. 201. ST II-II, q. 4, a. 7, ad 5.
202. ST II-II, q. 4, a. 4. In a response to an objection, Aquinas makes the point that
“when living faith becomes lifeless, faith is not changed, but its subject, the soul, which
at one time has faith without charity, and at another time, with charity” (ad 4).
203. See ST II-II, q. 62, a. 5; cf. q. 23, a. 8.
266 Love in the Summa Theologiae
In a grand movement of grace, God not only introduces the light
of faith but gives the human person the ability, through an interior in-
stinct, to assent to faith. This assent is then quickened and formed by
the virtue of charity. The infusion of faith with charity confronts us
with the true grandeur of Aquinas’s vision. Namely, “faith works by
love.”204 Placing this wonderful truth along side the notion that chari-
ty is friendship with God and we have an even more beautiful picture
of God’s plan. Not only does the revealing God raise our minds to
share in his own self-understanding through the light of faith, but he
also gives us fellowship with him in his divine nature.
Thomas explicitly disagrees with Peter Lombard, who he under-
stood to teach that the theological virtue of charity was caused by the
Holy Spirit dwelling in the mind and causing the movement of love
without any intermediary habit. If that were the case, Aquinas argues,
then the movement of charity would not be a movement of the per-
son’s will. It would not be voluntary but rather a forced movement
from an extrinsic power.205 The same is true, he continues, if the Holy
Spirit were moving the will as an instrument. According to the Angel-
ic Doctor:
No act is perfectly produced by an active power, unless it be connatural to
that power by reason of some form whereby it is inclined to the end appoint-
ed to it by Him; and in this He ordereth all things sweetly [Wis 8:1]. . . . it is
most necessary that, for us to perform the act of charity, there should be in
us some habitual form superadded to the natural power, inclining that power
to the act of charity, and causing it to act with ease and pleasure.206

This form superadded to the power of the will is part and parcel of
grace that becomes a certain quality of the soul.
As I mentioned earlier, in Aquinas’s view, charity differs from hope
in this respect. Hope tends to God as something attainable, whereas
charity effects both a spiritual union with God, who is our supreme
end, and a transformation in him.207 This is only possible by an ele-
vation of the man’s natural powers through some superadded form. It
is not difficult to see why Aquinas says that charity is the most excel-
lent of all virtues since it “attains God Himself that it may rest in Him,

204. ST II-II, q. 23, a. 6, ad 2. 205. See ST II-II, q. 23, a. 2.

206. Ibid. 207. See ST I-II, q. 62, a. 3.
 Love in the Summa Theologiae 267
but not that something may accrue to us from Him.”208 The infusion of
grace as superadded forms means that Aquinas’s view of grace is not
extrinsicist.209
This is also why Thomas says that without charity there can be
no true and perfect virtue, as only imperfect virtue is possible with-
out grace. Virtue is ordered to the good, and the good is primarily
an end. In Aquinas’s worldview, an end is twofold: last end and prox-
imate end, the latter ideally being ordered to the former. The prox-
imate end, in his system, is not wholly subsumed into the ultimate
end. The proximate end retains its own character. Hence, he writes,
“If . . . we take virtue as being ordered to some particular end, then we
may speak of virtue being where there is no charity, in so far as it is di-
rected to some particular good. . . . If . . . this particular good be a true
good, for instance the welfare of the state, or the like, it will indeed be
a true virtue, imperfect, however unless it be referred to the final and
perfect good.”210
Since the good is an end, this translates to an ultimate univer-
sal good (which is God) and also to particular goods. Aquinas con-
cludes: “Accordingly it is evident that simply true virtue is that which
is directed to man’s principal good; thus also the Philosopher says
that virtue is the disposition of a perfect thing to that which is best:
and in this way no true virtue is possible without charity.”211 He goes
on to say that an imperfect virtue is possible inasmuch as it may be
208. ST II-II, q. 23, a. 6.
209. See Cessario, Introduction, 200.
210. ST II-II, q. 23, a. 7. It should be noted here that even though Aquinas cites Au-
gustine in this article, he disagrees with Augustine on this point. Augustine held that
no virtue was possible whatsoever without the theological virtue of charity. Augustine
believed only in a strict dichotomy between sinful self-love and charity, thus any act
that was not motivated by charity was necessarily motivated by sinful self-love (see Ma-
honey, Making of Moral Theology, 37–71). Aquinas disagrees in this article by pointing
to the possibility that true proximate ends (which tend to the universal end) can be
pursued in a stable manner for the good of the individual and of the community. For
further discussion, see Schockenhoff, “The Theological Virtue of Charity,” 250–51. For
a contemporary attempt to articulate the Augustinian position as Thomas’s own posi-
tion, see Thomas M. Osborne, “The Augustinianism of Thomas Aquinas’s Moral The-
ory,” The Thomist 67 (2003): 279–305. For a more traditional explanation of Aquinas’s
view of virtue without charity, see Brian Shanley, “Aquinas on Pagan Virtue,” The Thom-
ist 63 (1999): 553–77.
211. ST II-II, q. 23, a. 7, citing Aristotle, Physics VII.3.247a1.
268 Love in the Summa Theologiae
directed to a particular end provided that end be a true good and not
a false good. But “it is charity which directs the acts of all other vir-
tues to the last end, and which, consequently, also gives the form to
all other acts of virtue: and it is precisely in this sense that charity is
called the form of the virtues.”212
In Aquinas’s virtue theory, those virtues acquired through habit-
uation are imperfect because they are not explicitly directed to divine
reason.213 When prudence, justice, temperance, and fortitude are ac-
quired by habituation, they are concerned primarily with right reason
of human affairs directing those affairs to the good of the individual
and the good of the community (even though these goods participate
in the divine good).214 This is why Thomas says that there are infused
virtues which accompany the theological virtues: “The theological vir-
tues direct us sufficiently to our supernatural end, inchoately: i.e., to
God Himself immediately. But the soul needs further to be perfected
by infused virtues in regard to other things, yet in relation to God.”215
With grace, we must learn to love God in all of our actions explicitly.
The primary difference between infused and acquired virtues is
this: “those infused moral virtues, whereby men behave well in re-
spect of their being fellow-citizens with the saints, and of the house-
hold of God [Eph 2:19], differ from the acquired virtues, whereby
man behaves well in respect of human affairs.”216 The infused vir-
tues go hand-in-hand with the theological virtue of charity: they can-
not exist in the human soul without charity and charity cannot exist
without them.217 When charity is lost because of mortal sin, which is
to say when a single action undertaken with sufficient reflection and
full consent is a grave violation against God’s love, the infused vir-
tues are lost. (Although, because they are acquired by habituation, ac-
quired virtues require repeated behavior to reverse.)218 Charity, the

212. ST II-II, q. 23, a. 8. Charity is the mother of all virtues (see ad 3).
213. See ST I-II, q. 63, a. 2; cf. q. 65, a. 2.
214. See ST I-II, q. 63, a. 4; q. 61, a. 5, co. and ad 4.
215. ST I-II, q. 63, a. 3, ad 2. 216. ST I-II, q. 63, a. 4.
217. See ST I-II, q. 65, aa. 2–3.
218. See ST I-II, q. 63, a. 2, ad 2. For a more detailed study of the infused virtues see
Cessario, Moral Virtues, 102–25; Michael Sherwin, “Infused Virtue and the Effects of Ac-
quired Vice: A Test Case for the Thomistic Theory of Infused Cardinal Virtues,” The
Thomist 73 (2009): 29–52.
 Love in the Summa Theologiae 269
love of God at work in the human person, is the love that orders men
and women, and all the activities of their life, to the ultimate end:
God himself.
Thomas spends twelve articles addressing the loves that are com-
manded or ordered by charity other than the love of God.219 These
are not different loves. The theological virtue of charity is one virtue
interiorly but is differentiated in different acts.220 We are to love our
neighbor but not the guilt of their sin; to love angels but not demons;
to love ourselves but not irrational creatures. Any “love” for irratio-
nal creatures or for demons is not for their own sake, but for our own
sake or for God’s glory.221 In the end, Thomas concludes that there
are four objects that ought to be loved with the theological virtue of
charity. Primarily, there is God, the principle of object of the virtue.
We should love God above all else.222
Secondly are those things which partake in the happiness of God:
angels and men. Man loves himself because charity is the love of God
and all that partakes of God, which includes us.223 A man loves his
neighbor for the same reason, namely that all men and women are
made in the image of God and partake in God to some degree.224 But
a man is not to sacrifice his spiritual beatitude, his love of God, for his
neighbor, even if to keep his neighbor free from sin.225
A person does not love every other with equal intensity out of
charity, for man loves his neighbor inasmuch as he or she is proxi-
mate to God himself (who is the principal object of charity). Those
neighbors closer to God rightly receive more intense love from a man
infused with charity than whose are not.226 There is also an order of
charity in regard to natural relationships. Man should love his parents
with a greater dignity but his children with greater priority, because
of the differing sorts of relationships to his kin.227 He should love his
wife with greater passion but his parents with greater respect.228

219. See ST II-II, q. 25. 220. See ST II-II, q. 23, a. 5, co. and ad 2.
221. See ST, II-II, q. 25, a. 11, co. 222. See ST II-II, q. 25, a. 12; q. 26, aa. 1–3.
223. ST II-II, q. 25, a. 4. Aquinas says that sinners and the wicked are not blamed be-
cause they love themselves, but because they love themselves wrongly. They are too much
in love with the carnal aspect of their human nature. See ST II-II, q. 25, a. 4, ad 3; a. 7.
224. See ST II-II, q. 25, a. 1; q. 44, a. 2. 225. ST II-II, q. 26, a. 4.
226. See ST II-II, q. 26, a. 6. 227. See ST II-II, q. 26, aa. 8–9.
228. See ST II-II, q. 26, aa. 10–11.
270 Love in the Summa Theologiae
Finally, man loves his body because it participates in a kind of
overflow of happiness from man’s participation in God. Man loves
his body because it was created by God, but he does not love the ef-
fects wrought in it by original sin.229 The love of the body is beneath
the love of persons even when ordered by the theological virtue of
charity because the body participates in happiness secondarily from
the soul, which participates in happiness primarily. This follows from
Aquinas’s own anthropology discussed in chapter 6, in which the
body is ordered to the goods of the soul and receives from the soul its
form. Thus our love for our body must fall behind our love for God
and our love for our neighbor, even to the point of suffering bodily
harm for the good of our neighbor or for ourselves in spiritual mat-
ters.230

Conclusion
Thomas Aquinas’s understanding of love as a movement toward the
good combines with his understanding of the good as perfecting of
limited and imperfect creatures to give a decisive metaphysical bent
to his theology of love. Like other created beings, men and women go
out of themselves by nature in order to seek the perfection that oth-
er beings can provide (and, ultimately, that only God can give). Ide-
ally, reason must come to govern our appetites if we are to make pru-
dent choices of which goods to pursue and in what manner: a man
loves his wife in a certain manner that is different than the manner in
which he loves other persons.
For men and women to proceed through life in a way that main-
tains their own human dignity as rational creatures created in the im-
age of God, they must learn to love rightly. Their loves must be prop-
erly ordered according to the dignity of their human nature. This is
made all the more difficult by the possibility of the concupiscible and
irascible appetites pursuing their own ends apart from reason, espe-
cially since original sin has wounded the natural harmony between
body and soul, reason and emotion.

229. See ST II-II, q. 25, a. 5.

230. See ST II-II, q. 26, a. 4, ad 2; a. 5, co. and ad 2.
 Love in the Summa Theologiae 271
Virtue orders love. Prudence orders love by establishing the ra-
tio behind behavior, affection, and the manifestation of love so that a
person loves appropriately in every situation he finds himself. Tem-
perance combines with prudence to order the passions which ought
to accompany love so that they do not overtake that which is most
human: man’s reason. When man loves rationally and appropriately,
he loves passionately and most humanly.
However, on their own, prudence and temperance order love only
within the confines of human achievement: within the family and with-
in society. But man is made for more. He is made for eternal life with
his creator, who fulfills this destiny only by gratuitous gift. The gift of
grace brings not only knowledge by faith of our ultimate end and hope
in attaining that, but it also brings charity which unites the will to God
in a love that creates a friendship in every sense of the word: commu-
nion and mutual benevolence. This new friendship with God puts man
on a new horizon, in which every aspect of his life is oriented explicit-
ly to the ultimate end that is God. Charity creates its own order of love
between man and God, man and his family, man and his neighbors,
and, finally, man and his body. Thus with charity we receive the infused
virtues. New supernatural principles are superadded upon our natural
principles of the intellect, will, and sensitive appetite in order to orient
all of our actions and thoughts to God, who is the supreme good that
rightly orders all other activity and perfects all deficiency.231
231. Henri de Lubac’s Surnaturel was followed in 1965 by two works clarifying the
issues raised in 1946. There were translated into English in the late 1960s. See Henri de
Lubac, Surnaturel: Etudes Historiques (Paris: Aubier, 1946); Henri de Lubac, The Mystery of
the Supernatural (London: Chapman, 1967); Henri de Lubac, Augustinianism and Modern
Theology (London: Chapman, 1969). It is no understatement to assert that the distinction
between grace and nature is at work in many, if not most, twentieth-century disputes in
Catholic moral theology. For a history of this debate, see Stephen Duffy, The Graced Hori-
zon: Nature and Grace in Modern Catholic Thought (Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical Press,
1992); Fergus Kerr, After Aquinas: Versions of Thomism (Oxford: Blackwell), 134-48; Ma-
honey, Making of Moral Theology, 72-115.
For a sympathetic reading of de Lubac’s work see Paul McPartlan, Sacrament of Sal-
vation: An Introduction to Eucharistic Ecclesiology (N.Y.: T&T Clark, 1995), 45-60. Thor-
ough scholastic analyses are offered by Denis Bradley, Aquinas on the Twofold Human
Good: Reason and Human Happiness in Aquinas’s Moral Science (Washington, D.C.: The
Catholic University of America Press, 1997) and Lawrence Feingold, The Natural Desire
to See God: According to St. Thomas and His Interpreters (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic
University of America Press, 2004).
272 Love in the Summa Theologiae
The traces of Thomistic support for Pope John Paul II’s notion of
the spousal meaning of the body should now be coming into view. As
we saw in earlier chapters of this study, the pope never abandoned
wholesale the Thomistic education he received. Even though his The-
ology of the Body is explicitly a biblical anthropology, Thomas’s meta-
physics, anthropology, and philosophy were also informed by his
faith in God. It should not be surprising that what John Paul isolated
as a scriptural theme—that man’s existence is only truly fulfilled with
the sincere gift of himself to another—can be located in Aquinas’s
Summa Theologiae even though the Angelic Doctor is not here explic-
itly commenting on scripture (although he was a scriptural commen-
tator).232
There is yet another critical piece in this puzzle. As we have seen,
the catalyst for Theology of the Body was Pope Paul VI’s encyclical Hu-
manae Vitae. John Paul argued that the spousal meaning of the body is
typified most commonly in this life in the marriage of man and wom-
an. Therefore, to complete our analysis of Aquinas’s contribution to
the spousal meaning of the body, it is necessary in the next chapter
to analyze Aquinas’s understanding of marriage and the conjugal act.

232. Another study might explore the prevalence of love as movement and love as
ecstasy in Aquinas’s scriptural commentaries. This study has limited itself to the Summa
Theologiae as its primary source.
 8

Marriage and the

Conjugal Act according to
Thomas Aquinas

Thus far we have considered the impact that Thomas’s view of the hu-
man person as a composite of body and soul has had on the other
relevant aspects of his understanding of human life. We have also fo-
cused on his notion of love as a movement out of one person to an-
other and the ways in which this movement is properly ordered by
virtue. Both of these have connections to the spousal meaning of the
body (the relation of body and soul, along with the outward move-
ment of love), which will be made more clear in this chapter. We now
turn to an exegesis of Aquinas’s understanding of marriage. In his
mature work, Thomas argued that marriage is the greatest of friend-
ships. We will see that the Angelic Doctor articulates a notion of self-
offering and self-gift of spouses in marriage, a self-giving that builds
the foundation for the domestic society of the family.
Given the importance that he places on the hylomorphic unity
of the human person, it is important that any treatment of Aquinas’s
view of marriage explore his consideration of sexual difference with-
in that marital relationship. This is a vital point when serving as an
ambassador of Aquinas to a modern audience: while Aquinas was a
product of his cultural milieu, he was not an advocate of the absolute

273
274 Marriage and the Conjugal Act
subjection of women to men. Aquinas thinks that marriage is a sort of
mutual self-offering, he must therefore allow for the equal dignity of
spouses. In short, marriage is true friendship that moves beyond sex-
ual relations to establish a domestic society.
We will be able to explore how this complete self-offering in friend-
ship of one spouse to another is rendered in Aquinas’s view of the
conjugal act. This will show clearly the way in which Aquinas’s con-
ception of marriage and the conjugal act support both the position
offered by John Paul in Theology of the Body and the inseparability of
the unitive and procreative as an expression of the spousal meaning
of the body.
Admittedly, any scholar of the Summa Theologiae interested in
Thomas’s thought on marriage will be able to glean very little informa-
tion from it about Aquinas’s mature thought on the relationship be-
tween husband and wife. The Angelic Doctor treats the life and nature
of Christ along with the sacraments in the tertia pars of the Summa.
It is likely that he began writing this final portion of his magnum opus
during the last year of his life, while he was regent in Naples.1 Unfor-
tunately for the disciples of Aquinas, on December 6, 1273, while cel-
ebrating Mass, Aquinas had a mystical experience which his compan-
ion Reginald could only describe as an “astonishing transformation”
(fuit mira mutatione commotus), and after which Aquinas simply said
he could write no more.2 He died three months later on March 7, 1274.3
Later, his disciples completed the questions of the tertia pars by
adding a supplementum. These questions were lifted verbatim from
parallel passages of Aquinas’s earliest work, his commentary on Pe-
ter Lombard’s Sentences.4 Aquinas’s treatment of marriage in the sup-
plementum, therefore, is not entirely indicative of his mature thought.
For an accurate understanding of Aquinas’s mature thought, we must
turn to other works from the later years of the Angelic Doctor’s life,
principally the Summa contra Gentiles, which was completed by 1267
at the latest.5
Here we will work from the presumption that unless Thomas ex-
1. See Torrell, Saint Thomas Aquinas, 1:261–62.
2. Ibid., 1:289. 3. Ibid., 1:293.
4. See Jean-Pierre Torrell, OP, Aquinas’s Summa: Background, Structure, and Recep-
tion (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2004), 62.
5. See Torrell, Saint Thomas Aquinas, 1:101–2.
 Marriage and the Conjugal Act 275
plicitly modified his position on marriage in a later work, then the
supplementum of the Summa Theologiae represents his settled con-
victions. Even though he never wrote an extended treatise on mar-
riage, he devoted several chapters to marriage in the Summa contra
Gentiles. There, he does, in fact, broaden his view of marriage. He also
mentions matrimony briefly in other mature works, including the se-
cunda pars and tertia pars of the Summa Theologiae. There is no other
way for a scholar of Aquinas to proceed than to assume that had the
Angelic Doctor changed his thinking on certain aspects of marriage,
he would have at least hinted at it in the Summa contra Gentiles or in
his other works, even before he had the opportunity to rework his
thought fully in a completed Summa Theologiae.
Indeed, Aquinas’s understanding of marriage and his arguments
in favor of monogamy and the indissolubility of the marital bond did
develop and mature in his later years. This development is evident in
the differences between the treatise on marriage in the supplemen-
tum and his writing in the Summa contra Gentiles. Of particular im-
portance is the fact that Aquinas came to understand marriage as the
greatest of friendships between human beings. As we shall see, this
conclusion then strengthens his arguments in favor of monogamy
and marital indissolubility, and it further supports the notion of mar-
riage as a privileged expression of the love of friendship, which brings
the lover and the beloved into a union. It consequently provides the
perfect conclusion for our study, because it lays the clear foundation
for the work of Pope John Paul II.

Marriage as the
Greatest Friendship
The Nature and Role of Women according to Thomas
Numerous studies have detailed the development of thinking—theo-
logical, canonical, and cultural—on marriage during the Middle Ages.
During the eleventh and twelfth centuries especially, the church be-
came the standard bearer for understanding marriage as a union be-
tween two equally consenting persons.6 There are inherent difficulties
6. See, e.g., Antti Arjava, ed., Consent and Coercion to Sex and Marriage in Ancient and
Medieval Societies (Washington, D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection,
276 Marriage and the Conjugal Act
in attempting to reconstruct the social status of women in any histori-
cal era. Historian Glenn Olsen notes that
assessing a “status” typically involves evaluating a large number of not neces-
sarily commensurate and always changing factors simultaneously. The status of
an individual, let alone of some large category as “women,” depends on a host
of factors. These range from age and class through economic circumstances to
the possession of various forms of personal freedom. Even if specified in the
medieval sources, these have inevitably to be ranked by some scale of values,
either our own or a composite coming from the period under study.7

Yet it would be purposefully neglectful to ignore that Thomas had a

certain view of women that is no longer held by most scholars.
Previously, we explored Aquinas’s anthropology, highlighting the
importance of the relationship between the body and soul in the hu-
man person. We also briefly explored Aquinas’s understanding of sex-
ual difference, and the fact that it serves the purpose of propagating
the species. We have not, however, discussed in depth how Thomas
understood the relationship between men and women in the Summa
Theologiae. Even though he holds that men and women are not differ-
ent in their souls (the seat of the imago Dei), since the human person
is a body-soul composite, the differences of the sexes must be consid-
ered in their relationship to one another. In fact, Aquinas’s consider-
ation of the relationship between man and woman centers on the pur-
pose of this specific difference between the two. Kristin Popik notes:
“Sexual differentiation is ordained to generation. . . . Thus it is to the ac-
1993), esp. part 3; Judith Evans Grubbs, Law and Family in Late Antiquity: The Emperor
Constantine’s Marriage Legislation (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 183–93;
James A. Brundage, Law, Sex, and Christian Society in Medieval Europe (Chicago: The Uni-
versity of Chicago Press, 1987), 188–89; James Brundage, “The Paradox of Sexual Equality
in the Early Middle Ages,” in Shifting Frontiers in Late Antiquity, eds. Ralph W. Mathisen
and Hagith S. Sivan (Brookfield, Vt.: Variorum, 1996), 256–64; Charles J. Reid, Jr., Pow-
er over the Body, Equality in the Family: Rights and Domestic Relations in Medieval Canon
Law (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2004), 37–44; Edward Schillebeeckx, OP, Mar-
riage: Human Reality and Saving Mystery, trans. N. D. Smith (New York: Sheed and Ward,
1967), 287–303.
7. Glenn W. Olsen, “Marriage in Barbarian Kingdom and Christian Court: Fifth
through Eleventh Centuries,” in Christian Marriage: A Historical Study, ed. Olsen (New
York: Crossroad, 2001), 150. Historian Georges Duby repeatedly acknowledges these
sorts of difficulties in his work on the history of marriage in the Middle Ages. See
Georges Duby, Love and Marriage in the Middle Ages, trans. Jane Dunnett (Chicago: The
University of Chicago Press, 1994).
 Marriage and the Conjugal Act 277
tivity of generation, to the roles which males and females play in gen-
eration that Aquinas looks in order to determine the nature of mascu-
linity and femininity and how they are related to each other.”8
Following Aristotelian biology, Aquinas believed that the male
provides the active agent in procreation that works on the female’s
passive material to form the child.9 Since in Aristotelian-Thomistic
metaphysics it is a greater good to be in act than to be passive, mas-
culinity is thought to be superior to femininity. Femininity is inferi-
or precisely because of its passivity in relation to the masculine and
also because the female comes into existence through a defect in a
particular case (even though her birth serves God’s divine purpose):
the male gamete fails to reproduce its likeness with a male child.10
Throughout the Summa Theologiae, Aquinas presumes that the male
sex is nobler than the female sex. He says fathers should be loved
more than mothers because they are the active principles of our gen-
eration.11 When speaking of Christ’s incarnation, he takes it for grant-
ed that the male sex is superior.12 And this is true across all animal
species. This is the reason, Thomas says, that only males were used in
the holocaust sacrifices of the Old Testament.13
Since the differences are bodily and not spiritual, the passivity of
the body translates to a general physical weakness according to Aqui-
nas. But this bodily weakness affects the soul of the human composite.
Thus, Aquinas (following Aristotle) asserts that women are general-
ly weaker and less persevering than men.14 Weakness of body yields a
weakness of soul. This is why women have a greater need for the virtue
of sobriety: “In women there is not sufficient strength of mind to resist
concupiscence.”15 They are at greater risk for allowing their appetites
8. Kristin Popik, “The Philosophy of Woman of St. Thomas Aquinas, Part One: The
Nature of Woman,” Faith and Reason 4, no. 4 (Winter 1978): 26. See also Kristin Pop-
ik, “The Philosophy of Woman of St. Thomas Aquinas, Part Two: The Role of Woman,”
Faith and Reason 5, no. 1 (Spring 1979): 12–42. Popik’s study is a thorough exegesis of all
of Aquinas’s writings on the nature of woman. The following pages of my own study are
indebted to Popik’s work. See also Allen, Concept of Woman, 1:385–412.
9. See ST I, q. 92, a. 1; q. 98, a. 2; q. 118, aa. 1–2; III, q. 31, a. 5. Cf. Aristotle, On the
Generation of Animals I.20.728b21–35.
10. See ST I, q. 92, a. 1, ad 1; Cf. Aristotle, On the Generation of Animals II.3.737a28.
11. See ST II-II, q. 26, a. 10. 12. See ST III, q. 31, a. 4, obj. 1 and ad 1.
13. See ST I-II, q. 102, a. 3, ad 9.
14. See ST II-II, q. 138, a. 1, ad 1. Cf. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics VII.7.1150b15.
15. ST II-II, q. 149, a. 4.
278 Marriage and the Conjugal Act
to run rampant since their bodies (and thus their minds) are weaker.16
Because of this, Aquinas repeats that man’s reason is superior to that
of woman, at least in this life.17 Indeed, “in matters pertaining to the
soul woman does not differ from man as to the thing (for sometimes
a woman is found to be better than many men as regards the soul).”18
Even though the Angelic Doctor speaks of the inferiority of wom-
en to men in general terms, there are instances where he suggests
that in individual cases a woman may be better. In fact, any individ-
ual woman may be stronger and more reasonable than any individu-
al man. In the very same response to an objection when he speaks of
the weakness of women, he mentions another possibility. He writes:
Accordingly, since woman, as regards the body, has a weak temperament, the
result is that for the most part, whatever she holds to, she holds to it weakly;
although in rare case the opposite occurs, according to Proverbs 31:10, Who
shall find a valiant woman? And since small and weak things are accounted
as though they are not, the Philosopher speaks of women as though they
had not the firm judgment of reason, although the contrary happens in some
women.19

In the tertia pars, he explicitly identifies Mary Magdalene as an exam-

ple of a uniquely strong woman.20 In other areas of his mature work,
he identifies Mary and the Samaritan woman as examples of uniquely
strong women.21
In various parts of the Summa, Aquinas makes comments about
the disposition of the body in the activity of the soul. For example, he

16. See ST II-II, q. 156, co. and ad 1.

17. See ST II-II, q. 70, a. 3; q. 177, a. 2; q. 182, a. 4.
18. ST, Supp., q. 39, a. 1, co. Cf. Aquinas, Scriptum super Libros Sententiarum Magistri
Petri Lombardi IV, d. 25, q. 2, a. 2, qua. 1, ad 4. Christopher Roberts draws an appropri-
ate conclusion: “On Aquinas’s premises, it follows that sexual difference is part of our
natural existence without which we cannot be human, but sexual difference is also not
sufficient to make us human and it does not in itself enable or bring us to our supernat-
ural, beatific destinies. Our ultimate destiny is, according to Aquinas, something first
and foremost enjoyed by the contemplative soul, which is where the imago Dei exists.
Beatitude or eschatological fulfillment is a gift of grace bestowed on the soul by God”
C. Roberts, Creation and Covenant: The Significance of Sexual Difference in the Moral The-
ology of Marriage (N.Y.: T&T Clark, 2007), 202–3.
19. ST II-II, q. 156, a. 1, ad 1. 20. See ST III, q. 55, a. 1, ad 1.
21. On this aspect of Aquinas’s work, see Popik, “The Philosophy of Woman of St.
Thomas Aquinas, Part One,” 46–51.
 Marriage and the Conjugal Act 279
writes that one person may understand something better than anoth-
er because of the body’s disposition or because of its better health.22
He says that some men may be less persevering because of the “soft-
ness” (effeminacy) of their bodies.23 Some women may grow in the
virtue of sobriety and find themselves stronger than some men.24
Grace is also a great equalizer, available to all who receive it.25 In an-
other work contemporaneous with the Summa Theologiae, Aquinas
even suggests that women surrounded by theoretical and speculative
discussion grow in understanding, strength, and virtue more than
other women and even other men outside of these circles.26 Popik
concludes that these passages from Aquinas indicate that the “infe-
riority [of women] is not so great as to be impossible of being over-
come with a bit of practice, by cultural factors, and by education.”27
Aquinas’s conclusions about the relationship between men and
women will naturally have an impact on his understanding of the mar-
ital relationship. Throughout his career, Thomas viewed marriage as a
freely chosen common society in which men and women played dif-
fering roles. This society, however, is characterized by a friendship be-
tween men and women.

Marriage in the Supplementum to the Summa Theologiae

The material of the supplementum to the Summa Theologiae, culled
from Aquinas’s commentary on Peter Lombard’s Sentences, was writ-
ten at the dawn of his academic life. In the supplementum, Thomas be-
gins his treatment of marriage by arguing that it is natural. It is not
natural because it is absolutely necessary (as the upward motion of
fire is necessary). Matrimony is a matter of free will, and nothing hap-
pens with absolute necessary in matters of the will.28 Rather, marriage

22. See ST I, q. 85, a. 7. 23. See ST II-II, q. 138, a. 1.

24. See ST II-II, q. 149, a. 4. 25. See, e.g., ST III, q. 72, a. 8, co. and ad 3.
26. See Aquinas, In Evangelius S. Ioannis Commentarium IV, lec. 10, v. 10, no. 598. An
English translation of this passage is available: Commentary on the Gospel of St. John, Part
I, trans. James A. Weisheipl, OP, and Fabian R. Larcher, OP (Albany, N.Y.: Magi Books,
1980), 246. I am grateful Popik for calling attention to this passage. Cf. Popik, “The Phi-
losophy of Woman of St. Thomas Aquinas, Part One,” 46–47.
27. Popik, “The Philosophy of Woman of St. Thomas Aquinas, Part One,” 47.
28. See ST, Supp., q. 41, a. 1 (cf. In IV Sententiarum, d. 26, q. 1, a. 1). For excellent
280 Marriage and the Conjugal Act
is natural, Aquinas says, in the same way as virtue is natural. This is to
say, nature inclines man to marriage, even though he must still freely
choose it. For Aquinas, marriage is connatural for two reasons—the
principal and secondary ends of matrimony.29
The “principal end” of marriage is “the good of offspring. For na-
ture intends not only the begetting of offspring, but also [their] ed-
ucation and development until [they] reach the perfect state of man
as man, and that is the state of virtue.”30 And this, he asserts, requires
a stable tie between the man and a “definite” woman.31 The second-
ary end is “the mutual services which married persons render one an-
other in household matters.”32 Natural reason, therefore, directs man
to this “society of man and woman which consists in matrimony.”33
Marriage is the bond between the man and the woman.34

summaries of Aquinas’s understanding of marriage, see Angela McKay, “Aquinas on

the End of Marriage,” in Human Fertility: Where Faith and Science Meet, eds. Richard J.
Fehring and Theresa Notare (Milwaukee, Wis.: Marquette University Press, 2008), 53–
70; Roberts, Creation and Covenant, 99–109. I am especially grateful for McKay’s study,
which concerns the development of Aquinas’s thought on marriage.
29. See ST, Supp., q. 41, a. 1 (cf. In IV Sententiarum, d. 26, q. 1, a. 1).
30. Ibid. That procreation includes the education and nutrition of children is not a
position unique to Thomas. See Augustine, De Genesi ad litteram IX, chap. 7.
31. Ibid.
32. Ibid. In the section below, it will be shown that Thomas’s thought on the rela-
tionship between the primary and secondary ends of marriage changes slightly in the
Summa contra Gentiles. For an excellent study of Aquinas’s thought on the two ends
of marriage, see Guy de Broglie, SJ, “La conception thomiste des deux finalités du
mariage,” Doctor Communis 30 (1974): 3–41.
33. ST, Supp., q. 41, a. 1 (cf. In IV Sententiarum, d. 26, q. 1, a. 1). In the very next arti-
cle, Aquinas argues that matrimony is not commanded since the contemplation of God
is the highest activity a person can undertake. True and undivided contemplation cannot
tolerate the distraction with worldly affairs that marriage requires. Since every society is
best served by each person accomplishing his task for the common good, as long as there
are married couples who serve the common good by procreation and education of off-
spring, some persons may renounce marriage for the common good by contemplating
God (see ST, Supp., q. 41, a. 2). Cf. In IV Sententiarum, d. 26, q. 1, a. 2. See also Pinckaers,
Sources, 433 and 442–47; Reid, Power over the Body, 78. This is one of the few instances
in which Thomas disagrees with Augustine. Augustine held that the necessity of procre-
ation differed according to the eras of salvation history. After the resurrection of Christ,
he believed, celibacy was always preferable to marriage and there was no longer a strict
need for procreation. See, e.g., Augustine, De scanta virginitate, §9. Cf. Paul Ramsey, “Hu-
man Sexuality in the History of Redemption,” Journal of Religious Ethics 16 (1988): 56–88.
34. See ST, Supp., q. 48, a. 1.
 Marriage and the Conjugal Act 281
That marriage is primarily directed to the begetting of children is
important for Aquinas’s understanding of marriage in other ways. For
example, it is because the marital bond leads to children that Aquinas
says that marriage existed before original sin. In fact, Aquinas held
that because of its necessity for procreation, marriage was an office
of nature before it was a sacrament.35 The sacrament of matrimony
adds a sacred quality to the natural institution of marriage inasmuch
as the sacrament affords both the grace of indivisibility between the
partners and the nature of a sign of Christ’s love for the church.36 To
be clear, Aquinas insists that the sacramental quality of marriage is its
most excellent feature (since grace surpasses nature), but the inten-
tion for offspring is the most essential defining characteristic of this
union.37
It is important to note that for Thomas, procreation includes not
only the biological generation of children, but also their education
and upbringing until the child reaches “the perfect state of man as
man, and that is the state of virtue.”38 Education requires time and
a community of persons. This is why the all-important inclusion of
education with procreation means also that even early in Aquinas’s
thought, the secondary end of mutual cooperation is directed to and
included in the primary end. The education of the children is that “to
which as its end is directed the entire communion of works that ex-
ists between man and wife as united in marriage, since parents lay up
for their children (2 Cor. 12:14); so that the offspring like a principal
end includes another, as it were, secondary end.”39
In the supplementum, Aquinas shows how these two ends prohibit
certain forms of unions, specifically polygamy and concubinage. Po-
lygyny does not hinder the primary end if a man has several wives
since, Aquinas believes, “one man is sufficient to get children of sev-
eral wives, and to rear the children born of them.”40 Yet, having many
wives hinders the secondary ends inasmuch as it creates discord in

35. See ST, Supp., q. 42, a. 2. Cf. In IV Sententiarum, d. 26, q. 2, a. 2.

36. See ST, Supp., q. 49, a. 2, co. and ads 4 and 7. Cf. In IV Sententiarum, d. 31, q. 1, a. 2.
37. See ST, Supp., q. 49, a. 3. Cf. In IV Sententiarum, d. 31, q. 1, a. 3.
38. ST, Supp., q. 41, a. 1. Cf. In IV Sententiarum, d. 26, q. 1, a. 1.
39. ST, Supp., q. 49, a. 2, ad 1. Cf. In IV Sententiarum, d. 31, q. 1, a. 2.
40. ST, Supp., q. 65, a. 1 (emphasis added). Cf. In IV Sententiarum, d. 33, q. 1, a. 1.
282 Marriage and the Conjugal Act
the conjugal society and, therefore, jeopardizes the mutual benef-
icence of the partners.41 However, the Angelic Doctor insists that
polyandry is violation of the principal end of marriage. If a woman
has several husbands, the paternity of the children will be question-
able and human beings are concerned mostly with the good of their
own offspring rather than somebody else’s.42 Having a concubine,
and indeed engaging in sexual intercourse outside of marriage, like-
wise jeopardizes the primary end of marriage since the education of
offspring requires the stable union of man and woman.43
Additionally, Thomas argues that the union between man and
woman must naturally be enduring because educating children in vir-
tue requires the parents’ care “for a long time.”44 In fact, Aquinas sug-
gests that this education continues throughout a parent’s lifetime.45
Yet, in the very next article, he will insist that inseparability in mar-
riage is a secondary precept of natural law (or the secondary inten-
tion of nature) and not a primary one (primary intention). Aquinas’s
delineation between primary and secondary precepts of natural law
(that is, intentions of nature) and how these precepts may be dis-
pensed is instructive:
A dispensation from a precept of the law of nature is sometimes found in the
lower causes, and in this way a dispensation may bear upon the secondary
precepts of the natural law, but not on the first precepts because these are al-
ways existent as it were, as stated above [cf. ST, Supp., q. 65, a. 1] in reference
to the plurality of wives [which goes against the secondary end of marriage
but not the primary end]. . . . But sometimes this reason is found in the high-
er causes, and then a dispensation may be given by God even from the first
precepts of the natural law, for the sake of signifying or showing some Di-
vine mystery, as instanced in the dispensation vouchsafed to Abraham in the
slaying of his innocent son. Such dispensations, however, are not granted to
all generally, but to certain individual persons, as also happens in regard to
miracles.46

41. ST, Supp., q. 65, a. 1.

42. See ST, Supp., q. 65, a. 1, ad 8. Cf. In IV Sententiarum, d. 33, q. 1, a. 1.
43. See ST, Supp., q. 65, a. 3; q. 65, a. 5. Cf. In IV Sententiarum, d. 33, q. 1, a. 3, qua. 1
and 3.
44. ST, Supp., q. 41, a. 1, ad 2. Cf. In IV Sententiarum, d. 26, q. 1, a. 1.
45. ST, Supp., q. 67, a. 1. Cf. In IV Sententiarum, d. 33, q. 2, a. 1.
46. ST, Supp., q. 67, a. 2. Cf. In IV Sententiarum, d. 33, q. 2, a. 2, qua. 1.
 Marriage and the Conjugal Act 283
This, in turn, allows Aquinas to explain how it is possible that spouses
might separate, and, indeed, have separated in the past.
He begins by noting that if indissolubility is a primary precept of
nature then only a divine cause could dispense a couple from mar-
riage.47 But, he says, indissolubility is a secondary precept because it
“is not directed to the good of the offspring, which is the principal
end of marriage, except in so far as parents have to provide for their
children for their whole life, by due preparation of those things that
are necessary in life. Now this preparation does not pertain to the
first intention of nature, in respect of which all things are common.”48
Therefore, he says, dispensations from indissolubility can be granted
by causes other than God himself such as the Mosaic or ecclesial law.
Aquinas admits that in the fallen state, divorce is permitted (and
here, he follows Jesus Christ’s only explicit teaching on marriage).
This, however, does not negate the fact that inseparability is naturally
part of matrimony, even if only secondarily.49 While indissolubility is
a second intention of nature it “belongs to its [marriage’s] first inten-
tion as a sacrament of the Church. Hence, from the moment it was
made a sacrament of the Church, as long as it remains such it cannot
be a matter of dispensation, except perhaps by the second kind of dis-
pensation [a divine dispensation].”50 It is the grace of Christ in the
sacrament that restores indissolubility. While these passages may give
the impression that Aquinas was less than convinced of the indissolu-
bility of marriage, it is important to recall his purpose here: to explain
the historical instances of dispensation from this natural norm.
The early Aquinas saw marriage as “a particular kind of compan-
ionship pertaining to that common action [of offspring and mutual
services]”—indeed, as a society.51 Every society needs a head, and
Aquinas repeatedly says the husband is the head of the family in the
management of the household.52 But there is a division of labor in the

47. ST, Supp., q. 67, a. 2.

48. Ibid.
49. See ST, Supp., q. 67, a. 1, ads 1 and 2. Cf. In IV Sententiarum, d. 33, q. 2, a. 1.
50. ST, Supp., q. 67, a. 2, ad 3. Cf. In IV Sententiarum, d. 33, q. 2, a. 2, qua. 1.
51. ST, Supp., q. 43, a. 3, ad 3. Cf. In IV Sententiarum, d. 26, a. 1; d. 27, q. 2, a. 2; ST,
Supp., q. 41, a. 1.
52. See ST, Supp., q. 44, a. 2, ad 1; q. 52, a. 3, ad 3; q. 67, a. 6, ad 1. Cf. In IV Senten-
tiarum, d. 27, q. 1, a. 1, qua. 2; d. 36, a. 3; d. 33, q. 2, a. 3, qua. 1.
284 Marriage and the Conjugal Act
household management just as there is a division of roles in the mari-
tal act. The two are equal in this act, says Aquinas, even if he still holds
that the man is more noble in his part than the woman, because, as he
sees it, it is more noble to be active than passive. He writes: “Although
the father ranks above the mother, the mother has more to do with
the offspring than the father has. . . . Wherefore the mother has a clos-
er relation to the nature of marriage than the father has.”53 Elsewhere,
he writes that slavery is an impediment to marriage precisely because
marriage involves an equal debt of both parties to the other, which is
not the case between slave and master.54 He writes that the husband
is subject to his wife in the generative act, and that she has a claim on
his body for this purpose.55
Even though the man may be the head of the family, the Angel-
ic Doctor cautions that the “head in its own capacity is bound to the
members.”56 In the parts of the Summa Theologiae that are more ma-
ture than the supplementum, it becomes clear that Aquinas sees man’s
governance over the family as political rather than despotic. The man
must treat his wife with respect, especially in the marital act, neither
demeaning her nor treating her as an object of lust to satisfy his wan-
ton pleasure.57 In fact, Aquinas says that one of the graces contained
in the sacrament of matrimony is the grace for the man to relate to his
wife in the marital act in a becoming manner.58
Aquinas did modify some elements of his understanding of mar-
riage later in his life. Angela McKay astutely notes that his early de-
fense of monogamy and indissolubility “is an attempt to derive these
requirements strictly from the two activities that men and women
share. . . . One who reads the text from the Commentary on the Sentenc-
es in isolation might well think that Aquinas believed that marriage
could be justified only by procreation and the other necessities of
life.”59 McKay notes that the Aristotelian notion of imperfect friend-
ship, friendship of utility, revolves around shared activity and is very
53. ST, Supp., q. 44, a. 2, ad 1. Cf. In IV Sententiarum, d. 27, q. 1, a. 1, qua. 2.
54. See ST, Supp., q. 52, a. 1, ad 1. Cf. In IV Sententiarum, d. 36, a. 1.
55. See ST, Supp., q. 52, a. 3; q. 64, a. 1. Cf. In IV Sententiarum, d. 36, a. 3.
56. ST, Supp., q. 64, a. 5, ad 4. Cf. In IV Sententiarum, d. 33, q. 1, a. 3, qua. 3.
57. See ST, Supp., q. 49, a. 6, co. and ad 1. Cf. In IV Sententiarum, d. 31, q. 2, a. 3.
58. See ST, Supp., q. 42, a. 3. Cf. In IV Sententiarum, d. 26, q. 2, a. 3.
59. McKay, “Aquinas on the End of Marriage,” 63–64.
 Marriage and the Conjugal Act 285
fragile. Once the activity is no longer shared, the mutual benefits no
longer received, the friendship dissipates.60 She asks: “If divorce . . . is
unlawful only because of the time that the upbringing of children re-
quires, then why should it not be licit for those spouses who are in-
fertile or whose children have died to divorce?”61 In the Commentary
on the Sentences, Aquinas never discusses the character of the relation-
ship between the man and the woman, the nature of their compan-
ionship. In the Summa contra Gentiles, however, he fills this lacuna in
his thought.

Marriage in the Summa contra Gentiles

Aquinas’s presentation of marriage in the Summa contra Gentiles has
many of the same elements of his earlier teaching presented in the
supplementum of the Summa Theologiae but it differs in two import-
ant respects. First, as McKay has already noted, Aquinas is more con-
cerned with the character of the relationship, moving “beyond the
‘ends’ of marriage he offered in the Sentences . . . to introduce more
‘personalistic’ considerations.”62 Specifically, in this Summa, Thomas
presents marriage as the greatest of friendships and explores the ram-
ifications for such a statement. Secondly, the Angelic Doctor more
closely unites the generation of offspring with their upbringing.
In the Summa contra Gentiles, Aquinas presents marriage as
friendship. In his treatment, he offers allusions and sometimes direct
reference to Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics. For example, in one place
he writes: “The greater that friendship is, the more solid and long-
lasting will it be. Now, there seems to be the greatest friendship [max-
ima amicitia] between husband and wife, for they are united not only
in the act of fleshly union, which produces a certain gentle associa-
tion [suavem societatem] even among beasts, but also in the partner-
ship of the whole range of domestic activity.”63 Aquinas’s understand-
ing of friendship (largely dependent on Aristotle) is found in the
secunda pars of the Summa Theologiae, which I discussed in chapter 7.
Presently, it is sufficient to note that Aristotle believed that greater or
60. See ibid., 56–58. Cf. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics VIII.3, VIII.6, IX.12.
61. McKay, “Aquinas on the End of Marriage,” 64.
62. Ibid.
63. See, e.g., SCG III.123, no. 6.
286 Marriage and the Conjugal Act
more complete friendships were more durable, and that friendships
based solely on utility or pleasure dissolve once the friend is no lon-
ger useful or pleasant.64
Aristotle argued that all friendship, whether the imperfect friend-
ships of utility and pleasure or the complete friendship of virtue be-
tween good people, involves a shared activity between the friends.
He writes: “Whatever someone [regards as] his being, or the end
for which he chooses to be alive, that is the activity he wishes to pur-
sue in his friend’s company.”65 The shared activity of rearing children
forms the basis for the natural friendship between man and woman in
Aristotle’s thinking:
The friendship of man and woman also seems to be natural. For human be-
ings form couples more naturally than they form cities, to the extent that
the household is prior to the city, and more necessary, and childbearing is
shared more widely among the animals. For the other animals, the commu-
nity goes only as far as childbearing. Human beings, however, share a house-
hold not only for childbearing, but also for the benefits in their life. For the
difference between them implies that their functions are divided, with differ-
ent ones for the man and the woman; hence each supplies the other’s needs
by contributing a special function to the common good. For this reason
their friendship seems to include both utility and pleasure.66

So it seems that Aristotle held that all marriages consist at least in

the friendship of utility or pleasure, which he has said, is easily dis-
solved. He is careful to include the possibility that husband and wife
may have a complete or perfect friendship (the virtuous friendship)
“if they are decent.”67 Complete friendship requires the friends to be
good and virtuous.68
It seems that in the Summa contra Gentiles, Aquinas not only bor-
rows Aristotle’s sense of friendship to describe the relationship of
husband and wife, but he also insists that this friendship goes beyond
mere utility and pleasure to virtuous friendship. Thus, he notes that
friendship is characterized by equality and specifically cites Aristo-
64. See, e.g., Nicomachean Ethics VIII.3 for Aristotle’s treatment on the different
types of friendships.
65. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics IX.12.
66. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics VIII.12.
67. Ibid.
68. See Nicomachean Ethics VIII.3.
 Marriage and the Conjugal Act 287
tle.69 One of Aquinas’s mature arguments against polygamy is pre-
cisely Aristotle’s point that true and complete friendship is not pos-
sible with many people simultaneously.70 It is precisely because the
friendship is complete and virtuous that marriage should be indissol-
uble.71 Moreover, the indissolubility is important so that their love
for one another will be more faithful.72 In the Summa contra Gentiles,
as McKay notes, “what Aquinas’ remarks seem to demonstrate is an
increasing awareness that marriage consists not merely in sharing ac-
tivities, but also about sharing those activities in a highly specific con-
text, namely in the context of complete friendship.”73
In addition, Aquinas works in the Summa contra Gentiles to con-
nect more firmly the generation of offspring with their upbringing,
which further strengthens his arguments for the indissolubility of mar-
riage. Aquinas explicitly ties upbringing to the teleology of the semen
itself by insisting that this teleology would be “frustrated” if the emis-
sion of semen allows for generation without upbringing. The genera-
tion of offspring includes production of, nutrition for, and upbringing
of offspring. He writes that seminal emission without being ordered
to nutrition and upbringing would be contrary to the good of man.74
In Thomas’s view, generation is a natural act directed toward the
common good: the good of the species, the good of the state, and the
good of the church.75 Hence, Aquinas says that “disorders connected
with the act of generation are not only opposed to natural instinct,
but are also transgressions of divine and human laws. Hence, a great-
er sin results from a disorder in this area than in regard to the use of
food or other things of that kind.”76 This is also why he says that for-
nication is a very serious sin: it is contrary to the natural good. He
even asserts that “after the sin of homicide whereby a human nature
69. See SCG III.124, no. 4. Cf. Nicomachean Ethics VIII.5.1158a1: “Friendship is said
to be equality. And this is true above all in the friendship of good people.”
70. Cf. SCG III.124, no. 5. Cf. Nicomachean Ethics VIII.6.
71. See SCG III.123, no. 6.
72. See SCG III.123, no. 8. Aquinas uses friendship to buttress his arguments against
marriage within consanguine family lines by insisting that friendship should be expanded
throughout the world and this is accomplished by persons marrying (and thus develop-
ing friendships with) persons from outside their family of origin (see SCG III.125, no. 6).
73. McKay, “Aquinas on the End of Marriage,” 69.
74. See SCG III.122, no. 6. 75. See SCG III.123, no. 7; IV.78, no. 2.
76. SCG III.123, no. 7.
288 Marriage and the Conjugal Act
already in existence is destroyed, this type of sin appears to take next
place, for by it the generation of human nature is precluded.”77
Given the importance of upbringing, Aquinas repeats many of
the same arguments he made in the supplementum about the neces-
sity for an indissoluble relationship in which the father remains with
the mother to assist in this task. He writes that women cannot raise
children alone since they cannot provide for themselves and are not
strong enough to issue the corrections necessary in the children’s edu-
cation in the virtue of prudence.78 Elements from both the commen-
tary on Lombard’s Sentences and the Summa contra Gentiles appear in
the completed parts of the Summa Theologiae. Although Aquinas only
mentions marriage briefly in these portions of the Summa Theologiae,
what he does write is instructive for his settled view of marriage.

Marriage in the Summa Theologiae

In the most detailed article on marriage in the secunda pars, Aquinas
repeats many of his earlier positions about marriage. The article states
that the primary purpose of marriage is the generation and education
of children, and this lifelong task requires the man and the woman
to live in a mutual bond. Marriage is between a definite man and a
definite woman and is directed to the common good of the human
race.79 In the tertia pars, he includes an additional notion to the form
of marriage—the union of souls. He writes: “Now the form of matri-
mony consists in a certain inseparable union of souls, by which hus-
band and wife are pledged by a bond of mutual affection that cannot
be sundered. And the end of matrimony is the begetting and upbring-
ing of children: the first of which is attained by conjugal intercourse;
the second by the other duties of husband and wife, by which they
help one another in rearing their children.”80
Though Aquinas acknowledges that some women are more intel-

77. SCG III.122, no. 9.

78. SCG III.122, nos. 7–8. No doubt in the Middle Ages this was at least partially
true, since women had very little access to the public square. Moreover, the certitude of a
man’s offspring would be impossible if the separation of men and women were routinely
acceptable (cf. SCG III.123, no. 5).
79. See ST II-II, q. 154, a. 2.
80. ST III, q. 29, a. 2.
 Marriage and the Conjugal Act 289
ligent, stronger, and more virtuous than some men, when he speaks
of the structural role of society and the family, he assumes that mascu-
linity is superior to femininity. Following Aristotle’s notion that man
is a social being, Aquinas writes that all human beings are inclined to
live in common. The difficulty with common life is that individuals
are also inclined to their own good. Thus, the Angelic Doctor writes,
“a social life cannot exist among a number of people unless under the
presidency of one to look after the common good; for many, as such,
seek many things, whereas one attends only to one. Wherefore the
Philosopher says, in the beginning of the Politics, that wherever many
things are directed to one, we shall always find one at the head direct-
ing them.”81 He goes on to say that any person who is given knowl-
edge and virtue receives these gifts “to the benefit of others.”82
In the secunda pars, Aquinas reasserts that the family is itself a so-
ciety in which there are varying roles.83 Since he believes that men are
physically stronger and more virtuous than women, it is natural for
the man to be the one who governs the family and to direct it to the
common good.84 This relative inequality of male and female bodies
would have existed in the state of innocence.85 And this natural sub-
jection of wife to husband would have existed then too.86 This subjec-
tion became more rigorous after sin inasmuch as now, Aquinas says,
she “has to obey her husband’s will even against her own.”87
It is true that in various places throughout the Summa Theologiae,
Thomas compares woman to man as a lower reason to a higher rea-
son, with the lower requiring the direction of the higher.88 Aquinas
is, however, also clear that the rule of husband over wife is not a des-
potic governance but an economic or civil one. Despotic rule is char-
acterized by a servile subjection in which the ruler governs others for
his own benefit. Economic or civil rule (political rule) is a govern-
ment for the good of all.89 The woman is not the slave of the man.90
Yet, when Aquinas speaks of the differences between the role
81. ST I, q. 96, a. 4. 82. Ibid.
83. See ST I-II, q. 105, a. 4. 84. See ST I, q. 92, a. 1, ad 2.
85. See ST I, q. 96, a. 3. 86. See ST I, q. 96, a. 4.
87. ST II-II, q. 164, a. 2, ad 1.
88. See ST I, q. 79, a. 9; I-II, q. 74, a. 7; II-II, q. 182, a. 4.
89. See ST I, q. 92, a. 1, ad 2; cf. q. 96, a. 4.
90. See ST I, q. 92, a. 3.
290 Marriage and the Conjugal Act
of slaves and the role of women in the home, it can seem as if he is
equating the two. After noting that the members of the household are
concerned with “everyday actions directed to the necessities of life,”
he states:
Now the preservation of man’s life may be considered from two points of
view. First, from the point of view of the individual, i.e., in so far as man
preserves his individuality: and for the purpose of the preservation of life,
considered from this standpoint, man has at his service external goods, by
means of which he provides himself with food and clothing and other such
necessities of life: in the handling of which he has need of servants. Second-
ly, man’s life is preserved from the point of view of the species, by means of
generation, for which purpose man needs a wife, that she may bear him chil-
dren.91

The distinction between the two follows precisely the difference be-
tween despotic and political rule. Despotic rule seeks only the good
of the ruler, while political rule seeks the good of all. Popik observes
that Aquinas “is distinguishing, not equating, the positions of slave
and woman. The slave fulfills needs which pertain to the individual
good of the man, and the woman is needed for generation, which is
not ordered to his good but to the good of the species. . . . The wom-
an does not merely supply the man with some personal needs of his
as a slave does; he needs her in order to generate offspring, which is
for her good as much as for his.”92 Moreover, unlike a slave, which is
commonly considered property, a wife is not a man’s possession in
Aquinas’s thought. Committing adultery with a married woman is
not equivalent to theft.93
In the Summa Theologiae, Thomas understands that there is a cer-
tain equality in marriage between the husband and wife. For exam-
ple, in the treatise on justice, when Aquinas distinguishes between re-
lationships of persons in justice, he sets marriage apart as a unique
arrangement. The relationship between two men subject to the state
is characterized by justice, simply speaking. But when a person “be-
longs” to another there is a different form of justice. Thus, a child be-

91. ST I-II, q. 105, a. 4.

92. Popik, “The Philosophy of Woman of St. Thomas Aquinas, Part Two,” 20.
93. See ST II-II, q. 66, a. 3; q. 118, a. 2.
 Marriage and the Conjugal Act 291
longs to his father, and the father, therefore, has paternal rights over
his son. A master has dominative rights over his slaves. In these two
relationships, there is no strict justice between the two since one par-
ty is not considered civilly equal to the other: the son is not equal to
his father and the slave is not equal to his master. However, there is
a sort of equal domestic justice between husband and wife that dif-
fers from the subservient relationship of children and slaves to the
head of the household.94 It is not a strict civic justice since women, in
Aquinas’s worldview, have no role in the public square.95
This is why when he considers the sin of adultery, even though
he considers it as a sin against lust in the treatise on temperance,
Thomas’s explanation of adultery gives the distinct impression that
it is also a sin against justice. He writes that it is a “twofold offense
against chastity and the good of human procreation.”96 By uniting
with a woman not joined to him, a husband harms the upbringing of
his own children. By uniting with another’s woman, he harms the up-
bringing of another’s children. And, Aquinas says, the same is true for
adulterous women just as much as adulterous men. Adultery breaks
the good faith between the spouses.97
Within the marriage, man and woman have different but equally
necessary roles. The woman is concerned with the begetting of chil-
dren and the “community of works pertaining to family life.”98 While
she is “subject to her husband in matters relating to the family life, so
it belongs to the husband to provide the necessaries of that life.”99 The
man is to have a certain “solicitude” for his wife and his children.100
In a work contemporaneous with the Summa Theologiae, his Com-
mentary on Aristotle’s Politics, the Angelic Doctor notes that the wom-
an is directly responsible for the management of the interior life of
the family. For example, she is “concerned with the preservation of
the household wealth which the man acquires.”101 In his Commentary

94. ST II-II, q. 57, a. 4.

95. See Popik, “The Philosophy of Woman of St. Thomas Aquinas, Part Two,” 20–
21, 32.
96. ST II-II, q. 154, a. 8. 97. See ST II-II, q. 154, a. 8, ad 2.
98. ST II-II, q. 164, a. 2. 99. Ibid.
100. See ST II-II, q. 186, a. 4.
101. Popik, “The Philosophy of Woman of St. Thomas Aquinas, Part Two,” 25, citing
Aquinas, Commentary on Aristotle’s Politics III.2, no. 376.
292 Marriage and the Conjugal Act
on the Ethics, he says that the wife is concerned with domestic oper-
ations.102 Popik’s conclusion is forceful: “The fact that the woman is
subject to her husband in household affairs does not mean that she is
without authority in the home. . . . Aquinas likens the husband’s and
wife’s rule of the family to aristocratic rule, in which each of them has
responsibility over matters pertaining to them both. Although she is
ultimately subject to her husband’s direction, the wife is the manager
of all the internal affairs of the household.”103
Aquinas allows a great deal of freedom for wives within the fam-
ily. Even though he continues the convention of publicly prohibiting
women from teaching (which he inherits from Paul’s letters, among
other places), he allows (and even insists) that they teach within their
home.104 A wife’s subjection to her husband is only in matters relat-
ing to the household. She is a free person with regard to her own af-
fairs. For example, she can freely assent to the faith without her hus-
band’s permission since this does not concern the management of the
home.105 Yet she is not allowed to take a religious vow or to take any
oaths, since these can interfere with her management of the house-
hold.106 The same is true of her administration of money within the
home. Aquinas says that she is free to give alms from the house-
hold money if she has the “express or presumed consent of her hus-
band.”107 With the exception of her dowry (which is given for the
management of the family), she is free to give from her own money
and property without her husband’s consent, although Thomas says
she “should be moderate, lest through giving too much she impover-
ish her husband.”108 This suggests that Aquinas understands that the
property and money which the spouses earn are shared by the house-
hold.

102. See Popik, “The Philosophy of Woman of St. Thomas Aquinas, Part Two,” 25,
citing Aquinas, Commentary on Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics VIII.12, no. 1721.
103. Popik, “The Philosophy of Woman of St. Thomas Aquinas, Part Two,” 25.
104. See ST III, q. 55, a. 1, ad 3; q. 67, a. 4, ad 1.
105. See ST II-II, q. 10, a. 12, ad 1.
106. See ST II-II, q. 88, a. 8, co. and ad 3; q. 89, a. 9, ad 3. On the biblical warrants for
Aquinas’s teaching, see Lisa Sowle Cahill, Between the Sexes: Foundations for a Christian
Ethics of Sexuality (Phila.: Fortress Press, 1985), 114–18.
107. ST II-II, q. 32, a. 8, ad 2.
108. Ibid.
 Marriage and the Conjugal Act 293
From our present vantage point, that Aquinas accepted (yet tem-
pered) Aristotle’s conception of woman as a “defective male,” severely
limited the public role of women and made women subject to men in
matters of the household can appear quite negative. Yet, in spite of his
cultural milieu, he held for equality between the spouses. While the
equality of roles may be disputed by contemporary standards, Thom-
as did hold that both spouses must be equal in their self-offering in
marriage. No human person could be forced either to marry or to re-
nounce marriage.109 Aquinas held that wives were able not only to
manage the affairs of the household and their husband’s money (with
only his presumed consent), they could keep their own wealth and
money, managing it as they see fit (provided it does not interfere with
the life of the home).110
Very importantly, as Popik observes, Aquinas never says explicit-
ly that women as a group of persons are subject to men.111 In fact, he
takes for granted that widows are under the authority of no man.112
Elsewhere, Aquinas makes no distinction between boys and girls and
their freedom (after they reach the age of reason) in professing reli-
gious vows, without their father’s consent on the matter.113 Unlike
slaves, who are not free in their person, men and women can dispose
of themselves any way they like without their father’s approval.114
In Aquinas’s view, a girl was under the protection of her father lest
she fall into a wanton and promiscuous lifestyle, which would bring
shame on her family.115 This is the distinguishing characteristic of se-
duction: it is the robbing of a woman’s virginity, which, in Aquinas’s

109. See ST II-II, q. 104, a. 5.

110. See ST II-II, q. 32, a. 8.
111. See Popik, “The Philosophy of Woman of St. Thomas Aquinas, Part Two,” 35–36.
112. See, e.g., ST II-II, q. 65, a. 4, obj. 2 and ad 2.
113. See ST II-II, q. 88, a. 9; q. 189, a. 9.
114. ST II-II, q. 88, a. 8. However, it is true that Aquinas uses a girl’s subjection to
her father as analogous example to explain a person’s relationship to his superior (ST II-
II, q. 88, a. 8, ad 3). In this example, he writes, “no vow of a religious stands without the
consent of his superior, as neither does the vow of a girl while in her father’s house with-
out his consent.” Clearly, Aquinas means here to insist that a girl under her father’s rule
cannot vow anything without her father’s consent. Yet in the very next article, once she
reaches the age of reason, Aquinas is clear: the girl, just as much as her brother, can give
herself over to religion.
115. See ST II-II, q. 154, a. 6, co.
294 Marriage and the Conjugal Act
milieu, rendered her incapable of marriage.116 Yet, it is precisely this
defining of women only in relation to the men of their lives that puts
many contemporary moral theologians ill at ease.117
In her magisterial study on women in philosophy and theology,
The Concept of Woman, Prudence Allen identifies several theories of
sexual identity at work in the history of Western philosophy and the-
ology. She identifies Aristotle as the founder of a view she calls sex-
ual polarity, the idea that men and women are not only significantly
different from one another but that women are inferior to men. His
theory was based entirely on his biology and embryology—the idea
of woman’s material inferiority. She writes: “Aristotle chose to isolate
what he believed was woman’s contribution to generation and then,
upon that idea, to develop an account of the differences between the
sexes in a wide range of other aspects of human life. This pattern of
isolating a single factor in women’s biological nature is common in
sex-polarity arguments.”118
Regarding Aquinas’s own conception of sexual identity, Allen is
much more favorable, without denying his limitations. She notes that
“while Thomas was misled by Aristotle in the adoption of his ratio-
nale for philosophical differences between women and men, he was
correctly led by Aristotle towards the goal of presenting a philoso-
phy of the person as an integrated, unified existent.”119 Moreover,
she writes, “Thomas partially opened the door to a philosophy of
sex complementarity on the highest of level of existence [namely, in
heaven and in resurrected glory].”120 She expresses her hope that this
opening could one day lead to a Thomistic theology of sexual com-
plementarity without the Aristotelian conclusions based on a faulty
biology.121
116. Ibid.
117. See, e.g., Kari Elizabeth Borresen, Subordination and Equivalence: The Nature and
Role of Woman in Augustine and Thomas Aquinas (Kampen: Kok Pharos, 1981), 253. Yet,
one must be careful to judge Aquinas from the standards of the twenty-first century, es-
pecially given thirteenth-century social conditions and lack of a public role for women.
118. Allen, The Concept of Woman, 126.
119. Ibid., 411. Of course, Aristotle himself did not have a concept of personhood.
Human beings are individuated by their matter and form, potency and act. See Joseph
Torchia, “Aristotle: The Human Composite,” in Torchia, Exploring Personhood, 71–95.
120. Allen, The Concept of Woman, 411.
121. See ibid., 412.
 Marriage and the Conjugal Act 295
Popik similarly notes that Aquinas’s theory of “the inferiority of
woman is solidly based on the Aristotelian biological theory of femi-
ninity as passivity, as defective in comparison with masculine activity
and perfection. Without this foundation, the only ground of woman’s
inferiority for St. Thomas is her physical weakness and a few scriptur-
al passages, which are clearly used only as supportive arguments in
his writings.”122 She admires the fact that in spite of Aquinas’s cultural
milieu, his Aristotelian formation, and the scriptural precedent, that
Thomas was able to argue as he does for any sort of equality between
the two sexes.123 Jean Porter also recognizes Aquinas’s qualified asser-
tion of the equality of the sexes: both created in the image of God.124
Lisa Sowle Cahill also praises Aquinas for identifying marriage as a
certain friendship between the spouses, which incorporates the sex-
ual act.125
In the preceding, I have argued that Thomas’s view of marriage is
nuanced enough to include not only sexual differentiation (which he
must concede given his strict hylomorphism), but also elements of
equality, self-offering, and the union of souls. In particular, the idea
that the union of souls is the form of marriage has special importance
when discussing the spousal meaning of the body, which (as I noted
in chapter 5) is communicated in the sacrament of marriage through
marital consent and the conjugal act. Marriage has both a formal and
a material element even in Aquinas’s thought. The material element is
the conjugal act rightly ordered.

122. Popik, “The Philosophy of Woman, Part Two,” 37.

123. See ibid., 36–39.
124. Jean Porter, Natural and Divine Law: Reclaiming the Tradition for Christian Eth-
ics (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1999), 211.
125. See Cahill, Between the Sexes, 118–19: “If the thought of Thomas about men and
women, marriage, and sex does not always escape the strictures of a medieval outlook,
I think we can hardly regard his failure as greater or more culpable than the idealization
of individual freedom and glorification of sex, equally unbiblical, that often accompa-
ny the modern view of what is natural and fulfilling for humans. . . . His most valuable
and original contribution to a Christian theology and ethics of sexuality is his insight
that marital commitment is a profound form of friendship, intensified by physical ex-
pression.”
296 Marriage and the Conjugal Act

The Conjugal Act

according to Thomas Aquinas
The Conjugal Act in the Summa Theologiae
It seems the Angelic Doctor understood the importance of the conju-
gal act not just for procreation but also for the marital relationship it-
self. The conjugal act signifies not only the goods of marriage but also
the very union of the spouses’ souls. In chapter 7, I analyzed Aqui-
nas’s view of temperance and chastity. In this chapter, I am more con-
cerned with his understanding of sex within marriage. First, I want
to review some of the basic observations about chastity from chap-
ter 7. There, I noted that in Thomas’s moral theory, the virtue of tem-
perance moderates the concupiscible pleasures of touch, those great-
est of sensual pleasures for the human person.126 Temperance and
the other virtues associated with it (sobriety, abstinence, and chasti-
ty) moderate these pleasures according to the mean between excess
and deficiency.127 Chastity is important in Aquinas’s view since the
pleasures associated with sexual intercourse are so great “that the free
act of reason in considering spiritual things is incompatible with the
aforesaid pleasure.”128
The virtue of chastity disposes a person to make use of the sex-
ual act in accordance with reason and in a due manner.129 Reason
directs all things to their end. And the end of the generative organs
are just that: generation.130 It precisely because of this that Aquinas
insists that engaging in the sexual act is not sinful but can be truly
good, even meritorious, if it is engaged in according to reason (that
is, directed to the procreation and upbringing of offspring).131 In
Aquinas’s view, the pleasures associated with sexual intercourse are
not evil. They overcome reason not because they were created to do
so but because of the punishment due to original sin: “That venere-
al concupiscence and pleasure are not subject to the command and
moderation of reason, is due to the punishment of the first sin, inas-

126. See ST II-II, q. 151, a. 4. 127. See ST I-II, q. 59, a. 1.

128. ST II-II, q. 153, a. 2, ad 2.
129. See ST II-II, q. 151, a. 1, ad 1; q. 153, a. 2.
130. See ST II-II, q. 141, a. 6; q. 154, a. 11, ad 3.
131. See ST II-II, q. 154, a. 1, ad 2; a. 2.
 Marriage and the Conjugal Act 297
much as the reason, for rebelling against God, deserved that its body
should rebel against it.”132 The lustful person is one who habitually
prefers these pleasures over and against the intention to procreate.133
The carnal union is very important in Aquinas’s conception of
marriage, since it is this union that separates a person’s love of his
spouse from the love he has for his parents.134 Still, precisely because
sexual intercourse in our fallen condition entails such vehement plea-
sure that overpowers reason, it is possible that even an act of inter-
course within marriage may be at least venially sinful.135 Despite this
fact, the marital act can be meritorious as well if engaged in for the
right reasons.136
Even though reason distinguishes the human person from other
animals, Aquinas is not against its temporary impairment for a great-
er good, such as sleep or procreation.137 As Thomas sees it, there must
be some goods associated with marriage, which, he says, “excuse” or
“rightly order” the marital act and its accompanying pleasure as well
as the necessity of sharing one’s possessions with another for a life-
time.138 Following Augustine’s lead, although he does not acknowl-
edge him here, the Angelic Doctor identifies three goods: offspring,
fidelity, and the sacrament.139 These goods are not extrinsic factors
that make the marital act good and so rightly order marriage from the
outside. They are, in fact, goods intrinsic and essential to the nature

132. ST II-II, q. 153, a. 1, ad 2.

133. See ST II-II, q. 153, aa. 3–4; q. 154, a. 11, ad 3.
134. See ST II-II, q. 26, a. 11.
135. See ST II-II, q. 41, a. 4. Here Thomas supports the view established by Augus-
tine that marital sex is at least venially sinful if pursued merely for the sake of satisfying
concupiscence. Similarly, if a spouse requests the satisfaction of the marriage debt be-
yond reasonable measure, it is venially sinful. See Augustine, De bono coniugali, chaps.
6–9.
136. ST II-II, q. 41, a. 4.
137. See, e.g., ST II-II, q. 153, a. 1, ad 2. As I noted in the previous chapter, this is ex-
actly why Aquinas condemns drunkenness, which he defines as the immoderate use of
alcohol and its intoxicating effects beyond what is necessary for health (ST II-II, q. 149,
a. 1; a. 3; q. 150, a. 1).
138. See ST, Supp., q. 49, a. 1. Cf. In IV Sententiarum, d. 31, q. 1, a. 1.
139. See ST, Supp., q. 49, a. 2. Cf. In IV Sententiarum, d. 31, q. 1, a. 2. For a summa-
ry on Augustine’s view of marriage, see Mackin, The Marital Sacrament, 190–231; Glenn
W. Olsen, “Progeny, Faithfulness, Sacred Bond: Marriage in the Age of Augustine,” in
Christian Marriage, ed. Olsen, 101–45; Roberts, Creation and Covenant, 39–78.
298 Marriage and the Conjugal Act
of marriage.140 These three goods are the reasons why the marital act
is not always sinful in Aquinas’s view.141 This is why the marital act it-
self does not corrupt virtue: the temporary overwhelming of reason
does not instill a vicious habit if the act is engaged in rightly and in
rational order (which is to say within marriage and primarily for the
purposes of procreation).142
Although marriage provides the faculty or authority for sexual in-
tercourse, the marital act is not itself essential for the marital union.143
For Thomas, the consent between two persons is the most important
element in establishing the marriage, but this consent includes a con-
sent to carnal union. He writes:
The consent that makes a marriage is a consent to marriage, because the
proper effect of the will is the thing willed. Wherefore, according as carnal
intercourse stands in relation to marriage, so far is the consent that causes
marriage a consent to carnal intercourse. . . . Marriage is not essentially the
carnal union itself, but a certain joining together of husband and wife or-
dained to carnal intercourse, and a further consequent union between hus-
band and wife, in so far as they each receive power over the other in reference
to carnal intercourse, which joining together is called the nuptial bond.144

140. See ST, Supp., q. 49, a. 1, ad 2. Cf. In IV Sententiarum, d. 31, q. 1, a. 1.

141. See ST, Supp., q. 41, a. 3; q. 49, a. 4. Cf. In IV Sententiarum, d. 27, q. 1, a. 3; d. 31,
q. 2, a. 1.
142. See ST, Supp., q. 41, a. 3, ad 6; q. 49, a. 4, ads 1 and 3. Cf. In IV Sententiarum, d.
27, q. 1, a. 3.; d. 31, q. 2, a. 1.
143. See ST, Supp., q. 42, a. 4: “Integrity is twofold. One regards the primal per-
fection consisting in the very essence of a thing; the other regards the secondary per-
fection consisting in operation. Since then carnal intercourse is an operation or use of
marriage which gives the faculty for that intercourse, it follows that carnal intercourse
belongs to the latter, and not to the former integrity of marriage.” Cf. In IV Sententiarum,
d. 26, q. 2, a. 4. In the early Middle Ages, theologians and canonists debated the relation-
ship between consent and consummation. By the time of Aquinas’s writing the opin-
ion was relatively settled that consent was essential but that consummation ratified the
consent. See Brundage, Law, Sex, and Christian Society, 229–42; Schillebeeckx, Marriage,
287–302. From a theological perspective, both sides wanted to protect the virginity of
Mary, on the one hand, and the reality of the marriage between her and Joseph on the
other. This is why Aquinas offers that wonderful phrase in the tertia pars mentioned
above when discussing that unique marriage: “The form of matrimony consists in a cer-
tain inseparable union of souls, by which husband and wife are pledged by a bond of
mutual affection that cannot be sundered” (ST III, q. 29, a. 2).
144. ST, Supp., q. 48, a. 1. Cf. In IV Sententiarum, d. 28, a. 4.
 Marriage and the Conjugal Act 299
The consent orders the couple to intercourse and orders intercourse
rightly within the union that bears the goodness of offspring, fidel-
ity, and the sacrament. And in his own language, Aquinas says that
carnal intercourse actually signifies each of these three goods of mar-
riage. Clearly, intercourse signifies offspring since this is its biologi-
cal end, yet it also signifies the fidelity of consent. In fact, he writes
that “nothing is more expressly significant of consent than carnal in-
tercourse.”145 Finally, carnal intercourse signifies the indissolubility of
the union brought about by the sacramental grace, which is itself a
sign of Christ’s union with his church.146

The Marriage Debt, Union, and Procreation

In a passage cited above, Aquinas wrote that the consent of mar-
riage includes a power over each other’s body. Each spouse gives to
the other authority over his or her body in the marital act, directing it
to procreation (the natural end of the procreative organs). Like other
medieval theologians, Aquinas understands this mutual right and re-
sponsibility as the “marriage debt” each owes to the other.147 The mar-
riage debt is another aspect of fidelity that is proper to the relation-
ship: “Just as the marriage promise means that neither party is to have
intercourse with a third party, so does it require that they should mu-
tually pay the marriage debt. The latter is indeed the chief of the two
since it follows from the power which each receives over the other.
Consequently both these things pertain to faith [that is, fidelity].”148
The husband and the wife are equal in responsibility to “pay the
debt,” which is to offer their bodies to the other.149 However, because
Aquinas recognizes differences between the husband and wife, and
because he believes the man is the stronger principle of the relation-

145. ST, Supp., q. 46, a. 2. Cf. In IV Sententiarum, d. 28, a. 2.

146. See ST, Supp., q. 42, a. 4, ad 2; cf. a. 1, ads 4–5 and In IV Sententiarum, d. 26, q.
2, aa. 1 and 4.
147. I am grateful to Paul Gondreau for suggesting the importance of the marital
debt in a personalist reading of Thomas’s moral theory. See Gondreau, “The ‘Insepara-
ble Connection,’” 758–60.
148. ST, Supp., q. 49, a. 2, ad 3. Cf. In IV Sententiarum, d. 26, q. 2, a. 2.
149. See ST, Supp., q. 64, aa. 1 and 5. Cf. In IV Sententiarum, d. 32, a. 1; a. 5, qua. 1. For
a more detailed review of the concept of the marriage debt in the medieval period, see
Noonan, Contraception, 285, 357–58; and Brundage, Law, Sex and Society, 359–60.
300 Marriage and the Conjugal Act
ship, he indicates that there are differences in how the husband and
wife communicate their desire for the other. Thus, for example, the
man must not be modest in asking for his wife to “pay the debt.” He
must explicitly ask. The wife need not respond when he only hints of
his wishes.150 Yet because Aquinas believes women to be more mod-
est, he expects the husband to be much more intuitive and to respond
to his wife even if she makes only subtle indications of her desires.151
The equality of authority of the spouses over each other’s bodies in
marriage is so pronounced in Aquinas’s view that he prohibits a slave
from marrying a master since the slave is not free in offering her body
to her husband.152 Elsewhere, Thomas writes that the inability to en-
gage in the act of coitus (which is quite different than sterility or infer-
tility) can render a marriage invalid precisely because one of the spous-
es cannot offer his or her body to the other.153 To the objection that the
marital act is not essential to marriage, Aquinas responds: “Although
the act of carnal copulation is not essential to marriage, ability to fulfill
the act is essential, because marriage gives each of the married parties
power over the other’s body in relation to marital intercourse.”154 It is
important to note, though, that a spouse may reject the other’s requests
for the marital act for legitimate reasons of health.155 What is clear,
however, is that even though the conjugal act is teleologically ordered
per se to the procreation and the education of children, Thomas did not
believe that if a particular conjugal act happened not to produce a child
that the act was therefore sinful. In fact, his writing on the marital debt
suggests a secondary, if not equal, use of the conjugal act: the expres-
sion of honesty and fidelity in the marriage.
In the supplementum, Thomas writes: “The end which nature in-

150. See ST, Supp., q. 64, a. 5, ad 2. Cf. In IV Sententiarum, d. 32, a. 5, qua. 1.

151. See ST, Supp., q. 64, a. 2. Cf. In IV Sententiarum, d. 32, a. 2, qua. 1.
152. See ST, Supp., q. 52, a. 1. Cf. In IV Sententiarum, d. 36, a. 1.
153. See ST, Supp., q. 58, a. 1. Cf. In IV Sententiarum, d. 34, a. 2.
154. ST, Supp., q. 58, a. 1, ad 2. Cf. In IV Sententiarum, d. 34, a. 2.
155. See ST, Supp., q. 64, a. 1, ads 2 and 3. Cf. In IV Sententiarum, d. 32, a. 1. In these
passages, Aquinas speaks only of the husband rejecting his wife because of his health
or some other legitimate reason that prevents him from engaging in the conjugal act.
However, there is nothing presented here nor elsewhere that would suggest his use of
the husband’s rejection is anything more than an example. Aquinas nowhere denies this
same freedom to wives.
 Marriage and the Conjugal Act 301
tends in sexual union is the begetting and rearing of the offspring;
and that this good might be sought after, it attached pleasure to the
union. . . . Accordingly to make use of sexual intercourse on account
of its inherent pleasure, without reference to the end for which nature
intended it, is to act against nature, as also is it if intercourse be not
such as may fittingly be directed to that end.”156 Later, in the Summa
contra Gentiles, Aquinas notes:
It is evident that . . . every emission of semen, in such a way that generation
cannot follow, is contrary to the good of man. And if this be done deliberate-
ly, it must be a sin. Now, I am speaking of a way from which, in itself [secun-
dum se], generation could not result: such would be any emission of semen
apart from the natural union of male and female. For which reason, sins of
this type are called contrary to nature [contra naturem]. But, if by accident
[per accidens] generation cannot result from the emission of semen, then
this is not a reason for it being against nature, or a sin; as for instance, if the
woman happens to be sterile.157

Here, Aquinas distinguishes those venereal acts which are contra na-
turem from those conjugal acts which are in themselves procreative
but which are in particular instance per accidens non-procreative for a
circumstantial reason (for example, the sterility of the woman).
John Noonan has suggested that this later development represents
a change in Aquinas’s position.158 However, even in the supplementum,
Aquinas suggests that it is not sinful to engage in intercourse even if
procreation is not the result. Acknowledging Aquinas’s view that the
pleasure concomitant with the marital act is not in itself sinful—
though its vehemence is the result of original sin—it is interesting to
note what he says about the marital goods and how they “excuse” this
pleasure in the marital act:
Just as the marriage goods, in so far as they consist in a habit, make a mar-
riage honest and holy, so too, in so far as they are in the actual intention,
they make the marriage act honest, as regards those two marriage goods
which relate to the marriage act. Hence when married persons come togeth-
er for the purpose of begetting children, or of paying the debt to one another

156. ST, Supp., q. 64, a. 3. Cf. In IV Sententiarum, d. 32, a. 3.

157. SCG III.122.
158. See Noonan, Contraception, 242.
302 Marriage and the Conjugal Act
(which pertains to faith), they are wholly excused from sin. . . . Consequently
there are only two ways in which married persons can come together with-
out any sin at all, namely in order to have offspring, and in order to pay the
debt; otherwise it is always at least a venial sin.159

Here, Aquinas makes it clear that there are two ways in which a cou-
ple avoids venial sin in engaging in the marital act: the intention to
beget children and the intention to pay the debt. The larger issue at
work here, of course, is the concept that any act of sexual intercourse
between husband and wife might be a venial sin. Yet I believe there
are other passages in the supplementum that help clarify Aquinas’s rea-
soning here. They concern the relation of the marriage debt to the sin
of lust.
Thomas insists that the marriage act may become vicious if the
motivation is lust. The gravity of the sin of lust, whether it be venial
or mortal, is measured by the presence of the marriage goods in the
intention of the spouse. And in these passages, Aquinas universally
references the husband in his examples as the one prone to lust.160
Thus he writes: “If the motive be lust, yet not excluding the marriage
blessings, namely that he [the husband] would by no means be will-
ing to go to another woman, it is a venial sin; while if he exclude the
marriage blessings, so as to be disposed to act in like manner with
any woman, it is a mortal sin.”161 A man who sins mortally with lust is
willing to satisfy his sexual needs with any woman, it just so happens
that he has a wife ready at hand.
Later, Aquinas clarifies his position in regards to the sinfulness of
lust. The lustful man seeks the pleasure itself without any intention to
satisfy the marital debt or to generate offspring. The difference is the
attention he pays to the fidelity he owes his wife:
If pleasure [in the marital act] be sought in such a way as to exclude the hon-
esty of marriage, so that, to wit, it is not as a wife but as a woman that a man
treats his wife, and that he is ready to use her in the same way if she were not
his wife, it is a mortal sin; wherefore such a man is said to be too ardent a

159. ST, Supp., q. 49, a. 5. Cf. In IV Sententiarum, d. 32, q. 2, a. 2.

160. I note that even though in Aquinas’s view it is women who are more in need of
sobriety, it is men who are consistently identified in his treatises on lust.
161. ST, Supp., q. 41, a. 4. Cf. In IV Sententiarum, d. 26, q. 1, a. 4.
 Marriage and the Conjugal Act 303
lover of his wife, because his ardor carries him away from the goods of mar-
riage. If, however, he seeks pleasure within the bonds of marriage, so that it
would not be sought in another than his wife, it is a venial sin.162

This explains why Thomas also asserts that “if a man intends by the
marriage act to prevent fornication in his wife, it is no sin, because
this is a kind of payment of the debt that comes under the good of
faith. But if he intends to avoid fornication in himself, then there is
a certain superfluity, and accordingly there is a venial sin.”163 Aqui-
nas wants to keep the motives of the husband (and, by extension, the
wife) free from lust in order to prevent the spouses from using one
another merely for the satisfaction of sexual desire. In fact, Thomas
departs from the theological norm of his day by insisting that even
if a man seeks pleasure primarily, provided he seeks it within the
bounds of marriage—procreation and fidelity—it is only a venial sin,
not a mortal one.164
The marital debt gives each spouse power over the other’s body.
Aquinas never used the notion of self-gift in his treatment on mar-
riage. The theology of gift is a contemporary development in moral
theology.165 However, I suggest that his understanding of the mari-
tal debt in the supplementum, which he never corrects or modifies in
his mature work, is comparable to the idea that the spouses give their
bodies over to the other in the marriage consent.
While Aquinas uses terms such as authority and power, he clari-
fies his meaning. The spouses must be equally free in the consent to
marriage and so equal in giving their bodies over to the other. They

162. ST, Supp., q. 49, a. 6. Cf. In IV Sententiarum, d. 31, q. 2, a. 3.

163. ST, Supp., q. 49, a. 5, ad 2.
164. See ST, Supp., q. 49, a. 6. See Ronald Lawler, Joseph Boyle, and William E.
May, Catholic Sexual Ethics: A Summary, Explanation, and Defense, 2nd ed. (Huntington,
Ind.: Our Sunday Visitor Press, 1998), 61–63. For a history of the pursuit of marital sex
for the sake of avoiding the sin of fornication, see Brundage, Law, Sex, and Christian So-
ciety, 282–84; Noonan, Contraception, 343–45.
165. Brian Johnstone has offered a brief history of the development of the theology
of the gift. See Brian V. Johnstone, “The Ethics of the Gift According to Aquinas, Der-
rida, and Marion,” Australian eJournal of Theology 3 (2004). In this very helpful article,
Johnstone offers a historical narrative of the development of the subject-object distinc-
tion. Furthermore, he offers an exegesis of Aquinas’s understanding of gift by looking at
the treatises on the Holy Spirit and grace in the Summa Theologiae.
304 Marriage and the Conjugal Act
must be capable of equally rendering the marriage debt. Further-
more, the fact that the husband cannot make use of his wife’s body
for lustful purposes suggests something different than these terms
convey to modern ears. While both the husband and the wife can ex-
plicitly request “payment” of this debt, they cannot do so for lustful
purposes. Finally, the natural structure of the act itself, when respect-
ed, further prevents lust from overwhelming them. For the nature of
the act in itself tends to procreation even if per accidens a particular
marital act does not beget any children. Only if such a per accidens
non-procreative conjugal act is used for “its inherent pleasure, with-
out reference to the end for which nature intended it” then it is a sin-
ful act because it reveals a primary motive of lust and not fidelity or
the payment of the marriage debt.166
I agree with Paul Gondreau’s argument that Thomas’s sexual the-
ory must be interpreted in light of his hylomorphic anthropology.
Procreation is the primary end of marriage in Aquinas’s view because
the generation and education of offspring is what separates the re-
lationship of husband and wife from every other personal relation-
ship.167 Gondreau isolates the connection with hylomorphism: “Just
as human nature cannot be defined in abstraction from the bodily
(i.e., animal) dimension, so neither can we abstract the bodily, pro-
creative dimension from the nuptial, symbolic meaning of our sexu-
ality.”168 The love of marriage is specified by its expression in the mar-
ital act.169
Gondreau has drawn an interesting conclusion from Aquinas’s
notion that the form of matrimony consists in the union of souls.

166. See ST, Supp., q. 64, a. 3. Cf. In IV Sententiarum, d. 32, a. 3.

167. See ST, Supp., q. 49, a. 3. Cf. In IV Senteniarium, d. 31, q. 1, a. 3. See Gondreau,
“‘Inseparable Connection,’” 760. Gondreau shows here that Raymond of Peñafort,
Aquinas’s elder in the Dominican Order, had already made this observation. Cf. Ray-
mond of Peñafort, Summa on Marriage II.3. An English translation of this text is avail-
able: Raymond of Peñafort, Summa on Marriage, trans. Pierre Payer (Toronto: Pontifi-
cal Institute of Medieval Studies, 2005), 20.
168. Ibid.
169. Regarding the marriage of Mary and Joseph, Aquinas argues that their mar-
riage was perfect in its form (the essential union of souls) but only partly in the exercise
of marriage (the procreation and upbringing of children). Although they never consum-
mated their marriage, nevertheless their marriage was exercised in the upbringing of the
child Jesus. See ST III, q. 29, a. 2.
 Marriage and the Conjugal Act 305
While it may be anachronistic to say that Thomas had a concept of
the “unitive” aspect of the conjugal act and of marriage, Gondreau
argues, I think correctly, that the unitive dimension of marriage is
this union of souls of which Aquinas speaks. The union of souls is
not an afterthought in Aquinas’s view. Precisely because the unitive
represents the inseparable union of souls, it “expresses human sexu-
ality’s participation in the rational, in what is highest and noblest in
us. The personalist [unitive] dimension raises our procreative ani-
mality, as it were, to the properly human.”170 Gondreau further con-
cludes that since, in Aristotelian-Thomistic metaphysics, the form is
the principle of unity between matter and form (just as the soul is the
principle of unity between body and soul), this explains why married
couples seek, first, union with one another before they seek children
together.
Throughout his writings on marriage, Aquinas, like Augustine,
routinely insists that the procreation of offspring includes not only
their biological generation but also their education and upbringing.
Thomas routinely insists that human children are not like animal
young. They require a unique form of care and education. On this
account, Aquinas elaborates numerous qualities of married life: mo-
nogamy, fidelity, parental solicitude for children, and indissolubility.
The domestic society that mother and father create is the society in
which their children will be raised. Gondreau draws the conclusion:
“We do not just ‘produce babies’ like animals. . . . Rather, we first en-
ter into a communion of personal spousal love, from which the be-
getting of human children flows, followed by the welcoming of these
children into this same communion of love, into a family.”171
One of the last moral textbooks written before the close of the
Second Vatican Council made this same point:
Sometimes the primary ends are referred to by modern writers as the bi-
ological and social ends, while the secondary ends are called personalist.
However, in contrasting personalist values with biological and social values
one should not make the mistake of imagining that procreation and rearing
of children are not personalist values, too, or that the so-called personalist
values do not contribute to the biological and social ends. Procreation is not

170. Gondreau, “‘Inseparable Connection,’” 761. Cf. ST III, q. 29, a. 2.

171. Gondreau, “‘Inseparable Connection,’” 762.
306 Marriage and the Conjugal Act
just a continuation of the race or the nation. It is inherently a continuation
and fulfillment of the persons of husband and wife also. Parenthood may
well be, and in fact frequently is, the highest of the personalist values in a giv-
en marriage which is de facto fruitful.172

The conclusion of this section serves to directly rebut those con-

temporary moral theologians who insist that Thomas’s sexual theo-
ry is overly dependent on the physical structures of nature and hence
too concerned with the teleological structure of the sexual act.173 A
Thomistic anthropology is unable to separate the physical from the
spiritual. Respecting the naturally procreative structure of the sexu-
al act guarantees and protects its unitive and personalist dimension
from motivations unworthy of human dignity. Respecting the unitive
and personalist dimension guarantees that procreation is more than
simply biological.
This is precisely why Aquinas’s anthropology lends itself to the
notion of a spousal meaning of the body. Since the human person is
a body-soul composite, the body is not simply the soul’s biological or
physiological tool. As I showed in chapter 6 of this study, the body
and soul mutually implicate each other in action and in thought. I
also noted in that chapter that the body and soul composite that is
man must, like all created being, come out of himself in order to find
complete perfection in another (and, ultimately, in the other: God).
Only God is complete perfection in himself. Nowhere in man’s natu-
ral existence is this more apparent than in the sexual act itself, which
requires a person of the opposite sex for teleological perfection. With-
out these admittedly basic insights along with Aquinas’s notions of
love and virtue, which I presented in chapter 7, and his understanding
of marriage as a union of souls and highest friendship, Thomas’s sexu-
al ethic could be construed as physicalist. As it stands, however, Aqui-

172. John C. Ford and Gerald Kelly, Contemporary Moral Theology, vol. 2: Marriage
Questions (Cork: Mercier Press, 1963), 49.
173. See, e.g., Charles E. Curran, Contemporary Problems in Moral Theology (Notre
Dame, Ind.: Fides, 1970), 106; Charles Curran, A New Look at Christian Morality (Fides,
1970); Josef Fuchs, Moral Demands and Personal Obligations (Washington, D.C.: George-
town University Press, 1993), 31; Richard M. Gula, Reason Informed by Faith: Foundation
of Catholic Morality (New York: Paulist Press, 1989), 223–28. For a terse response to these
theologians, see William E. May, An Introduction to Moral Theology, 2nd ed. (Huntington,
Ind.: Our Sunday Visitor Press, 2003), 80–84.
 Marriage and the Conjugal Act 307
nas’s view of marriage, much of which depends on Augustine’s teach-
ing, offers a robust Aristotelian hylomorphic framework in which we
can understand what it means to say that the body speaks a language.
Because men and women are created composite beings with bod-
ies and souls, both elements reach out to another for perfection—both
the body and the soul are searching for perfection, and thus the hu-
man person as a whole is searching for perfection. The movement of
love is a movement not only of the soul but also of the body, since the
soul and body are two principles of the human composite. And this
reaching out to the other (with both body and soul), the hallmark of
John Paul’s spousal meaning of the body, being manifest in marriage
means that in spite of apparent inequalities of sexual roles, Aquinas’s
argument required him to insist upon not only the equality of the
spouses in the self-offering of marriage (an offering which included
the rendering of the marital debt) but also to insist upon the view that
the conjugal act was a visible or material manifestation of this union.

Conclusion
It is certainly true that some of Thomas’s perspective on women is at
odds with contemporary values. Yet in spite of his cultural milieu and
his respect for Aristotelian biology, the Angelic Doctor made extraor-
dinary steps in his theory of marriage and the conjugal act. He agreed
that men were the head of the household, for which he had not only
cultural custom but biblical warrant on his side, but he nonetheless
insisted that there was a definite equality between husband and wife.
He even established that there is a certain domestic justice between
the two. Moreover, he insisted that a wife’s freedom must be respect-
ed, while both husband and wife are subject to the common good of
the household.
There was a definite development in Thomas’s thinking on the na-
ture of marriage. Early in his life, he was not sure how to characterize
the nature of the relationship between husband and wife. As a result,
he seemingly settled for the lowest caliber of friendship in Aristot-
le’s view: a friendship of utility based on a shared activity, which was
the procreation and education of children. Later in his life, howev-
er, he began to see marriage as the supreme form of friendship be-
308 Marriage and the Conjugal Act
tween human beings. Building on Aristotle’s own understanding of
perfect friendship, Aquinas was able to make a more appealing argu-
ment for the indissolubility of monogamous marriage in the Summa
contra Gentiles.
Finally, we have seen that Thomas’s view of the conjugal act need
not be interpreted in a strictly physicalist way, as some have argued in
the past. In fact, it is not too difficult to see his understanding of the
marital debt through the same lens of the gift of self that Karol Wo-
jtyła and others have written about. Equally important is the ramifi-
cations Aquinas’s hylomorphic anthropology has for his understand-
ing of the conjugal act. The material and the immaterial cannot be
separated in this life, nor can the procreative and the unitive aspects
of the conjugal act. The body is implicated in the love between man
and woman. This is a central tenet of John Paul’s Theology of the Body:
the body communicates the person, and it communicates love.
 Conclusion

My goal in this book has been to show the rich metaphysical foun-
dation that Thomas Aquinas’s anthropology provides for the spousal
meaning of the body as articulated by Pope John Paul II in his The-
ology of the Body catecheses. My hope is that by articulating Aqui-
nas’s anthropology and his understanding of marriage alongside that
of John Paul II, it is now easier to see how the thought of these two
thinkers can be mutually enriching. This is shown first in the clear in-
fluence of Aquinas on the early thought of Wojtyła, exemplified in his
firm loyalty to the theological method of Aquinas as demonstrated
at the beginning of his academic career and never abandoned by him
even as he turned increasingly to phenomenology in the 1970s. Sec-
ondly, we have seen how Theology of the Body, which offers a biblical
and experiential anthropology, can supplement Aquinas’s thought. It
is critical to understanding Wojtyła and to appreciating the opportu-
nity afforded in this synthesis of his work with Aquinas to note that
the Wojtyła never rejected the value of natural theology and meta-
physical theory. On the contrary, he consistently affirmed the need
for Thomistic metaphysics to distinguish moral good from evil.
In this study, I have argued that elements of John Paul’s spousal
meaning of the body can be found in the mature thought of Aquinas.
Furthermore, I have read Theology of the Body as a development in the
twentieth-century debate on marriage and contraception. A principal
element of that debate, I have suggested, is the relationship between
the category of personhood and the category of human nature. I have
also shown that early in his academic career, Wojtyła recognized the
deficiency of purely academic or speculative theology in reaching the

309
310 Conclusion
faithful. In some ways, his entire life was devoted to the task of con-
necting the speculative and the practical, the dogmatic and the expe-
riential, the objective and the subjective. Theology of the Body was by
no means the pinnacle of his life’s work, as he would serve as pope for
another twenty-one years after these catechetical talks. Nonetheless,
it represents a remarkable project of defending, and perhaps rearticu-
lating, the church’s sexual ethic.
This background helps to explain why the pope never explicit-
ly explains the ontological foundation which he presumes in Theolo-
gy of the Body. When he studied for the priesthood, Wojtyła had the
benefit of a basic scholastic education, common at the time, in which
he learned Thomistic metaphysics (although he later admitted how
difficult the subject was for him). His early academic work indicates
a thorough assimilation of Thomistic categories. Yet by the time he
penned the manuscript for the book that eventually became the The-
ology of the Body catecheses, he was convinced that a more experien-
tial and phenomenological approach would be most effective in artic-
ulating the norms of sexual morality.
While he did not abandon his own background, there is a real pos-
sibility that at least some, if not many, readers of these catecheses do
not have the benefit of the same scholastic education in metaphysics
which John Paul received and which he presumed in his work. With-
out an ontological foundation supporting the anthropology John Paul
presents, it is easy to miss the fact that he is not simply speaking met-
aphorically or lyrically. He is not romanticizing the body or marriage.
Thomas’s hylomorphic theory gives philosophical credence to
what in Theology of the Body is primarily a biblical anthropology. That
the spousal meaning of the body entails an intrinsic urge to the oth-
er and the freedom to love the other rightly is compatible with Aqui-
nas’s worldview is evident from the following points. First, like Wojtyła,
Aquinas holds for a strict unity between body and soul. The human
person is not constituted by either principle alone but by both. Second,
Aquinas agrees that all created being is inherently driven out of itself in
search of complete perfection. Third, this movement, called love, must
be properly ordered, and this ordering is the chief characteristic of vir-
tue. Without virtue, in Thomas’s moral theory, man dissipates into a
creature pursuing disparate ends with no guidance from reason.
 Conclusion 311
Fourth, marriage as the highest form of friendship entails a free
exchange of consent, which includes the voluntary offering of one’s
body to the other. Finally, because of the hylomorphic unity of the
human person, the conjugal act involves not only a biological aspect
(procreation) but also a personalist aspect (paying the marital debt,
fidelity, and education of offspring). The fact that Aquinas, like Au-
gustine, routinely includes the education of offspring with procre-
ation as the primary end of marriage and advocates a teleological im-
portance for sexual pleasure (reasonably enjoyed) suggests that he
himself was not entirely convinced that biological necessity (procre-
ation) was the only use for the conjugal act. Indeed, paying the mar-
ital debt as an expression of fidelity is another good use of the act in
Aquinas’s view. The conjugal act might be considered to express the
very union of souls that Aquinas came to believe marriage is.
However, it is my considered opinion that there are weaknesses in
both Aquinas’s presentation and in Theology of the Body. Aquinas did
not offer a view of the experience of human consciousness or a full
explanation of human personhood (though he did offer a modified
version of Boethius’s definition of the person). Consciousness and
human personhood did not become overriding issues until the mod-
ern period. Similarly, Thomas did not provide a detailed view of the
conjugal act as an expression of the fidelity and unity between spous-
es, but the fact that he asserted that either an intention to procreate
or to pay the marital debt was sufficient to avoid sin in marital sex
suggests he would be open to the idea.
The emphasis Aquinas places on the marital debt as an expression
of conjugal fidelity, along with his appreciation of sexual pleasure and
his admission that not every conjugal act is procreative, suggests that
he was struggling to develop a richer understanding of conjugal in-
tercourse than the one he had inherited. It is in these areas that I see
the principles necessary to develop a Thomistic spousal meaning of
the body. In my view, his limitations in developing a personalist read-
ing of sexual intimacy to complement his sexual ethic and his under-
standing of marriage are strictly the result of his historical and cul-
tural milieu. I believe that Karol Wojtyła, in a decidedly different
historical setting, resolves many of the deficiencies in Aquinas’s pre-
sentation.
312 Conclusion
Karol Wojtyła’s anthropology, especially what he presented in the
Theology of the Body catecheses, can serve to ameliorate or even cor-
rect these deficiencies in Aquinas’s thought. His focus on human con-
sciousness and the human person as a subject has brought greater
clarity to theological discourse, especially surrounding sexual ethics.
Moreover, in a post-Cartesian modernity, his insistence on the impor-
tance of the body offers a holistic view of men and women and their
relationship with one another. Yet, as he states throughout his corpus,
the objectivity of the body is itself necessary but insufficient to under-
stand the uniqueness or originality of every human person. The bibli-
cal anthropology he offers moves beyond (yet does not reject) the an-
thropology of Aquinas.1
1. The focus of this book has been the pre-pontifical published work of Karol Wo-
jtyła leading up to Theology of the Body. In this period of his life, Wojtyła was less con-
cerned about the differing roles of men and women in the family, in the church, and
in the world. However, the anthropology of Theology of the Body, which sees the hu-
man person’s uniqueness going deeper than his somatic constitution, is present in Mu-
lieris Dignitatem. In that letter he expands his argument that men and women are called
to a communio personarum by explicitly connecting their communion and relationship
with each other with the communion of the divine persons of the Trinity. See, for ex-
ample, MD, pars. 7–10. Here John Paul further elaborates his anthropology by incorpo-
rating the Trinitarian dynamism of truth and love within the communion of the divine
persons. He is able then to highlight the vocations unique to men and women (who
make their own self-gift to each other and to God) without a dependence on the physi-
cal differences between them. “ I am convinced John Paul intended to speak analogous-
ly about the similarities of the Divine communio personarum and the human communio
personarum. He says as much: “The image and likeness of God in man, created as man and
woman (in the analogy that can be presumed between Creator and creature)” (MD,
par. 7). Later, he writes: “For biblical Revelation says that, while man’s ‘likeness’ to God
is true, the ‘non-likeness’ which separates the whole of creation from the Creator is still
more essentially true” (ibid., par. 8). The insistence upon analogy does not lessen the im-
portance of John Paul’s conclusions. It confirms that faith moves beyond reason. John
Paul insists on this point when he speaks about the relationship of men and women as
the communio personarum (ibid., par. 7). By calling the reader’s attention to theologi-
cal analogy, I want simply to highlight the differences between human persons and di-
vine persons. Somatic sexual difference is, after all, from God just as much as the call
the communio personarum. An anthropology from above raises the dignity of the human
body and sexual difference by clarifying their true purpose in the light of faith. With-
out an element from below, an anthropology from above runs the risk of reducing the
body’s participation in that communio personarum which characterizes humanity, and
especially marriage. Yet without the witness of faith, an anthropology from below can
easily fall into sexual prejudice and gender stereotyping. For a slightly different inter-
pretation of this, see John Grabowski, “Mutual Submission and Trinitarian Self-Giving,”
Angelicum 74 (1997): 489–512.
 Conclusion 313
Given the importance that the body has for both thinkers, the
role of sexual difference can and should be further developed based
on their thought. Aquinas, on the one hand, follows through with
the logical conclusions of his hylomorphism but was limited by the
scientific conclusions he inherited from Aristotle. In Theology of the
Body, on the other hand, the pope asserts that the spousal meaning
of the body is experienced differently by men and women, yet he
also insists their somatic constitution is more important than the fact
that they are male and female. Theology of the Body could have been
strengthened had the pope further explored exactly how the spousal
meaning of the body differs for men and women.
While it can be argued that Aquinas was prejudicial or mistaken
in the roles he assigned mothers and fathers in the family, it is certain-
ly true that he was interested in articulating the structures that a fam-
ily needs for its survival and the propagation and education of chil-
dren. Since John Paul does not spend time explaining the differences
between men and women adequately in Theology of the Body, he does
not spend time addressing the structure of the family. Although he
discusses procreation and parenthood as manifestations of the spou-
sal meaning of the body, he never discusses children, their role in the
family, and the parents’ obligations to them.2 Reading Theology of the
Body in line with the tradition that came before it, especially on this
point, can bring clarity to the pope’s articulation of the spousal mean-
ing of the body as the gift of self, manifest in marriage especially in
the conjugal act, but not exclusively so.
In his early academic career, Wojtyła was more focused on em-
phasizing Thomas’s thought as he looked for a way to connect faith
and doctrine to lived experience. I have argued that in the 1970s he
made a much more intentional shift to phenomenology because he
did not think that teleology-based ethic alone was effective in articu-
lating Christian moral norms. Is his phenomenology simply a matter
of “window-dressing” for traditional teleological arguments, or was
he truly attempting to offer a new philosophical ratio for Christian
morality?
It is arguable that (at least initially) he was not sure of his own

2. In his later pontifical writings, however, the family and children become more
prominent. See, for example, MD, pars. 18–19, and FC, pars. 13–14.
314 Conclusion
project. I noted in the third chapter of this book that during the 1970
colloquium at the University of Cracow on The Acting Person, Wojtyła
flatly stated that he was not trying to combine Thomism with phe-
nomenology. Indeed, he thought such a combination was impossi-
ble. Yet, in the introduction to the 1979 English edition of The Act-
ing Person, a translation that I noted has been criticized for rendering
explicitly Thomistic terms and concepts in incomprehensible ways,
he writes that this is exactly what he was trying to do: combine phe-
nomenology with Thomism. Whether that project can be successful
remains to be seen. But at the end of his life he was adamant that the
church simply cannot proceed in the twenty-first century without the
metaphysical ontology of Aquinas, lest, in his words, “we end up in a
vacuum.”3
Theology of the Body is extraordinarily popular, especially in cat-
echetical and parochial settings. Yet it is my belief that these cat-
echeses must be interpreted according to their own genesis, which
was a manuscript furthering the conversation on questions of mar-
riage and contraception. In this light, they should be read in continu-
ity rather than in isolation from Wojtyła’s earlier work. I believe this
hermeneutic would take readers and commentators back to the very
anthropology and metaphysics offered by Aquinas in which Wojtyła
was trained.
It has been over thirty years since Pope John Paul II began deliv-
ering in his Wednesday audiences the material that became known as
Theology of the Body. With the passage of time, perhaps the salient in-
sights the pope articulated in that work will increasingly be the sub-
ject of academic dialogue and scrutiny, especially through the lens of
the theological tradition preceding Wojtyła. In that way, the pope’s
work will be strengthened and refined for generations yet to come.
My hope is that this study will contribute to that important project.
3. See John Paul II, Memory and Identity, 12: “If we wish to speak rationally about
good and evil, we have to return to Saint Thomas Aquinas, that is, to the philosophy of
being. With the phenomenological method, for example, we can study the experiences
of morality, religion, or simply what it is to be human, and draw from them a significant
enrichment of our knowledge. Yet we must not forget that all these analyses implicitly
presuppose the reality of the Absolute Being and also the reality of being human, that
is, being a creature. If we do not set up from such ‘realist’ presuppositions, we end up in
vacuum.”
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 Index

Abelard, Peter, 2n2 tempt to bring into dialogue, 150n137;

Acting Person, The (Wojtyła), 5–6, 116–23, sexual identity, conception of, 294–95;
145–51, 314 supplement to the Summa Theologica,
action and agency, human: Aristotle and 220n106; weaknesses in the presentation
Wojtyła’s view of, 107, 118; disintegrated, by, 311; the will, approach to, 19–22, 104–
151; dynamism of, 146–48; language of 5, 107–8, 223–25, 228n159, 238–42, 247–50,
the body and, 184–87; natural instincts, 254, 260–61, 264–66, 298; Wojtyła’s de-
148–49; self-mastery, 191–93; two experi- scription of the philosophy of, 111n103;
ences of, 146. See also conjugal act Wojtyła’s shift in tone regarding, 114–15
adultery, 163, 181, 187, 194, 290–91 Aquinas on love, 235–36, 270–71; attraction
Aeterni Patris (Leo XIII), 37–38 to the good, 236–39; friendship and con-
Albert the Great, 24 cupiscence, 244–46; grace and nature,
Allen, Prudence, 294 260–63; happiness and the proper or-
An Evaluation of the Possibility of Construct- dering of love, 246–49; passion, reason,
ing a Christian Ethics on the Basis of the and will, 239–44; the theological virtues,
System of Max Scheler (Wojtyła), 98–103 263–70; the virtue of charity, 260–70; the
Anglican Communion, 47–48 virtue of prudence, 250–55; the virtue of
“Anthropological Vision of Humanae Vitae, temperance, 255–60
The” (Wojtyła), 156–58 Aquinas on marriage and the conjugal act,
Aquinas, Saint Thomas: action, theory of, 259, 273–75, 307–8; the conjugal act
146; career and work of, 15–16; conflict in the Summa Theologiae, 296–99; the
over teachings of, 24–25; faith, under- marriage debt, union, and procreation,
standing of, 96–97; goodness and being, 299–307; marriage in the Summa contra
connection between, 110; influence of, Gentiles, 285–88; marriage in the Sum-
2; John Paul II and, 1, 5–7, 10, 166; John ma Theologiae, 288–96; marriage in the
Paul’s theology of the body catacheses Supplementum to the Summa Theologi-
and, 309–11; Leo XIII’s revival of the ae, 279–85; women, nature and role of,
teaching of, 37–38; Lombard’s Sentences, 275–79
commentary on, 239n26; manualists’s de- Aquinas’s anthropology, 198–99, 233–34;
parture from the theology of, 44; moral the body and knowledge, 209–13; man
theology, synthesis of, 16–22; mystical as composite of body and soul, 199–204,
experience and death of, 219n106, 274; 306–7; original innocence and original
Raymond of Peñafort, response to, 14; sin, 226–32; personhood, 214–19; powers
renewed interest in, 7; Scheler and, at- of a soul united to a body, 204–9;

331
332 Index
Aquinas’s anthropology (cont.) expression, as means of, 147; redemption
sexual difference, 219–22; sexuality and of, 178–83; the resurrection and, 182; sen-
human flourishing, 222–26; spousal suality and, 143–44; the sexes and, 170–
meaning of the body and, 306–7 72; sexual difference for Aquinas, 219–22;
Aristotle: on the active intellect, 211; Aqui- solitude and, 169; the soul and, 199–209;
nas’s incorporation of, 108; forms of nat- unity of the person and, 142. See also ac-
ural things, 210; on friendship, 244–45, tion and agency, human; spousal mean-
285–87; on human action, 107, 118; “na- ing of the body; Wojtyła on the body
ture,” uses of the word, 18; Plato and Boethius, Anicius Manlius Severinus, 112,
Augustine, disagreement with, 24; po- 214, 217
tency, principle of, 202; powers in the Buttiglione, Rocco, 111
soul, 204–5; sexual polarity, theory of,
294; women as “misbegotten/defective Cahill, Lisa Sowle, 195–96, 295
males,” 220, 233, 293 Callan, Charles, 41–42
Asci, Donald, 82, 83n178 Cana Conference Movement, 53n33
Augustine of Hippo, Saint, 24, 254, 267n210, Casti Connubii (Pius XI), 48–51, 75
280n33, 297 casuistry, 33–36, 43. See also manualist tra-
Aumann, Jordan, 244 dition
Azor, Juan, 34–35, 41 Cates, Diana Fritz, 259–60
celibacy, 143, 183, 280n33
Barrett, Timotheo, 42 Celtic penitential movement, 12
Baruzi, Jane, 95 Cessario, Romanus, 41–43, 251–52
beatitude: Aquinas’s theory of, 17–24; exclu- charity, 97, 114n118, 235–36, 260, 263–71
sion of by manualists, 41, 43 chastity, 70, 114n118, 144, 232, 257–58, 291,
Bekkers, William, 66 296
Berman, Harold, 14 Christian Family Movement, 53n33
Bible, the: Ephesians, 179–80; Genesis, 165– Chrysostom, Saint John, 222
70, 172, 176, 221; Matthew 19, 177–78 Cicognani, Amleto Giovanni, 69–70
biologism. See physicalism Commentary on Aristotle’s Politics (Aqui-
birth control: biology of the body and the nas), 291
pill, 4; early twentieth century move- Commentary on the Ethics (Aquinas), 291–92
ment, 47–48; hesperdin pill, 58–59; concupiscence: continence as opposing,
mid-twentieth century debate, 5; 193; falsification in the language of the
progesterone pill, 59; rhythm method/ body, 187; love, as a barrier to the matu-
periodic continence, 65–68, 84, 158, 193; ration of, 144; love of, 244–46; lust and,
self-mastery and, 191–93. See also contra- 181; marriage as a remedy for, 49–50, 55,
ception; Humanae Vitae 140; original sin and, 196–97; in the state
birth control debate: first phase: the hesper- of innocence, 228; as a threat after the
idin pill and the principle of double ef- fall, 175–77; women’s difficulty resist-
fect, 58–59; personalist arguments, emer- ing, 277
gence of, 62–64; therapeutic uses of the confession and confessionals: Luther’s
progesterone pill, 59–62 charges regarding, 31; origin of the prac-
birth control debate: second phase: John tice, 12–13; publication of confessional
Rock and the widening of debate, 64–68; books, 14–15; scholasticism and, 32
reports of the papal commission, 73–79; conjugal act: Aquinas on, 296–307; avoiding
the Second Vatican Council, 68–72 sinfulness in, two ways of, 301–4; ends of,
body, the: in creation, 169–70; dynamisms Roman Rota decree addressing, 55–56;
of, 147–48; gift of in marriage, 142–43; integration and, 155–60; language of the
knowledge and, 209–13; language of, body and, 185–86; meaning of, 189–90;
184–87; original sin and, 175–78; personal original sin, impact of, 176–78; periodic
 Index 333
continence or the pill in the, 66–68; per- Doms, Herbert, 5, 53–55, 140n72
sonalist view of, 52; Pius XI on the “mar- double effect, principle of, 59
ital right” to, 65n95; procreation as moral dualism, 199n1, 210–13
norm for, 188–93; procreative and unitive Duby, Georges, 276n7
aspects of, strength of union between, D’Azeglio, Luigi Taparelli, 36–37
78, 81–83; as reciprocal self-gift, 171; in
the Summa Theologiae, 296–99. See also Emery, Gilles, 199n1, 203
marriage; sexual act, the; sexual ethics/ ethics: perfectionism and normitivism, dis-
morality tinction between, 109–10; teleology as
conjugal love: in Gaudium et Spes, 71–72; in inadequate approach for, 115–16. See also
the majority rebuttal of the papal com- Wojtyła’s ethics of sexuality
mission on contraception, 77; responsi-
ble parenthood and, 153–55 faith: for John of the Cross and Aquinas,
consciousness: Aquinas not attentive to, 6, 95–97; reason and, First Vatican Council
10, 115, 311; for John Paul II, 7, 165–69, 173, on, 37; as theological virtue, 264–66
179, 181–83, 187, 190, 194; for Wojtyła, 115, Faith according to St. John of the Cross (Wo-
118–20, 136, 141, 145, 148–49, 153, 312 jytła), 95–97
continence, 65–68, 84, 158, 193 Familiaris Consortio ( John Paul II), 191, 193
contraception: the Anglican Communion, Family Renewal Association, 53n33
46–48; areas of disagreement in papal Finnis, John, 253n115
commission documents, 77; artificial, First Vatican Council. See Vatican Council I
John Paul’s argument against, 191–93; Cas- “Foundations of the Church’s Doctrine on
ti Connubii, 48–51, 75; Doms’s voluntarist the Principles of Conjugal Love, The”
argument regarding, 54–55; as a falsifi- (Wojtyła’s diocesan commission), 151
cation of the language of the body, 187; Fourth Lateran Council, 15, 31
majority rebuttal of papal commission, Franciscans and Dominicans, dispute be-
75–77; manualist position regarding, 4; tween, 24–25
minority report of papal commission, 74– Franzelin, Johannes, 37
75; the schema of the papal commission, freedom: of indifference, 26, 42–43, 254;
77–79; the Second Vatican Council, 70– innermost impulses, responsibility for,
72; von Hildebrand’s condemnation of, 181; love as interaction between passion
52. See also birth control; Humanae Vitae and, 239–44; the manualists’ concep-
Council of Trent, 32–33 tion of, 42–43; Ockham’s conception
creation: the body in, 169–70; original soli- of, 26–29
tude and, 165–69; of woman, 170–71
Crosby, John, 166, 173, 191 Gallagher, John, 13, 38–42, 50–51, 71, 82
Crowley, Patty, 68n110 Garrigou-Lagrange, Reginald, 94–95
Curran, Charles E.: “physicalism,” use of the Gaudium et Spes (Second Vatican Council),
word, 3n5; reaction to Humanae Vitae, 86, 69, 71–72, 78, 80, 140n71, 155–57, 168n20
88–90; as revisionist, 5; theology of the gender. See sexual difference
body, criticism of, 162n, 183n93, 194n145, Gibbons, William, 60
195n148, 196 Gilson, Etienne, 38
Gondreau, Paul, 222n120, 304–5
Delaney, John P., 53n33 Grabowski, John S., 4n6, 52, 54, 64n89,
de Lubac, Henri, 249n90 72n126, 221–22
Descartes, Rene, 201n8 grace: nature and, 249n90, 260–63; paradox
Dewan, Lawrence, 204 of, 24; in the state of original justice, 227;
Doepfner, Julius, 73 as a substantial quality, 263
Dominicans and Franciscans, dispute be- Gregory of Nyssa, 222
tween, 24–25 Gregory VII, 14
334 Index
Grisez, Germain, 253n115 of the body ( John Paul II’s catechetical
Gury, Jean, 34 talks); Wojtyła, Karol
Johnstone, Brian, 303n165
Hall, Pamela, 21 John XXII, 25
Harak, G. Simon, 228–29n162 John XXIII, 46, 68
Häring, Bernard, 5, 88–89 Jonsen, Albert R., 14, 33
Hittinger, Russell, 247n77
hope, 40, 264, 266 Kant, Immanuel, 98–100, 105–7, 118
Hoyt, Robert, 84–85n189 Kaufman, Philip, 85n190
human action. See action and agency, Kaveny, Cathleen, 196
human Kleutgen, Joseph, 37–38
Humanae Vitae (Paul VI): the encyclical, Krapiec, Mieczyslaw Albert, 103
79–84; as moral norm, 188–93; reactions Kupczak, Jaroslaw, 99, 101, 103–4, 146–47
to, 84–90; Wojtyła’s analysis of, 152–60,
163; Wojtyła’s defenses of, 6 Labourdette, Michel, 95
human perfection, 101, 109, 231n173, 251n97 Lambruschini, Ferdinando, 85–86
Human Sexuality: A Study Commissioned by law: intrinsic vs. extrinsic images of, 42; ob-
the Catholic Theological Society of Amer- ligations of, 35; Ockham on freedom and,
ica, 140n71 28–31. See also natural law
Hume, David, 106 “Law of Nature, The” (Wojtyła), 109
Husserl, Edmund, 118–20 Leo XII, 36
hylomorphism: of Aquinas, 198–204, 217, Leo XIII, 37–38
233, 273, 295, 304, 308, 310–11, 313; of “Letter to Families” ( John Paul II), 186n104
Aristotle, 198, 307 Ligouri, Alphonsus, 35–36
Lombard, Peter, 25–26, 266, 279
incommunicability, 134–35, 145, 194n146, love: attraction to the good and, 236–39; the
217–19, 233 gift of self and, 135; John Paul’s treatment
Ingarden, Roman, 98n22 of, 194n145; ordering of, 246–49; as re-
Innocent III, 15 formulation of the personalistic norm,
integration: the conjugal act and, 155–60; 129; sensuality and, 143–45; sexuality
control of the sexual instinct and, 149; re- and, 131n18; three aspects of, 132–35; uni-
sponsible parenthood and conjugal love, tive and procreative meaning of, 186–87;
necessary for, 155; transcendence and, Wojtyła on, 53n35, 129–30, 132–35. See also
121, 149–50 Aquinas on love
intellectus, 21 Love and Responsibility (Wojtyła), 5, 53n35,
110–14, 128–37, 139, 143–45, 147
Janssens, Louis, 5, 60–61, 64, 66–67 lust, 43, 181, 255, 258–59, 284, 291, 297, 302–4
Jesuits. See Society of Jesus Luther, Martin, 31
John of the Cross, Saint, 94–97 Lynch, John, 58–60, 64–66
John Paul II: Aquinas and, 1, 5–7, 10, 166; Fa-
miliaris Consortio, 191, 193; human person, Mahoney, John, 12–13, 31n84, 41
contributions to understanding, 194n146; Malthus, Thomas, 47
“Letter to Families,” 186n104; man finding Mann, J. A., 4n7
himself, theme of, 167n15; Memory and manualist tradition, 3; Aquinas’s moral the-
Identity: Conversations at the Dawn of a ology, discontinuity with, 11; critique
Millenium, 125; Mulieris Dignitatem, 312n1; of, 41–44; Humanae Vitae and, 89–90;
Redemptor Hominis, 167n15; scholasti- neo-Thomism and, 36–38; Ockham as
cism, unsuitability of, 2; “The Teaching of precursor for, 28; of the seventeenth
Humanae Vitae on Love,” 140n72. See also century, 35–36; of the twentieth centu-
spousal meaning of the body; theology ry, 38–41
 Index 335
Marechal, Joseph, 38 manuals, 35–36; twentieth-century man-
Maritain, Jacques, 38 ualists, themes of, 38–41; Wojtyła’s, basic
marriage: consent to includes carnal union, axiom guiding, 113–14. See also person-
298–99; ends of, 49–51, 130, 139–40, 280– alism; sexual ethics; Wojtyła’s ethics of
82, 288; as a friendship, 244–45, 285–87, sexuality
295; Humanae Vitae on, 82–83; indissol- Mulieris Dignitatem ( John Paul II), 312n1
ubility of for Aquinas, 283, 287–88; lan-
guage of the body in, 184–93; of Mary natural law: Aquinas’s understanding of, 42,
and Joseph, 304n169; personalist un- 226, 228n159, 282; contraception, argu-
derstanding of, shift to, 51–55; Pius XII ment against, 76–77, 81–83, 87–90; mar-
on, 56–57; revision of church teaching riage as a secondary precept of, 282–83;
on, advocacy of, 5; Roman Rota decree physicalism as a methodology based
on the nature and ends of, 55–56; as a on, 4n5; procreation and, 190–91; pru-
sacrament, 281, 284; the Second Vati- dence and, 253n115; reason as the basis
can Council, 68–72; self-gift of man and of, 226; Wojtyła’s understanding of, 91,
woman in, 142–43; sexual intercourse, as 109, 139, 190
proper place for, 145; in the Summa con- nature: freedom from and indebtedness to,
tra Gentiles, 285–88; in the Supplementum 170; grace and, 249n90, 260–63; marriage
to the Summa Theologiae, 279–85; three and, 279–81; sexual difference in, 221–22;
goods that excuse the pleasure of inter- three goods of human, 230; uniqueness
course, 297–99; as union of souls, 288, of each person and, 174
295, 304–5; Wojtyła on the nature of, 135– “Nature and Perfection” (Wojtyła), 109
41. See also Aquinas on marriage and the neo-scholasticism, 3
conjugal act; conjugal act neo-Thomism, 3, 36–41
marriage debt, 299–304 nominalism, 11, 25–31, 42
masturbation, 4, 75, 131 Noonan, John, 46–47, 51–52, 54, 74, 87n196,
Mattison, William, 183–84n94 301
McCarthy, David Matzko, 195
McClory, Robert, 68n110 O’Brien, Thomas, 229, 231n173, 251n97
McCool, Gerald, 36 Olsen, Glenn, 276
McCormick, Richard A., 87n196 ontology: basic necessity of Thomas’s, 125;
McHugh, John, 41–42 phenomenology and, Wojtyła’s effort to
McKay, Angela, 284–85, 287 synthesize, 111–14, 117; role of for Wo-
Memory and Identity: Conversations at the jtyła, 102
Dawn of a Millenium ( John Paul II), 125 O’Reilly, Michael, 142
Mercier, Désiré, 94 original justice/innocence, 226–28
Meyer, Charles R., 87n196 original sin, 22, 175–78, 229–32, 250
Miner, Robert, 237n11 original solitude, 166–69
moral theology and philosophy: Aquinas’s Outler, Albert C., 87n196
synthesis, 16–24; Azor’s presentation overpopulation movement, 47–48
of, 34–35; casuistry after the thirteenth
century, 31–36; the early penitentials and Pantin, William, 31n84
confessionals, 12–15; effects of Ockham’s parenthood: conjugal love and responsible,
nominalism on the history of, 30–31; 153–55; love and marriage, connection
manualism, critique of, 41–44; mystical to, 137, 306; responsibilities of, 78–82. See
theology and, separation between, 32; also marriage; procreation
neo-Thomism, birth of, 36–41; nominal- Pasnau, Robert, 200n4, 237n11
ism of William of Ockham, 25–30, 44; Paul VI: conjugal act, inseparability of pro-
scholasticism vs. the Enlightenment, 3; creative and unitive aspects of, 78n151,
seventeenth- to twentieth-century 81–83, 189–90; executive committee to
336 Index
Paul VI (cont.) “Problem of the Theory of Morality, The”
the papal commission on contraception, (Wojtyła), 123–24
73; Humanae Vitae, 6, 79–90, 152–60, 163, procreation: education and upbringing of
188–93; modi submitted to the Second children included in, 281, 287–88, 305; le-
Vatican Council, 69–70; papal commis- gitimation of the sexual act, Aquinas on,
sion on contraception, 68 259, 300–304; natural instinct for repro-
Pecci, Gioacchino, 37 duction, 148–49; natural law and, 190–91;
penitentials, the, 13–14 as order of nature in marriage, 136–37;
periodic continence, 65–68, 84, 158, 193 as primary end of marriage, 139–40; re-
Perone, Giovanni, 36 sponsible parenthood and, 153–54; sexual
personalism: Aquinas on the person, 214– difference for Aquinas in, 277; sexual eth-
19; birth control debate, emergence in, ics and, 3–4; the spousal meaning of the
62–64; in Humanae Vitae, 80, 82–83; mar- body and, 172. See also birth control
riage, value of, 51; the personalistic norm, Protestant Reformation, 32–33
128–30, 139–40, 142; Pius XII on, 57; re- prudence, 235, 250–57, 268, 271, 288
ligion and purity, connection between, purity, 141–43, 166n12, 178
141–42; rise of, 4–5; sexual ethics and,
137–40; understanding of marriage based Quay, Paul, 64
on, shift to, 51–55; of Wojtyła, 5–6, 112–22
“Personal Structure of Self-Determination, Ratzinger, Joseph, 199n1
The” (Wojtyła), 124 Raymond of Peñafort, 14–15
phenomenology: ontology and, Wojtyła’s reason: importance of for Aquinas, 225–26;
effort to synthesize, 111–14, 117; Thomism passion and, 239–44; procreation and,
and, question of combining, 314; Wo- 296–98; superiority of male for Aquinas,
jtyła’s first major study of, 102 278, 289; Wojtyła’s trust in, 108–9
physicalism, 3–5; in the birth control debate, redemption, 178–83, 187
63–65, 74; exterior principles of action Redemptor Hominis ( John Paul II),
and, 30–31; failure to incorporate the per- 167n15
sonalistic norm, 139; in Humanae Vitae, “Religious Experience of Purity, The”
89–90; in the language of Pius XI, 50 (Wojtyła), 141–43, 145
Pieper, Josef, 257 Richard of St. Victor, 217
Pinckaers, Servais: Aquinas’s theory of be- Riedmatten, Henri de, 73
atitude, 18, 22–23; freedom of indiffer- Roberts, Christopher, 278n18
ence, 254; manualists as descendants of Rock, John, 46, 64–67
Ockham, 11; manualist tradition, critique Roman Rota, 55–56
of, 41, 43; moral and mystical theology, Routhier, Gilles, 69
separation between, 32; on Ockham, 26, Różycki, Ignacy, 94n6, 98n22
28–31; on the pedagogy of the Society of
Jesus, 33–35; on virtue, 253 Sabetti, Aloysio, 42
Pius XI, 48–51, 65, 65n95 sacramentality, principle of, 175n49
Pius XII, 56–57, 61–62, 65 Sapieha, Cardinal Adam, 93
Plato, 24, 209–11 Scheler, Max, 98–102, 104–8, 117, 150n137
Popik, Kristin, 276–77, 279, 290, 292–93, 295 Schmitz, Kenneth, 104n57, 121, 150n134
Porter, Jean, 295 scholasticism, 2–3, 31–33, 36, 95
“Problem of Catholic Sexual Ethics, The” Schu, Walter J., 129, 184–85n96
(Wojtyła), 115–16, 137–40 Scotus, John Duns, 25
“Problem of Experience in Ethics, The” Second Vatican Council. See Vatican
(Wojtyła), 123–24 Council II
“Problem of Scientific Ethics, The” self-determination: Ockham’s view of, 28–
(Wojtyła), 108 29; relationship with God and, 168;
 Index 337
Wojtyła’s emphasis on, 113, 120, 123–24, of, 182–83; initial reference to, 172–73; lan-
128, 131, 146, 194 guage of the body and, 184–87; marriage
self-possession and self-governance, 150–51, and sexuality as normative expression of,
159–60 183–84n94; modes of expression of, 192–
self-preservation, 148–49 93n139; non-conjugal way, living out in
Selling, Joseph, 85n190 a, 183; original sin and, 177–78; redemp-
sexual act, the: Aquinas on, 222–23, 282; jus- tion and, 179–83; Thomistic support for,
tification of, 136–37; morally legitimate in 271, 306–7. See also theology of the body
marriage, 145. See also conjugal act ( John Paul II’s catechetical talks)
sexual difference: body-soul composite and, Stoics, the, 225
276–77; likeness to God and, 312n1; man Suarez, Francisco, 36
as head of the family, 283–84, 289–90; synderesis, 21–22, 24
marriage, relations in, 289–93; the mar- Szulc, Tad, 151n139
riage debt and, 299–300; masculinity as
superior to femininity according to Aqui- “Teaching of Humanae Vitae on Love, The”
nas, 277–79, 289; sexual identity, theories ( John Paul II), 140n72
of, 294–95; spousal meaning of the body temperance, 114n118, 252, 255–60, 268, 271,
and, 313; upbringing of children and, 288. 296
See also women theological virtues, 263–70
sexual ethics/morality: biology, physicalism theology of the body ( John Paul II’s cat-
as focus on, 3–4; casuistry’s dispropor- echetical talks), 162–64, 193–95; Aquinas,
tionate interest in, 43; personalist view compatibility with, 310–11; the body in
of the sexual instinct, 53–54. See also Wo- creation, 169–75; celibacy and virginity,
jtyła’s ethics of sexuality 183; central tenet of, 308; Christian per-
sexual instinct, the, 149 sonalism in, 5–6; consent, the body, and
sexual urge, the: as attribute of a person, truth, 184–87; creation and original sol-
137–38; natural and personal purpose of, itude, 165–69; critiques of, 195–96; Hu-
need for accepting both, 138; as natural manae Vitae as moral norm, 188–93; John
instinct, 143; Wojtyła on, 130–32 Paul II’s delivery of, 1–2; “optics of the
Shannon, William, 46, 52–53, 81 issue,” attempt to transform, 161; redemp-
Sherwin, Michael, 12n2, 238 tion of the body, 178–83; self-gift of hus-
Shivanandan, Mary, 102, 168, 180, 194n146 band and wife, the body and, 143; sexual
Sieve, Benjamin, 58–59 ethics, continuation of earlier work on, 6;
sin: definition of for Aquinas, 232; original, sin, shame, and concupiscence, 175–78;
22, 175–78, 229–32, 250; as preoccupation translations and publications of, 9–10,
of the manualists, 40–41 162. See also spousal meaning of the body
Smith, Janet, 47, 77, 79n156 Thomism, 2–3; Lublin school of, 103–4;
Society of Jesus: pedagogy of and manu- phenomenology and, question of com-
als of moral theology, 33–36; Thomism bining, 314; Wojtyła and the objective
and, 36–38 ontology of, 5–6; Wojtyła’s initial en-
Sordi, Serafino, 36 counter with, 93–94
soul, the: body and, 200–204, 211–13, 216–17; Torchia, Joseph, 214
image of God resides in, 220; powers of, Torrell, Jean-Pierre, 16
204–9; sensitive and rational parts of, re- Toulmin, Stephen, 14, 33
lationship of, 209 transcendence, 120–21, 146–47, 149–50
Spinello, Richard, 194 Tymieniecka, Anna-Teresa, 122–23n171
spousal meaning of the body: components/ Tyranowski, Jan, 94n6
characteristics of, 196–97; concept of, 1–2,
174–75; disintegrated use of sexuality, sub- Valsecchi, Ambrogio, 61, 63
verted by, 151; eschatological fulfillment Vatican Council I, 37
338 Index
Vatican Council II, 68–72 ground, 92–93; personalism of, Aquinas
Vaughn, Austin, 87n196 and, 5–6, 114–15; “The Personal Structure
virtue(s): Aquinas’s definition of, 250; char- of Self-Determination,” 124; “The Prob-
ity, 97, 114n118, 235–36, 260, 263–71; chas- lem of Catholic Sexual Ethics,” 115–16,
tity, 70, 114n118, 144, 232, 257–58, 291, 137–40; “The Problem of Experience in
296; infused and acquired, difference Ethics,” 123–24; “The Problem of Scientif-
between, 268–69; prudence, 235, 250–57, ic Ethics,” 108; “The Problem of the The-
268, 271, 288; temperance, 114n118, 252, ory of Morality,” 123–24; “The Religious
255–60, 268, 271, 296; theological: faith, Experience of Purity,” 141–43, 145; sexual
hope, and love, 263–70 ethics, difficulties of church’s understand-
von Hildebrand, Dietrich, 5, 51–53 ing of, 151, 160. See also John Paul II
Wojtyła on the body: in The Acting Person,
Wais, Kazimierz, 93–94 145–51; interior life of the person and
Waldstein, Michael, 9–10, 162, 194n145 personal inviolability, 141–43; in Love and
Weigel, George, 1, 151n139 Responsibility, 143–45. See also spousal
Weisheipl, James, 2n3 meaning of the body
West, Christopher, 196 Wojtyła’s analysis of Humanae Vitae, 151–53,
Westberg, Daniel, 19–20, 225 160–61; conjugal love and responsible
will, the: Aquinas on, 19–22, 104–5, 223–25, parenthood, 153–55; integration and the
228n159, 238–42, 247–50, 254, 260–61, conjugal act, 155–60; personalist ap-
264–66, 298; Franciscans, primacy for, proach to, 90–91
24; happiness and, 249n88; love and, Wojtyła’s early teachings and writings: The
239–42; Ockham on, 26–30, 44; in Schel- Acting Person, 5–6, 116–23, 145–51, 314;
er, 100; Wojtyła on, 104–8, 145, 150n137 following The Acting Person, 122–24; Love
William of Ockham, 11–12, 25–31, 44 and Responsibility, 5, 53n35, 110–14, 128–
Williams, George, 128n1 37, 139, 143–45, 147; Lublin lectures, 103–
Wojtyła, Karol: The Acting Person, 5–6, 116– 5; from the Lublin lectures to Love and
23, 145–51, 314; “The Anthropological Vi- Responsibility, 105–10; Saint John of the
sion of Humanae Vitae,” 156–58; Aquinas’s Cross, 94–97; Scheler, 98–103; the shift
deficiencies, amelioration/correction of, after Love and Responsibility, 114–16
312–14; Aquinas’s philosophy, description Wojtyła’s ethics of sexuality, 127–28; love,
of, 111n103; An Evaluation of the Possibility three aspects of, 132–35; love and the gift
of Constructing a Christian Ethics on the of self, 135; marriage, the nature of, 135–
Basis of the System of Max Scheler, 98–103; 41; the personalistic norm, 128–30, 139–
Faith according to St. John of the Cross, 40; the sexual urge, 130–32, 137–38
95–97; “The Foundations of the Church’s women: Aquinas on the nature and role of,
Doctrine on the Principles of Conjugal 275–79; defining in relation to the men
Love” (diocesan commission), 151; “The of their lives, 293–94. See also sexual dif-
Law of Nature,” 109; on love, 53n35; Love ference
and Responsibility, 5, 53n35, 110–14, 128–37,
139, 143–45, 147; “Nature and Perfec- Zalba, Marcelino, 63–64
tion,” 109; personal and intellectual back-
 Thomistic Ressourcement Series

Series Editors: Matthew Levering

Thomas Joseph White, OP

Angels and Demons

A Catholic Introduction
Serge-Thomas Bonino, OP
Translated by Michael J. Miller

The Incarnate Lord

A Thomistic Study in Christology
Thomas Joseph White, OP

The Mystery of Union with God

Dionysian Mysticism in Albert the Great and Thomas Aquinas
Bernhard Blankenhorn, OP

Introduction to the Mystery of the Church

Benoît-Dominique de La Soujeole, OP
Translated by Michael J. Miller

Christ and Spirituality in St. Thomas Aquinas

Jean-Pierre Torrell, OP
Translated by Bernhard Blankenhorn, OP

The Trinity
An Introduction to Catholic Doctrine on the Triune God
Gilles Emery, OP
Translated by Matthew Levering