“The Personalist Basis of the Church’s Teaching on Human Sexuality and the Natural Law in the Work of John Paul II” Part I and Part II which appeared in The Linacre Quarterly 2024, Vol. 91(1) (Part I) and Vol. 91(2) 168-180 (Part II)
Responding to Pope John Paul II’s call to give the “ethical grounds and personalistic reasons” behind the Church’s teaching on sexual morality, this reflection written over the span of two articles analyzes the norms of the natural law related to human sexuality from a personalist perspective.
The key ideas of this study are drawn from two passages: one from Gaudium et spes which states that “The sexual characteristics of man and the human faculty of reproduction wonderfully exceed the dispositions of lower forms of life”, the other from Humanae vitae stating that “Conjugal love reveals its true nature and nobility when it is considered in its supreme origin, God who is love,…and it is of supreme importance to have an exact idea of these.”
Part I provides an overview of natural law theory, explaining what it means that the natural law is not arbitrary, but the moral norms governing our actions in relation to the beings in the world are rooted in the nature and value of those things. Second, on the background of John Paul II’s idea that “the body is the person,” this article brings to light a type of bodily act (which I call an embodying act”) that is not only bodily, but one that forms an organic union with an act of the spirit.
Finally, we examine here the nature of love as consisting of two dimensions: of mutual self-giving as well as the fruitfulness arising from mutual self-gift. The analysis of “embodying acts” together with the analysis of love will be crucial for arriving at one of the main conclusions in Part II, namely, that the Church’s moral norms governing the use of the spousal act are not grounded in the biological structure of sex, but in the laws of love
“Masculinity and Femininity in their Symbolic Aspect” which appeared in Proceedings of the ACPA, Vol. 98 (2024) pp. 125–137
In this paper, I assume the essentially spiritual nature of masculinity and femininity, and consider them in their symbolic character. As created they are themselves contingent; but as symbolic, they are related to necessary or eternal realities which function as the organizing principle of their content.
I consider, on the one hand, how masculinity and femininity are clearly given in experience, and on the other, how the content of masculinity and femininity cannot be clearly grasped conceptually, and is thus elusive.
I then suggest what are the necessary realities symbolized by masculinity and femininity, namely, spontaneity and receptivity, respectively. Using a passage from Edith Stein’s Science of the Cross, I consider the depth and richness of the symbolism of masculinity and femininity, and thereby hint at how tragic contemporary culture’s attempt is to destroy them.
“’God is Love’”: Personal Plurality as the Completion of Aristotle’s Notion of Substance and Love as the Absolute Ground of the Divine Being” which appeared in Proceedings of the ACPA, Vol. 91 (2017) pp. 105–114
These reflections will, firstly, propose a philosophical solution to the Trinitarian problem of the “three-in-one,” and secondly, show how love is foundational to the divine being. Beginning with the Aristotelian notion of substance, I will show how substance undergoes a first modification in the consideration that substance finds its fullest realization in a person existing in a love-relation with another person. The highest instance of this, in turn, will prove to be found in persons whose very essences are constituted by such relationality and the communion resulting from it. This will force a second modification of substance: the unity of substance will turn out to have its highest instance in the moral unity of a plurality of persons existing in love—which leads to the solution of the “three-in-one” problem. I will end by reflecting on the foundational role of love with respect to absolute being.
“Human Sexuality: The Battle for the Human Soul” in Mary and the Crisis in the Church, ed. Roger Nutt. Sapientia Press: Baltimore, 2019 and in Clerical Sexual Misconduct: Challenges and Theological Considerations, ed. Jane Adolphe, Cluny Media, Inc.: Providence, 2021
“Only Union Plus Fruit Equals Love: A Personalist Reflects on the Teaching of Humanae Vitae” in Why Humanae Vitae is Still Right, ed. Janet Smith. Ignatius Press: 2018
“’Finis superabundant operis’: Refining an Ancient Cause for Explaining the Conjugal Act” in the Summer 2016 American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly
Dietrich von Hildebrand denominated the generation of new human life as the “superabundant end” of the spousal act not to deny but to refine the scholastic view that the child is the “end of the act,” simply. The act at the source of human generation is not straightforwardly generative; rather, its generativity is metaphysically grounded in it as a concrete act of union between the spouses. There are thus in some sense two finalities structuring the act, with a specific order between them: union and the fruitfulness following superabundantly from it. In this essay I bring to evidence the framework underlying von Hildebrand’s position by examining love as the forma of the spousal act and the significance of sexuality as an embodied act. I will conclude with some thoughts on how the concept of superabundance accommodates certain truths about the spousal act more readily than does the simple notion of finality.