The book St. John Paul II did and did not write

Viri dignitatem is Latin for “on the dignity of men.” When St. John Paul II published an apostolic letter entitled Mulieris dignitatem (On the Dignity and the Vocation of Women) on the feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin in 1988, he had much to say about women and motherhood as he did throughout his pontificate. He coined the term “feminine genius” to highlight the irreplaceable contributions of femininity to the world and to the life of salvation. On the other hand, he was widely criticized for seeming to neglect men and fatherhood. Given the crisis of fatherhood in the West, his apparent silence is a curiosity.

It is true that John Paul II didn’t publish a document on men, but one can still find implicit in his writings a complementary work to Mulieris dignitatem based on his understanding of human personhood and sex difference. He did in fact reveal much about the dignity and vocation of men in his writings. My book, Viri Dignitatem: Personhood, Masculinity, and Fatherhood in the Thought of John Paul II unpacks what he does have say about this important topic.

St. John Paul II’s pontificate ended nearly two decades ago. For most young Catholics, any awareness of him is likely due to his “theology of the body.” But while this work was interpenetrated with his anthropology, it was not a systematic description of it. Understanding his anthropology requires delving into the entirety of his work and his many influences. John Paul’s greatest contributions arose from his profound understanding of the human person. He was convinced the greatest threat to human civilization was our loss of the Christian understanding of the human person and so everything he taught and did began from his anthropology.

John Paul II had experienced in his youth violent attacks on human personhood in a most visceral manner, suffering first under the occupation of Nazi anti-human ideology only to be “rescued” by the same ruthless errors in Marxist Communism. Both ideologies reduced the value of the person to his usefulness to the collective, which effectively meant the state. By the time he was elected pope, Nazism was defeated but the Soviet Union as a world power still had the stage to promote its anti-human errors.

Yet in the free West the attack on human dignity had also reached a crisis point. The damage was not as visible as the violence of totalitarian socialism, but it had infiltrated most forms of mass media and entered into daily life. Its effects were being seen in skyrocketing divorce rates, family breakdown, and increasing societal fragmentation. It broke into the open with the sexual revolution, which was promoted as liberation from oppressive social norms. In reality, the Christian sense of human dignity was giving way to the person being reduced to his sexual value and appetite. A key point of entry of this attack was now on the doorstep of the Church in the debate about artificial birth control during the 1960s. John Paul’s theology of the body was a direct response to this covert attack on human personhood.

His theology of the body was introduced as a series of Wednesday audience catecheses from the beginning of his pontificate. These were drawn from a Polish manuscript he had recently completed, but which would remain unpublished, entitled Man and Woman He Created Them. These catecheses were perhaps the first glimpse the non-Polish speaking world had of John Paul II’s anthropology and his use of a relatively new field of study called phenomenology. He used this as a primary tool of investigation for his approach to personalism.

Personalism as a field of study comes in many forms, but what they all have in common is addressing the question: “what does it mean to be a person?” I would say that John Paul II’s distinct contribution to this field is that he moves us to ask the question: what does it mean to be a “who” as distinct from being a “what?” The answer to this question is necessary to understanding and articulating the meaning of the human person. To gain adequate insight into his anthropology and his personalism, one must start from the beginning, going all the way back to his time during Nazi occupation.

St. John Paul II’s approach to personalism is a unique integration of St Thomas Aquinas’ anthropology with contemporary insights from various fields of philosophical personalism, using phenomenology as his primary tool of inquiry. The result was a fresh approach to answering questions about the human person and human nature to which the contemporary world gave rise. Insights St. John Paul II gives us about the human person and human nature give a deeper account for what used to be obvious, that there can be no human person who is not either male or female.

His personalism indicates that sex must arise from who we are rather than what we are, though it completely permeates our nature, body and soul. In fact, it is only because we have a body that complementary sex difference is possible. The fact that we have a soul makes us more like the angels than anything else in the visible world. However, the fact that we are a seamless unity of soul and body enables us to reflect the interior life of the Trinity and Trinitarian love in a manner more perfect than the angels.

Therefore, the dignity of the human person, which is rooted in the fact we are made in the image of the Trinitarian God, is also rooted in the fact we are male and female. The dignity of each and every human person is inseparable from the fact he is male or female. Therefore, we are not able to understand ourselves if we do not understand what our sex difference means and we cannot fulfill ourselves if we are not able to embrace our femininity or masculinity.

For St. John Paul II, human fulfillment simply means that we bring to their authentic actualization all of the potentials God has put within us. We do this by knowing God and ourselves, and act according to these truths through our creative, free, and loving choices. What human beings have in common is we are all made for love, and we are brought to fulfillment in the degree to which we become perfect in loving.

Because sex difference is the foundational core of each human person it conditions the way each sex loves. Understanding the manner in which one loves as a man or as a woman is essential for personal fulfillment. John Paul indicates that masculine love first offers itself to the other, and secondarily receives love back again. Feminine love is the complement of this, forming the hierarchy of human love and revealing why the most intimate of human loves, reflecting Trinitarian love, must be complementary.

Mature human love in all other relationships is then either the love of fatherhood or motherhood. Masculine fulfillment is fatherhood, and the same is true for feminine love. Fatherly love is simply helping to bring to fulfillment in another that which has already been fulfilled in oneself but so done in the masculine mode of love. Before and throughout his pontificate, John Paul II provided a wealth of insights helping men to understand what this masculine mode of love (first initiating and then receptive love) should look like.

The starting point for orientating masculine love can be seen in marriage and what the saint termed mutual submission (see Ephesians 5:21). While mutual submission is given in the context of the marital covenant, its foundations arise from the complementary structure of human personhood. Its necessity is due to the effects of the fall, which can distort complementary love. Mutual submission reflects the hierarchical structure of complementary love, masculine initiating and feminine actively receptive love followed by feminine initiating love and masculine actively receptive love. Initiating love is manifested through the masculine mode of human nature in everything from gross anatomy to gametes and everything in between. It is seen in brain structure, the endocrine system, skeletal musculature, and the entire masculine human experience.

Because of concupiscence, these masculine gifts tend to be used not for love but for one’s selfish benefit. Yet, even without selfishness a man is still much more aware of his primary gift of initiating love. He is generally unaware of his need to secondarily, actively receive the other. He therefore must be taught actively receptive love. The man must learn to master his gifts arising from masculine initiating love in order to serve love, which is his is first task, not simply in marriage but in all of his relationships. Moreover, he must learn to experience and express the fullness of love, including his actively receptive love in these relationships.

In marriage, the husband’s actively receptive love requires trust and surrender, something to which he is not generally accustomed. This completes his initial offer of self-sacrifice to his wife, which St. Paul tells the husband is modeled for him by Jesus Christ on the Cross. Only by completing this structure of love is his offer of the headship of love fully authentic. A husband’s leadership is not a pagan demand that his will be done, but an offer of himself and a death to himself for the good of his wife, marriage, and family. His actively receptive love of his wife, though secondary, is still essential to overcoming his pagan/fallen inclinations.

John Paul reminds the husband that though he reflects Christ the Bridegroom in the analogy of the Great Mystery when it comes to headship, there is an infinite difference. The Christian husband isn’t God. So, to lead his family authentically, he must submit to his wife in the order of actively receptive love, an area in which her feminine genius gives her the advantage. This means a Christian marriage will look much more like a cooperative, collaboration in love than a master-servant relationship which we find in pagan civilizations. Mutual submission prepares him for fatherhood.

John Paul explains that men become authentic fathers by radiating God’s Fatherhood. This radiation of fatherhood is most perfectly seen in Jesus’ Passion and total self-gift for His Bride, the Church. He shows St. Joseph to be the model par excellence, of what this radiation of Fatherhood means for the daily life of a father. St. Joseph exemplifies the total self-sacrifice of a husband in setting aside his misgivings and fears of inadequacies in taking Mary as his wife. He approaches his vocation with the gift of an obedience of faith and makes himself an oblation in service of his office as husband and father. He accepts being the guardian and protector his wife and her maternity and collaborates with her in their joint vocation as parents of their Son.

The husband’s role as guardian and protector of the family and collaborator with his wife is directly related to his initiating love. These responsibilities, using the masculine gifts God has given him to meet them, arise from this foundational principle of masculine love. Yet, every human male has the responsibility, as a spiritual father, to protect the dignity of women and to collaborate with them in protecting the dignity of the human person. The man’s entire dignity is fulfilled in his taking up this responsibility.

Today the crisis of the human person has reached its nadir. The attack on the person now calls into question human personhood and sexual identity. The permanent givenness of sex difference is systematically rejected. While the widespread normalization of sexual dysmorphia and identity disorders had not yet come to the fore during John Paul II’s life, his anthropology and theology of sex difference provide the foundation for addressing this latest phase of the attack on the human person and Viri Dignitatem indicates how it can do so.