When I was trying to decide whether or not to become Catholic, one of the differences I noticed between Catholicism and Protestantism was how Catholics incorporated physical aspects into things. (This wasn’t a huge stumbling block, like say Mary, just a difference.) I guess I could best describe this as sensory experiences. Worship appealed to the five bodily senses and not just to the heart or mind. Examples: the smell of incense, the taste of the Eucharist, the sight of statues, the touch of baptismal water and rosary beads, the sound of chanting (phew, I got all five!). I hypothesized that this was because back when mass was held in Latin, people didn’t actually know what was going on and so the priests had to do something to keep the parishioners involved.
I was wrong. The thing is, Catholics recognize the fact that we humans do have bodily form. I know as a Protestant I never thought about my body at all – faith was all about what I was thinking and feeling and how God was working in my heart and my mind – the body was just a disposable shell for the soul (of course I didn’t articulate it that way to myself, but I think that’s an accurate description). Catholics recognize that we are body persons. I know, kind of a weird way to express it, but it makes sense. We’re not just disembodied spirits. We can use our entire body to worship and serve the Lord.
The Bible talks about our bodies all the time. For example: 1 Corinthians 6:18-20, 2 Corinthians 4:10-11, Philippians 3:20-21, and we won’t even get started on the Song of Songs. “I urge you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God, your spiritual worship.” Romans 12:1
So we really shouldn’t try to separate the body from the soul. It’s a unit, and we’ll be that way in heaven, too (although in glorified bodies, which I’m looking forward to – can you imagine?!). God created our bodies with desires for good things that we need: hunger, thirst, sleep, and yes even sex. It’s just that sin creeps in and turns these good desires into disorders. Thankfully Jesus came and stepped in, so we have strength to fight these disorders.
Every human being is a creation of God with a soul and a body that can spend eternity with God. And that’s what He wants! Because each human is so precious to God, we should never treat them as objects instead of people. We should honor the dignity of every individual. And all of this in a nutshell is what leads to the Church’s teachings on issues like abortion, contraception (I’ll try to broach that next week), the death penalty, euthanasia, stem cell research – basically all issues related to human life.
Sorry to go on about that – but I’ve been reading a study guide to John Paul II’s Theology of the Body and wanted to try to verbalize what I had been reading (and my husband's tired of hearing about it). I'm no philosopher, so I’m sure I haven’t done it justice in the least, but hopefully I’ve got the basic principles right!