from the 1950s to the late 1970s Carol
vojta wah who eventually became Pope
John Paul the second was a professor of
moral philosophy at the Catholic
University of Lublin in Poland he
specialized in sexual ethics what we
call today may be issues of marriage and
family life he wrote two great books in
association with that philosophical work
the one is called the acting person and
I'll warn you it's a little bit heavy so
those who love serious philosophy can
read that book here another one though
called love and responsibility which is
a lot more accessible easier to read and
it's about love and sex and marriage
now those two books provide the deep
background for what as john paul ii he
produced namely these talks on the
theology of the body if you want the
deep background though read these
philosophical works from his earlier
career you know from John Paul's papacy
that he had deep love for young people
think of World Youth Day that he
sponsored and you know time and again
you see him interacting with young
people and it deeply concerned him that
young people were drifting into amoral
forms of behavior I think he wanted to
propose the church's moral teaching
especially in areas of sex and marriage
that has a burden but it's an invitation
to a fullness of life what I'm going to
do in this brief little video is to
share one insight from John Paul's very
rich Magisterium on the theology of the
body the insight is this and you see it
all the way from beginning this
philosophical work until the time of his
papacy every moral act accomplishes two
essential things on the one hand a moral
act produces its own immediate
consequences so you choose to do a
certain thing and certain consequences
follow from it but in the longer run
every act also helps to produce your
character every act contributes to the
person that
you are becoming so there are two things
the immediate result and then this
long-term result the building up of
character everything I do in the course
of a day is either building up my
character or undermining it it's as
though there's this long-term kind of
sculpture project going on is the person
that I am is being shaped by acts both
positive and negative now in saying this
job Paul is not engaging in some kind of
puritanical moralizing he's articulating
call it a law it's a it's a principle in
the moral and spiritual order I often
use these sports analogies which help me
think of a golfer who over and over and
over again swings the golf club badly
now believe me I know there are a
thousand ways to swing it badly so
you've done it over and over again what
happens is in time you become a bad
golfer you become someone who is
predisposed to hit the ball short and
crooked right let's suppose over and
over and over again you hit the golf
ball well you swing correctly well in
time you're building up your character
as a golfer you're becoming a good
golfer someone now predisposed to hit
the ball a far and straight well same is
true in the moral order in the course of
your life you're building up your
character either positively or
negatively John Paul saw that I think
very clearly and when he put his finger
on as a consequence is the danger of a
typically modern attitude which is this
you know I've done all kinds of bad
things but deep down I'm still a good
person and you can hear that in the high
philosophical discourse but you also
hear it all over the place in the
popular culture
you know I'm a good person even though
I've done all the bad things well it
just doesn't work that way John Paul
song according to this physics of the of
the soul there's a kind of dualism
that's built into a lot of the modern
sense of the self and it's interesting
to watch how over the centuries the
church has battled that I'll give it its
proper name is called Gnosticism
the view that there's a sure
divide between kind of an interior
spiritual dimension in this external
bodily dimension as though the body is
not affecting interior t/c in point of
fact we're not a dualistic hybrid in
fact were this coming together of spirit
and matter matter affects Who I am
the body matters in terms of shaping the
character that I'm becoming okay so
that's all the sort of philosophical
approach what I wanted to do now is
apply it to a very particular situation
which I know bothered John Paul the
second bothers a lot of people today
namely this hookup culture among too
many of our young people that's to say
the acceptance of the kind of most
casual most impersonal manipulative
forms of sexual behavior simply as a
matter of course young people are
feeling increasingly that it's okay to
engage in this kind of behavior now go
back you know even 25 or 30 years
teenagers were always engaged in
improper sexual behavior but there was
still I think a tendency to link sexual
expression to something like love or
commitment you know that even then it
was seen as somehow appropriate that it
belong within some kind of loving
relationship where people are seeing now
is that increasingly that's not the case
the young people are simply dividing
these two things out what's the problem
the problem is if John Paul is right you
cannot engage in all sorts of
manipulative superficial of trivial and
dangerous sexual behavior without
affecting your character it's not the
case that you simply remain a good
person underneath all of this kind of
problematic aberrant behavior now I'm
going to bring in to support me here too
not just John Paul but dr. Leonard Sachs
wonderful psychiatrist and writer wrote
a book called why gender matters I'd
recommend it very warmly to young people
and their parents to read the letter tax
is a six
Hayate rest' and he said the hook-up
culture is doing enormous damage to
young people and may I say especially to
women and he said his office is filled
with young people suffering from
depression anxiety low self-esteem
suicidal tendencies where's it coming
from Saks argues is coming from a sort
of cognitive dissonance between what the
wider culture is telling them do
whatever you want deep down you're a
good person and what their consciences
are telling them namely that this is
very dangerous behavior in terms of the
formation of their characters so both
john paul ii and dr. sacks i think are
seeing the truth of this intimate
relationship between what we do and who
we are
so I'm saying in summary go back to John
Paul every time you act you perform a
moral Act for wiegel or for whoa you're
shaping something namely you you're
shaping your own self your own soul your
own character for wheeler for whoa
you're becoming somebody I would urge
especially young people to keep that in
mind as you engage in different forms of
behavior you're not just performing
certain things which have immediate
consequences you're also for good or for
ill shaping the person that you are
becoming