Veritas in Caritate

Last week, I saw Ironman, and it confirmed to me that when it comes to seeing pain, I’m a wimp.  It’s not that I don’t have an acceptable pain tolerance myself, but throw up an image of someone getting the magnet that was keeping shrapnel from piercing his heart ripped out of his chest, and you can pretty much bet you will find me with my eyes closed and my hands reaching longingly for the mute button.

The Immaculate Heart of Mary

This is not all that abnormal. Many people hate seeing others in pain—some have even not been desensitized to it.  But, fear not, this is not another Catholic jeremiad bemoaning the moral decline of our society.  See, I seem to be an abnormality with my reaction to others’ pain.  But the anomaly goes deeper than that.  I’m not only uncomfortable about people being hurt physically, but also when they’re hurt spiritually.

You might ask what this means.  Well, as a Catholic, I believe in a soul.  I also believe in this pesky little thing called “objective morality,” which basically means that every time you do something wrong, you are tearing your soul kicking and screaming further from God.  And that’s no better for the soul than Tony Stark‘s chest magnet being ripped out is for his heart.

In practice, that means that watching my friends do something morally wrong is the spiritual equivalent of watching them cut themselves.  No wonder I get so uncomfortable at frat parties.

Of course, when someone’s cutting himself, the proper response isn’t to threaten him with the fires of Hell.  It’s not the time to lecture him about the sanctity of the body, and how God is angered by the desecration of His temple. The person who cuts himself is broken, and in need of healing, and so the proper response is love.  And love is not driven by fear, but is patient and kind.  And it’s love that conquers all.  Sure, at some point the “that wasn’t okay” conversation should probably happen, and this can serve an important point for accountability.  However, having that conversation at the wrong point in time not only doesn’t help, but can undo progress that had been made.   

Jesus and the Woman Taken in Adultery
Gustave Doré 

So me striding into Shooters during alumni weekend with a sign announcing, “Hell awaits you! Repent!” is probably not quite the Christian way.  Sure, the Catholic who goes to a frat party and sees some of the partygoers taking a knife to their soul perhaps should feel uncomfortable about it, just as we all feel uncomfortable about self-mutilation.  However, the to inflate ourselves and self-righteously condemn so we can distance ourselves from the messiness that comes with sitting at table with sinners breaks Jesus’ examples just as the sins they themselves commit.

After all, many of those same partygoers simply disagree with Catholic morality. Some have even thought much deeper about it than the Catholics who want to condemn them have.  I personally find getting drunk to be probably morally questionable, and I find a faithful homosexual relation to be probably not.  Many Catholics probably disagree with me on one or both counts.  But I promise you screaming Leviticus 18:22 at me will change my mind no more than me going to LDOC yelling about Ephesians 5:18 would stop the Catholics there.  I’ve thought quite deeply about these issues, and if your first response is to tell me which are my sins rather than finding the Christ within me, perhaps your priorities are misplaced.  

Once we have a mutual understanding in love, which bears all things and endures all things, then we can work to find the truth.

A Temple of the Lord

I spent last week eating healthfully and going to the gym.  Your first reaction is probably an approving, “Good for you, Shane!”  And indeed, heaven knows I need to work on my health, since every academic year I seem to do my best to drown my body’s best efforts at longevity in excessive caffeine, sugar, sedentariness, and sleep deprivation.  If our bodies are a temple of the Lord, I have been damned a thousand times over for its wanton desecration. 

But, I’ll be honest: last week’s veggies and gym sessions weren’t peace offerings to assuage my wronged God.  And as few calories as I was eating and as many hours as I was spending in the gym, it’s a bit excessive to try to spin it as “being healthy.”  And it’s not like I particularly need physical strength—few of us do: athletes, military/intelligence personnel, and those in some labor intensive industries such as construction.   So why would I care so much? 

If I’m honest with myself, I can only conclude I had an extremely simple reason—I wanted to be more attractive.  This is absolutely normal, right?  How many guy want to bulk up?  How many girls want to slim down?  And it makes sense, considering that despite disputed efficacy, the body-building supplement industry was worth $2.7 billion in 2008, and the diet industry was worth a whopping $60 billion in 2011.  And our popular media agrees: Stephanie Meyers seems to excuse Edward Cullen for his rather obsessive stalking with frequent reference to his “marble Adonis” body.  But, again, this is absolutely normal, right?   I just watched Thor—what guy doesn’t want a body like Chris Hemsworth?

Probably Christ for one. The Bible talks about many aspects of His life and death—but it seems remarkably thin on Jesus’ workout regimens.  In His years preaching on Earth, God somehow didn’t see fit to mention, “Blessed are the hot.”

So why do we strive so much to have a “hot body”?  I don’t need it for my career; I don’t need it to be healthy.  Well, what is “being hot”?  It seems to be generally a measure of how much you can make another person “want” you merely upon looking at you.  When Jesus warns, “everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart?”  (Matthew 5:27) he is speaking about this exact thing we are attempting to evoke with our workout regimens and protein supplements.

If we actually succeed in this, we are literally leading those around us to sin.  Sure, it fans our ego to have all the girls or boys talking about us, and perhaps we can’t help but wonder if anyone would date is if we’re not attractive enough.  But if we accomplish in making all those who look at us covet us, we have converted our body into a temple to ourselves, not a temple to the Lord.

This is not to say we should never work out or eat healthfully: being healthy, staying fit, making sure we’re able to do what is required of us are all deeply ingrained in the Catholic Tradition.  From the very beginning of religious orders, the Benedictines have divided each day into care for the body, mind, and soul, and the Jesuits have always discussed cura personalis—care for the whole person.  But we must be careful not to go too far, or act in an immodest way (why did you just take your shirt off in front of all those people?  And what exactly is the purpose of that plunging neckline?).

After all, for all the care we can spend sculpting our bodies for possible human lovers, how many of us spend that same amount of time sculpting our soul for God?  The Church teaches that our bodies are sacramental; what we do with them—and why—have eternal reverberations in our soul. 

Honestly, my reckless disregard for my physical health during the school year is against my faith.  I’m not Jesus; when I destroy my temple, it takes more than 3 days for to rebuild it.  But with the modern world telling us we’ll never have a boyfriend or girlfriend unless we have a certain body, it is so easy to fall prey to the other extreme, and allow our bodies to become idols.

Or perhaps it’s not just society.  Perhaps we fear, deep down, we’re the ones who are shallow.  If we have the right body, we’ll probably end up having our pick of physically attractive partners, and we'll never have to stop and reflect that we don't look with heaven’s eyes and see the whole person, but merely life on the surface.

Because above all, if love is skin-deep, then true covenantal marriage is impossible, and if we cannot overcome desire to possess others’ bodies, then even our closest relationship with our spouse will be tainted with sin.