The discovery of Polish
texts predating Pope John Paul II's pontificate sheds new light
on his catechesis about love
and sexuality, says a leading scholar. Michael Waldstein, the
founding president of the International Theological Institute
for Studies on Marriage and the Family, and a member of the
Pontifical Council for the Family, changed his perspective on
John Paul II after the discovery of the texts. Waldstein shared his views on this catechetical work
with ZENIT in this interview.
ZENIT: What is the necessity of publishing a newtranslation
of John Paul II's theology of the body?
Waldstein: There are many problems in the existing
translation. For example, the key concept “significato
sponsale del corpo” — spousal meaning of the body —
which John Paul II uses 117 times, is translated in eight
different ways. The reason is easy to understand.
On any given Wednesday when John Paul II delivered
one of the catecheses at the general audience, the Italian
text was sent over to L'Osservatore Romano andwhoever
was on duty at the English desk translated it. The translators
did not have the work as a whole before them,
but they translated each catechesis individually. These
various inconsistencies indicate that there were several
translators.
Later translators could not go back and change the
translation, because it had already been published. The
edition by Pauline Books and Media is simply a compilation
of these translations.
And so there is a need for a systematic translation that
considers the work as a whole tomake decisions about
particular terms in light of the whole.
I began to retranslate passages that I needed for the
book about the theology of the body I have been working
on for the past five years. At a certain point the
decision to translate the whole text became the logical
next step, so I contacted Pauline Books and Media.
It seemed a providential moment, because the
Daughters of St. Paul had become increasingly aware of
the need for a new translation and were praying that
God would show them some way to produce it.
It has been both wonderful and fun to work with them.
They are professional and animated by a strong love
for John Paul II.
There is a second reason why we need a new edition. It
is even more important.
The current translation does not contain John Paul II’s
own headings. Just imagine reading a complex work
like Kant's “Critique of Pure Reason” with all the headings
gone. You would get lost like someone in the fog.
You wouldn't know where you are or where you are
going. The headings help to organize the work as a
whole.
ZENIT: Why did earlier editions not have these headings?
Where did you find them?
Waldstein: I found them at the John Paul II archives in
Rome. It was an exciting discovery.
Like many people, when I began reading the “Theology
of the Body” I felt disoriented. A deep argument
seemed to be going on, but its overall structure was not
clear to me.
Some people say the “Theology of the Body” is like this
because John Paul II was a phenomenologist rather
than a Thomist, or a mystic rather than a theologian, or
a Slav rather than a Western European. In the work for
my book, I thought I had made some real progress in
understanding the overall structure.
Still, I wanted to know how John Paul II himself
thought of it. I felt sure he must have had an outline
when he wrote the work.
So about half a year ago I went with a Polish friend to
the Dom Polski, the Polish Pilgrim House in Rome, on
the Via Cassia,where the John Paul II Archives are kept.
We looked through the Italian materials, but found
nothing. We were disappointed, but asked the director
of the archives if he had anything else. Yes, he said, we
have the materials of the Polish translation, but you
will not find anything there that is not in the Italian, because
the Italian is the original text.
We decided to take a look nevertheless and found a
Polish text that had a five level division with headings
I had never seen before. It turns out that Cardinal
Wojtyla wrote the theology of the body in Polish before
his election in 1978. It seems to have been ready for
publication.
We became fully sure about the priority of the Polish
text only when we managed to contact the sister who
actually typed the manuscript in Krakow before John
Paul II's election.
In the archives we also found a handwritten note from
John Paul II to his secretary that explains that the structure
of the theology of the body would remain exactly
the same when he adapted it for the series of catecheses.
Having these headings is a revelation. It opens up the
text in amazing ways. You see how rigorous John Paul
II's writing really is.
The reason why other editions don't have these headings
seems to be the relatively isolated life of the
individual catecheses. John Paul II delivered them one
by one without, of course, saying, just to take one example,
We are now in Part Two — The Sacrament;
Chapter Two—The Dimension of Sign; Section Two—
The Song of Songs; Subsection Three—Eros or Agape?
That would have been unintelligible. When he was finished,
the catecheses were collected and assembled, but
the knowledge of the structure of the whole was lost.
Only John Paul II's Polish collaborators had this knowledge.
I don't know why it did not cross the language
barrier into Italian.
ZENIT: What reasons could you give for the growing
attraction of people to the theology of the body?
Waldstein: To all men and women, their own body is
very precious, and what happens with that body, especially
in love, in erotic relations, is very significant.
Nobody can be indifferent to sexuality. To make sense
of sexuality, deep sense, penetrating sense that shows
the beauty of union between man and woman, and also
the beauty of celibate life, is worth a good amount of
effort.
This is the main reward of climbing the tall mountain of
the theology of the body. You see your own body differently.
You see it as being full of meaning. This is my
experience and the experience of the many students
with whom I have studied the theology of the body
here in Austria.
ZENIT: What is particularly revolutionary about John
Paul II's ideas of the human person and sexuality?
Waldstein: In his preface to the new translation,
Cardinal Schönborn singles out three striking theses
that are relatively new in Catholic magisterial teaching.
One, the image of God is found in man and woman
above all in the communion of love between them,
which reflects the communion of love between the persons
of the Trinity.
Two, in God's design, the spousal bodily union of man
and woman is the original effective sign through which
holiness entered the world.
Three, this sign of marriage “in the beginning” is thus
the foundation of the whole sacramental order.
I am not sure though whether “revolutionary” is quite
the right word, because John Paul II's roots in the tradition
are so deep and he stands in such substantial
continuity with it.
In the introduction that I wrote for the new translation
I show that John Paul II is deeply rooted in St. John of
the Cross, in particular in the Mystical Doctor's spousal
understanding of Christian life. On his death bed, when
his brothers prayed the traditional prayers for the dead,
St. John of the Cross waived them off and asked them
to read the Song of Songs.
Of course there are many tributaries to John Paul II's
vision of sexuality, but at the very heart of his vision,
John Paul II unfolds the implicit theology of marriage
in St. John of the Cross. When Karol Wojtyla was 21, before
he entered the seminary, he learned Spanish to
read St. John of the Cross in the original, and seven
years later he wrote his dissertation under Garrigou-Lagrange about his favorite poet and theologian.
In comparison with much theological writing about
marriage in the Catholic tradition, which approached
marriage often from the point of view of law—to help
confessors and those who had to judge marriage cases
— John Paul II's approach is decidedly
“personalistic”and focused on the actual experience of
love. He himself helped to form this fresh vision of love
during Vatican II and it is the predominant form of his
thinking in the theology of the body.
He explains that in some streams of the Catholic tradition
sex itself got blamed for the trouble it seems to
cause so many people because of theintensity of the
pleasure.
The theology of the body rejects that mechanism of
shifting the blame from the heart to sex. John Paul II is
radically anti-Manichaean. Human sexuality is good, created by God as a "language of the body" to expresslove, to express the gift of self between man and
woman.
ZENIT: What are some of the main themes emphasized
in this new translation?
Waldstein: I try out to bring out in the introduction that
the theology of the body responds to a split between
the person and the body as seen in the history of philosophy.
It goes back to the reconstruction of knowledge for thesake of power over nature in Francis Bacon and
Descartes and the scientific revolution they spearheaded.We owe the “scientific” rationalist way of
looking at nature to this ambition for power.
John Paul II is very conscious of this history and of the
modern split between person and body. He explicitly
attempts to overcome it. There are many passages in
which he says, directly against Descartes, that the
human person “is a body,” not just “has a body.”
The human body with the sexual language created by
God has a deep kinship with the person. The sentient
body is created for the person as an expression of personal
love.
In fact, the body is immediately and directly personal,
because the person “is a body.” A great Thomist, Charles
De Koninck, came up with a variation on Descartes' famous
statement: “Sedeo ergo sum, I sit therefore I am.”
This is much in the spirit of John Paul II.
It was important to get the passages about the relation
between the person and the body absolutely clear. They
were a bit obscure in the old translation.
One theme is very decidedly de-emphasized in the new
translation, namely, lust. In the existing English translation,
Jesus says, “Whoever looks at a woman lustfully
has already committed adultery with her in his heart”
— Matthew 5:28, following the Revised Standard
Version.
John Paul II's translation is much closer to the Greek
original. It has “Whoever looks at a woman to desire
her.” The difference is important. Desire can be good or
bad; lust is a vice.
In the Italian text of the theology of the body, you can
find the word “lust” — “lussuria” — four times. You
can add six instances of lustful — “libidinoso” — and
11 of “libido” for 21 defensible instances of “lust.”
In the existing English translation, you have “lust” 343
times. That is a massive multiplication of “lust.” The
reason is the RSV translation of Matthew 5:28—“looks
lustfully.”
When John Paul II discusses Jesus' words in detail and
repeatedly uses the word “desire” — “desiderare” or
“desiderio” — in agreement with his own translation
— “looks to desire” — the existing English translation
tries to preserve the connection with the term “lustfully”
and often translates “desire” as “lust.”
It multiplies “lust" further by frequently using it to
translate “concupiscenza.” But concupiscence is a
wider concept than lust. Sexual concupiscence is only
one of its species. The multiplication of “lust” introduces
a note of pan-sexualism that is foreign to John
Paul II.
ZENIT: Has the target audience changed from the original
translation? Would the average lay person find this
text easy to read, or is it more of a scholarly work?
Waldstein: The target audience is the universal Church.
The theology of the body is a catechesis designed for
the universal Church, for everybody, though in different
ways.
It is a difficult work, though it has many passages that
are fantastically powerful, poetic and clear. John Paul II
seems to have written it as one would write a theological
journal: with all the philosophical and theological
resources available to him.
Vatican II says about preaching and catechesis that they
are the primary means for a bishop to exercise his
teaching office. In accord with that principle, the ordinary
Magisterium of the Pope consists mainly in his
preaching and catecheses.
It is clear that John Paul II intended these catecheses for
the universal Church. In that way, the theology of the
body is for everybody. Since it is a difficult text, there
needs to be much work of explaining and popularizing.
At the other end of the spectrum, in the academic
world, the theology of the body has not been studied
much. My Introduction is an attempt to open up the
text a bit for academic study.
In the theology of the body John Paul II was really
wrestling with the fundamental questions of our age,
the question of progress, of the nature of science, of
technology and its good as well as dangers, etc. It is a
powerful contribution to the debate about those questions
and deserves a hearing....
I am convinced it will increasingly speak to people and
have a profound impact. It is what our culture needs.
