Statement on Christopher West from Fr. Jose Granados

From Fr. Jose Granados:

"It is highly inadequate and open to serious misunderstanding to say that John Paul II took the sexual revolution a step further. For the principles that were at work in Puritanism, with its negative vision of the body, are the same ones at work in pornography and in the sexual revolution. In both cases the body is seen without reference to the dignity of the person and to the plan of God for man; it is deprived of its symbolism and its language. Puritanism attempts this by silencing the body and its urges; the sexual revolution (as expressed for example in Hugh Hefner) by exalting it as an absolute. In both cases (but especially in the latter) the body, and with it the human person, are despised, because they are cut off from their ultimate origin and destiny. Pornography is in no sense an attempt to recover the beauty of the body and sexuality, but a sign of despair regarding this beauty and the possibility of finding meaning in human love.

The recovery of the meaning of the body, with reference to love and to the mystery of man and God, is the novelty brought about by John Paul II’s Theology of the Body. The Pope’s proposal is not about sexuality, but about the truth of love as the foundation of the person’s dignity and the meaning of reality; and about the family as the place where the person finds himself and his way towards happiness.

Moreover, one of the results of the sexual revolution is precisely the pansexualism that surrounds our society. We cannot respond with a different kind of pansexualism, with a sort of “Catholic sexual revolution,” which in the end promotes a similar obsession with sex, even if 'holy.'"

Fr. Jose Granados
Assistant Professor of Patrology and Systematic Theology at the Pontifical John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family

Coauthor of "Called to Love: Approaching John Paul II's Theology of the Body"
(Source of article)