Sunday, April 27, 2014

"the body, which has been promised the resurrection," or: "You are not your own; you were bought with a price."

"This moral theory does not correspond to the truth about man and his freedom. It contradicts the Church's teachings on the unity of the human person, whose rational soul is per se et essentialiter the form of his body.  The spiritual and immortal soul is the principle of unity of the human being, whereby it exists as a whole — corpore et anima unus — as a person. These definitions not only point out that the body, which has been promised the resurrection, will also share in glory. They also remind us that reason and free will are linked with all the bodily and sense faculties. The person, including the body, is completely entrusted to himself, and it is in the unity of body and soul that the person is the subject of his own moral acts. The person, by the light of reason and the support of virtue, discovers in the body the anticipatory signs, the expression and the promise of the gift of self, in conformity with the wise plan of the Creator. It is in the light of the dignity of the human person — a dignity which must be affirmed for its own sake — that reason grasps the specific moral value of certain goods towards which the person is naturally inclined. And since the human person cannot be reduced to a freedom which is self-designing, but entails a particular spiritual and bodily structure, the primordial moral requirement of loving and respecting the person as an end and never as a mere means also implies, by its very nature, respect for certain fundamental goods, without which one would fall into relativism and arbitrariness."

     Veritatis splendor 48.  "body and soul are inseparable: in the person, in the willing agent and in the deliberate act, they stand or fall together" (49).  Latin:

"Haec moralis disciplina cum veritate de homine eiusque libertate non congruit. Ea quidem Ecclesiae doctrinae de hominis unitate repugnat, cuius rationalis anima est per se et essentialiter forma corporis (Cfr. CONC. OECUM. VIENNEN. Const. Fidei Catholicae: DENZ.-SCHÖNM., 920; CONC. OECUM. LATERANEN. V Bulla Apostolici Regiminis: DENZ.-SCHÖNM., 1440). Spiritalis et immortalis anima principium est unitatis hominis, id scilicet est per quod veluti unum exsistit – corpore et anima unus (Gaudium et Spes, 14) – qua persona. Definitiones hae non modo ostendunt etiam corpus, cui resurrectio promittitur, gloriae fore particeps; verum et vincula rationis liberaeque voluntatis cum corporeis sensibilibusque facultatibus commemorant. Persona, corpore incluso, sibi ipsi penitus concreditur, atque in animae corporisque unitate ipsa suorum actuum moralium fit subiectum. Persona, per rationis lumen et virtutis fulcimentum, signa praenuntia in suo corpore detegit, significationem pariter atque donationis sui ipsius promissionem, ad similitudinem sapientis propositi Creatoris. Dignitate personae humanae prae oculis habita – per se ipsa confirmanda – ratio bonum morale nonnullorum beneficiorum peculiare percipit, in quod persona naturaliter tendit. Quandoquidem persona humana redigi non potest ad libertatem quandam quae de se ipsa disponat, sed spiritalem corporeamque structuram certam sibi vindicat, primigenia necessitas moralis amandi observandique personam humanam, quae est semper finis non merum instrumentum, intrinsece prae se fert nonnullorum bonorum praecipuorum obsequium, sine quo in relativismum et in arbitrium procumbitur."

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