Love and Responsibility
by Karol Wojtyla
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Book Summary Information
Author: Karol WojtylaBrand: Ignatius Press
Edition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 1993-04-01
ISBN: 0898704456
Number of pages: 319
Publisher: Ignatius Press
Book Reviews of Love and Responsibility
Book Review: This Book Changed my Life. Tolle, Lege.
Summary: 5 Stars
This is a poetically dangerous book. I first read it some ten years ago, just after having graduated college, when I was emerging from my adolescent decadence & skepticism.. I was searching for understanding, for faith. The thought herein is so limpidly potent it made me high, like great poetry. It radically changed my thought & heart for good. For better. It made me actually embrace the Faith, and the Church's ethic on sexuality & the human person. It really sheds the deepest insight, revealing the pith of what it means to be a human being. To be a man or a woman, a Christian.
So I cannot possibly recommend it highly enough. It should be read by, or explained to every Christian, not just Catholic. It ought to be a part of every Catholic's catechesis, as well as at the top of the reading list of anyone who seeks to understand the Faith.
[Aside: If you are a priest, have you quoted this book in a homily yet? Please, Father.. I mean, I realize hearing from the likes of SS. Ambrose or John Chrysostom is waaay too much to ask, but can we get at least this much of the Tradition? Please? Is thirty years back already too far? By that mark we should have already had enough of the St. Louis Jesuits & their ilk by now.. and we all know we're *never* going to get sick of them!]
I've heard (or rather have read) some folks - a rank few - attack this work, and it's author, on the grounds that they are theologically suspect: for being phenomenalist. More Heidegger & Husserl, than Augustine or Aquinas.. For being modernist, in other words. Instead of being reactionary, the pope's too "liberal" for some. Funny. People are such a hoot.
All I can say is that I know nothing about this supposed masonic subversion of the papacy, myself. I only report the nattering for the sake of full disclosure, as it's the only negative criticism I've read of this book anywhere. Virtually every Catholic I respect who has read this book loves it.
Lots of folks from the other side of the spectrum shoot their mouths off and scratch their pens over the Church's teaching on sexuality in general, without ever really bothering to understand it. They call John Paul (and Paul VI & Benedict, etc., etc.) authoritarian killjoys, amongst worse things. (The Church's prohibition of condoms prevents the control of AIDS! Or didn't you know? Wait.. Or is it the Church's prohibition on sexual activity outside marriage? Is that killing people too? I get so confused.. Anyway..) They would never bother to touch this book. They cannot afford to give it a fair read. Like witches with water, trolls sun, vampires garlic, or Kal-El kryptonite, exposure to the truth in these pages burns.
Despite all the cocky posturing, I think many of them sense this.. They know it might actually awaken conscience, and move them to become someone they would rather not be. For, as we all know, an informed conscience can be a truly inconvenient thing. Tant pis..
But useful, nonetheless. Being that it can free you from unhappiness, addiction, "poor self esteem," and that ultimate killer of love, freedom & life: sin. Which is why this book and the "inconvenient" yet beautiful truth that it proclaims is so essential.
Purgatorial fire (Truth, Love) hurts, but cleanses.
Final admonition: acquire & read this book.
Summary of Love and Responsibility
Drawing from his own pastoral experience as a priest and bishop before he became Pope John Paul II, Karol Wojtyla has produced a remarkably eloquent and resourceful defense of Catholic tradition in the sphere of family life and sexual morality. He writes in the conviction that science--biology, psychology, sociology--can provide valuable information on particular aspects of relations between the sexes, but that a full understanding can be obtained only by study of the human person as a whole. Central to his argument is the contrast between the personalistic and the utilitarian views of marriage and of sexual relations. The former views marriage as an interpersonal relationship, in which the well-being and self-realization of each partner are of overriding importance to the other. It is only within this framework that the full purpose of marriage can be realized. The alternative, utilitarian view, according to which a sexual partner is an object for use, holds no possibility of fulfillment and happiness. Wojtyla argues that divorce, artificial methods of birth control, adultery (pre-marital sex), and sexual perversions are all in various ways incompatible with the personalistic view of the sexual self-realization of the human person.Perhaps the most striking feature of the book is that Wojtyla appeals throughout to ordinary, human experience, logically examined. He draws support for his views on the proper gratification of sexual needs, on birth control, and on other matters, from the findings of physiologists and psychologists. His conclusions coincide with the traditional teachings of the Church, which invoke scriptural authority. His approach ensures that non-Christians also can consider his arguments on their own merits.
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