Alice von Hildebrand on a Genuinely Catholic Theology of the Body

Alice von Hildebrand recently published a lengthy essay in critique of Christopher West’s manner of presenting the theology of the body. In the essay, she contrasts what she considers to be West’s rather vulgar and democratic presentation of John Paul II’s theology of the body to her own husband’s approach to similar themes.

I have only one point that I wish to draw from her presentation: and, above, I’ve only linked to a news account of it, as I did not have time to see if it was published on line. Her own husband’s theology was, presumably in contrast to West’s, thoroughly aristocratic in spirit, in the ancient tradition of orthodox monastic theology, seeing the Christian life, whether in the married state or celibate, as ascensional in Christ. He was horrified and repulsed by pornography and sodomy. These were, for him, unlike for many contemporary Catholics, even orthodox Catholics, vile and violent misuses of human freedom and of the body, as gravely serious in their nature and consequences as any sin. He was incapable of even joking about these acts, contrary to the blithe attitude of so many Catholics today.

Hildebrand was a man of genuine Catholic tradition and greatness of spirit. He was not a fashionable pre-vericator in expounding the nature of the Catholic tradition. He is a genuine role model of the faith for our times, especially, I would suggest, for lay Catholic men. Would that all Catholics today could see their lives as truly in Christ as Hildebrand did and allow their sensibilities to be shaped accordingly.

He is the antidote to those many theologians in the Anglosphere today who would claim to recover the great tradition of Catholic theology all the while thinking that it is morally right that, for instance, ”civil unions” for SSA couples should be established.

[And, I would add, the very idea of 'women's ordination' would likewise be horrifying to Hildebrand, and he would see it as connected to the same gross and diabolical misunderstandings of Catholic tradition and of the nature of the body that lead one to blithely ignore the grave consequences of sodomy or pornography. But I'd have to do a very long essay on that to make the point clear -- I only offer it here as an aside. And, besides, this is David's area of expertise, not mine.]