Current Issue: Spring 2007 (Vol I)
Whose Body Is It Anyway?
Occasionally, on Saturday mornings I travel with the Boston College Pro-Life Club to the local Planned Parenthood to pray the Rosary as women enter the abortion clinic. I pray for the women walking through those doors amid abortion supporters who wave banners, fighting for the rights of those same women. I believe that, in their hearts, the members of both groups truly want what is best for the women. Yet this is not what the debate between the two groups is ultimately about—rather, what divides them is a question of the freedom and ownership of one’s body.
What I read on the banners there is the claim that women own their own bodies and should be able to choose what they do with them. In this, the supporters follow in the footsteps of Margaret Sanger, founder of what has become Planned Parenthood, who believed that “no woman can call herself free who does not own and control her body.”1 Is this ownership of body, then, ultimately what sets a woman free?
John Paul II, in his apostolic letter “On the Dignity and Vocation of Women (Mulieris Dignitatem),” presents a view of woman that is entirely different, one undoubtedly difficult for some to accept. Our bodies, he writes, although entrusted to us and an indispensable part of our being, are not solely our own. We did not create our own bodies, nor will ourselves into existence; God did, through our parents. And not only did He make us, but He continuously sustains us. Such a fact makes us partners in ownership with God. Furthermore, John Paul II holds that woman’s freedom is to be achieved only through “a sincere gift of self.”2
The starting point for John Paul II’s understanding of woman is that humans are made in God’s image and likeness. Any object made in another’s likeness, it seems, fulfills its purpose only in relation to the original. Thus the statue of Ignatius of Loyola in front of Higgins Hall is successful in so far as it accurately portrays Ignatius himself. Women and men are clearly not made to be physical representations of an immaterial God (though they are, separately and together, a physical manifestation of Him). But they are made in His image and likeness. Thus John Paul II states that “no human being, male or female, created in the image and likeness of God, can in any way attain fulfillment apart from this image and likeness.”3
Thus to understand who man and woman are created to be, we need to understand who God is. Through God’s self-revelation, we know of His Trinitarian nature: God the Father perpetually gives of Himself to God the Son who returns this gift by giving all of Himself back to God the Father. This love between them is manifested as the Holy Spirit. And this model of giving, according to John Paul II, is to be found in those made in God’s image and likeness.
This idea constitutes the basis for his philosophy of the woman. Had we not been created in God’s image and likeness, the dignity and purpose of each human being would have little meaning, and our obligations would be only to ourselves. The fact that we are made in God’s image and loved personally by Him calls humans to respond to God’s love by loving others, and above all Him.
Recognizing this basic equality that exists between all men and women, namely that all are made in God’s image and likeness, we might wonder why it was essential for God to make two different “kinds” of human beings. John Paul II believes that the answer lies in the inherent complementarity between man and woman. Just as the hues of a color wheel naturally complement and enhance one another, so too do men and women. Each color can, of course, stand on its own. But, as the Impressionists found, it is when they are brought together that blue is most blue and orange most orange.
In a similar way, the natures of men and women are complementary, each created to fulfill a distinct purpose for which one’s sex is not a random detail but an essential function. Humanity is not simply one massive splash of orange: it is blue and orange; or, if you like, blue and pink. And, though they have these distinct “colors” or callings, men and women still need each other. That’s the point of distinct color in the first place. They “exist mutually one for the other,” and their union is more important than their separation.4 In order to fulfill who they are, men and women must make of themselves a “sincere gift of self ” to other men and women.5
Women, then, are called to give of themselves, both physically and spiritually. How they do so, however, is just as important as that they do so. Women must take responsibility for their actions and choose to give in a way that will serve God and others. We are partners with God, not His puppets. He does not choose how we use our bodies; we must choose this for ourselves. Our bodies are a beautiful gift, but we must acknowledge that they have been given to us.
Recognizing how God made us is an important first step in knowing how we must act, since we are to act so as to fulfill our God-given nature. John Paul II, who came to a deep understanding of the feminine nature through years and years of close pastoral “Women must take work with women, emphasizes above all the responsibility for their woman’s capacity and proneness to receive. This actions and choose to characteristic receptivity, seen by so many as give in a way that will a weakness, is proclaimed by John Paul II to be serve God and others. central to a woman’s strength and essential to We are partners with her fulfillment as a woman. Far from what the God, not His puppets.” world sees as mere “submissiveness,” for John Paul II, to receive is to give. Mary, the chosen Mother of God, received God’s gift in her “yes” to Him and gave back God unto the world. This unforeseen pregnancy had not likely been in her life plans. But it was through her maternal and spiritual gift of self that God’s plan for the world was fulfilled. By choosing her as a vessel, He shows us how very significant women are in His plan.
Women, of course, are not limited to motherhood, but neither is motherhood limited to the physical. “Motherhood,” John Paul II states, “concerns the whole person, not just the body, nor even just human ‘nature.’”6 Women’s natural potential for motherhood, whether literal or spiritual, is something to be positively embraced rather than rejected. It is the uniquely feminine capacity for sacrificial love. Though some feminists might counsel escape from or avoidance of this “burden,” John Paul II calls on women to embrace it, thereby gaining the characteristics of moral and spiritual strength (which are motherly traits). It is because of these traits that “God entrusts the human being to [women] in a special way… precisely by reason of their femininity—and this in a particular way determines their vocation…. A woman is strong because of her awareness of this entrusting.”7
The fact that women must make a gift of themselves in order to be truly free does not thereby free men from culpability in abusing women and their gifts. Sent to be a “helpmate” to woman, man has, instead, all too often hindered her or worse from sincerely giving herself to God and others. This is in direct opposition to God’s will; Jesus always acted in a way that protested “whatever offends the dignity of women,” engaging the outcast Samarian at the well and defending the adulterous woman who was to be stoned.8
John Paul II, recognizing the immense suffering women have felt at the hands of men, lovingly reaches out to them: “In this suffering a woman’s sensitivity plays a role, even though she often succeeds in resisting suffering better than a man…. With these sufferings too we must place ourselves at the foot of the Cross.”9 This view of women frankly acknowledges the sin of men. But for John Paul II, the focus is not as much on the negative role men have played as on the positive role women have. Since God trusted the woman Mary to be the first mover in the “salvific event” of Jesus’ life—Mary, whose heart was pierced because of her deep compassion—one can infer that a woman’s sensitivity gives her a special gift. It was her calling to fulfill His plan in a way that only women can. This feminine responsibility and privilege is cause for rejoicing!
John Paul II focuses on uncovering the realities about the nature of a female, but he does not provide specific ways in which the woman can fulfill this nature. He does not do so because he cannot do so; each woman is called to a very specific and very unique vocation within her Christian life, known to her and God. What he does do is show that living a life of self-gift is freedom, because it allows a woman to fulfill her nature and become an instrument of God. It is not necessarily freedom from suffering, but it is a freedom to bear that suffering with faith; for suffering in the hands of God can and does become salvation.
The abortion clinic is too often the final step in a woman’s analysis of how to deal with the situation in which she has found herself, the impact of which will doubtless change her life. I cannot know the thoughts running through the heads of those entering the clinic; yet, I imagine, in their hearts, some feel they have no other choice, that they have somehow become not more but less free, that they are slaves to their bodies in a world that tells them that abortion is their only choice. John Paul II aims to reach women in this desperate position, acknowledging that, from the beginning, their bodies were made to glorify God and that their freedom lies not in their power to choose in the end but to give in the beginning, to serve God by giving themselves back to Him.
1. Margaret Sanger, Woman and the New Race (New York: Brentano’s, 1920), 8.2.
2. John Paul II, Apostolic Letter Mulieris Dignitatem (15 August 1988), 3.
3. Ibid., 5.
4. Ibid., 7.
5. Ibid., 8.
6. Ibid., 4.
7. Ibid., 36.
8. Ibid., 18.
9. Ibid., 24.
Meredith Brennan is a junior in the Lynch School of Education majoring in Human Development. She is also majoring in Philosophy and minoring in Spanish in the school of Arts and Sciences. She is interested in making the late Pope John Paul II’s Theology of the Body accessible and relevant to our society, and hopes to continue studying the relationship between psychology and philosophy in light of his theology. Meredith aspires to pursue a career in counseling upon graduation, one which places the Catholic faith at the center of the understanding of the human person. She is currently considering marriage and family counseling, as well as working with youth.