Is this for real?
Dr. Carlos Taja from the US Conference of Catholic Bishops:
Tuesday, June 25, 2013
TOB Tuesday: The opposite of love
One observation Pope John Paul made while still known to the world (if he was known at all) as Karol Wojtyla was that the opposite of "loving" a person wasn't "hating" but using. When a person is reduced to a means decided by someone else, that person is being treated as a thing, not a person or partner at all. In Love and Responsibility, and later in his Theology of the Body, Wojtyla says that even when both parties in a relationship agree to what amounts to mutual exploitation, love--if it is there at all--is seriously compromised.
Is this for real?
Is this for real?
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3 comments:
I think this post also speaks to people using the Church, the body of Christ, for a specified purpose, too. Thinking about people who want the bells and smells and the aisle to walk down on their wedding day, but don't attend on a weekly basis, or who want their babies "done", baptized but not bring them to Mass, those who come at Christmas but not the rest of the year. They, too, cheat themselves and others out of an opportunity to meet Jesus in others and grow in faith, and those of us who are regulars miss out on their presence.
It's not enough to pay a fee for the prep class, for the building use, they owe it to themselves to indulge in the richness of Community. I know this is slightly off topic, but it came to mind that people misuse in many ways, always to their detriment, though they may think at the time they're getting what they want at the moment. - Jean
An interesting tangent, to be sure. I think it relates especially to our "commodified" culture: we are just used to being able to pay for the goods and services we want, without having them represent a commitment on our part. It may also be a sign of the fragmentation of our lives in which no one "piece" has any essential link to another: in this way of thinking "baptism" has no essential link to the rest of a child's life or a family's life; the wedding day Church ceremony has no essential link to the life of the couple in the Church, etc.
And maybe there is an "essential link" between this way of thinking and the inability to maintain a relationship in love...
Yes, you summed it up exactly. - Jean
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