Self-Giving and Human Fulfilment: Critical Reflections on Self-giving in the Thought of Pope John Paul II in Dialogue with Psychology

Pope John Paul II is credited for introducing a long-awaited “heart” to the Church’s teaching on marriage through A Theology of the Body and its affirmation of spousal love. JPII’s emphasis on love made his defence of Humanae Vitae’s key teaching that marriage must be open to procreation more appealing and compelling to some than earlier papal expositions. I propose that JPII’s emphasis on spousal love was not the authentic affirmation of love that it appeared but rather an appealing distraction from the deep essentialism at the heart of his thinking. This essentialism did more than restate the primacy of procreation; it raised the stakes for compliance with papal teaching that marriage must be open to procreation by claiming it as the highest form of love, the closest exemplar in human experience of being formed into the image of the Trinity. Rooted in personalistic language uncommon to papal teaching, JPII’s self-claimed “integral approach” to self-giving as human fulfilment combined a form of Thomistic personalism with traditional papal teaching on natural law. JPII defended Humanae Vitae through a theology of self-giving by framing the inseparability of the ends of marriage outlined by Paul VI as the pinnacle of human fulfilment in total spousal self-giving. These claims were further supported by tying self-giving in both love and suffering with human flourishing. I propose that JPII’s chief concern in A Theology of the Body might not have been, as he claimed, to exposit and affirm spousal love, but instead to validate and extol Humanae Vitae. I draw on psychology to examine JPII’s empirical claims. Applying Carl Jung’s theory of individuation, I explore the role of wholeness in human realisation. Drawing on positive psychology, I challenge JPII’s reverence of suffering and corresponding neglect of positive emotions in orienting our lives towards the other.