Greeting friends, including the comparatively large number of you who joined us here in the middle of the weekend’s dustup. Chris, Kate, Casey, and I have a podcast dropping later today about the very, very, very, (did I mention very) strong reaction that both my piece and the Butker speech received, so if you want any further commentary on that, you’ll have to listen to the episode.
In the meantime, for those of you who are new here, contrary to the word on social media, I am not a modernist liberal feminist, nor various unsavory words for female body parts and female dogs. So, if you came here expecting that, I’m afraid you’ll be disappointed. I also don’t think I’m a crockpot or ignoramus, but you’ll have to decide that for yourself. What I am is a faithful Catholic wife, mother, and writer, who is passionate about helping people know Jesus, understand the teachings of the Church, and think through tough questions with charity and nuance, not anger and soundbites.
I never do that perfectly. I fail at it frequently. But in the midst of all that failing, I keep picking myself up, dusting myself off, and starting all over again because I think this work is worth doing. I also think God has called me to this work as much as He has called me to be wife to Chris and mother to Toby, Becket, and Ellie. The little people in my life matter far more to me than my writing, but my writing still matters, and I’m grateful that in this moment, God has made a way for me to do both. So, again, welcome. I hope you stick around.
Now, for the matter at hand. This was supposed to be the third and final essay in my ongoing series on the Manosphere. You can (and should if you plan on reading this essay) read Parts 1 and 2 first. But as I got to writing, I realized that this essay was going to be 6,000 words if I didn’t break it up into two parts. So, for those of you really wanting me to wrap this series up, I’m sorry. Believe me, no one wants to be done with this series more than I do. But hopefully, most of you just feel like you’re getting your $6 worth
Today, I want to go back to the beginning. Not to the beginning of everything, but rather to the beginning of this series.
Last month, I kicked off this whole brouhaha with a story about my identity crisis in college. I was nineteen-years-old, crazy about a boy who didn’t like me back, and convinced that the problem was me. Not just that I wasn’t the right girl for this boy, but rather that I wasn’t the right girl for any boy. I feared that my sharp mind and strong opinions would make me forever unloveable, that I would always be the wrong girl because I wasn’t girl enough—not thin enough, not pretty enough, not charming enough, not sexy enough. And so I started starving myself.
That helped somewhat. Tiny, delicate Emily attracted more male attention than mildly overweight Emily. But tiny, delicate Emily was also slowly killing herself, both physically and spiritually.
What saved me was coming back to the Catholic Church, having my heart and mind transformed by the graces of the sacraments, and reading The Theology of the Body by Pope Saint John Paul II.
The theology of the body has fallen out of fashion these days. We could do a whole Substack on why that’s happened (maybe another time), but the end result is that many Catholics, young and old, have no idea what the theology of the body is. If they’ve heard of it at all, they equate it with some kind of marital sex ed class, and many dismiss it as such. They do this either because they think they already know what the Church teaches about sex or because they think what John Paul II teaches about sex is not what the Church teaches. This latter view is promoted heavily in the Catholic Manosphere and prevalent among its adherents, many who think of the theology of the body as just another modernist innovation.
But the theology of the body is not a modernist innovation. Nor is it a sexology—a study of the Church’s teachings on sex. Rather, the theology of the body is an anthropology. It is a study—rooted in Scripture and Tradition—of what it means to be a human person, made in the image of God.
Two decades ago, when I first encountered the theology of the body, it answered the question that drove me into the dark hole of anorexia—“What does it mean to be a woman?”—and then pulled me out of that hole. Christ used the theology of the body to give me my life back. Today, it can do the same for all the young men and women asking similar questions: What does it mean to be a man? What does it mean to be a woman? And knowing that, how are we called to live?
In fact, I suspect that the neglect and abandonment of the theology of the body (and the frequent failure to teach it correctly) is a large part of why we’re in the situation we’re in today. When we’re not presenting the truth in a compelling way to people, compelling lies and half-truths will fill the vacuum.
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