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Maybe he's going to try to repair Augustine a bit,"

If Benedict XVI did nothing else in his papacy, correcting Augustine's disdain for the human body and its desires would serve mankind immensely.

The idea that sexual desire is somehow sinful in itself is still very much with us, despite John Paul II's strong theologizing to the contrary. Perhaps it takes a disciple of Augustine to bring the world this "Nixon goes to China" moment.

Let us rid humanity of Manicheaism and its dualism forever!

Let us rid humanity of Manicheaism and its dualism forever!

Through Christ's grace it can be done. It is so human to look at the world in a dualistic manner. I'd say farts may have something to do with that tendency. I am not sure if we can ever overcome the impact of farts or other bodily realities but Christ's death on the cross and resurrection has a chance if we take Him in.

I do not mean any disrespect by the above. I just think that if we have any chance of someone actually grabbing God's grace on the Theology of the Body - it is if they know we too are very realistic about our bodies.

Augustine did not have disdain for the human body and that you think he did only shows how little you know about Augustine. Some people who claimed the support of Augustine for their position did disdain the body, namely, Jansenists, but they were misusing Augustine. Read Margaret Miles's dissertation at Harvard, Augustine and the Body for starters. Or just look at book VII of Confessions if you don't want to read Miles. Or read book I of On Christian Doctrine in which he asserts, with St. Paul, that no man "disdains" (hates) his body. Nothing God created can be rightfully disdained. To do so is to sin against God. All that God created is good. Somethings are lesser goods and some are higher goods. The soul is a higher good than the body but both are good and both are higher goods than all animal bodies and animal "minds" (not souls).

Miles expected to find Augustine hating the body because that was the prejudice she and people like you start from. She was astonished to find the opposite. Her conclusion: Augustine always valued the body but the more he dug into the meaning of the Incarnation the greater his love of the body grew. Miles is not conservative Catholic but a liberal feminist.

I'm tired of people who have never actually read a work of Augustine and understood it dumping on Augustine as a misogynist, body-hater, predestinarian etc. Benedict XVI has read Augustine carefully, along with just about ever other significant theologian in the Christian tradition. You might actually learn something from him about Augustine if you dropped your prejudgments. Augustine doesn't need to be lectured to by Benedict XVI or by you and Benedict XVI is not lecturing to him or correcting him. So what gives you the authority to lecture to both of them?

"The idea that sexual desire is somehow sinful in itself is still very much with us, despite John Paul II's strong theologizing to the contrary. Perhaps it takes a disciple of Augustine to bring the world this "Nixon goes to China" moment...Let us rid humanity of Manicheaism and its dualism forever!"

Sinkspur, I could kiss you! (Blush. Note to my everlovin' husband Don-o: I mean, like, on the cheek, y'know?)

Defending honorable sexual love from shamefaced, starched-pajamas Manicheism/Jansenism on the one hand, and from let-it-all-hang-out-and-lick-our-balls-on-the-front-lawn junk-sex libertinism on the other...

Good sex, good times, good people, good marriages: in defense of all this, one would gladly give one's life!

It's so strange (wonderful strange)that the Catholic Church ends up being one of the main institutions in the 20th Century defending human rationality, that is, the human capacity (and duty) to seek out and know the truth; and one of the main institutions in the 21st century, defending honorable, natural, sexual love.

And ---- it hurts me to say it --- but it's while our stomachs are still turning over from the revelations, over the past 3 years especially, of wayward priests performing perverted homosexual acts on male youths. Goes the show the truth of the old saying, in relation to both (good) sex and (good) Church: The worst is the corruption of the best.