As we have been exploring the nature and effects of original sin on humanity, it is now time to plunge into the reality of shame with the help of Pope St. John Paul II.  We could hope for no better guide.  As a poet, pastor, philosopher, and theologian, he reflected deeply on the experience of shame.  In Theology of the Body alone, he used the term “shame” 136 times and another closely related term 33 times.  He also wrote an extensive reflection on “the metaphysics of shame” in his prior book Love and Responsibility.  Let’s see what we can learn from his insights.

The pope took Genesis 3:9-10 as his starting point.  There we read, “The Lord God called to the man and said to him, ‘Where are you?’ And he said, ‘I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid myself.”  John Paul II saw our first parents’ new impulse to hide from God and from one another because of their perceived “nakedness” as evidence of the birth of shame in their hearts.  He described this shame as a “boundary experience” because it demarcates original man and historical man, now affected by original sin (TOB 11:3ff). 

It is important to clarify that original shame pertains not merely to physical nakedness.  According to John Paul II, “‘Nakedness’ does not have only a literal meaning: it does not refer only to the body” (TOB 27:2).  After all, God sees not only the body but also the depths of man’s heart.  Indeed, our first parents were ashamed before God in part because they perceived the loss of harmony within them.  They perceived their lack of full self-possession due to sin.  Their interior life is now marked by disharmony and conflict. 

Furthermore, because of original sin, the visible world is no longer docile to man’s authority but rebels against him.  The forces of nature now threaten man, and his work to cultivate the world is marked by suffering and toil.  The “resistance of nature against man and his tasks” gives rise to “cosmic shame,” which expresses a “sense of insecurity” and an “awareness of being defenseless” in a now hostile world.  “The end of this toil, of this struggle of man with the earth, is death” (TOB 27:4).

Thus, our first parents experience shame over the loss of harmonious self-possession and mastery over nature.  But why would they — or us — wish to hide from the God who is love, who created humanity out of nothing, and who bestows wondrous gifts?  It is because they have become “alienated from the Love that was the source of the original gift” of creation, “the source of the fullness of good intended for the creature” (TOB 27.2).  Through the influence of the tempter, man doubted God’s goodness and that Love is the ultimate meaning and motive behind creation.  By believing the words of the tempter and acting upon them, man turned his back on our loving Father and “in some sense cast him from his heart” cutting humanity off “from that which ‘comes from the Father’” leaving only “what ‘comes from the world’” in its place (TOB 26:4).  “Shame touches in that moment the deepest level and seems to shake the very foundation of their existence.”  It gives rise to an urge to hide from God showing that “a sense of fear before God has matured: a fear previously unknown” (TOB 27:1, italics in original).

This fear is entirely different from the “fear of the Lord” praised in Scripture.  The latter refers to awe and wonder in the presence of the all-holy God.  It is closely related to reverence and is an essential and wholesome spiritual attitude for all of us to cultivate.  Conversely, the fear that flows from original shame stems from doubting God’s goodness.  If God is not pure goodness, then how can we let Him “see” us?  How can we trust Him enough to let Him come to us at our worst moments?  I invite all of us to reflect on the many ways we, like our first parents, hide from God because we struggle to believe that in the face of our brokenness and sin, He could possibly continue to see good in us, just as we in turn struggle to see His pure, infinite goodness. 

Note:  This article is part of a series of reflections on Pope St. John Paul II’s “Theology of the Body.”

Continue Reading: Original Shame – Part 2

Written by, Dr. Andrew Sodergren, M.T.S., Psy.D.,
Director of Ruah Woods Psychological Services

(Article originally published in The Catholic Telegraph, February 2023 Issue, the official magazine of the Archdiocese of Cincinnati)

With their fall from grace, our first parents experienced a decisive shift in their relationship marked by what I have been referring to as original shame.  In my last article, I discussed how this experience emerged because of the new state of internal and interpersonal disharmony in which the man and woman found themselves.  Original sin caused a weakening of “control of the soul’s spiritual faculties over the body” and brought about “tensions” between man and woman, “their relations henceforth marked by lust and domination” (CCC, 400).  Catholic tradition refers to this inner state of disorder that leads to lust and domination, which we all inherit, as concupiscence. 

Because of this new situation that the man and woman found themselves in, they experienced a new urge to cover the signs of their sexuality, which John Paul II referred to as “reciprocal shame” (TOB 28.1).  Being a result of sin, it is not hard to see this new experience of shame as a bad thing.  Clearly, it’s not supposed to be this way.  We were made for communion, not hiding.  However, God never abandons man and always seeks with His infinite power, wisdom, and love to draw good out of evil.  In this light, even our experience of shame can be used to guide us back to a deeper appreciation of the dignity of the human body.  Let us examine how.

In contemporary psychology, shame is typically seen as toxic for the human person.  This is because psychologists tend to equate shame with the experience of seeing oneself as bad, defective, or unworthy.  If I see myself in this way, I will dread self-disclosure because I anticipate that I will be harshly treated and rejected by others.  In the face of such a situation, mental health professionals — myself and my colleagues included — work  to increase self-acceptance and awareness of one’s goodness. 

While this contemporary approach to shame is valuable, it differs significantly from Pope St. John Paul II’s use of the term in TOB and his prior work Love and Responsibility.  When he spoke of shame, especially the reciprocal shame experienced by man and woman, he had in mind the urge to hide the sexual features of our bodies from one another.  This flows from our experience of concupiscence.  Shame moves us instinctively to shield from the eyes of the other those aspects of our bodies most connected with sexuality because we perceive that others may look upon our bodies not as the sacrament of the person but as mere objects to be used.  Thus, shame, in this sense, is a reaction to the possibility of being used. 

In TOB and Love and Responsibility, the saintly pope wrote extensively about how the dignity of the human person requires that we never treat another human being as merely an object of use.  Rather, the only proper response to another person is love.  He applied this “personalistic norm” especially to the relations between man and woman in which the sexual appeal of the body — in the presence of concupiscence — can become a source of temptation to use the other for my own selfish purposes.  Shame moves us to prevent this by “concealing the sexual values in order to protect the value of the person” (LR, p. 165, emphasis added).  In this sense, shame is very closely related to, and a building block of, the virtue of modesty.  This has nothing to do with a prudish view of the body or sex as inherently bad or evil.  Rather, as Pope St. John Paul II repeatedly affirmed, sexual shame can actually help reawaken in us an appreciation for how good and even sacred our sexuality is.  He wrote that through shame, man and woman “become conscious of the spousal meaning of the body” and are moved “to protect it” (TOB 31.1).  In protecting the spousal meaning of the body, we implicitly say to ourselves and others, “Behold, it is very good” (Gen 1:31).

Note:  This article is part of a series of reflections on Pope St. John Paul II’s “Theology of the Body.”

Continue Reading: The Problem of Shamelessness

Written by, Dr. Andrew Sodergren, M.T.S., Psy.D.,
Director of Ruah Woods Psychological Services

(Article originally published in The Catholic Telegraph, April 2023 Issue, the official magazine of the Archdiocese of Cincinnati)

Last month, I raised the problem of shamelessness and how, in the face of concupiscence, a healthy sense of shame is essential in preserving the dignity of the human body and sexuality.  Attitudes and behavior marked by shamelessness lead to an exaggerated emphasis on the sexual features of the human body and strips away the personal meaning of human sexuality.  Shamelessness reduces the human person to a mere object to be used and discarded by others and even a commodity to be bought and sold.  Pornography is the most prominent example of shamelessness today.   

Some wonder why we Catholics make such a fuss over porn.  The Church does indeed make quite a fuss over pornography.  As I explained in my previous article, the Catechism identifies the making, distributing, and consumption of pornography as grave sins.  It even goes so far as to implore civil governments to outlaw pornography.  So, why all the fuss?  I believe contemporary social science research can shed some light on why everyone should be quite concerned about pornography.  In short, recent research has made it increasingly clear that pornography is omnipresent, toxic to the human person, and addictive.  Let’s look at the first of these.   

With the proliferation of the Internet, smartphones, and wireless technologies, it has become possible to access pornography anywhere, anytime.  Whereas previous generations had to go to a store and purchase pornographic materials from a vendor, now anyone can find it at any moment in virtual privacy.  These technologies and the accessibility they provide have allowed the porn industry to grow into a multi-billion dollar industry.  According to a 2009 article in the Journal of Economic Perspectives, the US “adult entertainment” industry produces more revenue than any of the major professional sports leagues (e.g., NFL, MLB, NBA, etc.).¹  The anti-porn advocacy group “Fight the New Drug” reports that one of the most popular pornographic websites on the Internet had 42 billion visits to their site in calendar year 2019.  That’s an average of 115 million visits per day.  In that same year, 1.36 million hours of new pornographic content was uploaded to the site.  If one were to try to watch all the pornographic material uploaded to this site in 2019 alone, it would take 169 years of continuous viewing!² 

Bearing in mind the toxic effects of pornography and its addictive nature, which I will discuss next month, these prevalence numbers are absolutely staggering and should give every concerned adult pause.  Research tells us that most females and nearly all males have consumed some amount of Internet pornography prior to turning 18.  For these unfortunate young people, most have their first exposure during the middle school years.  This coincides with the time when many of these children receive their first cell phone or other portable, Internet-capable devices.  Sadly, many, many parents do not take necessary precautions such as enabling parental controls and installing filtering and accountability software when giving their children such devices.³  Parents are also often ill-equipped and hesitant to talk with their children about pornography, its destructive effects, and how to avoid it.⁴  Clearly, there is much work to do here for all of us (parents, educators, ministers, mental health professionals, etc.) if we are to build a culture of purity in which the dignity of the human person is upheld and the hearts of our young are supported on the paths of virtue and chastity.  

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[1] Edelman, B. (2009). Red light states: Who buys online adult entertainment? Journal of Economic Perspectives, 23, 209-220.
[2] See https://fightthenewdrug.org/2019-pornhub-annual-report/
[3] See https://protectyoungeyes.com for guidance.
[4] See www.defendyoungminds.com for helpful resources, especially the book Good Pictures, Bad Pictures.

Note:  This article is part of a series of reflections on Pope St. John Paul II’s “Theology of the Body.”

Continue Reading: The Toxic Nature of Porn

Written by, Dr. Andrew Sodergren, M.T.S., Psy.D.,
Director of Ruah Woods Psychological Services

(Article originally published in The Catholic Telegraph, June 2023 Issue, the official magazine of the Archdiocese of Cincinnati)

In the last couple of articles, I have been exploring the scourge of pornography as a prime example of the problem of “shamelessness.”  I previously discussed how porn is omnipresent today, toxic to body and soul, and, in this article, I will highlight its addictive nature. 

For many years, medical and mental health professionals thought of “addiction” as only applicable to consuming chemical substances.  However, in recent years, neuroscience has helped our understanding of addiction to evolve.  We understand more about the mechanisms underlying addiction that involve the brain’s natural reward circuits, memory systems, endorphins (i.e., chemicals in the brain that induce euphoria), impairments to the executive control centers, and more.  Researchers have now established that it is possible for an addicted brain state to occur without consuming a chemical agent.  Certain behaviors (e.g., eating, gambling, sex) result in the release of pleasurable chemicals in the brain such that if they are repeated and intensified under certain conditions, an addiction can become established. [1] 

Internet pornography is designed to capitalize on this potential for behavioral addiction.  When a consumer, especially a man, views pornography, the sexual images activate the dopamine pathway in the brain that is involved in anticipation of pleasure, focused attention, and learning.  Essentially, the brain becomes fixated on the image and associates it with the anticipation of pleasure.  Physiological arousal is heightened, which intensifies learning.  If sexual climax occurs in the viewer, the brain comes to associate the euphoric experience with pornography.  The brain releases chemicals that normally promote bonding (e.g., prolactin and oxytocin), but in the case of viewing porn, these may serve to strengthen the false sense of connection with the pornographic fantasy.  When this process is repeated, the brain becomes increasingly conditioned to seek and prefer pornography to other sources of enjoyment.  In addition, changes occur in the brain’s dopamine reward system such that more and more pornographic stimulation is needed to get the same response previously experienced.  Meanwhile, the executive control centers in the frontal lobe actually diminish, reducing self-control and thoughtfulness.  The end result is a person who feels miserable most of the time due to the changes in their dopamine system, is preoccupied by sexual thoughts, experiences intense craving for porn and sexual behavior to feel better, and whose ability to resist is weakened over time.[2] 

There are additional features of Internet pornography that make it especially addictive.  Whereas in the past, one would have to go to a physical store, potentially interact with other humans, and pay money to obtain porn, the Internet has made pornography accessible, affordable, and potentially anonymous.  One researcher referred to this as the “triple A” engine of Internet porn and likened it to crack cocaine in its addictive potential.[3] 

Even more, Internet porn constitutes a “supernormal stimulus.”  Nobel prize winner Niko Tinbergen coined this term to describe a phenomenon that he and other scientists discovered in their research on animal behavior.  They found that they could manipulate animals’ natural instincts by presenting them with artificial stimuli that were exaggerated versions of familiar objects.  For example, after presenting male butterflies with artificial mates with exaggerated colors and shapes similar to but more intense than those of real females, the researchers observed that the males preferred to direct their sexual advances toward the artificial butterflies than toward real females.  The researchers were similarly able to manipulate the caregiving behavior of mother birds by presenting them with artificial stimuli that exaggerated the features of their own young, resulting in the mothers preferring the fake young to their actual chicks.[4] 

This type of process is frequently at work in advertising and media today. We are bombarded with exaggerated stimuli designed to trigger our instincts in order to capitalize off our cravings.  Pornography is a prime example.  By presenting anomalously attractive bodies engaged in extreme sexual activities and situations, pornographers are manipulating our natural instinct toward sexual union to crave the exaggerated, artificial fantasy world of porn.

As we have seen, pornography is destructive to human beings and human society.  It presents a counterfeit version of the intimacy for which we are created.  While our fallen nature can make us susceptible to such lies, Christ died to redeem us and show us the way to freedom.  In future articles, I will explore Pope St. John Paul II’s reflections on purity of heart and our call to true spousal love.  With the saintly pope as our guide, let us confidently follow the path that Jesus has prepared for us. 

[1] Hilton & Watts (2011). Pornography addiction: A neuroscience perspective. Surgical Neurology International, 2:19.
[2] Struthers, W. M. (2009). Wired for intimacy: How pornography hijacks the male brain. InterVarsity Press.
[3] Cooper, A. (1998). Sexuality and the Internet: Surfing into the new millennium. CyberPsychology & Behavior, 1(2), 187–193.
[4] Love et al. (2015). Neuroscience of Internet pornography addiction: A review and update. Behavioral Sciences, 5, 388-433.

Note:  This article is part of a series of reflections on Pope St. John Paul II’s “Theology of the Body.”

Continue Reading: Redeemed and Called by Christ

Written by, Dr. Andrew Sodergren, M.T.S., Psy.D.,
Director of Ruah Woods Psychological Services

(Article originally published in The Catholic Telegraph, August 2023 Issue, the official magazine of the Archdiocese of Cincinnati)

In the second major part of TOB, Pope St. John Paul II guides us in exploring the implications of our redemption in Christ and the moral teaching of the New Testament for the relationship between the sexes and our call to spousal love.  Before we can delve into this teaching, it is helpful to pause and ponder an essential but overlooked question:  What is the purpose of the moral law? 

In our modern age, law is typically seen in a distorted way as purely an instrument of control.  In the best case scenario, some may see it as imposed for the sake of social order, but in the worst case, it is seen as merely a tool by those in power to maintain their position.  In addition, we live in an increasingly relativistic age that rejects belief in moral absolutes, making each person the sole arbiter of right and wrong.  Indeed, we regularly hear references to “your truth” and “my truth” as if truth could be different from one person to the next. 

These views of the moral law pervade our culture and even infect the hearts and minds of many Catholics.  If we make an honest examination, we may discover that we are embarrassed by Catholic moral teaching.  We may outwardly profess to be good Catholics and faithful followers of Jesus, but when difficult moral issues come up, we distance ourselves from the teachings of the Church and hope that the topic of discussion will just go away.  A complacent attitude of “well, the official teaching of the Church is _____, but only extremist / fanatical / rigid / ultra-traditional people live that way” creeps into our hearts and grows like a cancer, slowly cutting us off from the life of God within us. 

When we look at the moral law in this distorted way, we can only see it as an arbitrary burden imposed on us for nefarious purposes (e.g., to control us, to make us miserable, etc.).  Even more, our distorted, relativistic thinking often conceals and enables attachment to sin.  These two forces work together to lead us to despise the moral law because it calls us to reform our lives.  As Pope St. John Paul II said in his great encyclical on the moral life, Veritatis splendor, “Those who live ‘by the flesh’ experience God’s law as a burden, and indeed as a denial or at least a restriction of their own freedom” (no. 18).  As a result, we begin to see the moral law as a threat to our freedom from which we must protect ourselves.  We regard it with a sense of suspicion, resentment, and even outright hostility. 

All our hearts are in need of purification from attachment to sin and the distorted, relativistic thinking of our culture.  To this end, I invite us all to meditate on Psalm 119 in which the inspired psalmist beautifully pours out his deep love, thankfulness, and even yearning for God’s law.  He speaks of it as sweeter than honey, finer than gold, greater than riches, the source of his comfort, the song of his house, and the delight of his heart.  If we see it rightly, with pure eyes, this would be the natural response of our hearts toward all of Catholic moral teaching. 

In reality, the moral law is not an imposition or a burden.  Nor is it a restriction of our freedom.  Rather, the moral law is one of our loving Father’s greatest gifts to us.  It is meant to ensure and enhance our freedom by protecting us from ways of living that harm us.  Sin is the true threat to our freedom for “everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin” (Jn 8:34). As St. Paul reminds us, “For freedom Christ has set us free; stand fast therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery” (Gal 5:1). 

Our Father loves us so much that, through Christ and His Church, He has given us the fullness of the moral law so, as we pray in the Serenity Prayer, we “may be reasonably happy in this life and supremely happy with Him forever in the next.”  As we meditate on Jesus’ moral teachings in future articles, let us ever remember His tender words about the true purpose of the moral law:

“If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in His love. These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full” (Jn 15:10-11).

Continue Reading: The Law of the Heart

Dr. Sodergren’s Introduction to Theology of the Body: A Collection of Articles from the Catholic Telegraph

Written by, Dr. Andrew Sodergren, M.T.S., Psy.D.,
Director of Ruah Woods Psychological Services

(Article originally published in The Catholic Telegraph, October 2023 Issue, the official magazine of the Archdiocese of Cincinnati)