The Theology of the Body: 41. Depersonalizing Effect of Concupiscence

In his General Audience of 24 September 1980, the Holy Father further examined "adultery in the heart," spoken of by Our Lord in His Sermon on the Mount. When a woman is looked at lustfully by a man, she ceases to be regarded as a subject of personal attraction or communion, but only as an object of sexual satisfaction. And when this "intention" reaches the will, the man himself becomes enslaved.


Depersonalizing Effect of Concupiscence

On Wednesday, 24 September, tens of thousands gathered in St. Peter's Square to hear the Pope continue his catechetical development of the theme of adultery.


1. In the Sermon on the Mount Christ said: "You have heard that it was said, 'You shall not commit adultery.' But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart" (Mt 5:27-28). We have been trying for some time to penetrate the meaning of this statement, analyzing the single elements in order to understand better the text as a whole.

When Christ spoke of a man who looks lustfully, he indicated not only the dimension of intentionality in looking, thus indicating lustful knowledge, the psychological dimension, but also the dimension of the intentionality of man's very existence. In the situation Christ described, that dimension passes unilaterally from the man, who is the subject, to the woman, who has become the object (this does not mean, however, that such a dimension is only unilateral). For the present we will not reverse the situation analyzed, or extend it to both parties, to both subjects. Let us dwell on the situation outlined by Christ, stressing that it is a question of a purely interior act, hidden in the heart and stopping on the threshold of the look.

It is enough to note that in this case the woman—who owing to her personal subjectivity exists perennially "for man," waiting for him, too, for the same reason, to exist "for her"—is deprived of the meaning of her attraction as a person. Though being characteristic of the "eternal feminine," she becomes at the same time only an object for the man. That is, she begins to exist intentionally as an object for the potential satisfaction of the sexual need inherent in his masculinity. Although the act is completely interior, hidden in the heart and expressed only by the look, there already occurs in him a change (subjectively unilateral) of the very intentionality of existence. If it were not so, if it were not a question of such a deep change, the following words of the same sentence: "...has already committed adultery with her in his heart" (Mt 5:28) would have no meaning.

2. That change of the intentionality of existence, by means of which a certain woman begins to exist for a certain man not as a subject of call and personal attraction or as a subject of communion, but exclusively as an object for the potential satisfaction of the sexual need, is carried out in the heart, since it is carried out in the will. Cognitive intentionality itself does not yet mean enslavement of the heart. Only when the intentional reduction, illustrated previously, sweeps the will along into its narrow horizon, when it brings forth the decision of a relationship with another human being (in our case: with the woman) according to the specific scale of values of lust, only then can it be said that desire has also gained possession of the heart. Only when lust has gained possession of the will is it possible to say that it is dominant over the subjectivity of the person and that it is at the basis of the will, and of the possibility of choosing and deciding, through which—by virtue of self-decision or self-determination—the very way of existing with regard to another person is established. The intentionality of this existence then acquires a full subjective dimension.

3. Only then—that is from that subjective moment and on its subjective prolongation—is it possible to confirm what we read, for example, in Sirach (23:17-22), about the man dominated by lust, and what we read in even more eloquent descriptions in world literature. Then we can also speak of that more or less complete compulsion, which is called elsewhere compulsion of the body. This brings with it loss of the freedom of the gift, congenital in deep awareness of the matrimonial meaning of the body, of which we have also spoken in preceding analyses.

4. When we speak of desire as the transformation of the intentionality of a concrete existence, of the man, for example, for whom (according to Mt 5:27-28), a certain woman becomes merely the object of the potential satisfaction of the sexual need inherent in his masculinity, it is not at all a matter of questioning that need, as an objective dimension of human nature with the procreative finality that is characteristic of it. Christ's words in the Sermon on the Mount (in its whole context) are far from Manichaeism, as the true Christian tradition also is. In this case, there cannot arise, therefore, objections of the kind. It is a question, on the contrary, of the man's and the woman's way of existing as persons, that is, of that existing in a mutual "for," which—also on the basis of what, according to the objective dimension of human nature, can be defined as the sexual need—can and must serve the building up of the unity of communion in their mutual relations. Such is the fundamental meaning characteristic of the perennial and reciprocal attraction of masculinity and femininity, contained in the very reality of the constitution of man as a person, body and sex together.

5. The possible circumstance that one of the two persons exists only as the subject of the satisfaction of the sexual need, and the other becomes exclusively the object of this satisfaction, does not correspond to the union or personal communion to which man and woman were mutually called from the beginning—on the contrary, it is in conflict with it. Moreover, the case in which both the man and the woman exist reciprocally as the object of satisfaction of the sexual need, and each on his or her part is only the subject of that satisfaction, does not correspond to this unity of communion—but on the contrary it clashes with it. This reduction of such a rich content of the reciprocal and perennial attraction of human persons in their masculinity or femininity does not at all correspond to the "nature" of the attraction in question. This reduction extinguishes the personal meaning of communion, characteristic of man and woman, through which, according to Genesis 2:24, "a man...cleaves to his wife, and they become one flesh." Lust turns away the intentional dimension of the man's and woman's mutual existence from the personal perspectives, "of communion," characteristic of their perennial and mutual attraction, reducing it, and, so to speak, pushing it toward utilitarian dimensions, within which the human being uses the other human being, for the sake merely of satisfying his own needs.

6. It seems possible to find this content again, charged with the human interior experience characteristic of different ages and environments, in Christ's concise affirmation in the Sermon on the Mount. At the same time, we cannot in any case lose sight of the meaning that this affirmation attributes to man's interiority, to the integral dimension of the heart as the dimension of the inner man. Here lies the core of the transformation of ethos aimed at by Christ's words according to Matthew 5:27-28, expressed with powerful forcefulness and at the same time with admirable simplicity.