The Ethical and Anthropological Content of the Commandment: “You Shall Not Commit Adultery”

by Pope John Paul II from his general audience on 23 April 1980. Read text via EWTN.

With these words our Holy Father Pope John Paul II brings to a conclusion his 25th catechesis Man and Woman He Created Them. We are using the edition translated by professor Michael Waldstein to whom we are so indebted. This 25th catechesis of Pope John Paul II focuses our attention in great part on the Sermon on the Mount. We find the Sermon on the Mount in the Gospel, in the New Testament of the Holy Scripture especially Matthew 5: 27-28. Those are the passages Pope John Paul II is focusing on right now in this 25th catechesis on Man and Woman He Created Them a Theology of the Body. It goes like this: You shall not commit adultery but I say to you whoever looks at a woman to desire her – and the Pope adds in a reductive way (or Waldstein does) – has already committed with her in his heart. This reduction by desire is not a wholesome desire. Husbands and wives should a desire for each other. “Be fruitful and multiply”, that is a part of our marching orders from the Garden, from the beginning. But there is a possessive desire which is demeaning which, in the Holy Father’s words (or Waldstein’s) is reductive; makes less than actual. Remember Schmiegel or Golum, I always get those personalities confused from the Lord of the Rings, “My precious. My precious!.” And so we see the materialism and the bad sort of possession, the desire that character had for the ring. When our Lord gives His Sermon on the Mount, three chapters from Matthew really, the Pope just focusing on two verses here, it is like a stump speech. It is His taking the 10 Commandments, the Decalogue, to the next level. If you remember the cook, the chef, Emeril Lagassi he throws those spices and says ,”Bam!” He takes it up a notch. Well our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ takes the Decalogue up a notch and not only makes it more demanding but gives us the grace we need to fulfill it; to be those blessed people who are pure of heart. So now it is not only not to do a sinful act, not to commit adultery, but now, not even to have such a desire in your heart.

“He has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” How? Through the eyes, through the senses. So Pope John Paul II focuses on that one of our senses. So often first we will covet our neighbors wife and then we commit the adultery. Now just because the Scripture or the tradition of the Church or the Pope are saying not to covet your neighbors wife or not to commit adultery doesn’t mean the contra-wise is less true. Thou shall not covet thy neighbors husband. The Spanish has a beautiful expression for the 9th Commandment: Not to covet thy neighbors wife. Not to have impure desires. And for the 6th commandment: Not to commit impure acts. So the Spanish is better, I think, in that regard because when I would teach kids in the school the clever ones would say ,”Well Father I am not married and she is not married, so hey, we can do whatever we want.” “Well no that is fornication.”

The Holy Father does not address fornication in this passage. He is focusing on adultery and he spells it out. He says just what adultery is in his understanding. Adultery is the violation of the unity in which a man and woman can unite as spouses so closely that they are one flesh. And he refers us to Genesis 2:24. So there is no reference in the Holy Father’s lexicon to holy marriage. Adultery is when one or both committing the crime are married. If they are both married but to other people it is adulterous. If only one of them is married it is adultery on that person’s part but it is fornication, it is an impure act, it is to sin with the body against the intention of our Creator who made us male and female, who made us to be fruitful and to multiply, who has given us the sacraments especially holy marriage. In this regard for the continuance of the race and for the sanctification of the couple.

The Holy Father Pope John Paul II has mentioned in this 25th catechesis Man and Woman He Created Them a Theology of the Body the 6th Commandment of the Decalogue: Thou shall not commit adultery. And so we are reminded that the Sermon on the Mount takes it to the next level. The Holy Father did not cite the Beatitudes here but we know that they are applicable. “Blessed are the pure of heart for they shall see God.” We know that each, the husband and the wife, the man and the woman, are made to the image of God. The nuptial embrace should lead not only to the generation and education of children but also to the vision of God not only in the here after but even in the here and now.

For, elsewhere in Scripture we are told that we cannot love the God we cannot see if we do not love the neighbor we can see. And three different passages of this 25th catechesis our Holy Father Pope John Paul II speaks to us about anthropology. He speaks about an ethical and an anthropological sense in which this passage from the Sermon on the Mount can be approached. He speaks about the explicit anthropological content of this passage of the Sermon on the Mount and he speaks about an adequate anthropology in relation to this passage on the Sermon on the Mount, which he treats in this 25th catechesis of the Theology of the Body Man and Woman He Created Them. So we should look at each of those.

The anthropological sense of the passage refers to what can we know about the human being, the human person, anthropos – the study of man, based on this passage of Sacred Scripture. It speaks to us of the dignity of the person, the dignity of the one who sees and the one who is seen, the object of sight. The intention being to be seen as a temple of the Holy Spirit, to be seen as another self, to be seen as an heir or citizen of heaven. This is part of the anthropological sense of this passage of the Sermon on the Mount. The ethical sense, the good we should be doing, and the evil that we should be avoiding. In this case, for lust to be absent from our heart and for our desires to be pure. And so that anthropological sense echoes also in the anthropological/ethical content of the passage, we diminish ourselves when we diminish the other by the way we look at each other. We are made less as we make them less. In an adequate anthropology this reminds us that the human person is not just so much sodium and so much hydrogen and so much oxygen. We are not materialists, the Holy Father Pope John Paul II was not a materialist. Yes we have our bodies and yes the body is part of the good creation but we are more than that and we are more than just the here and now. We have a destiny which is heaven and when we sin we change directions, we change our trajectory. We don’t go to where we are supposed to. An adequate anthropology reminds us that we are made in the image and likeness of God. That is what the Lord is getting at when he speaks in the Sermon on the Mount. He wants our desires to be noble, to be holy, to be chaste, to be pure. Because He is all holy and all pure. Christ Jesus is the model of chastity for all. This is part of an adequate anthropology, that Christ reveals not only God to us but us to ourselves. Homo perfectus. Christ is the perfect man.

In the original translations of these conferences by the workers of L’Osservatore Romano, the Italian newspaper, the Vatican newspaper, the word which Professor Waldstein has rightly translated as “desire” was inconsistently translated and erroneously translated most of the time as “lust.” There is a lustful desire but not all desire is lustful. It is a very great correction that professor Waldstein has offered us and it plays a key part in this 25th catechesis on the Theology of the Body Man and Woman He Created Them. There are two passages which are specifically striking to me in this catechesis and so I’ll reread them again:

“A look of desire directed toward one’s own wife is not ‘adultery in the heart’ precisely because the man’s relevant interior act, the desire, refers to the woman who is his wife. In relation to whom adultery cannot take place because adultery is having sex with the woman who is not your wife or with the man who is not your husband.” This is not to say that there might not be an impure or an unchaste or noble embrace. That is another question, but it wouldn’t be adulterous, it would just be, dare you say, just immodest, impure, or not right. So we want to have pure intentions and pure actions. We want our desires to be noble, good, and true.

The other passage which I though was worth rereading with a little explanation is this one from the 25th catechesis on Man and Woman He Created Them Theology of the Body: “If the conjugal act as an exterior act in which the two unite in such a way that they become one flesh is legitimate in the relationship between the man in question and the woman who is his wife then also the interior act in the same relationship is analogously in conformity with ethics.” So, the Holy Father in this passage is making a distinction between the ‘interiority’ and the ‘exteriority.’ The exteriority is the nuptial embrace – to make the love. The interiority – the desire of the heart. And what he is teaching us here is that when a husband and wife are married and when they engage in making love, in the nuptial embrace, this exterior act is legitimate when they are the husband and wife and if the exterior is right the interior is analogously in conformity with ethics. To be ‘in conformity with ethics’ is to say it is right it is good, it is fine, it is not a sin. It would be interesting to look and see what so many of the learned commentators of the Holy Father’s writings have thought about this passage. I am not that familiar with them so I will have to look myself as well.

In this 25th catechesis on the Theology of the Body Man and Woman He Created Them Pope John Paul II mentions a metaphysical category four (4) times at least and that is ‘time’. He mentions the time in which the Sermon on the Mount was first uttered. Even before it was recorded by Saint Matthew; that is one time. Then he mentions the ‘immense expanse of past time,’ that is, time before the Sermon on the Mount or time before we heard that there was a Sermon on the Mount or before we heard there was a Theology of the Body – the past time. And then he speaks about an ‘equally vast expanse of future time.’ Time which is not yet arrived like our time when we are having these conferences was the future when our Lord was speaking the Sermon on the Mount or when Saint Matthew was recording the sacred text or when the Holy Father was speaking his conferences. The last category of time our Holy Father mentions in this 25th catechesis on Man and Woman He Created Them Theology of the Body is the present, the contemporary time, and that is the time of our lives. Some people have a nostalgia, “Oh, it was better in the apostolic age. Oh, it was better in the medieval period of the Church or in the time of the Fathers of the Church (from 100-700 A.D).” But, in point of fact, the time which the good God has given us is the best time because that is what God gave us and God does not give us garbage. Even as God has not created garbage. He has created us well, marvelously, and he has given us so much time in which to work out, with fear and trembling, our salvation. He has given us so much time in which to hear His Word and to act upon His Word, to worship Him in spirit and in truth, in time, even as we long for eternity, that day without end, which is Heaven. When a husband and wife speak their vows it is at a time but there was a time before they spoke those vows that would be their past. And as they approach anniversary after anniversary they have a different past. A past together and they look forward to the future. Before the day of the wedding they looked forward to that moment when they exchanged their vows. They looked forward, future time, to the birth of their first child or the next child. They looked to forward, future time, to a ripe old age surrounded by family and friends. The eternal God entered into time when Mary said ,”Yes” to the greeting of the Angel, “Hail full of grace the Lord is with thee.” Mary said yes in time. Time is not insignificant. This program is 28min. 30seconds long and we cover so many important issues relating to time and eternity, to our faith, to our reality body and soul composites that we are. And that is why we are so grateful that our Holy Father Pope John Paul II went to the trouble to present these Wednesday catechesis in Rome and that the Daughters of St. Paul saw fit to publish them and Professor Waldstein saw to fit to well translate them.

The Holy Father speaks of a three-fold meaning in this 25th catechesis on Man and Woman He Created Them a Theology of the Body, and we have seen some of them before, already in preceding catechesis. He speaks about the ‘perennial meaning.’ He speaks about the ‘spousal meaning.’ He speaks about the ‘generative meaning’. The perennial meaning of these words means they are timeless truths. This is the reality. This is what our Lord meant when He said, “Not to covet your neighbor’s wife. Not to look upon another with a lustful desire”, a reductive desire. Why? Because each of us, man and woman, made in the image of God, in the likeness of God, to be respected. The spousal meaning refers to how these truths relate to holy marriage, to holy wedlock, to that sacrament of service which is Marriage. There is a spousal meaning of the body: the husband for his wife and the wife for her husband. And what God has joined, the generative and the unitive aspects of holy marriage, no one should rend asunder. No one should tear apart. The generative meaning of these words of sacred scripture and of our Holy Father’s catechesis reminds us of the primary end of marriage, as the Holy Father will say later, is bringing to birth new children. Each of us children of our parents. The generative meaning: to generate, to give life. To look upon another with a reductive desire to commit adultery in one’s heart, this is not a life-giving glance, this is a destructive glance. But our Lord looks upon each of us with love. Not only from the height of the cross but even from the Father’s right hand. He who was once crucified who is now glorified who is risen and alive calls us to live and move and have our being in Him. These are the perennial, spousal, and generative meanings of these words, which our Holy Father has entrusted to us even as the Eternal Father has entrusted us with our saving faith.

By way of review it is good for us to remember we are in Chapter 2 of the Holy Father’s great work. Chapter 2 is entitled “Christ appeals to the Human Heart.” And we have seen four different aspects of the Sermon on the Mount: Who ever looks to desire; its ethical meaning; the anthropological meaning; and further dimensions of that passage from Matthew 5:27. In our next program we will begin looking at the ‘Man of Concupiscence’ but all of this has presupposed the earlier words of Christ. Matthew 19:3-8 when the Lord appealed to the beginning. The beginning of Genesis, and the beginning of the human race. When Adam walked in the cool of the evening with the Lord God recognizing that he was unlike any of the other creatures of the field, or birds of the air, or fish of the sea, and finally at last he found bone of his bone, flesh of his flesh; the original unity of man and woman. And how they were naked without shame. Shame entered the world through sin and we will see more of that in our next program.

God has given us not only the gift of faith and grace, life in Him, but also the gift of existence, our being-in-the-world, our being in his image. The Holy Father spoke to us about knowledge and procreation. Adam knew his wife and she conceived by the power of the holy spirit. The Lord knows us intimately from the inside out better than we know ourself and thanks be to God, God has revealed Himself to us in the fulness of time in the person of Jesus Christ His only Son. Our Savior and Lord and brother, like us in all things but sin. For Christ reveals not only God to us but us to ourself.