Friday, February 02, 2007

My thoughts on Ashley's treatment

The body of a human person is an expression of the personhood of the person whose body it is. Human personhood is characterized by the nuptial meaning of the body, which is the potential to use the body to show love.

The symbolic value of the human body so constructed does not depend on the actualization of that potential. That is, just because one is not exercizing one's personhood by using the body for love in the ways that that can be done does NOT mean that the body is not in fact communicating the personhood of that person--specifically their call to fruitful motherhood or fatherhood. Ashley is called to fruitful motherhood (which for her just as with us all will not be fully realized until the life to come) and that call is written on her body by God in the form of the face, hands and her sexual attributed. Even if she is not actively engaged in activity having to do with those human capacities, her body still is expressive of God's call to her and God is communicating to the rest of the world about her dignity and her vocation and the universal calling of all people by the configuration of her body. To alter that configuration for any other reason than to save essential or overall human functioning is an unethical mutilation that mutes the very word of God to the world written on her body.

The human body is not just a machine to be manipulated at will for any laudable purpose, but Word of God to be treated in all its aspects with the reverence one owes the Word of God and the Temple of the Holy Spirit.

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