In betrothed love, through the gift of self, man belongs to woman as woman belongs to man. Such was the theme of this evening's discussions on a section from The Ethical Analysis of Love called "Membership of One Another" (pages 125-130). Wojtyla begins by reflecting on love as gift of self and on the intrinsic value of each person. He says that the value of the person is inseparable from the essential being of that person. By its very nature, a person is its own master. Yet, he states "...love forcibly detaches the person, so to speak, from this natural inviolability and inalienability. It makes the person what to do just that -- surrender itself to another, to the one it loves." Peter commented that this draws on one of the themes of the book, overcoming selfishness by going outside oneself. In love as gift of self, the person wishes to become the property of the other, renouncing its autonomy and inalienability. Wojtyla adds, "Love proceeds by way of this renunciation, guided by the profound conviction that it does not diminish and impoverish, but quite the contrary, enlarges and enriches the existence of the person."

Self-giving can have its full value only when it involves and is the work of the will. Betrothed love (gift of self) "commits the will," he writes, in a particularly profound way...in the language of the Gospels, "giving one's soul'. He explains that contrary to the superficial view of sex where the woman surrenders her body to a man in erotic love, we are speaking of the mutual surrender of both persons, of their belonging equally to each other.

The group discussed the role of man and woman in marriage. The Church has given each unique roles. Sean and Laura commented how St. Paul has written that a wife is to her husband as the Church is to Christ. This image, Sean explained, invokes some subsidiarity but excludes authority as unaccountable control. Laura added that in dying for his Church, Christ made the ultimate sacrifice. She added that it is much harder for a man to take on this responsibility than for a woman to submit.

Male and female are both female in response to God, said Laura. God is active, while we respond. The Church receives Christ. This helps to explain why women cannot be priests; the maleness of priests is not accidental nor is it inessential. She recommended a book by Dr. Alice von Hildebrand called Women and the Priesthood.

Peter described how in the Czech language, the suffix -ova is added to a husband's name to form his wife's name. The suffix means "belonging to." Jorge mentioned a book he had read that said that the man has the grace to make decisions. Sylvia vigorously disagreed -- this is not Christian, she said, and too often people pull the text of St. Paul out of context. He has a view of his time, she said. Decision-making should not be the husband's alone, she argued. Decision-making is a great responsibility, not a power play, Peter said. Man is the head of the family and woman is the heart, Laura added. Authority is not better, she said -- it has its own accountability. One is not superior, and each is called to holiness. Laura promised to research some of the writings of John Paul II on this matter and update the group at our next session.

The Pope then reminds us that sexual values -- which can have forms of sensual and emotional eroticism -- must be firmly welded in the consciousness and the will to the value of the person. "Without this, 'love' can only have an erotic significance and not its true (personal) significance: it can lead to sexual 'union' but with not warranty in a true union of persons." The two persons are then using each other to derive pleasure. All the conditions exist, he writes, for a conflict of interest between the two parties which will inevitably arise. "The ricketyness of the structure must show itself in time," he says, adding, "It is one of the greatest of sorrows when love proves to be not what it was thought to be, but its diagonal opposite." Sean remarked that one can see this in the most unlikely places, like on daytime talk shows where ex-couples lament deep betrayal. On some level, he said, they realize that being sexually involved implies something that should be exclusive -- they are acting the role of husband and wife, inwardly acknowledging that there could be a child. Cyrille commented that society -- especially the young -- seems increasingly desensitized. George Weigel's recent column described an AIDS testing ad on the back of a bus, targeted at young boys, which said "Gettin' busy?" Sean commented on what Humanae Vitae forewarned regarding the dangers of contraceptives -- intercourse purely for sexual pleasure in effect allows an element of pornography to creep into marital sex.

Wojtyla continues on a positive note: "Betrothed love, which carries within itself an inner need to make gift of one's own person to another human being (a need realized between man and woman in surrender of the body and in a full sexual relationship as well as in other ways) has a natural grandeur of its own. The measure of this is the value of the person who gives himself or herself, and not just the degree of sensual and sexual enjoyment which accompanies the gift of self.... Take away love from the fullness of self surrender, the completeness of personal commitment, and what remains will be a total denial and negation of it ." Here, he is quite sharply saying that without the fullness of self surrender and personal commitment, there is not just no love, there is denial and negation of love.

Wojtyla then points out the mystery of reciprocity in gift of self: acceptance of the gift in the giving and in the receiving. Peter remarked that his years spent in Eastern Europe taught him how to be a good guest; learning to receive takes humility. Wojtyla then calls out a skill in giving and receiving "...exhibited by the man whose attitude to a woman is informed by total affirmation of her value as a person, and equally by the woman whose attitude to a man is informed by affirmation of his value as a person." This skill, he says, creates a "climate" of betrothed love, the climate of surrender of the innermost self. Man and woman must first believe it the value of his or her own person before he or she can make a gift of self.