Tonight’s discussion focused on pages 181-193. We began with the section “Law of the Absorption of Shame by Love.” By this, Wojtyla means that shame is “swallowed up by love, dissolved in it, so that the man and woman are no longer ashamed to be sharing their experience of sexual values.”

Shame, according to Wojtyla, has a dual significance. It means both the endeavor to conceal sexual values so that they don’t obscure the values of the person, but it also means the longing to experience love. He explains: Love between man and woman develops, as we know, on the basis of sexual values, but in the last resort the attitudes of each of them to the value of the person are the decisive factor, since love is a union of persons.

Wojtyla writes: “To say that love is ‘absorbed’ by love does not mean that it is eliminated or destroyed.... for only where it is preserved intact can love be realized in full.” He explains that shame is the natural form of self-defense for the person against the danger of being used as an object for sexual use. Equally, shame prevents someone from using another as an object.

Only true love, a love which possesses in full the ethical essence proper to it, is capable of absorbing shame. True love is a love in which sexual values are subordinated to the value of the person. The value of the person is dominant, and affirmation of it pervades all the experiences born of man’s natural sensuality or sentiment. True love ensures that these experiences are imbued with the value of the person to such an extent that it is impossible for the will to regard the other person as an object for use.

Given such an attitude, there is no reason for shame, or for concealment of the values of sex, since there is no danger that they might obscure the value of the person.... The need for shame has been absorbed by mature love for a person. "A man and a woman can become ‘one flesh’ — in the familiar words of the Book of Genesis (2:24), with which the Creator defined the essence of marriage — and that oneness will not be a form of shamelessness, but only the full realization of the union of persons, which results from reciprocal conjugal love.”

Sean pointed out that Wojtyla uses the word reciprocal — marriage is not just a mutual agreement for use, but conjugal implies total abandonment of the self to the other — a much deeper mutual gift.

Wojtyla then warns that shame, and its absorption by love, might be treated superficially. “The feeling of shame inspired in one person by sexual desire for another is...blurred in the consciousness, where it coexists with a growing emotional attachment which has the power to liberate the minds of man and woman alike from the feeling of shame. And this emotional-affective process explains the view, so very often expressed or implied, that ‘the emotion (love) itself gives men and women the right to physical intimacy and to sexual intercourse.’”

This is a mistaken view, says Wojtyla, for love as an emotional experience, even if reciprocated, is very far from being the same as love completed by the commitment of the will in a marriage. “The mere elimination of the feeling of shame by some sort of amorous feeling is not enough...” Hence, he says, there is a need to develop sexual shame by education.

Sean described chastity and shame as little no’s always in the context of a bigger yes. Chastity is a way of living where one is open to receiving love — a positive orientation. The wonders and joys of shame could be misunderstood, he said, without that context. Peter pointed out that this is why we love the Pope — he looks at shame, something easily viewed negatively, and instead sees a longing for love, with shame clearing the way for love.

Kevin remarked that the sexual revolution of the 1960s was about getting rid of sexual shame. Why is it, he asked, that some people in certain times and places have a puritanical view vs. a view that says anything goes? Kevin’s theory is that the “anything goes” morality happens when societies become comfortable and secure, as opposed to the difficult times during which protective mechanisms are heightened.

The Problem of Shamelessness

Wojtyla explains that there is a certain relativism about what is shameless, possibly depending on moral culture, external climate, etc. Nevertheless, he says, this does not mean that shamelessness itself is relative. Shame, he says, is “a tendency, uniquely characteristic of the human person, to conceal sexual values sufficiently to prevent them from obscuring the value of person as such.” Besides physical shame (connected to the body), there is emotional shame which endeavors to conceal reactions and feelings in which the habit of regarding “the body and sex” as objects for use is in evidence.

Physical shamelessness is a behavior where the values of sex are given such prominence that they obscure the essential value of the person. Emotional shamelessness is the rejection of that healthy tendency to be ashamed of reactions and feeling which make another person merely an object of use because of sexual values. True emotional shame does not equate to prudery, he clarifies; emotional shame is a healthy reaction. Gerard remarked that for Muslims our physical being is bad, and that notion tends to lead to obsession with sex. They lack an appreciation for the dignity of the human person. Pat remarked that shame is there to protect, until love happens...shame is protecting what is good.

Wojtyla then explains that physical shame is important — especially for women — to conceal (via dress, for example) sexual values from men. On the other hand, emotional shame is important — especially for men — to avoid feelings about using persons as objects for sexual use. One is necessary, he is saying, because the other is a possibility.

Sarah explained how she sees this in her high school classes where she teaches. She sees that some girls put their sexual values on display opening themselves up to be used as objects, later to be hurt emotionally; yet boys expose their emotions without necessarily understanding how those might be interpreted. Kevin remarked that what we tend to overlook is that shame has to be somehow inculcated.

Wojtyla then addresses the problem of pornography in art. He writes:

“An artist communicates in his work his own thoughts, feelings, and attitudes, but his work does not serve only this purpose. It serves the truth, in that it must capture and transmit some fragment of reality in a beautiful way. Aesthetic beauty is the most distinctive characteristic of a work of art. A fragment of reality which artists very frequently try to capture is the love of man and woman.... Art has a right and a duty, for the sake of realism, to reproduce the human body, and the love of man and woman as they are in reality, to speak the whole truth about them.”

Pornography, he continues, is a tendency to accentuate the sexual element when reproducing the human body or human love. This destroys the integral image of the human reality which is love between man and woman. “For the truth about human love consists always in reproducing the interpersonal relationship, however large sexual values may loom in the relationship.”