Some months ago, while reading Moral theology after Humanae Vitae: fundamental issues in moral theory and sexual ethics, my eyes fell on a phrase the author, the famed moral theologian Rev. Vincent Twomey SVD, quoted from St. Paul’s letter to the Ephesians “No one hates his own flesh but nourishes it and cherishes it” (Eph 5:29).
Twomey was addressing the question of gender dysphoria, the situation where people claim to experience distress due to a mismatch between their gender identity— i.e. their personal sense of their own gender—and their sex assigned at birth. Relying on this phrase from St. Paul, Twomey argued that “to hate one’s own flesh is the limit of self-contradiction to which our freedom tends, it is the point at which our assertion of ourselves against nature becomes an attack upon ourselves.”
Now, I do not wish to debate the question of gender dysphoria here, but the quotation from St. Paul stayed with me and has returned to me repeatedly. I realised that there is more that this phrase can offer us, than merely a reflection on gender dysphoria.
For example, the phrase can be used to reflect more broadly about our relationship with society. To the Catholic it is not unusual to see the entire Church as a single body. There have been centuries of teaching on this point, where all Christians are seen as members of Christ’s mystical body. Once again, this teaching can be traced back to St. Paul, this time in his first letter to the Corinthian : “For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ…. Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it” (12:12, 23).
Modern nationalism most certainly took this Christian teaching and made it its own. From my own childhood I recollect little musical performances at school days where students were dressed up as parts of the body, which started out all happy and cooperative, but then went on to refuse this cooperation, resulting in the collapse of the body. Indeed, I believe the Films Division even made a short, animated film on this idea.
Before it was taken by modern nation-states, however, the Catholic Church was teaching that the family is the first natural society, the basic unit of society. If one can argue for secular society in fact operating, and needing to operate as a body, the same thing can most certainly be said of the family unit. Which is why it makes sense for us to assert that one cannot, and must not, hate members of our families, whether natal or those united through marriage, because this is to, whether one recognises it or not, hate one’s own self. Our selves are not isolated, autonomous entities, but twined with those of others, and a happy, self-satisfied life rests on our having loving relationships with those we are intimately related to. To hate one’s parents, siblings, spouses (former or otherwise) or in-laws, is to lay the ground for profound unhappiness. Worse, to inculcate this dislike in own’s offspring is to perpetuate a cycle of hatred which will spin onward into time even as they will not realise where these dark feelings and responses come from.
Having said this, I must hasten to add that pious moralising on your personal lives is not my intention here. I am still building the base for the heart of my argument to come. The argument I seek to make is to suggest that if convivial relationships with those in our family, and larger society, yes, even the nation-state, are critical to our personal well-being, not to mention that of the larger system, then it is critical that we also look further afield to ensure this well-being.
I refer to the way in which early 20th century nationalists inculcated a spirit of vengeance towards the European powers they were ranged against. To be fair, some of the Indian nationalist leaders, like Gandhi and Nehru, held fraternal feelings towards the British, specifying that their contest was solely against the governmental powers which they sought to liberate India from. Nevertheless, the project of crafting a culture for independent British-India, seems to have rested on systematically getting rid of European influences in our body-politic (the socio-political body).
This project only gained momentum with the emergence of post-colonial theory which provided a veneer of respectability to this project which essentially rested on refusing to recognise that for better or for worse, the European was as much a part of us, as we were (are?) part of the European. The post-colonial project rested on an attempt to tear away these influences, to liberate a precolonial sensibility, or craft a postcolonial culture.
Understandably, this project of cultural decolonization was also turned against others who were seen as colonizers prior to the British – the Mughals and pre-Mughal Turko-Afghan rulers of the subcontinent, and closer home, the Portuguese (who established themselves in the subcontinent well before the Mughals did).
One cannot, however, right a wrong, by committing another wrong, and we can see the error of this, and the truth of St. Paul’s teaching, by looking at the world around us. Almost unawares we have slipped into a horrid world which can be recognised in the famous phrase of Thomas Hobbes, Bellum omnium contra omnes, the war of all against all.
As St. Paul, and his Master before him, taught, Love is the answer. We need to recognise that for good, or for bad, the persons and cultures we demonise are our own flesh. To launch campaigns of hate – no matter how sophisticated or disguised they may be – is to eventually wind up hurting our own flesh. If there is one thing each of us can do at this moment, it is to pause and find a way to nourish and cherish what we have rejected, and the madness that if not checked will only escalate and destroy us all.
(A version of this text was first published in the O Heraldo on 17 Sept 2024
Image reference: 'Study for St. Paul preaching in Athens, Raphael, between 1514 and 1515, Uffizi Gallery, via Wikimedia. )
