The Great TOB Debate
Posted on: June 19, 2009
Matthew Warner at Fallible Blogma offers his assessment of the recent Christopher West “debate”:
I think the entire episode has been a healthy process (mostly) motivated by love. Christopher West has even said he has learned from it.
In case you missed it, West was on ABC’s Nightline last month to talk about JP II’s Theology of the Body. In typical mainstream media fashion, however, the six minute report did not exactly portray the Church teaching or West’s own views properly, which immediately prompted a response from West in order to clarify a few things.
Nevertheless, the whole thing sparked a few very public (and sometimes harsh) criticisms about West’s TOB interpretation and delivery from some Catholic theologians, including Alice von Hildebrand and David L. Schindler of the Pontifical Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family and Fr. Angelo Geiger. Both Janet Smith and biblical scholar Michael Waldstein have spoken up in West’s defense and West himself has responded to his critics in this interview with Our Sunday Visitor. Jimmy Akin also gave a very thorough and constructively critical as well as defensive look at West’s TOB etiquette.
All of that, of course, doesn’t even compare to the heated debate among commenters in the blogosphere. Things apparently got so bad at Mark Shea’s blog that he had to write a post telling his readers to cease what he called the trial and summary condemnation of Christopher West.
As for myself, I can say with almost absolute certainty that I wouldn’t even know that the a Theology of the Body even existed if it weren’t for Christopher West and the abundant TOB resources he has made available to the general public – and in a language that we normal people can understand and retain easier.
Theology of the Body 
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