TOB is the Antidote to Totalitarianism

The 20th century saw the rise and fall of many totalitarian regimes which left in their wake immeasurable horrors of the like mankind had never before seen. Tyranny, suffering, and death on an untold scale spread across the world like a plague on a wave of revolutionary zeal. Fascism and Communism stripped people of their property, their rights, and their lives. But amid the despair, some, like Pope Saint John Paul II, chose hope.

Pope Saint John Paul II, who lived under the oppression of both the Nazis and the Communists, preached an antidote to the disease of totalitarianism. In his Theology of the Body, Pope John Paul reminds us that God created each and every human being in His own image. This gives each and every one of us inherent dignity, no matter our wealth, class, or race. We know this because our bodies teach us we are unique persons created for love. This relational nature mirrors God Himself, who is a communion of persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. By affirming the infinite dignity of every human person, St. John Paul’s Theology of the Body shines as a beacon of hope against the totalitarian tendency to reduce people to mere cogs in a collective machine. 

The difference between totalitarian ideology and Theology of the Body leads to radically different ways of living. Our beliefs dictate our actions. Communists believe that fixing our material problems will make us happy and thereby justify theft and oppression. St. John Paul reminds us that loving others will make us happy, then we can find joy in the deepest poverty. Nazis view humans merely as tools for material progress and therefore thought of those who hindered their progress as expendable. St. John Paul reminds us that humans exist for love: they are not expendable; they are not a means to an end; they are an end in themselves.

A young Karol Wojtyla