I have no reason to think that Christopher West isn’t 100% genuine. He has made it his life’s work to make Catholic teaching on sexuality accessible to a culture that so badly needs the message. I can respect that even if I have some quibbles over presentation.
Does his approach resonate with everyone? Of course not. I think West’s strategy is to shake the lukewarm out of complacency rather than preaching to the choir. On that front, it’s hard to argue that he has not been successful.
But if you don’t like him, you’re certainly free to disregard him. He’s not a pope or a bishop.
Dear Joe5859,
Cordial greetings and a very good day. Hope all is well and jolly good to see you on the boards again.
Many men, dear brother, myself among them, have very grave concerns with Mr. West as a popular teacher of Catholic moral theology. Sadly, he appears intent on chasing secular culture (already in a dire state of moral deterioration) so as to be seen to be ‘relevant’ and with it, even stooping to the shameful level of using indelicate and irreverent language to supposedly serve that end. The chap has fallen for the fallacy that to reach modern man, shaped by a licentious and promiscuous culture, one has to communicate and express oneself in coarse speech to have any chance of being heard. However, this makes very little sense, since he mostly appears on stage before a well-adjusted Catholic audience, including mothers with children who have had to exit in horror and disgust. If he has enjoyed wide success then it because many contemporary Catholics are driven by their own worldly desires to accumulate for themselves teachers who will gratify the tastes of their carnal and self-willed hearts. This is surely why the truth seldom gets hearing now; men refuse to listen it, having a preference instead for irreverent discourses that pander to their worldly ‘itching ears’ (cf II Tim. 4: 3).
Notwithstanding our sex saturated culture, Mr. West apears to be thoroughly convinced that your American Catholicism is Puritanical, dear friend, and this has resulted in some jolly un-Catholic thinking. According to him, previous generations of Catholics have been unduly prissy owing to a repressive approach to sexual matters. This is arrant nonsense and an attempt to bolster his own pet theories and misrepresentations of H.H.JPII’
s Theology of the Body, Wednesday Audience Adrresses. Moreover, it reveals a very defective understanding of our most holy religion, for sanctity and separation from the world is a divine mandate (cf. Rom. 12: 2; CCC, paras. 2013-20-15). We are bidden to strive for a deeper intimate union with our Blessed Saviour and to relinquish all that would hinder our efforts towards this goal. This has nothing whatsoever to do with Puritanism, Manachaeism or Jansenism, but it has everything to do with the godly pursuit of holiness. A hand in hand with the world type of religious practice has never been an option for any pious Catholic, for we are to keep ourselves “unstained by the world” (Jam. 1: 27), in other words, separate from distracting and demoralizing influences.
Mr. West, moreover, has not always been a spokesman for the Pope or Catholic doctrine. At the age of 21 he nearly left the Church because he considered its good teaching on birth control to be repressive and antiquated. Prior to his departure he decided to allow the Church to explain herself. Thus he read H.H.JPII’s 129 Wednesday Audiences on the
Theology of the Body and this changed the way he viewed the whole universe. He said, “I knew that I would spend the rest of my life studying the Pope’s theology of the body and making it accessible to others”. Now, dear brother, this comes from a chap who finds deep meaning in that debased sensory material, rock music, and the Spiderman III film (which he admits has occupied his thoughts for many years now). Again, this comes from a man who boasts of his own rock drumming and pounds his chest to the beat of a rock group song whilst belting out “DEE-SIII-RE” to illustrate one of his undergraduate style theology lectures!
Much more could be said, but his presentations have been well critiqued and refuted by David L. Schindler and Alice Von Hilderbrand and I would strongly recommend that Catholics peruse these very carefully. However, dear brother, the answer to Mr. West’s strange teachings is quite simple. We must needs ask ourselves, just how much in recent decades has our
sensus Catholicus been dulled and how much has our standard of decency been abased by the abounding depravity of Western secular culture? Have we become so densensitized that we cannot see that someone who utters the vulgarity of Christopher West cannot be regarded as a popular teacher of Catholic moral theology? Mr. West may well have good intentions, but his ‘mission’ is, in my and others opinion, yet another sign of the apocalyptic spiritual declension of our times, amidst the worst crisis in Church history. He deserves our ardent prayers for his repentance and a change of heart, no less than the public condemnation his scandals require.
God bless.
Warmest good wishes,
Portrait
Pax
Which one did you read, watch or listen to?