When Adam and Eve saw each others’ bodies, they saw each other for the beauty of God’s image in one another. The love Adam felt for his wife was a most pure and holy love and on a level, a love for God which he expressed toward her. Their attraction to one another was not one of lust or a sought for satisfaction.
When Adam and Eve sinned, they at once knew that they were naked and hid. Then, God fashioned clothes for them (Genesis 3:21).They had acquired shame as a result of their sin. While compared to the shamelessness that we would enjoy had our first parents retained that state of grace, shame to us now is not a curse; it’s a gift!
Shame is what protects us from violation. It’s what protects us from one another and keeps us from falling perpetually to sins of sexual immorality because of the fallen lens through which we see others’ bodies, and our own.
Adam and Eve didn’t need to wear clothing because of the supernatural state of grace they enjoyed prior to the fall, but upon their sinning and the entrance of lust into the world, it was necessary for them to hide their bodies. We are wise to take the same que from them and dress with modesty.
We would have no reason to believe that naturists at any nudist colony have any more perfect an understanding of the human body or its beauty than that which Adam and Eve once enjoyed and so, living as fallen beings, they must feel the same feelings of shame and lust that the rest of us do–except they simply ignore them.
I cannot see life as a nudist in consonance with Catholic teachings regarding modesty. It just doesn’t jibe with Theology of the Body because it presumes an immunity to those earthly, fleshly temptations which even Christ, Himself, experienced (Hebrews 4:15) and which all of us are called to avoid.
