Greetings Father Angelo.
A simple question: what is the position of the Holy Church for the philosophical conception of Spiritualism.
Thank you very much and regards.

Priest’s answer

Dearly beloved, 
1. spiritualism in the moral context means that current of thought that reduces the human person only to his spiritual element.

The human body would not be an essential element of the person, but the reality through which the person manifests himself.

Here the error is first and foremost anthropological rather than ethical.

2. In the moral sphere, the consequences of reducing the human person to his only spiritual element are very serious, because if the body is not essential for the human person, the moral norm arises only from what one decides.
If, however, the body is an essential element of the person, the inclinations of the body are the inclination of the person. These inclinations indicate what the meaning of the body and ultimately of the person is.

3. To immediately get down to the concrete and look, for example, at the field of sexuality, if the body is only the place in which the person manifests himself, everyone can do with sexuality what they want.

To make his action good or bad it would be sufficient for his intention to be good or bad.


If, however, the body is an essential element of the person, sexuality reveals its specific meaning, which is that of total self-donation, which when it includes the body, is also a donation of one’s ability to become a father and mother.

By excluding this purpose, self-giving is altered. It ceases to be a donation of oneself, of one’s whole person, of one’s heart, of one’s mind, of one’s destiny. It is reduced purely to a playful experience of pleasure, in which what makes that act a truly human act is missing, that is, a total and exclusive gift of one’s person.

4. Spiritualism, on the other hand, makes everything permissible as long as there is a good intention.

The holy Pope John Paul II in the encyclical Veritatis splendor clearly highlighted the limits and unacceptability of spiritualism.

He found the error to belong to the anthropological level: “Other moralists, however, in their concern to stress the importance of values, remain sensitive to the dignity of freedom, but they frequently conceive of freedom as somehow in opposition to or in conflict with material and biological nature, over which it must progressively assert itself. Here various approaches are at one in overlooking the created dimension of nature and in misunderstanding its integrity. For some, “nature” becomes reduced to raw material for human activity and for its power: thus nature needs to be profoundly transformed, and indeed overcome by freedom, in as much as it represents a limitation and denial of freedom” (VS 46).
“In their view, man, as a rational being, not only can but actually must freely determine the meaning of his behaviour.. (…).  The workings of typically human behaviour, as well as the so-called “natural inclinations”, would establish at the most — so they say — a general orientation towards correct behaviour, but they cannot determine the moral assessment of individual human acts, so complex from the viewpoint of situations” (VS 47).

5. And here is the pronouncement of the magisterium: “This moral theory does not correspond to the truth about man and his freedom. It contradicts the Church’s teachings on the unity of the human person, whose rational soul is per se et essentialiter the form of his body.86 The spiritual and immortal soul is the principle of unity of the human being, whereby it exists as a whole — ‘’corpore et anima unus’’  —  (Gaudium et spes, 14) – as a person.
These definitions not only point out that the body, which has been promised the resurrection, will also share in glory. They also remind us that reason and free will are linked with all the bodily and sense faculties.(…).
And since the human person cannot be reduced to a freedom which is self-designing, but entails a particular spiritual and bodily structure, the primordial moral requirement of loving and respecting the person as an end and never as a mere means also implies, by its very nature, respect for certain fundamental goods, without which one would fall into relativism and arbitrariness.” (VS 48).

6. Even more concretely: “A doctrine which dissociates the moral act from the bodily dimensions of its exercise is contrary to the teaching of Scripture and Tradition. Such a doctrine revives, in new forms, certain ancient errors which have always been opposed by the Church, inasmuch as they reduce the human person to a “spiritual” and purely formal freedom
This reduction misunderstands the moral meaning of the body and of kinds of behaviour involving it (cf. 1 Cor 6:19). Saint Paul declares that “the immoral, idolaters, adulterers, sexual perverts, thieves, the greedy, drunkards, revilers, robbers” are excluded from the Kingdom of God (cf. 1 Cor 6:9). This condemnation — repeated by the Council of Trent”88 — lists as “mortal sins” or “immoral practices” certain specific kinds of behaviour the wilful acceptance of which prevents believers from sharing in the inheritance promised to them. In fact, body and soul are inseparable: in the person, in the willing agent and in the deliberate act, they stand or fall together. (VS 49)

7.In another document of the ecclesiastical magisterium, the letter to families “Gratissimam sane” of 2 February 1994, the holy Pope John Paul II indicates the precise point in history in which the deviation of spiritualism began, with all its moral consequences: “Unfortunately, Western thought, with the development of modern rationalism, has been gradually moving away from this teaching (implied: biblical and Pauline,editor’s note).
The philosopher who formulated the principle of “Cogito, ergo sum”, “I think, therefore I am”, also gave the modern concept of man its distinctive dualistic character. It is typical of rationalism to make a radical contrast in man between spirit and body, between body and spirit. But man is a person in the unity of his body and his spirit. The body can never be reduced to mere matter: it is a spiritualized body, just as man’s spirit is so closely united to the body that he can be described as an embodied spirit. The richest source for knowledge of the body is the Word made flesh. Christ reveals man to himself. In a certain sense this statement of the Second Vatican Council is the reply, so long awaited, which the Church has given to modern rationalism (n. 19).

I thank you for the question which leads to the root of many wrong statements even by some theologians who say that the encyclical Veritatis splendor should be revised and rewritten. While it would be more appropriate for them to review and rewrite their statements.I bless you, I wish you a happy continuation of the Easter season and I remember you in prayer.
Father Angelo

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