What the Duck Dynasty guy doesn't know could hurt us all

Migrated over from Nunblog, with slight modifiations:

You might be surprised to hear this, but until all the brouhaha about cable network A&E and Duck Dynasty, I had no idea who Phil Robertson might be. Indeed, all I knew about Duck Dynasty was from seeing the spin-off merchandise in the novelty aisles at the local Walgreens. Now all of a sudden the bearded patriarch is being held up as a paragon of plain-speaking biblical wisdom.

Except I'm not buying it.  I have no doubt that Mr. Robertson is a sincere and virtuous man, butI am afraid that the more Robertson is defended in social media as an upholder of marriage, the more the cause of natural marriage will suffer in the long run. The articles I have read on the matter quote very little of Mr. Robertson, but what is there is incredibly coarse and unreflective. There is little "biblical" to it.

As much as Catholics all the way to Pope Francis believe that complementarity is essential to marriage as such, we really can't put an "Amen" to what the White's Ferry Road Church of Christ elder said about it. Yet the more Mr. Robertson's cause is pleaded, the more he becomes established in the cultural imagination as the mouthpiece and representative of all those who stand up for the integrity of natural marriage.

Is this what we are hoping for? A reduction of the spouses themselves to their reproductive organs?  A raw, physical (not personalist) caricature of complementarity, divorced from its essential, life-giving fruitfulness and the very nature of the family built on marriage as the primary cell of society? Heaven forbid!

Somebody, quick! Invite my fellow Louisianan Mr. Robertson to the Theology of the Body program!  As a Church elder, he should really appreciate the rich, nuanced, infinitely complex biblical vision of man and woman that Pope John Paul spent so many years developing. As the now de-facto media spokesperson for natural marriage, he really needs it.

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Here's a reflection from Audrey Assad on Phil Robertson and the Theology of the Body; Audrey offers  the same point as I (in a much more elegant and comprehensive way).


For a do-it-yourself overview of the Theology of the Body, watch Discover Theology of the Body.

Meditating on a Good Death in the season of Holy Birth

Susan Windley-Daoust offers an interested approach to Theology of the Body, drawing from Pope John Paul's principles in a reflection on what used to be called a "happy death." Even though our attention toward the end of Advent is drawn more to birth, for many bereaved families, this may very well be a season of dying. Windley-Daoust's post on "The Sign of the Dying Body" is timely for all of us, though.