Healing the Culture and the Family According to John Paul II

It is evident that the culture and the family need healing, but before we can offer a cure, we need to know the spiritual disease ailing us. Pope John Paul II offers a diagnosis in his Letter to Families: the human family is experiencing a “New Manichaeism,” a variant of an ancient heresy, that was released with the philosophical revolution of the 17th century philosopher René Descartes and has reached pandemic levels today. This New Manichaeism has deteriorated our understanding of ourselves, the world, and how we ought to live, and borne radical consequences especially in the areas of bioethics and sexual ethics. John Paul II believed the remedy was an “adequate anthropology” — an “integral vision of man” that includes the body within the structural whole of the person’s life and activity. This is what he offers in his popularly known Theology of the Body. In this book, Dr. David Hajduk details Pope John Paul II’s diagnosis and remedy, explaining how Descartes and the philosophical tradition that followed are at the source of the current crisis in the culture and the family. Dr. Hajduk demonstrates how all the symptoms point to a rejection of the philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas, as well as how they bear a striking resemblance to the heretical ideas that throughout Christian history have typically been labeled as “Manichaean.” Finally, he presents John Paul II’s anthropology, particularly as expressed in his oft-misunderstood Theology of the Body, as a corrective especially suited to lead contemporary men and women to the truth about themselves and God’s plan for human love, as well as marking a return to the perennial philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas, which John Paul II himself declared as the only way to get past the Cartesian watershed.

Book review by Fr. Gerald Murray (Homiletic & Pastoral Review): October 2023

Among John Paul the Great's defining achievements, by God's grace, were Veritatis Splendor and his Theology of the Body.  In this richly insightful book, David Hajduk enables us to see why. —Dr. Matthew Levering, James N. and Mary D. Perry Jr. Chair of Theology, Mundelein Seminary  

A deeper look [at the Theology of the Body] discloses not phenomenological subjectivism or a personalist subversion but a fresh rethinking of Aristotelian and Thomistic principles, deftly applied to the errors of modern philosophy that made possible the sexual revolution... Dr. Hajduk skillfully locates Wojtyła’s contribution within the history of thought and culture… —Dr. Peter A. Kwasniewski, author of The Ecstasy of Love in the Thought of Thomas Aquinas  

In this important study… Hajduk carefully examines the links which Wojtyla/John Paul II sees… in light of current scholarship on Descartes and ancient Manichaeism, making for a nuanced appreciation of the great Polish pope’s analysis… Highly recommended for both scholars and advanced students. —Dr. John Grabowski, Professor of Moral Theology/Ethics, The Catholic University of America

Everyone interested in understanding the post-modern challenges to the Catholic view of the human body, sexuality, the theology of marriage and bio-ethics should study this book. —Dr. Jaroslaw Kupczak, O.P., Chair of Theological Anthropology, The Pontifical University of John Paul II in Krakow