THE "BANALIZATION OF THE BODY"

The Holy Father pronounces the obvious, and the press scurries. It is interesting that in the AP version of this story, they left out the "banalisation of the human body" line from his speech.

"Banal" means "trivial, commonplace." What the Holy Father is saying, is that the human body is not meant to be trivial or cheap. This earthly body is an integral aspect of the most astounding creature created by God in the universe: the human being, the embodied spirit or inspirited body who bears the image and likeness of God. When people give themselves to each other sexually, that is a moment of particularly heightened sacramentality, because giving-yourself-in-love is what the Trinity does for all eternity. And for new life to spring from that giving is like having a brilliant ray from Genesis shining through you: "And God said, let there be Child." That's the way it's meant to be. When people "banalize" sex into a mere jumble of opportunity, heat, and itch, and "banalize" their connection with each other as something less than an enduring and cherishing love; and "banalize" new life as something disposable, a new budding child as a kind of undesirable bodily waste, something to be flushed it's a tragedy. So painful. So low. God is calling us to something so much higher, so much more beautiful.

Pope Benedict, in his first clear pronouncement on gay marriages since his election, on Monday condemned same-sex unions as fake and expressions of "anarchic freedom" that threatened the future of the family.

The Pope, who was elected in April, also condemned divorce, artificial birth control, trial marriages and free-style unions, saying all of these practices were dangerous for the family.

"Today's various forms of dissolution of marriage, free unions, trial marriages as well as the pseudo-matrimonies between people of the same sex are instead expressions of anarchic freedom which falsely tries to pass itself off as the true liberation of man," he said.

The Pope, who as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger headed the Vatican's doctrinal department for more than two decades, said "pseudo freedoms" such as gay marriages were based on what he called the "banalisation of the human body" and of man himself.