“the redemption of the body and the sacramentality of marriage”
- Cycle I – The original unity of man and woman
(Theology of the body of man “in the beginning”) - Cycle II – The redemption of the heart
(Theology of the body of fallen and redeemed man) - Cycle III – The resurrection of the flesh
(Theology of the body of risen man, fully redeemed and re-created) - Cycle IV – Christian virginity
- Cycle V – Christian marriage
(the sacrament of marriage in the dimension of the Covenant, of Grace and of the Sign) - Cycle VI – Love and fruitfulness
(A fresh reading and deeper study of “Humanae Vitae” and outlines of family and marital spirituality in the light of the encyclical)
for each catechesis I shall indicate, besides the date on which it was delivered by the Holy Father (so as to allow the text to be checked or traced in other ways, as well as to indicate the period and the context), the numbering of the catecheses as given in the volume “Male and Female He Created Them. Catechesis on human love” (Città Nuova – Libreria Editrice Vaticana, Rome 1985), which has by now become the reference text for scholars of these catecheses.
A “discrepancy” occurs between catecheses 95 and 96 (in the fifth cycle), between which I have inserted the catechesis delivered on 29 September 1982 (“The analogy of spousal love indicates the radical character of grace”), in my view extremely important and inexplicably overlooked in the text cited.
Another “discrepancy” exists in catecheses 108 to 117 (in the fifth cycle), which appear never to have been delivered by the Holy Father (in their place, for the same period, I have found another 5 catecheses which certainly, by the Holy Father’s explicit reference, relate to the Catecheses on Human Love, yet are not included in the text cited).
OTHER CATECHESES – This short cycle of catecheses seems to me of interest for a reflection on:
freedom and moral conscience which may usefully be included in the cycle of the catecheses on human love
