Ecstatic Morality and Sexual Politics. A Catholic and Antitotalitarian Theory of the Body by G. J. McAleer (review)

164 BOOK REVIEWS above, Balthasar would not have seen his thought either in terms of an ignorance of Church teaching, or in terms of a simple rejection thereof. Rather, Balthasar's genius lies precisely in his ability to circumvent certain impasses by asking the question in a different way or by beginning with a different starting point. Indeed, he provides numerous hermeneutical keys to his thought in works such as Love Alone Is Credible. It seems strange in a book of this nature not to have looked more closely at how Balthasar sees his own work in the light of the history of Christian (or even Western) thought. Still, this book is to be recommended for engaging in the sort of high-level, re-theologized theology which Balthasar himself would have surely relished. One can only look forward to the debate that this book is sure to elicit. RODNEY HOWSARE DeSales University Center Valley, Pennsylvania Ecstatic Morality and Sexual Politics. A Catholic and Antitotalitarian Theory of the Body. By G. J. MCALEER. NewYork: Fordham University Press, 2005. Pp. 237. $55.00 (cloth). ISBN 0-8232-2456-2. This is a intriguing work. Cognizant of the fact that there exists "no booklength study of Thomas on the body," McAleer offers this work as a "return to Aquinas," or as an "engaged Thomism" in the arena of a general theory of the human body (xi-xii). What follows is tour de force of sorts, wherein Aquinas is put in dialogue with several contemporary thinkers, chiefly Pope John Paul II, on the meaning of the human body in general, and then on the body as it relates more specifically to human sexuality and to political theorizing. The chief notion running throughout, suggested by the unusual title of the work, is what McAleer terms "ecstatic Thomism." Rather innovatively, he takes this creative mode of expression as the key to defending traditional Catholic moral thought, and as the key to unlocking the "extremely elaborate metaphysical conception of the body [that] is at the root of Humanae Vitae and [of] its recent defense in Woytyla's philosophical theology" (137). Grounded in the Pseudo-Dionysian maxim bonum est diffusivum sui, "ecstatic Thomism" signifies a "metaphysics of the body as a self-diffusive good" (ibid.). McAleer shows the central importance of such a metaphysics by juxtaposing it with the fact that the body, and more specifically human sexuality, is ridden with "violence" on account of original sin, that is, is subject to tension, lust, domination (125ff.). The norms of Catholic sexual morality give us the best chance of reducing this violence, or the best opportunity for realizing the body's self-diffusive goodness. So when we look, say, at the use of artificial BOOK REVIEWS 165 contraceptives, we see an act that "cannot escape violence," or an act that stands opposed to "ecstatic sex," as ecstatic sex is only where "spouses act so as to serve the good ofthe other" (128). Rather than serving the good of the other, artificial contraception feeds the tension, the lust, the domination to which human sexuality has been enchained since the original fall. With the assertion that a metaphysics of the body as a self-diffusive good is central to Karol Wojtyla's philosophical theology, McAleer betrays his firm conviction that there runs a deep Thomist undercurrent throughout the whole of Wojtyla's works and that, indeed, Pope John Paul II stands out as "a leading contemporary Thomist" (138). Whether most Thomists, or even most proponents ofJohn Paul II's personalist theology of the body (who often exhibit little interest in Aquinas), would agree with this assertion is open to debate. But McAleer does not fail to deliver a strong attempt to corroborate it. The book concludes with a critique of what the author terms a "liberal conception of the body" and of "the liberal political thinking that accompanies it" (157). More specifically, McAleer attempts to show that Catholic social thought has taken a "wrong turn" in its employment of the language of human rights. This is due chiefly to the influence of Jacques Maritain, who for his part sought to place liberal democratic principles on a Thomistic foothold. The result, according...