Reclaiming physical culture

Why only the religion of the Resurrection honours the body fully

On May 20, 1945, Pope Pius XII addressed the Italian sporting associations, and the remarks he made on sport then are worth returning to today for two reasons. First, Christianity has downplayed the importance physical culture and its role in the development of virtue. This has driven many young men especially away from the Church. Second, vitalists — many of them Nietzschean sodomites — are advising men on masculinity. Homosexuality has always been strongly linked to bodybuilding. In the pagan gymnasium, men trained naked, and the homoerotic cult of Adonis and the body beautiful persists today.

Unlike pagan body worship, Christianity understands sport as ‘an education of the body’. And because we can’t train the body without also training the mind, sport is ‘closely related to morality’. Schools used to understand this, and it shouldn’t surprise us that physical and intellectual expectations have fallen together.

The body has ‘its part to play in the homage to be rendered to the creator.’ When we don’t take sufficient pride in our bodies, we dishonour God. Imagine a stud athlete who allows himself to become a fat, weak slob who does nothing but watch TV all day. In making an idol of physical comfort and luxury, he has squandered God’s gifts. By contrast, ‘the Church has always shown for the body a care and respect which materialism, with its idolatrous cult, has never manifested.’

This care and respect isn’t only about physical health. Of course sport does aim ‘to cultivate the dignity and harmony of the human body to develop its health, strength, agility and grace.’ But since grace builds on nature, we need to discipline our bodies because the natural virtues provide a firm foundation for the supernatural ones.

As ‘an effective antidote to softness and easy living,’ sport has not only physical but moral and spiritual benefits. Through ‘rigorous discipline,’ it ‘awakens the sense of order’. This means it helps a man develop temperance and fortitude: ‘It goes far beyond mere physical strength, and leads man to moral strength and greatness.’

Pope Pius XII asks, ‘Have you ever noticed the considerable number of soldiers among the martyrs whom the Church venerates?’ The reason for this, he says, is that ‘the training inherent to the profession of arms’ formed ‘their body and character,’ making them ready to fight for the Church. And sport also teaches the endurance and diligence this requires, becoming ‘an occupation of the whole man,’ not just the body.

Indeed, ‘sport is the image and symbol’ of ‘unceasing work for Christ, the restraining and subjection of the body to the immortal soul.’ No pain, no gain — in the spiritual life as in sport. And this is why so many men find that lifting weights to be a powerful first step on the road to recovery from degeneracy. ‘The body should be so treated and trained as to be able to obey the counsel of wisdom and reason,’ and physical culture is a way to start doing this. If you want to make good progress in the gym, you can’t eat junk, nor can you have haphazard, insufficient sleep.

And you can’t make progress forever. So apart from making a man courageous, sports also teach a man to be ‘a generous loser and a gracious victor.’ This is the vital lesson of humility. And for especially tough-minded, proud men, sporting injuries are sometimes the only thing that humbles them before death itself does.

Christianity also prevents physical culture from becoming an idol. Against the disordered pursuit of sports, ‘we can never without sufficient necessity endanger our life for the sake of a sport.’ Shortening your life with bodybuilding drugs isn’t manly. ‘Sport is not an end in itself, but a means.’ It’s for the ‘balanced formation and education of the whole man.’ Doing more pushups than prayers is disordered. ‘I do all things for the gospel's sake,’ wrote St. Paul.

Ultimately, the aim of the physically powerful man must be to ‘use his superiority or authority to prevent or halt with a look, a word or a gesture, some blasphemy, evil speech, dishonesty.’ St. Sebastian, for example, used his military strength and courage to defend the faith against the wicked emperor Diocletian who was having the Christians put to death.

If we are physically soft, we become spiritually soft. Grace builds on nature. And because sport prepares a man ‘to carry without weakness the weight of the greatest responsibilities,’ physical culture needs to be part of the return to Christian masculinity. Only the religion of the Resurrection honours the body properly and sets strength in its proper place: as Pope Pius XII warned, ‘Where did you get the strength from? Thank God, use it for his glory, or else both you and it your physical strength or talent will be equally plunged into hell.’