Theology of the Shoddy

By Eamonn Clark, STL ( bio - articles ) | May 28, 2026

The Theology of the Body Institute (TOBI) recently released a piece of content which received an abnormal amount of attention, much of it negative. A previous video had spoken positively about “tongue kissing” for unmarried couples, which elicited a few concerned comments. Wider controversy ensued over the follow-up video, which further defended the original position.

There is an entire subgenre of Catholic relationship and dating content addressing the question, “How far can we go?” Answers typically offer vague and subjective shibboleths ranging from “what you would do if the Pope was in the room” to “whatever protects your heart and your partner’s.”

As this sort of advice has grown to constitute “mainstream” wisdom in the Catholic west, such that it is delivered in every chastity talk at every big youth conference every year, so too has an awareness that something has gone awry. Among the many negative reactions to the TOBI video was a pointed reference to the blunt words of Pope Alexander VII, who condemned a proposition in favor of “kissing for pleasure.” These types of appeals throw into sharp relief the disconnect between the institutional “Catholic mainstream” and older theological and magisterial texts on this area of moral life.

Standing between these two worlds is Pope St. John Paul II. As a theologian, including with respect to questions of human sexuality, he took classical authorities for granted. He looked to move beyond the safety of older authors and their formulas to offer more engaging and expressive ways to communicate truths about marriage and embodiment, especially in a series of Wednesday audiences which are collectively called the “Theology of the Body.” This was an appropriate project for his time, in the aftermath of the sexual revolution and widespread dissent against Humanae Vitae. Merely reiterating lines from older moral textbooks—however good and correct they may be—would likely have proven far less fruitful than what he offered.

However, one must be realistic. Many complain about the “Spirit of Vatican II,” a progressive attitude about doctrine and liturgy which makes poorly-grounded appeals to the texts of the Council. I propose that there is also a “Spirit of the Theology of the Body,” a progressive attitude towards sexuality which makes poorly-grounded appeals to the texts of John Paul II’s catecheses. To be direct: claiming that tongue-kissing your unmarried partner is a healthy thing to do for your relationship is much the same as claiming that liturgical dancing at Sunday mass will help people pray.

How have we reached this point?

There are two kinds of problems with moral literature on chastity from the 1800s and earlier. First of all, the older authors are skittish around the topic of chastity, in an attempt not to dwell on the details of sexual acts too much themselves. Unfortunately, this lack of deep reflection leaves us with a variety of views on matters which an uninitiated moralist would assume were “settled questions,” if not by the universal magisterium, then at least by common consent of the learned. But that is not the case.

Second, these older authors assume and speak to a social fabric which no longer exists, leaving their practical conclusions radically dissonant with contemporary Western culture and thus unpalatable to the point of seeming “unhinged”—or, in the language of the TOBI presenter, “Puritanical.”

I used to live in the small town of Albano, just south of Rome; almost every day I would walk past the bishop’s house and would sometimes think of St. Alphonsus Liguori’s (1696-1787) appeal in his Praxis Confessarii to a decree of a bishop who once resided there (Cardinal Pico della Mirandola, 1668-1743). The decree instructed his priests that young people who were unsuccessfully warned three times to stop spending time alone with someone of the opposite sex were to be refused absolution, especially if they were spending time alone at night. They were also to be refused if their “company-keeping” was against the direct will of their parents, or if the other person’s speech was habitually provocative. St. Alphonsus explains that this policy was enacted due to the danger of kissing and petting which such occasions create. In St. Alphonsus’s mind, scarcely two or three people out of a hundred would not fall into mortal sin through frequently seeing someone alone.

Both the civic architecture and quaint provincial life of eighteenth-century Albano lent itself to this kind of stewardship of the young. The narrow streets cutting through the tiny, packed blocks of apartments which open up to the small piazzas adjacent to several churches along the Via Appia were and still are supplemented by little more than the vast patchwork of farmlands sloping up the hill towards the town itself and the forest atop the crater around the lake. The evenings would have seen families gathering together outside in the streets and piazzas to relax after the day’s work, which was hard labor out in the fields or perhaps in the market or in some artisan shop, where most young people would have also been working. Men would be eager to discuss the day’s business with each other, with a keen desire to arrange a marriage for at least one of their adult children so that their families would mutually benefit and flourish. Traveling meant spending money for a carriage and for lodging, or hours of walking—quite unlike a quick zip into Rome by car today. Trains were only allowed in the Papal States after Pius IX came to power, as he opposed the outright ban of his predecessor, Gregory XVI (d. 1846). All this is to say that “spending time alone” was not particularly consonant with the life of 1700’s Albano—while not difficult in theory, it didn’t fit with the “flow” of things.

Compare this with the life of devout Catholic youth in American suburbia in 2026. Half of their waking hours are spent in front of a screen, much of that interacting with people they have never met in person. They may not know the people who live next door, and must drive almost everywhere, just like everyone else, often being nearly anonymous in places they may visit frequently. They have a plethora of “dating apps” to use in an attempt to find their “soulmate,” and “meeting the family” is usually considered a big step in a relationship. For American Catholic suburbanites, to spend time alone with someone not only fits with the flow, it practically summarizes it.

These are entirely different worlds. However, human nature is identical in both of them. While the popularizers of the Theology of the Body and other “chastity gurus” are right to take inspiration from both the texts and the intentions of John Paul II, they ought to take more inspiration from the texts and intentions of moralists like St. Alphonsus and bishops like Cardinal Pico della Mirandola. While the limitations of simply quoting an eighteenth-century bishop’s decree for confessors are granted, the fact is that it speaks to a reality which cuts through time and space, even if its finer details have not been particularly well explained or commonly agreed upon among serious moralists. The reality is that there are some behaviors which are so morally hazardous that they must never be done, even if they are not immoral in and of themselves. The old Bishop of Albano drew that line at “keeping company.” This is completely unworkable today, but certainly the line must be prior to “making out.”

Or must we simply resign to mass expectations about what “dating” is supposed to be like, even though the paradigm of solo dating is something of an anomaly in world history? In fact, many devout young people engage in inappropriate romantic behaviors because they think this is how it’s “supposed to work.” What if the people with bigger platforms pushed back against this and said, “Actually, it’s never supposed to have worked that way before, and it shouldn’t work that way now”? This would be a long-term investment worth making to improve the landscape of Western Catholic romance—and it is best accomplished as a team effort.

The TOBI video, in which the presenter astonishingly admitted she had not prepared ahead of time, offers precisely zero moral justification for the positive opinions expressed therein about tongue-kissing. In fact, the sense one gets is that she did not quite understand that the objections she was replying to were not about one’s personal feelings about one’s own behavior in one’s own relationship, but were about the objective reality of such actions, at least in the vast majority of cases—against a minority likely far short of St. Alphonsus’s “two or three in a hundred.”

There is a vibe that because the chastity gurus have the biggest microphone, have the most funding, and command the most attention, they must have the right answers. To me it seems they do not even understand the questions. Anyone daring to teach ought to be prepared for a stricter judgment (James 3:1), and anyone who scandalizes the little ones deserves a millstone (Mark 9:42). If the chastity gurus will not attend to the difficult reading of the classical masters of moral theology, perhaps these simple texts of Scripture will get them to rethink their approach and their demeanor to questions like, “How far can we go?” Instead of proposing to young people drowning in hormones that they ought to jump feet-first into the fire to “learn self-mastery,” perhaps it is groups like TOBI that ought to work on their discipline.

The presenter was surprised that the comments she received from the first video were “conservative” critiques. Maybe this is a sign that TOBI and other chastity gurus are not as in touch with Catholic youth as they think they are—and that the moment to begin a more intellectually serious conversation on chastity has arrived.