Excerpt from the talk of Sr. Marianne Lorraine Trouve, FSP, delivered at the UN for the occasion of the launch of Man and Woman He Created Them, the title John Paul II gave to his seminal work on the bodily dimension of human personahood, sexuality, marriage, and celibacy:

In his masterful biography of Pope John Paul II, George Weigel called the Pope’s theology of the body "one of the boldest reconfigurations of Catholic theology in centuries." He also said it is a "kind of theological time bomb set to go off with dramatic consequences... perhaps in the 21st century."

Those of us from Pauline Books and Media, the publishing house of the Daughters of St. Paul, are very grateful to God for helping us to play some role in setting off that theological time bomb. When we first began to publish these talks in the early 1980’s, as the Pope was giving his addresses, we certainly did not realize then what an impact this teaching would have on the Church. We were simply doing what we always have done, which was to take the teaching of the Pope and make it available to people as best we could.

We first published John Paul’s TOB in four small volumes from 1981 to 1984. In the preface to the first book, which was titled Original Unity of Man and Woman, Bishop Donald Wuerl wrote that the Pope’s “meditations have a timeless ring to them, as do the questions he raises.” From our perspective now, some 25 years later, we can certainly see how true those words were. This timeless teaching is still now only beginning to be discovered and unpacked.

By the mid 90’s the four small volumes had gone out of print. By this time the unity of the Pope’s teaching was becoming more apparent. So instead of simply reprinting the four volumes, we put them together into a single volume entitled The Theology of the Body: Human Love in the Divine Plan, which was published in 1997. To be honest, even then I think we still did not quite realize how much interest was brewing in TOB. So we were surprised and delighted to see that, contrary to the life span of most books, TOB actually sold more copies every year. Something was going on; little by little the word was getting out. More and more people were discovering that the Catholic Church had a very positive message about marriage and human sexuality.

At the same time, scholars were studying the Pope’s message more in depth. Gradually a growing need was felt for a better translation of the Pope’s text. The original translation into English was done by the staff of the Vatican newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano. The speeches were translated each week over a period of five years. Naturally, with different people doing the translating, certain key terms were translated in different ways. They did not have the benefit of the in-depth studies of the Pope’s thought that have since been published. The text had some other inadequacies, which Prof. Michael Waldstein explained in detail in an article in the magazine Communio. We realized the need for a new translation, but were at a loss as to who might do this. We began to pray for this intention. So when Prof. Waldstein sent us an email in the summer of 2004 and told us he was already doing a translation and would like us to publish it, it was literally an answer to a prayer. We were extremely grateful to him for contacting us, and from there the project went ahead. He’ll be speaking shortly and will explain more in detail the significance of this work.

In a special way we wish to thank Dr. Waldstein for the tremendous amount of work he has put into this project. He amazed us with his attention to detail not only in the translation itself, but in the index which he compiled himself. He also helped us greatly throughout the entire production process. He was involved in every aspect of the project and it was a joy to work with him.

The introduction that he wrote to accompany the text is truly outstanding and could stand alone as a book in itself. Kenneth Schmitz, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Toronto, and a visiting professor at the John Paul II Institute in Washington, said that Dr Waldstein’s introduction “is nothing less than stunning in its completeness, insight and integrating power. I have rarely read a text with such pleasure!”

In conclusion, all of us at Pauline Books & Media pray that this work will help to make the thought of Pope John Paul II better known and lead those who study it to experience in themselves the full joy of what it means to live fully as a human person made in the image and likeness of God.