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The Vulnerable Body

Issue Four / 2018

To be embodied is to be vulnerable. Vulnerability strikes us as negative and with reason, rooted as it is in the word “wound.” But the ability to be wounded is also the capacity to be affectedmoved—by another. To be vulnerable is to be in need of help, in attaining something, in growing up, or just in being. “I am wounded with love,” says the Bride of her Bridegroom. Our bodies open us to the world and to God, even though that openness also makes us susceptible to a host of wounds in the more obvious, negative, sense. This issue takes up the full range of that vulnerability in man.

Humanum: Issues in Family, Culture & Science
Pontifical John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family
620 Michigan Ave. N.E. (McGivney Hall)
Washington, DC 20064