Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church

Man was created by God in unity of body and soul^{238Cf. Fourth Lateran Ecumenical Council, Chapter 1, De Fide Catholica: DS 800, p. 259; First Vatican Ecumenical Council, Dei Filius, c. 1: De Deo rerum omnium Creatore: DS 3002, p. 587; First Vatican Ecumenical Council, canons 2, 5: DS 3022, 3025, pp. 592, 593.}. “The spiritual and immortal soul is the principle of unity of the human being, whereby it exists as a whole — corpore et anima unus — as a person. These definitions not only point out that the body, which has been promised the resurrection, will also share in glory. They also remind us that reason and free will are linked with all the bodily and sense faculties. The person, including the body, is completely entrusted to himself, and it is in the unity of body and soul that the person is the subject of his own moral acts”^{239John Paul II, Encyclical Letter Veritatis Splendor, 48: AAS 85 (1993), 1172.}.

Through his corporeality man unites in himself elements of the material world; these “reach their summit through him, and through him raise their voice in free praise of the Creator”^{240Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, Pastoral Constitution Gaudium et Spes, 14: AAS 58 (1966), 1035; cf. Catechism of the Catholic Church, 364.}. This dimension makes it possible for man to be part of the material world, but not as in a prison or in exile. It is not proper to despise bodily life; rather “man ... is obliged to regard his body as good and honourable since God has created it and will raise it up on the last day”^{241Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, Pastoral Constitution Gaudium et Spes, 14: AAS 58 (1966), 1035.}. Because of this bodily dimension, however, following the wound of sin, man experiences the rebellion of his body and the perverse inclinations of his heart; he must always keep careful watch over these lest he become enslaved to them and become a victim of a purely earthly vision of life. Through his spirituality man moves beyond the realm of mere things and plunges into the innermost structure of reality. When he enters into his own heart, that is, when he reflects on his destiny, he discovers that he is superior to the material world because of his unique dignity as one who converses with God, under whose gaze he makes decisions about his life. In his inner life he recognizes that the person has “a spiritual and immortal soul” and he knows that the person is not merely “a speck of nature or a nameless constituent of the city of man”^{242Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, Pastoral Constitution Gaudium et Spes, 14: AAS 58 (1966), 1036; cf. Catechism of the Catholic Church, 363, 1703.}.

Therefore, man has two different characteristics: he is a material being, linked to this world by his body, and he is a spiritual being, open to transcendence and to the discovery of “more penetrating truths”, thanks to his intellect, by which “he shares in the light of the divine mind”^{243Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, Pastoral Constitution Gaudium et Spes, 15: AAS 58 (1966), 1036.}. The Church affirms: “The unity of soul and body is so profound that one has to consider the soul to be the ‘form' of the body: i.e., it is because of its spiritual soul that the body made of matter becomes a living, human body; spirit and matter, in man, are not two natures united, but rather their union forms a single nature”^{244Catechism of the Catholic Church, 365.}. Neither the spiritualism that despises the reality of the body nor the materialism that considers the spirit a mere manifestation of the material do justice to the complex nature, to the totality or to the unity of the human being.