Training the Body

Perspectives from Religion, Physical Culture and Sport

David Torevell, Clive Palmer, Paul Rowan

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN: 9781032123301
• eBook ISBN: 9781000588675
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

This is the first book to examine the body in training in the context of religion, sport and wider physical culture, offering important insight into the performative, social, cultural and gendered aspects of somatic discipline and exercise.

The book presents a series of fascinating thematic and case-study led chapters from around the world, examining topics including the martial discipline and symbolism of artistic gymnastics; religious interpretations of body vulnerability in the context of marathons; the religious language of corporeal training in sport and martial arts. Drawing on multi-disciplinary perspectives, from sport, religion, history and philosophy, the book explores the often contested and sometimes over-zealous application of training in both sport and religion and the ways in which this can cause harm to athletes or adherents.

This is fascinating reading for any advanced student or researcher with an interest in the body, physical cultural studies, the ethics and philosophy of sport, the sociology of sport, religious studies, Asian studies or philosophy.

Part I Personhood

Chapter 1 ‘Giving the Best of Yourself’ in Sports The Catholic Church’s Attention to Sports in Past and Present Dries Vanysacker

DOI: 10.4324/9781003224112-3

Introduction

It goes without saying that physical culture and sport play an important role in contemporary society. Nevertheless, the Catholic Church and theology often seem to overlook these aspects of human life because both sooner seem to involve physicality rather than spirituality. This chapter will examine whether this is accurate and whether the Catholic Church and theology have indeed so far not paid any attention to physical culture and the rise of modern sport.

Moreover, it discusses whether the recent document Giving the best of yourself (2018) by the Dicastery for Laity, Family and Life and the vision of Pope Francis offer new common ground for the Catholic Church, physical culture and sport. Very few Catholic theological faculties actually deal with this possible dialogue. Yet, from its earliest beginnings, the Church has shown an interest in physical exercise and play, and a quick scan of the Vatican website (www.vatican.va/content/vatican/it.html) shows that, since the twentieth century, popes have on at least 200 occasions, from audiences to addresses, spoken about body culture and sport. It shows a certain development from an ecclesiastical embedding and engagement towards an ecclesiastical vision on these phenomena as a service to the world.

This is what Giving the best of yourself expressly seeks to do, in step with the Second Vatican Council. Even more remarkable is that the things sport and physical culture can teach us are actually closely related to what could be dubbed their ‘quasi-religious’ aspect: sport and physical culture are thus seen as a form of grace. This is a new common ground with the Church and with theologians at the heart of modern culture. Insight into how the Church and theology have dealt with sport and body culture in the past will help us to understand and design possible attitudes for our day and age.

The Catholic Church: A History of Ignoring Sport and Physical Culture?

The Church and theology could certainly ignore sport and physical culture since the latter, at least in some circles, are perceived as having more to do with physicality than spirituality. In that way the myth is continued that Thomas Hughes’s philosophy of ‘muscular Christianity’, characterized by a belief in patriotic duty, discipline, self-sacrifice, masculinity and the moral and physical beauty of athletics, with which the English and American Protestant denominations gushed about in the mid-nineteenth century, is still the monopoly of the latter (Eitzen & Sage, 1993; Putney, 2001; Watson et al., 2005). At the same time Catholicism should be still seen as a pure spiritual religion that considers the body – and especially sport – as troublesome or even a necessary evil.

The fact is that there is still a wide gap between Protestant and Catholic scholarship on the topic of sport. Compared with the multiple scientific publications and academic conferences concerning the Church, theology and sport that the Protestant world produces, Catholic attention to it is meagre (Watson & Parker, 2014).

Historical Ecclesiastical and Theological Attention on Body Culture and Sport

Despite the fact that the majority of recent theological attention that has been placed on body culture and sport has come from within Protestant-oriented sources, the Church and Catholic theologians have for centuries addressed themselves to questions of sport (Vanysacker, 2013). Indeed, from its very start, the Church has dialogized on sport and related topics. We know, for instance, that St Paul used sport metaphors to explain the Christian life to the pagans (Pfitzner, 2013).

Some Church Fathers continued to utilize this method; even so, these authorities tended to maintain a distance from what they considered to be a pagan body culture (Koch, 2012). During the Middle Ages, laity and clergy, secular as well as regular, organized plays and sport on holidays and Sundays. During the thirteenth century in the region of what is now northern France, a kind of handball game (jeu de paume) was introduced on the European continent. This activity, considered to be the precursor of tennis, was practised in many monasteries and abbeys (Vuillermet, 1925). Such games were given theological support by the writings of Thomas Aquinas, who argued that there can be ‘a virtue about games’ because virtue has to do with moderation. A virtuous person, by this account, should not be working all the time; he or she needs time for play and recreation also. The Renaissance humanists and the early Jesuits made use of Aquinas’s understanding of virtue when they decided that students needed time for play and recreation during the course of the school day. This was the original rationale for the inclusion of play and sport in educational institutions in the Western world (Kelly, 2012).

From the beginning of the nineteenth century through the middle of the twentieth, schools, boarding schools and after-school recreation programmes exercised in annex gymnastics, and sport associations would contribute to a major network of sport for the Catholic youth. Within the Catholic European colleges, secular priests, but especially regular orders, played a major role in sport activities. These orders included the Jesuits, Josephites, Benedictines, Dominicans, Salesians of Don Bosco, Xaverian Brothers and Brothers of the Christian Schools. From these Catholic education environments, modern sports imported from the Anglo-Saxon world, such as football, rugby, lawn tennis and hockey, were spread throughout European society, providing the impetus for the formation of various teams and competitions (Renson, 1994; Vanysacker, 2021b). This education method was also transferred to the overseas mission territories (Vanysacker, 2019). In France, the Dominican order, led by Henri Dominique Lacordaire (1802–1861), restarted the Catholic education system and, in collaboration with Henri Didon (1840–1900), introduced gymnastics, body culture and competition sport on the curriculum. The slogan the latter used for his college sport – ‘Citius, Altius, Fortius’ (faster, higher, stronger) – eventually became the motto of the modern Olympic Games (Bruxelle, 2010).

At the end of the nineteenth century and at the beginning of the twentieth century, the popes were very open towards gymnastics and the modern sport. The involvement of Pius X (1903–1914) with Baron de Coubertin – himself a product of Jesuit education – who restarted the Olympic Games is known, besides the fact that the Pope lent his strong support to the candidacy of Rome to organize the 1908 Games (Stelitano et al., 2012; Vanysacker, 2020). Even after the failure of the project, Pius X continued his interest in sport and endorsed the International Catholic Federation of Physical Education (FICEP), which was launched in 1911 (Munoz & Tolleneer, 2011).

At the same time one notices within the Catholic theology after the First World War a fierce criticism towards the ever-stronger professionalism and competitive passion that was emerging within the world of sport. According to the adherents of the so-called Catholic anti-sport movement, the body was totally subordinate to the soul and the spirit. The fact that the body cult was promoted by ideologies such as national socialism and fascism was for them the proof of where excesses in sport could lead. According to them, sport competitions for women threatened the ideal of motherhood and the Catholic ideal of marriage, since such activities seemed to them to lead to women’s masculinization. The public gymnastic parties and sport competitions in Germany and Italy, featuring women and girls in swimsuits, were strictly disapproved of and considered immoral by Church authorities. Hence, during the interwar period, one preferred in some Catholic milieus ascetism, sober entertainment and games without any form of competition. In sum, this period saw the value of the body, physical culture and sport called into question (Vanysacker, 2014).

In many countries, for instance Belgium, the Netherlands and Italy, recreation and sport activities were, as many social–cultural activities, organized within a subdivided society. The role of the Catholic Action and the influence of the diocesan bishops became more and more influential (Vanysacker, 2021b). Codewords were keeping control and self-organization within the Catholic pillar. In the Netherlands, for example, the episcopal mandate of 15 July 1933 emphasized the very disadvantageous consequences for faith and morals to which Catholics exposed themselves by sporting in neutral milieus (Derks & Budel, 1990). In Italy, the bishops fiercely resisted the privilege of the ‘Azione Cattolica’ within Mussolini’s regime to continue the organization of the youth and sport movements within the Catholic pillar (Preziosi, 2011; Vanysacker, 2021a).

The increasing popularity of body culture and sport, together with their abuse by European totalitarian regimes during the interwar period, constituted a huge challenge for the Catholic Church and Pius XI (1922–1939) (Vanysacker, 2015, 2018). The Pope did not remain silent for long. In his encyclical Divini illius Magistri, issued on the last day of 1929, the Pope decided among other things that the Church and Catholics themselves should organize physical culture and sport and totally separate the physical education of boys from that of girls. He further stipulated that this separation could not be left in the hands of the state and the families alone (Pius XI, 1929).

Pius XII (1939–1958), who as a papal nuncio in Germany previously had experienced the excesses of sport, underlined the positive power of sport as a relaxing factor but warned at the same time of idolizing the body. Sport was not a purpose on its own, he maintained, but could be a tool to train the body to serve important duties in life, namely family life, studies, work and religious activities. It was the task of the Church to remediate the world of sport by means of the Catholic Action, and Gino Bartali (1914–2000), a pious contemporary cycling star from Italy, fit wonderfully to that approach (Lixey, 2012).

It is obvious that the Church institute and the theologians were forced to take a stance towards this modern approach to sport and physical culture. According to Catholic theology, there was a hierarchical relation bet...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of contributors
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• PART I Personhood
• PART II Virtue
• PART III Asceticism and Aesthetics
• PART IV Education, Gender and Mental Health
• Bibliography
• Index