If you’re interested in either the thought of St. John Paul II or masculinity in general, this is the book for you. In the first two parts, Delaney brilliantly summarizes and explains John Paul’s philosophy of the human person and his theology of the body. In the latter half of the book, Delaney develops and then defends what he terms John Paul’s theology of masculinity and fatherhood.
A key thing to note about Delaney’s excellent book is that it isn’t a synthesis or presentation of John Paul’s direct thoughts on masculinity, since the latter did not write explicitly on the topic. Instead, Delaney brilliantly uses the principle of complementarity and John Paul’s writings on femininity to infer what the pope likely would have said about masculinity if he had written about it. Perhaps a more accurate subtitle would be “A Wojtyłean Account of Masculinity.”
