Angelos Alekopoulos
People have their being and are regarded always as a whole and as a person. They aren’t a conglomeration of disparate substances and elements (such as soul and body) but each is a unique persona, involving the soul and body.
In the human person, the body and soul are not independent entities but are hypostatic realities. In other words, the soul and the body don’t exist and can’t be conceived by themselves, outside or earlier than the persona, because they don’t have their own persona. The soul and the body exist only within the human person, as personal realities and dimensions of the person.
On this basis, the prime concern of the Church is respect for and protection of the human person as the distinctive feature of human existence. The person isn’t an individual. An individual is to be understood as a unit, isolated in itself. A person is an identity, a particular presence, which emerges from his or her relationships with other people. It’s…
