He said it was "very important" to understand that the Theology of the Body is not only for married people.
It is "for everybody, married, single, or consecrated celibate, because it provides a vision for us of what it means to be human. That was very lacking of the story."
"The story [by ABC] sensationalized some of the sexual aspects," West said.
"Certainly the Theology of the Body provides a beautiful vision for us of marital love. But to reduce the Theology of the Body to its teaching on sexual morality, or to some kind of Catholic version of a sex manual is terribly missing the mark."
He said the ABC correspondents were generally "very professional" and "very interested" in giving a fair hearing to the Theology of the Body. However, the two hour interview and four hours of speaking footage had to be reduced to a 7-minute interview.
"I can understand why they put it together the way they did. They did a decent job," he told CNA, but his concerns prompted him to encourage people to read his articles and books for "the very important context."
Responding to ABC’s characterization of Hefner and Pope John Paul II as "heroes," West said the statement was not given proper context.
"I never said Hugh Hefner is a hero, never," he remarked, explaining that Hefner said he started Playboy as a personal response to the hurt and hypocrisy of Americans’ Puritan heritage.
"The point I was making with ABC was that we as Catholics agree with Hefner’s diagnosis of the disease of Puritanism, a fearful rejection of the body rooted in heritage of Manicheanism. Sadly, that very important point did not come out in the interview."
"Let the record stand very clearly: the pornographic revolution that Hugh Hefner inaugurated, the medicine that he suggested, proves to be in many ways more dangerous than the disease itself.
According to West, Hefner has remarked that he has never "found the love that’s satisfying."
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"The man is just going to the wrong menu to feed the hungry," West said.
"We disagree radically, in that we do not agree with his remedy of the disease. Pope John Paul II provides precisely the proper remedy to a ‘Manichean’ or ‘prudish’ Puritanism."
In West’s view, Pope John Paul II was in agreement with Hefner that the body and human sexuality must not be rejected.
"The very, very important distinction is that Hefner began a sexual revolution of indulgence, of indulging libido, without concern for a proper understanding of the true dignity of the human being and of human love."
While the Sexual Revolution started people talking about sex, this conversation must be brought "into the glorious mystery of why God made us this way in the first place."
"We must redeem the body, redeem sexuality," he remarked. "That’s what I mean by ‘completing the sexual revolution.’ Only Christians can do that because of the work won through the bodily death and resurrection of Jesus Christ."