While the "use Body Text" rule is how I do things, it is my understanding from the real experts that it is on ribbon versions of Word the Normal style is not a problem.

That said, as expressed above, the first thing I did when setting up the new versions was to put Body Text at the top and Normal at the bottom. I also went through and made Body Text based on nothing and most of the other styles set to be based on either Body Text or a heading style. I also set the style for the following paragraph on most styles to be Body Text. While in my Understanding Styles in Microsoft Word I think I recommend using Body Text, I am no longer so confident in that recommendation.

OTOH, if people do this and have their documents set to "update styles from template" it is marginally less likely to trash the document when opened on a different system.

Again, I think MS has fixed the problems with the normal style that were present in earlier versions of Word. I already have most of my documents set up the older way and I know that what I am doing works for me.