Last week, Student Health Services along with a feminist student organization at the University of Illinois sponsored an event called “Sex Out Loud,†a so-called “sexual health fair†held in the Illini Student Union. Upon entering the room, one was aware of the driving-animalistic beat of the latest dance club favorite emanating throughout the hall, a variety of t-shirts with pithy sayings so fraught with sexual innuendo I am unable to repeat them, free condoms everywhere, and a nurse practitioner filling out prescriptions for the “morning after pill†before our very eyes. And there I was, wearing a pink baby tee with the words “Virtue is Sexy†scrawled across the front, standing with a group of young Catholic students by a table sponsored by St. John’s Newman Center dedicated to the proclamation of the Theology of the Body. And I loved every minute of it!
In nearly two years as a missionary with FOCUS, never have I ever had such a dramatic experience of sharing the Gospel. Picture this: with half a dozen condoms and/or morning after pill prescriptions in hand, students would meander passed our table, read the words “Theology of the Body,†and just sort of stare, dumbfounded at how these two words might have anything in common with one another. At this moment, one of the Catholic students and I would approach the aforementioned dumbfounded co-ed and ask if they had ever heard of Theology of the Body - to which they would invariably reply “No.†Next, we asked if they would like to hear a little bit about the Theology of the Body to which they would invariably reply “Yes!†We then shared the following five points:
1) The Theology of the Body is a rearticulation of the Christian Gospel rooted in terms of human sexuality, who we are as men and who we are as women.
2) In Genesis, we read that men and women are made in the image and likeness of God. Sounds nice, but who is God?
3) God is a communion of Love. God the Father pours himself out in love to God the Son, and God the Son receives that love and gives a total gift of Himself back to the Father in return by dying on the cross. And the love between them is so potent that it is a third person, the Holy Spirit.
4) In the same way, in the sexual act a man pours himself out in love for a woman. The woman receives this love and gives a total gift of herself back to the man. And the love between them is so tangible that nine months later, you have to give it a name - it becomes a third person!
5) Therefore, the sexual act is meant to be nothing less than the number one sign and symbol that God has written into our very nature as men and women to be an image - a symbol - an icon - of who He is in His inner self - a communion of Love. That’s why Catholics save sex for marriage - because it is so good and so holy and so sacred. We say “no†to sex before marriage so we can say “yes†to sex in a much deeper way - in a way that most perfectly images the God himself.
People’s jaws dropped down to their knees. “That’s so beautiful,†said a Kim, a freshmen business major. “It’s refreshing to hear chastity and abstinence spoken about in the positive rather than in the negative,†said John, an agnostic religious studies major. “Why hasn’t anyone told me this before?†asked a beautiful young woman named Jill with a quivering lower lip and a tear in her eye.
I don’t know, Jill. But I am honored to be the first.
12 responses so far ↓
1 Rae Stabosz // Mar 28, 2007 at 1:55 pm
Bravo!
I am getting ready to retire after 28 years at the University of Delaware. This represents 28 years of seeing misguided adults and impressionable students popularize such things as The Vagina Monologues and V-Day, Live Free or Die (that tells the tragic story of a noble abortionist fighting the “stealth terrorists” of the New Hampshire Right to Life), and A Stiff Problem — the hard-hitting investigative reporting about the secret epidemic of erectile dysfunction among male students at UD.
Congratulations on fighting back and standing witness to JPII’s theology of the body, that “ticking time-bomb” as George Will called it, one that will revolutionize our modern understanding of human sexuality. Keep up the good fight.
2 Kelly // Mar 28, 2007 at 7:51 pm
That awesome, Katie! I agree with the students, it is wonderful to see Christianity placed in a positive light so people can see how beautiful the truths we believe are.
3 Lindsay // Mar 29, 2007 at 12:18 am
Katie, what a great idea! My school (University of Maryland) is having a similar “sexual health fair” soon. I don’t know if our FOCUS missionaries or our student group the Missionaries of the Eucharist have similar plans, but it would be really cool if they did. Thank you so much for taking the Theology of the Body to people who need to hear about it the most. :o)
4 Lucinda // Mar 29, 2007 at 9:06 pm
Katie… Bless you for sharing your experience at the “sexual health fair”. Never had one of those in my day… thank goodness. But I know my daughters did. And I’m not sure where I’ve been all these years, because somehow I missed out on the “Theology of the Body”.
As a grandmother, your entry was emailed to me from a friend through her daughter. As a mother of two young woman (one a mother herself), and having spent years working with young people, this is the first time I’ve ever heard such a simple and straight forward answer for the ongoing question, “What’s wrong with sex outside of marriage? Everyone else is doing it?”
I plan on checking this out thoroughly and seeing what I can do to get the word out about the Theology of the Body in our small rural community before prom season hits!
5 Jessy Scholl // Apr 3, 2007 at 1:24 am
Great work Katie. You are a walking example of Jesus Christ and it shows. Keep up the good work and I hope to see you back here in North Dakota.
6 sr. helena burns // Apr 3, 2007 at 3:40 am
Kudos for having the courage and love to share the Good News!
I give TOB workshops and also get to watch people get surprised with joy!
RIP JPII the Greatest.
Sr. Helena Burns, fsp
Daughters of St. Paul
Chicago
7 Fr. Totton // Apr 3, 2007 at 3:35 pm
Katie,
This is extremely encouraging! Thank you for your courage! As far as the Theological Timebomb, it was George Weigel rather than George Will who made that statement.
8 Tom // Apr 3, 2007 at 5:12 pm
Katie,
God bless you for introducing those students to the Catholic view on sexuality!
I wanted to urge some caution as well, though. I am always somewhat uncomfortable with the marriage-as-image-of-Trinity line. It’s not Scriptural, nor is it found in the Fathers. If anything, St. Augustine went out of hsi way to affirm that thinking about God by starting from actions we do with our bodies is fraught with incredible peril due to our tendency to think of God as if He is a body. So, he took pains to develop his thinking along the lines of a psychological analogy having to do with our act of understanding, which is necessarily a spiritual activity. If marital love is an analogy of the Trinity, some very odd conclusions might follow: is Jesus the Spirit’s mother? Do the Father and the Son both contribute something slightly different to the processionof the Spirit? This is especially perilous with respect to people who have been unchatechized in Trinitarian faith, who don’t realize that any analogy for the Trinity must be utterly immaterial, both in itself and in the way we think about it.
St. Paul refers to marriage as pointing to the union of Christ and the Church, which is a great mystery. The imaging of Christ’s union with the Church provides much food for thought and grounds equally well the notion of the holiness of marriage and sexual intercourse. It also has the advantage of being Scriptural and well-founded in the whole tradition.
Anyway, just some things to think about. Nevertheless, hurrah for you and your confreres, and hurrah for JP II!
9 Steve Pokorny // Apr 3, 2007 at 8:08 pm
An excellent blurb about the awesome work that you’re doing out in Illi! I will pray that you as missionaries continue to stand strong for the Truth, for know that God has already won the war; we simply have to be witness to hope and love.
If anyone you know is interested, I give talks and seminars on TOB and am willing to travel. Check out tobministries.com for more info, and help spread the Culture of Life!
10 Jane // Apr 5, 2007 at 12:02 pm
What a wonderful testimony you gave to your college peers. Besides the completely overt sexual innuendo which exists in our fallen world, it seems as though there is a gap for young Catholics during the late teen/early adulthood years. Myself and many of my friends (all who went through 8-16 years of Catholic schooling) can not recall any of these teachings being available (let alone promoted!) during this critical time in a young person’s life. Thank you (and FOCUS) for filling a need and meeting students where they are–without condemning or judging them.
God bless!
11 Anja // Apr 25, 2007 at 12:08 am
Oh wonderful
Let’s turn our backs on sexual health and live in the misguided belief that young people
will not have sex.
Let’s stop handing out free condoms, and let the spread of STDs skyrocket. Let’s stop
telling girls they have options, and reproductive choice. Let’s keep them chained to the
ridiculous notion that their body is less important than a bag of cells.
How dare the Catholics land their outdated, ludicrous and quite franky ridiculous notions
on people. Preach by guilt - the Catholic way. And they wonder why people run screaming
from this barbaric institution of hate.
12 Kelly // Apr 25, 2007 at 8:05 pm
Catholics don’t “preach by guilt,” or at least they shouldn’t. Rather, in order to say “no” to anything, we should have something deeper to say “yes” to. That reason for the deeper “yes” is what the Catholic Church tries to provide for the youth of today. We abstain from temporary hook-ups outside of marriage, so that we can enjoy the beauty and trust of a committed marriage and sexual relationship later on. We don’t give part of ourselves away now (you can have all of me EXCEPT my fertility or future or faithfulness), so that we can give all of ourselves away later to someone who will appreciate and reciprocate the full gift.
It’s exactly because Catholics DO believe that people have a choice that they want to encourage them to be responsible in this area. We believe that women and men are able to choose the deeper and more beautiful thing, even at the expense of satiating a momentary desire for pleasure now. We’re not animals. We’re humans. That’s why we refuse to just throw condoms and pills at the youth of our country and back away hoping that they’ll just get over this stage of their lives in college and come out ok as responsible adults on the other side. Rather, we want to affirm their dignity and their freedom and help women to treat their body as something that is too precious and beautiful to be given to the first college guy who asks for their number.
Catholics don’t say, “Have sex and you go to Hell.” Catholics ask, “What are your kisses worth? What are you worth? Probably more than you know.”
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