Opinions on JPII's Theology of the Body

[cam100]

I appreciate all the feedback people have been providing here to my orginal question. I’m not sure why the priest I mentioned didn’t like Theology of the Body. If I get a chance, I’ll ask him. Meanwhile, I think I’ll take a look at Christopher West’s version since the majority of opinions expressed about it here seem pretty positive.

 

[Slick_Shoes]

I appreciate all the feedback people have been providing here to my orginal question. I’m not sure why the priest I mentioned didn’t like Theology of the Body. If I get a chance, I’ll ask him. Meanwhile, I think I’ll take a look at Christopher West’s version since the majority of opinions expressed about it here seem pretty positive.

I have read Christopher West’s books as well and can say that they are very insightful. I would recommend them to anybody, maybe even to your priest. He could learn a few things and then share them. What a great world it would be if more priests would preach on this.

 

[authorkiwi]

I recently heard a conservative priest say that he did not view John Paul II’s Theology of the Body as being beneficial. I had been inteterested in reading it, but haven’t done it yet. I was hoping to get some opinions from others who are familiar with it.

What does “conservative priest” mean. Does conservative mean traditional or even Tridentine? Does it mean the priest may even have biases against Vatican II? Theology of the Body is awesome! If you read Guadiam et Spes you can in fact read the foundational theology behind this Theology of Love. I’m currently finishing a book on the Crusades, Human Sexuality and Our Creator. I have researched “Theology of the Body” indepth. It is fantastic. I am also a third of the way through a Bachelor of Theology Degree and one of the papers was on the Sacrament of Marriage. Therefore I discovered that much of Theology of the Body is not as new as we thought. St. Chrysostom, the Church Father also gives wonderful insights into marriage. He has the best come-back to Sex in the City of Desperate Housewives. He says if a prostitute approaches you who are married then you should say “My body is not my own but my husbands”.

I also found Theology of the Body to be a wonderful exegesis on Genesis. The best I have ever read. In fact Pope John Paul II starts at the beginning and goes through the entire salvation history. There are many many pearls of wisdom within this catchetical teaching. In fact because it was given by a Pope teaching it should be listened to.

I haven’t read it on this forum yet, but if you have a deep love of the Lord in the Eucharist then this is also a reason to read Theology of the Body. I have a free PDF on my website www.godfact.com which is called “Eucharist and Church: Real Presence, Sacrifice, and Human Sexuality”. Alternatively if you want to discover more about the Eucharist Theology of the Body is awesome!

My final word today on this is a quote from my upcoming book. “I believe that this stunning piece of work has the potential to revolutionize and galvanize people of many different faiths and beliefs into further insights of their sexuality together with the possibility of accepting their sexuality as sacred.”

God bless

Brendan
www.godfact.com

 

[thessalonian]

Glenn Stanton of Focus on the Family was on local protestant radio here in Minneapolis with Christopher West plugging Theology of the Body and a seminar Mr. West was doing in November at St. John’s in New Brighton.
You can hear it at:

kkmslive.com/podcast/
Scroll down to the October 30th program in which Jeff and Lee on KKMS interviewed Christopher West

I have been using this program and sending out emails to protestant pastors and currently have three Lutheran Churches interested in doing a “Created And Redeemed” Seminar. The word is getting out. Quite honestly for various reasons I think this will catch hold in protestant Churches and perhaps spread more quickly there. Thanks for the link to Focus on the Family. That will help in my promotion of this.

 

[thessalonian]

Here is a letter I heard read on secular radio one day that shows how badly a coherent teaching on human sexuality is needed across denominations.

Hello Ian–Your recent discussion about virginity in adulthood could not have come at a more bizarre (or timely) time for me…I just had a similar discussion with two friends of mine that are my age this week
We grew up in evangelical Christian culture, and I have a degree in historical theology–yet we can’t seem to come up with a coherent theology of sexuality. The only thing we can think of is that we’ve been told not to be sexually active with people we aren’t married to.

I am admittedly somewhat of an anomoly of this culture. I am single at age 25, which is a freakish thing in this community, and about to finishlaw school–equally bizarre to them. I have no regrets about not being married at the moment. As a result of being busily engaged in achievment, I haven’t activley pursued a dating life. Because of my convictions, I have maintained my virginity without any real pains of conscience over it up to this point.However, it has recently come to my attention that many of my friends who used to reinforce the expectation that virginity is to be maintaineduntil marriage have changed their minds rather suddenly and deviated wildly from these notions just in the last couple of weeks.

I just think it’s interesting that I had at one point I committed to something out of conviction and now I can’t even fully articulate a theology that I, myself, buy into. I know what the canned answers tothe questions related to sexuality outside of marriage are, but in coming to the realization that I am one of the few, the freakish, thevirginal…I wonder if that is enough to keep me on this same course.I am challenged by the idea that if I can’t even articulate a viable theology to keep me from being sexually active, I may have committedmyself to something that actually may be detrimental to my ability to engage in healthy relationships for no reason! If you know of anytheological works that can help me sort this out, I would be appreciative as well.
A few of my friends dare interested in engaging in some intentional study on this topic–we think it’s interesting that we are this old and haven’t really been taught this stuff…

Sincerely,Leslie