Wow! I thought yesterday's talks were good, but today's blew me away. It is so uplifting to see so many gifted speakers who are passionate about the Theology of the Body! And to gather with so many other people with the same worldview is so encouraging!
I have almost filled my little memo pad with notes from all these talks. I have a feeling I will be unpacking and meditating on what I've learned for quite a while. (And if that wasn't enough to digest, there are plenty of books and cds and dvds tempting me from the exhibitors hall!)
We started the day with a fantastic talk by Dr. Helen Alvare. Let me just say, this woman was awesome. She is my new hero. I was so impressed that I seriously considered buying the tape of her talk. (By the way, you can do that for any of the talks from the conference.) She discussed family law and how most of it is counter to the ethics we hold as Christians. Then she went on to discuss how she's been able to bring concepts from TOB into her work; it's based entirely on the data, but then she looks at human nature from a TOB perspective and tries to see how that can inform the explanation for that data. She gave an amazing example from her work on out-of-wedlock births (which account for 40% of all births now!). I can't do justice to it, and really hope to find the article she wrote (there might be both a book/article and a book chapter?), but the punchline is this: the human longing for communion is evident. And as a related note, the sex ed programs that "work" incorporate a sense of communion; the ones that talk about sex as an individual act don't.
Next I attended a workshop by Monica Ashour of TOBET about "The Violation of Feminine." She discussed how a tendency to abstract away from the body (to say the body has no meaning) is harmful to women. She also had some cute sayings that she uses when teaching teens that I had to share: men are meant to "protect, provide, and pursue", and women are meant to be "hiding, inviting, and exciting." (That struck me as perhaps echoing the Eldridge books, which I haven't read?)
I attended another workshop by Katrina Zeno on how to catechize with TOB. I was really impressed with how she engaged the audience and tried to help us learn how we could also engage with all different kinds of people, from kids to teens to parents to senior citizens. (Yes, apparently old people need to hear TOB as much as the rest of us - Viagra is actually wreaking havoc in their communities.) She showed how to break down TOB to get the basic messages across, in a way that is appropriate to your audience's maturity level. For some reason I hadn't been sure if I would like her beforehand, but I thought she was really great.
A panel on TOB and pastoral ministry finished off the afternoon, which Lisa Hendey did a wonderful job moderating. (I sometimes think the role of moderator is underappreciated, so I like to point out when it's done well!) The panelists included Fr. Roger Landry, Dr. Gregory Popcak, Sr. Mary Elizabeth Wusinich, and Rev. J. Brian Bransfield. There was a lot of rich material from this, but two points were most memorable to me. The first is the importance of embracing the Church's teaching on morality and sexuality as a positive thing, and not just a list of no's. This is something I think we all realize, but need to be reminded of from time to time. We aren't saying no to things, we're saying yes to very beautiful things! The other point is that, while 77% of Catholics say they are proud to be Catholic, only 23% of them attend weekly mass. That leaves a whopping (and likely wounded) 54% that we can reach out to!
Finally, Father Roger Landry closed the evening with a keynote address on TOB in the life and ministry of a priest. (Actually, there was still a big awards thing after that, but I skipped it so I could drive on home.) I really enjoyed his talk, and everyone else did, too, as he was the first person to get a standing ovation afterward. He recalled some of the times he had met John Paul II when he was a seminarian in Rome, and one of the things JPII said to him really resonated to me: "If you love them, they will listen to you." That gets us back to the reality of TOB. While this is something that you have to intellectually understand, it can't stop there. You have to live it out! You have to live out your masculinity or femininity, your fatherhood or motherhood in whatever form it takes; you have to be in communion with other people; and you have to offer yourself as a gift to others. Because, as they say in Gaudium et Spes and as JPII repeats over and over, "Man cannot fully find himself except through a sincere gift of self."
Note: Sorry I haven't had time to link these posts as thoroughly as I've liked (or even proofread them), or to read your wonderful posts this week! I'm keeping my fingers crossed that I have time to catch up tomorrow afternoon, after the Congress ends and I get a much needed nap!