THEO UWU
DEEPENING OF LOVE AND SEXUALITY
LOVE AND MARRIAGE
What does the Church say about love and
marriage?
➢ Love is the vocation of every person
➢ Family is the school of love. Future of humanity
passes by way of family.
➢ The opposite of to love is to use (not hate)
➢ No one should use another person as a means
to an end (e.g. for utility or pleasure)
➢ Body speaks a language: the gift of self
❖ Love – the vocation of every person
❖ Family – the school of love
➢ The opposite of love is lust (to use)
Body speaks a language–the gift of self
Three Basic Concepts:
1. Language of the Body - includes the body
2. Holiness - includes the body
3. Gift of Self - includes the body
Why save sex until marriage?
➢ Love without regret
➢ Among those who have already lost their
virginity, two-thirds of them wished they had
waited longer to have sex (77% of girls and
60% of guys)
➢ Less likely to divorce
➢ When a man is married as a virgin, his divorce
rate is 63% lower than non-virgin. For women,
it's 76% lower.
➢ The younger a girl is when she becomes
sexually active, the more likely she is to
experience multiple sexual partners, STDs, out
of wedlock pregnancies, depression, abortion,
and poverty
What is love?
➢ We are looking for love. Sometimes we look for
the right thing in the wrong places.
➢ Aquinas "Love is willing the good of another
person."
➢ Pope John Paul II: 'love is not merely a feeling,
but an act of the will, preferring the good of
another to the good of oneself. Love is not easy.'
How does love relate to happiness?
➢ "Because true happiness, dear friends, does not
consist in the pleasures of the world or in earthly
things, but in peace of conscience, which we
have only if we are pure in heart and mind."
➢ Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati
What is the difference between love and lust?
➢ Lust is a disordered desire for or inordinate
enjoyment of sexual pleasure, sought for itself.
➢ Lust is the counterfeit of love.
Comparing Love with Lust
● Words to describe Lust:
❖ Objectifying devious
❖ Lifeless, Temporary
❖ Uses criticize, Unattached
❖ Disloyal, Selfish, Manipulates
❖ Shallow, Insensitive, Impure
❖ Demanding, Blind, Intimidates
❖ Discards, Obsessed
● Words to describe Love:
❖ Gives, Personal, Honest
❖ Waits, Life giving, Life long
❖ Chooses, Sympathizes, Committed
❖ Faithful, Generous, Communicates
❖ Deep, Responsive, Pure
❖ Understands, Kind, Appreciates
❖ Accepts, Given, Talks, Adores
What is the difference between chastity and
abstinence?
➢ Sometimes think saving sex until marriage will
either lead to repression or indulgence.
➢ Abstinence is the lack of sexual activity. In itself, it
is not a virtue, but simply abstaining from action.
Chastity: A Definition
❖ A positive virtue, to be thought only in
association with love.
 ❖ Is about living an integrated and well balanced
life.
❖ All Christians are called to chastity, whether
married, single, or celibate.
Chastity: For this is the will of God, your
sanctification; that is, that you abstain from sexual
immorality–1 Thessalonians 4:3
How dangerous is virginity?
➢ Some think that virginity is something dangerous
and it might in fact kill you.
➢ The gift of one's virginity is the most perfect
present that you can give your spouse on your
wedding day.
How important is the body of Christians?
➢ We are made in the image of God (Genesis 1:27).
➢ God became man, in order that man Might
become God.
➢ God would rather die than live without us. He sent
his own son to redeem the world.
➢ We believe in the resurrection of the body.
➢ The body and desire are good in and of
themselves. The body is able to make visible what
is invisible.
➢ Glorify God with our Body
➢ Our body is the temple of the Holy Spirit
What are the Important Elements of Marriage?
❖ Free - through personal consent.
❖ Faithful - a promise of exclusivity
❖ Total - holding nothing back
❖ Fruitful - open to the gift of new life
What about the message of 'safe' sex?
➢ Safe sex is an absolute joke.
➢ Its is medically inaccurate and insulting to
women.
➢ It generates a false sense of security
encouraging risky behavior.
➢ Sex has more consequences than a condom ➢ A man who looks at a woman lustfully commits
could ever protect against. There is no condom
for the heart of the soul.
➢ 'Safe' sex misleads people about the
biological, spiritual, and emotional effects of
sex.
 For better, safer sex put a ring, marriage. Living
God’s plan for life and love
'Safe Sex' Examined
➢ 46% of teenage girls acquire HPV from their
first sexual relationship.
➢ Doesn't matter where you have been, or what
you have done, it's always possible to start
again.
Oral Contraceptive Pill
➢ Pill can act as an abortifacient.
➢ Pill ages the cervix twice as quickly.
➢ The birth control pill increases a woman's
chance of having breast cancer, cervical cancer,
and liver cancer.
➢ Birth control pills meddle with a woman's
immune system, making her more likely to
contract certain STDs.
➢ Because of its link to breast cancer,
veterinarians stopped prescribing Depo-
Provera for dogs. However, it's still being given
to women.
Modesty
➢ There is a difference between dressing attractively
and dressing to attract.
➢ When women wear suggestive clothing, men will
finish the picture with their imagination.
➢ Modesty is closely related to mystery and helps to
guard purity.
➢ Many believe that modesty in dress is far more
attractive, dignified, and classy.
Women
➢ Pope John Paul said, "God has assigned as a duty
to every man the dignity of every woman."
➢ Ephesians 6 "Husbands love your brides as Christ
loved the Church."
adultery with her in his heart.
➢ Purity is about wanting heaven for the women we
love. Women are a gift to be received not a goal to
 be conquered. Every woman is somebody's
daughter. Imagine your future bride.
A dump him list for girls
Pornography
➢ Trains the mind to want women to be constantly
sexually available and physically flawless.
➢ Is a fantasy based on lies, manipulation and
profit. It destroys marriages, degrades women,
emasculates men and distorts the emotional and
spiritual dimensions of sex.
Top ten myths about sex
Response to top ten myths about sex
❖ Sex and the Soul
➢ Your mind, emotions, and will are all affected by
the sex drive.
Why live a pure life?
➢ Chastity is a sure way to happiness as it sets
you free to love rather than use. It is a stable
foundation for a happy marriage. It brings
integration, gratitude and joy, preparing us in
faithfulness that brings us closer to God.
➢ A source of self respect, clear conscience,
less pressure, the wisdom of how to respect
others, improved sex in marriage, help in
finding the right mate, the development of
virtues.
➢ Doesn't matter where you have been, or
what have you done, it's always possible to
start again.
A Final Exhortation
➢ Don't be afraid to be the saints of the new
millennium! Christ is calling you. The
Church needs you; the Pope believes in you
and he expects great things of you.
7 Myths about Sex
➢ The sex drive functions in the 3 different
planes of the human personality.
❖ Sex and the Body
➢ Sex is the most intimate physical bond that
can exist between two persons. It involves all the
senses. Seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, feeling.
➢ "Sexual intimacy is more than the bringing
together of sexual organs, more than the reciprocal
sensual arousal of both partners, more even than
mutual fulfillment in orgasm. It is the experience of
sharing and self-abandon in the merging of two
persons, expressed by the biblical phrase, 'to
become one flesh'."
❖ Mind: The mind weighs everything that goes
into decisions. It considers the facts and
weighs the pros and cons. Your mind acts as
a referee in the midst of your will, emotions,
and other competing influences including
your sex drive.
 ❖ Emotions: Sexual motives can cause a
person to swing from one emotion to the
other.
❖ Will: The will is your self-guidance system. It
asserts what you want to do regardless of
what the mind may object to or what your
emotions might try to sway you to do.
➢ Through it, we transmit language, culture,
ethics, core values - even religion.
❖ The Family is Sacred
➢ The family-marriage and parenthood are
regarded as sacred by the world's
religions.

❖ Sex and the Spirit ❖ Family Relations Are Essential

➢ The spirit is the divine element that reminds your ➢ There are five relations of utmost
soul of God's will for your life. Your soul will be importance under Heaven...between
held accountable for its decisions. prince and minister; between husband
➢ "Is the spirit involved in sex? Yes! The ecstasy of and wife; between elder and younger
your spirit, your consciousness of faith in God, brothers; and between friends.
-Confucianism, Doctrine of the Mean
and all the other aspects of your spirit are
involved in sex act. Your spirit can employ the ❖ The Family Influences the Whole.
sex drive to honor God-if your soul permits it." ➢ It is by the proper regulation of each
family that the whole world is stabilized.
Some things to note:
➢ Your sex drive is not dirty. ❖ Family as a Spiritual Foundation
➢ Your sex drive is not sinful. ➢ When the family declines, ancient
➢ Your sex drive is a gift from God. traditions are destroyed. With them are
➢ However... lost the spiritual foundation for life, and the
➢ Your sex drive is not a toy. family loses its sense of unity. -Hinduism,
➢ You will give account of how you handled Bhagavad-Giat 1.40
your sex drive and be judged on it whether
❖ The Family Honors God.
to commendation or damnation.
➢ When a man honors his father and
mother, God says, "I regard it as though I
7 Big Myths About Sex
had dwelt among them and they had
➢ You can't be in a relationship without having
honored me."
sex.
-Judaism, Talmud
➢ Your sexual history doesn't affect your
marriage.
Partnership between God and Man
➢ Some people are born promiscuous or with
❖ The sacred partnership of true marriage is
a heightened sex drive.
constituted both by the will of God and the
➢ Sex is just an event.
will of man.
➢ Sexual abuse is a vicious cycle.
-Christianity, Pope Pius XI, Casti Connubi
➢ It's not sex until there is actual intercourse.
➢ You are inferior because you've lost your
Types of Love in the Family
virginity.
❖ The family has the potential to manifest,
___________________________________
most fully, God's ideal of true love.
➢ Children's love
Family as the School of Love and Peace
➢ Brotherly and sisterly love
❖ The First Human Institution
➢ Marital love
➢ The family is the most important human
➢ Parental love
institution.
➢ Without it, we would not exist.

The Significance of Marriage  The God of biblical revelation is not merely a
❖ A partnership of man and woman
❖ A sacred, exclusive and eternal commitment
❖ Forms the most fulfilling, secure, and
constructive base for:
➢ sexual/conjugal love
➢ creation of new life
➢ establishment of lineage
Love, Life, and Lineage
➢ Marriage joins the life of one woman and the
life of one man. In time, through children, it
joins the lineage of the man and the lineage
of the woman. It thus begins a history, a
nation, the world, and the Kingdom of Heaven
on Earth.
____________________________________
THE HUMAN BODY: CATHOLICISM
(TOB) By: St. John Paul II
The Human Body,
Catholicism, and John Paul II
 The body, in fact, and only the body, is
capable of making visible what is invisible:
the spiritual and the divine. It has been
created to transfer into the visible reality of
the world the mystery hidden from eternity
in God, and thus to be a sign of it. (TOB
19:4)
 This is the thesis statement of St. John
Paul II’s Theology of the Body(TOB) the
brush with which he paints his entire
catechesis.
The Human Body
 The body, precisely in the mystery of sexual
difference and the call to union, is a sign of
the great mystery hidden in God from
eternity.
 The body enables us in some way not only
to see this invisible mystery but also to enter
into it, participate in it, and experience it
theological idea or concept, but it is an eternal
union of three divine persons, the second of
whom has dwelt among us in the flesh, in
order to take our flesh up with him into
trinitarian bliss through the mystery of the
Incarnation.
The Mystery of the Incarnation
 This is precisely what Pope Paul II’s
Theology of Body is. If the language of
Israel is Hebrew and the language of Islam
is Arabic, the language of Christianity is the
body. There is simply no other way to “do”
theology in the Christian sense. It all
begins with the Incarnation – with God’s
human body.
1. What is the Theology of the Body?
 The Wednesday Catechesis
 St. John Paul II (Pope John Paul II) was the
first pope to use his Wednesday
audiences to present a systematic
catechesis spanning several years started
on September 5, 1979,and after various
interruptions, including the 1981
assassination attempt – concluded over five
years later on November 28, 1984.
Man and Woman He Created Them
 Karol Wojtyla had written the TOB to be
published as a book entitled Man and
Woman He Created Them.
 Its publication was interrupted, however,
when he was elected to the Chair of Peter
in October 1978.
 Providentially, this gave the text another
destiny and a global audience. It also
made it an official work of John Paul II’s
magisterium, rather than the private work
of a Polish theologian.
  Sometime after his election, John Paul II
personally adapted his manuscript for
the Wednesday audience format, dividing
it into 135 catechetical addresses, but
delivering only 129.
The “Crisis of the Body”
 The mission of John Paul II was to
reconnect men and women with the
nature and meaning of human bodiliness.
 St. John Paul II targeted the disincarnate
spirituality rooted in a Cartesian
(Descartes Dualism) divorce between
the body and soul posing “an immense
threat to lifle: not only to life of individuals
but also to that of civilization itself”.
4. We cannot see God. Yet God has made
himself visible in the flesh. This making
visible of what is invisible is what John Paul II
means by the “sacramentality of the body.”
Only the body is capable of making visible
what is invisible: the spiritual and divine. God
created the human body to transfer into the
visible reality of the world his own eternal
Mystery - the mystery that God is an eternal
exchange of love and that he has destined us to
share in that exchange.
theo=sex ed

Summary

1. Christian Theology begins with the

Incarnation, with God’s manifestation in the
human body. Through the fact that the Word of
God became flesh, the body entered theology
through the main door. To ask questions about
the meaning of the human body begins an
exhilarating journey that leads us from the
union of the sexes to the union of Christ and the
Church and, from there, into the heart of the
mystery of the Trinity.

2. The only cure for modern rationalism and

neoManichaeism, with their dualistic contrast
between body and spirit, is to recover a sense
of primordial wonder at the divinely inspired
beauty of the human body. We must
rediscover the treasure of human sexuality as
stupendous sign of the divine image in man and
woman. We can only do so by pondering the
profound understanding of masculinity and
femininity found in divine revelation

3. The phrase “theology of the body”

represents the very logic of Christianity.
Thus, TOB is not merely an extended
catechesis on marriage and sexual love. It is an
extended commentary on the Gospel of the
Incarnation, the Gospel of Jesus Christ – or ,
one might say, the “Gospel of the Body.” The
TOB is an extended commentary on the truth
that Christ fully reveals man to himself through
the revelation – in his body – of the mystery of
Father and his love