Artists respond to the Theology of the Body

TOB and Art conference by sculptor Dony MacManus.  
Thank you to art student and TOB blogger Shana for embedding the full set of these videos on her blog.
Here's part 1 of 5:

Full-body scanning and the Theology Thereof

The Chicago Tribune posted my reflection on airport security scanners. Please visit the site and add your comments!

TOB: Yiddish Style

An interesting article in the "Houses of Worship" column of the Wall Street Journal presents Orthodox Jewish perspectives on marriage. Not surprisingly, it sounds very much like the Theology of the Body (though without the Trinitarian dimension).

TOB and Lenten Discipline

It has been in the news lately that Pope John Paul II practiced personal austerities that were once very common among the devout, but now pretty much unheard of. Father Loya took this news as an occasion to look at how the practice of asceticism, typical of Lent, is a Theology of the Body message about the goodness of the body.

We meet again mid-Lent, March 13.

Love and Responsibility

Pope John Paul's early book is the subject of an entire series of Friday night meetings in Corpus Christi, organized by Fr. Samuel Medley, S.O.L.T. Last night's presentation was broadcast from here in Chicago (Fr. Loya was the speaker), and the folks in Texas watched it on a big screen.


You can access the earlier talks, and those to come, on the program's blog: http://loveandresponsibilitylectureseries.blogspot.com/
A question also came up about same-sex attraction, something Father could not address in an adequately nuanced way in a few seconds. He recommended as a first step in a conversation on that very delicate issue: this article by Dr. Jeffrey Satinover.

Thinking about Freedom (of Choice or of Conscience?)

"It is ironic that those who today assert a right to kill the unborn, aged and disabled and also a right to engage in immoral sexual practices, and even a right to have relationships integrated around these practices be recognized and blessed by law—such persons claiming these “rights” are very often in the vanguard of those who would trample upon the freedom of others to express their religious and moral commitments to the sanctity of life and to the dignity of marriage as the conjugal union of husband and wife."
From the Manhattan Declaration.

Food for Thought

"The last thing we can afford to do is to re-define marriage in such a way as to embody in our laws a false proclamation about what marriage is."
From the Manhattan Declaration.