Theology of the Body (Sample)

Theology of the Body Love, sexuality & the human body

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by Dominic Baster

All booklets are published thanks to the generous support of the members of the Catholic Truth Society

CATHOLIC TRUTH SOCIETY publishers to the holy see

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Contents Setting the scene . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 God’s plan for human love . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 The great analogy of spousal love . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32 The issue of contraception . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41 Living the Theology of the Body . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50 Further Reading . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64

All quotations from Blessed John Paul II’s original general audience addresses are taken from Man and Woman He Created Them, translated

by Michael Waldstein, Pauline Books & Media, 2006.

All rights reserved. First published 2013 by The Incorporated Catholic Truth Society, 40-46 Harleyford Road London SE11 5AY Tel: 020 7640 0042 Fax: 020 7640 0046. This edition © 2013 The Incorporated Catholic Truth Society.

ISBN 978 1 86082 829 4 Front cover image: The Anastasis, (14th Century) from the Chora Church, Istanbul © Pierpaolo Finaldi.

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Setting the scene Planting a “theological time bomb” The Theology of the Body is a treasure of the Church’s recent heritage and a towering achievement of its author, Blessed Pope John Paul II (1920-2005). It is a spiritual and philosophical work of tremendous depth which has changed the way many people view themselves, God, the nature of love and the very meaning of life itself. It also resonates powerfully with audiences of all ages and situations, who are struck by its ability to surprise them, move them emotionally and motivate them to live the Christian life with renewed fidelity and enthusiasm.

Still, many Catholics today have not come across the Theology of the Body or have very little understanding of what it means. However, when they do discover it, they find that its message is profound, surprising and also intensely practical. It is not a dry, theoretical theology but is meant to be lived. It deals with the deepest yearnings of the human soul, but even at its most complex it is simply a reflection on the beauty of God’s plan for human love.

It explores what it means for each of us, and for the human race as a whole, to have been created in God’s image as either a man or as a woman. It is about the true meaning of love and God’s intention for each one of us - in

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the beginning, now and in the life to come. It expounds the vision that human love is analogous to Christ’s spousal love for the Church and also proposes a truly integrated vision of the human person - body and spirit. It opens up new vistas for understanding human sexuality and draws out the implications of the remarkable insight that our physical bodies are created in such a way that they call us to live our lives as a gift.

It has certainly had a profound effect on many theologians and philosophers as well as on ordinary men and women across the world, for whom it has revealed a new way of viewing sexuality and Catholic moral teaching from a wholly positive perspective. It is not about following a set of rules but is, rather, a proclamation of the good news of the body and a reflection on who we are, what we were created for and how we are called to live.

It is no wonder, therefore, that John Paul II’s biographer George Weigel has described the Theology of the Body as “a kind of theological time bomb set to go off with dramatic consequences” and “one of the boldest reconfigurations of Catholic theology in centuries”.1 The American writer and speaker Christopher West puts it this way: “Brace yourself! If we take in what the Holy Father is saying in his Theology of the Body, we will never view ourselves, view others, view the Church, the Sacraments, grace, God, heaven, marriage, the celibate vocation... we will never view the world the same way again.”2

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Where it comes from The Theology of the Body was the subject of 129 addresses given by Pope John Paul II during his Wednesday general audiences starting on 5th September 1979 and concluding finally on 28th November 1984 - although during that time there were a number of breaks in the series, including a pause of six months in 1981 while the Pope recovered after being shot in St Peter’s Square and a hiatus of more than 15 months from February 1983 for a Holy Year.

An Italian edition of the audiences published in 1985 rearranged some of the individual catecheses to set the total number at 134, while in his more recent English translation, Professor Michael Waldstein has revised this structure to arrive at a total of 133 catecheses.

This series of catecheses, however it is numbered, represents the definitive exposition of the Theology of the Body, but in fact it had been developed by Karol Wojtyła (as he was called before becoming Pope) over many years, starting with a profound encounter at the age of twentyone with the teachings of the Spanish mystic St John of the Cross (1542-1591). This led him to write his doctoral dissertation in 1948 on faith according to St John of the Cross - that is to say faith as a means of union between God and the human person.

In 1960, by which time, as an auxiliary in Krakow, he had become the youngest bishop in Poland, Karol Wojtyła

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wrote the strikingly original book Love and Responsibility in which he developed the theme of the spousal meaning of the body, shaped by the theology of St John of the Cross and his own pastoral experience with young people. Pope Paul VI was aware of this work when he came to write Humanae Vitae, his seminal 1968 encyclical on the ethical regulation of fertility.

Moreover, the general audience addresses of 1979 to 1984 should not be considered the end of the matter. Many themes from the Theology of the Body were taken up and developed or clarified in subsequent papal documents, such as the encyclical Veritatis Splendor in 1993 and John Paul II’s Letter to Families in 1994. Indeed, it is arguable that Pope Benedict XVI’s first encyclical Deus Caritas Est published in 2006 constitutes a final completion of the Theology of the Body because it explores the relationship between the different types of love in God’s plan.

The general audience addresses themselves were taken almost entirely from the completed manuscript of a book Karol Wojtyła had written in Polish during the 1970s, when he was Archbishop of Krakow. Entitled Man and Woman He Created Them, he described his work as “reflections on the Theology of the Body” and this is the title for the teaching most often used in English. However, John Paul II himself suggested two alternative titles.3 They were ‘Human Love in the Divine Plan’ and ‘The Redemption of the Body and the Sacramentality of Marriage’. Each

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of these titles expresses important elements of what the teaching is all about, though they perhaps fail to convey its tremendous scope and depth, touching and illuminating as it does almost every aspect of Christian teaching and modern experience.

The central message The very fact that there are alternative titles for this teaching indicates how difficult it is to distil it down to one central thesis. However, it is possible to summarise the overall message - even if inadequately - and the key concerns addressed by the teaching.

The Theology of the Body is, then, a teaching about God’s plan for human love and about the true meaning of our bodies - which are not just biological but also theological because they reveal in themselves aspects of the nature of God. The teaching speaks about the spousal meaning of our bodies, which are created for love, and about a true understanding of the person - body and soul.

It is also about God’s original intention for human beings and our final destiny, and about how we can live in accordance with this in a way that brings true happiness and fulfilment.

It is certainly about the beauty and purpose of our sexuality, but about far more than just sex. It reveals fresh insights into how to live the married vocation and the celibate vocation, or how to live ‘spousally’ by offering

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our lives as a gift at any age and in any situation. Indeed, Fr Pascal Ide condenses the whole argument of the Theology of the Body in this short statement: “Gift expresses the essential truth of the human body.”4 Two passages that are particularly helpful as keys to unlock and understand the message of the Theology of the Body are to be found in the Second Vatican Council’s Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World (Gaudium et Spes) from 1965 - which Karol Wojtyła helped to influence. The first of these states that “Christ, the final Adam, by the revelation of the mystery of the Father and His love, fully reveals man to himself and makes his supreme calling clear” (22:1).

The belief that Christ fully reveals man to himself through the revelation in his body of the mystery of divine love is a key to understanding the whole of John Paul II’s teaching on this topic. The physical human body can tell us about God - the fullest revelation of whom was given in Christ, a man with a physical human body. In a sense, if we have the eyes to see, looking in the mirror can teach us more about God than any book or homily. God’s stamp is on each of us.

The second passage comes shortly afterwards and cites the Gospel of John 17:21-22 in which Jesus prays to the Father “that they may be one as we are one”. It then explains: “He implied a certain likeness between the union of the divine Persons, and the unity of God’s sons in truth

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and charity. This likeness reveals that man, who is the only creature on earth which God willed for itself, cannot fully find himself except through a sincere gift of himself” (24:3).

Our supreme calling, therefore, is to share in the glory of Trinitarian love, which is reflected in the self-giving love of Christ for the Church, and the spousal, self-giving love of man and woman in marriage.

This central theme of ‘gift’ can be traced back to a triangle of theses in the writings of St John of the Cross.

These theses, put simply, were that the real meaning of love is to give oneself totally to another; that the spousal love of man and woman in marriage is the most profound model of total self-gift in our experience; and that the Trinity is the supreme example of love and gift.

The Theology of the Body is thus a defence of the body in its intrinsic meaning - and the highest meaning of the body is to be found in the beauty and depth of the spousal mystery of God’s love.

The structure At first glance, it can be quite difficult to make sense of John Paul II’s series of general audience addresses on the Theology of the Body because they were not delivered with section headings and chapter titles. However, the series can in fact be divided into three distinct parts.

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Part 1 is about God’s plan for human love and the redemption of the body. It focuses on three passages in the Gospel of Matthew in which Christ speaks about Original Man (what God’s original intention was for us “in the beginning”), Historical Man (what we must contend with now as a result of Original Sin and the implications of our restoration by Christ) and finally Eschatological Man (what we are called to, and created for, in heaven). A discussion on celibacy, or continence for the Kingdom of Heaven, presented as an anticipatory sign of the resurrection, then follows.

In fact, this first part could stand alone as a complete ‘theology of the body’ so to speak. John Paul II summarises it by saying, “Christ speaks to man - and speaks about man, who is a ‘body’ and is created as male and female in the image and likeness of God; he speaks about man, whose heart is subjected to concupiscence; and, finally, about man, before whom the eschatological perspective of the resurrection of the body opens up.”5 In Part 2, John Paul II focuses on the teachings of St Paul in his Letter to the Ephesians about “the great mystery” or analogy of spousal love and the sacramentality of marriage.

The final part then applies the insights of Parts 1 and 2 to practical ethical concerns, and principally to the teaching of Pope Paul VI in the encyclical Humanae Vitae on responsible parenthood and the illicitness of contraception.

In fact, in his last general audience address of the whole

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series, John Paul II makes the point that everything that has gone before constitutes “an extensive commentary on the doctrine contained precisely in Humanae Vitae”.6 So, although the final part is relatively short, it is clear that it should be considered absolutely crucial in the context of the whole teaching.

There are other ways of referring to the different sections in the Theology of the Body which make sense of its overall message. Christopher West, for example, entitles Part 1 “Who are we? Establishing an Adequate Anthropology”, and Part 2 “How are we to live? Applying an Adequate Anthropology”. He includes the section on continence for the Kingdom of Heaven at the start of Part 2 and the last section on ethical concerns at the end of Part 2.

Fr Pascal Ide, meanwhile, simply calls the first part “The Theology of the Body” and the second part “The Theology of Marriage”.

However one chooses to structure the teaching, it does possess a clear internal consistency and an overall direction, arriving finally at the powerful argument in support of Pope Paul VI’s teaching in Humanae Vitae.

An integral vision of the human person One of John Paul II’s key objectives in the Theology of the Body was to defend the spousal meaning of the body against the prevailing modern idea that the body is in some sense separate from, and alien to, the ‘person’. The

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presentation of an integral vision of the human person is, therefore, a crucial aspect of the whole teaching.

In today’s world, many people simply take it for granted that there is, in some sense, an alienation between the ‘person’ and the ‘body’. This dualism can be traced back in part to the scientific rationalism of the French philosopher and mathematician René Descartes (15961650), which reduces the body to ‘mere matter’. This in turn leads to a new Manichaeism (named after a third century Gnostic heresy) which puts body and spirit in opposition to each other so that the body can be regarded simply as a mechanism and an object for manipulation and exploitation.

Descartes had embraced the views of the English philosopher and scientist Francis Bacon (1561-1626), who believed that the goal of human knowledge should be to achieve power over nature. For Descartes, in this mechanistic account of nature, the human subject becomes an absolute. Consciousness sets the terms of reality itself and we are masters and possessors of nature.

John Paul II insists that human bodies are not meaningless mechanisms placed in the position of an ‘object’ for human power. In his 1994 Letter to Families, he writes: “It is typical of rationalism to make a radical contrast in man between spirit and body, between body and spirit. The body can never be reduced to mere matter: It is a spiritualised body, just as man’s spirit is so closely

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united to the body that he can be described as an embodied spirit. The richest source for knowledge of the body is the Word made flesh. Christ reveals man to himself.”7 In the so-called sexual revolution of the 1960s, sex was cut loose from the person and our bodies came to be regarded as tools we could manipulate and exploit for pleasure. However, sex is not a mere function outside of the person without meaning because, as John Paul II insists, the human person is composed of both body and soul together. The soul does not possess the body, nor the body possess the soul.

We can also say that the person and nature are intimately united. As Karol Wojtyła writes in Love and Responsibility, “In the order of love a man can remain true to the person only in so far as he is true to nature. If he does violence to ‘nature’ he also ‘violates’ the person by making it an object of enjoyment rather than of love.” This approach is the absolute opposite of Francis Bacon’s ‘project’ to achieve power over nature and it is important to bear this in mind when it comes to understanding the Church’s teaching against contraception - since a contraceptive act violates nature and, thus, also the person.

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God’s plan for human love In the beginning So we come now to John Paul II’s teaching itself. At each stage in this teaching we see how the themes identified above are drawn out and placed in the context of God’s plan for his creation and our experience as his creatures, made as we are in his image with physical bodies yet blinded by sin and in need of redemption.

As we have seen, the first part of the series of general audience addresses on the Theology of the Body deals with God’s plan for human love in “the beginning”, then in history (this includes our experience today) and finally in eternity.

In taking us back to “the beginning”, he draws out what God’s original intention was for mankind, before our experience of the body and of sexuality became corrupted by the Original Sin of Adam and Eve - the effects of which are inherited by all of us. He bases his reflections on Christ’s discussion with the Pharisees in Matthew 19:3-9 on God’s plan for marriage “in the beginning”.

He also analyses the two accounts of creation in Genesis 1 and 2 very carefully. In Genesis we read that God created man “in the image of himself… male and female he created them”. This means that our being male and female in some

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way reflects and images God. After God had created us, he “saw that it was very good”. This included our sexuality and our bodies.

In making his analysis, John Paul II identifies three “original human experiences”8 which continue to have a “foundational experience” - namely original solitude, original unity and original nakedness. He explains that these experiences “are always at the root of every human experience” even if we usually pay them little attention.

It is important to bear in mind at this point that, although the first eleven chapters of the Book of Genesis were written in the genre of myth and are not necessarily historically accurate in every detail, they do contain very profound truths about creation and the human condition.

As John Paul II explains, “the term ‘myth’ does not refer to fictitious-fabulous content, but simply to an archaic way of expressing a deeper content”.9 Original solitude The original human experience of solitude refers to the first man’s realisation that he was alone after he named all the animals in the Garden of Eden. He is aware that he is the only rational creature on earth but also that he was created by God and so, therefore, is not God himself.

God says in Genesis 2:18 that “it is not good that the man should be alone” and John Paul II points out that the first man is actually defined as male only after the creation

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of the first female. Therefore, this original experience of solitude refers to ‘man’ generically and not just to the first male.10 From this fact John Paul II concludes that original solitude has two meanings. One derives from the relationship between male and female - put simply, that males and females are both alone without the other. The second meaning is about the fundamental nature of man (both male and female), that he is alone before God as the only one of God’s creatures on earth who can have a personal relationship with him. John Paul II says, “Man is ‘alone’: this is to say that through his own humanity, through what he is, he is at the same time set into a unique, exclusive and unrepeatable relationship with God himself.”11 Original solitude is based not only upon Adam’s realisation that he was alone, but also upon the knowledge that his very experience of existing was due to his Creator.

Without understanding this he could not have understood what God meant when he warned him not to eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil or he would die (see Genesis 2:16-17) - because otherwise he could not have had any awareness of this possibility.

Original unity The original human experience of unity refers to the essential nature of man as both male and female. We read in Genesis 1:27 that “God created man in the image

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of himself... male and female he created them”. In the alternative account in Genesis 2, the first man awoke from his induced sleep to discover the first woman and exclaimed, “This at last is bone from my bones, and flesh from my flesh!” So it is clear that the creation of man consists in the unity of two beings.

This leads on to the concept of the communion of persons. John Paul II explains, “We can deduce that man became the image of God not only through his own humanity, but also through the communion of persons, which man and woman form from the very beginning...

Man becomes an image of God not so much in the moment of solitude as in the moment of communion.”12 This is a key point in the Theology of the Body.

John Paul II continues, “In the mystery of creation... man[kind] has been endowed with a deep unity between what is, humanly and through the body, male in him and what is, equally humanly and through the body, female in him.”13 The Theology of the Body is therefore also a theology of sex - that is to say a theology of masculinity and femininity.14 Original nakedness The original human experience of nakedness refers to the fact that Adam and Eve were naked and yet not ashamed.

They did not view each other as sexual objects but “with all

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the peace of the interior gaze”,15 loving each other as whole people - body and soul. They had no “shame” - which means that they had no need to protect themselves from being regarded as a sexual object by the other but could view each other as a whole person. Original nakedness without shame meant that they could relate to each other without fear of being exploited or being used as an object.

They saw and received each other as a gift and sought only to give themselves to each other.

In describing these original human experiences, John Paul II speaks of the meaning of the body “unfolding” as the first man and woman dwelt on their reciprocal experience of the body - male and female. They knew they were different from each other not only because of how they acted and thought but because of how their bodies looked, yet they also knew that they were fundamentally compatible.

How does one explain the absence of shame in Adam and Eve’s state of original innocence before they first sinned? John Paul II explains that it was because they fully understood the meaning of their bodies as a revelation of God’s mystery, an understanding that was later lost when sin got in the way. Shame is a “boundary experience”, arising from a desire to protect the dignity of the person from lust, which did not exist in the beginning.

The first man and woman saw each other without knowing that they were naked. They could view each other

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for who they were and could understand the “spousal” meaning of their bodies clearly.

The spousal meaning of the body Original solitude, unity and nakedness reveal man to us in the dimension of gift. This means that God created man and woman in such a way that it was self-evident to them, before sin corrupted their vision, that they were created and called to love and to give themselves to one another as a gift.

John Paul II says that the dimension of gift stands at the very heart of the mystery of creation. The Creator called man into existence from nothing precisely because he “is love” (see 1 John 4:8).

This dimension of gift is imprinted on everyone and means that each of our bodies has a spousal meaning.

This meaning tells us that our common human vocation is to offer ourselves as a gift through our bodies - that is, through our masculinity or femininity. Our bodies are a gift and sign of God’s love and we, in turn, are called to share this love with one another in and through our bodies.

John Paul II defines the spousal meaning of the body as the body’s “power to express love: precisely that love in which the human person becomes a gift and, through this gift, fulfils the very meaning of his being and existence”.16 This echoes the quote from Gaudium et Spes cited earlier: “...man, who is the only creature on earth which God

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willed for itself, cannot fully find himself except through a sincere gift of himself.”

John Paul II explains that the foundation of the spousal meaning of the body is the freedom of the gift. The original man and woman, unencumbered by Original Sin, were totally free from any urge to use the other and desired only to be a gift to each other. They did not act from selfseeking motivations but freely gave themselves to the other out of love.

Each of us is called to exercise this freedom today. We must achieve self-mastery in order to be able to be free of lust and self-serving tendencies so as to give ourselves to another completely (either to another person or directly to Christ) and thus live out the spousal meaning of our bodies authentically.

The body as a sign A final word should be said here about how the mystery of God is revealed in the spousal meaning of the body.

The body, when regarded with understanding, tells us not only about human love but also about the interior exchange of love within the Trinity. This is why “man became the image of God not only through his own humanity, but also through the communion of persons”.

The human body carries within it an unquestionable sign of the image of God17 and this is what is meant by the sacramentality of the body. As John Paul II explains,

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“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.”18 And what is this mystery? It is “the mystery of Truth and Love, the mystery of divine life, in which man really participates”.19 This is quite extraordinary, and means that, because we are created in the image of God, we are created to live in relationship with another like God. God himself is a related being - Father, Son and Holy Spirit and human love therefore reflects and is modelled upon the eternal exchange of love within the Trinity.

The entrance of shame and lust After exploring Original Man, John Paul II moves on to Historical Man. This refers to the experience of all of us in the present moment, affected as we are by Original Sin with the consequence that we have a fallen experience of the body. John Paul II’s reflections are based on Christ’s words in the Sermon of the Mount regarding adultery committed “in the heart” (see Matthew 5:27-28). The word ‘heart’ is very important and in this context refers to the inner man. The ‘heart’ is where we experience disordered tendencies which lead us away from God, and also where we experience love and the desire for union with God. John Paul writes, “Man, in fact, is unique and unrepeatable

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above all by reason of his ‘heart’, which is decisive for him ‘from within’.”20 Historical Man is the ‘man of concupiscence’ - with an inclination towards sin and evil. John Paul II refers to the threefold concupiscence - that is, concupiscence of the flesh, concupiscence of the eyes and pride of life (see 1 John 2:16). Shame was born in the hearts of the first man and woman, together with concupiscence in their bodies, which led to a “radical transformation” in the reciprocal relationship between them. Shame made them hide their bodies from each other, changing the meaning of nakedness from what it had been before the Fall. Suddenly an obstacle appeared stopping them giving themselves fully to the other as a gift. John Paul II describes this as “the ending of the power of a full reciprocal communion, a closure that manifested itself as sexual shame”.21 Shame is thus “a symptom of man’s detachment from love”22 and implies a fundamental lack of trust in the other, breaking down the communion of persons. The equal, mutual partnership between man and woman in the beginning is no more, and so God tells Eve in Genesis 3:16, “Your yearning shall be for your husband, yet he will lord it over you.” This was not what God originally intended, and certainly no longer mirrors the relationship of persons within the Trinity.

Man is no longer “male and female” but “male or female”. Sexuality no longer expresses the communion of

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persons but becomes a threat, because man and woman continue to be attracted to each other but the dimension of self-giving gives way to domination or possession of the other as an object of desire. This is what is meant by lust.

And so a battle ensues between lust and the spousal meaning of the body. This spousal meaning has not become totally foreign to the heart but is now habitually threatened.

It becomes “in some way confused with concupiscence and easily lets itself be absorbed by it”23 and so the heart becomes a battlefield between love and concupiscence. Yet John Paul II asks, “Does this mean we should distrust the human heart? No! It is only to say that we must remain in control of it.”24 Ethos of the redemption of the body In the Gospel of Matthew’s account of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus explains that Moses allowed men to divorce their wives because of the hardness of their hearts, adding, “but it was not like this from the beginning” (Matthew 19:8). John Paul II explains that this meant that the ‘ethos’ of the people of Israel at the time of Moses had given rise to a situation that was contrary to God’s original intention.

The concept of ‘ethos’ is important in the Theology of the Body. Whereas ‘ethic’ is objective moral law, ‘ethos’ refers to the abiding inner desires of the heart. ‘Ethos’ could be described as an attitude which involves taking up a position and being ready to act in accordance with it.

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In terms of sexuality, John Paul II says that a “Christian ethos is characterised by a transformation of the human person’s consciousness and attitudes... such as to express and realise the value of the body and of sex according to the Creator’s original plan, placed as they are at the service of the ‘communion of persons’”.25 This Christian ethos is undoubtedly ‘new’ - both in comparison with the people of the Old Testament and with the state of Historical Man after the Fall. This new ethos is the “ethos of the redemption of the body” (see Romans 8:23). It involves becoming a “new man” when the heart makes an alliance with the new ethos.

The word ‘heart’ here signifies the interior man. When Jesus explained the commandment, “You shall not commit adultery”, he appealed to the human heart. When he said that a man who looks at a woman to desire her [that is, lustfully] “has already committed adultery with her in his heart” (Matthew 5:28), he was not condemning or accusing the heart but inviting it to embrace the new ethos.

What does following this new ethos of the redemption of the body involve? It involves “the imperative of selfmastery, the necessity of immediate continence and habitual temperance.”26 John Paul II acknowledges that this can be hard, especially if we have formed bad habits, but we can rediscover the spousal meaning of the body if we really try and turn to Christ.

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Humanae Vitae Pope Paul VI

Humanae Vitae is a momentous restatement of how love must, and must not, be expressed if it is to be marital love, true to the nature of human persons and of real marriage as a high and most significant calling.

In this 40th anniversary year of the encyclical, the CTS commissioned a new translation from the Latin text, with notes on some earlier translations, by John Finnis, Professor of Law and Legal Philosophy in the University of Oxford.

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Do 786 ISBN 978 1 86082 517 0

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Questions & Answers on Sex and Marriage Luton Good Counsel

For many people the Catholic Church holds outdated and impractical views when it comes to sex, marriage and contraception. Dr Charlie O’Donnell answers 24 of the most common questions put to him by couples at marriage preparation classes. The beauty, practicality and advantages of the Church’s teachings on these issues are explained in this easy to read booklet.

The DVD produced with this booklet is also available from CTS.

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