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.
Grace flows through wounds.
Marital love is a reflection of how God loves. It is free, total, faithful and fruitful.
If we want to know what's most sacred in this world, all we need to do is look for what is most violently profaned.
In a world that has lost a sense of sin, one sin remains: Thou shalt not make people feel guilty (except, of course, about making people feel guilty). In other words, the only sin today is to call something a sin.
Why was Christ so compassionate towards sexual sinners, especially women? Think of the woman caught in adultery. Think of the prostitute who wept at his feet. Could it be because Christ knew that these women, who had been deceived by counterfeit loves, were actually looking for him, the true Bridegroom?
When marriage exposes a person's selfishness and sins it's doing what it is meant to do: bringing our sins and wounds to light so we can recognize them, confess them, and begin the healing process.
Marriage is the most basic expression of the vocation to love that all men and women have as persons made in God's image.
The free exchange of consent properly witnessed by the Church establishes the marriage bond. Sexual union consummates it - seals it, completes it, perfects it. Sexual union, then, is where the words of the wedding vows become flesh.
Holiness is not first a matter of doing anything. It is first and foremost a matter of letting it be done. Holiness is to conceive the love of God within and to bring it forth to the world.
God's plan remains God's plan despite our sin.
Marriage is a living sign that truly communicates the love of Christ and the Church.
For those with the purity to see it, a nursing mother is one of the most precious, most beautiful, and most holy of all possible images of woman.
In the sacraments, spirit and matter "kiss." Heaven and earth embrace in a union that will never end.
The idea that 'preaching the Gospel' has nothing to do with sex and that 'preaching about sex' has nothing to do with the Gospel betrays layers and layers of seriously misguided thinking. When we divorce God's love from sexual love, as Pope Benedict says, 'the essence of Christianity' becomes 'decisively cut off from the complex fabric of human life.'
The Church's basic moral principle regarding reproductive technologies is this: if a given technology assists the marital embrace in achieving its natural end, it can be morally acceptable, even praiseworthy. However, if it replaces the marital embrace as the means by which the child is conceived, it's not in keeping with God's design.
In Christ, man who made himself God encounters God who made himself man. Unrivaled self-importance and pride encounters unrivaled self-emptying and humility.
If (environmentalists) want to continue to beat those drums to solicit money from concerned soccer moms, they can do that. The reality on the ground is things are better as a result of Gale Norton's tenure.
