Well put. I do hope that what you present comes to pass. It is always a challenge to try to meet both worlds. I think the first step would be for someone to trained in both to write a book or something… or perhaps for two or more persons to collaborate. Let’s hope that it can happen.

Thanks for your very sound comments!

Kevin Keiser

I also appreciate your disclosure that you don’t deal with sexually wounded or the even larger number of Catholics who lack a solid grounding in the faith and don’t believe in the central tenets of the faith or don’t know what they believe. Too many are members of both groups, although I’m the only person I ever met who sexually sinned while maintaining a full awareness I was wrong to do so.

I offer myself as a case in point. Immediately following my reading of “Theology of the Body for Beginners: An Introduction” by (dare I say it?) Christopher West, I had a profoundly compelling spiritual experience that led me more deeply to Jesus than I ever anticipated.

Although I could not understand how I could ever prevail over an addiction which had tormented me even in my years outside the Church, He invited me to turn all of it over to Him. In so doing I have not fallen back into porn at any time. Every temptation is successfully dispatched with a Hail Mary or two.

It was TOB which led me to the deeply personal experience I mentioned, and I believe it was the Holy Spirit who brought me to TOB. Jesus brought me into full chastity through Him and has kept me there so long as I continue to assent and to pray; to turn it over to Him.

The more I have studied TOB and read the contributions offered by all those working to get that message out to sexually wounded like myself, the greater strength I take from it. I appreciate your recognition that TOB offers value in this over-sexualized world and I share your view that many brought back into compliance with church teaching via TOB will be positioned to eventually learn and embrace the more substantive bases for Her teachings.

It is unusual to encounter someone with a deeper and perhaps a more traditionalist theological background to express the POVs which you offer regarding TOB. It is my wish that folks like yourself might consider how you can collaborate, perhaps, to put together programs, workshops, books, etc. that might (forgive the term) “popularize” the foundations to Church teaching so that there might be accessible media available to the faithful.

I mean this to suggest that given the success of West’s DVD workshops traditionalists might not build on his success by taking the best of what he teaches in TOB and use that as an entree to drill down deeper for all of us hungry souls. My concern about the hard-core traditionalist reaction against West and TOB is that too many of these critics seem to fit Christ’s description of the Pharisees as placing a heavy burden on the people while not lifting a finger to relieve their burden. Constructing a program to address the shortfalls in West’s teaching would put the many talents in our Church to a use not nearly so well served by the ongoing criticisms through which they maintain their ongoing conversations in their own echo chamber.

Thanks again. I hope I made my points effectively. I threw this together spontaneously and gave it no critical editing to better shape my thoughts or sentence structure.

Phil