Catholic schools have a big problem when it comes to teaching about sexuality and ethics. Society at large, and the government that helps to determine the curriculum, have absorbed the modern view of body and soul as essentially separate from each other, and the body as an instrument of the mind that can be treated as we wish. This view is false, but has been accepted as common sense. The task of the Catholic school is now partly to show why it is false, and to offer an alternative – an alternative beautiful and coherent enough to convince, and strong enough to provide the foundation for a Catholic way of life. This is what Blessed John Paul II tried to do with his "Theology of the Body", founding a John Paul II Institute in each continent (under the Pontifical Lateran University) to teach and develop further his rich vision of Christian anthropology – in a sense tackling head-on one of the strongest forces behind the Culture of Death.
Since then many people have tried to simplify and express the basic principles of the Theology of the Body in more accessible, less academic terms. Dr Christopher West has become well known for this, although his approach has been criticized by some of the faculty of the John Paul II Institute, partly on the grounds that it lays too much emphasis on sexual experience per se. I do not propose to survey all the alternative resources available in the field of sex education or marriage prep, but here are two examples of courses based specifically on John Paul II that readers may find interesting.
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