Creighton University

Course Introduction | Learning Objectives | Course Hours
Course Content & Outline | Creative Uses | IPF Faculty

If God tells us to be fruitful, why does the church call priests to be celibate?

Why does the Catholic Church teach that contraception is always wrong?

What do marital sex, Holy Eucharist and Heaven all have in common?

 

In the early years of his pontificate, Pope John Paul II devoted nearly all of his Wednesday general audiences to expounding a scriptural vision of human sexuality known as the theology of the body. Starting with a penetrating analysis of the creation accounts in the book of Genesis, John Paul II illuminated the meaning of human love in the divine plan.

 

The theology of the body is John Paul II’s timely response to the sexual confusion troubling our culture and our Church. Papal biographer George Weigel calls the theology of the body “one of the boldest reconfigurations of Catholic theology in centuries...a kind of theological time bomb set to go off with dramatic consequences, sometime in the third millennium of the church.”

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The course is designed to:

• Familiarize students with Karol Wojtyla’s/John Paul II’s philosophical project of linking the subjective and objective world views.
• Introduce students to the main themes of the 129 addresses that constitute John Paul II’s “theology of the body.”
• Encourage students to integrate the principles of John Paul II’s theology of the body in their own personal lives and relationships.
• Equip students to apply John Paul II’s “adequate anthropology” to a range of questions such as sexual morality, bio-ethics, gender issues, vocation, the sacramental life, and the new evangelization.
  
  

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This five day course intensive contains 30 - fifty-minute classroom sessions for two Creighton University-IPF graduate credits.

 

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This course will examine the 129 Wednesday audience addresses that comprise John Paul II’s “Theology of the Body” with an emphasis on the importance of the Pope’s project for the new evangelization. Particular attention will be paid to themes such as creation in the imago Dei, fall and redemption, Christian ethics and ethos, freedom and person, gender and vocation.

 

Introduction

The Human Body, Catholicism, and the Philosophical Project of John Paul II

 

Part I

Establishing an “Adequate Anthropology”

• Cycle 1: Original Man (reflections on Genesis)
• Cycle 2: Historical Man (reflections on the Sermon on the Mount and St. Paul)
• Cycle 3: Eschatological Man (reflections on the resurrection of the body)

 

Part II

Applying an “Adequate Anthropology”

• Cycle 4: Celibacy for the Kingdom (reflections on Matthew 19 and St. Paul)
• Cycle 5: The Sacramentality of Marriage (reflections on Ephesians 5)
• Cycle 6: Love & Fruitfulness (reflections on Humanae Vitae)

 

Conclusion

The Theology of the Body and the New Evangelization

 

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This exciting course offered through IPF at Creighton University is taught by the internationally recognized speaker and author Christopher West. It adapts easily to individual and local diocesan needs. Creighton University-IPF credits may be transferred to supplement graduate theology programs.

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Christopher West is a graduate of the John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family and a visiting professor at the Institute’s Melbourne, Australia campus. He is formerly Director of the Office of Marriage and Family Life for the Archdiocese of Denver. He currently serves as faculty for sexual ethics at the Institute for Priestly Formation at Creighton University, Omaha, Nebraska. He is also the Theology of the Body Staff Advisor for the GIFT Foundation. Christopher West’s extensive lecturing has taken him to four continents and his tapes and CDs have been distributed around the globe. He lives near Lancaster, Pennsylvania with his wife and their two sons and daughter.

 

For Further Information

For more information regarding Christopher West and his schedule, please contact:

Theology of the Body Institute

Telephone: (610) 696-7795, ext. 206

Fax: (610) 696-7796

Email: mstumpf@tobinstitute.org

URL: www.tobinstitute.org.

 

Course Introduction | Learning Objectives | Course Hours
Course Content & Outline | Creative Uses | IPF Faculty