 A Catholic Perspective on Sexuality. Fr. William Graham, author of A Catholic Handbook on Sex, will show how the richness of the Catholic tradition provides a healthy and holy perspective on issues of sexuality and the human body. Register here.
Called from darkness, children of the Light know that human sexuality is not just about the pleasures of the flesh, but about the witness of holy lives. And holy lives need be neither dull nor lacking in pleasure. So our questions are not about “What and how much can I get away with and still hope to see the face of God?” but rather, “How can I feel confident that my deeds and my attitudes are in keeping with what it means to be a son or daughter of the Most High God so that I walk and act in keeping with human dignity?”
So what does the Church teach? How did we arrive at such an approach? If I do not immediately understand the wisdom of a position or teaching, shall I presume that the Church is wrong and should change to share my opinion? What if I find some teachings difficult? What if they are not particularly difficult to understand, but just hard to put into practice? These are the questions that will launch our considerations here, faithful both to what the Church teaches and also to what it means to be a human person. St. Irenaeus of Lyon, an early Church Father and Doctor of the Church, writing in the last quarter of the second century in what is now France, noted that “The glory of God is [wo]man fully alive.
In A Catholic Handbook on Sex: Essentials for the 21st Century, Graham writes, “Those who seek only a good time will find this book out of step with that desire. Those who seek to participate as fully as possible in what it means to be human and fully alive will, I hope, be both cheered and challenged here.”
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