As a priest and pastor I often receive the phone call: “Fr. Tom, can we come in to see you? We are having marriage problems.” This phone call almost always comes from the wife and almost never from the husband. I tell the wife to try and convince her husband that both of them should come to see me together. Few men ever really want to come to “see the priest” and talk about relational problems. When the wife finally comes to see me, dragging her reluctant husband along, I listen to their story, to their wounds and pains. After they tell me their story I offer a statement to the couple that is both encouraging and confusing at the same time: “Take heart. There are no such things as marriage problems.”

In his much-awaited first Encyclical entitled God is Love (promulgated Christmas day, 2005 but officially released January 25th, 2006), it seems Pope Benedict wants to proclaim to the world that the Church - despite all the supposed anti-sex sentiment - has a vision of erotic love far more glorious than anything Sigmund Freud, Hugh Hefner, Dr. Ruth, or Howard Stern could dream or imagine.

Every fiber of a woman's being cries out for connection, for relationship. This distinctively feminine orientation has been poo-pooh'd in recent decades, claiming it makes a woman weak and dependent. The solution has been to downgrade her need for relationships and upgrade her ability to accomplish and achieve. However, there's an undeniable aspect of a woman that can't be swept under the carpet or deleted from her life - her body...

I discovered John Paul II's theology of the body (TB) in the early 1990's. As a Catholic who had rejected what I perceived to be the Church's antiquated teaching on sexuality, the Pope's TB was a revolution for me. It opened my eyes to the beauty and grandeur of an authentic Catholic understanding of sex. I knew it had the potential to change the Church and the world - if people were only able (and willing) to "take in" what the Pope was saying...

What is marital spirituality? How does the family become authentically spiritual? For John Paul II, the answers to these questions "of the spirit" are revealed in the body...

Following the words of Genesis that establish marriage as a union of the two "in one flesh" (Gn 2:24), we read that the first man and woman were both naked yet "felt no shame" (Gn 2:25).

Suppose I were to suggest that these evocative words hold the key to understanding God's plan for human life. Furthermore, suppose I were to suggest that the only way to "see" the invisible mystery of God is through the vision of the human body in its masculinity and femininity? Even more, suppose I were to suggest that the inner "logic" of the Christian mystery itself is simply unintelligible unless we understand the meaning of sexual difference and our call to nuptial communion?