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Ave Maria, Florida – the town with a Catholic heart.©™ Stories & information for residents & visitors.Archive for Theology of the Body
Vatican’s Humanum marriage colloquium: Pope Francis presides, AMU alum’s films featured, AMU faculty attend
This past week Pope Francis made headlines as he presided over the opening of a Vatican sponsored event called “Humanum” by unreservedly reaffirming that the complementarity of man and woman is at the very root of marriage and family and that each child has the right to be nurtured by both a mother and a father. The Humanum event is described as “An International Interreligious Colloquium on The Complementarity of Man and Woman”:
The Complementarity of Man and Woman: An International Colloquium is a gathering of leaders and scholars from many religions across the globe, to examine and propose anew the beauty of the relationship between the man and the woman, in order to support and reinvigorate marriage and family life for the flourishing of human society.
Each session of the colloquium began with the screening of one of a series of six short films that were created by Ave Maria University alumnus RG Delgado (AMU ’06). One of the films features AMU professor Maria Fedoryka. Present at the colloquium as an invited participant was AMU professor Catherine Pakaluk.
AMU alumnus RD Delgado
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Pope Francis names Theology of the Body expert Mary Healy, daughter of AMU’s founding president, to Pontifical Biblical Commission
Congratulations to Nick and Jane Healy upon today’s Vatican announcement that Pope Francis has named their daughter, theology professor Mary E. Healy, to the Pontifical Biblical Commission. This is a most interesting appointment, given the ongoing Synods on Marriage and Mary Healy’s expertise in Pope Saint John Paul II’s papal teaching on Marriage and Human Sexuality that is known as the Theology of the Body. Nick Healy was the founding president of Ave Maria University and he and Jane spend part of the year at their home in Ave Maria.
Professor Mary E. Healy
McTeigue: Jesus tells us, “Do not make an idol or an instrument of people made beautiful by God.”
Ave Maria’s Father Robert McTeigue, S.J., preached this homily today for the Feast of St. Anthony of Padua. The scripture readings are here. Please pray for Father as he works towards completing a collection of homilies and essays on preaching entitled, I Have Someone to Tell You: A Jesuit Heralds the Gospel.
Michelangelo’s naked Adam and Eve just before the Fall, on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. According to Ave Maria University’s Dr. Michael Waldstein, a renowned scholar on Pope St. John Paul II’s Theology of the Body: “Some [naked] images push us to concupiscence, others do not. . . . Going to the Sistine Chapel and looking at the naked women on the ceiling is for this reason a very different experience than watching a pornographic movie. It is not presumption, but the experience of many men, that one can look with purity at Michelangelo’s nudes and take delight in their beauty. Michelangelo himself must have looked at his naked models in a pure way in order to be able to paint nudes in that pure way. . . . Of course, if one does feel a slide into concupiscence when looking at Michelangelo’s nudes, it is a good idea to look away. That need to look away should also be a trumpet blast for recognizing . . . that one is in need of a serious transformation.”
May I ask you a question? What if someone came to you and said this: “Oh! I just did a terrible thing! I was in an art museum, and I noticed that the paintings were beautiful!” You would think that a rather strange statement, would you not? Suppose your troubled friend went on to say: “And after I noticed that the paintings were beautiful, I praised the artists who painted them!” You would know right away that your friend is obviously quite confused. Going to an art museum, enjoying the beauty of the paintings, and then praising the painters—well, in terms of a purpose of a museum—it just doesn’t get any better than that.
But what if your friend says this: “Oh! I went to the art museum, and I saw the beautiful paintings, and I stole them!” Then you would know that your poor friend is more than just confused. And what if your friend said: “I went to the art museum, slashed the beautiful paintings, and used the shredded paintings to shine my shoes.” Then you would know for sure that your confused friend is very sick.
Now, let me ask you another question. What does this little parable of mine have to do with today’s gospel reading?
Pontificate of Hope (that continues to inspire our town)
This reflection (below), penned by Cistercian Father Edmund Waldstein after St. John Paul was beatified in 2011, highlights what many Catholics of my generation found in his Petrine ministry: hope. That hope in the nature of who we are as creatures of a Creator will continue to fuel the flame that is the Gospel. That hope is precisely why the Ave Maria projects were founded.
We can look forward with hope to the writing and teaching of theologian Pater Edmund, and of his theologian parents Michael and Susan here in Ave Maria, who have done much already to spread this good news that is St. John Paul’s theology – especially his Theology of the Body.
My confrere Pater Johannes Paul and I went to Rome with a group of pilgrims for the beatification of Pope John Paul II. It was tremendously moving and all that sort of thing, but the trip was also kind of exhausting and so I actually fell asleep during the sermon at the Beatification Mass. Reading the sermon when I got back, I was struck by the following passage, in which Pope Benedict gives a remarkably pithy summary of the center of his predecessor’s teaching:
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