The title of my talk this evening is Thomism of the body, St. John Paul II's Thomistic Anthropology of Marriage and Sexuality.

And that's really what I want to show, that St. Thomas Aquinas' theology and his anthropology of the body and his theology of marriage, really,

is the foundation of what St. John Paul II did in what we now call

the theology of the body.

Tonight I want to do a few things then. First is to familiarize you, since I'm going to just

take a stab in the dark here, then I think that probably many of you are not familiar or have not read all 133 talks of the theology of the body that John Paul II gave.

In Catholic circles, the theology of the body has become rather popular.

It's mostly because it's been popularized by folks like Christopher

West and what we call the Theology of the Body Institute. But not even many Catholics are familiar with it,

and there's a whole lot going on in what we now call the theology of the body. So the first part of my talk is going to sort of familiarize you with the basic thrust of

the themes of the theology of the body of John Paul II.

If you're already familiar with it, this might be review.

I might have different things to say about it than what you already know.

Then once we have a handle on those major themes, I want to show you the way that those themes are, in fact, indirect continuity with the thought of St. Thomas Aquinas, even if they're presented a little differently by John Paul II.

And so to that end, I will offer six to mystic principles that I think show convergence between the angelic doctor and the Pope's theology of the body.

And then finally, and there'll be just very brief, I'm going to offer some suggestions on how Aquinas' theology can aid in the understanding of John Paul's theology of the body going forward.

So to begin, we should note that what we are now calling the theology of the body was a series of what can only be described as catechetical addresses that John Paul gave

publicly from either the steps of St. Peter's or from the window of the papal palace

every Wednesday at noon from 1979 to 1984.

John Paul really started doing that. Paul, the Six, did it a little bit, but John Paul made it a thing.

All right, so every week, except when he was traveling or recuperating.

Pope Benedict, the 16th, continued that practice, and the present Holy Father, Pope Francis, continues to do that.

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