As parents, we teach our children to respect their bodies at a young age. We make sure they eat the right food; we teach them personal hygiene and how to tie their shoes. We teach our children to be kind, to share with others, and to treat each other fairly.

We do this because we want our children to grow up to be strong, healthy, moral individuals. Then we send them off to school where they begin to experience life outside of our protective bubble and be influenced by others. We suddenly find our families in the middle of imposed ideologies that are difficult to evade without coming across as hateful or bigoted. These mainstream teachings normalize things like fornication, pornography, gender confusion, radical individualism, and an indifferent attitude toward the nuclear family.

How do we counter this?

Going back to basics can help center us and redirect our family’s focus to truth: St. John Paul II’s Theology of the Body. His teachings provide a perspective of human sexuality that is pure, holy and respectful. It is the perfect contrast to our current culture’s proposal of a no-holds- barred approach to our body and human sexuality.

Theology of the Body teaches us that God does not make mistakes and that we are each beautifully and wonderfully made. In his writings, St. John Paul II explains that a human person is not just a body nor just a soul. A substantial unification of body and soul creates a person who has dignity and value despite his or her race, education, religion, or material assets. We are loved because we are a son or daughter of God. Our destiny, our purpose in life is to be in union with God in Heaven.

Once we understand this truth about our own dignity and our destiny, we realize that conforming to the world’s subjective truths, for fear of offending someone, is nothing more than false compassion. We must not be afraid of what others may say or think of us if we refuse to follow along with society’s erroneous ways. Remember that just because we follow what others do, it does not create a new reality, but rather makes us stand wrongly with them.

St. John Paul II tells us, “The opposite of love is not hate; the opposite of love is use.” When we love someone, we respect them, we build them up, we want what’s best for them. Real love invites real love in response. When we use someone, there is no longer that sense of reciprocity. Instead, we treat them as an apparatus to satisfy our own selfish needs and pleasure. We disregard their spirit and diminish them to merely an image or an outer shell to fulfill our own lustful desires.

Theology of the Body’s teachings help us to see others as human beings who have the right to be loved and respected. This renews our mindset of not only how we see others, but how we see and respect ourselves.  It gives us an internal filter to help us navigate this unfiltered and skewed world.

Parents, I urge you to educate yourselves on the concepts of the Theology of the Body. If we as parents do not take the time to understand the truth of the scriptures and the detrimental effect the cultural views have on daily life, we won’t have the incentive to do anything about it in our own family. Our home needs to be on the frontlines to help fight against the distorted reality that is quickly infiltrating our mainstream lifestyle. If we continue to allow the truth to be hidden, we will ultimately find it becomes more difficult to push back.

We are invited by God to become people who see with renewed eyes and hearts. What will we see when our eyes are opened? In what light will we see the world? May God open our eyes so that we see who we really are and who we are called in truth to be.

— Valerie Parzyck is director of family faith formation and youth ministry at St. John Vianney Church in South Burlington.

—Originally published in the Summer 2023 issue of Vermont Catholic magazine.