We Need Heart Transplants

We thought you might enjoy reading the notes from the closing address of Ruah Woods’ Executive Director Leslie Kuhlman Feb. 28, 2018 at the benefit breakfast featuring keynote speaker Paul Kengor (author of A Pope and a President: John Paul II, Ronald Reagan, and the Extraordinary Untold Story of the 20th Century.)

With the latest school shooting in Parkland, FL don’t you feel it in your bones that we have reached a tipping point? That point at which a series of small changes or incidents becomes significant enough to cause a larger, more important change? Within the last six months, add to the school shooting tragedy:

• The conviction of Dr. Wm. Nasser – the doctor who abused so many young gymnasts
• Harvey Weinstein and his Hollywood abusers, and
• The emergence of the “Me Too” and “Times Up” movements aimed at ending sexual harassment and violence.

This parade of incidents, among many others like addiction to porn & drugs, the hook up culture, and broken families, have become significant enough to cause a larger, more important change.

Rather than pursuing knee jerk, band aid solutions, deep and profound questions are being asked.  By all of this negativity we sense there must be a positive worth searching for.  People are forming weighty questions about society and our culture. Band aids won’t do…WE NEED HEART TRANSPLANTS!  THIS is where HOPE to rebuild our culture lies.

Enter Pope John Paul II’s revolutionary teaching to turn on the light in this darkness. Theology of the Body is the antidote to this cultural cancer we are experiencing.  It answers these profound questions:

• What does it mean to be human?
• Who am I?
• How do I live my life to be fully happy and whole?

In short, TOB is “Human Education”…”Humanity 101”

John Paul II emerged as a man whose life was formed by remarkable experiences that prepared him to proclaim the culture of life and the dignity of the human person. These experiences uniquely qualified him to advance the new evangelization through the teaching of the Theology of the Body as a dramatic response to the signs of the times. He said,

“The evil of our times consist in the first place in a kind of degradation, indeed a pulverization, of the fundamental uniqueness of each human person.  We must oppose this with a kind of recapitulation of the inviolable mystery of the person.”

Pope JPII’s Theology of the Body responds, in heroic fashion, to society’s chronic confusion about the identity and meaning of the human person.

It is a strategic development that reads the “signs of the times” and responds immediately to humanity in crisis. The antidote to this crisis is to reassert true human dignity by taking a look at the human person and emphasizing that the identity and vocation for the human person is fulfilled in and through the total gift of self in love.

Ruah Woods is committed to help rebuild the culture by providing onsite Theology of the Body education, comprehensive marriage preparation and healing through high quality psychological services grounded in a Catholic vision of the human person.

• Our Mission? To help men and women live their vocation to love, according to God’s plan, as informed by the Theology of the Body.
• Our Current Challenge? To develop and deliver ROOTED: K-12 Theology of the Body Curriculum so that students can learn what the Church teaches on issues such as marriage, morality, the sanctity of human life and the dignity of the human person.

 — K-5 – We are using award winning Children’s Literature and creating Teachers Guides which help educators & catechists mine the TOB themes that lie within,

 — 6-8 – We are using a Commonplace Book…a journaling approach utilizing the five senses to bring the teaching alive through interactive and dynamic lessons.  These books become students journals to treasure as they grow and enter high school.

 — 9-12 – is an online experience, integrated with what is already being taught in the classroom, featuring peer to peer testimonies of how TOB has affected student’s lives.

So…What does this mean for you?

• Don’t you think people are beginning to take a look at our culture today and think we took a wrong turn somewhere along the way?  Aren’t you concerned for the direction our culture is headed?
• We can’t address social problems and build a culture of life if we do not understand the truth of the dignity of the human person.
• Understanding, living and sharing the Theology of the Body, “the curriculum of the culture of life” helps us to reclaim the dignity of the human person.
• The antidote to this crisis is to reassert true human dignity by taking a look at the human person and emphasizing that the identity and vocation for the human person is fulfilled in and through the total gift of self in love.

This is precisely what the Theology of the Body offers us. It provides the antidote to the culture of death and a theological foundation for the new evangelization. So, I appeal to you-take up a study of the TOB. Make it your mission in life to understand it, live it and share it with everyone you know. And we at Ruah Woods are here to help make that happen!

We also remember what Sir Edmund Burke said, “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”  We humbly ask that you pray for our K-12 Theology of the Body Curriculum Project and consider supporting us financially. We are grateful for your generosity.