What the Twisted Mystics Got Right

Sex is like fast food. This analogy was the main stream running through Christopher West's talks, that bound everything together. It cropped up in the middle of important points, alongside funny jokes, and within the first five minutes. It floated slowly alongside us until we forgot about it and then *bam!* he'd be talking about chicken nuggets.

Christopher explained that our world is hungry -- hungry for love. You hear this theme all over the place. You especially find it in the media. Consider how many songs there are about love. This point resonated with me; I'm occasionally annoyed because I would like some music other than love songs. Yet he called rock and roll artists the "twisted mystics" of our day. They know what our hearts seek. They just don't know where to look for it.

You see, all around us, we have a culture offering us a fast-food diet of sex. And the Catholic Church has had the "right words, [but the] wrong music." If you listen to the Catholic Church's message about sex, it seems to be "DON'T DO IT." As a part of the fast-food analogy, it seems to offer a message of starvation. "And I don't know about you," Christopher said, "but if the other choice is starvation, I'm going for the greasy nuggets!"

Here's the thing though (and the whole Theology of the Body is meant to demonstrate this) : The Catholic Church doesn't offer starvation. It offers a feast. We just haven't been saying that. We haven't been saying it to Catholics who grow up around the Church, let alone the world at large. No wonder our world is so confused.

This point came from the beginning of his talk, Sunday night. He spent the next three nights explaining this feast. Unfortunately, I will only be able to offer you two nights of the vision, but over the next few posts, I'll do my best to explain this feast of the Church.