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at to mystic institute.org. I've given this talk the title and historical overview of the growth

of marriage as an avenue of holiness, but I probably should have titled it something like

the growth of marriage as an avenue of holiness amidst all the sort of challenges and societal

changes of the 20th century. You can't really understand the theology of the body without

understanding the context in which it came about. And so I want to lay that groundwork this

evening. As by way of introduction, I would simply say, starting in the late

19th century and going really full throttle in the 20th century, Catholics and Christians in

general began to be more cognizant of what the Second Vatican Council would eventually call the universal call to holiness.

Namely, that every person, and not just priest or religious men or religious women,

were called to close personal relationships with God and with Jesus Christ and in fact to grow in holiness.

Now, it's not like that wasn't known before, but in the long history of the church,

there are things that are known and that are teaching, and then there are things that

are popularly known and popularly taught or not popularly taught, we might say, right, as the milieu's and

as mores come and go. So, I mean, in fact, the lay faithful long had devotions and

strove to walk the narrow way to be close to God. It's not like only monks and priest and nuns

were moral. In fact, in some time periods of the

church, many of the lay faithful were much more moral and much more holy than some of the clerics.

But even devotions like the Rosary, for instance, which is wonderful. I mean, it's the Dominican

...