Library Item

Precious, but Prudent? A Reflection on Opposite-Sex Friendships

In his Theology of the Body, Pope John Paul II posits, “Christ teaches that the meaning of life is to love as he loves (see Jn 15:12). One of the Pope’s main insights is that God inscribed this vocation to love as he loves in our bodies by creating us male and female and calling us to become ‘one flesh.’” (TBB 2). Indeed, he says that the “deepest yearning of the human heart is to
be ‘like God’ by sharing in his life and love” and that “[o]ur creation as male and female and our longing for communion is ‘the fundamental fact’ of human existence” (TBB 35, 120).