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3 Lessons and 2 Tips from David Calavitta

Ace3 Lessons and 2 Tips is a series of interviews in which some of my favorite people (and probably some of yours) share three lessons they’ve learned by being married, plus two tips for single people.

This edition features David Calavitta, a graphic designer for Life Teen and a Catholic speaker who has worked in youth ministry since the year 2000, when he was 19.

David is a “good ol’ fashioned, clean-cut, tattooed, Catholic” who loves Christ and His Church, and his wife, Brittany. They met in the Life Teen ministry at their parish while they were teens in the program. They dated on and off until David was in his early 20s, and “God made it mercifully clear that we were supposed to be together. (Huge thanks to Him for that! And to my wife for being ok with that.)”

David is gracious to share three lessons and two tips with us today: Continue reading “3 Lessons and 2 Tips from David Calavitta”

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The ‘morality clause’ controversy calls for fortitude.

While I read several news stories out of San Francisco last week, I felt sick. The general public, they said, led by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, had picked a fight with the Catholic Church.

A clause had caused a controversy. Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone, of the Archdiocese of San Francisco, had announced the plan to add it to the faculty handbooks at archdiocesan high schools. In multiple paragraphs, the clause says that adults who work for the schools — which, to be clear, are Catholic schools — are supposed to uphold Catholic teaching.

In an op-ed he wrote last week, Dennis Herrera, San Francisco’s city attorney, called the clause “a chilling directive.” It requires teachers, he said, “to ‘conform their hearts, minds and consciences, as well as their public and private behavior’ to tenets of church teaching that include ‘chastity’ and ‘abstinence from all sexual intimacy outside of marriage.'”

To which Herrera, and the Board of Supervisors, and hundreds of Catholic school teachers in San Francisco essentially said, “How dare you?” Continue reading “The ‘morality clause’ controversy calls for fortitude.”

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Q and A: What should we do when we’re attracted to each other?

The Q: What advice would you give to a young Christian woman when she’s attracted to a guy? And what advice would you give her when a guy has asked her on a date?

The A: The short version? READ MY BOOK. 😉 Keep reading for the long version:

When a woman is attracted to a man, the words of advice that come to mind are as follows (And — for the record — I’d say the same stuff to a guy): Continue reading “Q and A: What should we do when we’re attracted to each other?”

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A sex talk in a city near you?!

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Theology on Tap in STL.

In or near Tampa, FL or Athens, GA? PREPARE TO MARK YOUR CALENDAR. (If you aren’t, read on anway, ’cause I need a favor.)

I’ve booked events where you are, and I want to see you there. Here’s where I’ll be:

SPRING HILL, FL: I’ll give a talk about practicing chastity in a culture that calls it crazy at 6 p.m. Friday (2/27/15) at Connexion, an event hosted by the young adult ministry in the Family Life Conference Center (which says “Welcome to Northcliffe” on it in giant letters) at Northcliffe Baptist Church, 10515 Northcliffe Blvd., Spring Hill. Continue reading “A sex talk in a city near you?!”

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What I learned about God by giving a sex talk to teens.

I couldn’t see their faces. So I smiled at the silhouettes of the sixth through twelfth graders who sat silently on the bleachers while I stood in the spotlight.

As a chastity speaker (and writer), my target audience never has been teens or tweens. But I stood last Wednesday morning in the mostly dark gymnatorium at a private, Protestant Christian school — the same gym in which I graduated from fifth, eighth and twelfth grades, 18, 15, and 11 years ago, respectively.

And in my head, I kept saying “this is weird.” Weird to be in this room, in front of these kids, on this morning, doing what I would not have guessed I’d ever do when during my eight years as a student there, I sat in those same bleachers.

When I got the invitation to speak, I was totally game. I was honored. Moved, even, because I’m Catholic and we’re talking about a school that circulated anti-Catholic Bob Jones and Jack Chick literature until my parents and I asked them not to.  Continue reading “What I learned about God by giving a sex talk to teens.”