One reason people get involved in religion is they fancy it'll make 'em feel better about themselves; that it'll improve their self-esteem. And it might, at least for a while...

I once saw a poster in the foyer of an RC church in a Dallas suburb. It showed a picture of a very askew Raggedy-Ann doll being dragged through an old-fashioned clothes wringer. It bore the slogan "The truth will set you free but first it'll make you miserable."

Sometimes that also happens.

I'll try again.

The Catholic Church does not have a monopoly on Truth.

You asked, "If there isn't a distinctive truth in Catholocism, then why be Catholic?"

I can only speak for myself, as I'm sure there are as many reasons for being Catholic as there are Catholics.

I would be Orthodox if I hadn't married a Roman Catholic. Rather than ask her to leave a church she joined since birth for one neither of us belonged to, I became Eastern Catholic. It was a matter of maintaining communion within the marriage, nothing about the Catholic Church being any more truthful or better than the Orthodox (because it isn't).

But enough about me. I'd rather continue this line of conversation in a new topic and stick to your original question about the Theology of the Body.

Again, taxonomic problems with the word "church". My way is clearer and better: the Catholic Church is one, but consists of several "communions of Churches", which, sadly, are not presently in communion. Each communion of Churches consists of several particular Churches, to which each individual belongs. And each particular Church is divided into local Churhes headed by a bishop who has oversight of multiple parishes.

Stuart, that makes sense to me.

Fr. Evdokimov has written about the concept of the body with theological angles. Was that Latinization?

In XC,
J. Andrew

Depends, did he invoke Humanae Vitae?