Diplomatic Corps - Tracy Moran

I've Got You to Hold My Hand
Mary Beth Bonacci guides teens to the Church's beautiful message of chastity.

Now, she travels the world speaking about chastity, and her hip take on the once-taboo topic has made her a hit with youth. She tells them the truth, spicing it with her quick wit.

"In the '50s, you had a culture where it didn't need to be discussed because it was the prevailing norm," she says. "There was an understanding that sex was private, and that's a good thing. It was 'good girls don't and men behave like gentlemen.' Nobody bothered learning why the Church taught what it did."

Then came the '60s.

"You had the pill, all this social upheaval and no one knew how to respond," explains Bonacci, who, at 34, has come of age with a generation encouraged to question what their parents accepted on faith.

"I don't think anybody knew what to say," she says. "There was this preachy 'don't do it' and there was 'if it feels good, do it.' "

The oldest of four children, she was a self-described "nice Catholic girl." She knew about abstinence, but found few answers to such questions as: How do I say "no" nicely? How far is too far? How do I know when I'm in love?

Then, when Bonacci was a senior studying communications at the University of San Francisco, she attended a St. Ignatius Institute lecture series on chastity. She was, she says, "enthralled."

"The word 'chastity' brought my understanding of the gift of sexuality to a whole new level," she notes in Real Love. "This was about understanding, finding and living love. Abstinence had always seemed like a negative term -- something you don't do, while chastity was positive, a virtue."

She was volunteering at a crisis pregnancy center and realized teens needed to hear this message. "It was clear to me that their sexual activity was fueled by an unfulfilled desire for real love," she says.

That's when she decided to go into schools and talk about chastity -- not in theological terms, but in a way her audience would understand.

"Turning it into street language was my job," she says. "I was fairly grounded in the teachings of the Church, and I was very interested in explaining this one."

As a 22-year-old Catholic girl, she "had given a lot of talks on dates, so it's not like it was coming out of the blue," she says chuckling. With a $100 grant from the St. Ignatius Institute, she embarked on her project to teach teens about chastity. This would be her weekly "good deed" while she successfully climbed the corporate ladder.

"I spent a year just reading about it -- I was stalling," she laughs.

In the meantime, she graduated and got a job in the Silicon Valley. Then in the fall of 1986, knowing of her interest in chastity, a local crisis pregnancy center asked her to be on their speakers bureau.

"I had to start talking the talk," Bonacci says. "I was terrified. I thought, these teens won't care what I say. It was intimidating -- for the first three minutes. They were so responsive, so enthused."

Every time she spoke, it was the same thing: They gave her standing ovations and kept her long after her talk, just asking questions.

"It was exponential, it just exploded," she says. "It felt like a calling. I loved seeing the change, and I was convinced that the fact that no one was speaking on this topic was the foundation of so many problems."

Eventually, she had to make a decision about her life's direction. "Things got dicey with my job," she says, explaining she had to call in sick every time she spoke.

"Then I called in sick to be on live TV," she says, adding drolly, "That didn't go over so big, and that was about the end of that job."

And the start of something infinitely more meaningful.

But just because she can talk to teens on their level, don't dismiss her as merely a pop-culture phenomenon. She holds a master's in the theology of marriage and family from Lateran University.

Bonacci recently spoke at the Second World Meeting with the Holy Father for Families, addressing Church leaders during the International Theological Pastoral Congress.

She didn't get to meet with the pope at the gathering -- she had another commitment and left before he arrived -- but she's unequivocal in her feelings about him.

"John Paul II is such an incredible gift," she says. "Everything I do is based on him and his theology. He spent his entire priesthood on issues of family, marriage, sexuality and youth. He tied in this idea of sexual meaning so beautifully."

After Bonacci spoke at the 1993 World Youth Day in her hometown of Denver, she realized that "there was so much content in what the Holy Father was saying, and it was getting lost -- the crowd was huge, his accent thick and the sound system poor."

Youth needed his message "unpacked for them," she says, so she wrote We're on a Mission from God: The Generation X Guide to John Paul II and the Real Meaning of Life.

The book's title and cover, picturing the pope in a pair of Ray Ban sunglasses, are designed to grab the attention of the younger crowd. Inside, Bonacci uses the Holy Father's World Youth Day quotes to illuminate the truths of the Faith, bringing young Catholics a clearer understanding of the Church and their role in it.

Bonacci says that's where her effectiveness lies -- "taking significant concepts down to the eighth grade level and not corrupting the meaning."

When she's not traveling the world speaking, she's busy developing a brochure series on chastity -- something, she says, more up-to-date than the ones produced in the '60s "featuring a guy in a leisure suit, playing a guitar in a field of daisies."

She's also producing a nine-part video series called Real Love, for use in youth ministry and classroom settings.

Whatever the medium, Bonacci's message is being embraced. "People of all ages are starved for this message," she says. "Starved for guidance and starved for love."

Real love.

Mary Beth Bonacci can be reached at: Real Love, Inc., 1520 West Warner Rd., Suite 106-138, Gilbert, AZ 85233, 602-812-1194.