Take a Sydney pub and add hundreds of youth who are keen for wisdom and understanding, brought there by their natural desire to know more about God. It’s Theology on Tap – a crowd atmosphere of yearning for authentic learning. May’s ToT featured The Record columnist Anna Krohn, Nashville Sr Mary Rachel OP, and Celebrate Love co-founder Francine Pirola as over 600 gathered to hear about What women want.
By Bridget Spinks
What women really want is “intimate love” a guest speaker at this month’s Theology on Tap (ToT) suggested to a packed out audience at an Irish pub in Sydney’s west.
Intimate love is “a love that involves and recognises, includes and celebrates not only what they do or what they look like they do – but also who they are in their ‘inmost being,’” Anna Krohn, PhD student of Melbourne’s JPII Institute for Marriage and Family said.
“Now this is of course the way men want to be loved too – to be loved authentically, richly, with passion and with fruitfulness,” she added before addressing practically what kind of love women, specifically, yearn for.
Mrs Krohn, a Record contributor, was one of three women on the ToT panel for the month of May exploring the ever-intriguing, enduring conundrum of “what women really want,” where each panelist had 10 to 15 minutes to talk before the floor was opened for a Q & A.
Panellist, Sr Mary Rachel OP, a member of the Nashville Dominican congregation of St Cecilia, living in Sydney, spoke theologically about women’s aspirations – “from Eve to Our Lady”.
Francine Pirola, who is a co-author and Australian co-founder of Celebrate Love (for married couples) and Embrace (for engaged couples), used literature – fairy tales and myths – to unpack and explore what women desire.
Women are often depicted in fairy tales as being rescued, being protected and going on dangerous adventures and trying to find a happy ending, she said. They are depicted in fairy tales as wanting “true love” – someone who treats them with respect and dignity.
After the 45-minute panel session, the questions that followed kept Theology on Tap going for well over another hour and a half.
Anna Krohn described the engaging setting as a “mini-World Youth Day,” perhaps in part due to the high number of Franciscans and Dominicans and other religious so obviously visible in the audience – not to mention the presence of Bishop Anthony Fisher OP – at his first Theology on Tap in his new appointment as Bishop of Parramatta.
Mrs Krohn said there was a “lively crowd” that evening, where the Q and A was conversational, with an “openness” that she hadn’t experienced in a public setting such as this before.
The questions tended to be very “practical” from how to handle workplace situations where men are dealing with “smutty stuff” or are rough, to how old should you be when you get married, she said.
Mrs Krohn brought the audience alive and made the evening quite personal by asking where they hailed from.
Many had come from Campion College, Notre Dame (Sydney campus) as well as bus of young people from Wollongong. The take-home wisdom she provided was encouragement for the men to be noble.
“The men wanted to know what they should do, and I said “One way to measure what you do is ask yourself ‘Is this ennobling? Is it making me kinder, more creative, braver, more patient, more sensitive?
This seemed to hit home, as she said the boys went “Oh yeah, right”.