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Culture Project focuses on human dignity and sexual integrity
By LINDA M. LINONIS
YOUNGSTOWN
Two representatives of the Culture Project emphasized recognizing and respecting each individual’s human dignity, during presentations this week to some 75 students in Richard Mattiussi’s theology class at Cardinal Mooney High School.
Becky Frybarger of Reno, Nev., and Nathan Maurer of Columbus are Culture Project missionaries. The website, www.restoreculture.com, describes the effort as “an initiative of young people set out to restore culture through the experience of virtue. We proclaim the dignity of the human person and the richness of living sexual integrity, inviting our culture to become fully alive.”
Frybarger and Maurer’s talk was interspersed with brief videos that intertwined with their message. The first showed daring physical feats. Frybarger told the students that the dangerous stunts weren’t as awesome as each person is.
Maurer added that when a human egg is fertilized, 23 pairs of chromosomes from the mother and 23 from the father join to make a unique individual. “No one like each of you ever existed before or will ever exist,” he said. “We are created to love and be loved,” Frybarger added.
But, the two noted, the world tends to dehumanize people and make them seem unworthy of love.
They said this was accomplished in various ways including slavery in the United States. “People were bought and sold like property,” Frybarger said. Maurer added that German concentration camps were another form of slavery ... where people “were worked and starved to death.” Six million Jewish people and other minorities died.
Other types of dehumanization that students might experience are face-to-face and cyber bullying. “Both treat a person like they are not worthy of respect,” Frybarger said. “It’s up to the person being bullied to seek help,” she said, adding, “or someone witnessing the bullying must stick up for the victim.”
They also focused on human trafficking, which they said is “the second-fastest growing criminal industry, second to drugs.”
“Every 30 seconds, there is a new victim of human trafficking,” Maurer said.
Human trafficking involves labor and sex slavery. Maurer added that Columbus and Toledo in Ohio are “huge hubs of human trafficking.”
He continued that pornography “changes the way we look at other people ... not as a person but as an object for pleasure.” Maurer added pornography affects the brain, relationships and sexual experiences.
The Culture Project supporters said the initiative promotes human dignity and sexual integrity by “acknowledging that each person has intrinsic value,” Frybarger said. Frybarger, 26, and Maurer, 25, said they felt being close in age to those they speak to helps form a connection.
Mattiussi said he welcomed the Culture Project speakers because they address the idea that “life is so precious” and convey an important message about behavior to students.