Brian wrote:

I think to answer that question properly, you would need to answer the question, do the different genders have different ends or telos?   (I have no idea what the plural of telos is, sorry.)

Plural = teloi

We might take the politically and socially charged element out of the discussion to get a clearer view of the fundamentals.  Beyond the list of virtues that come from our common human nature which includes our common human telos, are there *any* other virtues that apply to narrower groups of people?  My instinct is to say yes.  There are certain dispositions of character that a computer programmer may have that makes him more successful as a computer programmer.

I'm reading Russell Kirk's Conservative Mind, and the (quite extensive) reading packet for this year's Dietrich von Hildebrand Summer Seminar at Franciscan University at Steubenville (If any of y'all are going, I'll gladly share my pipe tobacco).

I'm not Roman Catholic, and this may not help with the rhetorical effectiveness part of your question, but I found JPII's Love and Responsibility to be an incredibly compelling philosophical account of Catholic sexual morality (which I 90% agree with despite not being Catholic myself).  Here is the edition I have and is a classic, although there is a new translation that I have heard is available.  Several of the basic arguments in this book can be made to speak to contemporary non-Catholics:

(1) I think many people today will find it compelling that one should not treat the other person in a sexual relationship as a mere tool to one's own end.  This basic Kantian point means that I cannot pursue sex merely as a way of receiving pleasure.

(2) Many people today will be sensitive to the idea that we are essentially embodied beings.  Our bodies are not something merely extrinsic to our true self (this mistake lies behind much of the transgender ideology), so therefore treating another person with love involves taking his or her embodied gender (and one's own) into account.  Thinking that you and I can love one another quite apart from our respective genders implies a kind of angelism.

(3) I think it is a fairly easy argument to make for people who are really worried about being "scientific" that reproduction must at least be a part of any adequate philosophy of sexuality.  The more we talk about reproduction, however, the less compelling many contemporary philosophies of sexuality become.

I just so happened to be reading Joseph Ratzinger's important essay "Concerning the Notion of Person in Theology," today and thought this point would reinforce the idea from Kinlaw: 

"...the Christological concept of person is an indication for theology of how person is to be understood as such" (p. 450).  In other words, if you want to understand personhood, you need to start with Christology, rather than the reverse procedure of starting with a philosophy of personhood in order to understand Christology.

I think it matters that Jesus predicted the resurrection beforehand, it was prophesied beforehand, and his followers at the time universally saw the event as a vindication by the Father of Jesus's claims, including the claims that (i) Jesus is the messiah, (ii) Jesus is Lord and Judge of all, and (iii) Jesus is God.  (Of course the last took some time to work out the metaphysical details, but the claim is clearly throughout the NT.)

It may not be readily apparent why the rest of Christianity is logically necessitated by the truth of the resurrection (it isn't as simple as modus ponens, after all), but since all the bits and bobs of Christianity are a deeply interconnected web of thought, it becomes increasingly difficult to sustain intellectually a simultaneous affirmation of the resurrection and rejection of the rest.