Browsing Category

Pornography

Catholics Do What?, feast days, guest post, Marriage, Pornography, Sex, sin

How Real Men Beat Lust {guest post}

December 14, 2015

Today I’m sneaking in my second-ever guest post of the masculine persuasion – John, the husband half of the writing duo over at The Whitford Life. I’ve been reading this married couple’s blog for a couple weeks now, and when I stumbled upon this post I knew I wanted to invite them to share it here. Suzi and John have one little lady who keeps them running and another on the way. Hope you enjoy getting to know the man of their house.

“You can look, just don’t touch!”

I hear it all the time. A seemingly innocent joke as she catches her husband’s eyes wandering a little too long.

“It was just a harmless peek…” he will defensively retort. “I’m a warm-blooded American man! You know you’re the only one for me.”

Well gentlemen, I’m here to tell you that peek is not harmless, and lust weakens yourself and your relationships. Put lust out of your life; it’s time to live intentionally.

Before we get into it, this is not a holier-than-though speech. I struggle with this every day of my life. I know my weaknesses, but also know what I have to fight for. And it is so worth it.

Lust Breaks You Down

Lustful thoughts slowly break a man down. Every time I slip, whether in thought, word, or deed, I can feel the guilt. I just broke the promise I made in front of God, my wife, my family, and my friends.

Lust is an addiction. Pornography is as addictive as alcoholism and gambling, and has its own rehabilitation programs to overcome. These addictions take away your freedom. You become a slave to your impulses.

And as with all addictions, the more you indulge in lustful behavior, the more you need to satisfy your ever-growing urges. We reduce ourselves to base animals, simply following instinctive behaviors and disregarding the willpower and sense of right and wrong that were given to us by God.

If we accept the weakness of our lustful behaviors, we begin down the slippery slope. Additional vices are not far behind. And as our self-control slides further from reach, so too does our effectiveness as leaders.

Lust Breaks Down your Wife

Every time we fall, we chip away at the sense of self-worth of our most precious gift, our wives. When she sees our eyes wander, she begins to doubt herself. She wonders if she is meeting our expectations, if she is pretty enough, or if she has done something to lose our interest.

You are called to lift up your wife, not break her down.

But lust isn’t confined to impure thoughts of other women. Lust can be equally damaging when we lust after our own wives. It becomes so easy to objectify your wife, and skew the lines of love and lust in marriage. We forget that sex is intended to deepen the bond of marriage, not just provide physical pleasures.

Lust Breaks Down your Family

We are called to be leaders in our family, the foundation upon which it stands firm. It is our job to protect the souls of all those in our care.

Your daughters will seek out your behaviors in their boyfriends. Your sons will mimic your every move, whether in vanity, humility, charity, or greed. Act accordingly.

If you create self-doubt in your wife, your children will see it. They may not fully comprehend what is going on, but that self-doubt will be transferred to them. They may think it is their fault. You may come from a broken family, a broken past, but we all have the decision to make of what legacy we will pass on.

So what are you going to do about it?

Build Yourself Up

To be strong in virtue, it helps to be strong in body. Eat right. Get enough sleep. Go for a run. Treat your body like the temple it is. The weight of the devil on your soul and a weak body and mind, is a recipe for disaster.

And when you do fail, go to confession. Just as the addiction is enslaving, reconciliation is liberating. Be a man, take courage, and face your failures.

Build Others Up

If you won’t keep yourself accountable, find someone who will. I meet every month with a group of young fathers. Discuss your struggles, pray for each other, sharpen the saw. In helping others, you will learn volumes about yourself.

You are not alone. But are you man enough to ask for help?

Build your Wife Up

Remember your dating days, the effort you put in to every planned date, every perfectly timed compliment.

How has it gone since marriage? Since children?

For a while, my date nights became more like status reports: Listing out future chores, reviewing the upcoming calendar, discussing our struggles at work.

I wouldn’t even notice the dress she was wearing…

Once I realized how much I was neglecting my wife, I committed to:

Regularly tell her how beautiful she is
Splurge on occasion to remind her she is special
Ask about her day, every day
Focus on couples-based ministries together
Learn and practice her love language

Remember, it’s a journey

Your lustful habits did not develop overnight. They will not be gone tomorrow. But I urge you to embark on the journey to reclaim dominion over your instincts, and to become the man that He has called you to be.

Love your wife, love your God, and you will succeed.

Catholics Do What?, Contraception, Culture of Death, NFP, Pornography, Sex, Theology of the Body

Are we all a little over-sexed?

July 6, 2015

It has been suggested to me by certain commenters that I not write or speak about NFP or marriage because woman, know your place, and maybe when you’ve lived it for 35 years you’ll have something worthwhile to contribute. So I tread lightly on forbidden ground here.

But then again, when I think about all the brilliant stuff I’ve read by St. JPII, and as I mentally replay the life-changing lectures I’ve heard by Dr. Janet Smith, I am reassured by the simple fact that you don’t have to have exhaustively experienced a thing firsthand – or in some cases, even at all – to be able to speak truth about it.

(In fact, in the case of the two aforementioned giants of the intellectual persuasion, perhaps a little bit of distance only enhanced the genius. Certainly seems to have been the case.)

So now drop your expectations nice and low because I’m neither a genius nor a theologian, but I’ve been thinking about the whole messy matter of modern sexual ethics and comparing it to those geniuses, and I keep coming up against this crazy idea that I hope you’ll hear me out on:

I think we’re having too much sex.

More to the point, I think our appetites and our expectations for sex have outstripped reality.

When I say reality, I mean how sex was designed and how we were made, not how “far” we’ve come, technologically, that it is now possible and commonplace to chemically or mechanically sterilize sex to a moderate level of effectiveness in preventing pesky procreative side effects.

I’ve read a few real head scratchers this past week having to do with gay “marriage,” marriage in general, NFP, and what the Church has failed so miserably to communicate to her members.

And with each paragraph consumed, I have become increasingly convinced that we are living in the midst of the most sexually over-satiated and lifeless culture that has ever existed.

We’re all products of this same culture, because each of us, to some extent, have been influenced by the contraceptive mentality of our age, whether through media consumption, personal experience, or education: namely, that sex is primarily about consenting adults getting what’s theirs, and as an afterthought, sometimes babies.

This holds true even among Christians. Even among practicing Catholics who use NFP and pledge allegiance to TOB.

It’s inescapable, to a certain degree. Because we live in the world and yeah, we’re trying not to live of the world, but it’s awfully hard to prevent cross contamination in the digital age.

I’m wondering if some of the very real dissatisfaction in the sexual realm arises because we’re simply having too much of it.

Or, rather, that we’re expecting to be having a whole lot more of it than is realistic. Or even good for us.

I was reading this fascinating piece from 2012 by Elizabeth Scalia that posits the idea of marriage as an office to which some of us – the majority, perhaps – are called, and that certain privileges are afforded to the office of marriage as consolations, sex being the foremost of those privileges.

And by privileges she means those naturally-occuring “graces of office,” if you will, not the popular understanding of privileges as “what I want, when I want it, because I’m entitled to it.”

All these thoughts were rolling about in my insomniac brain last night while I did XL barrel rolls trying to find a comfortable position for my expansive belly, and I remembered a conversation from years ago with a friend whose sister, a high-church Protestant, was preparing for marriage.

Her bridal shower had been held the previous weekend and my friend was recounting the advice doled out by some of the married ladies in attendance. The two main points were as follows:

First, costumes/role play/kinky lingerie: so he doesn’t get bored/tempted. I think the actual wording was “you need to keep things surprising and have him feel like he’s going to be with a different woman from time to time. If you’re his pinup girl, he won’t be tempted by porn.”

I found that…disturbing.

Especially considering the couple being showered were virgins in their young 20’s, and had been maintaining a chaste relationship before marriage. I guess the thought was, rings on, bets off?

Don’t get me wrong, you should absolutely splurge on pretty bed clothes and look hot for your husband, but if the point of costuming is to “trick” the imagination into pretending there’s another woman in his bed entirely, something is very, very wrong. And sexy little pinup wives don’t prevent pornography use: virtuous masculinity does. Chastity and temperance and self mastery does.

Saying no to porn is his job, not yours. You don’t have to compete for his attention, and it’s certainly not your “fault” if the hapless bloke strays. #thesexismoffeminism #punchme

and the second piece of helpful information imparted to the blushing bride to be?

A vow of “whenever, wherever” makes for a happy, healthy marriage and a satisfied man.

This was my first introduction into a now familiar concept, and it is one that hinges absolutely on a highly reliable form of contraception or a uterus of steel and an openness to life that rivals that of St. Catherine of Siena’s parents.

Because if you’re going to solemnly vow to say yes to sex whenever he initiates, no matter how sick/tired/angry/stressed/fertile you are, you’d better have a backup plan for all those double pink lines, to either prevent them or to upgrade your vehicle with real regularity.

But what’s the alternative? Sad, broken marriages with sex in the single digits each month?

Sexually frustrated husbands who turn to prostitutes?

What if, instead, it is our expectations and our appetites that are completely out of proportion with reality?

What if sex, rather than being an adult entitlement, is an immense privilege and a gift? What if we’re actually not entitled to as much of it as we might want?

And what if our past lifestyle choices or sins or the simple pressure of living in a contraceptive culture where everyone else is queuing up in the buffet line has left us with a disproportionate appetite – or at the least, an unrealistic expectation – for sex, period?

What if sex isn’t the be-all, end-all that our culture posits it to be, but a beautiful, consoling, mysterious communion that we are privileged to partake in on the terms of the Author of sex, rather than our own?

Would that help alleviate some of the tension in NFP-using marriages, I wonder?

Would that be a more helpful message to send to young people preparing for marriage, challenging them to rise to the occasion and get real, real good at practicing temperance and self-denial and selfless love now, during their dating and engaged lives, rather than urging them to grit their teeth and run for the nuptial finish line?

And would it perhaps be a better selling point to couples looking to practice NFP in their marriages to admit that yes, it is challenging and requires continuous growth in virtue and selflessness and self control…and that coincidentally, so does marriage. And that it’s so worth it to have a marriage that counters our sick culture.

I speak as a woman and a wife with an imperfect and ordinary marriage which is very much in its infancy. And as a flawed and fallen human being who is, most days, far from capable of the kind of sanctity it daily demands of me.

But I see something worth striving for in this vocation, and I believe utterly that it is I who must adapt to the challenges of this office I have been called to, and not the other way around.

Catholics Do What?, Contraception, JPII, Pornography, Sex, Theology of the Body

Contraception and the Catholic Church: {part 2} What’s wrong with contraception?

June 16, 2015

Yesterday we began with a little overview of the historical background on the practice of contraception and how for 1,900+ years, Christianity uniformly condemned the practice. Today we’re going to delve into the why behind it: why when the rest of the world has heralded the Pill as a technological innovation on par with electricity and the internal combustion engine (seriously, read some of the UN’s documents on women’s rights) Rome has stubbornly refused to capitulate on the matter.

And it’s not because the Church is anti woman. It is, in fact, because She holds women in such high regard and is so intimately concerned with the dignity of women – and men – that She continues to firmly, gently, uncompromisingly say “no.”

It’s the same reason I say no to my kids when they bolt in parking lots and run blindly into the street after a stray soccer ball. It’s the same motivation that compels me to store poison up high and restrict certain media content from entering our home.

I love them.

I love them enough to say no to them even when they’re really, really sure the thing they want to do is worth doing, and is a good to be pursued.

I don’t want them to get hurt, and if I know better, as the wiser, older, well-formed and properly instructed parent, I say no.

Even when it frustrates them. Even when they tantrum.

Because their ultimate happiness is tied to their wholeness and their health, body and soul, and I won’t permit them to inflict self harm in pursuit of a temporary perceived good when I know the long-term cost is one of destruction and heartache.

So what, exactly, is wrong with contraception?

Contraception is anti life because it opposes the creation of new life physically, by preventing fertilization or by means of preventinve sterilization, but it’s also anti life because many popular forms of contracption are actually abortifacient in nature, meaning they are capable of causing early abortions as a secondary line of defense against pregnancy.

Some examples of this are IUDs, the Depo Provera shot, and certain forms of the Pill, including but not limited to the so called “Morning After” pill.

But even those forms of contraception that aren’t capable of causing abortions – condoms or diaphrams or the good old-fashioned withdrawal method, – they’re still anti-life. They still strip away the procreative aspect from sex, and as we understand as Catholics, sex has two fundamental purposes: it is both procreative and unitive.

And in its perfect design, sex is good. It’s very good. There’s no question about it.

Because sex is fundamentally ordered to bring forth new life – it’s literally how God is writing the story of Salvation History, how He continues to bring new life into the world – it is intended to unite and bond the spouses.

So sex is supposed to feel good. It’s supposed to be wildly delightful and desirable. And it is fundamentally ordered toward the creation of new human life. Not every sexual act will result in new life, nor is every act capable of doing so (read: any biology textbook explaining the human reproductive cycle, paying particular attention to the female body) but God designed sex to bring forth babies. Not every time, but a lot of the time. And the Creator of sex – and of people – is the One who has the ultimate say so.

St. JPII was the master of interpretting – and putting into laymen terms – Christian sexual ethics. His early work “Love and Responsibility,” written when he was still Karol Wojtyla, includes sections on mutual enjoyment and sexual satisfaction between spouses that could make a public school health teacher blush. So forget anything you’ve heard about the Church – or God – being anti-sex.

God created sex, and He created sex in order to continue creating us. Think about that!

It’s the only way He chooses to bring new souls into being. So of course it’s an area of life where we are particularly vulnerable to attacks from the enemy, and to our own concupiscience.

God doesn’t surround us with rules and regulations governing the sexual realm because He’s some kind of cosmic killjoy – it’s because sex is so good and so holy, and because it’s where we participate with Him, directly and intimately, in creating the world anew.

But how do you explain this to someone?

It’s a tough pill to swallow in a culture like ours, so obsessed with the idea of sex but with limited experience with the thing itself.

We’ve got plenty of experience with pornography, with sexually explicit content, with sexual innuendo … but with real sex? With the profound communion of persons, united in the sacramental love of spouses, freely giving and receiving the entirety of the Other?

We aren’t as familiar with that.

Our culture styles itself as sexually free and fulfilled, but to look around is to recognize the price we’re paying for this apparent freedom, as individiuals and as a larger community.

Sex, “freed” from the bonds of marriage and the responsibility of parenthood, is actually fairly disastrous. Particularly to women and children.

Rather than making us – especially women – more free, contraception has resulted in deeper slavery – sometimes literally as we witness in the growing global scourge of human trafficking (which is fundamentally enabled by and dependent upon the availability and effectiveness of contraception), and sometimes solely on a spiritul level, no less real, but often unseen and unacknowledged.

Because sex, divorced from love, divorced from its life-giving potential…is just another bodily function. An exchange of fluids and pleasantries, and an opportunity to use and to be used; perhaps with a stranger or perhaps with your spouse.

And this is the antithesis of what God designed it for, designed us for – to give and to receive love.

And in each of those scenarios I mentioned above – the one night stand, the casual relationship, the paid transaction – made possible by the availabilty of contracption, there is damage done to both the relationship and the participants.

Because in reality?

There is no such thing as casual sex.

There is no such thing as protected sex.

And there is no such thing as “safe” sex.

Sex isn’t casual, even if the two (or more!) constenting parties spit shake and swear on it. You can’t unhitch a thing from its meaning just by saying so.

And since sex is not a human innovation but a divine invention, purposefully and intelligently designed for us and for our good…we’re not the ones who get to write the user’s maual on it.

Stay tuned for later this week when we’ll talk about the hard cases, the heartache of infertility, and the fundamental difference between NFP – Natural Family Planning – and contraception.

{click here for part 1 in the series}

Catholic Spirituality, Evangelization, Parenting, Pornography, Sex

What’s wrong with sex ed in America?

May 22, 2015

By now you’ve heard the news du jour that the heir to the throne of America’s biggest TV family molested his younger sisters and a family friend as a young teenager. The internet is predictably delighted, because nothing is more delicious to progressives than a stumbling, screwed-up Christian. Never mind that it happened over a decade ago and he has reportedly repented and reformed himself; because he and his family live a life of publicly-demonstrative faith, they must be stoned for their crimes.

The real victims in this whole disaster are, of course, his younger sisters and the girl who suffered his unwanted advances and touching, and his own children who are now going to grow up in a world where daddy’s dirty adolescent laundry will be forever enshrined online.

I am in no way excusing Josh Duggar for the abuse he committed against his own sisters. I know plenty of women who were once little girls who suffered molestation by family members, friends, and peers, and the healing can be the work of a lifetime. And sometimes it doesn’t come.

But I am a little confused as to why, in this sexually-permissive freewheeling society of excess we dwell in, it’s being treated as such bombshell.

If every boy I went to middle school with had his behavior from that time period made public, I can guarantee we would have a massive influx of registered sex offenders added to the roster, for one thing.

But then, I went to public school.

The Duggars, homeschooled and sheltered as they were, ought to have known better. Ought to have acted better.

But sin is the damnedest thing, isn’t it? There’s no guarantee that, no matter the efforts you make as a parent, no matter the values you strive to instill in them, your kids aren’t going to turn out to be delinquents or criminals. Or at least screw up royally at some point.

But here’s my question. Why, in a culture pushing sex sex sex at younger and younger ages, passing out condoms and dental dams in 6th grade health class and schooling kindergarteners on proper masturbation techniques, is it shocking or disappointing when a kid goes ahead and acts on the information we’re saturating their developing brains in?

But of course, Josh Duggar wouldn’t have been in any public health class. He would have been learning at his kitchen table what does and doesn’t constitute good and bad touching, what sex is and what it’s for, and how God fearfully and wonderfully designed us to give and receive love within His plan for marriage.

But perhaps that’s not exactly the message his parents were sending, either.

(It also bears mentioning, though it’s speculative at best, that to offend on younger siblings is a particularly disturbing manifestation of sexual deviance, and that it’s entirely possible that Josh was, himself, abused and/or exposed to pornography.)

I don’t pretend to know the specifics of what the Duggar family – or other fundamentalist or even more mainstream Christian denominations – are telling their kids about sex. But I’ve read enough of the popular Protestant chastity books to speculate that it goes something along the lines of “no touching till you’re married, and then all bets are off.”

And guess what? That message is still flawed. Perhaps not as obviously or as disturbingly as free condoms at the nurse’s office and a parent-funded prescription for Ortho as a “now you’re a woman” gift, but for different reasons.

When I was a searching teenager gobbling up books like “Why I Kissed Dating Goodbye” and “When God Writes Your Love Story,” I was reading a different narrative, but one which still left a lot to be desired.

In retrospect I can identify what was so lacking in those hopeful tomes of white-knuckle chastity I dog-eared, but at the time it just struck me as somewhat…lacking. To be told to find the line you should not cross and to point to it and say “there’s the boundary. Don’t touch.” and to leave it at that.

To expect kids to sign pledge cards and exchange chastity rings with the instruction that “true love waits,” and to not take them deeper into the explanation of why? That’s crazy.

And that’s what I found lacking in my middle class upbringing and sexual education. My parents did the best they could, pulling us out of health class and protecting us from the condom flinging freaks running the guidance counseling office, but 15 years ago there honestly wasn’t a whole lot of great information out there for them to counter the cultural narrative with, both mainstream and Christian.

I think that has been true for plenty of Catholic families.

Now they’re older, wiser, and in possession of countless copies of “Theology of the Body for Beginners” and “Men, Women, and the Mystery of Love,” and so my youngest brother has plenty of personalist philosophy and sexual ethics to read about, helpfully laid out in laymen’s terms, while he sits out chlamydia class in the cafeteria.

But that hasn’t always been the case. And part of the very real success of the so-called Sexual Revolution has been the deafening silence on the side of conservative Christians, those of us who are supposed to be communicating truth, goodness, and beauty to the world.

But how, when we can’t seem to have those conversations with our own children?

How can we expect to produce integrated, chaste, loving, self-sacrificing adults capable of becoming faithful spouses when all we’re saying in reply to the culture’s sex-a-palooza message is: wait till you’re married?

And then what? All that pent up sexual energy and frustration and curiosity are unleashed on your unsuspecting and inexperienced spouse? How is that setting up marriages for success?

That’s why the Catholic teachings on sexual ethics and sexuality have always been – and will continue to be – so profoundly life-giving. Even if we’ve made a few generational missteps in getting the information out, both from the pulpit and around the kitchen table, the truth of it has always been there: sex is good, sex is holy, your body is fearfully and wonderfully made…and there is a purpose for this part of you.

Sex is not reducible to an appetite, a mere craving or desire. Sex isn’t about scratching an itch or pushing the limits (or running right up to them and stopping short) or racking up carnal experiences over the course of a lifetime.

Sex is profoundly more than all of that.

And that’s the message our kids need to hear, from early on, and then continuously, for as long as they’re in our homes and then yes, even once they leave our nests. Especially once they go out into the sexually carnivorous world of college life and beyond. And then still, once they seek out spouses and begin to assemble nests of their own.

It’s not enough to tell them, “don’t touch that, don’t think those thoughts, and don’t do that before you’re married.”

And it’s certainly not enough to sheepishly hand over your credit card with one hand over your eyes, telling them to “be safe” and to “use protection.”

Here’s what I think they need to hear from us. And I speak as a mother with only very young children so far, but as a former teenager and very lost college kid:

Sex is holy. Your body, male or female, was designed with intention. The way you feel about the opposite sex is good – it’s meant to draw you into relationship with your husband or wife one day, and to bring forth new life, new souls. You are created with the capacity to create with God, within the relationship you’ll have with your spouse one day.

There are a lot of things you’re going to hear about sex as you get older, especially once your friends start dating. And it’s okay that you’re curious, that on the one hand, you don’t want to hear about their exploits and conquests, but on the other hand maybe you feel drawn to know what they’re experiencing. There is nothing wrong with being curious about sex. It is purposefully designed to be very, very attractive and very enjoyable.

What we’re going to help you understand and integrate is that sex is designed with a specific purpose: to bond you to your spouse for life, and to bring forth new life.

If you have a sexual thought or daydream, that’s okay. It’s not dirty to think about sex, and it doesn’t make you a creep. It’s not okay, however, or healthy, to dwell on the sexual thoughts and impulses you’re going to experience. That makes the practice of chastity – of rightly ordering your desires and behavior – more difficult. When you find yourself experiencing a sexual thought or a temptation, bring it to the Lord in prayer and tell Jesus, “thank you for making me this way, thank you for the gift of my body, teach me how to love as You love.”

You don’t have to be afraid of your body, or of the gift of your sexuality. You do, however, have to learn how to use it properly, how to integrate what we are going to teach you and what you will learn over your lifetime about chastity and love, for the sake of your soul and for the good of your husband or wife.

We love you. We’re glad you’re maturing and becoming an adult, and God has a plan for your sex life that is better than anything the world can offer. You can trust us. We will always be open and honest with you.

At least, I think that’s a decent start.

My prayer is that my children and their friends and future spouses can grow up to witness to – and perhaps participate in – the destruction and conversion of our sexually perverse and dying culture.

Now that’s something worth waiting for.

Catholics Do What?, Contraception, NFP, Pornography, Sex

50 Shades of pain: sterile sex and the problem with porn

February 12, 2015

I’ve seen dozens of articles about 50 Shades floating around the internet the past week or so, and I’ve read a handful of them. One or two are worth reading, this piece and this piece in particular.

The thing that has me scratching my head over the whole situation, the fact that a trilogy of pornographic novels have been adapted to a reportedly dismally-cast and middlingly-entertaining big screen production, is how we got here in the first place.

Not whether it’s wrong or weird or nasty to plan to take your spouse on a hot date to the movies on Valentine’s day to see Anastasia get spanked by Christian (though it is assuredly all of those things), but how it is that we have arrived at this destination, en masse, as a culture.

Let’s look at the numbers; these books have sold 100 million copies since their release in 2011. That’s some kind of record, and whatever else we can take from those numbers, we can presume that there’s definitely an audience for the stuff. And in the pornographic culture we live in, it has become perfectly acceptable to identify oneself as a paying member of that audience and synch up the Kindle for a little smut to ease the long layover or kill the time in carline.

Because you see, the overwhelming majority of that audience is female.

I’m sure plenty of guys have read 50 Shades too, but it wasn’t written for them. Romance literature (if abuse and domination can be so categorized) is the centerfold pull-out of the female demographic. It’s printed porn, spelled out in characters and punctuation marks instead of screen shots and video clips.

And there’s a growing market for smut of the feminine persuasion, because yes, it has become more socially acceptable to raise one’s hand and identify oneself as a woman who consumes porn, but also because, I think, there are a lot of sexually-unhappy ladies out there.

So why is that? Aren’t we all liberated and unshackled from the fear of pregnancy and the stigma of unmarried sex? Isn’t everyone entitled to access anything they could ever have dreamt of, in terms of the erotic, now that all bets are off and all taboos have been discarded?

And yet what we’re longing for, apparently, is something so “exciting” that in polite circles and legal terms, it is actually defined as abuse and battery?

Which leads me back to the title of this piece.

I have a pet theory about sex in the current cultural climate, and it goes like this: when a couple removes all of the mystery, all of the suspense, and all of the “riskiness” from sex, perhaps it becomes intolerably boring.

Maybe your interest in your partner fades, over time, because sex becomes merely another option in a long list of activities which can be pursued after the dishes are done.

Obviously my husband and I are in a unique and temporary season of marriage, during which time it is actually possible, when everything is functioning properly, for us to get pregnant.

On paper, that means that every time we decide to have sex, unless we’re already currently pregnant, we first have to discern whether or not we’re disposed to receive another child into the mix. Because that is always a possibility. When the answer to that question is “not right now,” we still have to enter into the act prepared that the outcome might be another diaper-wearer, even when all our calculations and observations tell us otherwise.

Translation: even when we’re in an NFP “safe zone,” scientifically-identified as a period of infertility, there’s still always a chance that we’re wrong. I might have missed an observation or miscalculated a date. Or, since I’m not God, it could happen anyway, despite our best efforts otherwise. Because I’m not the one in control of my fertility, ultimately.

I didn’t design me, and, short of a hysterectomy, I cannot 100% guarantee that I can suppress my fertility.

(An aside, that’s why “surprise” babies in contracepting couples always strike me as such an odd concept. I mean, sure, you were using condoms or taking the Pill, but did you really think that if you did the thing that makes babies, there was zero chance you might end up making one?)

Honestly, this does add a certain level of excitement/fear/wonder at the unknown to the mix.

I’m not saying it’s comparable to the, uh, thrill, I guess? of being tied up and hit, but frankly, I don’t have the time to entertain thoughts of spicing things up with whips and chains. Nor the inclination.

I wonder if couples who can have all the sex they want – as much sex as they can physically stomach, kind of like the Golden Corral of the bedroom – thanks to contraception, aren’t getting a little bored?

Is that why Christian Grey is a welcome figure in the imagination of a woman who is already being used, on some level, by her partner?

Is that why a man feels comfortable taking his girlfriend to a movie where a young woman is physically and psychologically abused by an older guy, because it’s a little thrilling to control her like that?

Maybe there’s no real correlation, but I do think it’s worth considering that porn and contraception influence each other, even if only because they are both simultaneously so prevalent.

But sex doesn’t need to be increasingly dangerous and forbidden in order to be satisfying. There isn’t some kind of pleasure threshold that only riskier and kinkier behavior can satiate; indeed, the further we drift from the Christian ideal of sex as a total gift of self, the more dissatisfied (and sexually dysfunctional) we become as a civilization.

Because at the end of the day and in the dark of the night, what we do with our bodies and to the bodies of the ones we love matters. It matters very much. And a relationship that purports to be loving but that trades in the currency of use abuse is anything but romantic.

31 Days of Writing with the Nester, Catholics Do What?, Pornography, Theology of the Body, Women's Rights

The modesty wars

October 28, 2014

I’ve been rolling this one around in my skull today in between bouts of toddler WWF-style throw downs. I don’t know why they have to bite each other, but I guess if it’s important to them, I want to be supportive.

Yeah.

So I have this pretty, funny, sort of insecure little college girl in mind when I write this. And she is smart and beautiful, and she seems to kind of know it, but she also seems to want to trade almost exclusively on her looks. So that makes me think maybe she’s not as sure as she’d like to seem. Does that make sense?

So I want to talk to her. But not directly, because I’m not sure how she’d receive it. Even from someone who loves her.

I have to be 100% honest that one million blog years ago I’m pretty sure I wrote a post called Modest is Hottest. And I’m almost positive it was farcical. But just in case, I’m still hanging my head in virtual shame.

Here are two things to keep in mind when discussing modesty:

1. Modest is not hottest. I don’t think those words mean what you think they mean.

2. Girls are not responsible for how guys perceive them. But we are responsible for putting on pants before leaving the house/appearing on Facebook.

So those seem to be the two hottest (har har) points of contention in the matter. Firstly, that practicing modesty is in some way competitive with dressing provocatively and therefore, cap sleeves are bringing sexy back; and second, that women are emphatically not responsible for Creepy McCreeperton leering at them in the checkout line but we are allowed to wear underpants outside of the locker room.

It’s a tad confusing to navigate, as a woman. As a human.

What if being modest has more to do with how one perceives (and values, and presents) herself (or himself) than about trying to repackage turtlenecks as provocative?

And what if girls (I’m speaking mostly to girls not because it’s a feminine issue per se, but because I’ve got the chromosomes to go there. And so I go.) were absolved from striving to compete on a sexual level, every waking moment of the day.

I think our culture sends a confusing, schizophrenic message to women, inviting us to be simultaneously powerful and provocative and simpering and slutty and empowered and utterly on display. Because equal rights!

So a lot of girls buy into this idea, believing that they’ve got some serious capital to trade in, namely, their boobs, etc., and that it is their natural born right to flaunt it because they’ve got it, and nobody can tell them otherwise. Because sexism!

It’s kind of ironic that female empowerment has to synch up with public nudity, though. Because you know who is really not coming out on top in that equation?

Yeah, the naked person.

Even the most confidant, empowered, enlightened, thresholded, whatever-ed woman of the 21st century doesn’t deserve to be put on public display and openly ogled. Even if she is the one doing the displaying.

Does that sound crazy? To say that just because you can do something with your body doesn’t mean that you ought to?

Even if a woman is a willing, eager participant in presenting herself as a sexual object to be consumed (and pornography is the ultimate example of this), she is still participating in the degradation and depersonalization of a human being. And that always gravely wrong. Even when it takes the form of self harm.

But maybe there’s a better way, where we as women decide that looking decently beautiful and approachable shouldn’t require a compromise with our dignity, nor should it involved ankle-length demin? And that maybe situations or people that demand otherwise aren’t worth our time?

It’s not empowering to shake your sexy kitten bottom at a costume party. Even if you are 22 and your butt is at its pinnacle of perfection (which, I can assure you, it is).

You are not empowered by being naked in public. In fact, nobody is empowered by that.

You are being exploited, even if it is self exploitation. And your sisters, and your friends, and your mom, and your future daughters are all the poorer for it.

Conversely, you do not have to drape thyself in a denim hijab hybrid. There’s a middle ground out there, and it’s waiting for you at J Crew. Or, you know, somewhere else that carries clothing which is equally attractive and more reasonably priced.

I just want you to know, if you’re reading this and feeling judged, feel, instead, looked after.

Beloved.

Feel the weight of your dignity as a human person, and as a beautiful and powerful woman. Feel the immense responsibility you have to demand the same level of respect of yourself that you would ask from anyone else. You are worth it. You are worth more than kitty ears and a push up bra in public. And it sounds so trite. But it’s true.

But you have to believe it for yourself, too. And believe that other people deserve to see more of you than is possible when they’re seeing all of you.

And seriously, no cap sleeves.

Linking up anyway because it’s MY party and I’ll tangent if I want to.
Click here for the rest of the series.

31 Days of Writing with the Nester, Marriage, Pornography, Sex, Theology of the Body

A little porn never hurt anybody

October 17, 2014

I escaped from momdom for a couple hours this afternoon and found myself with a hour left on the baby-sitter-meter and nary an errand or appointment to occupy my remaining 60 minutes of freedom.

I have a deep seated weakness for the pedicure chair. Maybe it’s because I went into labor for the first time while seated in one. Or maybe I just like polished toes. But whichever the case may be, I found myself cozied up with a stack of Good Housekeeping magazines and a truly hideous shade of mauve that I swore up and down to myself was stone-cold Autumn in a bottle, but looks fairly corpse-like on my feet. C’est la pedi.

As I flipped through my extremely age-appropriate choice of magazines and relaxed into the pummeling of a massage chair set to “drunken kidney punches” I came upon a strange interview with Jennifer Garner, aka Mrs. Ben Affleck.

She had the weirdest reaction to one of the interviewer’s questions about pornography.

Just for reference, she has a new movie coming out about the internet, and her A-list husband reportedly flashed some serious skin in his latest blockbuster, so I was curious to see her answer.

It was … odd.

Basically she started by saying that she was afraid for the day her daughters might find something scary online, and that she really needed to be mindful, as a parent, of what they were exposed to. Okay, so far, so good.

But then…then she said that pornography between two adults was probably fine, and that there was “probably a time and a place for porn” if two people are on the same page and mature. Or something. But still, not for her daughters. Not now, anyway.

I can understand a mother’s heart wanting to protect her children from harm. What I can’t understand is ever not wanting that.

The truth is, there’s no such, this as “a little bit of porn between two consenting adults,” because first of all, the camera man makes three. And even with selfie-style contemporary amateur porn, the inevitable internet makes three…million.

Part of what makes porn so destructive is the intrusive nature of making something so intensely private as sex, public, and not only public, but actually intended and designed to be consumed by an other, an outsider, an observer.

Porn degrades sex into a transactional exchange, into an open invitation to use a human person as a tool, to consume them as a product.

Everyone involved, from the “actors” on the set to the producers behind the product to the consumer on the other side of the computer screen is participating in the use and abuse of a human person.

There’s no such thing as just a little bit of porn. And there’s no acceptable age at which it becomes “healthy” or “normal” to consume porn, or more accurately, to be consumed by it.

Because even if two consenting adults were to sit down with a completely digitally-acted movie and use it as a means to introduce a level of erotic excitement into their own sex life, it’s still an utterly self-centered means to arousal. When you’re watching porn with your partner, you’re not experiencing any kind of intimacy with them as you both get excited by the person on the screen in front of you.

It might be titilating and it might lead to sex in real life, but at what cost? You just used another person’s body (either actual or CGI, it really doesn’t matter) to bring yourself to sexual arousal so that you can, essentially, dump your feelings (and then some) into an available receptacle in the form of your partner.

Self, self, self.

But that’s not what sex was made for. Sex was designed to draw us to the other, to invite our small and selfish little hearts to open wide enough to let another person inside, and to pursue their happiness above our own, seeking to outdo one another in love.

That’s part of why St. John Paul II was so (and scandalously so, for his time) insistent that mutual climax be the goal of sexual union between spouses, so that husband and wife were continually seeking the good of the other, constantly trying to outdo each other in love.

Porn seeks the opposite. It wants immediate self gratification.

Forget delayed gratification, porn says ‘give me what I’m owed, and if you can’t deliver it, I’ll just click over to the next option.’

And even if it’s used alone, in the privacy of one’s own bedroom, with nary another flesh and blood participant to be found, it’s still deeply damaging. To the person consuming it, to the person performing it, to the spouse or boyfriend or daughter on the other side of the closed door, perhaps unaware but not unharmed by the transaction taking place on your screen.

There’s never a time or a place for it, and there’s no relationship on the planet that’s better off because of it.

The reason that a little porn never hurt anyone, is that there’s no such thing as a little porn. It’s a dark, insidious, addictive, and destructive force that feeds on human love. And God knows we’ve got too little of that to go around these days, anyway.

Click here for the rest of the series

31 Days of Writing with the Nester, Abortion, Contraception, Pornography, Sex

Hey Pope Francis, it’s the 21st century, what’s up with contraception?

October 12, 2014

One of the most difficult Catholic teachings to accept – for believers and non believers alike – is the Church’s position on contraception.

I imagine (actually no, it’s not imagined. I get these questions all the time) that people are confused primarily about the motives behind the teaching, all while simultaneously reeling in disbelief that anyone could – or would – live without birth control in the modern world.

First, let’s start with a couple reasons why the Church doesn’t forbid contraception.

It’s not because:

The Pope is attempting to raise a standing army of believers to vanquish the Islamic state
Catholic women are being imprisoned by the productivity of their own uteruses and prevented by perpetual morning sickness from running for office or owning small businesses
The Church doesn’t want sex to be enjoyable
Screw the environment, let’s have a crusade

Whether or not you agree with the Church’s teaching on this matter, know that it has NOTHING to do with the above reasons, promise. And you’re not being particularly funny or original when you insist otherwise at a cocktail party or in the com box.

Now how about some of the reasons why Catholics are forbidden from using contraception?

Most forms of hormonal contraception are abortifacient (capable of causing abortion) in addition to being contraceptive
The introduction of contraception into the marital relationship opens a pathway for mutual use of the other and makes truly selfless love really, really hard … and unlikely.
Contraception is fundamentally anti-woman and anti-child. It says, in effect, that the female body is broken/in need of suppressing/better off poisoned than functional, and that the child is disposable.
It makes a woman “on” 24/7. And if you’re available for sex 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, you better be ready to perform ladies, or else he’s gonna look elsewhere to have his “needs” met.

This last point is worth expanding on, because in the oft-maligned and eerily prescient bombshell encyclical, Humanae Vitae, Pope Paul VI warned about 3 very specific things which would result from the introduction of widespread contraception:

A decline in the moral standards of the young leading to greater marital infidelity in entire generations (more premarital sex, more promiscuity, more teen pregnancy, more divorce.)
A lowering of respect for women as men see them more and more as tools to to use to serve their own desires. (more spousal abuse, more domestic violence, rise in sex trafficking and sex slavery)
Contraception will become a tool in the hands of amoral or immoral states seeking to control populations and repress entire classes. (Aid dollars tied to contraception and sterilization campaigns, “benevolent” foreign governments seeking to sterilize poor, indigenous populations “for their own good,”Western-style contraceptive campaigns undermining traditional values in non-Western countries)

So basically, check, check, check.

Every single thing the Church warned about has happened.

And every single time the culture tries to fix the above issues by calling for “better access to women’s healthcare (aka suppressing or mutilating the female body), better access to condoms and birth control for poor, indigenous populations who just don’t know any better and who there really should be fewer of, anyway (aka eugenics), and younger and more aggressive introductions to the Pill for adolescent girls, the problems get worse.

You can’t fix all the things contraception has helped to bring about with more contraception.

But there’s good news, too. Really good news, I promise.

But you’re going to have to come back later this week because I’m not even joking, a certain 2-year-old just projectile vomited all over the couch. Biological/spiritual warfare or hilarious irony? You be the judge.

Click here for the rest of the series

31 Days of Writing with the Nester, Abortion, Catholic Spirituality, Contraception, euthanasia, Homosexuality, Marriage, Pornography

I’ve made a mistake. Now what?

October 11, 2014

One thing I’ve realized in writing my way through the Church’s teachings on love and sex and marriage, is how many people out there have found themselves in the oh-so-familiar position of begin on the wrong side of those teachings.

In other words, having sinned.

First off the good news: YOU AND EVERYBODY ELSE WHO EVER INHABITED THE PLANET, the Blessed Mother excluded.

Including me.

Oh, how very much I belong in this camp. The camp of regret and heartache and anger and remorse and resentment toward God and a Church that would ask me to not do the thing which I had just done, because it would hurt me. And then it did hurt me. And so I was doubly mad.

So where does that leave someone who has sinned?

Well, hopefully, in line for confession.

Honestly, it’s that simple. And it’s that difficult.

The practice of reconciliation is essential for the health and wellbeing of any successful relationship. How much more essential is it to our relationship with God? And how much more effective?

Catholics go to confession to repair the relationship between the Creator and the creature. We go to admit (and this takes humility) “I screwed up. I did the thing you warned me against. And I’m sorry. I’ll try not to do it again. But You have to help me.”

And you know what God says, every time?

I forgive you.

Read the account of the prodigal son in Luke’s gospel and you’ll get a perfect, simple and profound explanation of the Sacrament of Confession.

But, but, you might be thinking…my sin is too great. God can’t handle the magnitude of my screw up.

Yes, He can. The same way He’s handled it for every other sinner and saint (often one and the same) who’ve roamed this earth. There’s nothing He can’t handle.

God can handle abortion.

God can handle a sexual homosexual relationship.

God can handle an extramarital affair.

God can handle prostitution.

God can handle vasectomies and tubal ligations.

God can handle an IUD.

God can handle the Morning After pill.

God can handle sex trafficking.

God can handle a pornography addiction.

God can handle abuse.

God can handle divorce.

God can handle murder.

And God can handle you.

There’s nothing you’ve done He can’t (and won’t) forgive, if you are willing to come to Him and ask for it. And that’s the entire premise of the Gospel right there, isn’t it.

He died for you. And He rose again for you. And He founded His Church to help carry you to Him. And He entrusted the Church with His laws, with His best plan for your life. And every time you stray from that plan, He’s ready to welcome you back.

Every time.

So if you’ve had an abortion, do not despair.

If you’ve cheated on your spouse, do not give up and walk away.

If you’re addicted to pornography and want so badly to believe the cultural lie that it’s harmless and healthy and completely normal…listen to the small, still voice in the back of your mind that’s telling you differently. And come to Jesus. He longs to rescue us from our sins.

The reason the Church teaches anything about anything at all is out of love. That includes in a particularly powerful way Her teachings about sex and marriage.

The “rules” and the “restrictions” are all there to protect us, and to call us back into relationship with God when we fall short.

And we all do. All.of.us.

That doesn’t mean the Church is wrong.

Pornography reaching epidemic proportions doesn’t mean the Church is wrong.

Birth control being practiced both in the pews and by the culture at large doesn’t mean the Church is wrong.

Abortion on demand available in most places and for any reason doesn’t mean the Church is wrong.

Homosexual relationships being recognized as marriages in 31 out of 50 states in the US doesn’t mean the Church is wrong.

And the idea that you did x or y or z or even all three together and you might as well just accept yourself as “that kind of person” and walk away from Jesus because He doesn’t want you and He doesn’t accept you and His Church sure as hell doesn’t want you around…

That’s dead wrong.

The Church is your home. Jesus Christ crucified and resurrected is your savior.

And if you’ve screwed up a hundred times, He is all the more your savior.

Sometimes the more a soul has suffered, the more a soul is capable of loving. And the more profound the conversion to holiness. Think of St. Paul. Think of St. Augustine.

It’s never too late.

“Catholic doctrine and discipline may be walls; but they are the walls of a playground.” -G.K. Chesterton

Click here for the rest of the series

Culture of Death, Pornography

50 Shades of Scando

July 8, 2012

Hat tip to Grace for coining the cheeky phrase, for it is what echoed through my tired little brain on all 4 legs of last week’s flights from Hades.

For not only was our ‘wee hot man’ (so dubbed by our charming Scottish co-worker) an utterly and unrepentant insomniac for 99% of our air travels, but every.single.woman. seated within a 50 mile radius on every one of our flights was reading some iteration of the infamous erotica (thriller? tome? epic?) … and I started to feel like the one student who picked up the wrong course outline back in September and was on a different reading list.

Confession: I have no idea the premise of the “50 Shades” series, other than a very vague impression of something involving repressive sexual tension and a male protagonist who doesn’t like to be touched. (So I guess it’s Twilight for the over 40 set?) So, don’t be surprised if I veer from this post to consult the google for more info on what the heezy these books are about and why they’re so hot right now.

But I’ll take a stab at it.

In a culture like our sex-saturated and Puritanically-rooted modern day America, it doesn’t take a far stretch of the imagination to see why perfectly reasonable and moderately well-adjusted adults might be enticed to purchase, read, and verbally vomit enthralled enthusiasm for some poorly-written British soft porn in literary form.

Thank you, Facebook.

But more to the point, thank you, twisted and repressed ‘liberation sexuality,’ which somehow simultaneously renders millions of men impotent, millions of women anorgasmic, and millions of readers eager to lap up juicy details of some frigid old dude spanking his handcuffed younger flame. And we swoon over this?

Truth is, our sexual identity as a culture is so profoundly broken that it makes perfectly good sense that ’50 Shades’ would A. Sell spectacularly well and B. Induce ironic conversations on sex and intimacy between strangers that they are otherwise incapable of having with their actual sexual partners in real life.

Go figure.

When pornography invades a relationship or, at a broader level, a cultural ethos, and becomes perfectly acceptable as the new normal, real live intimacy dies. We spend so much time and energy as a culture talking about sex and how to improve it, how to deepen ones physical enjoyment, connect more deeply on an emotional level with one’s partner(s, achieve multiple orgasms and get a body like Katy Perry’s in order to win the affections of the most perfect man, that we don’t actually have much time to enjoy authentic intimacy. Quite frankly, most of us have no idea what the hell that actually is.

When perfect strangers can titter over pages of sex scenes between fictional characters while passing the time between airport layovers, but they are incapable of having satisfying sex with their spouses or – worse – are unable to hang on to spouses, then Houston, we have a problem.

The scariest run-in I’ve had with Christian Grey to date was in a little snack and magazine store in the Charlotte airport (where I was secretly hoping to run into Emily Maynard, but I digress) where a mother(?), step mom(?), guardian-esque figure of authority(?) was waiting in line with a booty-short-clad teenage girl who apparently studied dictation under the auspicious tutelage of Lauren Conrad ala “The Hills.”

I turned my eavesdropping ears in their direction at the first mention of ‘50.’ After all, I’d sat beside no fewer than 14 women all reading the book during my travels that week (and spent an unfortunate 3.25 hours beside one woman who was on the final installment of the trilogy and was actually absent-mindedly running her fingers along her cleavage area while sighing occasionally as she flipped the pages. So.Very.Awkward.

So I tuned in to the mother and child reunion only to hear a super depressing back and forth where Mom (or whomever) was schooling daughter on the finer qualities of the tales.

Mom: Oh you have to read these…your dad has them on his Kindle, (um, he does? WTF?) you should ask him to borrow it when he’s done.

Girl: Omgawd everyone is like obsessed with Christian. Teeheehee…all my girlfriends want to find a guy like him!

Mom: Well it isn’t hard to see why…seriously you have got to read the books!

Girl: It’s like all over Facebook how hot they are…everyone is obsessed with them…all my girlfriends are like in love.

Mom: OMG you HAVE to read them. Let’s get your dad to give you the Kindle for the next leg of the flight.

Girl: (pointing to shelf) Holy sh*t there’s the new (Tucker Max) book ‘A$$holes Finish First’ … mom you have to read that it’s sooooo funny.

End scene.

And end Western Civilization, if the above exchange is any indication of how we’re doing in the culture and morals department.

I managed not to vomit or confront the conversing duo, but only thanks to extreme exhaustion and the heat emanating from the tiny man strapped Ergo-style to my chest. But their words stayed with me. And they are troubling. And I think, an indicator of the real fallout from our pornified, sexually ‘progressive’ and permissive culture.

What we’re witnessing here, people, is the death of intimacy. Ironically and irrefutably manifested in a cultural obsession with pornography. But what we’re missing here is the point: no amount of titillation or exposure or oversharing can ever – ever – replace the deeply satisfying interpersonal communion we were created for. And the more we seek to expose and consume in the name of sexual satisfaction, the further we move from the truth of it, and from any measure of real happiness in that arena.

I’ve been meditating on this quote from Pope Benedict (you know, that repressive old man in Rome) recently and I think it fits perfectly the topic at hand:

“The world promises you comfort. But you were not made for comfort…you were made for greatness.”

True, no?