Such a time as this

 From the Associated Press this morning:

"The U.S. Supreme Court cleared the way for same-sex weddings to start in Alabama, letting the number of gay-marriage states climb in advance of a constitutional showdown that may mean legalization nationwide.   

In a 7-2 order, the justices rejected Alabama’s bid to stop a federal trial judge’s legalization order from taking effect Monday. The state now will become the 37th where gays can marry."

At first glance, this perhaps doesn't look like much in terms of news. States' marriage laws have been crashing down left and right like felled timber over the past 2 years, and it's hardly shocking that Alabama has joined the ranks of the other 36 places in the U.S. where same sex couples can legally contract a "marriage."

No big deal, right?

Live and let live, and live the life you love, and you love who you love, and all the other platitudes that fill the airwaves and our ears in this modern cultural milieu.

I have some news for us Christians, and maybe it's going to come as a bit of a shock, but it may well be that none of those clever turns of phrase are going to apply to us before too long.

Make no mistake, this has never been about simply leveling the playing field so that all may freely participate in the institution of marriage; what it is about - what it has always been about - is redefining and recreating marriage into something else entirely.

And when something gets redefined, the old definition is, by necessity, destroyed. Retired into the annals of history, if you will. Marked down as a tried-and-failed social experiment, and abandoned in the name of Progress.

If you believe that Christians, Jews, progressive Muslims, people of other faiths who practice monogamous, heterosexual life-long fidelity within the context of a religious sacrament are going to be allowed to continue to teach, preach, and contract said marriages in peace once gay "marriage" is enshrined as the law of the land, you may be in for an unpleasant surprise.

Maybe not immediately, but highly likely in the not-too-distant future

If you think you're going to be able to teach your publicly-schooled fourth grader that sex is sacred and reserved for the intimate communion of marriage between husband and wife, you may have another think coming. (And possibly a visit from CPS, to boot.)

Once gay "marriage" becomes the law of the land, it will no longer be possible to hold a competing worldview and still be viewed, either professionally or legally, as a person of good will.

You will be a bigot, first and foremost. A menace to the pluralistic good of a society unshackled from the burdensome moral code of the past. And your kind - our kind - may not be tolerated.

Oh, it might not be a matter of legal troubles, at least not yet. It will probably be a quieter persecution. Passed over for a promotion. Let go from a job. Denied entry to a committee or school organization. Little things like that, white martyrdoms in varying shades of grey.

Because you see, it's not really possible to live and let live when life trajectories are fundamentally opposed. Something has to give, someone has to yield.

We can't all be right.

Relativism only works on paper. In real life it plays out like this: someone is right, and someone else is a bigot who is breaking the law.

Marriage can't be both a monogamous, permanent, life-long commitment between a man and a woman and an open-ended sexual relationship configured by any two consenting adults. The two definitions are fundamentally contradictory.

And while I may be perfectly capable of ignoring the antics and goings-on behind my neighbor's bedroom doors right now, when I am forced to publicly endorse their lifestyle by the laws of the land, my reality is altered.

Then it's no longer live and let live, but becomes instead applaud what we do and accept what we teach, because you are now legally bound.

It's time for us to wake up. Authentic Christian charity doesn't mean turning a blind eye to social ills and harmful behavior just because they're fashionable, trending heavily on Twitter, and popular in Hollywood.

I can love my gay brother or sister - and indeed, true love is willing the good of the other - without endorsing the institution of gay "marriage."

But I may not have that option forever.

One day in the not-too-distant future, it might not be okay to say that in public. It may be something we whisper in private: "oh, we still believe in the Sacrament of Marriage personally, but we can't talk about it here."

And you know what? That's on us. We have been hand-picked, each one of us, to occupy this unique space in this place and time in history. So what witness are you prepared to give, and what defense for the faith you have?

We ought to be praying, fasting, working like crazy to share the goodness and the truth and the beauty of married love. Not sticking our heads in the sand and pulling our kids, our voices, our potential to be influencers and world changers, out of the public square.

We have to be fearless. St. John Paul II said to us, over and over again, "be not afraid." This is the heart of the Gospel: perfect love that casts out all fear.

I won't let my fear of what somebody may think of me prevent me from speaking the truth. And so long as we have the freedom to do so, we ought to be speaking it boldly, humbly, inviting people in to the Faith, not cowering in church doorways, bracing ourselves for disaster.

Be not afraid. Over and over again, I have to remind myself. Be not afraid.

Gay "marriage" isn't going to satisfy the deepest longings of the human heart; only the one Who created us can do that. Let's invite as many people as we can to experience the truth of that firsthand. Jesus is what this sad, suffering culture of ours seeks, whether or not they know Him by name. And if we center our lives and our marriages on Him, we cannot lose.

Marriage is a beautiful vocation, and it is worthy of being defended. But it is our lived example that speaks volumes to a visually distracted and chaotic culture starved for beauty.
So that awkward encounter with a fellow commuter holding a matching newspaper early in the morning? Be not afraid.

A hard conversation with a beloved friend or college roommate who champions an alternate view of marriage? Be not afraid.

An unpopular stance with your child's school administration for the sake of your impressionable 5th grader who won't be participating in the sex-ed program? Be not afraid.

"For if you keep silent at this time, relief and deliverance will rise for the Jews from another place, but you and your father’s house will perish. And who knows whether you have not come to the kingdom for such a time as this?" Esther 4:14

Catholics, sex, and marriage: the elevator pitch

Man, has it been a month or what? 

I told you guys when I started writing this series that I had some serious resistance going on, but I had no way to prepare for the all out spiritual warfare that this venture would trigger. I'm not actually even being facetious. 

It.has.been.real.

Which has me even more convinced that these conversations, virtual though they may be, are so deeply necessary. 

And the point is not that they remain virtual, you know? I'm fully aware of the limitations of the internet as means for evangelization. I get it. Things don't always translate, and layers of complexity and nuance are all too often lost amidst the keystrokes and the fiery rage of the combox.

But the internet is a great place for sharing information. Which, in turn, is good for facilitating communication. It's up to us to do the actual communicating on a one-to-one level though, got it?

So, to wrap things up, here's a tidy 2 minute overview of what Catholics believe about sex and marriage, and why.

Sex is good. It isn't dirty or naughty or some kind of half-hearted concession to our fallen animalistic nature...it is good, just as it was good in the beginning. Be fruitful and multiply, He said. And so we are, and we do. 

And we absolutely have to teach our kids that. Early and often. There's no such thing as "the talk" in good Christian parenting; rather, it must be a series of talks, spanning childhood into early adulthood, continually drawing children into the beauty and the truth of human sexuality. If you're waiting until your little snowflake starts middle school to say anything positive or informative about sex and the human person, well, I'm sorry to say it, but you're about 3 years too late.

We live in a sexually saturated culture, and our children's eyes and brains are bathed in provocative, violent, and sadistic images of a sexual nature at every turn. It's our job to combat that with beauty, and goodness, and above all, the truth of who and why they were "created, male and female." 

Marriage is also good. For the majority of people, it's not only good, but it's the means of our salvation. If you are called to the Sacrament of Marriage, it is through those graces (and crosses) that you'll make your way to heaven, leading and alternately being led by the spouse you choose. 

Marriage and sex go together. You might even say that attempting to separate them is at the root of almost every problem facing our society. We reserve sex for marriage not out of prudishness or repression, but for the same reason you wouldn't build a nuclear bomb in the garage: that kind of power demands respect. Mishandle plutonium and you're going to have a disaster, because you are violating the stuff's nature. You can't change nature. You can ignore it, or deny it, or repackage it as something of your own creation, but the stuff is still radioactive.

That's the reason the Church will never change her position on marriage: she doesn't have the power to. Marriage is the union between one man and one woman, designed by the Creator of plutonium, etc. to produce brand spanking new humans. We can tinker with the definition and broaden and rewrite all we want...but we can't alter nature. Even if the State does. Even if every country on earth proclaims marriage to be "an open ended living arrangement featuring a rotating cast of 4 or more adults featuring occasional collaborations with domesticated animals." Or something. Even then, the Church will not alter her stance on what marriage is, because it isn't hers to alter.

The Catholic Church's teachings on sex and marriage are profoundly freeing, which is a shocking claim to make on a libertine, pleasure-worshiping culture. But it's true! There is such freedom in chastity and fidelity and wild abandonment and trust. And while there's never a guarantee for happiness, it sure makes sense to stack the deck in your favor when it comes to matters of the heart.

If you think you know what the Catholic Church teaches about sex and marriage, make sure you've actually read and learned what the Catholic Church teaches about sex and marriage.

Humanae Vitae

Evangelium Vitae

Letter to Women

Theology of the Body

Sex is good. Marriage is good. Life is very, very good. Now let's go live it like we believe it.

As a guy I really like was fond of saying,

"Be not afraid."

Click to read the rest of the month-long series on the Catholic Church's teachings on sex and marriage.

The modesty wars

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.

I'm Catholic, can I get a vasectomy/tubal ligation?

There have been a number of questions about permanent sterilization during this month-long series, and while I wrote a post on it a while back, I think it deserves a fuller treatment, and a more nuanced explanation.

I know this is a question that many, many couples wrestle with. Even couples who have zero moral qualms whatsoever about shutting down their reproductive functions struggle with the permanence of surgical sterilization, because, well, it's permanent. And that makes you feel something on a deep emotional and, dare I say, spiritual level.

We know this part of our bodies is sacred. Walk into any delivery room or birthing center and watch the miracle of life unfold and just try to remain unmoved.

There is something profound and powerful at work in our fertility.

The short answer for why Catholics don't practice permanent sterilization is the same one you'll get for why Catholics don't use any other form of contraception: it isn't broken. 

For those of us who are called to marriage and to parenthood, the invitation to participate directly in God's creative process by bringing forth new human life is a staggering, gut-wrenching responsibility.

Vasectomies and tubal ligations take the "I will not serve" of contraception and carry it a step further, beyond the moment to moment "not this time" of hormonal contraceptives and barrier methods. They allow us to say with our bodies, in effect, I will not act in accordance with my nature, not now, and not at any point in the future.

In other words, God, you screwed up. I'm not supposed to work this way.

The Church isn't anti contraception because it's science. Or because it's artificial. Or because she has million dollar stock options in thermometers. The Catholic Church (and, up until about 100 years ago, all of Christianity) opposes contraception because it is in direct defiance of the very first thing that He commanded us to do, once He created us, man and woman.

Do you remember?

Be fruitful, and multiply.

(Not: have so many children your uterus falls out and you go bald/die of starvation because you have more children than can fit in your doublewide. But be fruitful, and multiply.)

Children, in Scripture, are only and always a blessing. For couples who have many of them, and for couples who wait in longing for a single one. (Ahem, Abraham.)

There is never a point at which God says, okay, I think we're good here, plus, you guys, college is so expensive right now, you probably need to go ahead and shut things down and start maxing out that 529 because otherwise you are going to be SO screwed.

If He sends them, we accept them.

And if we can't accept them? If we are simply not in a place where it would be prudent/loving/responsible/safe/possible to accept a(nother) child?

We don't. Have. Sex.

If you cannot welcome a child into your family you should not be doing the thing which invites children into your family. It's that simple. And it's that difficult.

For couples who have grave, serious reasons why having a child would be absolutely disastrous, how could anything else but abstaining be loving?

Because what if it happens anyway? We all know that couple who still got pregnant, in spite of their best efforts to prevent it. And then what? Hopefully not abortion...but what if the reason for not getting pregnant was a grave medical complication for the mother? How is that fair or loving to her?

It's not just that, though. It's not just the "you might still get pregnant even though you're fixed" argument. It's also because it's sexually bulimic. It's doing one thing with your body, but meaning another. When we do that with our words, it's called lying. So when we do that with our bodies...it's still lying. And denying the truth has consequences. Real, tangible, physical, emotional, and spiritual consequences.

Marriage is hard enough when everything is on the up and up. But when a couple chooses to consciously and systematically say one thing with their bodies but mean the opposite, there is going to be tension. There is going to be strife. There is going to be a breakdown in communication and mutual respect. And God knows we don't need anything more stacked against us, not when it's already an impossibly tall order. (Matt 19:10)

This is not a condemnation of couples who have made this decision and who regret it. This is, hopefully, a wake up call to couples who have never considered the real spiritual and emotional ramifications of physically severing the connection between sex and reproduction.

While there is no guarantee that either tubal libations or vasectomies can be reversed, there are doctors out there who are willing to try. Depending on the individual circumstances of the procedure, it can sometimes be done. And even if it doesn't work, what a huge opportunity for grace and for reconciliation to make that sacrifice, bodily, to attempt to restore what has been damaged.

For couples who are older, it might look a little different. While there is no way to return to one's childbearing years and make different choices, there is a huge opportunity for older couples to minister to younger couples in the trenches who are considering making this decision for their own marriages.

It's a message that younger couples desperately need to hear, and there are far too few voices speaking this truth: your bodies are fearfully and wonderfully made, sex was created for marriage, and marriage is designed to be fruitful and life-giving. 

Don't separate your love! Don't try to undo what God has intentionally and lovingly written into your bodies. It is good that you are together, and it is good that you love each other enough to participate in bringing forth new life out of that love.

And God knows this world could use a little more love.

Click here for the rest of the series.

JPII, we still need you

A couple of decades ago the world was introduced to a new kind of pope when Cardinal Karol Wojtyla stepped out onto the balcony of St. Peter’s, arms held high in greeting to a massive crowd who could not pronounce his name.

Cardinal who?

It was a tumultuous season in the life of the Church, and in the world. Communism held eastern Europe and Russia in a death grip. The West was in the throes of the fallout from the sexual revolution. War was everywhere. The family was under siege, both in the media and in the news. The Church was struggling to communicate the fullness and freshness of the Gospel to a world grown cold and indifferent to the message of Christ.

In short, it wasn’t a whole lot different from where we stand today.

Pope John Paul II was exactly the man for the job. Born into a loving Polish family, Karol would lose everyone who mattered most to him by his 21st birthday. With each subsequent heartache, each desolating loss, young Karol found himself drawn further and further into the mystery of the heart of the Father. Rather than running from God in his grief, he allowed his suffering to transform him, and his heart was enkindled with an unquenchable love for human love.

This man who lost mother, father, brother, and friend to all manner of hideous diseases and atrocities at the hands of the Nazis was transformed, by God’s grace, into one of the greatest lovers the world has ever known.

Maybe it’s strange to think of a celibate man as a great lover. Or maybe it’s just an unfamiliar application of the word. Our modern concept of sexual love is very narrow, and it’s very limiting. Sexuality has been reduced to mere animal lust, its scope and grandeur stunted by the pornographic times we live in.

But it’s true, JPII was a great lover. He was able to see into the depths of the human heart and, through his work with countless hundreds of young people and married couples, he had a unique perspective on human love. You might say he was an expert on matters of the human heart.

He saw the divinity in our humanity, and he stretched our minds to the breaking point trying to communicate it through his years-long series of Wednesday addresses, which we know today by another name: Theology of the Body.

George Weigel, the late pope’s official biographer, made a sort of prophesy about Theology of the Body more than 20 years ago, calling it:

“A theological time bomb set to go off with dramatic consequences sometime in the third millennium of the Church… It has barely begun to shape the way the Church understands herself and thinks about herself, barely begun to shape the Church’s preaching and education, but when it does it will compel a dramatic development of thinking about virtually every major theme in the creed.”

A theological time bomb? Sounds like we could use one of those right about now.

Set to change the way the Church thinks about herself and virtually every major theme in the Creed?

Sounds kind of like a big deal.

Now, you could say that Weigel was overstating his case or that his prediction was mere conjecture, but you cannot deny the dire need for the Church to re-propose the Gospel and the meaning of life and love to a world such as ours, in a time such as this.

We are at war. We have always been at war in this fallen world, it is true. But today we are warring in a particular way for the very soul of human love.

Everything that we know to be true is open for debate: Marriage. The dignity of the human person. The meaning and purpose of sexuality. The fundamental right to life itself. Every bit of it is being reexamined and reconfigured by a world in crisis.

And we have all the answers. Literally at our fingertips. Because the internet. Because massive literacy levels across broad sections of society in many cultures. Never before has information been so easy to disseminate in all of human history.

And yet we sit idly by as our civilization self-destructs, one marriage and one family at a time.

Listen, fellow Christians…this is on us.

We were each of us hand-selected for a time such as this, and we’ve been entrusted with a powerful message from the Creator to the rest of creation in this Theology of the Body.

This stuff is visionary. It’s powerful. And it isn’t going to transform a single heart or convert a single soul so long as it remains untaught, unread, and inaccessible to the average person in the pew or on the street.

St. John Paul II, we need you. More today than when you were here with us on earth.

Pray that we may find the same kind of courage that faced down communism, defied tyrants and dictators, and saw in the face of every person an unrepeatable icon of Jesus Christ.

(cross posted at Catholic Exchange.)

A little porn never hurt anybody

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.

Why does the Catholic Church care about what I do in my bedroom?

This is a valid question, and it's one that gets asked frequently, especially in our sexually schizophrenic culture. On the one hand, we're super freaked out by the idea of anybody, for any reason, asking anything about our sex lives...let alone having opinions or making judgements on what goes on behind closed doors.

Then again, reality tv. And pornography. And sexual deviance the likes of which the world has probably not seen since the days of ancient Rome.

So we're both consumed by the idea of sex as something private all while simultaneously flaunting our sexuality in an intensely public manner, making sure the whole world, starting with the stranger on the subway or the unsuspecting fellow parent on the playground, knows precisely how things are going in that department.

Then we've got this Church. This 2,000 year old, preposterously behind-the times, headed-up-by-a-celibate-male-hierarchy Church, trying to tell people who are having sex all the ways they shouldn't be having it.

What?

First off, the whole "celibate male hierarchy argument." Let's just put that one to rest, shall we?

Catholic priests are called to a life of celibacy and chastity in imitation of the life of Christ. They give up the great good of sexual expression within the context of a human marriage for the greater good of a spiritual union with Christ, and a fruitful life given in service to the larger Church. So sex is good, and priests surrender this very good thing as a gift to the rest of the Church. A life devoted entirely to Christ, to His Church, and to the proclamation of the gospel.

Some of my closest friends are priests. One of my girlfriends left her job, her friends and family, and her life this past summer to enter a religious order. Their lives are beautiful, fruitful, and deeply meaningful. And they're never, ever going to have sex! In the year 2014...can you even fathom it?

It's no small sacrifice, but it yields some beautiful fruit, and as Catholics, we believe that it offers a glimpse of eternal life as "in heaven people are neither married nor given in marriage." Not because marriage isn't incredibly good, but because marriage itself is just a preview of eternal life with God who is love.

So, just to recap, sex and marriage = good.

Good enough to have a few rules around it for its - and our - protection.

Catholics are expected to behave a certain way in the bedroom. Namely, to practice faithful, chaste, sacrificial love for our spouse within the exclusive and permanent commitment of marriage.

We're also expected to love God with all our heart, soul, and mind, and to refrain from committing murder, along with a handful of other commandments.

In other words, there are rules for everything. Not because God hates us, or because sex is shameful, or because we're hysterically guilty about everything...but because we live in a fallen world that has been redeemed by a loving God.

All relationships have rules. Otherwise they're just hook ups. And God doesn't want to hook up with us. He wants to wed Himself to us for eternity.

So the next time someone questions you about the Church's stance on sex, be sure you're prepared to explain that actually, there's no other place on earth where human love is held in such high esteem.

Click here to read the rest of the series.

What is marriage for?

I thought I'd start out my 31 days of posts about the Catholic Church's teachings on sex and marriage with a light n' fluffy number, so let's talk ontology, shall we?

Namely, what is a thing made for, and to what end is it directed? (I think that's ontology, but I only took 2 philosophy classes so ... maybe don't hold me to that.)

So marriage.

Maybe a good place to start would be the cultural definition, which I think goes something like this: two people (is that right, are we still advocating for only 2 names on the registry?) who like having sex with each other and who make each other feel good have an awesome, expensive party or else a brief civil ceremony at the courthouse or something in between and then live happily ever after. Hopefully. Oh, and maybe children as a +1 (or 2).

I think that's an accurate summary of our current cultural understanding of the institution of marriage. I think that also pretty much nullifies the argument for marriage as an "institution" because those parameters are not the stuff cultural monuments are built upon, amiright?

So on the one hand, we've got that popular conception of marriage circulating.

On the other hand, we've got Marriage with a big M, the sacramental kind. This is where the Catholic Church and popular society go their version of two roads diverging in a yellow wood so hang with me here: marriage and Marriage, for the purpose of this discussion, are not actually the same thing. So the culture wars and the punditry and the round-and-round of the national discussion we're all having about the m-word? It's actually kind of ... futile. Not entirely futile, but very nearly.

The Catholic Church (and historically, the rest of Christianity) recognizes marriage as a Sacrament, a physical sign which conveys a spiritual reality. In this case the physical sign would be the married couple, male and female, and the spiritual reality would be Christ's fruitful and sacrificial love for His Bride, the Church. Marriage as a Sacrament necessitates 2 committed parties of the opposite sex (see: fruitfulness, capacity to create and bring forth new life, etc.) giving themselves entirely and unreservedly to each other, and only to each other, until they are parted by death.

So there's a big difference there. And it's not difficult to see how it is that we're talking past each other on a cultural level, because to some degree yes, we're all discussing sex and love and commitment, but we're assigning different meanings to these words.

Once language becomes corrupted it becomes very, very difficult to have an effective discourse on, well, anything...because how can I put this, I don't think that word means what you think it means.

Catholics recognize marriage as a Sacrament, along with the Eucharist and Baptism, to name a couple, and as such, we recognize in it's very nature a deeper reality than is visible to the naked eye.

Marriage is about two people who love each other. But it isn't just that. It's also about revealing the love of the Creator to the world He created, and cooperating with Him to bring forth new life.

The Church teaches that marriage has a "twofold purpose:" the mutual good and support of the spouses and the procreation and education of children. Laymen's terms: it exists to help two people who love each other get to Heaven, along with any children created out of their love. And by created we're talking sexual reproduction here, aka the business necessitating cooperation between a male and female.

So there you have it, in a long-winded nutshell. Marriage is a Sacrament, a lifelong union between a man and a woman, and an image of the life-giving love of the Trinity. So the next time you hear an argument debating the meaning/parameters/accessibility of marriage, keep that in the back of your mind for a helpful reference, because it might be that while we're all using the same words, we're not actually speaking the same language.

Until tomorrow!

Babies and Bonding

I've always prided myself on extreme self-reliance. An almost pathological self-reliance, truth be told. Chalk it up to a mixture of firstborn-child-meets-choleric temperament with a heaping dose of introversion and you have a lone wolf-ette who doesn't like to ask for help or work as part of a team. Ever. Even in high school the sports I chose were laughably individualistic: swimming, diving, cross country running, discus and shot put (not even joking) and…wait for it…pole vaulting. So yeah, I put the "I" in team.

Then I got married. 

More specifically, then I got married, got pregnant, and gave birth to our sleep-averse firstborn child. Fast forward 4 years and three babies and while this one sleeps a whooooole lot better (knock knock KNOCKING on heaven's big wooden door here) than her older brothers did/do, she is still up for portions of the night/morning I'd just as soon leave to the imagination. And then the sun comes up and the party really gets going because there are three of them. And they all want all of me, pretty much all day long. 

I try to divide and conquer the house/my work/their needs/my wants, but 4:56 pm on any given evening will find me frantically texting one hard-working hubby for minute-by-minute updates on his commute conditions. God help him if he texts back while still sitting at his desk. 

It's not just that I miss him during the work day, (and I do! Though perhaps not to the same level of creepy g-chatting intensity seen during our courtship. Ahem.) I desperately need him to tag team this burgeoning child army we're creating, for better or worse. Today, like so many other Mondays of recent memory, it was mostly worse. I think I let both boys out the front door, barefoot, to tear down the driveway to his still running (but parked) car in hot pursuit of the fun parent. I just sort of stood in the doorway, cradling a fussy newborn in one arm and vacantly patting my unwashed top knot while I wondered what the neighbors thought about barefoot children in 40-degree weather. Probably they love it. But I digress.

If this husband in question were to offer me, in fact, the choice between a shopping spree at Tiffany's or  a solid month of evenings during which he would be home one hour earlier than usual every day, I'd pick him over diamonds. Truly I would.

I need him in a physical, emotional, and spiritual way that I could never have envisioned 4 years ago, standing up on the altar all skinny and mascara-clad, full of good intentions and heartfelt vows. I'm still getting back into the mascara habit, thanks to the fraternal (sororital?) correction of my little sister, but I'm definitely not skinny any more. And I probably won't be for quite some time if things keep going the way they've been going (courtesy disclaimer: not currently pregnant). And that's fine. It's not what awesome, but it's fine, because this is what babies do to women's bodies: they change them. For better and for worse. Mostly worse, but honestly, I don't mind all that much any more.

So babies change our bodies. And they also change our bonds. I remember naively listening to Dr. Janet Smith's famous treatise "Contraception, Why Not?" as a college student and nodding along sagely as she spun her anecdotal wisdom about marriages involving children being fundamentally more difficult to walk away from, because you're not just a pair anymore, but a family. There's more at stake if the thing blows up. I get that, now. I'd never dream of leaving Dave for any reason, but the thought of walking out the door on our children makes me physically ill to contemplate. There is a bond we've literally co-created that physically, psychically, spiritually links us for all eternity. Actually, we've got three of them. We're in real deep. 

Real, real deep.

And I love that. I love how deeply I depend upon him to come walking through the door at night to rescue  me from the scrabbling, sticky paws of tiny monsters who can't stop touching me for two seconds and who absolutely won't sit still for a perfectly lovely episode of "House Hunters" at 4:30 pm because mama's trick bag is not only empty, but there's a gaping hole in the bottom, but who will beg mercilessly for Curious George the whole time I'm trying patiently to explain the superiority of coffered ceilings and crown moldings. I mean really.

Then comes prince charming, zooming up the street in his noble Toyota Camery and suddenly I am rescued, I am not alone, I am not doing this by myself…and even though I look like a lukewarm mess and 100% of my outfit involves some percentage of spandex, I know he'll come through the door, kiss me, take a baby off my hands and tell me to go pour myself a glass of wine. Or water, as Genevieve would have it. 

Am I enslaved to this man whose life is pledged to me and mine to his? I guess that's one possible interpretation. But it is a sweet, sweet bondage, forged in the crucible of the delivery room, the late-night runs to Super Target for diapers, the monthly roller coaster of charting and calculating and discerning, and in the endlessly-needy love and adoration of three tiny people who have his blue eyes and my strong will.  I've yet to come across a form of contraception that can offer those kind of benefits.

(Cross posting at Catholic Exchange today)

A Church for Gay People

Hint: it's also a church for alcoholics. And for recovering bulimics. And for former (or current) pornography addicts. For liars, cheaters, shoplifters, and drug users. In short: it's a church for humanity.

Pope Francis made an unexpected gift of his time and did a little Q & A with the lucky group of journalists accompanying him home on the papal flight from World Youth Day in Rio this morning, and inevitably, the question of homosexuality came up.

The Pope reiterated the Church's teaching on homosexuality, clearly stated and lovingly (one hopes in all cases) implemented:

If someone is gay, who searches for the Lord and has goodwill, who am I to judge? The Catechism of the Catholic Church explains this very well. It says they should not be marginalized because of this (orientation) but that they must be integrated into society." 

Did you catch that? The Pope isn't judging gay people. The Pope isn't judging any of the rest of us poor, sinning schmucks either, people who are trying - and failing - day after day to live a Christlike life and do His will in our lives. 

Did the Holy Father invite people to practice homosexuality? By no means. Did he infer that gay 'marriages' would soon be performed in Catholic parishes around the globe? Nope. He simply stated the eternal Christian truth which is preached for all people and for all time: if you are searching for the Lord in earnest, you will find him. And you will be welcomed. 

Too many Christians have been branded by a media eager to demonize and divide as 'intolerant' or 'bigoted' because of their rejection of homosexuality. But the rejection of homosexuality must never be confused with the rejection of homosexual persons. No person is unwelcome to Christ, or to His Church. We are all of us sinners, found wanting, and in need of His mercy.

Does this mean the Church will ever stop calling people to repentance? Definitely not.

Will the same Church ever embrace sinful behaviors in her children in order to assuage their misguided notions  of happiness? Never. 

The Church does not dictate morality; she reveals what is inherently true, good, and beautiful. 

Homosexual behavior is not deemed 'sinful' because the Church says so; the Church says so because the behavior is inherently damaging to the human person. As is all sin. The teachings of Jesus Christ are not arbitrary, but are rather deeply informed with the most intimate knowledge of the human person. He knows what makes us tick, because He made us. And neither He nor his Bride are ever, ever going to recommend a behavior that is harmful to us. 

That's why the Church will never change Her teachings on contraception. She'll never jump on board with Planned Parenthood and endorse the concept of 'therapeutic abortions.' And there are never going to be a special set of readings for use at 'same sex wedding' Masses. 

Because He loves us too much.

And because homosexual behavior, for all the noise being made by Hollywood and the media, is fundamentally damaging to the human person.

The Pope was not speaking some sort of secret code and green lighting gay 'marriage' with his statement to the press today. Though it will surely be misconstrued in many circles as such. He was simply reiterating the words of Christ, spoken 2,000 years ago, and spoken still today. 

Come to me, you who are burdened, I will give you rest. Forget what you've done, where you've been, what you've seen...and come to me. And be at peace. I made you. I alone know what can fulfill the desires of your heart. Do not seek the world's happiness; the world did not make you, and cannot know what you are made for. Only I can tell you that.

What to Write

When there is so much to say?

I have the unique position of being on the other side of a 'hockey stick effect' as my boss calls it, that moment when internet traffic spikes in a dramatic and upward fashion, (much like the angle between the face and the handle of a hockey stick, get it?) and here I have this incredible spike in traffic...and nothing particularly profound to say.

I mean, there's so much I could say...but how much would be relevant, interesting, or effective? When I started this blog more than 7(!) years ago (insane) it was called something else - The Great Deception - and I wrote almost exclusively about contraception, abortion, Theology of the Body, and other culturewars-esque stuff. About 6 months ago, it became clear that my days of dissecting the philosophical banqruptcy of Planned Parenthood's operational model had given way to, well, more mundane discussions and lamentations of my own journeys through parenthood. Thus, Mama Needs Coffee was born.

I still like to have a good time, philosophically and theologically speaking, but I spend a whole lot less mental energy dissecting the Culture of Death these days ... and a whole lot more trying to live antithetically to it.

For any of you new faces who made your way over via one very cute baby face, I guess I just wanted to say welcome, explain myself a bit, and invite you to come back every once in a while for riveting discussions on apostolic succession and potty training. And maybe some pointers on how to make thee very best margarita of your life. (Hint: silver trumps gold in this equation.)

At any rate, thanks for stopping by. I can't promise pretty graphics or amazing craftiness or even half decent outfit ideas...but I can assure you of my honest, thoughtful, and sometimes irresponsibly passionate opinions on the stuff life is made of. Hope you'll pour a cup and hang out for a while.

Picking Rotten Fruit

What do contraception, pedophiles and gay 'marriage' all have in common?  (Besides the ability to make one's stomach churn.)

I'll give you a hint: trees.

Three different species of rotting fruit, all plucked from the same evil tree of selfishness. 

Three wildly variant forms of sexual deviance, one root sin:

Pride.

Pride that asserts one's subjective reality over objective reality.  Pride that places personal happiness and 'fulfillment' ahead of the good of the other.  Pride that seeks to subvert, destroy and remake truth for the sake of an imagined personal 'good' at the cost of real goodness.

At first blush, predators who seek sexual encounters with children and homosexual adults who seek to enter into 'marriages' with same sex partners might not seem to have too much in common besides an uncommon sexual appetite, but an honest examination of the motivation behind both behaviors reveals an uncomfortable truth.

When we attempt to redefine reality, we have to expect that others will do the same.  Gay 'marriage' may be promoted as all about tolerance and love... but in some circles, (widening circles, I might add) so is the notion of 'love' between an innocent child and an adult. 

In a disturbing report issued earlier this week, a reporter shed light on a curious conference taking place outside our nation's capital right now.  Pedophiles are seeking to destigmatize their deviant, criminal sexual behavior by lobbying the American Psychological Association to declassify pedophilia as a mental illness in the forthcoming edition of the DSM - the 'bible,' if you will, of the mental health world.

This is relevant because it is the same path homosexual activists started down in the late 70's when they lobbied to have homosexuality removed from the third edition of the DSM as an identified psychological condition.

And where exactly does birth control factor into this all?

Well it turns out that everyone is after their own version of 'no strings attached' sex.  And if straight, married couples can go on the Pill - which many did for the first time starting in the 1950's and '60's - then why not straight, unmarried couples?  Sex, no longer prudishly bound to the constraining, tired and traditional 'construct' of marriage was now fair game for anyone, provided they were 'in love.' (I am well aware that the invention of modern contraception did not single-handedly fuel the sexual revolution.  People have been sexually active outside of marriage from time immemorial.  The difference is, now it's openly acknowledged and even applauded by a global majority)

Once sex was effectively divorced from marriage by its sterilization, homosexuality - nothing new except in its growing social acceptability - began to creep from the shadows.  If sterile, fruitless sex made sense for straight people, than why not for two men?  Or two women?  Sex, no longer inextricably linked to the possibility of bringing forth new life (in addition to pleasure), became just another method for communication between companions.  And who are we to tell anyone with whom they may or may not communicate?

When sex ceases to be primarily about the gift of self, (and, consequently, the gift of life) it becomes primarily a means to self-gratification.  And everyone deserves to be gratified.  To be satisfied.  To be happy.  It's one of the last remaining 'virtues' we seem able to agree upon as a culture: happiness.  Except sometimes one person's version of 'happiness' turns out to be tantamount to another person's version of 'hell.' 

The young girl whose body is used by an older cousin for unspeakable acts of sexual abuse.  The toddler whose two 'mommies' special ordered her using hand-picked sperm and cutting edge IVF technology, but who will never know her father.  The teenager whose parents divorced during his freshman year of high school, dumping him with relatives while they set out on solo journeys of self discovery to 'find themselves' at a time when he is poised on the precipice of adulthood and in crying need of parental guidance and support.  Each of these are the unwilling victim of someone else's pursuit of happiness.  

So where does it end?

I would imagine that bestiality and incest will be coming down the pike as the next agenda items in our glorious cultural pursuit of equality.  Because if anything goes, then everything goes.  And who are we to say otherwise? 

As the family goes, so goes the nation and so goes the whole world in which we live.
Bl. John Paul II

Pray for us.

Liberated for Slavery: The Life of a Cosmo Girl

I have a confession: I used to read Cosmopolitan magazine.  Really, I did.  And while it made me feel kind of dirty and offended my sensibilities as a woman, a Christian, and a human being... there was something, I don't know, almost addictive about reading all about the lifestyle contained within its tawdry pages.  It was, for me at least, a precursor to reality television; something you know in your gut is just terrible for you, but something so fascinatingly awful you can't look away.  Kind of like "The Hills."  But I digress...

The thing is, when I look back on that dark time in my life - the college years - and I remember the girl who used to eagerly devour her roommate's monthly subscription, there's a stark, obvious juxtaposition of my own personal misery to the gospel of liberation Cosmo preached.  As I look back over my life, it was during the lowest times that I saw only one set of footprints... okay, kidding.  But seriously, during what were for me the least satisfying times of my life, the times where I was living exactly as I pleased, answerable to me, myself and I alone...and hating every minute of it, these were the times during which I found Cosmo relevant. 

These were the times, quite honestly, when I found Cosmo palatable at all.  They say misery loves company, and with 13 million copies of "the bible" ala Sex in the City being cranked out each month... it would seem to be true.  But do I go too far by imposing my own subjective experience onto other women who may legitimately enjoy the read? 

Well, have you read Cosmo lately?  Even glanced at a cover?  I would venture to say that no healthy, self-respecting woman in her right mind, no feminist for that matter (in the best use of the term) would be caught dead with a copy of Cosmo on the reading stand of her StairMaster.  Period.

In a recent column for First Things entitled "The Cosmopolitan Life," David Mills pithily dissects the strange need for "liberated" women to subject themselves to the peculiar rhetoric of slavery to male approval which is familiar to each issue of Cosmo and every other magazine of it's ilk.  Glamour.  Marie Claire.  Redbook.  They're all preaching the same, tired lines promising mind blowing sex, steamy workplace hookup hints and beauty tips for shrinking one's backside in order to better attract a man whose head is stuck up his.  Or so it would seem. 

For all its big, blustery talk about being the guidebook of the modern, sexually-liberated woman of the 21st century, it would seem that Cosmo is, in reality, little more than a bit of poorly-crafted propaganda, a misogynistic rag intended for instructing women on the niceties of pleasing and keeping a man.

"But, but..."  the editorial staff might sputter, "these women are freely choosing to engage in wild, spontaneous and uncommitted sex.  That's progress." 

Is it really? 

It seems awfully backwards to me to have to fill each monthly issue with remedial instruction on the carefully-crafted art of emotional detachment and hookups.  For above all else, Cosmo preaches relations without relationship.  Sex without security.  Booty calls without boundaries.  In other words, unpaid prostitution. 

Think about it...at least a hundred years ago or so, women who engaged in casual, meaningless recreational sex were reimbursed for their troubles.  And actually in the state of Nevada, I believe some still are...  But the point is this; if this is freedom, then perhaps we should ask to be put back in chains, because I've yet to see a truly liberated woman gazing back at me from the cover of Cosmo... or from behind its pages. 

Call it freedom, call it progress, call it feminism if you will... but kindly do so with your tongue placed firmly in your cheek. 

Introducing Joseph Kolbe

The reason blogging has been - and will continue to be sparse for now.  Behold his cuteness!  We are supremely blessed and grateful for God's gift to our family.

Let's Be Honest, We Were All Raised By Wolves...

I've gone round and round with my mom about this topic more times than I care to recount, but I was gratified to see this piece featured on CNA earlier this week, because it points out a rather obvious defect which deeply wounded the Church these past 4 decades, but which is often ignored or unacknowledged by those who rail against her failure to preach the Gospel of Life. 

As the article indicates, the majority of our priests have indeed been too silent on matters of contraception and sins against life.  But I'd like to highlight what's not mentioned; namely, the reality that throughout all the poor catechetical formation many adult Catholics received at home and in their schools... sitting beside them were the majority of the priests who serve the Church today. 

So what does this mean for us?  It means an entire generation or two of adult Catholics (read: priests AND laity) came of age during a time of moral confusion, contradiction and poorly-communicated Catholic teaching.  However pitifully our priests have failed to communicate the teachings of Humane Vitae from the pulpit these past 40 years, the fault is not completely theirs. 

The formation they received at home and in the seminary was probably no better than that which has informed the consciences of the 90-something percent of adult practicing Catholics today who choose to live in open dissent from the Church's teachings on contraception.  Does this excuse our spiritual fathers from their duty to form and shepherd their flock?  By no means!  But does it explain some of the deafening silence from the pulpit for these past decades?  You bet. 

It's one of the reasons that Theology of the Body is so necessary, and not just for married couples, but for all Catholics, for all persons.  There is a fundamental disconnect in the modern human psyche, a great divorce which has severed our understanding of our very selves as bodies and souls, as bodies with souls.  The great modern mistake is not to think too much of the body, as some puritanical prudish types might insist, but to think too little of it.   We have been fed a dangerous lie indeed, one which insists that our actions need not match our intentions, and that we can somehow separate our mental and spiritual existences from the physical realm. 

This is what the practice of contraception shouts from the rooftops: "I am in control, and my intention determines the reality of my actions."  The actions themselves are meaningless, until and unless I inform them. 

Can you see the arrogance?  The asininity?  The utter falsity of such a way of living?  To presume that "I can, because I will it to be so" is to presume equality with God... and by so doing, reject His "version" of reality for one which better suits that which you have determined to be "right for you."

Our priests aren't alone in having fallen into this deadly way of thinking.  Neither are they excused, however, from crawling back out of the pit and leading their congregations with them.  Let's pray for our priests, and particularly for those who are currently studying and undergoing their priestly formation, that another generation doesn't slip through the cracks without hearing - and being equipped to proclaim - the truth.

Worth a Repost

What does the Church really say about homosexuality?

(In response to a reader's comment):

Too many Christians - including many Catholics - put the cart before the horse and insist that Biblical reference is the standard of truth ... yes, it is... but what is true was true before it's inclusion in Sacred Scripture, and not only because of it's inclusion - make sense?

Your questions about homosexuality are quite valid too, in our society which teaches that tolerance is actually acceptance, and which dismisses the idea of absolutes - in the moral realm or elsewhere - as archaic.

The Church's stance on homosexual behavior (note: the behavior, or the action, being the locus of the sin, and not the desire itself, nor the person suffering the attraction) stems from the reality that we as human persons are created in God's image to love as He loves: totally, faithfully and fruitfully.

All moral and theological arguments aside, the stark biological reality is this: homosexual "love" can never be fruitful, and so it cannot rightly be called love.

The Church isn't trying to prevent people who struggle with same sex attraction from finding fulfillment/happiness/companionship ... she (the Church) is simply unable to teach something that is false. She will never recognize the validity of homosexual "marriage" because no such thing exists.

Marriage is, by nature, the permanent, fruitful union of two persons: a man and a woman, united in sacramental purpose for the begetting and education of God's children and for the mutual sanctification of each other. The Church won't change her stance on this because she can't. She didn't create it - He did.

We exist to be in communion with one another - to give and receive love so fully, so completely, that in the giving and receiving an entire other person may come into existence... much the way the Holy Spirit, though co eternal with the Father and the Son, is nonetheless an outpouring of the Father's love for the Son, received and returned with such perfection that the love, in essence, becomes an "Other." This Trinitarian exchange of love is mirrored - dimly - in the conjugal act between husband and wife, whose love can also incarnate, or make physical, the reality of their spousal love.

Kinda heady stuff for a comments section, but it is what we profess to believe as Catholics, and not simply because it is in the Bible or because it is socially acceptable at some juncture in history. 

Reaching Across the Tiber

Encouraging proof that all Christians are beginning to question the morality of a contraceptive mentality.  Good stuff.

Tap, tap, hello?

I'm here... just treading water and trying to balance work, home, moving, travel... you get the picture.

Anyway, had a fabulous time speaking to the students at Eastern Illinois University last week, where we discussed "Green Sex" for Earth Day... can't wait to tell you about it, just have to get dinner ready first.  In the mean time, please enjoy this little gem.

Ciao!

Newsflash

He's a loser.  You just can't smell it on him...

Gay As I Wanna Be ...

Between Boulder and Mississippi (there's an unnatural pairing if ever there was one), the debate over "gay rights" is raging hot and heavy in the national and local press right now, leaving many wondering what all the fuss is about.

The Catholic Church's teachings on homosexuality, scarcely explored and oft-misrepresented, have come under particularly heavy fire in my neck of the woods in light of Archbishop Charles Chaput's affirmation of the archdiocese of Denver's - and the Church's - enrollment policies for Catholic schools.  In a press release given earlier this week, the Archdiocese eloquently and firmly stated that:

To preserve the mission of our schools, and to respect the faith of wider Catholic community, we expect all families who enroll students to live in accord with Catholic teaching.  Our admission policy states clearly, “No person shall be admitted as a student in any Catholic school unless that person and his/her parent(s) subscribe to the school’s philosophy and agree to abide by the educational policies and regulations of the school and Archdiocese.”

Parents living in open discord with Catholic teaching in areas of faith and morals unfortunately choose by their actions to disqualify their children from enrollment. To allow children in these circumstances to continue in our school would be a cause of confusion for the student in that what they are being taught in school conflicts with what they experience in the home.

 Accusations of hatred, bigotry, intolerance and slander have been sent flying, and GLBT activists in Boulder - and nationwide - have been stirred into a frenzy, but is there cause for such distress?

Let's examine the reasoning behind the decision to refuse re-enrollment to these kids.  According to the above statement, prospective parents are fully aware of the implicit adherence to Catholic teachings upon enrollment of their offspring in a Catholic institution.  I suppose that Jewish, Muslim and heck, even Montessori schools have some kind of "code of conduct" or "system of belief" to which they ascribe, and from which they inform their academic curriculum.  If not, then what would be the point of attending  a specific type of school?

Catholic teaching, however difficult to swallow in a multicultural milieu such as ours, has remained consistent, if nothing else, over the millennium.  Why then all the shock and disbelief over the school enforcing their own clearly stated policy?

Because it's "intolerant."  Of course, that same argument could be turned against the parents in this situation, seeking to enforce and superimpose their beliefs upon the Catholic Church... but I don't suppose that's going to be a popular argument.

Because the Church is one of the last remaining scapegoats of our time.  It is perfectly acceptable - laudable even - to demonstrate the most outrageous anti-Catholic bigotry in the media and in common conversation at cocktail parties.  It's acceptable to advocate for the advancement of anti-Catholic legislation in our government.  And it's becoming increasingly popular to pressure Catholics into abandoning their practices of faith in public... in short, it's the last acceptable form of discrimination.

But isn't that precisely what the Church is attempting to do to gays?

In a word, no.

The Church views the practice of  homosexuality as just one disorder in a long list of conditions which afflict the human person.  (Consequently, until recent decades, so too did the American Psychological Association, but you'll have to score a copy of DSM-II if you don't believe me.)

Let me be quite clear in stating that the Church does not - nor has she ever - condemned the homosexual person.  Partly because she staunchly refuses to identify the person by the disorder from which he suffers.  A person is never just an alcoholic or just a cancer sufferer... the condition does not the man make.

I'm sure blood pressures are spiking at this point because, yes, I just drew the analogy between homosexuality and disease.  But hear me out.  Or rather, hear us out.  The Catechism of the Catholic Church states in paragraph 2357:

Homosexuality refers to relations between men or between women who experience an exclusive or predominant sexual attraction toward persons of the same sex. It has taken a great variety of forms through the centuries and in different cultures. Its psychological genesis remains largely unexplained. Basing itself on Sacred Scripture, which presents homosexual acts as acts of grave depravity,¹⁴¹ tradition has always declared that "homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered."¹⁴² They are contrary to the natural law. They close the sexual act to the gift of life. They do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity. Under no circumstances can they be approved.

Hard words, those.  But read on.  Paragraph 2358 concludes:

The number of men and women who have deep-seated homosexual tendencies is not negligible. This inclination, which is objectively disordered, constitutes for most of them a trial. They must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity. Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided. These persons are called to fulfill God's will in their lives and, if they are Christians, to unite to the sacrifice of the Lord's Cross the difficulties they may encounter from their condition.(emphasis mine)

 Respect.  Compassion.  Sensitivity.  Three values that any human person - however he or she might identify sexually - longs to be viewed in light of.

Do I contradict myself, then?  Am I foolishly advocating for an archaic institution which is in regular violation of all three of the aforementioned values?

Again, no.  It is not the Catholic Church who commits the grave sin of giving the suffering person over to their difficulty, to their compulsion... it is our culture.

Study after study has revealed the loneliness, depression, hopelessness, and instability which mark the homosexual lifestyle... but we now advocate for it as a "civil right," insisting that it is intolerance of the behavior - not the behavior itself - which is causing such anguish.  It's funny though, because in the Netherlands, arguably one of the most pro-gay places on the planet, a place where the practice of homosexuality has been widely and unquestioningly embraced, the suicide rate among individuals identifying as gay is 8 times that of men in heterosexual marriages.

I return then to the Denver Archdioceses' statement, focusing now on the closing paragraph: "To allow children in these circumstances to continue in our school would be a cause of confusion for the student in that what they are being taught in school conflicts with what they experience in the home."

Odd that the Church, the very "cause" of such suffering in persons identifying as homosexual, would base a decision upon the purported well being of the students.  I'd wager many would argue that's not at all the case.  But it is, much as our confused and troubled world would like to deny it.

The Church recognizes the grave disservice done to a child who is being taught one thing at home and another in school... and with that, the autonomy of the parent.  Now, does this mean the Church should cow to the beliefs of the individual and adjust her doctrine accordingly to suit the will of the people?  Again, no.  It doesn't work that way.  I've said it before, but "man does not his own reality construct."  Well, except on reality TV.  But that's really another matter.

What this couple is essentially asking of the Church is a renouncement of belief on the Church's part.  Notice that the Church does not respond in kind, does not demand from the couple that they renounce their beliefs.  It is quite simply a difference of opinions ... on the nature of sin.

Our role as Catholics, as Christians, is to preach the Gospel, not to enforce it.  I know a million people would argue that this is precisely the Church's policy ... but they misunderstand the nature of sin and of the human person.  The Gospel, after all, speaks for itself through Christ and His disciples, through their lived witness, and much of what is contained "is a hard teaching... who can bear it?"

Who indeed?

More to follow...