Contraception, Bulimia, and Frankenfood

I finally read the Godspy piece in honor of Valentine's Day.  John Zmirak and Denise Matychowiak do great job of articulating the Church's teachings on sex and love.  The Theology of the Body has never made me laugh so hard.

Read it!

This suspicion towards even marital whoopie was manifested in moral manuals which warned couples repeatedly against the danger of "pollution," in the custom of "Irish foreplay" (five Guinnesses, then the Sorrowful Mysteries) and in the lives of the saints. Up until the 20th century, very few married folks were canonized—and of those who were, an astounding percentage had renounced sex altogether, or left their marital bed to become monks and nuns. This renunciation was typically presented not as grounds for entering marriage counseling, but as proof of heroic virtue. Well, maybe. But it seems to most Catholics today that there was something a little strange going on.

Meanwhile, over in the secular world, people have adopted the sexual ideology of the Marquis de Sade—who reasserted the Roman aristocrat's privilege of unlimited sexual expression, without regard to partner or progeny. In the early 20th century, this old creed gained respectability through the likes of Havelock Ellis and Margaret Sanger, and a birth control movement which promised to eugenically produce "more children from the fit, and fewer from the unfit." The work of the energetic pervert Alfred Kinsey moved things along, breaking down every barrier of modesty (and faking statistics) to "prove" that inside each American lurked a secret de Sade, who hungered to try every imaginable variation of sexual act—if only a prudish society would let him. The result, today, is that we rear children who mature sexually at the age of 10 or 11, and psychologically at 40, who are ready to rut in junior high, but are emotionally retarded, unable to contract enduring marriages, unwilling to procreate.

Comments

[Robert]

This is a chapter from an upcoming book, eh? Can't wait to see it when it comes out...I suspect I'll be buying multiple copies to give away as gifts.

[Aaron]

Stephen, do a story on how Matt from Lifeteen gave up his house for Lent and moved into a tent in his backyard. Seriously: http://www.lifeteen.com/?PageID=MTHOME