Why is Hollywood is obsessed with sex?: The movie “Hologram for the King” should have been about other things

25 06 2020

To begin, I recently watched an old movie called “Hologram for the King.” In the movie, a mid-aged man (Tom Hanks) traveled to Saudi Arabia to pitch a proposal for a hologram to the oil rich king of Saudi Arabia. On arrival, he discovers to his astonishment that things were not what he expected. Apart from having to deal with the heat and the dust, the culture clash left him reeling, and to make matters worse, he had no clue when the king who is traveling all over the world was going to show up for the meeting. The king’s cousin who was in charge during his absence was equally elusive. To add, he had to deal with a mysterious lump on his back, which he attempted to explore with a kitchen knife causing enough bleeding for his friend and driver, Kareem, to convince him to see a doctor.
At the hospital, he encounters a middle-aged Saudi woman- doctor and of course, they fall in love and begin a secret escapade. Finally, Hanks abandons his wife and daughter in America and settles down in Saudi Arabia with his newfound love.
It is striking how quickly an apparently solid story rumples down to sex and animal attraction between two mid aged people.
I wonder why they did not call it “The sex life of a mid-aged couple.” It is a pity that in the entire length of the movie, the king, and the hologram appeared only for a few flickering seconds.
Why is sex, divorce, and marital infidelity so important a theme in Hollywood films?
Hanks ditches a daughter who loves him dearly. He ditches friends, family, and relatives—chuck all out to live in Saudi Arabia with a woman he barely knows and whose culture and life would be burdensome. With any luck, right thinking people would know that this is widely unrealistic and any man that does that deserves a movie made about him even less.
It is not very hard to imagine a better ending for this movie. Hanks, if he were a real man, would have realized immediately that relationship with this Saudi woman would be self-defeating. That it would end up hurting him and the people he loves. It should have hit him like ice water that a life’s commitments he has with his wife and daughter is invaluable and should not be traded for quick fixes and, moreover, in a few years, he would be old and wrinkled and she even more, since science says women age much faster than men do. If Hanks were a real man, he would have thought through and walked away from that short-lived pleasure. That would have been a better ending.

by
Chinwuba Iyizoba


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Surviving Adultery: Story of Kobe &Vanessa Bryant

26 06 2019
Kolbe and Vanessa Braynt
Kobe and Vanessa Bryant

There is a saying that the most beautiful woman has not yet been born. If a husband does not guard his eyes, he will ditch his wife. Basket ball superstar, Kobe Bryant (25) learnt this the hard way in 2003 when a 19 yro woman accused him of raping her in his hotel room.

Facing a 25 yrs to life jail sentence, he initially rebutted the allegation, but when police told him they had evidence, he firmly denied raping her but confessed to having sex with her which was adultery against his wife of two years and mother of his daughter. Further probe exposed strings of affairs with other women unknown to his wife.

Due to inconsistency in the woman’s testimonies and her refusal to testify in court, the case never went to trial and was settled out of court. Yet, much damage has been done to Bryant’s career but more important, to his marriage.  His wife, Vanessa, felt deeply betrayed and humiliated but unlike other woman didn’t immediately file for divorce.

Perhaps, she understood what most people do not understand: adulterous men are often victims of their own weaknesses: a deep inclination to respond sexually to the sight of any beautiful woman.

In the video, “Sex and the power of visuals,” Dennis Prager argues that the mere sight of a beautiful woman alone is enough to sexual arouse an average normal man yet it takes far more to arouse a woman.  That is why men spend millions annually to see women with little or no clothing on. Magazines market their products with pictures of women with little to no clothing on, or even parts of women, like legs and breasts. (See video below)

On the other hand, many women commit adultery not because of an overwhelming sex urge on sighting a handsome man, but because they are looking for something or are in one form of trouble or another. In many cases, financial difficulties push wives into adultery, especially when their husbands are struggling financially or when they are emotionally or sexually dissatisfied or desire children that their husbands can’t give; studies also show that women are more attracted to men who are successful–superstars, men with money.

At a net worth of millions of dollars, Kobe had lots of female fans who would literally do anything for him, no holds barred, even setting sexual traps. As the story went his rape accuser had offered to show him the tattoo on her back.

To be faithful, it therefore means that a man must guard his eyes and thus his heart. An involved effort not to “look” at a beautiful woman is hard swallow for many men, yet with little effort of self-mastery, it can be learnt. There is a subtle difference between “looking” and “seeing”. A man can “see” a woman without necessarily “looking” at her–which is taking in the details of her size, shape and figure. A husband who is looking at a woman who isn’t his wife is merely looking for trouble and is on a short route to infidelity. It goes without saying that husbands who watch internet pornography are willing dupes of Satan who has them bound in cast iron chains on the path to marital destruction.

Forgiveness and mercy

Many spouses wouldn’t be quick to run to  divorce courts if they knew that in most cases, adultery stems from weakness on the part of the offending spouse rather than malice or an absence of love. Studies show that 56% of husbands who admitted to cheating said that they were happy with their marriages while 34% of adulterous wives rated their marriage as “happy”.When spouses better understand the factors enabling adultery, they can easily overcome angst and work towards helping their spouses overcome their weaknesses.

Vanessa Bryant overcame her angst and  “manned” up to the task of helping her husband overcome his failings by talking with a priest.

“One thing that really helped me during that process was talking to a priest and that was the turning point,” Kobe told GQ Magazine.

“It was actually kind of funny: He looks at me and says, ‘Did you do it?’ And I say, ‘Of course not.’ Then he asks, ‘Do you have a good lawyer?’ And I’m like, ‘Uh, yeah, he’s phenomenal.’ So then he just said, ‘Let it go. Move on. God’s not going to give you anything you can’t handle, and it’s in his hands now. This is something you can’t control. So let it go.”

Talking with a priest or going for “spiritual direction” is not only popular among Catholics like Kobe and Venessa Bryant, but is often practiced by many people unawares. People seek the advice of a mechanic or a plumber because they know more about cars and plumbing. Likewise when sick, people go to speak to a doctor. Bryant was spiritually sick, he cheated on his wife and was facing jail term; he was in need of spiritually healing and needed talk with a good mender of bad souls.

Everyone who has read the bible is familiar with the story of King David who committed adultery with Uriah’s wife and to cover up his crimes had Uriah killed in a battle, but God sent the prophet Nathan to talk to him and acknowledged his sins and repented.

When people are ill, they go to a doctor, and not just any doctor but a good doctor.  Accordingly, couples should do what in business is called “due diligence” to find the best spiritual consultant to solve their problems. Be he a priest, a relative or a friend, he should be a person who leads a worthy life, with a deep piety, wisdom, experience, maturity, zeal for souls and an unquestionable faithfulness to all the Church’s teaching. He need not have formal training in spiritual direction.

Couples should remember that it’s not just a one off talk; they should try to make it a regular visit because healing can take many years and the root cause of infidelity may lie in deep recesses difficult to reach. Thus regular spiritual direction will help couples talk over issues relating to their marriage and family, work, friendship, and social life and this can bring them closer together. There should be an effort to address a very particular area of their life which needs improvement, that defect or fault that keeps them from making more rapid progress.  From time to time they may simply need to unburden themselves of unexpected joys and sorrows that come their way.  If they are seeing a priest for direction, they may also want to avail themselves of the Sacrament of Penance, adding the sacramental grace to the actual graces received from being open and docile in spiritual direction.

Thus every spouse should know that adultery isn’t necessarily the end of marriage. If the offending spouse is served understanding, forgiveness and mercy rather than divorce papers, marital harmony may return even richer. This was how the Kobe and Vanessa Bryant saved their marriage and they have been married for 18 years now with 4 adorable children.

Chinwuba Iyizoba


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“Dump him” list for girls

20 03 2019

Here is a list for girls of sixteen behaviors enough to end a relationship- or, at the very least, place serious doubt in your heart about continuing the relationship.

School boy and girl
  1. You’ve had to tell him more than once to stop.
  2. You feel the need to “fix” him.
  3. He looks at pornography.
  4. He hits you, pushes you, or does anything to frighten you.
  5. He has a drinking or drug problem.
  6. He doesn’t care if you lie to your family.
  7. He leads you away from God.
  8. He puts you down- even if he then says he’s “just kidding.”
  9. He cheats on you.
  10. He lies to you.
  11. He flirts with other girls.
  12. He uses guilt to get you to do what he wants.
  13. He resents time you spend with your friends and family.
  14. He behaves badly and then blames it on other people or on things that happen to him.
  15. He can’t stand on his own two feet without you; he emotionally unable to function by himself.
  16. You can’t stay with him and remain pure.”

From Jason & Crystalina Evert and Brian Butler, Theology of the Body for Teens: Student Workbook, p. 170. 2006, Ascension Press.**


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The canal man

4 11 2017

Sometime ago, someone sent me a picture of a “church”building designed like a naked woman, legs spread and the entrance to this church through her sex organ. I was shocked at the crudity of those who put these things up on social media and horrified by the picture.

(sorry it would be highly inappropriate to publish the picture here)

I don’t know if the picture is real or not, I don’t know if such a building exists or not, but one thing I know for sure is that the devil has the world on a checkmate, yes with canality! The canal man  can not see God, God says, and the devil knows. The modern man’s obsession with genitalia and the unbearable abuse of every available media, print, movies, Internet, billboards with bizarre public showcasing of naked men and women in grotesque sex, acts previously unspeakable even in private whispers. The devil’s campaign of canality is the utter annihilation of every vestige of divine and holy in the souls of men, is gaining him a massive harvest of damned souls into eternal burning sulfur of hell of the damned. Before this time, a man who wished to damn his soul must seek out damnation in dark lurid holes, perhaps even spending money to find his ruinous pleasures in dark and seedy tarvans. No more. Tides have turned. Hell is loosed, and demonic things are common place. Christ is hemmed in from all sides, prevented from reaching the souls of men women and children, for whom he died. The man or woman who wishes to be saved must guard his/her sight and flee . Like Odyssey , he must plug his ears or the sirens of hades will snap tiny strings binding him to the Way of salvation.
He must carry his own environment with him, maintaining an interior dailog inside his heart with God. He must learn to ignore the world, and switch of television shows with immoral content. Like a soldier in a minefield, he must tread with caution on the Internet, sidestepping clips and views poisonous to his soul. No one is immuned, neither young nor old, for what stains a child, stains an adult. Scripture says, if you so much as look at a woman with lust, you have committed Adultery. Do we wonder why Adultery is epidemic sweeping our neighborhoods? Let us be wise and guard our hearts, guard our eyes.

In this video Bishop Barron describes how the fruits of the spirit are kindness, peace, generosity and happiness, while the fruits of the devil are canality, wickedness and immorality.


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Alcohol Sex and Girls: Effects of a toxic culture By Anne Maloney

14 06 2016

alcohol sex and girls

A few weeks ago, a young woman at Stanford University was raped by a virtual stranger, and her rapist received a ridiculously light sentence. The story grabbed headlines everywhere, and caused a firestorm on social media. This “dumpster rape” is being blared about everywhere in the public square while a far more insidious and dangerous threat to women rages on directly under our noses, unacknowledged. This threat is systematically destroying an entire generation of our daughters, sisters, aunts, future mothers, and friends.

The young woman who was raped behind the dumpster has an advantage over most young women today: she knows she was raped. She is angry, and rightly so. She realizes that she has been violated, and she can try to find a way to heal. The young women I encounter every day on the campus of the university where I teach are worse off than this victim, because they do not know what has gone wrong in their lives. Nonetheless, something has gone terribly wrong, and on some level, they know it.

In thirty years of teaching, I have come to know thousands of women between the ages of eighteen and twenty-six. These women are hurting. Badly. Consider these examples from “the front lines”: a young woman says to me with all earnestness, “This weekend I went to my first college party, and I hit it off with a guy so we went into the back bedroom where the coats were and started kissing, but then he reached down, moved my panties aside and penetrated me, so I guess I’m not a virgin anymore.” Another young woman came to me in tears because her doctor told her that since she has genital warts, she may have trouble conceiving children in the future. She had always assumed she would get married and have a family someday. “And the worst part is,” she wailed, “I’m not even promiscuous. I’ve only had sex with six guys.” This young woman was nineteen when she said this to me.

Once, in a writing assignment about Socrates and the Allegory of the Cave, a student wrote that she decided to make better choices after she woke up one morning in a trailer, covered with scratches, naked, next to a man she didn’t remember meeting. At least she knew there was a problem. All too often, these women come to me in a state of bewilderment. Women have never been more “sexually liberated” than these women are, or so they are told. No more are they shackled by ridiculous bonds like commandments, moral rules, words like “chastity.” They shout: “We’re free!” Yet they whisper: “Why are we so miserable?”

It is no coincidence that the top two prescribed drugs at our state university’s health center are anti-depressants and the birth-control pill. Our young women are showing up to a very different version of “college life” than that of the previous generation. One woman, while in her freshman year, went to her health center because she feared she had bronchitis. In perusing her “health history,” the physician said, “I see here that you are a virgin.” “Um, yes,” she responded, wondering what that fact might have to do with her persistent cough. “Would you like to be referred for counseling about that?” This student came to me to ask if I thought she should, in fact, consider her virginity—at the age of eighteen—a psychological issue. (I said no.)

In a seminar I teach every other year, we discuss the ways that addiction reveals certain truths about embodiment. One of the books we discuss is Caroline Knapp’s Drinking: A Love Story. The students adore this book, and we have fascinating conversations in class. The chapter that generates by far the most passion, however, is the chapter on drinking and sex. Knapp speaks honestly about the key role that alcohol played in her decisions to have sex, sex that she regretted and that made her feel terrible. My students resonate deeply with Knapp’s experiences, and I continue to be struck by how unfree these students feel. Once the culture embraced non-marital sex and made it the norm, women who do not want to have casual sex often feel like outcasts, like weirdos. College is the last place where one wants to feel like an utter misfit; couple that with the fact that first year students are away from home for the first time—lonely, vulnerable, insecure—and you have the recipe for meaningless sexual encounters followed by anxiety and depression.

Why don’t these women just stop it? Rather than get drunk in order to have casual sex, why don’t they put down the glass AND the condom? The world we have created for these young people is a world which welcomes every sort of sexual behavior except chastity. Anal sex? Okay! Threesomes? Yep. Sex upon the first meeting? Sure! Virginity until marriage? What the hell is wrong with you? I am going to go out on a limb here and suggest that the reason so many college-aged women binge-drink is so that they can bear their own closeted sorrow about what they are doing. The woman who got drunk and got raped behind the dumpster is the victim of a toxic culture. But my students are also the victims of a toxic culture. Small wonder that the number of women suffering from eating disorders, addiction, anxiety and depression is at an all-time high.

I have not been raped, and I did not engage in non-marital intercourse. I did have an encounter early in my life, however, that gives me a glimpse of the shame experienced by women who “hook up.” When I was sixteen years old, my sister took me to a bar near her college campus. The bar was one designated by students as the “easy in” place, because I.D.’s were checked cursorily if at all. Once we were inside the bar, my sister was swept away by a phalanx of her friends, and I lost her in the crowd. A “college man” at the bar noticed me, and came over to ask me if I would like something to drink. I had no idea what to order or how, as I had never been to a bar before. He reassured me that he would take good care of me, and went over to the bartender. When he came back with a Tequila Sunrise, he said it would taste great, like Hawaiian Punch. He was right; it was delicious, and I gladly accepted three more from him. The next thing I remember, I was doing some very intensive French-kissing with this fellow, and he was murmuring a suggestion that we “take this somewhere else.” By the grace of God, my sister’s boyfriend had just entered the bar, saw me, pulled me away from the man, and dragged me to the back of the bar and my sister. That was my first kiss. The next morning, I experienced my first true hangover. As awful as I felt physically, though, my shame was much, much worse. A romantic through-and-through, I had dreamed for years of my first kiss. A drunken slobber with a stranger was the brutal reality I would never be able to undo.

And yet, whenever I tell people this story, they are shocked that I am making “such a big deal” about that night. People drink. They kiss. But for the grace of God and a sister’s boyfriend, they end up in a stranger’s bed with a bad headache, a dry mouth, and an incalculable emptiness. I am often told, “Lighten up!” “You had fun. Big deal!” “Why are you so hard on yourself?” I kept speaking the truth of that awful experience, but my culture could not absorb that truth. I had no words for my sadness; it was only later in my life when I was a stronger person that I was able to say, “You know what? It was a big deal. It wasn’t fun. I did feel ashamed.”

A few years ago, I was online and saw that man’s name come up on a blog that I read. He graduated from the college and became a respected and award-winning journalist. When I told some friends I had found him and he was now famous, they suggested that I “network” and re-introduce myself to him online. I was horrified at the thought of doing any such thing; after more than thirty-five years, I was still deeply ashamed of that night. It was years before I realized how very ashamed he should have been. In fact, given my age and obvious vulnerability, his behavior was predatory and vicious. The fact that he ought to have been ashamed, however, did not mean that I needn’t have been. Had this fellow succeeded in taking me somewhere to do what he intended, I would have felt degraded. The culture of “Sex and the City” and “Girls” would have insisted that I was fine, I was a modern woman, I was “free.” I knew better. Yes, I was sixteen, but I knew I wasn’t supposed to be in a bar that night. I knew I was not of legal age to drink. I knew that accepting drinks from complete strangers is a very bad idea. I never told my mother about that night, but if I had, she would have said, “Anne, you know better.” To say that I had no choices that night is to rob me of the moral agency that I, in fact, had. At sixteen, I may not have known how to articulate that fact, but I do now.

An entire generation of women is wounded yet unable to find the source of the bleeding. There is, indeed, an “unconscious despair” behind their “games and amusements.” They “hook up,” feel awful and have no idea why. It’s hard to heal when you don’t know you’ve been damaged. And the despair and shame that these women who hook up feel is real. Contemporary sexual culture is toxic for young women, and until women stand up and acknowledge that fact, despair, sadness and regret are going to be the underlying chord structure of their very lives. We fail an entire generation when we withhold from them the “wisdom not to do desperate things.”


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How I Lost My Virginity by Coraline Yetunde

9 02 2016

caroline

I started “habitually and compulsively” watching pornography or blue films as it is popularly called and engaging in sex when I stumbled across pornography at 13 years old. At first, I was appalled, but by the time I saw it over and over again, as violent and degrading as it was, I began to see it as love. The two people on the screen are being intimate.  I began to imagine myself in the scene as opposed to standing outside of it looking in.  I was stimulated by the fantasy of being that woman in the video and I began to try out what I watched.

I view online pornography everyday for half an hour or more at a time, and I have done this on multiple occasions and have felt “out of control” with sex, sexting and masturbation. I have had sex with about 57 men and none of my relationship ever lasted for more than a month. Simple things like a guy’s hairy chest or the outline of his trousers can trigger intense sexual desires in my head and at times masturbate five or six times a day. It is that bad.  I am 43 and unmarried and I really don’t know who will marry me. I have had four abortions and I have had to treat myself  5 times for severe sexual transmitted disease.

All in all, I suffer severe depression and know I would have remained a virgin till marriage but for the availability of online pornography. Pornography has almost ruined my life and yet it is everywhere. It used to be sold discreetly behind the counter or some obscure bookshops, now, millions of websites are offering the most depraved hardcore graphic and lurid sex scenes a click away on any smartphone with internet connection bringing in its wake an unprecedented obsession with sex building up some brutal and unattainable sexual desires which guarantee that they easily succumb any temptation to have sex with almost anybody. Actually, if you are watching pornography, you don’t need a guy to tempt you into having sex. You are practically going to be begging for it.

I recently came across the video of Oghosa Ovienrioba Speaks on how she got addicted to porn at 14 and her work helping others to kick the habit.

She says, “Lots of people don’t think girls can suffer a porn addiction but it’s a problem for both sexes. I hope I can help others out there – talking about your problem is the first step.’

‘I was 14 years old when I went to find porn on the internet. It was out of curiosity and it was just a simple Google search for me to get hold of an adult movie.‘When I first watched it, my reaction was shock. But gradually over time, that shock becomes excitement and I would use any porn that I could get my hands on.’

‘I was watching it so much that I started to get bored by the “normal” soft porn movies.

‘I wasn’t getting the buzz that I felt when I first saw it – in fact I was almost desensitized to that content.

‘I went from watching soft pornography to dodgier stuff to get the kick I needed.’

‘For a period of two to three years, I was watching porn on a daily basis and sometimes masturbating over six times per day. It was all I could think about.’

‘I didn’t see people as people anymore – they were just sex objects to me.

‘The simplest things could set me off such as a girl unbuttoning her blouse or a boy taking his top off. Everything made me want more.

‘I would sit in my room alone for hours, with the lights off, watching porn. I felt lonely and ashamed of myself.’

Please watch her talk about her porn addiction in the 10 min video below

It is not just her, many guys wish they could stop right now but the urge to watch porn and masturbate are just too much for them Read

To understand harm watching pornography does to your brain, please download and read the Porn Circuit:the_porn_circuit_covenant_eyes

Although much attention is focused on helping men break free from pornography addictions, ministries are rising up to help women find deliverance from this bondage. Beggar’s Daughter, Bethesda Workshops and Dirty Girls Ministries, among others, are offering God’s grace to women trapped in sexual sin. If you or a woman you know is addicted to pornography, I urge you to seek help.


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Still a Virgin? 29yrs old Beauty gives her reasons

17 01 2016

Mandy pics

Twenty-nine-year-old Mandy Dobbelmann is a Minnesota native who lives in Los Angeles, CA. Mandy is a singer/songwriter, music teacher, blogger, and justice-fighter who is passionate about the issues of sex trafficking, prostitution, and abortion.
I stumbled upon an article Mandy wrote,”Keeping Sex Complicated,” for her blog,”Forte e Bello.” The title of her blog post made me curious, and since it was floating around my Facebook feed, I decided to read it. I’m thankful I did.

The Italian “Forte e Bello” means “strong and beautiful.” After reading through Mandy’s blog, I’d say that description fits her perfectly.

Mandy has a striking physical beauty paired with a loving heart that exudes vibrant joy, hope, and faith. In her article, Mandy tells her readers what it’s like to live in a city where sex appeal is everything and sexual addiction prevails, and where your sexual history is directly correlated with your identity.

Mandy writes:

I live in a city that is the porn capital of the world and that teaches the rest of culture through the influence of Hollywood and the media that sex is easy, uncomplicated and nothing more than a human appetite. Since I’ve moved to LA, the most common reaction I get from friends and coworkers when they find out I’m a virgin is a blank stare followed by an abrupt, ‘Why?’ I realize most people assume there must be something wrong with anyone who is still a virgin past the age of twenty. It’s the type of thing they’ll interview you on Oprah for (The Thirty Year Old Virgin) or make a comedy about (The Forty Year Old Virgin). It’s the type of thing people hide in shame over and vehemently deny in the face of peer pressure.
Mandy’s right in her assessment of the times. Being a virgin past adolescence in 2014 is not an easy thing. College campuses offer the morning-after pill in vending machines, sexually provocative dances like “twerking” are all the rage, and people dare to sell their virginity for cash.

In the midst of all of this, Mandy is unashamed to share her views on sex. Mandy wants others to know she’s a virgin not because she’s sheltered or mentally askew. Rather, she believes that sex is valuable. Her Christian faith teaches her she’s made in the image of God, and she refuses to become one with a man who hasn’t made a life commitment to her. In her own words, she says, “I’m a virgin because I am a passionate proponent of keeping the sanctity, beauty and value in sex”.

Mandy makes it clear that her virgin status in no way makes her more valuable than the person who has had many partners. She isn’t saying that those who engage in sex outside marriage don’t value themselves. Mandy is declaring that the reason she chooses to wait is that she views sex as a beautiful, powerful, and binding act. Mandy sees sex as complicated, not just a casual act.

She writes:

Our culture tries to un-complicate sex by advocating to, “do it often and with multiple partners.” We try to un-complicate sex by dumbing it down to a mere appetite. Even if it were a mere appetite then a good majority of our culture could be classified as sexually obese. Let’s face it. Sex is complicated. It is the driving force of many people’s lives. And they will loose all human reason to indulge in it for a fleeting second. Sex is powerful. It has the power to bind together or tear apart. It has the power to heal or destroy. It has the power to build up or tear down. It has the power to give or to take. It has the power to mar or to make beautiful.
I admire Mandy’s stand. As a 32-year-old virgin who’s happily getting married this summer, I know how challenging it can be to save sex for marriage. As a woman who works at a pregnancy resource center, I also see the damaging effects of sex outside marriage. Sex is meant to be a holistic experience that touches our minds, bodies, souls, and emotions. It’s more than just a pleasure; it’s a pleasure that comes with great responsibility.

A 2010 study called “RELATE” interviewed 2,035 married participants who waited until marriage to have sex. The study found that people who delayed sex till marriage

rated sexual quality 15% higher than people who had premarital sex
rated relationship stability as 22% higher
rated satisfaction with their relationships 20% higher
Not to mention that abstinence is the only 100% effective way to avoid STDs and pregnancy. Delaying sex ’til marriage is a healthy, responsible, and affirming life choice. I support Mandy in her decision and applaud others who are following the same example.

LifeNews Note: Christinia Martin writes for Live Action News. Martin has been a pro-life voice for eight years. Her work began after her mother confessed she paid a doctor to abort her, but walked out before he could. Knowing she was saved from death, she wanted to fight for others.


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Is the Catholic Church unrealistic about Sex? by Peter Kreeft

29 05 2013

Sex and the church
No, on the contrary, the Church is the only institution in the world that is totally realistic about sex.
Realism means thinking about reality, thinking about what a thing really is. That is exactly what the Church does–and what our modern culture does not do.
1. The first and most important foundation for thinking about sexual morality is to understand what sex is. You cannot understand what anything ought to be unless you understand what it is. You cannot understand what “good X” and “bad X” is unless you understand what X is. And that applies to sex as well as to X

2. But the Church’s teaching is all about the ideal, not the real; about what sex is supposed to be, not what it is. If you want to start with reality, you must start with the brute facts. Sex is simply a fact of life, like hair and thirst and death. Sex is not merely a “fact”, like the color of your eyes. It is more like a look, a glance of the eyes. It has deep meaning and purpose. It means something, it points to something, like a sign or a word or a pointing finger. It doesn’t just happen, like a belch, but it speaks, like a word.

The word it speaks is love. Sex means love. Sexual activity is one kind of love. We often call it “making love”. It is a form of speech, of body language. And what it says is: “I love you with my body, with my sexuality; I love your sexual identity with my sexual identity; I love your whole identity, body and soul, with my whole identity, body and soul.” Since it means that wholeness, it does not mean merely “My body wants your body for my body’s pleasure.” That is all that sex means for the animals, but it means something much more personal for human persons.
There are also many other kinds of love besides sexual love: for instance, instinctive liking, comfortable familiarity, friendship, charity, and admiration. We even say “I’d love a steak dinner” or “I loved that vacation” or “I love to listen to that music.” In other words, we love things and we love persons, but obviously not in the same way. When we love persons as if they were things, when we use persons as mere means to the end of our own selfish pleasure, that is a profound misuse of love. For instance, slavery and prostitution both use people as means instead of loving and respecting them as ends.

3. All right, then, so sex is about love. But the Church says sex is about babies, that sex is for procreation. Sex is about both. That’s the Church’s point. What most clearly distinguishes sexual love from all other kinds of love is that by its very essence, by its nature, it is fertile. It leads to procreation as naturally as eating leads to nutrition or exercise leads to healthy muscles. That is simply a biological fact. It’s called the “reproductive system”. Sex makes babies. That is its nature. What it does is part of what it is. Its natural effect is part of its nature. If you leave sex alone, sex can lead to conception–unless you stop it by some form of contraception. That’s why contraception is called “contra-ception”: it works against conception. That presupposes that conception would happen by nature, without our doing anything more, unless we did something against sex, fought against it, fought against its natural effect.
Exercise, eating, and sex are also by nature pleasurable but in obviously different ways and degrees. Sexual pleasure is different from all other pleasures, just as the pleasure of eating is also different from all other pleasures, and so is even the pleasure of exercising. That is also a fact, a biological and psychological fact.
So just as the nature of eating includes both its unique effect (nutrition) and its unique pleasure (the satisfaction of hunger), and just as the nature of exercise includes both its unique effect (stronger muscles) and its unique pleasure, so the nature of sex includes both its unique effect (babies) and its unique pleasure. There are thousands of things that give us pleasure, but in general, the greater the effect, the greater the pleasure. No effect that we can ever produce is as great as new people, and no pleasure is as intense as sexual pleasure.

4. So how does that make sex sacred? Pig sex makes baby pigs too, but that doesn’t make pig sex sacred.
Animal sex is not sacred because animals are not sacred. But human sex is sacred because humans are sacred. Sex is sacred because sex is not just made by humans but sex makes humans, makes more of those sacred things that we call human beings.
Let’s look more closely at what sex makes, or procreates; let’s look at those amazing things we call persons, or people. What is distinctive about persons? Why are they sacred? They alone, of all the things in this material universe, have infinite value, because they are not just God’s creatures but God’s children. Birds and flowers and rocks and stars and everything else in the created universe are creatures too and have value. (“Creature” means simply “created thing”.) But we are not just God’s creatures but God’s children because God is not only our Creator but our Heavenly Father. We are not just created, but created in God’s image.

5. What does that mean, that we are created “in the image of God”?
It means that, unlike all the other things in the universe, which are just material things, we are also spiritual, like God. We have spiritual souls as well as material bodies. And two of the powers of the spiritual soul are the mind and the will. We can think and we can choose. We can know and we can love.
And because we are spirit as well as matter, because we have souls as well as bodies, we are immortal. When the stars die, billions of years from now, every one of us will still be alive. Each individual lasts longer than any nation or empire on earth. That is why we have intrinsic value. You can’t put a price on a person. Each person is worth more than the entire universe.
That is what sex makes: new persons, new children of God, new immortals.
Procreation is literally a miracle. Every time we naturally make a new human body by sexual intercourse, God supernaturally creates a new human soul. God creates whenever we procreate.
This is one of the two greatest miracles in the universe, for it is one of the two ways God Himself keeps entering the universe to perform a miracle, to do something only God can do. The other ongoing miracle is the Eucharist, where God transforms bread and wine into His own Body and Blood every time a priest says the words “This is My Body” and “This is My Blood” over the bread and wine in the Mass. This is why sex is holy, like the Eucharist. It is not “dirty”; it is holy.
Unholy people feel “dirty” in the presence of something holy, like a saint, or a miracle, or an angel, or the Blood of Christ. In the presence of great sinners, we feel like saints, but in the presence of great saints, we feel like sinners. In the presence of something very good and holy and clean, we feel unworthy and unholy and unclean.

6. But sex doesn’t always make new people. It doesn’t have to. You can be sure it doesn’t by using birth control. So sex isn’t always holy.
Yes it is, because it always is what it is. It never loses its nature, even when it is prevented from exercising its power. A person who is bound and gagged and tied to a chair is prevented from exercising his power of walking and talking, but he is still a person and still a walker and talker, unlike a chair. When sex is prevented from exercising its power of procreation by contraception, it is still sex and still a holy thing. A priest who cannot offer the Mass is still a priest.
Contraceptive sex is artificial, not natural. The point here is not that everything artificial is wrong–of course not–but the point is simply that sex makes babies by its very nature. That is part of its significance, its meaning. Just as sex means love, just as it means “I want to give you my whole self, my body and my soul, my whole person, my whole personality, sexual and spiritual, material and mental, all of me, completely”, it also means children, just as an eye means seeing or a sword means fighting or a word means communicating. It is not a meaning we add to sex, but a meaning that is in it by its own nature. Unless you do something to stop it, sex makes babies.
In fact, this second meaning flows from the first one: the “baby-meaning” flows from the “love-meaning”. “I want to give you all of myself” means “I also want to give you my fertility” and “I want to give you my life, my children, my family, my future. I want to share my whole life with you.” That is the “message” God put into human sexuality when He designed it.
These two meanings (love and babies) do not just happen to be both there together by accident, but they are meant to be there together (as two lovers sense that they were “meant to be together”). By its very nature, sex means both intimate, total, self-giving love and procreation (babies, family).
That is why cloning and creating test-tube babies are wrong. They are not just unnatural but anti-natural. They are not wrong because they are artificial or technological but because they tear up God’s design for sex. They say yes to one half of it and no to the other half. As contraception says no to babies and yes to sex, they say yes to babies and no to sex. What God joined together, they separate. It is like divorce. (Remember Jesus’ words against divorce: “What therefore God has joined together, let no man put asunder” [Mt 19:6]). For it was not just one man and one woman, but also God, who made the marriage. It takes three to get married.
That is the same reason why rape and prostitution are evil. They are unnatural, antinatural, against God’s design for the nature of human sex. Homosexual sex, bestiality (sex with animals), and masturbation (sex with yourself) are wrong for the same reason. (They are not all equally bad, but they are all bad.) They are wrong because they are antinatural, and antinatural sex is so wrong only because natural sex is so right. They are so bad only because sex is so good. They pervert a very, very good thing. They deface a holy picture, an icon.
That is also why artificial contraception is antinatural and wrong. Sex that deliberately refuses all procreation refuses part of its own essential nature and thus violates the very nature of sex.
It’s not just a question of how you feel about it, whether you feel comfortable with it or uncomfortable, whether you feel it’s desirable or disgusting. Most people in our culture no longer feel that contraception is disgusting, as they used to. Most people in our culture still feel that bestiality is disgusting, but some don’t. Some people feel that homosexual sex is disgusting, and some don’t. But all three kinds of sex are wrong for the same reason. The reason is not how we feel, but what it really is. Morality is not based on subjective feelings but on objective reality. You can’t tell whether something is good or evil just by looking at your feelings. You have to look at what it really is. The question of whether X is morally good or evil is a question about X, not a question about you! You can’t find out what a thing really is by looking at how you feel about it, unless you are God. You can find out what anything is by looking at how God feels about it, because God designed it. But you didn’t. (Unless you are God!)

7. Does that mean that all birth control is wrong?
No. Spacing and planning births is not unnatural and wrong. Natural family planning (NFP) does this by respecting the essential nature of sex and of the male and female human bodies and a woman’s natural fertility cycle.
(By the way, nearly all couples who practice NFP are very happy and satisfied with it–and with each other. The divorce rate among NFP couples is 1-4 percent, in a society where it is nearly 50 percent. That tells you something!)

8. You say sex is for babies. But it is also for pleasure. Sexual pleasure is as natural to sex as babies are. To suppress its natural pleasure is as unnatural as suppressing its natural fertility.
This is true! Sex also obviously gives great pleasure. And that is no more an accident than babies are. That is part of God’s design. When He invented sex, He put great joy into it from the beginning, because He thought so highly of it. He could have invented other ways for us to come into the world instead of sex, or He could have put less joy into this way that He invented for us, but He didn’t. (That’s why the Church respects it so much: because God does.)
He put such great joy into it because He put two other great things into it: intimate, total self giving love, and the procreation of new persons, who will live forever. The Church puts a far higher value on sex than the world does. The better something is, the more respectful we are to it, the less we treat it like trash. We take great care with things of great value, like art masterpieces (but not casual sketches), or pets (but not animals out in the wild), or persons (but not mere things).

9. Why do the rules of sexual morality have to be so complex?
They are not complex at all. They are embarrassingly simple, uncomfortably simple. The moral law is not complex and difficult to think about; it is difficult to live. Ignorance is not the biggest enemy of morality; selfishness is. Most moral problems are solved not by cleverness but by honesty.
The essential Christian (and Jewish and Muslim) moral law about sex, from the beginning, has always been very simple: “You shall not commit adultery.” “You shall not adulterate sex.” Everyone knows what that means. It means don’t cheat on your spouse. Don’t have sex with others. You can’t give your whole self to more than one other whole self.
The place for sex is marriage. The perfection of sex happens only in marriage, in a voluntary, committed, lifelong, faithful, heterosexual relationship of mutual, total, self-giving, love. That is what marriage is: that is its essence, its nature, what God designed it to be. The connection between sexual love and marriage is part of the essential nature of both sex and marriage. Marriage is as natural to sex as air is to birds or the sea is to fish. So we must look at marriage in our next chapter.

10. Why does sexual morality have to be so negative? “Don’t do this, don’t do that.”
There is only one reason for the “don’t’s”, and it is a “do”. There is only one reason for the negative, and that is a positive. There is only one reason why being unfaithful and giving your body sexually to many people is so wrong: because being sexually faithful and giving your whole body to one person is so right.
It’s also wrong because of the Golden Rule, “Do unto others what you would have them do unto you.” Everyone who commits adultery hides it from his spouse, because no one wants his spouse to do the same thing. It’s a sin against justice. It’s just not fair.
Worse than a sin against justice, it’s a sin against love. Adultery (sex with others after marriage) is a sin against your spouse, and fornication (sex with others before marriage) is a sin against your future spouse.
And it’s also a lie, a deliberate deception. For when you have sex with anyone, your body says, “Here is all of me for you”, but when you’re not married to that person, your mind does not say that. When you have sex with others, you lie. You lie with your body. When you have sex, you can’t help saying with your body, “I give you my whole self, body and soul”, because that is what the sex act says, what it means, by its nature. Yet with your intention, with your mind, you say something else. Your mind means the opposite of what your body means. If your mind didn’t mean the opposite of what your body is saying in the sex act but meant the same thing, then you would be intending and proposing marriage to your lover! You are lying. You are dishonoring your own honor.
The fact that you are lying is obvious when you cover it up later. You don’t want your spouse to know about it, not even your future spouse. That shows it was a lie, for it’s always lies that you cover up, by telling more lies. You don’t cover up truth.

Article written by Peter Kreeft Ph.D


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