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Tuesday, December 11, 2012

Housewives Called to Communion

I keep handy a copy of J.I. Packer’s “A Quest for Godliness: The Puritan Vision for the Christian Life” [©1990 Crossway Books]. According to Packer, with respect to spirituality, “the Puritans are giants compared to us, giants whose help we need if ever we are to grow” (16).

Last, night, I came across the chapter on marriage and family. Packer notes “there is much to be learned by tracking Puritan thought on marriage and the family” (260). Especially, he notes, “the Puritans, like the Reformers, glorified marriage in conscious contradiction of the medieval idea that celibacy as practiced by clergy, monks, and nuns is better—more Christlike, more pleasing to God—than marriage, procreation, and family life” (260).

Packer cites a number of Puritan writings on the tenderness of married love. Here are several selections:

There is no such fountain of comfort on earth, as marriage.

It is a mercy to have a faithful friend that loveth you entirely … to whom you may open your mind and communicate your affairs …. And it is a mercy to have so near a friend to be a helper to your soul and … to stir up in you the grace of God.

God is the first Institutor of marriage, gave the wife to the husband, to bee, not his servant, but his helper, counselor, and comforter.

And then there is the well-known commentary of Matthew Henry on Genesis 2:22:

The woman was made of a rib out of the side of Adam; not made out of his head to top him, nor out of his feet to be trampled upon by him, but out of his side to be equal with him, under his arm to be protected, and near to his heart to be loved”.

Packer speaks of “the erotic agape of a romantic marriage” which was common in Puritan life.

Called to Desperation

This runs counter, now, to what the Called to Communion wives are experiencing. Perhaps they went along with their husband’s whims to give up the Reformed faith and move to Rome. I know, from correspondence with members of Jason Stellman’s church, that Jason’s wife did not give up her membership at Exile Presbyterian, and further, Jason’s youngest son made a profession of faith in that church. We should continue to pray for the difficulties left behind when these men gave up the faith.

“Marriage and Family” have a somewhat different meaning for Roman Catholics. Packer notes:

Thomas Aquinas gave teaching on womanhood that undergirded the opinion [that celibacy is more virtuous, more Christlike, and more pleasing to God]. He went so far as to opine that the birth of a girl is the result of a male embryo going wrong; that while a married man’s wife is a convenience to him, in that she enables him to procreate and avoid concupiscence (roving passion, prompting promiscuity), in all other respects a man will always make him a better companion and helpmeet than his wife, or any woman, can ever be. Furthermore, affirmed Aquinas, woman are mentally as well as physically weaker than men, and more prone to sin, and are always by their nature subject so some man. Husbands may correct their wives by corporal punishment if necessary, and children ought to love their father more than their mother. It may be said without fear of contradiction that the great theologian’s oracles about the second sex make distinctly dismal reading.

Nowadays, Roman Catholics pride themselves on their Church’s “Social Teaching”, but that is only a recent phenomenon. These attitudes of Aquinas were dominant for perhaps the largest portion of the time when “the Roman Catholic Church” was in ascendancy.

Thomas’ negativism here was not, indeed, entirely his fault; not only did Aristotle, whose thought Thomas sought to claim for Christianity, take a very low view of women, but many of the orthodox Fathers, whose teaching Thomas’ method required him to follow, had been just as negative and down-putting with regard to women, and even more so with regard to sexual relations in marriage. Chrysostom had denied that Adam and Eve could have had sexual relations before the Fall; Augustine allowed that procreation was lawful, but insisted that the passions accompanying intercourse were always sinful; Origen [who had made himself a eunuch for the Kingdom] had inclined himself to the theory that had sin not entered the world the human race would have been propagated in an angelic manner, whatever that might be, rather than by sexual union; and Gregory of Nyssa was sure that Adam and Eve had been made without sexual desire, and that had there been no Fall mankind would have reproduced by means of what Leland Ryken gravely calls ‘some harmless mode of vegetation’. (260–261).

Never fear. One reason why 90+% of Roman Catholic married couples today thumb their noses at Roman Catholic teaching about “marriage and family” is because John Paul II and Benedict XVI have been champions of a similar ethic on marriage. When he was a mere bishop, Karol Wojtyla (later John Paul II) wrote the book that was a major contribution to the birth control encyclical, Humanae Vitae.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer writes from prison (December 18, 1943) “to put it plainly, for a man in his wife’s arms to be hankering after the other world is, in mild terms, a piece of bad taste, and not God’s will. We ought to find and love God in what he actually gives us; if it pleases him to allow us to enjoy some overwhelmingly earthly happiness, we mustn’t try to be more pious than God himself and allow our happiness to be corrupted by presumption and arrogance, and by unbridled religious fantasy which is never satisfied with what God gives” (Letters and Papers from Prison, pg 168).

The Emperor Wants your Marriage

And yet, this is exactly the way that the “Holy Fathers” want Roman Catholics to approach love in marriage.

John Paul II cautions his readers that love in marriage can quickly turn to lust, and urges his readers not to succumb to it. There is a difference between “lust” and “holy sexual desire”. “John Paul goes on to articulate that while the sexual urge is itself a gift from God that attracts towards one another, it is possible that this can easily corrupt the person when he/she seeks only the sexual attributes of the other than the person as a whole.” (Rev. Benjamin P. Bradshaw: “The Theology of the Body according to Pope John Paul II: Conference IV: From Lust to Love, updated 3/20/2010). Citing Wojtyla’s “Love and Responsibility”:

Inevitably, then, the sexual urge in human beings is always in the natural course of things directed towards another human being, this is the normal form in which it takes. If it is directed towards the sexual attributes as such this must be recognized as an impoverishment or even a perversion of the urge…It is just because it [sexual urge] is directed towards a particular human being that the sexual urge can provide the framework within which and the basis on which the possibility of love arises (pg 49).

The document continues, citing Benedict XVI:

For his part, Pope Benedict beautifully addresses this distinction in his first encyclical Deus Caritas Est/God is Love published on Christmas day, 2005. In part I (of II) of the encyclical, Benedict addresses the transformation of eros, or erotic love (amor concupiscentiae) to agape or self-giving love (amor benevolentiae). The Holy Father points out that while erotic love is itself a great good, it must be purified, and in a way vivified by the self-sacrificing nature of agapic love:
An intoxicated and undisciplined eros, then, is not an ascent in “ecstasy” towards the Divine, but a fall, a degradation of man. Evidently, eros needs to be disciplined and purified if it is to provide not just fleeting pleasure, but a certain foretaste of the pinnacle of our existence, of that beatitude for which our whole being yearns…Purification and growth in maturity are called for; and these also pass through the path of renunciation. Far from rejecting or “poisoning” eros, they heal it and restore its true grandeur.

For the Roman Catholic male, then, you should remember Pope Benedict XVI when making love to your wife. He says it is good to make love to your wife, but then, the pope wants you to know that you ought not to be thinking lustful thoughts about her. That is a fall, a degradation. At that moment, you must take the pope’s instructions to heart and work toward “purification and growth in maturity” which are called for.

Wives, Roman Catholic wives, now, do not tempt your husbands to lust. Burn your lingerie, your lacey nighties; you too, must work for purification of yourself and your husband in bed, lest your corrupted eros ultimately lead to lust, and pride, and using your husband as a product.

You Desperate Called-to-Communion Housewives should now pause for a word from Your Holy Sponsor.

29 comments:

  1. Good article, John!

    Clement of Alexandria and Jerome also had goofy ideas of how evil sex is, even in marriage.

    That ancient attitude that "sex is dirty" - of so many of the early church fathers (Origen, Augustine, etc.) and the medieval RCs and even to modern day; - one of the clearest things that makes RCC a turnoff and shows it to be untrue and unbiblical - Genesis 2:24-25; Song of Solomon, Proverbs 5:15-20 - the ECF and RCC allegorization of Song of Solomon is really bad. That attitude caused a lot of the modern over-reaction that is in secular un-believing world and total debauchery and fornication and adultery and pornography is lauded as freedom.

    The picture of Benedict XVI with Emperor Palpatine is creepy.

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    1. Thanks Ken -- lots of folks understand the birth control angle, but I don't think this aspect of it comes up much. I remember reading an Art Buchwald column some years ago, and he was making fun of this particular papal teaching. It was a good article. Reading Packer on the Puritans is a wonderful experience. It just so happened that these diverse elements were able to come together like this :-)

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    2. I heard a sermon once that quoted either Peter Abelard or Peter Lombard as saying something like, - that when a husband and wife have sex, the Holy Spirit leaves the room, and he is acting with a demon of lust - but it was a long time ago and I have not been able to find that quote. I searched for it a few years ago and didn't come up with anything specific.

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    3. I wonder if the church fathers' attitude was perhaps an overreaction to the decadence they were surrounded by in the Roman and Greek cultures.

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    4. Mathetes -- Packer mentions that that may have been the case, but doesn't provide any supporting information.

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  2. A while ago I came across this quote from C.S. Lewis;

    'There is no understanding the period of the Reformation in England until we have grasped the fact that the quarrel between the Puritans and the Papists was not primarily a quarrel between rigorism and indulgence, and that, in so far as it was, the rigorism was on the Roman side. On many questions, and specially in their view of the marriage bed, the Puritans were the indulgent party; if we may without disrespect so use the name of a great Roman Catholic, a great writer, and a great man, they were much more Chestertonian than their adversaries'

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    1. I'm glad that people seem to be giving the Puritans another look these days.

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    2. Quite a number of books I've read recently have trotted out the old Puritan caricature, it gets frustrating. In pointing out the inaccuracy it isn't just pointing out a historical wrong but also an important difference between Protestantism and Romanism. The Bonhoeffer quote states it well.

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  3. You know, in most professions when someone writes a book or report or whitepaper on a topic they have utterly no practical experience in, they are regarded as a charlatan or a scammer.

    I'd like to know what expertise the Pope has in this topic that I should regard him as an expert or authority.

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    1. I can't think of anything at all :-|

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    2. I think John Paul II addresses this objection toward the beginning of his book Love and Responsibility. I believe his years of work as a priest counseling hundreds of married couples gave him a type of experience and understanding in the realm of marital and sexual issues that few married persons have through their personal and (we pray) monogamous sexual experiences with their spouse. Also, don't forget that priests don't sacrifice their sexuality when they choose to live a celibate life. Rather, they understand human sexuality as a sign or shadow of the nuptial relationship of Christ and the Church, and they bypass the sign to embrace the spiritual reality. There exists a kind of mutual illumination between the realities of the Church as Christ's bride and the relationship of husband and wife. Both are relationships between whole persons, in which both persons pour themselves out for the other in self-donation, and this marital union is ultimately open to life--spiritual life through Christ and new human life through the act of sexual intercourse. Anything that intentionally frustrates the unitive and/or procreative dimensions of the marital union is understood by Catholics (and by all Protestants before 1930 as well) as intrinsically disordered and sinful. Those couples who have embraced contraception have significantly higher divorce rates than couples who remain faithful to the historical Christian teaching that sex ought to proceed without any kind of barrier and remain open to the ends for which God created it. Shame on Paul VI for upholding this universal teaching when other denominations were caving to the pressure of the sexual revolution, I know...

      I'm wondering if John has read Karol Wojtyla's Love and Responsibility or taken a few years to study the fairly dense Theology of the Body by the same author, now Pope John Paul II. If not, where does he get his authority on the Catholic Church's teaching on human sexuality?

      May the grace and peace of our Savior be with you,

      Danny

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    3. Danny, you said: I believe his years of work as a priest counseling hundreds of married couples gave him a type of experience and understanding in the realm of marital and sexual issues that few married persons have

      Correct. The "type of experience" is purely as an outsider, an observer. Not someone who has ever had to deal with a wife experiencing a myriad of feminine problems or waking up and feeding a baby at 2:00 am. From his position on the sidelines [to use a football metaphor], he had no idea what it's like to be hit in an actual game.

      don't forget that priests don't sacrifice their sexuality when they choose to live a celibate life.

      Correct. Many are practicing homosexuals, and a large number have even taken on hobbies such as ephebophilia and pedophilia. I can point to my own former parish priest, whom I've seen driving in a T-shirt back to his home at 7:00 am, and who was later found to have porn on his computer [after having been charged with soliciting a minor].

      Those couples who have embraced contraception have significantly higher divorce rates than couples who remain faithful to the historical Christian teaching that sex ought to proceed without any kind of barrier and remain open to the ends for which God created it.

      You are talking about approximately 10% of all Roman Catholics who proceed without "any kind of barrier" [although time and temperature are barriers too, but there is no problem with the "intention" of wanting to prevent conception, merely with the fact that the preventative measure is not the specified kind], according to recent statistics we've seen. It is more than questionable whether the thing you are describing is genuinely "Christian teaching".

      I have read portions of "Love and Responsibility", but there is no way I am going to "take a few years to study the Theology of the Body". You are aware that there are millions of Roman Catholics who left "the Church" over this, and the 90% who have stayed, nevertheless thumb their noses at that teaching.

      where does he get his authority on the Catholic Church's teaching on human sexuality?

      I was a devout Roman Catholic for 35 years of my life. It does not take "authority" to comment on a "teaching" that's not hard to find.

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    4. Correct. The "type of experience" is purely as an outsider, an observer. Not someone who has ever had to deal with a wife experiencing a myriad of feminine problems or waking up and feeding a baby at 2:00 am. From his position on the sidelines [to use a football metaphor], he had no idea what it's like to be hit in an actual game.

      Sure, but I think someone as intelligent as him--someone who was probably woken in the middle of the night to administer last rites, etc.--could provide relevant pastoral care to those experiencing problems related with sexuality or other marriage issues. Perhaps if you carefully read Love and Responsibility and the Theology of the Body, you would see how masterfully John Paul II weaves together theological insight and pastoral care.

      Regarding what most priests do, I think your statement that "most are practicing homosexuals" is pure slander to the many fine and holy priests in the Catholic Church. Are some priests practicing homosexuals? Undoubtedly, and I ask you to join me in praying for their conversion so that they may escape the fires of hell. Knowing that some ministers of other denominations are also grave sinners (fornicators, active homosexuals, molesters, etc.), is it your recommendation that we just Christianity as a whole, and if so, why not? Also, what about denominations that teach that some grave sins (such as homosexual behavior, divorce and remarriage, contraception, etc.) are morally licit? At least the Catholic Church doesn't teach that the homosexual behavior of some of her priests is morally acceptable, and thus contains within it a basis of calling these men to live holy lives.

      Of course this historic Christian teaching is questionable. What isn't? But my claim was a historical one. My claim is that until the second Lambeth conference of 1930, no denomination went on record that there were circumstances in which contraception was a morally licit behavior. Certainly, the Reformers understood contraception to be against Scripture and contrary to God's natural design, some saying it is as bad as the homosexual behavior we both decry. Do you have evidence to suggest that any denominations changed their teaching on this moral issue before 1930?

      I know that few Catholic accept this teaching, but I'm doing everything I can in my local community to help proclaim the teaching clearly and faithfully, because avoiding sin is always better than engaging in it. And as I said, couples who use natural family planning help space their children have almost a 0% divorce rate. Remarkable, no? Also, let's be careful not to judge a teaching by how many people practice it, since these numbers (especially when it comes to "Catholic" statistics) are often skewed. Those who have studied the issue understand that the percentage of faithful, weekly-Mass-going Catholics who follow the church's teaching is significantly higher. Also, keep in mind that many of our priests are still not willing to broach this topic (please help me by praying for them, too), and so many faithful Catholics aren't fully informed about this issue. In short, we are sinners saved by grace, and we pray that over time, through God's grace, these problems will diminish. Of course I'm aware that people leave the Catholic Church over these teachings. People left Jesus because of his teachings as well. Does your argument mean that when people leave because of a teaching, the person doing the teaching is wrong? I'm not so sure that people thumb their noses at these teachings. Many simply have not heard them. I can tell you that in my parish, I hosted a 10-week study of these teachings over the summer, and it was so popular that attendees were changing their vacation plans so that they wouldn't miss another lecture.

      [cont.]

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    5. Finally, I know that anyone can comment on these teachings. Indeed, they are not hard to find. But, by your own admission, you haven't really studied them. Take it from someone who has studied these books for years: they are NOT an easy read. They are dense, but there is gold hidden in there for anyone willing to take the time. My point is that you fall victim to the argument you made against JPII. You claim to speak about a body of teachings that you yourself are not intimate with.

      My heart breaks at the scandal you experienced. If there is anything I can do to help you, please say the word.

      May the peace of Christ be with you,

      Danny

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    6. Sorry... "Is it your recommendation that we LEAVE Christianity as a whole?"

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    7. Sure, but I think someone as intelligent as him--someone who was probably woken in the middle of the night to administer last rites, etc.--could provide relevant pastoral care to those experiencing problems related with sexuality or other marriage issues.

      I'm not saying he wasn't smart, not saying he wasn't trained to give "pastoral care". The original comment was, "I'd like to know what expertise the Pope has in this topic that I should regard him as an expert or authority". And the topic was, "to put it plainly, for a man in his wife’s arms to be hankering after the other world is, in mild terms, a piece of bad taste, and not God’s will. We ought to find and love God in what he actually gives us", compared with, "intoxicated and undisciplined eros, then, is not an ascent in “ecstasy” towards the Divine, but a fall, a degradation of man".

      Ratzinger's is a false choice and is itself a degradation of marriage. Scripture says the man is supposed to be hankering for his wife, precisely because of "eros" outside of marriage. "That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, and they become one flesh. Adam and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame". "Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her". "Husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies". Christian men understand this. That does not preclude to being "intoxicated" with one's wife. Being "intoxicated" sexually with one's wife is precisely God's will for Christian marriage. It is in no way a degradation.

      The best that Wojtyla/John Paul could do was to theorize, using misshapen Roman Catholic doctrine leftover from Aquinas and the other church "fathers" who misunderstood God's biblical purpose for marriage.

      Regarding what most priests do, I think your statement that "most are practicing homosexuals" is pure slander to the many fine and holy priests in the Catholic Church. Are some priests practicing homosexuals? Undoubtedly,

      I didn't say "most priests are practicing homosexuals". I said "many", and that's well documented. It's not only "many priests", but a number of bishops, including those who wrote the CCC, who put in the little phrase about "gradually" seeking Christian perfection -- they still get to say homosexual acts are "disordered", but they also get to comfort themselves when they "slip"

      Of course this historic Christian teaching is questionable. What isn't? But my claim was a historical one. My claim is that until the second Lambeth conference of 1930, no denomination went on record that there were circumstances in which contraception was a morally licit behavior….Do you have evidence to suggest that any denominations changed their teaching on this moral issue before 1930?

      You may want to take a look at this:

      http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2011/07/early-church-and-contraception.html

      I'll give you a hint. "First I examine ancient reproductive biology and the extent of its impact on the beliefs of ancient Christianity. I then note the extent to which Stoic thought influenced condemnations of contraception. Quotations from some church fathers are provided, with special attention paid to the general rejection of the "unitive" function of sexual intercourse. From this it is clear that neither Protestants nor Catholics consistently follow the testimony of the early church…." [By Matthew Schultz, a writer here at Triablogue].

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    8. I know that few Catholic accept this teaching, but I'm doing everything I can in my local community to help proclaim the teaching clearly and faithfully, because avoiding sin is always better than engaging in it.

      Using contraception is not a sin.

      couples who use natural family planning help space their children have almost a 0% divorce rate. Remarkable, no?

      No. First of all, the number is not accurate. Second, as far as I can tell, there was one study that yielded a 5% divorce rate, and it's a questionable study, with a built-in statistical bias, insofar as there was no way to isolate other factors from the result.

      Also, let's be careful not to judge a teaching by how many people practice it, since these numbers (especially when it comes to "Catholic" statistics) are often skewed. Those who have studied the issue understand that the percentage of faithful, weekly-Mass-going Catholics who follow the church's teaching is significantly higher.

      Again, you're using a flawed methodology. Consider that the percentage of faithful, weekly church-going Protestants as well.

      Also, keep in mind that many of our priests are still not willing to broach this topic (please help me by praying for them, too), and so many faithful Catholics aren't fully informed about this issue.

      So much for the vaunted Roman Catholic doctrinal unity.

      Of course I'm aware that people leave the Catholic Church over these teachings. People left Jesus because of his teachings as well.

      It doesn't follow that they left for the same reasons, and I'm certain that's the case.

      Does your argument mean that when people leave because of a teaching, the person doing the teaching is wrong?

      No. But the "truth claims" of Rome, compared with the "truth claims" of the Scriptures, are two separate things. Leaving the wrong teaching [of Rome] and embracing the correct teaching of Scripture are not mutually exclusive events.

      I can tell you that in my parish, I hosted a 10-week study of these teachings over the summer, and it was so popular that attendees were changing their vacation plans so that they wouldn't miss another lecture.

      Woo hoo!

      You claim to speak about a body of teachings that you yourself are not intimate with.

      I am not intimate with Wicca either, but I reject it all the same.

      My heart breaks at the scandal you experienced. If there is anything I can do to help you, please say the word

      Repent! Leave the false teaching of Rome, and seek out a Bible-believing congregation.

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    9. The gist of Benedict's quote is that the sexuality is designed by God as a means to two ends: (1) the unitive and procreative ends within marriage and (2) our spiritual union with God, which our physical unions point to. None of this denies or degrades the reality and power of eros, nor does it put eros and the spiritual in a false opposition. Rather, it redirects the energy of eros away from ourselves and our own sexual fulfillment such that our wives do not become objects of lust, an objectification that fails to uphold the personal dignity of our spouse. Rather, we recognize through the marital embrace that we are giving ourselves completely, faithfully, and fruitfully to our spouse in an act of self-donation, and it is through this rightly-ordered sexual act that the act itself most perfectly points us toward the love of Christ for his bride, the Church.

      The simple analogy of eating might be useful here. Someone who separates the pleasure of eating from the end of nutrition is making a choice that leads some to gluttony and others to bulimia. At the very least, neither of these are healthy behaviors; at their worst, they are sinful. Lust (defined as an undisciplined hyper-focus on one's own sexual fulfillment in which a woman is reduced to an object of desire) is to sexuality as gluttony is to nutrition. Benedict is right: eros must be disciplined.

      Because eros is so powerful and is oriented toward ends beyond itself, it makes sense that we would want to discipline it. Don't we discipline ourselves with anything that is powerful? We discipline our use of weapons, we learn to play music well, we are careful to obey traffic laws, etc. Do you somehow think that human sexuality should be the one area of human experience in which we are granted a free for all?

      I asked if you knew of any Christian writer or denomination before 1930 who expressed that contraception was not a sin. Would you care to respond? If not, why should I ignore almost 2,000 years of constant teaching because some guy on a blog tells me that "contraception is not a sin"?

      I would also ask for the name of the study that you cited regarding the divorce rate of non-contracepting couples.

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    10. ...redirects the energy of eros away from ourselves and our own sexual fulfillment such that our wives do not become objects of lust, an objectification that fails to uphold the personal dignity of our spouse.

      If either of these men had wives, they would know that the wives enjoy sex, they enjoy knowing their beautiful, they enjoy knowing their husbands love them with a passion, yes, a sexual passion, and it is rather an insult to think that God's purpose in all of this is merely "unitive and procreative".

      we recognize through the marital embrace that we are giving ourselves completely, faithfully, and fruitfully to our spouse in an act of self-donation, and it is through this rightly-ordered sexual act that the act itself most perfectly points us toward the love of Christ for his bride, the Church.

      Christ does not hold back when loving the church. It is not a "donation". It is a complete giving of self.

      The simple analogy of eating might be useful here.

      That's a very bad analogy. Let me tell you how I make love to my wife. She used to work nights, and she would stand a lot. So she loves it when I lotion and massage her sore feet. Her ankles and calves get sore, too, and so I lotion and massage up there, too. Of course, I'm lusting a bit by this point, and her thighs and buttocks and lower back are sore too. So I lovingly massage those sore areas too. And while I'm at it, I massage her personal dignity, too, and tell her how absolutely beautiful she is to me.

      Nobody is talking about a "free-for-all". I am making love to my wife. This is in line with the designs of God for marriage. Your popes are just imagining things. Things which, (see the Matthew Schultz article), have nothing to do with "constant teaching".

      I asked if you knew of any Christian writer or denomination before 1930 who expressed that contraception was not a sin. Would you care to respond? If not, why should I ignore almost 2,000 years of constant teaching because some guy on a blog tells me that "contraception is not a sin"?

      It is not "constant teaching". That's the point of the Matthew Schultz article that I linked to. In fact, as Matthew summarized in his comments following the article, "Put somewhat crudely, no one follows the church fathers on this issue. If the consensus is problematic for Protestantism, it is also problematic for Catholicism. NFP would also have been condemned."

      If you don't like what I have to say, you are free to change the channel, as they used to say.

      I would also ask for the name of the study that you cited regarding the divorce rate of non-contracepting couples.

      Where did you get your "0% divorce rate" figure? Go look there.

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    11. Where did you get your "0% divorce rate" figure?

      Good question, and I'm happy to answer: Janet Smith, a University of Dallas (who now teaches at Sacred Heart Seminary in Detroit) professor who has spent her entire career studying the social and theological ramifications of birth control. She has published dozens of articles and at least two books on the subject.

      The reason I asked for your citation is because it suggests a higher percentage than what Smith has found, and so I was curious to compare the studies.

      There is no opposition between "enjoying sex [etc.]" and the unitive and procreative. In fact, the things you list are part of the unitive aspect. So, we seem to be in agreement about what you address in the first paragraph (so long as you are not denying the procreative end of sexuality).

      Also, I think we are in agreement about the act of donation. When I say "self-donation," I mean a complete, total, faithful gift of the whole self, just as Christ gave himself wholly and completely for the Church. I would contend that when a couple uses contraception, they are withholding parts of themselves and rejecting parts of the other. In other words, though our mouths might lovingly whisper how beautiful we think our wives our, the language of our bodies say the opposite: "I don't love and cherish your fecundity and so I will hold back the gift of my own."

      Since you seem to feel comfortable sharing the more intimate details of your sexual experience on the Internet, would you mind sharing if you and your wife use contraception, and if so, what type?

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    12. DBS, I simply Googled it and looked around for a while.

      I will tell you that I was Roman Catholic for the first 12 or so years of my marriage, I have six children, and each one of them was baptized by one of two priests, each of whom were named in child sex abuse scandals. But that's not the reason I left. I only found out about that later. I left for doctrinal reasons.

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    13. Hi John,

      Peace be with you.

      I'm very sorry to hear that the priests who baptized your children were accused of abuse.

      Also, have you published your conversion story online? I'd be interested to read it, if you wouldn't mind sharing it with me.

      Danny

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    14. Go to Reformation500.wordpress.com and click on my name under "pages". Take some time and look around.

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    15. Wondering where "Danny" has gone.

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    16. Testing profile picture.

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  4. A Victorian writer Charles Kingsley studied in this essay the Puritan relationship to the old English theater: he suggested that Renaissance-era licentiousness (against which the Puritans reacted) was itself an over-reaction to semi-Gnostic Medieval views on sexuality ("Manichaeism of monkery"):

    PLAYS AND PURITANS

    "We have just said that the Puritans held too exclusively to one pole of a double truth. They did so, no doubt, in their hatred of the drama. Their belief that human relations were, if not exactly sinful, at least altogether carnal and unspiritual, prevented their conceiving the possibility of any truly Christian drama; and led them at times into strange and sad errors, like that New England ukase of Cotton Mather's, who is said to have punished the woman who should kiss her infant on the Sabbath day.

    Yet their extravagances on this point were but the honest revulsion from other extravagances on the opposite side. If the undistinguishing and immoral Autotheism of the playwrights, and the luxury and heathendom of the higher classes, first in Italy and then in England, were the natural revolt of the human mind against the Manichaeism of monkery: then the severity and exclusiveness of Puritanism was a natural and necessary revolt against that luxury and immorality; a protest for man's God-given superiority over nature, against that Naturalism which threatened to end in sheer animalism."

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  5. Francois Rabelais, for example, can show how creatively obscene Renaissance writers could get; his works have been (seriously) compared to "South Park"...

    This is what Kingsley had to say about him:

    http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1360/1360-h/1360-h.htm#citation7

    "And what shall I say of him?—who stands alone, like Shakespeare, in his generation; possessed of colossal learning—of all science which could be gathered in his days—of practical and statesmanlike wisdom—of knowledge of languages, ancient and modern, beyond all his compeers—of eloquence, which when he speaks of pure and noble things becomes heroic, and, as it were, inspired—of scorn for meanness, hypocrisy, ignorance—of esteem, genuine and earnest, for the Holy Scriptures, and for the more moderate of the Reformers who were spreading the Scriptures in Europe,—and all this great light wilfully hidden, not under a bushel, but under a dunghill. He is somewhat like Socrates in face, and in character likewise; in him, as in Socrates, the demigod and the satyr, the man and the ape, are struggling for the mastery. In Socrates, the true man conquers, and comes forth high and pure; in Rabelais, alas! the victor is the ape, while the man himself sinks down in cynicism, sensuality, practical jokes, foul talk. He returns to Paris, to live an idle, luxurious life; to die—says the legend—saying, “I go to seek a great perhaps,” and to leave behind him little save a school of Pantagruelists—careless young gentlemen, whose ideal was to laugh at everything, to believe in nothing, and to gratify their five senses like the brutes which perish. There are those who read his books to make them laugh; the wise man, when he reads them, will be far more inclined to weep. "

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  6. "Dietrich Bonhoeffer writes from prison"

    Bugay, Bonhoeffer was a liberal, "higher-critical" heretic (like Albert Schweitzer also was). Perhaps you should not rely on his opinions too much:

    BEWARE OF DIETRICH BONHOEFFER

    "Dr. G. Archer Weniger declared, “If there is wholesome food in a garbage can, then one can find some good things in Bonhoeffer, but if it be dangerous to expect to find nourishment in a garbage can, then Bonhoeffer must be totally rejected and repudiated as blasphemy. It is worse than garbage”"

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