The Papists

Anon,

I’d say at face value, they’re not lustful. Lust is a desire to use the other person for our own sexual gain or pleasure, and butterflies are simply feelings we get when we encounter someone to whom we’re attracted. I think that if you, as you say, turn the experience of those feelings into an “unhealthy infatuation,” then it could turn into lust. If you do encounter someone who’s really attractive, thank God for their attractiveness, tell Him He did a good job, and move on. As a guy, I can tell you this is really important and effective in making sure we respect and love women rather than using and lusting after them. Hope this helps.

Your friend,

Olivier

Anon,

Forgive me for assuming, but it seems like you might not have a real grasp of why the Church teaches against IVF methods. BadCatholic offers a nicer explanation than I could ever give, so I suggest you take a look at what he has to say. I just got a feeling that you saying “If it wasn’t against Catholic teaching…” might mean that you don’t know why the Church teaches against IVF. And that’s okay, of course. I myself have a long way to go when it comes to Church teaching.

Now, onto your question. In terms of concrete acts, I would highly recommend your friend to chart her cycles/start looking at NFP methods. Natural fertility methods are surprisingly good at helping women conceive children. Q or anyone else who’s familiar with NFP, would you want to offer a comment?

Finally, good on you for praying for her, Anon. Pray that whatever the circumstance, you and your friend will give glory to God. 

Your friend,

Olivier

Hi Anon,

I think the contributors to this blog have different opinions, but I’ll link you to something Father Angel wrote recently. I hope it can shed light on your questions!

Your friend, 

Olivier

That’s true, but is the love of marriage one that can be done without knowing the other person’s sex?  I mean, obviously one can feel a great attraction to someone before knowing their sex, (either because they met over a social networking site and the person didn’t divulge their gender, as is the case on tumblr) or in the rare instances where one meets someone with a gender neutral name who’s appearance is fairly androgynous.  But for any true love to develop between them, even one such as friendship which has no sexual dimension, the self-disclosure of one’s sex is required, and this seems even more true for a romantic love. 

I mean, in my ethics class we talked about how almost every philosopher of the modern era, (and even many older philosophers) noted that self-disclosure is a necessary part of love, and since our sex is probably the second most intrinsic part of our nature after being human, it seems that without self-disclosing one’s sex a true love (any love) could not develop.

So, to be honest, I’d say its impossible to fall in love with someone without knowing their sex.  One can feel attraction, sexual or not to them, but love is much more than feeling attraction. 

-Niko

Here’s the thing, your argument only holds up if you can prove that gay marriage is a human right.  Until you do that, claiming it is a human right is an unfounded claim.

Furthermore, we believe gay marriage does harm people, 1. the people in the gay marriage because they do risk harming themselves when sodomizing physically and psychologically.  (Check out the wiki page)  2.  It harms society because that society sees marriage as divorced from the natural law and  therefore may seek to impose its will against the natural law elsewhere and in doing so, harm others.  3.  Also any children who are adopted by such a couple would lack the benefits of having a mother and a father.  They would be placed in a situation where it would be unlikely for them to develop a true appreciation of sexual ethics.

Thus, voting against same sex marriage is not cruel.  It is love for children, love for society, and love for those with same-sex attractions, because it is protecting them from themselves.

-Niko

Anon,

It’s at the discretion of the bishops to decide what to do with priests who are abusers (I believe Church policy right now is to automatically take priests out of ministry if they abuse). 

If the main advice from secular psychologists thirty or forty or fifty was to simply relocate abusive priests, then we can say in hindsight that it was a terrible tactic, but we can’t say that we were deliberately dealing with the situation in an ineffective way, for how could we know that what we were doing was the not the best possible solution?

And if the bishops hear of an instance of abuse, I’d say it’s up to their discretion to decide when the congregations are allowed to hear of it. I think this could have partly to do with making sure that the accused priest is indeed guilty, so that an innocent priest is not stigmatized for the rest of his life. I think there are other factors (could anyone else chip in?), but I also want to say that if there is a problem in the Church, the people need to know it exists. It’s just up to the bishops to be prudent about when they release such information. 

Your friend,

Olivier

Dear anon,

We’re not refusing to concede that certain individuals in the Church have made great mistakes regarding sexual misconduct involving minors in the last fifty or so years. We want to approach those who have been affected with love and compassion, and we want our bishops to take appropriate action with both those hurt by the scandal and those who’ve committed the sins. 

However, we refuse to concede that the Pope and all priests are child molesters, or that the Church has an extraordinary case of men who abuse children. All other institutions have/have had this problem, and while priests are held to a very high standard, it’s not fair to single out Catholic priests as the only perpetrators of this grave offense.

Your friend,

Olivier

In the words of G.K. Chesterton, “fallacies do not cease to be fallacies because they become fashions.”

The Church has seen two thousand years of dissenting laity (and even dissenting clergy). It has been given the authority to preach and defend the truth, and will continue to preach and defend the truth, regardless of who agrees or disagrees with it.

Your friend,

Olivier

Hey!

The Church isn’t limited to just what Jesus specifically said. Jesus gave the Church authority to bind and loose things here on earth. So even though Jesus never explicitly mentioned topics such as homosexuality and birth control, we can form teachings on those topics based on what Scripture has to say, based on what Tradition has to say, and through prayerful discernment with the aid of the Holy Spirit. 

For example: Jesus explicitly told us that God made man and woman for each other, that a man is to leave his family and become one with his bride (Mk 10:1-9, Mt 19:1-6). In Genesis the man and woman are to be fruitful and multiply. Based on these verses and prayerful reading of Song of Songs, and meditation on what God intended sex and marriage to be, John Paul II wrote Theology of the Body which outlines the Church’s teaching on contraceptives and touches on homosexuality. 

So the Church can make teachings as long as they are in-line with the Message of Christ. But even then, the Church doesn’t make the teaching, She just relays what God has revealed. 

I hope that made sense, if anyone else has a better way to put it feel free!

-Javi

Olivier: I’d like to point out that every single thing that the Church teaches is based on Jesus’ commandment to “love one another as I have loved you,” “love one another as you love yourself,” or even more plainly, “love one another.”

Every single Church teaching on sexuality (and every teaching for that matter) is based on the notion that humans are created in the image of God, that man and woman are made for each other (as Javi said), and that there is a distinction between using someone (wrong) and loving someone (right). 

When the Church teaches sexual ethics, it all stems from the fact that we must love one another. Church teaching is the authoritative source of answering applied ethical questions (such as “why is birth control immoral” or “why are homosexual actions immoral”) for the reason that Javi stated, and as I’ve said multiple times, all detailed explanations come from the fact that we were made out of and for love, and we were made to love. I hope this helps.

Well, the trouble is when you go to talk about relationships, the primary distinguisher between friendship and romance is eros, sexual love. There’s more to it, of course, but I’m a bit of a loss of where to begin.

Do you have a favorite book or television series? Are there two close characters in it of the same sex? These days, people can’t get past the idea that people might be intensely close without there being a sexual element—but we’re presented fictional models of that kind of relationship all the time, and those fictional models are drawn from real-life experience. Our culture sexualizes everything, as if that’s the be-all end-all of love. But it’s not.

How about a personal example. I’ve been blessed with a handful of close friends. Of my friends, there are maybe two or three—male and female—who are closer than friends, closer than family. The kind of people one willingly steps in front of a runaway bus for. My relationships with those friends are personal, intense, and satisfying - but there’s no eros there. Physical intimacy just doesn’t enter into it, not in the romantic sense. (Hugs are different. Hugs are for everybody.) Whereas my relationship with my husband is also personal, intense, and satisfying, but it’s a completely different kind of relationship. Even if you took eros out of my marital relationship, the relationship I have with my husband would be a completely different kind of relationship from the one I have with my close friends.

I’ve heard from one or two people on tumblr before who identify as asexual, and they’ve mentioned being in a close, deep, personal relationship with someone - without the sex. 

Consider also that in the history of the Catholic Church, there are and have been thousands and thousands of monks and nuns: people who willingly and joyfully enter the religious life and spend the rest of their days in the company of other men or women, in celibacy. Yet they were and are happy, well-adjusted individuals with satisfying personal relationships. 

I’m not sure if that answers your question or not, but that’s the best explanation I’ve got at the moment. I hope it helps.