- Feb 5, 2002
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We live in a human culture that is seriously intent on hiding from God, very often even within the Church herself. This is particularly obvious in the widespread abuse of the sexual appetite today—the eager justification of perverse sexual behaviors, the control of which lies so close to the heart of what it means to be human. Therefore, instead of the use of our procreative powers to beget children within stable families rooted in the lifelong marriage of one man and one woman, we now justify every sort of shameful behavior: inappropriate contentography, prostitution, sexual slavery, masturbation, contraception, extra-marital sex, elective divorce, serial monogamy, and sexual relations between two or more persons of the same sex, which may even be called “marriage”.
The abuse of our sexuality is not in itself surprising. Since sexual desire in the human person is generally very strong, and the legitimate uses of our sexual faculties are limited to that special familial openness to life and love which is supposed to be the defining characteristic of monogamous marital fidelity, there is ample room for temptation. Pagan cultures are generally characterized by the widespread abuses of sexuality that have been specifically prohibited by Judaism and Catholicism, and one of the neo-pagan West’s most prominent cultural markers is its deliberate indulgence in sexual temptation, a corresponding deliberate abuse of our sexuality, and an incessant deliberate rationalization of the results.
I was reminded of all this yesterday when rereading the first two chapters of St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans. My commentary will follow these key extracts:
Continued below.
On avoiding repentance
The abuse of our sexuality is not in itself surprising. Since sexual desire in the human person is generally very strong, and the legitimate uses of our sexual faculties are limited to that special familial openness to life and love which is supposed to be the defining characteristic of monogamous marital fidelity, there is ample room for temptation. Pagan cultures are generally characterized by the widespread abuses of sexuality that have been specifically prohibited by Judaism and Catholicism, and one of the neo-pagan West’s most prominent cultural markers is its deliberate indulgence in sexual temptation, a corresponding deliberate abuse of our sexuality, and an incessant deliberate rationalization of the results.
I was reminded of all this yesterday when rereading the first two chapters of St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans. My commentary will follow these key extracts:
Continued below.
On avoiding repentance
