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Growing Pains and Groin Pangs: Why Sexual Immorality is Not Quite Human

9/30/2013

The recent lewd performances by Robin Thicke and Miley Cyrus at the MTV Video Music Awards provide a vital opportunity to reflect upon the relationship between sexual behavior and human flourishing. Our faith teaches us that we are a unity of body and soul, called to reflect the love of God in every action. We have the duty of shining the love of God with our bodies. In his great work known as the Theology of the Body, Blessed Pope John Paul II explains that the “body and it alone, is capable of making visible what is invisible: the spiritual and the divine. It was created to transfer into the visible reality of the world the mystery hidden since time immemorial in God, and thus be a sign of it.” (TOB 19:4)

The incredible reality of the Incarnation reveals even further how our bodies are meant to be a manifestation of God’s love. Jesus shows us that the purpose of our bodies is to make an authentic self-gift. Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection were an outpouring of love for humanity. His death and resurrection enable us to live the truth of our bodies and to recognize how, even through difficult experiences, our gift of self to others is a reflection of God’s love for humanity. The paschal mystery especially is our model of love, because on the cross Jesus manifests the height of a free, total, faithful, and fruitful gift of self. The resurrection reveals that the gift of self leads to new life. In our desire to exemplify Christ, we too must accept suffering and be willing to sacrifice ourselves for others. Our hope of the resurrection spurs us onward in our efforts at true love despite every setback.

Actualizing the true gift of self that is based on the cross requires a daily growth in holiness. We therefore need to develop a mature understanding and presentation of the beautiful truth about our bodies. God created us as sexual beings with an intellect and free will, designed for a life of love that reflects the Trinity, but it is all too easy for us to forego any effort at becoming mature in our knowledge and expression of the truth. We often dislike the growing pains and frustration that come from trying to live an integrated sexuality. We frequently run away from the discipline needed to view ourselves and others as persons instead of as objects for self-gratification.

We see from our faith that a disintegrated sexuality, a sexuality devoted to pleasure instead of gift, leads us away from true human flourishing. Disordered sexual behavior is inhuman because it fails to focus on self-gift as the true purpose of our bodies. We become something less than human when we have a skewed understanding that leads to degrading behavior. We can see how such immoral behavior has negative consequences in so many spheres of life. Our society is filled with people suffering from the emotional pain and loneliness of one-night stands or pornography addiction, the physical pain of sexually transmitted infections, and the spiritual pain of being lost without knowing how to find their true identity. In only emphasizing momentary pleasure, a flawed perspective on human sexuality disregards the truth that a person “cannot fully find himself except through a sincere gift of himself” (Gaudium Et Spes, 24).

Even from outside the perspective of faith, we can be aware enough about God’s design for human sexuality because of the natural law. It is likely the natural law that caused so many people of different faith backgrounds or no faith background at all to express outrage and disgust at the scandalous conduct of Robin Thicke and Miley Cyrus. People who might usually have little problem with promiscuous and selfish expression of their sexuality still have a longing for real intimacy. All the attempts to eclipse the natural law does not exterminate the presence God’s light within our hearts, for God made everyone in His image. It is through the natural law that people first realize their desire to truly know others and to be known by others. No one wants to be used or treated as an object. The public display of sexual immaturity by Thicke and Cyrus has seemingly awakened people to the deep desire for truly human relationships and for a sexuality rooted in self-gift and authentic knowledge.

Even while disliking the pain of discipline and the suffering of self-sacrifice, everyone still longs for something far more lasting, life-giving, intimate, and powerful than the fleeting pleasure manifested on stage by Thicke and Cyrus. Let us pray that, as people dedicated to receiving grace and living a cruciform life, we will manifest to everyone the joy and peace of God’s design for the human person.

- Brendan Dudley, Honorary Member of UCSSP

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Temptation in The Hobbit

9/20/2013

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C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien are worthy Christian writers. The old and young alike have been captivated by their stories as stories and by the meaning in their stories. Each of them has a different approach to incorporating Christian themes in their works and they argued cheerfully over this when they were alive (and they are probably shaking their fists at each other in Heaven right now).

C.S. Lewis’s approach is very straightforward. In the world of Narnia almost everything correlates exactly to something in the history of salvation* and it does so in a chronological fashion. A child reading the Narnia series and then learning about salvation history would see a connection between the two and probably be able to better understand salvation history. Tolkien preferred to focus on incorporating Christian themes in a story he created. In this way his readers get a feel for Christianity in its essence instead of its history. Of course Lewis has Christian themes that come across in his works and Tolkien has some correlations to salvation history in his works but this was not their main focus.

I have read and loved both the Chronicles of Narnia and the Lord of the Rings, but I find Lord of the Rings more captivating. The passages in his works speak to your soul subtlety. An example in The Hobbit is when Bilbo and the dwarves are traveling through the Forest of Mirkwood. They are warned by Gandalf and Beorn not to stray from the path. As long as the follow the path they will make it to the other side of the forest. Their rations and their spirits run low and when they see some elves feasting in the distance off the path, they leave the path to follow after the light of the elven party. When they arrive the elves disappear and reappear somewhere else. The company continues to chase after the elves and head deeper into the dark forest and never attain what they thought they wanted from the elves. Then ensues a rough time for the whole company (including being wound upside-down by oversized spiders and taken captive by the elves of the forest) and it is a long time before they are able to continue on the path they had left.

This part of the story struck me as exemplary of the Catholic idea of temptation as expounded by St. Claude de la Colombiére in one of his letters:

“Be on your guard against the first movements of passion… Unless I am mistaken, you are very impressionable on this point, and it is hardly in your power to control these passions once you have let them enter your heart. First of all they occupy your attention; then they take up your time and application and make you neglect everything else, so that in the end, when they begin to die down, you feel lost, so to speak, so far away from God. You have strayed off the right path and not knowing how to find your way you are in danger of wandering in any direction to which nature calls you. This is why you must fight against the first movements of passion and prevent them if possible by great recollection.” **

I hope you are able to see the correlation here that I do.

The movies we watch, the music we listen to, and the books we read have great sway over which thoughts occupy our minds. Do you fall asleep with a song going through your head? Do your dreams contain scenes from movies you watched? In your mind, do you compare your companions to characters in books or think about the plot while in Mass? Be on guard about what you allow to influence your imagination. If you read Catholic authors such as Tolkien, the themes he slips in will occupy your thoughts and will help you develop a Catholic imagination. Such an imagination will help you stay on the path.

*Salvation History is the story of man’s relationship with God. It includes creation, the fall from Grace, redemption, salvation, and life everlasting. It is also called Covenant History, referring to the seven covenants between God and man.

**St. Claude de la Colombiére Letter 13. S. Sympohorien d’Ozon, 1679.

Written By:
Ashley Ladouceur

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Science is Cool (and the Creation Museum isn't)

9/10/2013

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God is a God of more.

A few months ago I went with my girlfriend Annie to Petsmart to buy some crickets for my leopard gecko. I can tell Annie likes me because whenever we go to Petsmart she lets me talk about cricket alleles, describe the ancestral history of the various animals, and talk about the evolutionary advantage of Chinese Water Dragons having long tails. Upon driving home, I passed a billboard on the highway for the Creation Museum in Kentucky. “Cool!” I thought. In Cleveland we have the Great Lakes Science Center, but I’ve never been to one specifically on the origins of life. “Hey, we should check that out some time!” I said. “You don’t want to go there.” She replied. But why not? I like science! More specifically, science dealing with evolution and the origins of the universe absolutely fascinate me. And then she elaborated that the reason I wouldn’t want to go is because it is a museum that exists solely for the purpose of trying to refute modern science to say that the earth is 6000 years old and humans lived with (and possibly rode) dinosaurs.

Oh.

Things like this upset me. Now, I’ve had a lot of things upset me in my life. In first grade my best friend said he liked another kid’s painted birdhouse more than mine. I was upset. “Star Wars isn’t that good” a "friend" I once knew told me. I was upset. And so on. You get the picture. But this was different. I was offended not because it was a different opinion, but because it totally ignored and made a mockery of hard-won, well-researched, sensible modern science, and turned it into an enemy of God, as opposed to one of his most amazing creations. (And I take this moment to inform all who may not know: a Scientific Theory is not a guess – it is an explanation of an aspect of the natural world that has been substantiated through repeated experiments. You know, like the Theory of Gravity.)

Have you ever watched a movie with somebody who goes into it with a bad attitude and then just doesn't really pay attention? The person who texts through all of Star Wars and then asks at the end why Darth Voltron had a face if he was a robot, and didn't he die last movie, and why could his robot son cry, and why did the Sasquatch appear in the movie? And then you get frustrated, because they missed a really great thing because they weren't paying attention. This is what he creation museum does.

The reason this sucks so much is that GOD DID SOME REALLY COOL THINGS and a lot of people either ignore them, or worse, consider them “evil works of Satan” with the sole purpose of pulling people away from God.

HISTORY gets the biggest slap in the face out of anything. Let’s take a moment to remember that the Bible, a book that was officially compiled centuries after the death of Christ, by the Church, who intended it to be an addendum to oral tradition and the magesterium, which is a book intended to be understood by people of every nation, in every time period, in every social class, probably isn’t going to use 21st century scientific language to describe things.

The point I’m making is this: Language is changed to meet the needs of the audience.
For example: On a hot day this summer my 9 year old cousin asked me why we sweat. Now I could have said this: “Well, you see, water has a high heat capacity, so when you sweat, that heat excites some of the water molecules on your skin to the point that the hydrogen bonds are broken and they evaporate away, taking heat energy with them.” Was this correct? Yes. Was it stupid to say because my 9 year old cousin wouldn’t have been able to understand any of the terminology I used? Yes. So instead, I said something like this: “Drops of sweat grab little bits of heat and remove them from your body!” Also accurate. Much more simple, and I’m willing to bet my cousin would get more out the second response than she would from the first.

It’s the same reason Jesus used parables! They are still relevant to us today! Stories don’t lose significance, provided you understand the context. Vocabulary and Terminology change. Even Science changes. The Bible is less a book on how it happened, and more a book on what happened, and what now.

Often, people say something to the effect of this: “The big bang didn’t create the universe, God did.” Would it make sense to say: “The paint brush didn’t create Starry Night, Van Gogh did.” Ok, yeah, that’s accurate I guess. But aren’t we missing that Van Gogh USED the paint brush to create Starry Night? So make the jump with the Big Bang as well. God USED the Big Bang to create the universe.

Any Christian will agree that God is a God of more. He’s a storyteller, He’s a scientist, He’s a poet, He’s a romantic. We can always count on God for more. God didn’t need salvation history to unravel in such a complex way, in a story that started with “in the beginning”, went to Abraham, then Moses, then David, then Mary and Joseph, and then to Jesus. But that’s just sort of how he tends to roll. Can I propose that God works this way in all things? Instead of just poofing you into existence, what if you’re a work of art nearly 15 billion years in the making.

Allow me to combine “two stories”. I’m going to propose to you that they go together, and always have.

In the beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth, the entire universe was in one infinitesimally small, hot, and dense mass that underwent cosmic inflation. Within 1 x 10-35 seconds, matter and energy separated and within .01 seconds the universe had expanded to billions of miles and hasn’t stopped expanding since… Forged in the belly of Stars and supernovas, God created man out of stardust.

You see, Here’s how it could have gone:

But instead, it went like this:

Scientists are constantly discovering incredible details about the universe we live in. We live in a world of discovery – a world of wonder, and a world so detailed that your very body is comprised of approximately 100,000,000,000,000 cells that work 24/7 to keep you alive.

Please take a few minutes to check out my favorite website page, called “The Scale of the Universe”:

http://htwins.net/scale2/

The cursor starts out set on a human being. From there, you can zoom either in or out, and get a sense of the unfathomable size of the universe.

You can find God’s personality in the details of his work, like you can find Monet’s personality reflected in his paintings. As I said before: God is a God of more - and science, with each discovery that broadens the ever-increasing world of creation, more and more is revealed of God’s masterpiece: The Universe.

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What Good Will Fasting Do for Syria?

9/7/2013

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Today is the day of fasting for Catholics requested by Pope Francis for peace in Syria. Given the modern misunderstanding of fasting, it goes without question that some will ask, what good will it do?

So what’s the deal with Catholics and fasting? For starters, it’s not a hunger strike. The goal is not to make Assad, or Obama, or Putin think, “Oh no the Catholics are starving themselves, I better change my ways.”

Fasting also is not intended to call down the grace of God to convince him to come in and clean everything up all nicely in Syria and make the governments behave humanely. God’s grace does not work that way, we can’t earn it. It is a free gift that he gives, and it is inevitable because we could not live without it. Think of it like a sunrise. A person could get up before the dawn and do a dance and beg the sun to rise, and pretty soon, voilá! The sun is rising. Mission accomplished. But get that person to sit and watch one morning without doing their dance, and sure enough the sun still rises. We can’t earn grace, it’s freely given.

So why fast? There are millions of things that fasting isn’t, but what is it? It’s a spiritual exercise, and a powerful one at that. Simply put, fasting uses the desires of the body to remind us to pray. It sharpens our spiritual awareness. We can easily get spiritually lethargic and dull without even realizing it. Fasting quickly snaps us out of our spiritual daze. Although we don’t earn God’s grace, it does call us into a response of love. When most will say, “why me, I liked my blissful ignorance,” the saint asks “what do I do with this?” Fasting helps keep that in mind.

When I skip a meal, my body tells me, “I’m hungry, I want food now. Here’s a hunger pain to make it very clear that I want food.” Do I really need that one meal? Not in order to live. So I tell my body no. I am denying my desire for food. Why in the world would I deny myself that? Eating is not an evil thing in itself.

It has do with entering the mystery of the cross. Jesus tells his disciples, “unless you take up your cross and follow me, you cannot be my disciple.” He then proceeds into Jerusalem where he willingly sacrifices himself on the cross for our sins and on the third day is resurrected from the dead. The New Testament in a nutshell; death and resurrection. So by denying my desire for food, in a small way I’m dying to myself and entering into the mystery of the cross, on which Christ won our salvation. It’s preparation for receiving the gift of God’s grace and being spiritually aware to respond to it more fully. It snaps us out of being ruled by every instinct our bodies have and spiritually opens a door for us to see things according to eternity, according to Christ.

What in the world does this have to do with Syria then? For one, Pope Francis has called for an end to our global indifference. We’ve become dull to the suffering of the poor around the world. They’re more of a nuisance to us than anything. We in America would rather rant about a pop start twerking than open our eyes to the pain of the poorest of the poor. Pope Francis has it right in calling Catholics to a day of fasting, it’s the most effective and powerful way to snap us out of our apathy and re-sensitize us to the Syrian peoples’ plight. He’s calling for something much greater than for 1 million people to like something on Facebook.

What effect will it have? A huge one, because we do not know how God will work in those who are willing. When millions of people are entering into the mystery of the cross and asking “what do I do with this?” there’s no telling who will be called in helping to resolve the conflict and bring peace to Syria rather than adding to the violence by bombing it. We need the grace of God, we need the cross, and we need to be profoundly moved by the cross. Syria needs the grace of God, Syria needs the cross, Syria needs people to be moved into peace by the cross.

So please, join in the fast for peace in Syria. We will find ourselves saying “what do I do with this?”

Written by:

Marty Arlinghaus

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Fearfully, Wonderfully, and Shockingly Made

9/2/2013

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It all started with Peter Kreeft’s Jesus Shock. I thought there couldn’t be much about Jesus that would shock me when I started reading this book. Come on, I had grown up in a Catholic, homeschooling home after all.

(If you want to know whether we wore our pajamas while doing school and how on earth we managed to socialize, we can talk. But for the present—)

Part of our Catholic curriculum was memorizing the Baltimore Catechism and reading the entire Bible (OK I might have skipped the genealogies). To me, everything in the Gospel was predictable. I often could say the words of Jesus to myself long before they came out of the priest’s mouth at Mass.

If there was a purpose for reading this book, I said to myself, it was so that I could better evangelize my non-Catholic friends.

I guess with that attitude I was just asking to be shocked out of my complacency. The Bible passages that Kreeft uses in his book opened my eyes to how much I had boxed Jesus into my own limited knowledge. If the only Jesus I knew was the One from Gospel passages, how was He relevant to my everyday life?

I think that the majority of us fall into this trap at some point in our life. It’s convenient to package Jesus into a small “faith box” and leave Him there for when we’re going through a rough patch in life. We give Him certain attributes: “Jesus is loving,” “Jesus makes us joyful,” “Jesus is all-good and all-beautiful.” These can inspire devotion, but only so much. Are these phrases really the extent of what Jesus is? Is Jesus so simple, so understandable, that He can be limited to a few words?

If Jesus is truly Who Christians say He is, it follows that it is impossible for any human being to fully comprehend Him. Jesus is Truth, Beauty, and Goodness. He is Life itself. We may not always feel it, but Christ is closer to us than we are to ourselves. All of those emotions bubbling inside of us, every longing and desire that we feel so keenly yet cannot explain, He understands. Psalm 139 puts this beautifully in verses 12-14: “Even the darkness is not dark to thee, the night is bright as the day; for darkness is as light with thee. For thou didst form my inward parts, thou didst knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise thee, for thou art fearful and wonderful. Wonderful are thy works!”

Don’t think that I’m discounting the Bible or the Catechism or anything of the sort! I treasure my Catholic education and am grateful every day for it. But we can’t stop there. If we only learned facts about people and memorized things they said without actually spending time with them, we would be horrible friends! It’s the same with Christ. We have to set aside time for personal prayer with Christ, whether it be at Mass or when we first wake up. We have to share with Him our daily struggles and joys, even the silly things that either make us laugh or push us off the deep end.

After all, Jesus is both God and man. He celebrated with friends at the wedding feast as well as wept at the tomb of Lazarus. Most of His life on earth was spent at home in an ordinary way, and yet His Divine nature is filled with mysteries that we can never fully comprehend! The contradiction is stunning…or should I say, shocking!

So continue to read the Bible and study the Catechism, but drop any ideas of completely understanding God. I think that’s what’s so exciting and wonderful about my Catholic faith. No matter how long I live (an eternity) or how mundane life is, there will always be more to learn. God will always be new and surprising, and He will always be recreating us to better reflect His own beautiful image. Who can say no to a promise like that?

Written by:

Rosemary Bullock

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SSP Blog

Growing Pains and Groin Pangs: Why Sexual Immorality is Not Quite Human

Temptation in The Hobbit

Science is Cool (and the Creation Museum isn't)

What Good Will Fasting Do for Syria?

Fearfully, Wonderfully, and Shockingly Made

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