Monday, August 17, 2015
Planning and parenthood
Parenthood is possibly one of the areas that is most stricken by this mania for planning. In our present culture we generally assume that pregnancies are supposed to be planned and that an unplanned pregnancy is a kind of personal failure, even a catastrophe. I’m not talking here about situations where having a child is a genuine trial – where there are factors like extreme poverty, lack of a stable relationship, serious health risks or rape involved. I’m talking about people in stable families with a stable incomes and reasonable accommodations.It turns out that, the less helicopter parenting you do, the better everyone is.
Labels: catholic, parenting, sex
Monday, June 15, 2015
Mark Shea and Jenner issues
To get to the point,
Steven Greydanus remarked yesterday: “The more I read and think about it, the more I realize that my difficulty with people calling Caitlyn Jenner a woman begins not with disagreement, but with honestly having no idea what they’re saying or what they mean to claim. In this context, I literally don’t understand what is meant by “woman.”
Friday, February 27, 2015
Miscontraceptions is on YouTube
Wednesday, February 04, 2015
Gay and Orthodox
Summary, like most articles on how to be a good religious person - Don't be a dick.
I love all members of the Church as best I can, seeing them as co-strugglers. I love them as brothers and sisters in the faith. However, I find it disconcerting when any group takes it upon themselves to proclaim moral superiority above the whole body of believers- as have certain politically ultra-conservative Orthodox Christians. We are all free to have opinions about any number of things, but we are commanded to firmly proclaim the truth in love and abide by the rules and traditions of our faith. We are all to encourage each other to fight the good fight, but to do so in love. I see very little of this happening when some take it upon themselves to be the absolute moral authority of the Church, disparaging those whom they see as lesser, and proclaiming they are not fully Orthodox. I have seen this first hand- when it comes to the issue of homosexuality and gay members in the Church. When these issues are discussed, some ultra-conservative Christians feel the need to reinforce the law to the T– sans grace, speaking only about what the canons say regarding these topics, and using the Church fathers as a backbone of their arguments.
Best Secular Prolife graphics of 2014
My fave - "Memo to people who think that because I'm anti-abortion, I must also have something against sex: Nope! I think sex is great! I just don't love sex literally more than life itself.
Tuesday, February 03, 2015
I find it reassuring that I'm not the only one that thinks our current culture is creepy
Body hair, and more specifically pubic hair, is an indicator of sexual maturity. Not all cultures remove pubic hair or see it as undesirable (see: our own culture 30 years ago). Pubic hair on a woman indicates that she is sexually mature. So what does it signify when we associate the REMOVAL of pubic hair with ‘femininity’? (1) That a fully sexually mature woman is undesirable? That to be ‘feminine’ a woman must resemble a pre-pubescent child? That a woman’s body is not acceptable the way it is naturally? (2,3) Those are certainly the messages I glean from this cultural expectation placed upon women.Basically, I agree with everything in this article.
Thursday, January 08, 2015
Abbey Road, Austin Ruse, and the new homophiles
I originally took issue with tone as well, yet upon closer evaluation and considering past as well as ongoing conversation involving Ruse and the Spiritual Friendship people, I interpreted the 'tone' as a matter of style - rather than a sneering attack. In Ruse's current article - that really is made clear. Sadly, some of his commenters go in for the kill, beating up on Eve Tushnet in particular. That is unfortunate, but Ruse does step in to defend his position, as in this comment: . . .Looking for the good and the common ground wherever possible. Good for Abbey Road. Am I a new homophile? Maybe.
Friday, December 19, 2014
NFP - Not just Catholic Birth Control
SHK ponders.
I read a lot of refutes to Natural Family Planning where people pose the question, “Isn’t that still birth control? What’s the difference between charting and popping a pill?”
Labels: catholic, morality, NFP, sex
Tuesday, October 28, 2014
Good reasons to call the female genetalia by the correct name.
MSFW. Call a spade a spade, and a vulva a vulva. That's my policy and I'm sticking to it.
Labels: nonplussed and friends, sex
Wednesday, October 15, 2014
Dispatches from the Synod - reactions
Some people are freaking out and being calmed down by friends. Mark Shea is horribly sensible and clear thinking as always.
That paragraph is the real biggie causing hyperventilation across both NPR and St. Blog’s Rightwingosphere, but what, exactly, is new (or wrong) with it? We do, after all, believe that every member of the body of Christ has gifts for the other members. There’s no asterisk in Romans 12 or 1 Corinthians 12 that says those who happen to experience homosexual temptations are exempt from having something to offer the Church. Ah! What about that line about “accepting and valuing their sexual orientation” cries both the Progressive and the Reactionary, carefully ignoring the bit about “without compromising Catholic doctrine on the family and matrimony”.Yes it turns out that you can want to do things that are wrong, have that give you a unique perspective on life, and participate in the life of the community productively. The horror I tell you.
Thursday, October 09, 2014
Abbey Roads, Fr. Z, and "Gay Josephite Marriage"
A most thought-provoking article, with conclusions that I can agree heartily with. People living together, attempting to live chastely, which may require them to avoid sexual relations, for the purpose of friendship. And no neither of them use the term in the title, it's just clickbait, which doesn't even make sense because I don't put anything past the click.
Labels: catholic, morality, sex
Monday, September 29, 2014
Sexuality and Pelagianism
Same-sex marriage, on this view, is utterly necessary for churches to affirm because it is a means for gay Christians to participate in Christ’s atoning self-gift. Or, as Eugene Rogers has put it, gay Christians’ renunciation (rather than consecration) of their desires “gives God nothing by which to redeem them, no hook in the flesh by which to capture them and pull them up.” What this means, as Douglas Farrow has pointed out, is that “Eros”—or the human pursuit and cultivation of it—“is the real mediator here, not Jesus Christ.”There's plenty of heresy to go around!
But things aren’t always better in the traditionalist camp. Mirroring the rhetoric of some of their ideological opponents, conservatives, too, can fall into the moralizing, semi-Pelagian trap. We—I count myself among them—can speak of celibacy as a faithful path for gay Christians in such sunny, sanguine terms that one might think salvation comes by saying no to gay sex rather than by the mediation of Christ.
Sunday, September 14, 2014
Onanism in other cultures
Despite the statistic that everyone's doing it, it turns out that only every college student is doing it.
Fully 96% of the subjects whose behavior has been reported in top psychological journals were drawn from only 12 % of the world's population.
. . . .
However, as the Hewletts document in their 2010 study, Western sexual patterns, including our frequent masturbation, are unusual by cross-cultural standards. The Hewletts arrived at this conclusion in part by studying the sexual behavior of two central African cultures. They were astonished to learn that neither the Aka nor the Ngandu were aware of masturbation
