Catholic Answers: don’t even lie in the same bed . . .
Is it OK for unmarried adults to lie in the same bed, even if they don’t have sex. Quick answer: NO. That’s the advice I got here, at the Chastity Q&A. It’s a sexual catechism filled with all kinds of advice, such as how far you can go without committing a sin.
Is foreplay wrong? Here’s advice I had never before considered:
Image by orangeline at dreamstime.com (with permission)
Perhaps the easiest way to find out if our actions conform to authentic love is to imagine God sitting on a nearby sofa watching us. If his presence would cause immediate shame or the desire to stop dead in our tracks, we need to ask ourselves why.
How creepy! Would a married couple have sex if God was sitting on a nearby sofa watching? And, BTW, isn’t God supposedly omniscient? Aren’t good Christians supposedly to always assume that God is on a nearby sofa?
Is it OK for homosexuals to raise children? No:
The impact of a mother in her family is unrepeatable, and the same can be said of the father. Two moms don’t make a dad, and two dads do not equal a mom. This is the way nature has designed it.
Oh, and don’t bother using condoms, because they cause greater numbers of unplanned pregnancies:
The fact is, increased condom use by teens is associated with increased out-of-wedlock birth rates.”
You’ll also learn that merely looking at women in swimming suits is akin to pornography and that “porn trains us to have mental polygamy.”
All of this advice was provided by spin-off (”Chastity”) site linked to a Catholic website (”Catholic Answers“) that provided so much Catholic esoterica that it left me disoriented in 20 minutes. Truly amazing that so many people are willing to discuss, as one example of many, the difference (if any) between the “holy spirit” and the “holy ghost.” Here’s another interesting question: Should rock music be allowed at church? Absolutely not, because “If you were before Christ being crucified on Calvary, truly there witnessing it, would you start up a rock band and clap and dance?” The argument seems to be that as Jesus was bleeding to death on the cross, he would rather have someone nearby playing solemn music on an organ.
If you want to be more than simply a good Catholic, “Catholicy Answers” is clearly the site for you.
Niklaus,
Difficult and absurd. One has to wonder how much harm has been caused in this world due to the tortured self loathing of the human animal writhing under the faith-based dictum that his erection or her lubrication are obscene, filthy, and sinful. A lot of people apparently grow up and get over it—or manage to use the ritual “purification” you mention as an escape hatch—but you gotta wonder about all those who never did, ala the Wild Man in Huxley’s “Brave New World.”
Niklaus makes great points. Think about the extremes we go to (myself included) not to let any of our animal “stench” show to the outside world - beyond soap and mouthwash and deodorant to perfumes, colognes, body splashes, scented lotions, creams, lip balms and hair products, floral douches and flavored condoms . . . God forbid we’d just smell like . . . us.
No, no! That’s far too . . . earthy and animalistic. Now granted, most of us can tolerate only a slight level of human musk before it becomes offensive, but we’ve conditioned ourselves to tolerate less and less of it; as a rule, we work to eliminate even the faintest hint of our own animal Perhaps this is why some of us can’t tell who we’re attracted to until it’s too late, and we realize it isn’t the one we’re married to? . . . oops.
Oh no! Two adults lying bed bed together who aren’t married???? That’s just terrible to the church! Priests MOLESTING LITTLE BOYS, THOUGH…… that’s perfectly alright!!!! F–k the Catholic Church! They are no arbitor of morality!
I ask my daughters to eat and drink only in the kitchen where there’s linoleum because I want to avoid spills on our carpet. What do they do? They like to stand with their heels in the kitchen and toes in the living room. Why? Don’t know why, easy answer is human nature. But this is the same principle… whenever religion tries to give black and whites it sets up the scenario where people do whatever they want right up to these boundary lines. I’m sure God can see right through the teenager’s religious gesture the same that I can see through my daughter’s rule-sidestepping.
People that don’t care what God wants or the Bible says use these religious legalities as a way to do as much as they can while still appeasing their consciences and perhaps their peers, it really has nothing to do with God or Christianity/Catholicism.
Your example of your daughters is perfect, Danny - that is what children do. You give them a flat-out specific rule, and they immediately look for ways to flaunt its breakability without breaking it. You give specifics to a a teenager, and they can find 500 shades of gray to get around it in the first 5 minutes. It IS human nature, and it is something that maturity helps moderate and manage. Unfortunately, when children are forced into the black and white rules and not allowed to find their own gray areas, they often never learn how to do that safely.
And church-as-parenting sometimes leave the flock in the same boat.