This is why we have Confession. Prudence requires action, but sometimes that action will be wrong. The sacrament of Penance lets us work out what went wrong and helps us give it another go.
And no one wants to deny themselves.
Been mulling these ideas more since yesterday.
Big on my mind is the physical/digital divide. Digital things have some physical existence. They are encoded in circuits or on hard drives and disks. However, our minds can't grasp those things unless they are mediated through a computer screen or are projected into the physical world in some other way.
We grasp physical things through a single medium, that of the senses. We grasp digital things through two mediums: the computer and screen, and then the senses. This digital goods are further abstracted from the reality our mind can grasp.
Man I want to talk about digital ontology, but everyone else wants to get in the same stupid old fights about sex.
Honestly I've always found the Church's teaching on sex to be quite simple. Difficult, perhaps, at times, but simple. Understanding the why, the rest follows naturally.
It also helps the husband exercise his moral faculties and develop the virtue he needs as head of the home.
Yup! The vigil only makes sense in light of the feast.
I haven't! I'll add it to my reading list!
Yeah I've encountered Ron Conte's site before. It's full of theological opinion presented as authoritative doctrine. I think a lot of well-intentioned Catholics become needlessly scrupulous as a result of some of his writings.
Self-government begins within each human being. Before engaging in self-government within a society, we must learn to properly govern our own passions. Hedonistic freedom is no freedom at all.
> Do not refuse one another except perhaps by agreement for a season, that you may devote yourselves to prayer; but then come together again, lest Satan tempt you through lack of self-control.
1 Corinthians 7:5
Clearly Paul would say that to deny your spouse selfishly would be sinful, but he certainly doesn't condemn abstinence when it is for the sake of some higher good.
Because you can't give of yourself unless you first possess yourself.
I think we as humans are ultimately built for love. Perfect love gives generously and receives graciously. However, you can't give what you don't have, and if you are slave to your passions, you can't fully possess yourself.
In short, sexual continence actually allows us to love more richly.
All that said, it's good you recognize the reasons for your atheism. I think a lot of people reject religion because they like sex, but hide the fact from themselves behind a bunch of other arguments and justifications.
The Mass, in some sense, is the Beatific vision. Our task is to learn to receive the Lord's presence there.
#catholic
I understand your argument. I still think it's excessively reductive. There's way more to even the sexual dimension of a marriage than just this tit-for-tat ethos you've outlined.
Sex is the mutual gift of self, in both directions. It's not the wife giving herself up for her husband to take. It's the husband giving himself wholly and unreservedly, and the wife receiving that and giving herself wholly and unreservedly back to him.
There's a sense in which that dynamic is an echo of our relationship with God, but that's a whole different conversation.
Paychecks in exchange for sex? How is this different from prostitution?
The other part of Ephesians 5 is that husbands must love their wives as Christ loves the Church. Christ's love for the Church is self-sacrificial to the point of death.
What if you're trying to space pregnancies so you don't have back-to-back Irish twins?
Do you use a condom?