Tell your friends you love them and you like spending time with them.
The (hopefully obvious) thing is, if two people actually like each other, sexual intimacy will very fulfilling.
Marriage ought to be the deepest and most complete form of earthly friendship. You need a firm friend to raise children with and to help you get to Heaven.
There's a real romance to friendship that has nothing to do with sex. We need to recover that.
Yep so if I start yapping my trap in a damaging way, people can just block me and tune me out.
If that does happen, I would welcome correction. I want to think through real issues with other people, not be a bureaucrat blogger.
The soul is inherently ungendered, but in the spiritual life, Jesus is the bridegroom and we are the bride.
I don't think the Christian manosphere is ready for that conversation, though.
#Catholic #Christian #gender #MasculineFrame
I was thinking about this the other day in relation to polyamory. It seems people who try out polyamorous relationships are looking for something good, but they lose sight of it because the social imaginary conflates love with sexuality.
We have to fast and pray for those in positions of authority, because the example they give is so crucial. A bad father can seriously damage his child's ability to know and love God, as can an abusive spouse, a nasty teacher, or a tyrannical government leader.
Another note worth making is that the opposite of hierarchy is not anarchy or egalitarianism—the opposite of hierarchy is bureaucracy.
Everything has a hierarchy, and we hope the people in that structure are virtuous.
Bureaucracy removes both authority and consequences and turns everyone into petty tyrants with no power to do good.
The answer is subsidiarity, because then each person's scope of concern and scope of power have the most possible overlap.
Nothing to add except that I love this conversation. This is the real difficulty we all wrestle with in trying to follow Christ
Even if the Pope is indeed a satanic socialist, that doesn't make him any less the vicar of Christ on earth. The person and the office are not the same thing, and Christ can work through the most degenerate people.
An interesting consequence of that thought would that, because electronic energy is almost always in motion digital information is closer to pure act than many material things.
The next step that I can see, then, is to ponder where information itself fits in the order of being. Information is what is needed to turn potency into act, to shape matter into substantial forms. Information also lives primarily in the mind, as far as I can tell.
This is, I think, one of the big differences between Catholicism and Protestantism. Catholics affirm that God primarily works through secondary causes, and thus His authority is normally mediated through human institutions. Thus, we always owe *something* to those institutions, even when the people in them are corrupt (as they usually are). Protestantism, as far as I can tell, removes most of that mediation for a direct "me and God" approach to authority. This lends itself naturally to the classical liberal order that America was founded on.
Believe me, I wrestle with this all the time, especially within the Church. Lots of our bishops and pastors kinda suck, but we still owe them some degree of obedience.
Live in the tension.
You're right, human authority is liable to abuse. However, we are called to be obedient to God, either so that He may direct us towards some mission, or so that we may learn humility and grow in virtue. Legitimate authority is not invalidated by abuse of a position of power.
That said, the situation is complex here in the West, because our social order is built on principles of self-government. It takes a lot of prudence to know when to submit in humble obedience to legitimate authority and when to stand up to correct an injustice.
No one is going to get into Heaven by "my way or the high way," though, so we do have to learn obedience and humility in order to attain greater union with God.
Yeah yeah, branding, whatever.
I want an app whose color theme changes with the seasons.
The founding myth of classical liberalism (i.e., the modern West) is revolution. As a result, I think we've lost a lot of our healthy respect for authority.
This is why strong same-sex friendships are so important. Men can hold each other accountable in a way no woman can, and women can check and encourage each other in ways that men can't.
Obedience is an underrated virtue. If women need it within the home, men certainly need it outside the home in relationship to proper hierarchies, such as pastors, bishops, and legitimate governmental authority.
A key to understanding the sexual ethics of Thomas Aquinas is his position that spouses sin whenever their purpose in having intercourse is the pleasure of it. The pleasure itself, Thomas declares, is not sinful, but necessary, natural and good.
This is an article covering the well-founded considerations on theology of the body and the sacrament of marriage by some saints.
St Thomas and marriage: beyond the Augustinian impasse
By
Bishop Peter Elliott
https://www.catholicweekly.com.au/st-thomas-and-marriage-beyond-the-augustinian-impasse/
Longer article, but looks interesting. I'll try to read it later today.