The blog.
Michael Brown has one of his best posts ever posted on today's issue of Spirit Daily. What's it called? EXPLICIT TALK OF SEX ENTERS CHRISTIANITY AS A PRETEXT OF MARITAL INTIMACY AND LOVE: SAD TIME.
Ed. note: I suppose you could call it sad, but I think we say things are sad way too often - and I'm not sure we are always sad about the things we say are 'sad'. We may be saddened, but usually we are really disgusted, scandalized, offended, and outraged. Sadness follows, and if it is healthy, it leads to compunction. If it doesn't - then we are just being self-righteous. But I digress.
Brown has a timely post on what all the sex talk going on in sacred spaces is all about - at least, I think he does...
There is a big push in Christian circles to openly discuss and advocate more and better sex in marriage. It's become a "hot" topic on websites. There are those who use (and misuse) the writing of John Paul II on the "theology of the body." There are those who speak in explicit and even lurid terms from the Protestant-evangelical pulpit.
Shame on the sex preachers. In our opinion, it's an excuse to justify certain prurient undercurrents. There is a shadow behind it. It feels and looks unclean.
We have a Catholic version [...] who will remain unnamed. Suffice it to say that John Paul II's encyclical on the body was not meant to be stretched into a ministry of sex. Let it say what it says and that's the end of it. - Read more here.
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ReplyDeleteVery interesting post, Terry. IMO, it's easy to see how Theology of the Body can be misrepresented, often by its strongest supporters. I made it through about half of reading in English translation Blessed John Paul's audiences where he laid out Theology of the Body. While it seems to me that he focused so much on how God created us as opposed to the marital act itself, it is very difficult to get through without "cherry picking" the parts that are easier to understand or those that we most relate to.
ReplyDeleteThere's so much good in Pope John Paul's talks, but it took me twice to three times the time to get through a paragraph with constant references to a dictionary and college philosophy texts.
In Christ,
You know what's really depressing? It's gotten to the point when if you don't want to hear about TOB anymore some nice person will accuse you of not being spiritually mature.
ReplyDeleteThat is depressing Dymphna but I believe it. I was going to visit a community a while back and the superior excitedly told me that everyone was going to a TOB talk and book signing and it just sent up a red flag for me. That an a comment made by the superior about Alice Von Hildebrand who I greatly respect.
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