Messy Mondays: Ten Ways to Get the Right Guy to Like You

Thank God for Theology of the Body

The modern pro-choice movement is the spawn of the sexual revolution of the 1960's, in which a few million angry college students abandoned traditional norms of decency and the marriage bond.
Compare this "freedom" with the definition our Holy Father gives us for authentic freedom.
(Quote @ bottom)

In the place of traditional norms of decency and the marriage bond they proposed a culture of what they termed free love, which turned out to be a euphemism for unbridled lust; sex without responsibility or commitment.

As the world has since seen, sex without responsibility is sex without love. In addition to spawning the current pro-abortion and overall death culture of today, the free love of these sexual revolutionaries turned out to be not so free at all. In stark contrast to it's euphoric promises it was emotionally and physically destructive on a grand scale.

The current sex education establishment denies all this. With typically modern schizophrenia, they aggressively advertise sexuality as a no-strings-attached recreational activity, while at the same time spending all of their time warning against the risks of this behavior. Having never known the wonder of committed, life-giving conjugal love, its adherents are passing on the only knowledge of sexuality that they do know: sex as a momentarily diverting activity with an alarming collection of risks.

Consequently, says Pope Benedict, sex is taught as risk management.

The wonder and beauty of conjugal love is reduced to a series of don'ts: Don't get a sexually transmitted disease, don't get overly attached to your temporary "partner," and, above all, don't get pregnant.

Does this remind you of Dr. Ruth Westheimer, the sex guru of the 80's, who said, "Swing from the chandelier, but remember, use birth control!" This mindset continues to be perpetuated in television and movies -- even in light comedy programs seen today as relatively harmless and marketed as family entertainment such as, "Friends, Seinfeld, 3rd Rock From the Sun, and Everybody Loves Raymond."

We recently purchased the first couple of seasons of 3rd Rock From the Sun and Everybody Loves Raymond. I have discovered it is necessary to preview each and every episode. I have been so disappointed! Here is a quick list of subjects joked about in a cavalier manner:
Pre-marital sex, birth control, homosexuality, drug use, divorce, disrespect for parents and family.

Thank God for the Theology of the Body which is catching hold among young Catholic abstinence educators, particularly here at The Rise of the TOB blog. Young people want more than the lies of the 1960's which sadly, was often promoted by misled Catholic educators."

Much of this post is quoted from Causa-Nostrae-Laetitiae
Read the Entire article here

HT: Causa-Nostrae-Laetitiae
who credits Life Site News

Dear friends, truth is not an imposition. Nor is it simply a set of rules. It is a discovery of the One who never fails us; the One whom we can always trust. In seeking truth we come to live by belief because ultimately truth is a person: Jesus Christ. That is why authentic freedom is not an opting out. It is an opting in; nothing less than letting go of self and allowing oneself to be drawn into Christ’s very being for others (cf. Spe Salvi, 28).

Pope Benedict XVI - Papal Youth Rally, St Joseph's Seminary in Yonkers, NY (April, 19, 2008)

On Necessities and Superfluities

This is an excerpt from Thomas Dubay's, Happy Are You Poor. The bolding and formatting is my emphasis.

“It must be noticed that the values of the kingdom are just about 180 degrees removed from the values of the world… It is assumed that every one knows them and that most people live by them. What are these premises:

• prestige is a primary value…
  
• bodily comfort and pleasure are indispensable…
  
• this life is all we have, and so let’s enjoy it to the full…
  
• impressing people with one’s possessions and accomplishments and attractiveness is important…
  
• sexual excitement and satisfaction are crucial…
  
• success is ‘coming out on top’ in relation to others…
  
• money is a must, for without it one can have very little of anything else worth having in life.

“If we turn to the pages of the New Testament we find a picture as opposite as it could be:

• humility, being last, unknown, hidden in Christ, is a condition for getting into the kingdom…
• prestige is worthless and even an obstacle to greatness…
  
• the hard road and the narrow gate, carrying the cross every day is immensely important…
  
• dying to our selfishness and crucifying our illusory desires are indispensable…
  
• impressing people is of no importance at all, whereas being pleasing to the divine eyes is everything…
  
• virginity is a favored and privileged state, and chaste fidelity in marriage mirrors the very union of Christ and his Church…
• one may not try to best others; rather he is to serve them as though he were a slave…
  
• it most difficult, indeed it is humanly impossible, for the wealthy to enter the kingdom of heaven.” pp. 57-58

What follows is an examen straight from Fr. Dubay’s book Happy Are You Poor. He says that we all have different needs so we “cannot know whether a need is real or illusory” for certain people, but these set of questions are at least a good start. Some may think this is a bit too rigorous… but examens should be rigorous–or perhaps blunt and sincere.

• By what standards do I determine what is necessary?
• Do I collect unneeded things? Do I hoard possessions?
• May I, on Gospel principles, buy clothes at the dictates of fashion designers in Paris and New York? Am I slave to fashion? Do I live in other peoples’ minds? Why really do I have all the clothes I have: shirts, blouses, suits, dresses, shoes, gloves?
• Am I an inveterate nibbler? Do I eat because I am bored? Do the weight charts convict me of superfluity in eating and drinking? Do I take second helpings simply for the pleasure they afford?
• Do I keep unneeded books and papers and periodicals and notes?
• Do I retain two or three identical items (clocks, watches, scarves) of which I really need only one?
• Do I spend money on trinkets and unnecessary conveniences?
• In the winter, do we keep our thermostat, at a setting higher than health experts advise: 68 degrees?
• When I think of my needs, do I also think of the far more drastic needs of the teeming millions in the third world?
• Do I need the traveling I do more than the poor need food and clothing and medical care?
• Am I right in contributing to the billions of dollars spent each year on cosmetics? How much of this can be called necessary?
• Is smoking necessary for me?
• Is drinking necessary for me?
• Do I need to examine exactly what I mean by saying to myself, “I need this”?
• Can I honestly say that all I use or possess is used or possessed for the glory of God (1 Cor 10:31)? Would he be given more glory by some other use?
• Do I in the pauline sense “mind the things above, not those on earth” (Col 3:1-2)?
  

H/T Katerina and Becky

Intimacy Separated from Love

The self is diminished, not fulfilled, when intimacy is separated from love.

To give our lives meaning, it is necessary to make commitments to each other. These define us. Mores and manners have everything to do with what distinguishes us as human. No amount of cultural programming (or pop culture propaganda) can ever deny that we have higher desires than those of the body.

When two people are in love and the man and woman are committed to each other (but not married) what makes sex wrong?
Well, first and foremost, remember 1st Thessalonians.

1 Thessalonians 4:3 - For this is the will of God, your sanctification: that you abstain from unchastity.

If a man and woman love each other it makes sense that they want the best for each other. . . above all, it makes sense to want to help each other to heaven. It is a betrayal to say you love someone and NOT want eternal life for that person.

In contrast to this culture of mutual betrayal and exploitation is the Church's sacrament of marriage, in which husband and wife participate in the awesome self-donation of Christ and his Bride to one another in mutual love.

For the sexual act is the highest incarnation of self-giving in human experience. By it, we say with our bodies, "I give you all of myself." To say that, apart from the sacrament of marriage is, bluntly, to lie. Unchastity is the lie of self-giving incarnated in the act of taking: taking the dignity and love of the other while exploiting them for the sake of a physical or emotional sensation.

This post is a kalaidascope of thought from Words of Encouragement, Mark Shea and Jeff Cavins with lots of input from me!

Novena to St Agnes

Here is a lovely novena to St. Agnes for unmarried couples.

St. Agnes, although you were only a child, you believed that Jesus was always with you; help us to remember that he is also with us and to remain true to his presence.

St Agnes, you refused to give up your faith, help us to be proud of our faith to love it, to be strong in it, and to give witness to it daily.

St. Agnes, patron saint of unmarried couples, watch over ________ and _______ keep them strong in their faith, committed to chastity and virginity until marriage. Be with them and always pray for them.

Amen

Why Chastity?

1 Thessalonians 4:3 - For this is the will of God, your sanctification: that you abstain from unchastity.

Our culture thinks that the Church speaks against unchastity because it thinks sex is dirty. But Pope John Paul II shows that this is wildly off the mark. The real reason the Church commends chastity is not that unchastity is dirty but that unchastity is dishonest.

For the sexual act is the highest incarnation of self-giving in human experience. By it, we say with our bodies, "I give you all of myself." To say that, apart from the sacrament of marriage is, bluntly, to lie. Unchastity is the lie of self-giving incarnated in the act of taking: taking the dignity and love of the other while exploiting them for the sake of a physical sensation.

As C.S. Lewis said, to say that an unchaste man "wants a woman" is false. He does not want a woman. He wants an experience for which the woman happens to be the necessary apparatus. And it matters not a whit if both parties are "consenting" to that mutual exploitation. Mutual lies do not make a truth. They merely complicate the betrayal.

Another betrayal must be mentioned. When two people are in love and the man and woman are committed to each other (but not married) what makes sex wrong?
Well, first and foremost, remember 1st Thessalonians! If a man and woman love each other it makes sense that they want the best for each other. . . above all, it makes sense to want to help each other to heaven. It is a betrayal to say you love someone and NOT want eternal life for that person.

In contrast to this culture of mutual betrayal and exploitation is the Church's sacrament of marriage, in which husband and wife participate in the awesome self-donation of Christ and his Bride to one another in mutual love.

This post is a kalaidascope of thought from Words of Encouragement, Mark Shea and Jeff Cavins with lots of input from me!