Former Catholics trolling the forum

[Mono no aware]

Feeling uncomfortably caught in the middle as you do, it's not the people who "shake the dust from their feet" that you envy, but those who have real faith.

This is true.  Having known the consolation which faith provides, I do envy those who have it.  Although in my case (as with any apostate), my faith may not have been true faith since, as QMR and Vetus Ordo have both averred, true faith cannot result in apostasy.  An apostate, in this view, was never really a believer to begin with.  This is a minority opinion, of course.

[Mono no aware]

Truly, people like you are the evidence that cannot be dismissed of nominal "human beings" of being so vastly different amongst each other in their spiritual constitution and feeling for life that it becomes questionable that we are really all of the same order of being.

On a side note, see the two opposed but ultimately related and complementary aesthetic trends, both of them sick, both of them arising from a hatred of the world and the fullness of life: one to de-sensualise, particularly de-sexualise art and beauty, the other to make the sensual and sex ugly.

Just for the record, I do not seek, nor have I ever sought, to de-sensualize or de-sexualize art and beauty.  Nor did Schopenhauer, who is probably recent history's most notable expositor of contemptus mundi and its attendant aesthetics.  The question at hand is whether the act of sex itself is base and ugly and shameful, and I submit that it is.  Pornography, I am sure you will agree, is not art.  I am merely putting aesthetics over individual pleasure in the hierarchy of things.

Perhaps I will change my mind if I ever encounter Christ, as you say, "personally, man-to-man, where his reality and the reality of what he is are undeniable, and one walks in light."  But this latter part appears dubious.  You yourself claim to have had this experience, but the result seems that rather than walking in light, your task is to go around brusquely correcting all others whose understanding of Christ does not accord with your own.  I do not think I would want your experience; it seems like an administrative headache.  You are a malleus haereticorum without limit, not only against countless members of this forum, but against saints and popes and much of ecclesial history back to the very first Fathers who dared to appeal to anything Greek. 

You tell us St. Alphonsus Liguori was a blasphemer; St. Jerome was an insufferable prude.  You will say that these doctors of the Church were neither infallible nor above criticism, but tell me, did anyone ever get the faith 100% correct besides yourself?  That should make you suspicious.  Brother, you are in a tent of one.  You don't even profess with an established communion anymore: you are "quasi-Catholic," because the Catholic Church herself has in your view borrowed overmuch from a Hellenistic patrimony, and gone too far with Mariology for your liking.  You need to get yourself a white cassock & zucchetto, Kreuzritter.  You are not just a heretic-hunter, but you have made yourself the very viceroy of Christ on earth.  You and your experience are the ultimate arbiter of orthodoxy.

[coffeeandcigarette]

  The question at hand is whether the act of sex itself is base and ugly and shameful, and I submit that it is.  Pornography, I am sure you will agree, is not art. 

How can the act itself be ugly and shameful when God designed it to be just as it is. He does not make things ugly and shameful. (you never answered my other response to this) Secondly, how on earth do you justify comparing porn to the act of sex itself? One is a exhibition of lustful sex, in all sorts of undue modes, outside of marriage for the benefit of an audience. The other is exactly what God made; a unifying act between husband and wife to bring life into the world...In PRIVATE. There is no comparison.

[Mono no aware]

How can the act itself be ugly and shameful when God designed it to be just as it is. He does not make things ugly and shameful. (you never answered my other response to this) Secondly, how on earth do you justify comparing porn to the act of sex itself? One is a exhibition of lustful sex, in all sorts of undue modes, outside of marriage for the benefit of an audience. The other is exactly what God made; a unifying act between husband and wife to bring life into the world...In PRIVATE. There is no comparison.

My apologies.  The reason I didn't answer your previous reply is because we are approaching this subject from such completely different angles.  You seem to be assuming a priori the very thing I think needs to be proved: that sex is good because God ordained it as good.  Forgive me if I have misread you, but you seem to be saying "God endorsed it, I believe it, and that settles it."  I didn't think you would consider it profitable to argue this point.

What I would offer as a counter is that many of the Early Church Fathers did not believe, as you do, that God had ordained sex as good in and of itself, but more as something like a distasteful and necessary evil: as a postlapsarian allowance for those who marry for the purpose of begetting children, which children would (hopefully, in the Fathers' view, taking from St. Paul) opt themselves for celibacy.  St. Jerome said, "I praise marriage because it brings forth virgins."  Regarding sex itself, he considered it unclean.  As for the aspect of "In PRIVATE," St. Augustine argued that the privacy sought for the act is a reflection of its aesthetic shamefulness:

Lust requires for its consummation darkness and secrecy; and this not only when unlawful intercourse is desired, but even such fornication as the earthly city has legalized.  Where there is no fear of punishment, these permitted pleasures still shrink from the public eye.  Even where provision is made for this lust, secrecy also is provided; and while lust found it easy to remove the prohibitions of law, shamelessness found it impossible to lay aside the veil of retirement.  For even shameless men call this shameful; and though they love the pleasure, dare not display it.  What! does not even conjugal intercourse, sanctioned as it is by law for the propagation of children, legitimate and honorable though it be, does it not seek retirement from every eye?  Before the bridegroom fondles his bride, does he not exclude the attendants, and even the paranymphs, and such friends as the closest ties have admitted to the bridal chamber?  The greatest master of Roman eloquence says, that all right actions wish to be set in the light, i.e., desire to be known.  This right action, however, has such a desire to be known, that yet it blushes to be seen.

What St. Augustine said applies not only to pornography but to the Swedish "educational films" of the 1960s and to the married couple in the darkened bedroom.  I mentioned pornography to Kreuzritter only in the context of his remarks on art.  I would never argue that all acts of sex are comparable to pornography.  I have conceded that there is intimacy and supreme pleasure in the act; all I am saying in addition is that there is an obvious baseness to the physicality of it, an almost absurd and comical bestial quality.  No matter how tenderly it begins, we know how it finishes.  We share our means of sexual reproduction with the other primates.  Which is why my own a priori assumption is that it seems rather like something designed by nature than by a deliberating deity.  Or, if it does come from God, then I would agree with the Fathers who were less than "sex positive," as they say in modern terms.  I do not agree with the attitudes that evolved later.  I consider them "proto-Christopher Westean."

[Miriam_M]

This is true.  Having known the consolation which faith provides, I do envy those who have it. 

It is yours to have (or regain) for the asking.

[Sempronius]

How can the act itself be ugly and shameful when God designed it to be just as it is. He does not make things ugly and shameful. (you never answered my other response to this) Secondly, how on earth do you justify comparing porn to the act of sex itself? One is a exhibition of lustful sex, in all sorts of undue modes, outside of marriage for the benefit of an audience. The other is exactly what God made; a unifying act between husband and wife to bring life into the world...In PRIVATE. There is no comparison.

My apologies.  The reason I didn't answer your previous reply is because we are approaching this subject from such completely different angles.  You seem to be assuming a priori the very thing I think needs to be proved: that sex is good because God ordained it as  good.  Forgive me if I have misread you, but you seem to be saying "God endorsed it, I believe it, and that settles it."  I didn't think you would consider it profitable to argue this point.

What I would offer as a counter is that many of the Early Church Fathers did not believe, as you do, that God had ordained sex as good in and of itself, but more as something like a distasteful and necessary evil: as a postlapsarian allowance for those who marry for the purpose of begetting children, which children would (hopefully, in the Fathers' view, taking from St. Paul) opt themselves for celibacy.  St. Jerome said, "I praise marriage because it brings forth virgins."  Regarding sex itself, he considered it unclean.  As for the aspect of "In PRIVATE," St. Augustine argued that the privacy sought for the act is a reflection of its aesthetic shamefulness:

Lust requires for its consummation darkness and secrecy; and this not only when unlawful intercourse is desired, but even such fornication as the earthly city has legalized.  Where there is no fear of punishment, these permitted pleasures still shrink from the public eye.  Even where provision is made for this lust, secrecy also is provided; and while lust found it easy to remove the prohibitions of law, shamelessness found it impossible to lay aside the veil of retirement.  For even shameless men call this shameful; and though they love the pleasure, dare not display it.  What! does not even conjugal intercourse, sanctioned as it is by law for the propagation of children, legitimate and honorable though it be, does it not seek retirement from every eye?  Before the bridegroom fondles his bride, does he not exclude the attendants, and even the paranymphs, and such friends as the closest ties have admitted to the bridal chamber?  The greatest master of Roman eloquence says, that all right actions wish to be set in the light, i.e., desire to be known.  This right action, however, has such a desire to be known, that yet it blushes to be seen.

What St. Augustine said applies not only to pornography but to the Swedish "educational films" of the 1960s and to the married couple in the darkened bedroom.  I mentioned pornography to Kreuzritter only in the context of his remarks on art.  I would never argue that all acts of sex are comparable to pornography.  I have conceded that there is intimacy and supreme pleasure in the act; all I am saying in addition is that there is an obvious baseness to the physicality of it, an almost absurd and comical bestial quality.  No matter how tenderly it begins, we know how it finishes.  We share our means of sexual reproduction with the other primates.  Which is why my own a priori assumption is that it seems rather like something designed by nature than by a deliberating deity.  Or, if it does come from God, then I would agree with the Fathers who were less than "sex positive," as they say in modern terms.  I do not agree with the attitudes that evolved later.  I consider them "proto-Christopher Westean."

I agree with you and this being a sensitive topic its quite hard to express a balanced view. Many more catholics would have the same opinion as you have if someone like St Augustine could come back to this world and explain his reasoning one more time.

[Mono no aware]

Many more catholics would have the same opinion as you have if someone like St Augustine could come back to this world and explain his reasoning one more time.

Sadly, I think the contrary would happen.  St. Augustine could return to the world, be elected pope, and explain and dogmatize his views in an ex cathedra declaration.  And many traditional Catholics would treat it like they did Laudato si': "just throw it in the garbage!"  The democratization of the Church is all-prevailing, even in traditional Catholicism, where "tradition" is in the eye of the beholder.  The heresy of Americanism has won.

[Gardener]

.

[dellery]

Many more catholics would have the same opinion as you have if someone like St Augustine could come back to this world and explain his reasoning one more time.

Sadly, I think the contrary would happen.  St. Augustine could return to the world, be elected pope, and explain and dogmatize his views in an ex cathedra declaration.  And many traditional Catholics would treat it like they did Laudato si': "just throw it in the garbage!"  The democratization of the Church is all-prevailing, even in traditional Catholicism, where "tradition" is in the eye of the beholder.  The heresy of Americanism has won.

How unfortunately true.

Many Saints would probably be rejected by trads for not being Right-wing enough.

[Vetus Ordo]

Feeling uncomfortably caught in the middle as you do, it's not the people who "shake the dust from their feet" that you envy, but those who have real faith.

This is true.  Having known the consolation which faith provides, I do envy those who have it.  Although in my case (as with any apostate), my faith may not have been true faith since, as QMR and Vetus Ordo have both averred, true faith cannot result in apostasy.  An apostate, in this view, was never really a believer to begin with.  This is a minority opinion, of course.

But if God has chosen you, you will hear Him.

[Gardener]

Many more catholics would have the same opinion as you have if someone like St Augustine could come back to this world and explain his reasoning one more time.

Sadly, I think the contrary would happen.  St. Augustine could return to the world, be elected pope, and explain and dogmatize his views in an ex cathedra declaration.  And many traditional Catholics would treat it like they did Laudato si': "just throw it in the garbage!"  The democratization of the Church is all-prevailing, even in traditional Catholicism, where "tradition" is in the eye of the beholder.  The heresy of Americanism has won.

I don't see how such a thing could be declared ex cathedra anyway. It's a rather moot thing and point. The fact of the matter is sex is licit in the marital union (this is indeed de fide) and Augustine's particular idiosyncratic notions of things with which he previously struggled (lust, Gnosticism, etc.) are not really matter for declarations except in the realm of revealed truths: something this particular subject is unlikely to be in, except as concerns the Sacrament of Matrimony.

It's an utterly fantastical notion.

As much as, "If St. Francis could return... ... ...and declare having clothes that aren't rags and a domicile to call one's own..."

Who cares?

It's not as black or white as your gray views would find optimal. The only things black and white in the Church are defined dogma, clerical collars and cassocks.

[Xavier]

I like the way Our Lord Jesus, the Best Professor of Theology, once explained it to a Mystic in speaking of His Grandparents St. Joachim and St. Anne. The careful reader will notice that the Lord Jesus is citing Sacred Scripture, and shows that marital love is good and holy when it is procreative and unitive: "Although she was now approaching old age and had been Joachim's wife for many years, she was always for him "the spouse of his youth, his joy, the most dear hind, the graceful fawn", whose caresses always had the fresh charm of the first nuptial evening and sweetly fascinated his love, keeping it as fresh as a flower sprinkled with dew, and as ardent as a fire continuously kept burning.

Therefore, in their affliction, their childless state, they spoke to each other "words of consolation in their thoughts and troubles". And eternal Wisdom, when the time came, besides teaching them in waking consciousness, enlightened them with dreams at night, visions of the poem of glory that was to come from them and was Most Holy Mary, My Mother. If their humility made them hesitant, their hearts trembled in hope at the first hint of God's promise. There was already certainty in Joachim's words: "Do hope... We shall gain our favour from God by our faithful love." They were dreaming of a child: they got the Mother of God.

The words of the book of Wisdom appear to be written for them: "By means of her I shall acquire glory before the people... by means of her, immortality shall be mine and I shall leave an everlasting memory to my successors." But to obtain all this they had to become masters of a true and lasting virtue which no event marred. Virtue of faith. Virtue of charity. Virtue of hope. Virtue of chastity.

The chastity of a married couple! They possessed it, because it is not necessary to be virgins to be chaste. And chaste nuptial beds are guarded by angels and from them descend good children who make the virtue of their parents the rule of their lives.

But where are they now [1944]? Now children are not wanted, neither is chastity.[prophetic!] I therefore say that love and marriage are desecrated. »

So the Lord only considers love and marriage to be desecrated when children are not wanted, nor that chastity which exists in a holy marriage.

That book btw has an Imprimatur from Bp. Danylak guaranteeing it teaches nothing against the Catholic Faith, and a practical seal of approval from Bp. Williamson, which is another testament for its orthodoxy. So it can safely be said this is authentic Catholic teaching on love within marriage.

Edit: And for those called to the higher state of Consecrated Virginity, the Mother of God, while Consecrating Herself wholly to God even in Her youth as a perpetual Virgin for His sake, said, from the same work, "If He wants a Virgin as His Mother, it means that He loves Virginity above all things. I want Him to love Me, His maiden, because of the Virginity which will make Me somewhat like His beloved Mother [at this time She did not yet not know that it was She, owing to Her Perfect Love for Him, Who was chosen to be Mother of God]". Later on, when teaching His Holy Apostles to become Perfect Priests and especially since they were going to be the First Bishops of the Church, He the great High Priest and model of Celibate Priests, told the holy Apostles that "it is a beautiful thing to be free from even the honest desire of a woman", just as every Bishop in particular and our Roman Rite Priests, and Monks, can and should be. Yes, truly beautiful, and very liberating, to love only God, above all things, and for His own sake, renouncing the world for union with Him. It all depends, then, on the state in life to which one is called.

[coffeeandcigarette]

How can the act itself be ugly and shameful when God designed it to be just as it is. He does not make things ugly and shameful. (you never answered my other response to this) Secondly, how on earth do you justify comparing porn to the act of sex itself? One is a exhibition of lustful sex, in all sorts of undue modes, outside of marriage for the benefit of an audience. The other is exactly what God made; a unifying act between husband and wife to bring life into the world...In PRIVATE. There is no comparison.

My apologies.  The reason I didn't answer your previous reply is because we are approaching this subject from such completely different angles.  You seem to be assuming a priori the very thing I think needs to be proved: that sex is good because God ordained it as good.  Forgive me if I have misread you, but you seem to be saying "God endorsed it, I believe it, and that settles it."  I didn't think you would consider it profitable to argue this point.

What I would offer as a counter is that many of the Early Church Fathers did not believe, as you do, that God had ordained sex as good in and of itself, but more as something like a distasteful and necessary evil: as a postlapsarian allowance for those who marry for the purpose of begetting children, which children would (hopefully, in the Fathers' view, taking from St. Paul) opt themselves for celibacy.  St. Jerome said, "I praise marriage because it brings forth virgins."  Regarding sex itself, he considered it unclean.  As for the aspect of "In PRIVATE," St. Augustine argued that the privacy sought for the act is a reflection of its aesthetic shamefulness:

Lust requires for its consummation darkness and secrecy; and this not only when unlawful intercourse is desired, but even such fornication as the earthly city has legalized.  Where there is no fear of punishment, these permitted pleasures still shrink from the public eye.  Even where provision is made for this lust, secrecy also is provided; and while lust found it easy to remove the prohibitions of law, shamelessness found it impossible to lay aside the veil of retirement.  For even shameless men call this shameful; and though they love the pleasure, dare not display it.  What! does not even conjugal intercourse, sanctioned as it is by law for the propagation of children, legitimate and honorable though it be, does it not seek retirement from every eye?  Before the bridegroom fondles his bride, does he not exclude the attendants, and even the paranymphs, and such friends as the closest ties have admitted to the bridal chamber?  The greatest master of Roman eloquence says, that all right actions wish to be set in the light, i.e., desire to be known.  This right action, however, has such a desire to be known, that yet it blushes to be seen.

What St. Augustine said applies not only to pornography but to the Swedish "educational films" of the 1960s and to the married couple in the darkened bedroom.  I mentioned pornography to Kreuzritter only in the context of his remarks on art.  I would never argue that all acts of sex are comparable to pornography.  I have conceded that there is intimacy and supreme pleasure in the act; all I am saying in addition is that there is an obvious baseness to the physicality of it, an almost absurd and comical bestial quality.  No matter how tenderly it begins, we know how it finishes.  We share our means of sexual reproduction with the other primates.  Which is why my own a priori assumption is that it seems rather like something designed by nature than by a deliberating deity.  Or, if it does come from God, then I would agree with the Fathers who were less than "sex positive," as they say in modern terms.  I do not agree with the attitudes that evolved later.  I consider them "proto-Christopher Westean."

  "designed by nature." What does that even mean? Men and women were not created by nature, they were created by God. Their sexual, life-giving purpose was built in from the beginning. God is not subject to "nature," if He wanted life to come into the world in a different way, he would have made it different, he didn't. Even if "nature" designed it (whatever that means) you would have to point to something else "designed by nature" which is inherently ugly and base. If you cannot find anything, it is because there isn't anything, there is nothing inherently ugly, evil, or base in nature. Also, St. Augustine did not just think that sex was not-so-great, or that sex was base, he thought that it was ALWAYS A SIN, even in marriage, with your lawful wife, a sin, always. Think about that. That has never been supported by God, Christ, or church dogma.

[coffeeandcigarette]

 

A little context on the early fathers I think would help here. Many were working under the assumption that the second coming was imminent. That is why we have so many exhortation to stay virginal and wait for the end. We are told that the time to "be fruitful" is over, that there are enough people, and that now we should all stay single and anticipate the second coming. Once they realized that this was not the case, and that Our Lord was not coming back right away, things settled to down to what has now been held for almost 2000 years, which is a honor and promulgation of marriage, in all it's aspects. It's a good thing too, that would have been the ultimate self-fulfilling prophecy. "Oh wait Lord, you aren't coming back? Well, all the Christians are dead so, sorry about that. You will have to send another prophet or something. Whoops."

[coffeeandcigarette]

I think we also need to discuss where Augustine was coming from. His relationship with sex was vile. His sum-total of sexual experience was orgies, hookers, strip clubs, etc. He would always have been psychologically impacted by that. He couldn't see beauty in sex, he had never experienced chaste love or fruitful love, he had only seen and experienced the basest, most sinful form of physical intimacy. Would we ask a reformed Hugh Hefner for opinions on the nature of sex? Can you imagine what we would get? St. Augustine was still human at the end of the day, and he could not help being blinded by the ugliness. Imagine if you grew up in a house where you only watched horror films and then when you got older, someone asked you whether movies could be wholesome, help you serve God, etc. You would have one very specific answer based on your own experience, and it would be faulty. St. Augustine would have had the images, feelings, and revulsion of his past life ever present in his mind; I can't think that he could ever have approached this subject with optimism.