Category: Sex, Love, Lust
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The Role of Concupiscence
The role of concupiscence in dimming our spiritual sight has long been recognized by many, among them, Plato, Augustine, and Pascal: "There are some who see clearly that man has no other enemy but concupiscence, which turns him away from God." (Pensées, Krailsheimer #269, p. 110) One wonders how much of the atheism of a…
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Feminism as Masculinism
I just heard Dennis Prager say that feminism is misnamed and ought to have been called 'masculinism.' He continued, "There is no celebration of the feminine in feminism." I remember having a similar thought back in 1973 when Playgirl Magazine first appeared. My thought was that there is nothing liberating in women imitating the worst features…
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A Whore’s Epitaph
One stone sufficeth (lo what death can do)Her that in life was not content with two. John Hoskyns (1566-1638) (Epigrams and Epitaphs, Faber & Faber, 1977, p. 18)
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Sex and the ‘Sixties
London Ed writes, Another thing from that era [the '60s], now surfacing in England, is the rampant promiscuity disguised as 'alternative' and 'liberation'. Jimmy Savile (I assume you have been following this case) was one of them. But I remember John Peel, who was an icon of English counterculture, boasting of sleeping with girls as…
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A Use of Old Age
Old age is a good time for the continence whose practice was too difficult in younger days. But wait too long, and your vices will abandon you before you abandon them. Scant is the merit of continence born of incapacity.
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Merton, Marilyn, and David Carradine
Today, August 5th, is the 50th anniversary of Marilyn Monroe's death. What follows is a post from 13 June 2009. ……………….. Thomas Merton, Journal (IV, 240), writing about Marilyn Monroe around the time of her death in 1962: . . .the death was as much a symbol as the bomb – symbol of uselessness and…
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Coitus Reservatus and Beyond
It is a decidedly unpopular thing to say these days, but I'll say it anyway, echoing a conviction of William James: Much profit comes from avoiding sensory indulgence. A much more difficult practice is to enter into it with cool detachment. Coitus reservatus, for example. But it is no more difficult than playing blindfold chess, which…
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Sexual Indulgence
"Sexual indulgence de-realizes the Transcendent for us." My first thought upon awakening from a strange sexual dream. "First thought, best thought," Kerouac used to say.
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Moral Responsibility in Dreams
I had a lucid dream the other night in which I lost my cool to an extent I would consider morally reprehensible in waking life. But was there any moral failure in the dream? And then there are the dreams in which I am having sexual intercourse with a woman not my wife. I'm aware…
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Sexual Intracourse
Masturbation is sexual intracourse.
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Food and Sex
We have it on good authority that man does not live by bread alone. To which I add: nor by bed alone.
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The Eternal Feminine
As delightfully different as my wife is from my mother, they are both religious. I wouldn't want a woman who wasn't. Descent into the carnal I can manage on my own. Das Ewig-Weibliche zieht uns hinan. ("The Eternal Feminine leads us upwards." Goethe, Faust)
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Catholic University Returns to Single-Sex Dorms
A paucity of common sense, a lack of wisdom, a tendency among those in authority to abdicate . . . these are among the characteristics of contemporary liberals. Common sense would suggest that in a sex-saturated society putting young men and women together in the same dormitory would be an unwise idea, one rather unconducive to the traditional…
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Advice on Sex from Epicurus
Epicurus (circa 341-271 B.C.) wrote the following to a disciple: I understand from you that your natural disposition is too much inclined toward sexual passion. Follow your inclinations as you will provided only that you neither violate the laws, disturb well-established customs, harm any one of your neighbors, injure your own body, nor waste…
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What Do We Have to Teach the Muslim World? Reflections Occasioned by the Death of Maria Schneider
I was one of those who saw "Last Tango in Paris" when it was first released, in 1972. I haven't seen it since and I don't remember anything specific about it except one scene, the scene you remember too, the 'butter scene,' in which the Marlon Brando character sodomizes the Maria Schneider character. Maria Schneider died…