Meat, Sex, and the Rosary

 

*Note: This is not clickbait and hopefully not scandalous to pious ears and eyes. Just something I've been thinking about. So read on in confidence; I'll get to the title point eventually!

One of the reasons I haven't posted in almost a month is I have been a little more preoccupied with my health and, more specifically, my diet (not that writing and such preoccupation have to be mutually exclusive like that, mind you). My blood pressure has been in the "pre-hypertension" range, and I am "overweight" according to my BMI by about 15-20 lbs. Glucose is normal, but I do tend to eat a lot of carbs and sweets. 

In any case, I've been exploring ways to lose weight and improve my health and energy, as nothing I've been doing seems to be working effectively. Two friends of mine have been having great results on the carnivore diet. My one friend has been on it for three years, and reportedly healed her lifelong IBS, psoriasis, and a whole range of other physical and mental health issues. Her total cholesterol was high, but from what she told me, demonizing cholesterol as a cause of heart disease may be misleading (more on that later), and she went ahead and got an artery scan to make sure they weren't blocked or anything, and they were all clear. My other friend is not strict carnivore, but meat heavy and says his anxiety has gone way down. He got a 172-point blood test done and everything came back healthy. Both have lost weight on it as well, fasting becomes way more sustainable, and hunger cravings subside. 

I am willing to give anything a try, but to be honest the thought of eating meat almost exclusively day in and day out makes me nauseous. I do really like meat, which is why I don't want to get tired of it by eating it all the time. But also, my inner skeptic was hard to quash, because it just sounds sooo unhealthy--fatty meats, heavy cream, butter, eggs, a little cheese, generous supplementation with salt, some fish like salmon. And that's pretty much it. No seed oils. No sugar or carbs. All of this food is high in saturated fat, which we have always been taught was dangerous to heart health, as well as sodium. I also was terrified of getting constipated, since there is virtually no fiber on such a diet. Everything about it just seems to go counter to mainstream nutrition and health science, as well as common sense. 

I know as a Christian, though, that viewing the teachings of Jesus through "mainstream" religious eyes (ie, that of the Pharisees and observant Jews of his day) makes absolutely no sense. Everything becomes paradox, flipped on its head, in order to work in the new divine economy. So I have faith that sometimes, maybe, things are not always as they seem. And the new "Way" that Jesus Christ espouses hinges on a few essential things without which it does not work: an abandonment to grace (rather than the Law); faith taking precedence over works; the cornerstone virtue of humility which admits it is powerless without God; and a charity which hurts (forgiving enemies, giving the cloak off your back, etc). So, I'm ok with paradox, willing to trust it if I trust the person leading.

I wanted to give this modified carnivore diet a go (even though in the back of my mind everything about it screams FAD DIET), and my friend talked me through a lot of my concerns and fears. I have been on the diet for almost two weeks and have lost almost a pound a day since starting, my blood pressure is for once in the "normal" range (120/80 or lower), I seem to have more energy (I've been working in the yard and biking almost every day without the need to take naps anymore) and mentally feel better as well. I don't feel constipated, yet only have a bowel movement once every three days or so (I used to be every day). This is because, apparently, your body has become so efficient at using your food for fuel that there is little waste left over. The diet is 80% fat calories, 20% protein, and virtually no carbohydrates. I also started reading the book The Big Fat Surprise by Nina Teicholz which makes the well-researched case that fats have been demonized due to flawed science, and that primitive cultures (like the Inuit, and other African tribes) have thrived on a high fat, animal based diet with almost no tooth decay or heart disease and cancer.

I think part of the lynchpin for the way this diet works is analogous to the way Christianity is rooted in paradox. The Holy Spirit will not rest on the proud, but only on the humble. You must die to live, be born again in order to see. The last will be first. God will not tolerate anything before him--you must leave mother and father to follow Christ exclusively, for no one who puts their hand to the plow and looks back is worthy to be a disciple. Likewise, this kind of fat-for-fuel incinerator works only when carbohydrates are strictly eliminated, because otherwise the system kind of breaks down and your body is not in a state of ketosis and so all that fat will then "stick" to you. In the same way a proud man or a man of two minds will not see the face of God, you have to play by these "new rules" somewhat strictly and consciously for the system to work. 

This was all a very roundabout and extended introduction to the fact that every day, I pretty much just eat meat (beef, lamb, chicken thighs, pork shoulder, bacon, etc), some eggs and cream and a bit of cheese, a little fish on Fridays, and electrolytes. Against all my thoughts to the contrary, this elimination diet has not burned me out yet--though there's no guarantee it won't in a few months time, provided I stay with it. 75% of the stuff in our pantry now I could probably throw out (beans, lentils, pasta, pastries, cereals, oils, flour, etc) though we keep it for the kids. It's just what I eat now. My wife is on board with me (though she is very low carb, she is not as strict on the carnivore piece).

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Speaking of my wife, we just celebrated our sixteenth wedding anniversary this summer. It's crazy when you think about that long-term commitment to one person (and we're just getting started!). Even monogamy in general seems like a novel concept to some of these B.C. male figures like King David and other biblical figures with their concubines and multiple wives. I do think there is something innate in men that, at a base level, craves sexual variety. But monogamy goes counter to that. It demands a strictness, an exclusivity, the elimination of all others. And that's not a bad thing, has its advantages, but only to say that man left to his own impulses would probably naturally choose to engage in relations with multiple women rather than just one if one is talking about strictly sexual gratification. Man wants salt and meat but also puff pastries and other sweets to gratify his palate. 

On a back-of-napkin calculation, assuming one has relations with their spouse twice a week, that's 8 times a month x 12 months a year x 16 years = 1,536 times you have engaged in the marital act with the same person over the course of one's marriage. The nature of the act changes over time, of course, and hopefully deepens as well. What becomes moments of unrestrained passion that can't be held back in the early years becomes scheduled "I'm not necessarily hungry but I'll eat" sessions. What they may sometimes lack in spontaneity they often make up for in intuitive self-giving; over many years, one learns how to please their spouse, the little touches and subtle caresses that gives them pleasure that may be lost on the same younger couple satiating their animalistic urges with each other's bodies. It is natural that sex, like eating, is an appetite. For some (like those who are single, priests and religious, consecrated virgins, etc) it is a perpetual fast that sublimates and draws its life-energy from other sources. One does not need sex to live, and these witnesses to celibacy prove that point. 

However, for married couples, St. Paul gives advice that one should be reticent to discount: one wife for one man (and vice versa) to prevent fornication (1 Cor 7:2); do not deprive each other except by mutual consent and for a time (1 Cor 7:5), and this for each other's benefit so that you are not tempted to infidelity. When you've been engaging in the marital act with the same person for decades, it seems natural that things might be a little...routine. Some couples may panic at this and as a result go to extremes to introduce some "spice" into their love lives by, perhaps, visiting a "Birds and Bees" type-boutique for some sex toys or role-playing outfits, or in more extreme cases, open up their relationship to others (swingers, threesomes, etc) or through mutual viewing of pornography. 

For the Christian, however, sex is more than just mutual gratification of the senses or the mechanics of manufacturing orgasms. It is a deep, abiding communion with another, a union of not only bodies, but souls. Just as God cannot get any closer to a human being's innermost self than He does in the reception of Holy Communion, man cannot get any closer to his wife when their marriage is consummated and they become not two but one flesh--not just figuratively, but spiritually.

Does this mean that every act of intercourse between spouses is a divine encounter of spiritual ecstasy that breaks open the seventh mansion of consummation in an earth-shattering rupture of heaven and earth? Of course it holds the potential for such experiences, but for those who have been married for any length of time, the mean is in the ordinary rather than the extra-ordinary. The spontaneous quickie before work has its place in a marriage as much as the dutiful living out of mutual submission through regularly scheduled intercourse after the kids go to bed. Both have the potential to be sinful, and both have the potential to be holy. But more often than not, routine sex in a marriage is the ordinary means of sanctification. 

And 'routine' is not a pejorative in this sense. Anyone knows that couples who go for months or even years without sex are starving each other--sometimes intentionally and vindictively, sometimes through neglect or prioritizing other things. Sex is a marital barometer. When one reaches old age, it is natural for things to cool and taper off as non-genital intimacy keeps the hearth of a marriage kindled. People who are married have more sex, more often, than those who are not married. And that's a good thing, because sex is a good thing! God made it "very good!" Regular sex in a marriage, even when it's not sublime or earth-shattering or uber-spiritual, is still a good even when it is the satisfying of an appetite. 

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Just as it's a little nauseating to think of how many pounds of meat I will be eating (provided I stay with this diet) over the next few months and, potentially, years, and just as (exhausting?) as the thought of having sex almost two thousand times over the course of our sixteen years of marriage is, the idea of praying the rosary every day (as Our Lady of Fatima exhorts us to do) has some parallels. The rosary is one of the most powerful meditative prayers in the arsenal of spiritual weapons we have as Catholics. As Fr. Amorth said, "Every Hail Mary is a blow to the Devil's head." It has the potential for deep insights into the life of our Lord and Our Lady that unfolds in scripture. It can bring healing of mind, body, and spirit. It can be meritorious for the souls in purgatory. Just as bringing a child (who may become a prophet, a scientist, a saint) into the world through the marital act can change the course of history, one rosary prayed with full devotion and unwavering belief can work miracles.

But let's be honest, here. When many of us who pray the rosary regularly do so, it's hard for it not to become rote. "Got my rosary in," or other type-A box checking can be akin to the joke my wife reminds me of ("err three days") when it comes to having relations. Sometimes you're just doing it because it's good to do, even if it is routine. I think Protestants especially see this "vain repetition" of the rosary and how many Catholics seem almost disconnected from it and think to themselves, "WORKS!" I think, like when it comes to a healthy, attentive, and unselfish sex life for married couples, there are things we can do to cultivate a more fruitful prayer life when it comes to the rosary. There are no shortage of spiritual books on the rosary that may give us new ways of looking at it, or entering more deeply into the Mysteries. We can slow down and, the way a cow chews it's cud, let each Hail Mary penetrate our senses and bring us right there into scripture, the way Lectio Divina bears its fruit. Of course, we might bang out a 15 minute rosary in the car on the way to work, or we might "go all night" in a marathon session where we pray the entire Psalter and find our flow.

But if you are praying the rosary every day, seven days a week for, say, fifty years, that's 18,250 rosaries, and close to one million Hail Marys during that span. Will they always be deeply meditative, deeply spiritual experiences? Is that even possible? Or is there a place for the benefit of "simply praying," "simply doing it," or "simply eating" your meat for its own sake? Perhaps we are transformed, slowly and infinitesimally, in virtue by the act of the regular work of prayer, the consistency of marital intimacy, the sticking to particular diets that keep us healthy (the jury is out on this one though) when our base urge is to hold up a Krispy Kreme at gunpoint. Sustainability and consistency, then, become the earmarks of a seasoned prayer and sex life, and a healthy diet that doesn't binge and purge. 

I'll admit although I aspire to pray the rosary every day, it's more usually the same frequency as my sex life. There's nothing keeping me from being daily about it other than laziness aversion. Same with daily Mass. Still, I'm a work in progress. Two to three days a week is better than once a month, or even once a year, and I'll take the win, though it's no merit or accomplishment of my own. Life is difficult; God gives us sex in marriage as a natural good, a respite, perk and boon that not only brings mutual physical gratification, but a cementing of the bond between husband and wife so that they can tackle, together, whatever life throws at them. Likewise, prayer should not be a chore, even when it becomes rote and routine, but is a solace where we can commune, for 15-20 minutes, with the Lord whose yoke is easy and burden light. We can rest, lay down our anxious and worried minds, and enter into the mysteries both mentally and physically through the tactile repetition of the prayers as our fingers knead over the beads. God is so good that He even gives His ungrateful and complaining children fowl, meat from the air when they grumble that they are tired of bread.

So eat the meat, enjoy the sex, don't fret about your rosary being rote. Take solace in the hidden graces of routine, especially during those times when life can get upended and chaotic. Our Lady would not have given us the gift of the rosary if it weren't for our benefit. Our Lord would not have given Adam his help mate if he was supposed to be self-sufficient. And even though God grew all them herbs on the earth, he preferred Abel's offering and also gave us to eat the creeping things, the fish and fowl, the hoofed animals, the clean and unclean and commanded us, like Peter, to "kill and eat!" 

Team We

 

Team Me We

For our sixteenth wedding anniversary, my wife got me a card from the Dollar Store. That sounds callous and pathetic; however, we have a mutual agreement to only do Dollar Store cards because all the cards are overpriced, the Hallmark cards at least, and they are all cheesy anyway so it just simplifies things. I got her card from the Dollar Store too, and picked flowers from around the yard to make her a bouquet which I arranged and put in a vase on the kitchen table. We didn't go out to eat or to a movie or even have a date because I was feeling low, a kind of suicidal low, and everything would have been tainted by that no matter what we did to celebrate. 

So we postponed until we were at the beach visiting my parents and brother the following week. Even then, too, I was feeling awful--anxious, weepy, irrational and still suicidal. We did go out in town, walked along the beach and then to the wharf to sit on a bench. We wanted coffee but it was late, so we settled at a bar and had a Coke and a Twisted Tea. It was fine, it was good, but I felt bad not being able to show her how much she meant to me, to be happy about it and actually celebrate those sixteen years. Because she is great, she understood and squeezed my hand to let me know it was okay, as if I were an invalid in a hospital bed, which was how I felt at least.

Anyway, back to that card. Most of the cards we have to choose from are either gag worthy flowery, probably AI generated sonnets, or the "funny" cards that are lighthearted and stupid. But this one she got me this time was just right. All it said on the front was:

I'm on team YOU!

And inside she said there was no other team she'd rather be on than Team Me.

She has the card sitting on the bay window sill in the kitchen where I can see it, next to an orchid some friends got us that has died and come back to life each year for four years now, maybe to remind me that there is in fact a Resurrection, that it is not a myth or a dream, that things will not always be awful and I will not always want to die, that things can come back from the brink and bloom and flower and be just as gorgeous and intricate and beautiful as that orchid is each spring when it blooms, leaving the previous year's pale colored stalk like a tentacle of death on the plant, like the rings of a tree you can ascertain its age by. I know it is in its fourth year of blooming because there are three of those spindly tentacles protruding from the main stem. 

And we do nothing to this plant except a tablespoon of water every few days; no fertilizer or care. I would have thought it would have used up or exhausted the soil in the small white pot, but it has not. As if something so beautiful demands an intensive input, managed care, to come back year after year as radiant as the year before. As if it does not deserve to live or be beautiful because of that lack of care.

And yet, it lives. 

And so I'm reading the cover of this card from my wife--mind you, not even the handwritten contents on the inside, and fighting back tears because inside I'm thinking "You piece of trash. Look at you, using up the food and the oxygen in the air. You don't deserve it. You are a loser." And other such self-recriminating thoughts. 

And yet here is this woman, this gift to my life, who would care to disagree with those statements. I am on your team, she says. I choose you. You and I are in this together. I am on team You. 

And of course, I want to say, you've made a mistake, I'm a lousy bet, a bad horse, and yet she won't be deterred. She pours into me, believes in me and the family we have created together. And there is no force stronger on earth for a man than a wife who believes in her husband. I cleave to her too, because she is flesh of my flesh and bone of my bone. And it does not occur to me in the throws of all these self-accusations of worthlessness and being a loser that I am accusing her of those things as well because we are one flesh, what's hers is mine and what's mine is hers. 

She doesn't deserve those self-defacing titles. And neither do I. They come from the Accuser under the guise of my own voice, like some kind of AI hack, a counterfeit trying to steal my identity. Because I am a child of God. I belong to Christ, I am not my own. I rebuke the demon but the echoes of the voices remain.

That exclamation mark at the end of the "You" on the cover of the card, I think that's what pushed my tears over the edge to spill out the corner of my eye. So juvenile, but it underscored that my wife was not begrudgingly choosing me as if I were the last kid left on the court and resigned to being on Team Rob, but she was in fact enthusiastic about it, believes in me, in us. Not that I will carry her her whole life, but that she will shoulder me when I am hurt and wounded, throw me over her five-foot-four frame and not give up on me or leave me for dead just because I cannot walk on my own in this war. It's a given that I would do the same for her, but to know that she would do it for me--a nurse, a soldier, doing whatever needs to be done for the team. Team Us.

There is a mural I painted that hangs in our bedroom. I painted it when we were engaged, stretching the canvas myself on scrap 1x2s and using cheap little tubes of acrylic paint. It is based on a poem that the boxer Muhammad Ali composed and recited spontaneously, the shortest in history:

Me. We.

The "me" is small, in black print, while the "We" sweeps up, the tentacle of the "W" diving the "m" and the "e" in "me." The "me" is tenuous on its own and easily split apart, but the "We" is indivisible, even while one would think a "we" would be more easily divided in two because it is made up of two parts, while the "me," or self, is a single entity.

While the card from my wife moved me--that she would entrust her future to someone as fragile and ill-equipped for life as myself (Team Me)--in her I see the potential for something elementally stronger, like a water molecule, a fusion of hydrogen and oxygen. Team We. The chemical fissure, the atomic glue, the spiritual epoxy is the sacramental grace of our marriage that not even the pope can dissolve, for no man should tear asunder what God has joined together. I would rather be a single drop of water in an ocean with her than an entire atmosphere of either hydrogen or oxygen alone by itself. 

For God can keep an orchid alive with a drop of water a day, and not only keep it alive but resurrect it year after year, bringing it back from death again and again and into new, radiant life. There are sixteen stalks, sixteen tentacles on our stem, giving testament to our life together, and I pray for the grace of sixty more.

When You Don't Feel The Love

Since Easter, I have been going through the motions in my faith life. Sunday Mass, daily morning offering, weekly holy hour, monthly Confession. But I feel like I'm on autopilot. I feel nothing. The truth of the matter is, I am suffering from the consequences of the sin of indifference. It doesn't seem like it should be, but I'm pretty sure this is a deadly sin. For why else would the Lord vomit the lukewarm from his mouth, and say "I wish you were either hot or cold" (Rev 3:16)?

As a largely emotional person, I recognize the danger in being beholden to one's emotional flux. This is where I think left-brained people have a slight advantage by shelving how they "feel" about something and just doing it--either by force of habit or simple logic. 

The Devil is wily, and has certainly been working on me lately by a thousand cuts. I've been feeling burnt out, out of step with the Catholic "scene," having little to draw from for writing, feeling neglected, cynical, distracted, worldly, and a host of other little things that make it easy to snip away at the hair-like roots holding the spiritual dunes together and erosion at bay. It reminds me of a story of the late Fr. Benedict Groeschel, who 

fostered a paternal love for priests, men worn out by the ministry, men fallen on hard times, addicted to alcohol or other vices, and then the most despised of all: priests who had abused. In a Church where the ministry of priests is taken for granted and many are forgotten, left to their work, not cared for, Fr Benedict was one who reached out to them to rebuild and restore what had crumbled through years of neglect, fatigue and loneliness. He said that often when burnt-out priests arrived to speak to him, or those who were considering leaving the ministry, the first question he asked them was: "When did you stop praying?" Inevitably all of them had abandoned prayer, and Fr Benedict's first piece of advice was to begin praying again. No priest can live without prayer, no priest can work without prayer, no priest can be a priest without prayer. 

It is not just priests that cannot live without prayer, but lay disciples like you and I who can admittedly take the work of prayer for granted...until you let it fall by the wayside and realize how far you have the potential to drift without it. And admittedly, it's not just that one stops praying one day...just as one drifts from their spouse a little bit at a time, day after day, until they find themselves in a bed far from their own. Divorce lawyer James Sexton related an insightful little story on Rogan to illustrate this point:

The problem is these little disconnections. This woman, my client, we were sitting outside the courtroom...late thirties, very attractive. And I said to her, "Was there a moment when you realized the marriage was over?" And she said "Yes," 

"There was this granola I liked, and they only sold it at a particular grocery store. And I liked to put it in my yogurt. Whenever I'd be running low on it, I'd just open the thing and a new bag would be there. And it made me feel so loved. I didn't have to ask, he didn't want credit for it. He would just do this thing...and it would always make me smile. 

"And one day, the granola ran out. And I thought that's weird, maybe he didn't see it. So I left the bag in there, because I thought at some point I figured he would notice.  And he didn't notice. So I took the bag out. And I waited. And he didn't get a new bag. And I thought, "Okay, this thing's going down..."

We all have these little 'canaries in the cage' in our marriages, our friendships, our work, and yes, our spiritual lives. They start slowly and innocuously but create little divots in the turf that over time create an indentation deep enough to get your car stuck in the mud. 

For me, it's usually my daily rosary that falls by the wayside. Missing one day turns into two or three per week, which is curiously when other sins and temptations start to sneak under the fence, ones that wouldn't have bothered or tempted me otherwise. Then it becomes easier for the Devil to discharge the demons of sloth, acedia, and hatred of all spiritual things. All because, little by little, I dropped my defenses of prayer which kept them at bay.

The thing is, I know the response I would give--either to myself or a close friend--were he to say "I just don't feel the love anymore," or "I just don't love him/her anymore." The response?:

"So? Who cares? Get back to work."

The work, of course, is the work of love. We show love by our devotion, not our emotion. And, sadly, many of us in the spiritual life fail the tests that the Lord subjects us to to test our faith: when we don't feel the love of the Lord, when He has hidden himself from us (Is 45:15), we lose our incentive and impetus to pray, adore, and sacrifice. We feel like the fool who says, "there is no God" because we do not feel His presence (Ps 14:1). And yet, you made a vow....you're not going anywhere son. 

What we really need to do is get our butts in the chapel pew, double down, and give God the time even when it feels completely wasted. If you're being tested, it's not the time to dial back off the gas. The thing is, we usually realize how much we've taken our loves for granted too late. In a marriage that depends on two fallible people, that can lead to rifts difficult to repair. With the Lord, however, we are only one confession away from healing. We are the ones that veer off into the night--the Lord is a constant (Heb 13:8) waiting for us to return. 

Continue your prayer routine, even when you have seemingly nothing to give, when everything is dry and seems meaningless.  Quit making shallow excuses. Your tinder offering is a worthy oblation because it's divorced from what you "get out of it." When you don't feel the love, stay the course, double down on the work, and keep your butt in the marriage and the pew.

Read and Weep: What Contemporary Christians "Think" About Divorce and Remarriage

 For all the charges leveled against the Catholic Church about being Pharisaical and obsessed with rules, it can't hold a candle to the absolute chaos of sola scriptura "bible-based" Christianity. 

Exhibit A: My wife came across a post by the well-known Christian radio program Focus on the Family in her feed recently, which posed the question to their audience: 

Do you think it's okay to get remarried after a divorce? 

Let us know what you think! #marriage #remarried

 She told me the comments were driving her absolutely crazy, and that I had to see for myself. So I took a look and sure enough, she was right. I took a little sampling of screen shots to show you what I mean, which I think serves as a decent litmus for the Christian culture at large. 

Now granted, I don't think cultural Catholics are much better if the question had been posed to them. So this isn't necessarily to indict Evangelicals specifically, since the majority of Catholics can be just as theologically ignorant of both the Bible and exegesis in general. But I will say that in this particular dim sum sampling of responses the glaring deficiency of "scripture alone" private interpretation can easily be used to justify sin in direct contradiction to the literal words of Jesus in Scripture. I will provide some commentary for each of these randomly selected screenshot comments on the post to try to back up my point. 

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I have to give this first commenter credit: just a straight up, "Yes" to the question "is it ok to divorce and remarry?" 

Now, for those who may not be familiar with the scriptures or who may have glossed over the particular passage in which this very question is posed to our Lord in Matthew 19:9: "I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another woman commits adultery.” Adultery is a serious sin worthy of damnation. And because it will appear in the comments again and again, the "exception clause" that Protestants will typically ascribe to the translation of "sexual immortality" means "in cases of adultery." But this is not accurate, as Jimmy Akin points out here. 

Another interesting trend I noticed was the "insertion" of extra-biblical justifications for remarriage after divorce, such as above in cases of adultery "or abandonment." Mm, kay? For "Where Is That In The Bible?" Christians, I find that curious as "abandonment" appears nowhere in scripture as grounds for remarriage. 

I find the above line of thinking pretty permissive as well: "Yes, according to God's will" and the subsequent convoluted reasoning of "seeking guidance from God for permission to marry or remarry" which sounds pious but is really only self-serving and deluded, since it justifies sin. Of course, it is followed up by "only between one man and one woman" as a kind of orthodoxy chaser after the shot.

This comment above refers to justifying remarriage if "Christ wasn't at the center" of the first marriage. This could be a case of "being yoked to an unbeliever," but nowhere is that grounds for remarriage after divorce (adultery). 

The line of thinking above that "I don't believe God called us to be alone if divorced" is a common one, and that "God will not punish anyone that gets remarried?" How do you know that? "I don't believe" that God would do such and such is not a solid source when you are wagering your eternal salvation. And where is the cross in all this? Yes, being alone can be a burden. So can being celibate and "posessing your vessel" in integrity, as Paul exhorts one to do in 1 Thes 4. That does not give us a license to sin. I can't even. 

Here's someone who thinks the question is obviously a stupid one because OF COURSE IT IS!

This individual claims that "all sins are forgiven," presumably as a "get out of jail free" card using Christ's death on the cross as license. Maybe they forgot Paul's words in Romans 6:2, "shall I continue in sin so that grace may abound? Certainly not!" "There is no condemnation in Christ Jesus" is trotted out a lot when these situations make one uncomfortable with their lifestyle choices, and I think that is what is happening here as well. 

Here's someone above who states that "it depends on the circumstances." Again, there is no justification for divorce, and yet time and time again people will try to get out from under their vows doing exactly that.

This person states that "it's between the couple and God," which is line with the private interpretation/personal relationship ethos of Protestant Christianity. This very much neglects the fact that marriage is a public good and is witnessed to publicly as well. The "it's about consent between the two parties only" is what paved the way for gay marriage and further warped people's understanding of the proper means and ends of marriage. 

Again with the 'abandonment' reasoning, with an extra does of "abuse" as grounds for divorce and remarriage--neither of which are in the bible. 

It sucks that people get divorced. It sucks that people end up alone. It sucks that people get sick, become disabled, die. "People should have 2nd chances at love" doesn't want to accept the cross. Because we shouldn't have to suffer. 

Abuse. Adultery. Again, these are used as 'outs' in lieu of any authoritative teaching body (Magisterium) that is absent in Protestant Christianity. Anything goes when the interpretation of what God wills is up to you.

Again, sorry...abuse is not a biblically sanctioned event for remarriage after a divorce. 

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Is it any wonder that Satan--the great Deceiver--would wage his final battle on the field of marriage and family, as St. Lucia of Fatima predicted? Is it any wonder that Satan blinds people so they cannot see clearly and repeats his temptation in the Garden "Did God REALLY say?..." Again, I'm not signaling out Evangelicals specifically here, (as Catholics are just as guilty) only that they are just another canary in the cage for Christendom in the West and this particular thing online was cannon fodder. The justification of sin here baffles me, as our Lord's words could not be more clear. It is no wonder our Lord said the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few" (Mt 7:13-14).

Marriage may be hard, but it's not terribly complicated: One man. One woman. Open to Life. Freely consented to. Until death do you part. Anything else is not of the Spirit...and the Spirit does not deceive.  

FALLING DOWN and the Divorced American Male "Going Home"

 

"You think I want to hurt your family? I have a family of my own. That's where I'm going. I'm going home to see my family. It's my little girl's birthday today. We were going to have a barbecue like you guys. She was going to play outside and my wife would hold my hand and we would talk about grownup things. And then when it got dark, we'd all go to sleep together. We'd all sleep together in the dark. And everything would be just like it was before."

These were the words of recently divorced and recently laid off defense contractor William Foster (played by Michael Douglas) in Joel Schumacher's 1993 cult classic Falling Down about half way through the film. By this point what started as a "bad morning" with a traffic jam has led to a standoff with the LAPD and a wake of assaults and property damage at the hands of an otherwise straight-edged man who has been pushed too far and simply "had enough."  

"I'm the bad guy? How'd that happen? I did everything they told me to. Do you know I build missiles? I help to protect America. You should be rewarded for that. Instead they give it to plastic surgeon. They lied to me.

 

None of Foster's violence or seeming entitlement is justified of course. As Michael Douglass' father Kirk described his son's character in the film, Foster is both the victim and the villain. His pathology is in simplicity--he wants to see his daughter on her birthday--and his derangement in just how far he is willing to go to clear the obstacles standing in his way from doing so on this particular "hot day" in L.A. What's strange is that there is a part of the viewer--that would be straight white middle aged male me, in this case--that sympathizes with his plight that didn't really register when I first saw the film in high school back when it was released.

There's an interesting scene when Foster's (ex) wife realizes he may be trying to show up at her house for their daughter's birthday party, and calls the police who are asking her some questions at her home.

"So, you have a restraining order against your husband?

"Ex-husband, yes. He'd show up on the wrong day or in the middle of the night, pounding on the door, stuff like that. Thing is, he has this horrendous temper and I didn't know if the restraining order was a good idea, and could do more harm than good. But the judge said we should make an example of him."

"Does he [your husband] drink?"

"No."

"Do drugs?"

"Oh, no."

"But he has a propensity for violence?"

"Yeah, I think you could say that."

"Did he strike the little girl?"

"No."

"Did he strike you?"

"Not exactly."

"Not exactly?"

"There were times I thought he was going to but I didn't want to wait until he got around to it."

"Uh-huh."

"It's hard to explain. He could, I think."

"You 'think'?"

I'll admit the single-minded, obsessive quality of Foster's character is a bit unnerving, and you can see how it contributes in some of the home movies to the tension in the marriage and child-rearing. But he's not abusive. He's not a drinker, doesn't do illegal drugs. That doesn't mean he can't be a "bad man." But when pressed by the cops for the reason the wife had for the restraining order, it was all a bit--wispy.   

Again, Foster is no hero here, and none of the violence is justifiable in the film. But it does go to show that when a man is stripped of the two biggest cores of his identity--his employment and his family--in a one-two punch...well, it can do a thing or two to a man's psyche. Might just be enough to break him, make him snap, or simply give up on everything. By the time lawyers and judges are involved, it's already over. It's heartbreaking to know how many children have been stripped of imperfect but otherwise loving and devoted fathers by the suicide of the courts. And how many men who want and desire to be in their children's lives and remain married to their spouse who they pledged themselves to get neutered by the sharp brass knife of law. 

I know abuse is real, and sometimes separation and legal protection is necessary, for both men and women alike. I also know that sometimes men who are not abusive, are not cheats, who essentially did nothing 'wrong' still get cut at the knees by divorce. 

"Home"--what once was but no longer is--becomes an almost mythical and painful memory everyone is telling them to forget about. Home is the one place we all want to have. Men are willing to work and grind to afford the mortgage because when you have a family you love and are devoted to, you have a reason to work. When you lose the family, you lose the will to work. And sadly too, when you are stripped of the ability to work (either via layoffs, downsizing, ageism, or not being an "economic viability" to the company anymore as referenced in the film), that can impact your marriage and family stability. When both marriage/family and work are in place, things can be really good. When you're out of work but you have the support of your family and community, you'll pull through. But when you've lost both work and your marriage and family--it's enough to crush a man's reason to get up each morning. Even the best and strongest men get cut at the knees by this one-two TKO.

I didn't get the impression William Foster was a religious man in Falling Down. Faith in God is perhaps that "third leg" needed to keep a man's stool from collapsing on itself when the other Big Two (work and family) snap in half. If nothing else, the Divine Law precludes us from exacting vengeance on the innocent for perceived crimes against our person. We aren't owed anything in this life--all is grace. Good marriages are a grace. Bad marriages are a grace (but can also be a cross). Work is a gift, not a right. Children, too. This world doesn't "owe" us anything. There is only one spotless victim--the Christ--and he didn't exact retribution. He made his way "home" not by vengeance, but submission.

There is a part of me that admires the tenacity and creepy single-minded obsession of William Foster "just wanting to go home", even on foot across L.A. during a heat wave and to a home which doesn't seem to welcome him anymore. At least he recognizes that it is worth fighting for. That many men and women are willing to so easily walk away from perfectly good (albeit imperfect) marriages for lesser things to the detriment of their children and society in general without fighting makes those who would instead fight the courts and sacrifice everything to be able to "go home again" look like the crazy ones, the obsessed, those that "should just forget about it and move on." 

Remember, that Fatima foretold that Satan's final assault would be on marriage and the family. Keep that target off your back by fortifying yourself in prayer. If you have work, work hard and be grateful--don't live beyond your means. If you are married, invest in your marriage so that the fissures of gradual drift don't create larger problems down the road. Don't take anything for granted. Including having a place to go home to.

When Your Wife Is Your Best Friend

 I have some crosses in my life, but my marriage is not one of them. If anything, my wife is my Simon of Cyrene helping me shoulder them.

I feel for people married to someone they don't like, let alone love. It doesn't give an excuse to look beyond the name on your marriage certificate to seek out the person "you're supposed to be with," but it does make life infinitely more burdensome. Even more so when you don't share a faith--not just the faith, but a common faith in something. If anything, liking the person you are married to--and continuing to do so decades into a marriage--almost trumps love in the hierarchy of needs, given how much time we spend with them. 

The chemistry of 'like' is different from the chemistry of love as well. When we fall in love, it is an inebriation of the senses, a temporary blindness to faults and imperfections, and an animalistic drive to mate. But the chemistry of like is much less tribal, more subtle. It operates on a wider swatch of synapses of factors to manage--what is your comfort level around them? Can you be yourself? Can you be honest? Can you laugh and have fun? Is it forced? Do you have to talk yourself into putting time in with them? Do you miss them when they're gone? Do you feel like you're missing a limb when they're absent? Whereas love is a conscious practice and an act of the will, like is an exercise in intuition, as well as a great and unexpeted grace. 

I like my wife, and she likes me. I don't want to go through life without her. As the sage says, "It is better therefore that two should be together, than one: for they have the advantage of their society: If one fall he shall be supported by the other: woe to him that is alone, for when he falleth, he hath none to lift him up" (Ecc 4:9-10). It is so very hard to be alone, and we should be conscious of this with those in our communities and parishes who have no one to pick them up, no one to call when their car breaks down, no one to talk about their day with. We should not bury our talents of companionship, but seek to compound them in charity. 

My wife and I have had the talk of what to do if something were to happen to either of us unexpectedly. "I want you to get remarried," my wife told me one night as we lay in bed together. "I will intercede for you from Heaven to find you a nice new wife."

"Agreed," I said. "No one will ever be able to replace you, of course. But I don't want to be alone, and we need to think of the kids as well."

"And I don't plan to remarry if anything happens to you," she said.

"Good, okay. I don't want you to get remarried anyway."

My wife and I got married later in life. I was twenty-eight when we met; she was thirty-five. We had both been in long-term relationships, were more or less established in life, and were on similar trajectories in regards to our faith. We got engaged after five months of dating, and were married a year later. My wife said she knew I was "the one" after the first date. I think it took me two or three weeks. 

When we were going through our Pre-Cana weekend, one of the activities was to stand under a sign that represented something that was most important to you. We were the only couple standing under the sign that read "PRAYER." Thankfully, that brick in the foundation has served us well. Each morning when we wake up, we go down to the kitchen table, put on a pot of coffee, and chat for a bit. Then we light a candle, bless ourselves with holy water, and pray--first with a morning offering of consecration, and then for the needs and intentions of those we know, for our priests, bishop, and the Holy Father, for our children, our marriage, and our day. We then read a short chapter from a book (usually The Imitation of Christ), and sometimes the readings for the day, followed by an Our Father, Hail Mary, and Glory Be. Then we start our day. 

When my wife is not around, I do feel a sense of incompleteness. Not in a co-dependent type of way, but that I am a player short on my team. I'm a spaz on my own, and my wife needs a push oftentimes when left to herself, but when we are together I feel whole--like we can do all things in Christ who strengthens us. 

I have been in relationships when you're just waiting for the other shoe to drop, for things to turn sour or fizzle out. That's not the case with my wife. The sacrament of Matrimony is like the activator for the epoxy--like the wind, you can't really point to it but you know that without it your foundation would start to crack without that infused grace. Marriage is a natural good, but a sacramental marriage has the goods to be an impenetrable rock of grace.

We sometimes hurt each other, but never intentionally, and usually out of tiredness or selfishness. Selfishness is the root sin in a marriage from which all the saplings of marital vice emerge. When those sprigs emerge in the soil, we usually are quick to sit down and identify them, pluck them out, and throw them in the compost before they take root too deeply. "Bearing with one another, and forgiving one another, if any have a complaint against another: even as the Lord hath forgiven you, so do you also" (Col 3:13). Forgiveness in a marriage is the practice and exercise of charity in faith.

There's a touching line in As Good As It Gets when Jack Nicholson tells Helen Hunt on a dinner date, "you make me want to be a better man." That's what it means to be married to a good woman, a best friend. You want to be a better husband, a better father, a better lover, a better man because of them.

One thing I really appreciate about my wife is she's content to just be. She's a good be-er, very Type B. Our favorite thing to do together is lie in bed and talk and laugh. Sometimes we get coffee, sometimes we watch a movie, but these are ancillary activities and not necessary. I haven't gotten tired of her yet after fourteen years of marriage, and vice versa. This is proof that God is a god of miracles. 

I am also the oldest of my siblings, and she is the youngest of hers. This can create some interesting conflicts and frustrations between us, but also is a good complementary dynamic, since I take the weight of the world on my shoulders while she is used to being taken care of. So much of marriage is being willing to care for the other--in riches and poverty, in health and sickness, for better or worse. You need to be ready for that in marriage, because nothing is promised to us--not our health, not the days, not even each other's faithfulness. 

Just as Adam was charged with being the caretaker of the garden of Eden, so too when Eve was formed he was charged with being her caretaker as well. Adam and Eve were both banished from the Garden, unable to ever return--perhaps it would have been a crueler fate were one to be banished and the other remaining in Paradise. They suffered and toiled in exile, but they suffered and toiled together. How much greater then is our redemption in Christ and the restoration of our friendship with God together through the Sacrament of Baptism and Matrimony together?

Life is very hard. Marriage can make it even harder depending on who you are yoked to, but it can also be the means by which we shoulder the burdens of life in solidarity together, making them bearable. I consider this a great unmerited grace, like having a job you enjoy as well as a good boss, or the benefits of health or wealth. You're not required to like your spouse to be married...but I'm so glad I do. 

"That's The Good Stuff"

I saw this image the other night and it hit me right in the feels. It said very succinctly, in a kind of koan-type fashion, exactly what I have thought on many occasions, and how easy it is not be be present to the blessings right in front of you. 

 

In Looking In From The Outside, I wrote:

Middle age is a tough time for dad. You're so focused on your career and managing things that time is at a premium. I try to balance having time for myself (time that my wife usually doesn't have as a luxury, admittedly), time with other men, time with my parents, time with my wife, time with my kids, time writing, and time in prayer.  

My wife was chastising me a bit last night for not being present with my kids when I have the opportunity. She's not wrong. She is a 'be-er' and I'm a 'do-er.' Every time I do have the opportunity to just 'be' I end up 'doing' something instead. Everyone knows that you can't substitute time together with other things and expect to have a healthy marriage. And the more time you spend with someone, the more you get to know them, and want to spend time with them. I feel like my kids pick up on that I am not as present with them as their mom is, and so they turn to other 'things' to fill the vacuum that I could be filling if I was more present.

There's an image I have, when I go out on the patio for some time to myself, of looking from the outside in while the rest of my family is inside. I've chosen to take time for myself, but I would be horrified if I tried to come back in the house and it was locked for some reason. Then you realize the place you really want to be more than anywhere, with your family, you're barred from, because of what you've chosen instead. I know it's just a moment but I don't want it to project as a future reality. Moments add up to days, and days to years, and before you know it if you're not careful, you can become a stranger in your own house.

My wife was telling me something she heard from Leila Lawler, some erudite wisdom on homemaking and childrearing, along the lines of "You don't 'make memories' for your children. They make their own memories." I don't know the exact context of what she was saying, but from what I surmised "the trip to Disney World," or "the birthday party" or whatever is often not the true memory. The memories are those snippets, those scraps of tapestry, that the children make for themselves. It could be the smell of the salt air, a song heard on the radio, laying on the couch with mom, or the salted caramel ice cream cone your dad treated you to.

We played a round of miniature golf yesterday, and walked over to the Wendy's afterwards to treat the kids to some frosties and things. It was "a great day" for them, and it wasn't because of the mini golf or the burgers or any one thing, but because we were together as a family. I don't make much money and I don't have any real professional status or standing. But I realized many people would kill to have what I have. My 'new core memory' as a dad that day was seeing them at the table as I ordered food, and realizing I am not a poor man, but instead very, very rich.

Robbin Williams has a great monologue in Good Will Hunting (part of which I heard was unscripted) when he's talking to the young Will about his deceased wife. 

"My wife used to fart when she was nervous. She had all sorts of wonderful idiosyncrasies. She used to fart in her sleep. One night it was so loud it woke the dog up. She woke up and went like "oh was that you?" I'd say yeah...I didn't have the heart to tell her...Oh God...[laughing]

Will: She woke herself up?

Sean: Yesssss....aahhh. But, Will, she's been dead two years and that's the shit I remember. Wonderful stuff, you know, little things like that. Ah, but, those are the things I miss the most. The little idiosyncrasies that only I knew about. That's what made her my wife. Oh, and she had the goods on me, too, she knew all my little peccadillos. People call these things imperfections, but they're not, aw, that's the good stuff." 

We are coming up on our thirteenth year of marriage, and I have plenty of those memories of my wife--the things that make her my wife. The time she dozed off looking at her phone and dropped it on her head; the particular sigh she makes which distinguishes whether she is angry or just tired, which would be lost on anyone but me; when she laughs and then accidentally snorts at the same time. I try not to take them for granted, either, to recognize and give thanks for that privileged place. 

There's a saying I'm fond of, when it comes to your life in Christ as a Catholic:

You have all that you need.

You have the grace of your baptism; the heavenly manna of Christ's flesh in the Eucharist; the opportunity to confess your sins to a priest; a community of fellow pilgrims and those who have gone before you, the saints; the solace of prayer and silence; the assurance of the promise of salvation; the opportunity to become a saint. We are rich in faith, every single one of us. And if we're not careful, there will come a time when you would give all you have to have that again and not find it. You will remember the heavy smell of incense, the flicker of an offering candle bouncing light of the stained glass windows, the solidness of the oak pews where so many hands have been placed, the unlocked door that allowed you to sneak in for a few moments of quiet. 

Same goes for our families, or marriages. These are great graces which we can build up, invest in, and recognize them for what they are: moments stitched together in time, moments not promised that can be taken away from us at any moment as the Lord wills. Each moment can be sacred, can be sanctified, especially while the kids are young--if we are paying attention and not letting it pass us by. This is what makes a man rich, establishes a legacy. You have all that you need.

Adultery Is Just Another Word For Narcissism

A few weeks ago I woke up from a dream that bordered on a nightmare. 

I only dream a handful of times a year, but when I do they are typically very vivid and detailed, though I try not to put too much stock in dreams either. In this particular dream I was in a situation in which I was tempted towards adultery with someone I knew. 

In the dream, the other person equally struggled with the same temptation. Both of us were in happy marriages; neither of us wanted to damage them or inflict harm upon our spouses. Nothing physical happened in the dream, as it never got to that point, but the feeling of having stepped into a riptide of attraction remained for hours even after I woke up. I was relieved it was just a dream.

The reality in my real life is that in thirteen years of marriage, I have never once been in a situation in which I was tempted to be unfaithful. That's not to say it can't happen, only that it hasn't so far. 

I suppose part of that can be attributed to my adoption of the "Pence Approach" of never being alone with a person of the opposite sex (married or not) and having an "open-book" policy with computers, phones, email, texts, etc with my wife. I also (thank God) have never picked up on any "vibes" from any member of the opposite sex I've come into contact with that were flirtatious or suggestive. 

In the past few years I have known or known through association five people who cheated on their spouses. Four were male, one was female:

Person 1 cheated on their spouse with a lower-level associate from work. Divorce ensued. Person 1 is in their mid-fifties.

Person 2 cheated on their spouse with a neighbor, also married with children. Divorce pending. Person 2 is in their mid-forties.

Person 3 cheated on their spouse with a series of prostitutes. Still Married. Person 3 is in their mid-forties.

Person 4 took up a new partner when the spouse was diagnosed with cancer. Person moved in with new partner, but is still legally married. Person 4 is in their mid-sixties. 

Person 5 took up a new partner when the spouse was diagnosed with dementia. Person moved out of state and in with the new partner, but is still legally married. Person 5 is in their mid-seventies.

It's always tough to judge actions while withholding judgment of the individuals. The actions are indeed worthy of condemnation, while it is up to God to judge the people themselves. 

Some cheat because they are unhappy or unfulfilled in their marriage, but not always. One woman who was in a "happy marriage," but who still found herself engaging in an extra-marital affair, found the chasing of fantasy (rather than pure physical appetite), part of the allure:

"Affairs are by definition precarious, elusive, and ambiguous. The indeterminacy, the uncertainty, the not knowing when we’ll see each other again—feelings we would never tolerate in our primary relationship—become kindling for anticipation in a hidden romance. Because we cannot have our lover, we keep wanting. It is this just-out-of-reach quality that lends affairs their erotic mystique and keeps the flame of desire burning. Reinforcing this segregation of the affair from reality is the fact that many, like Priya, choose lovers who either could not or would not become a life partner. By falling for someone from a very different class, culture, or generation, we play with possibilities that we would not entertain as actualities."

It also goes beyond attraction. Tiger Woods was married to a bombshell, but cheated on her with a homely Denny's waitress (among others). It doesn't make rational sense. In fact, the fact he confessed to sleeping with 120 women seems downright compulsive and borderline pathological. 

Affairs often don't "just happen" though; the term "slippery slope" is cliche but apt here. There are often early warning signals and opportunities to shut down the potential towards unfaithfulness. The problem is that individuals who fall into adultery don't often heed these signs and take swift action to flee the situations, but instead entertain and engage them. 

But why? What is it about the seedbed of affairs that blinds us to the dire consequences of such an act of betrayal? It's equally hard to find a common motive among adulterers, but I'm going to try anyway. I think the elusive common denominator (which applies to both men and women, albeit in different manifestations) is attention.

I suspect that for women, there is that innate desire, as Olivia Newton John's famous song expressed, "to want to be wanted." For men, there is a similar reflective quality; men want to be wanted to, but not typically for emotional needs. Instead, when a women sends out signals to a man that she is interested or inviting, it is reflective in the sense that he sees himself in her advances; i.e., "there is something about me that turns this person on." And that is itself the primary turn-on: it strokes the ego in a masturbatory fashion.

This symbiotic feeding of egos is a common thread in adulterous relationships. When we fall in love with our spouses before marriage, there is of course a primal physical attraction that gives us an impetus to marry and carry on the species. Before marriage, this must be resisted not because it is bad, but because it is good. Eventually, that good desire is able to be given its right of place within the context of marriage for the generation of children and the bonding of spouses. As time goes on in a (healthy) marriage, we find that we continue to struggle with selfishness and bruised egos, but that love demands that we forgo such narcissistic tendencies to will the good of the other.  As the love deepens and matures and becomes less preoccupied with itself, we find that we hurt when our spouse hurts, and feel joy when they feel joy. 

There is nothing good about an affair, however, and no self-giving is present. Affairs are, almost by definition, completely self-seeking and egotistic. They are an attempted replacement for something...something that may be tarnished and worn but still of great value and which should have been given pride of place. In a Christian marriage, when one looks in the eyes of their spouse, they should see Christ whom they serve. In an adulterous relationship, one looks in the eyes of their lover and rather than seeing Christ, they see...themselves. 

Affairs always hold the allure of excitement early on. Like all lies, it looks outside the self for validation. Even the excitement that got one into this mess in the first place becomes a trap. Whereas one's ego may be stroked in the partner's desire reflected back to him, eventually you get tired of looking at your own reflection, because sin is not comely, but ugly. And yet sin, like insanity, is doing the same thing and expecting a different result each time. It shouldn't take a hundred and twenty cocktail waitresses as human collateral to realize that the problem is not them, but you. 

Narcissism and adultery are like the peanut butter and jelly in the rotten sandwich of sin. Self-centered, a lack of empathy and concern for the feelings of others, manipulating to achieve what one wants, a need for admiration...scratch a narcissist and you will likely find an adulterer underneath the surface. 

The thing about a healthy marriage, though, is that while the physical can sometimes become commonplace over the decades, the capacity to know the other beyond just the sexual deepens. Adultery is like a plastic kiddie pool of physical pleasure where you splash around for a few weeks or months but in time discover how shallow the water is. 

The marriage bed, by contrast, is like a coral reef where decades of monogamous sexual self-giving has produced a deep bedrock of nuance, colors, and subtlety. The longer you spend there, the more unplumbed it seems to be. What seems 'boring' and common over time has suddenly become bright, mysterious, and teeming with life.

It's a fragile ecosystem though; one act of adultery is like TnT'ing the ocean floor and potentially destroying all the delicate coral and sea creatures in it. Just like any natural disaster can be cleaned up and nursed back to health over time, a marriage can recover and heal from such acts of infidelity with the grace of forgiveness and the hard work of contrite marital penance. 

No one seeks to have an affair because they want to work hard, but because they want to play. One must learn to look in the mirror and seek not the titillating rise of a stroked ego, but the true image of one's sin in contrast to the goodness of Christ, who had no guile in him. One's spouse can help reflect Christ to the other by their own grace and forgiveness, but it is work...and work is an attribute of marriage. 

In the five examples listed at the beginning of this post, none of them really had a happy ending. They may have had different endings that are not yet finished, but a lot was needlessly sacrificed because of the self-seeking gratification that an affair or different partner promised. People got hurt, as tends to happen with sin. The people involved are not necessarily happier, which sin also promises but does not deliver on.

But this is all of us as well. The things we chase that entice us and then vanish into thin air leave us in an unfamiliar cove, cold and alone, because we did not heed the commandments given to keep us from this fate in the first place. Avoid at all costs the fatal blow of adultery. Contrary to what the world teaches, "happily ever after" in faithful monogamy doesn't have to be the unattainable pipe dream it's portrayed as. When love is true, nothing can separate us from it. That true love is God in Christ Jesus, but its reflection is in our spouse, who lives and breathes Christ for us. Marriage is the arena in which we train to perfect this love so that when we meet our natural end, both partners can together wear the crown. 

Related:

Having Sex With A Stranger

"I'm Living the Cliche"--Extra Marital Affairs And The Illusion Of Happiness

Being Present In The Marital Act

If You Don't Flee, You're Going To Fall

 Sexual temptation should scare the hell out of a married man. There is a reason why St. Paul says there should not be even a hint of sexual immortality among the brethren (Eph 5:3), and that even a little leaven (of false teaching) works its way through the whole dough (Gal 5:9). Once you open that door, it's hard to shut. 

We have a conscience for a reason, and it should be well-formed. When it is, you know when certain actions are appropriate or inappropriate. We cannot always avoid temptation from besieging us, but we can use prudence to discern the situations we put ourselves in. Even then, the mind does not always rest. Thoughts and temptations that enter the mind that are not accented to are not sins, but temptations. And temptations are to be resisted. "Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you." (Ja 4:7)

Or are they? In his second letter to Timothy, St. Paul notes that we should be the ones fleeing such temptations and desires: "Flee the evil desires of youth and pursue righteousness, faith, love and peace, along with those who call on the Lord out of a pure heart." (2 Tim 2:22). 

So, when does one stand and resist the Devil, and when does one recognize that their best defense is to flee? 

When it comes to sexual temptation, we only have the upper hand insofar as we refuse to engage the temptation, whether in thought or action. Once the seed has taken root--and that may be lingering a few seconds too long on an image or memory, or purposefully knowing where to look or who to call, etc--it is slippery, wily, seductive...and much more difficult to leave alone. In this case, the best course of action is to flee the scene, as Joseph did from his master's wife (Gen 39:7-9). 

When we pause to entertain the possibility, even for a split second, we have the potential to lose our resolve. In fact, because of concupiscence, it is not that we hate what offends God, but that we are in fact attracted to it, pulled by it! The fruit of sensuality is sweet and intoxicating, and keeps temperance smothered in a nearby closet as it speaks. A man is undone by his member. 

It's not only our members, though, that will cause us to fall. It starts with the eye, the window to the soul. And even before that, thoughts arise from the mind. If I am entertaining memories of wistful times with an ex-girlfriend during the doldrums of my marriage, eventually that split second of thought turns to two. The next thing I know, my heart rate is up, I'm excited, discontent with the present and maybe even looking them up online, "just out of curiosity." Then you have situations like this, which are more common than you might think:

"Karen* was just going about her day when she logged into her Facebook account and saw a private message from Richard*. They casually dated back in high school and he wanted to catch up.

"At the first email contact," says the married mother of three, "he was a completely insignificant person from my high school past."

After weeks of exchanging emails and catching up with each other on life experiences, Karen asked Richard to call her. When she hung up the phone after an hour-and-a-half chat, Karen’s world came crashing down.

"By the time we ended that first call," Karen says, "I was sobbing because I knew I was in deep trouble with an attraction to him and realized [my] marriage was in deeper trouble than I had admitted to myself."

Her husband accused her of unfaithfulness by having these conversations and developing these feelings. She insisted she was driven to these conversations out of feeling emotionally stunted in the marriage. Although Karen and Richard never met face-to-face, her 16-year marriage eventually came to an end."

I actually had an incident come up in the past year which was maybe innocuous, but had the potential to defray. A female friend from college had reached out to me via LinkedIn because she had seem one of my articles. I hadn't spoken with her for years, so it was kind of exciting to reconnect, since she was a faithful Catholic as well. I gave her my number and told her to give me a call sometime. 

It was nice to catch up about the faith and our current lives, and she asked if it could be a weekly phone conversation. I was okay with a one-off conversation, and even a follow up one, but this felt a little...dangerous to me. Although there was a part of me that liked the idea, and I could kind of rationalize that it was innocent enough because we were talking about religious things, and she was in a different part of the country, the part of me that wasn't comfortable with it was enough to cast doubt on the wisdom of such engagement. If I continued on, I would be hiding it from my wife. So I brought it up to her (my wife), and deduced I would have to just be frank with my friend and tell her I couldn't continue with these kinds of conversations, innocent as they were. My wife concurred. I had to run away.

After I told my friend I couldn't have regular conversations with her, I didn't hear from her again, and that is probably for the best. I'm both a weak man and a naive one, and that's not a great combination. Were I to "resist" these attractions while still subjecting myself to them, the potential to be undone by them would be ever present. Best to just flee the scene, even if it is embarrassing or gruff. Apart from my faith, my marriage is the most important thing in my life. Even a hint of threat to it is too much. 

If your conscience is well formed, you know when there is a threat. I do have female friends who I speak with, but my wife knows them, and we have an "open phone/computer" policy. When my conscience tells me I have nothing to hide, I am at peace. But when I get that sneaky feeling, like "I don't want my wife to see this," that's a red flag. That's when you throw fire on that flame, stomp it out asap or run away like a little girl. Embarrassment or losing your coat is a small price to pay for a clean conscience. 

We do need to resist the Devil, so that he will flee from us, as St. James says. We don't need to be afraid of him when we are cloaked in the mantle of the Lord and our Lady. 

But we need to be smart--sometimes digging our heels in and fighting is not the best tactic. Fight when you need to fight, run when you need to run, and learn in prayer when to know the difference. Keep everything in the light, keep nothing secret from your spouse. The moment you start to feel excitement, tingling, anticipation, etc at the prospect of something that has the potential to turn into sin, you are playing with fire. And fire can spread quickly, and get out of control before you realize what's going on. 

Our first parents were not overtaken by brute strength in the garden, but a smooth tongue. And we are still paying the price of that fall. Don't make the same mistake! "Trust in the LORD with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths" (Prov 3:5-6).

What Does A Healthy Sex Life Look Like For Married Catholics?

 The engine is the heart and soul of a car. It runs best with regular maintenance and tuning, and has the potential to break down without it. 

Part of that regular maintenance is changing the oil every 5,000 miles or so.Why does a car's engine need oil? Well, there are a lot of moving parts in this complicated piece of machinery, and oil lubricates those parts and keeps them operating. It is essential, and you risk engine damage if you go too long between oil changes, or if your oil reservoir has a leak. 

By way of analogy, marital intimacy is the oil for your marriage--it keeps all the components lubricated and running smoothly, prevents overheating, and ensures a long life for the engine. 

John Paul II did a great service to the Church in his expounding on the vision of fruitful sexual intimacy in his "Theology of the Body." Sex in our culture has become so distorted and commodified that it can sometimes be difficult to know what is normal, healthy, and appropriate when one enters into a marriage. Thankfully, Christ and his bride, the Church, have a vision and purpose to our sexuality that is not only healthy and fruitful, but rightly ordered for our flourishing. 

Sometimes, though, the flowery theologizing can sometimes obscure the nuts and bolts of sexual intimacy in the minds of many Catholics. There is also the cultural flipside problem of secular cullture focusing on the nuts and bolts and abdicating any kind of theology of sexual intimacy and expression. 

Healthy Sex in a Marriage Is Rightly Ordered

G.K. Chesterton used the analogy of children playing in a fenced field to illustrate the importance of the moral law in the life of Christians:

“We might fancy some children playing on the flat grassy top of some tall island in the sea. So long as there was a wall round the cliff’s edge they could fling themselves into every frantic game and make the place the noisiest of nurseries. But the walls were knocked down, leaving the naked peril of the precipice. They did not fall over; but when their friends returned to them they were all huddled in terror in the centre of the island; and their song had ceased.”

This is the great grace of the Natural Law, the Moral Law, and the precepts of the Church: they give us a fence for the benefit of freedom. The secular world attempts to live outside this pasture, and may try to enact it's own "rules"--ie, the role of consent, lawful statutes, etc--but it is the Christian life which is the fullest expression of love and freedom. As Augustine said, "Love, and do as you will."

That does mean that in order to enjoy this freedom of conscience these boundaries must be respected and not transgressed. Martial intimacy is complementary in that it is reserved for those of the opposite sex; it is fruitful in that it is open to life; it is rightly ordered in that the marital act is completed in accordance with the Natural Law.

Healthy Sex in a Marriage is Open To Life

Sterilized sex (whether by way of barriers, chemical disruption of cycles, implants, or surgergy) that inhibits ovulation and the potential for new life to result from the marital act is not only a grave offence against the moral law...it makes for bad sex. You can't fight nature and biology--it's a fact that men are naturally more attracted to women when they are ovulating. When one closes the door to their fertility in impermissible ways, they are also closing the door to God's creative process in creating the potential for new life to form. There is something exciting about being invited to co-operate in this creative process, and one misses out on what God intends when they intentionally sterilize it. Fertile sex is good sex!

Healthy Sex in a Marriage is Self-Giving, Loving and Respectful

Sex is the barometer for a relationship, and what happens outside the bedroom affects ones sex life as well. When we act selfishly in a marriage, this can translate to our sex lives as well. When one "takes" without giving, or when one acts out spitefully, it casts a pall over the marital bed and the marriage, because selfishness is sin. Marital sex is not simply about gratification of the senses; it is an expression of embodied love. "Love is patient, love is kind...It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking" as St. Paul writes in 1 Cor 13:4-8.

Respect in marital intimacy preculdes coercion or pressure; it is tender, patient. It does not degrade or sacrifice dignity. It takes into account the individual's sensitivities. "All things are lawful to me," but not all things do profit" St. Paul again writes to the Corinthians, who needed guidance and discipline due to their sexual sins in that community (1 Cor 6:12). To the extent that we are loving and giving to our spouse selflessly, our sex lives will reflect that. 

Healthy Sex in a Marriage is Creative 

Sex is an endowed and brute appetite. But it is also an art, a language, an embodied poem of loving expression. The world is reductionist with regards to the sexual act--it is about technique and machinations. This is one reason why pornography is a lie: it sends the message that good sex is about these things. 

Healthy sex is creative, and creativity can employ variety as a spice. Again, this should be within the bounds of what is appropriate and moral, but it can employ creative license as to the "where," "when," or "how" it takes place, for example. Married people enjoy an immense amount of freedom in how they express themselves sexually, but can fall into routine over the years. It's perfectly ok to mix things up in this regard; variety is the spice of life!

Healthy Sex in a Marriage is engaged in fairly Regularly

As an appetite, sex can be enjoyed regularly and in fact this is a good thing. Frequency of intimacy varies from couple to couple, however, and should not be compared outside one's own marriage. For one couple, once a month may be sufficient for keeping the marital engine lubricated. For others, once or twice a week is necessary. 

There's no right or wrong, but there should be communication and compromise in this matter. Pornography is not only a moral danger, but a public health crisis as well. As St. Paul exhorts, "there should not be even a hint of sexual immorality among you" (Eph 5:3). When you cut this temptation out completely, and do not indulge even fantasy in your mind, you reserve that laser focus of desire for your wife, who benefits from it. Wives, honor this as well for your husband in offering him this gift of regular intercourse.

Healthy Sex in a Marriage is not used as a Bargaining Chip

Unfortunately, sex can be used as a weapon in a marriage. It can be withheld intentionally to hurt and deprive one of their rights. Again, St. Paul writes to the Corinthians on this matter: "Do not withhold yourselves from each other unless you agree to do so just for a set time, in order to devote yourselves to prayer." (1 Cor 7:5)

Women usually have the upper hand in this matter, so they should be conscious and may not realize how sexual intimacy is typically how a man feels loved. Withholding intimacy equals, in the minds of many men, a withholding of love.  

Healthy Sex in a Marraige does not incur Guilt

"My conscience is clear," St. Paul writes again to the Corinthians, "but that does not make me innocent. It is the Lord who judges me" (1 Cor 4:4). One of the greatest gifts of a clear conscience and being in a state of grace is that we do not incur the guilt  of our conscience; this is also the gift of the moral law and the clear teachings of the Church which give us the fenced field to play in. When we step outside that pasture, we fear the edge; this is akin to acting out sexually in violation of the natural or moral law. 

This is the case for so-called "vanilla sex." "You, my brothers and sisters, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the flesh; rather, serve one another humbly in love" (Gal 5:13). Freedom was made to be enjoyed within the bounds set for its protection.