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Theology of the Body for Beginners: Rediscovering the Meaning of Life, Love, Sex, and Gender?
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If you want clarity on the topic, consider reading Christopher West's book, Theology of the Body for Beginners, which helps to clarify the Church's stance on sexuality.
That's a great question! I think it was CS Lewis who likened sex to fire--it is indeed a good thing and can bring a lot of warmth when used within a house in a chimney, it's a terrific aid for cooking, etc. But when it out of control it can wreak havoc and burn whole villages down.
Chastity is not about "not having sex" (that's called continence), but about living God's plan for our sexuality, and in reverence for the glory of God's image in the other--chastity is the force that frees love from egotism, use, and violence. The marital act, when lived in the spirit of a total gift of self among spouses, is a mutual conferring and participation in Christ's love for his Church (cfr. Eph 5:31-32) and according to Christian mystic Adrienne Von Speyr, it can even bring forth graces of conversion and holiness. However, when sex is lived outside of the marital bond, it becomes a mockery and a negation of the holy image it represents--akin to trying to Baptise someone with motor oil. It can't help but be an egotistical self-seeking activity that negates the spousal meaning of the body.
As a sidenote, I think you'll profit a lot from reading any sort of book expanding on this; my personal favorite being Christopher West's Theology of the Body for Beginners. You'll fall in love with God's plan for sexuality and marriage, and see yourself experiencing a desire to avoid any kind of sin that would disfigure this sign.
You should help her see why sex is not only "allowed" and "not a sin" in marriage (as you know), but also an actual, positive good which is part of out sharing in God's free, total, and faithful love (it is as man and woman together that we're his image [cfr. Gen 1:27] and it is in marriage that we participate in Christ's love for his Church). I don't know if you're familiar with the Theology of the Body, but a great reading you can both share is this introduction by Christopher West. The basic theme is that sex is a sign and participation in God's love, and thus also a means of growing in holiness, and even healing from wounds.
Puritanism has unfortunately caused many evils, and this is why some have a lot of trouble understanding why something that was previously "bad", "shameful" and "sinful" before marriage can suddenly turn to its opposite after a marriage ceremony. The answer is that sex is not bad (and never was). It is a beautiful gift from God (He invented it in the first place), but it must be lived in the context of a free, faithful and total gift of self (ie. marriage) to be a true communication of what it is. Seeing the body as 'evil' springs from the gnostic heresy that said that creation was a bad thing (and only the spirit a good one) and thus denied that Christ could have truly incarnated among us (by failing to imagine that God would have anything to do with the material existence that we have).
St. John Henry Newman once wrote that 'false ideas may indeed be refuted by argument, but by truth alone can they be expelled'. Besides the daily Rosary, what killed in me the appetite for watching porn (after 6 years of addictive behavior towards it) was John Paul II's Theology of the Body. I'd recommend you to start with Christopher West's brief introduction to it in Theology of the Body for Beginners. Once you get a hold of God's awesome plan for marriage and the body, you won't want to go back to cheap falsifications of it.
Thats is awesome!
To learn more about what the priest was saying please consider reading Theology of the Body: for beginners John Paul II's teaching here is amazing and is more than a teaching on the dignity of the body but how we as humans should live a right relationship with the Lord and how that looks in relation to concupiscence, marriage, celibacy, etc.
Well.. I remember watching an episode of How I Met Your Mother (ep. 21 of season 2) where two of the main protagonists (Marshall and Lilly) had a private, secret wedding before the actual public one with family and friends. (Which crossed my mind when thinking of Paul's writing in 1 Cor 7:9: "But if they cannot control themselves, let them marry. For it is better to marry than to burn with passion"). It's probably is a far fetched idea, but I suppose that in extreme cases any far-fetched idea is better than risking losing God's grace forever by falling into grave sin. You wouldn't need to move together into a new home after such ceremony, but I guess you'd be free to 'release' the sexual urge with which you've been having to deal, and able to do so in a way that honors God and truly reflects Christ's gift of Himself to his Church (Eph 5:31-32). [When you think about it, the first Christians probably didn't have to wait that much for the date of their wedding ceremony as we do today].
Having taken the "thinking out of the box" part out of the way, what you need to do in any case is surrender to Christ and admit that waiting that much till the wedding date is beyond your strength as a fallen human being (in fact, living according to God's commandments is beyond our possibilities for any of us humans when devoid of grace)—give up the urge to deal with this based on your own strength: God's power is shown forth all the more in our very weakness (cfr. 2 Cor 12:9-11: "'My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.' Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me"). So far you've done nothing but repress your sexual urges—when what you need to do is to start, not indulging mind you, but redeeming them. From Christopher West's Theology of the Body for Beginners:
>Rather than repressing lust by pushing it into the subconscious, trying to ignore it, or otherwise seeking to annihilate it, we must surrender our lusts to Christ and allow him to slay them. As we do, the Spirit of the Lord gives new form to our desire. When lust tempts you, or even overwhelms you, you may want to place yourself in the shape of a cross—hands out-streched—while saying:
>
>'Lord, I thank you for the gift of my sexual desire. I surrender this lustful desire to you and I ask you, please, by the power of your death and resurrection, to "untwist" in me what sin has twisted so that I might experience the transformation of sexual desire as you intend—as the desire to love in your image'.
The whole book is worth a read, but I hope you get the idea. You'll be in our prayers man. Godbless!
As a lay person who is married, I wanted to chime in here with a recommendation for this book: https://www.amazon.com/Theology-Body-Beginners-Rediscovering-Meaning/dp/1635820073/ref=sr_1_4?dchild=1&keywords=theology+of+the+body&qid=1627664847&sr=8-4 because I also had the question about lust and spouses.
Yes, you find your spouse attractive (hopefully), but there is a difference between simple attraction and lust. This book does a great job of explaining. It would also show why sending nude pictures would be inappropriate.
I like saying "ordered" use vs natural use because it brings out more what we're trying to get at. You can find all kinds of perverse things in nature like animals that eat their young. However, at least since the Greeks we've had a study called teleology which examines what things are ordered towards or what their purpose is.
When it comes to sexual ethics, the fundamental question we ask is: what is sex and what is it for? What are our reproductive organs for? A short summary of the Catholic Church's response to this is that sex is ordered for 1) procreation and 2) unity of spouses. This doesn't exclude infertile couples because their bodies and the sexual act are still ordered towards procreation. Homosexual acts by their nature cannot be ordered towards procreation. The same goes for contraceptive use. Reserving the sexual (or marital) act for married spouses is also key because there seems to be something special and reserved to having sex compared to other acts we do with our body. You love many people in your life, but you don't have sex with friends, relatives, etc. So it's not just an expression of love. More importantly, children tend to come as an effect to having sex and a married husband and wife provides the best stability for those children. There's a whole framework the Church has built up to promote good and proper use of sex over a long time, it's probably best written in St. Pope JPII's Theology of the Body (ToB).
More layman version, Christopher West is a pretty popular Catholic speaker who specializes in discussing ToB. He has books and an organization dedicated to its teachings. Sorry for the link dump, I like ToB a lot.
I was curious and looked up why we have finger/toe nails - seems to be for protection, help with gripping, and fine-motor actions like picking up very thin objects. They also do have an aesthetic quality - no one likes ugly, unkempt nails. So things like nail polish and coloring seem appropriate to an extent. It's hard for me to think of a non-ordered use of fingernails without getting ridiculous. Our bodies can do a lot of different things, but as I said before - it seems that there is something special about the sexual act and our reproductive parts that brings out a lot of discussion.
>i want to be rich more than to have sex
The two are literally not related at all and a good Christian shouldn't strive for either. Your goal should be holiness, not sex or riches.
>i dont know if im celibate because its the only choice, or if im actively seeking this lifestyle.
It honestly doesn't matter. Every single person is called to chastity within their state of life. If you are married, you are called to chastity and gain merit and grow in holiness through the faithful practice of chastity. Whether or not you choose it doesn't matter. It's how you live it out that makes you righteous or not.
>if a man is starving we wouldnt say he is undergoing a long fast
No, but a person who has very little food is absolutely able to offer up their hunger to God and allow the patient suffering of it to make them holy.
I highly recommend you read a good Theology of the Body book to help you better understand the Catholic teaching on sex. You have a ton of misconceptions about sex and relationships that could cause you a lot of confusion and pain down the road.
I recommend:
Theology of the Body for Beginners
Theology of the Body in One Hour
or
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