Nonno
09-06-2009, 08:41 AM
"We Catholics are fond of mocking Protestant rectitude. We tell each other that Presbyterians don't like sex standing up as it may lead to dancing.
But for the Catholic church, sex has developed into a lifelong obsession and a very serious business. Priests, bishops, popes and Cherie Blair have wrestled with the question that dare not speak its name in high ecclesiastical circles: just why did God have to make the act of procreation so dramatic and thrilling? Did He really have to engage all of the senses in sex? Couldn't he have simply arranged things so that the continuation of the species could have been expedited by an innocent wee kiss or the chaste tug of an earlobe? Surely He's not playing games with us?
And lo it has come to pass that, down through the ages, the berobed Vatican sentinels of Catholic morality have warned us of the dangers of sex and all its attendant woes. We, poor children of Rome, were told to beware of the Other before we tried a bit and found that it wasn't that bad at all. But just in case we all got carried away, an acute sense of Catholic guilt nurtured, polished and handed down from generation to generation insinuated itself into the situation and made a mess of things. And if we insisted in pursuing such beastly folly, then our women would be reduced to a life of endless childbearing where there would be only weeping and brushing of teeth.
Just what on earth was God playing at? We do all the sacrificing, believing, self-mortification, fasting and abstaining; Dawkins and his legion of the godless get to do all the houghmagandy, as Robert Burns would have put it.
More at source: Say a little prayer β and then so to bed | Kevin McKenna | Comment is free | The Observer (http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/sep/06/kevin-mckenna-catholicism-couples-prayer)
But for the Catholic church, sex has developed into a lifelong obsession and a very serious business. Priests, bishops, popes and Cherie Blair have wrestled with the question that dare not speak its name in high ecclesiastical circles: just why did God have to make the act of procreation so dramatic and thrilling? Did He really have to engage all of the senses in sex? Couldn't he have simply arranged things so that the continuation of the species could have been expedited by an innocent wee kiss or the chaste tug of an earlobe? Surely He's not playing games with us?
And lo it has come to pass that, down through the ages, the berobed Vatican sentinels of Catholic morality have warned us of the dangers of sex and all its attendant woes. We, poor children of Rome, were told to beware of the Other before we tried a bit and found that it wasn't that bad at all. But just in case we all got carried away, an acute sense of Catholic guilt nurtured, polished and handed down from generation to generation insinuated itself into the situation and made a mess of things. And if we insisted in pursuing such beastly folly, then our women would be reduced to a life of endless childbearing where there would be only weeping and brushing of teeth.
Just what on earth was God playing at? We do all the sacrificing, believing, self-mortification, fasting and abstaining; Dawkins and his legion of the godless get to do all the houghmagandy, as Robert Burns would have put it.
More at source: Say a little prayer β and then so to bed | Kevin McKenna | Comment is free | The Observer (http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/sep/06/kevin-mckenna-catholicism-couples-prayer)