To hear some people talk, one would get the impression that the prohibition against artificial contraception came out of the blue. But even a brief review of history reveals a strong and consistent ban on all such activities from the earliest days of the Church to the twentieth century, with . . . . Continue Reading »
Perhaps the most significant prophet of this present age was neither Marx, Nietzsche, nor Freud. Continue Reading »
The Washington Post has excelled even its own exacting standards for an uncritical and intellectually bland approach to contemporary moral nonsense. Continue Reading »
The notion that women are rabbitlike “breeders” who should produce as many children as possible is harmful and false—as is the common assumption that this idea originated in Christian circles. In fact, it has secular origins in the eighteenth century Enlightenment. Continue Reading »
I haven’t followed the details of the UVA sex scandal. Unless one is an administrator with responsibilities for such things, keeping one’s distance from the facts is probably best for one’s moral health. Indeed, we didn’t need this particular news story to know that there’s a problem. We’ve embarked on a de-regulation of sexual relations. In the official ideology of our time, our bodies are machines available to provide us with pleasure. The same holds for the bodies of others, limited only by consent. Today, at places like UVa this is the unquestioned and unquestionable orthodoxy. Continue Reading »
Readers of First Things who are teachers and administrators at secular colleges know what happens in formal and informal discussions of student conduct when someone mentions the word “chastity.” Continue Reading »
Last week at National Review, David French had an article entitled “The Vindication of Christian Sexual Ethics” that takes a welcome turn in the controversies over sexual behavior on college campuses that have erupted in recent months. (See here and here and here for examples of thousands of stories from that last month.) Instead of focusing on incidents of proven and alleged sexual assault, then maintaining or denying “campus rape culture” at work, French speaks of “sexual-revolution values” in general and sets against them Christian values of sobriety, chastity before marriage, and fidelity after. Continue Reading »
The Extraordinary Synod on the Family issued an interim “relatio” yesterday. This is a document meant to sum up the current state of discussion among the gathered bishops. George Weigel has written a definitive refutation of the media’s spin, which, predictably, interprets every sane (and commonplace) pastoral observation about the need for the Church to welcome sinners and accompany them in their efforts to seek sanctity as a sea change in Catholic teaching on sex and marriage. Continue Reading »
I’m still thinking about why Genesis connects sexual desire and procreation only after the first disobedience. Both are mentioned before, but not explicitly connected.There is no question that both belong to the goodness of creation. The divine blessing of procreation (“Be fruitful and . . . . Continue Reading »
I have been trying to understand the justice in God’s speeches in Genesis 3:14-19. For this is the context in which to make sense of the great puzzle I find in his words to the woman: “Your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you” (3:16). It is, strikingly, the first time . . . . Continue Reading »
Subscribe
Latest Issue
Support First Things
