I have written here on this blog and elsewhere that I think there is a connection to liturgical abuses and perverse sex. I think there is a connection between modesty and sex, privacy and sex, reverence and sex and humility and sex.
The modern world, which is so besotted with sex, continually misses the point and so does Theology of the Body.
Sex is mysterious and sacred. We do not need to talk about details. We learn in marriage and in the context of love what is appropriate. We sense what is not by being humans and through love.
Discussions with details are damaging.
I do not think seminarians need sex education classes. I do not think anyone does. Such things must be learned in the context ONLY of the family and from loving,parents.
We are too open and miss the mysteries of love in our details analysis of marriage and sex.
I am all against the trend in England to teach Theology of the Body as a normal part of catechesis. I know two groups which are pushing this and making students study this as if it were infallible teaching, which it is not.
We have become coarse as Catholics.
We have lost sensitivity to sacred things.
We have "novused" sex.
ToB is not Catholic in my mind and the article by Alice von Hildebrand draws out my suspicions of ToB.
I am not prudish, but I am classy.
Just as we have lost the reverence in the Mass for the Eucharist, so we have lost reverence for marital sex.
Think like Catholics. Marriage is a sacrament, not merely a vehicle for sex.
We need to stop supporting ToB in our parishes and in the seminaries. Such a pseudo-theology does not lead us to perfection
From Alice von Hildebrand's article listed in the last post.
Noli Me Tangere
Here, I would like to reflect on an incident in the life of the Little Flower, St Therese of Lisieux. When a student grabbed her as she was stepping out of the train, she responded as a proper female should. She recommended herself to the Holy Virgin, and looked at him so severely that he immediately let her loose (Deposition of her sister Genevieve). Would West ridicule this great saint for being a “prude”? If he did, he would be wrong, for St. Therese’s response was thoroughly Catholic, and the only right one: she was responding with noli me tangere [Don’t touch me]. This attitude has nothing to do with an unhealthy fear of the body, or bodily contact, but a very healthy modesty and self-respect.
This "noli me tangere" is a key expression regarding the mystery of the supernatural. This is why, Dietrich von Hildebrand, who came from a privileged cultural and artistic background, and had been acquainted with holy paintings since his earliest youth, would never have made remarks about the size of the Holy Virgin’s bosom, as West has, repeating with praise an exhortation for Catholics to “rediscover” Mary’s “abundant breasts” (Crisis magazine, March , 2002) To Dietrich’s mind, this would be an act of irreverence. Her breasts were sacred and the response to the sacred is awe and not a critical approach to the size of "the blessed breasts that sucked thee". True religious art has always understood this.
