Pints With Aquinas - Asking Christopher West 10 Questions about Sex

Episode Date: December 20, 2023

Matt asks Christopher to explain the Church's teaching on 10 controversial topics in today's culture.  @TheologyoftheBodyInstitute   [e-mail] Leaving the Gay Lifestyle: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GybOCasgJng&t=1s Leaving the Lesbian Lifestyle: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TvFlZHaZg4g&t=1559s 🟣 Join Us on Locals (before we get banned on YT): https://mattfradd.locals.com/ 🖥️ Website: https://pintswithaquinas.com/ 🟢 Rumble: https://rumble.com/c/pintswithaquinas 👕 Merch: https://shop.pintswithaquinas.com 🔵 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mattfradd 📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mattfradd We get a small kick back from affiliate links.

Christopher West. Matthew Fradd. You have thought about sex way more than most people. I suppose that is true. Australian apologist Frank Sheed once said, modern man practically never thinks about sex. He dreams about it, he jokes about it. No, you're right.

But he doesn't think about it. I have thought, I have pondered, I have entered into the mystery. Let's just call it that. And your work has blessed so many people. Thank you, God. My wife heard of you back when she was a missionary on net. I heard about you and from you back then as well, and I've been tremendously blessed by your work.

It's good, isn't it? Praise God. Yeah, praise God. I've been doing it for almost 30 years, and 30 years in, you can see some of the fruit of it. People come up to me, it talks now and say, I heard you 25 years ago, and it put my life in a totally different direction,

and I never would have married this person, or we wouldn't have had these many kids. And you look back and you're just like, wow, thank you, Lord. I mean, that's the way it works. He chooses whom he chooses. And I think it was Scott Hahn who told me this years ago. He said, Christopher just-

Speak right into the, or pull it up a little bit so you speak right into the mic. Yep. I think it was Scott Hahn who told me this years ago that, Christopher, just remember you are but the- Keep talking. That went good. Yeah, that's perfect. you are but the... Keep talking. That went good. Yeah, that's perfect.

You are but the... What I feel like you better say, ass. I think it was Scott Hahn who told me years ago. We're not editing any of that out. Keep going. You are but the ass that Jesus rides into Jerusalem. And... And I was like, screw you, Scott.

No, I was like, yes, I'm gonna hold onto that one. And that's a good place to be Yeah, but he does he chooses asses to ride into Jerusalem like you and me Yeah, no, it's but and you know what? I was watching a interview the other day with George Cardinal Pell back in the day This was probably the 80s I think and they were asking him to kind of defend contraception to this hostile crowd. Defend the church's teaching against contraception. That's right. Yes, not to defend contraception. That's correct. Golly, I'm glad you're here.

Yes, I am here to help. Thank you. See, I didn't know that. This is what I'm talking about. And, you know, he defended it, but it's like the Lord has raised up people like yourself and Jason Everett and others to help the church articulate. And that's something like, with all respect, I feel like he didn't have that gift. He was orthodox, but it was before people like you and others were able to consume and then regurgitate in a way that made it easier for the rest of us to swallow. BD Yeah, I think that's probably my particular gift or

approach is to take very dense theology of John Paul II, internalize it, and then put it in language categories, analogies that that makes sense, hopefully, to the average person. I mean, I would not have believed that the Church is teaching on sex before marriage, which is one of the questions I have for you, would have resonated with me until I heard Jason Everett's talk on it. And I was like, oh my goodness, this is obviously true. Do you remember the particular insight or the particular angle that he took

that made you go, ah. So I was chatting with my now wife at Net Ministries, and she was big into theology of the body, and she had a CD of one of Jason Everett's talks on chastity, and she had a t-shirt, and on the back it said something like, call me frigid, call me a prude, call me uptight. It went down the list and then it said, just don't call me for sex until you call me your wife. So I did. But before that I just, I was like, okay, this girl's cool. She's passionate about

this topic, really passionate about it. And so she gave me this CD. So I went back to my room and I listened to it and I was so moved by it. I mean, one of the things he said was just, I mean, it sounds so obvious now, you know, and it may not even be the best way to argue for it, but it hit me at the time, which was, you know, if you're dating someone right now, that could be somebody else's spouse. How and if your wife's out there somewhere right now, she might be dating some dude. How far do you want him to go with her? Yeah, Yeah. Like not far at all. Yeah. And that just started to kind of resonate with me. And I started to see the church's genius in that. But what was funny is the talk he gave was to a public school. And he does this excellent job where he speaks to public schools sometimes and doesn't

bring into the faith component. I remember thinking to the church of shame, perhaps this is way too good to be Catholic. There's no way this guy's Catholic. I wasn't even sure he could be Christian. Isn't that tragic? It's so tragic because I was used to hearing kind of cheesy attempts. I don't think that's the case anymore. There's a lot of amazing Catholics. There's some really good teachers and speakers out there who have, I would say, internalized

the wisdom John Paul II has given us, which has been a boon to explaining the church's teaching. And that really is the gift of John Paul II has given us, which has been a boon to explaining the church's teaching. And that really is the gift of John Paul II. He's not changing the church's teaching, he's giving us a language that modern human beings can relate to. It doesn't need to be translated as a scholarly language, but again, once his ideas and insights are translated into a language that normal people can understand,

it's like, oh, that resonates. I know that's true on the inside. I remember reading John Paul II for the first time. I was 24 years old and I was like, how does this guy know me? How does he know my own experience? How does he know how to speak to what I have lived? See, that's wild because a 24 year old reading dense theology,

I mean, you're a smart guy. Well, I had a philosophical dictionary, I had a theological dictionary, I had to look up all these words because I didn't know what they meant, but I felt it was so personally addressed to me because I was in a hell of a lot of pain from all of my shenanigans as a younger man and I was desperately looking for answers and the whole seeking you'll find, knocking the door will be open, really played itself out for me. I sought and I sought, and in discovering this teaching of John Paul II, theology of the body, and then love and responsibility, I felt like I was reading somebody who had read my heart.

And it wasn't this teaching imposed on me from the outside. He said, reflect on your own experience and see if it's not confirmed what I'm telling you in your own experience. And I was like, yes, yeah, he's speaking right to me. Yes, he's speaking right to me. Yeah, that's amazing. Well, today I wanna look, I have 10 questions for you

about different sexual things, expressions, and I would love you to help us answer these questions. So, in a particular order, what is the church's teaching on masturbation and why do you think it's correct? Well, let's back up. To know right and wrong, we have to know what something is for, right? Look at a hammer. It has a design. You're not going to get a screw into the wall with a hammer without doing damage to the screw, the wall, and the hammer, right? What is the hammer for? What is the screwdriver for? There is a design.

What are our genitals for? You have to know what your genitals are for in order to know how to behave rightly with your genitals. Genitals, the root of the word gen comes from the Greek. It's gen, it means to produce, to give birth to. We see the same word in words like generous, generate, progeny, genealogy, gender. Our genitals are designed to generate new life. That is their natural purpose. If I were to say, let's just put me on, I don't know, the Ellen show or

something, some really secular context. If I said to Ellen on the Ellen show, Ellen, ears are meant for hearing. Is that a controversial statement? No. Ellen, eyes are meant for seeing. Is that a controversial statement? It would be so plain as to be annoying. Yes. Lungs are meant for breathing. But as soon as I say genitals are meant for generating. Whoa. Yeah. Easy. lungs are meant for breathing. But as soon as I say genitals are meant for generating, yeah. Whoa, easy. Whoa, whoa, whoa. Why? Why? Because there is this amazing pleasure connected

with the generative function, with the genital function. There's this amazing, intense pleasure connected with the generative function. To the extent that we as human beings love to zoom in on that pleasure, say, give me some of that without that. And the Church says rightly, I believe this is true, if you zoom in on the pleasure and separate it from the generative function, you are disintegrating yourself. Because what do we mean disintegration? What's the opposite? Integration. Body and soul coming together. If I separate the pleasure from its function, I'm doing damage to the way God made me. I'm not respecting the design of the artist and there will be damage just like if you use a hammer

to try to put a screw into the wall. There will be damage. What's the damage done? The generative function of the genitals is not merely that of generating new life, but also that of uniting a husband and a wife in a profound, lasting bond. When I program my psychosexual development with masturbation, what am I doing? I am operating, I am engaging the generative function without any chance of generation,

without any bond with another person, so what am I doing? I'm pleasing myself. I am programming my sexual functioning psychologically, physically, just the way I'm programming and wiring my very sexual being is towards self-gratification. If I start masturbating whenever I figure it out, 10, 12, 13, whatever, you figure it out as a young person and then for years and years that's the way you understand your genitals, please myself, please myself, please myself, then you enter into a relationship. What does that other person become now? Yeah, it's an instrument to please me. An instrument to please me.

I have not learned how to be a gift to that person. To masturbate is to invert the sexual desire back upon myself. I'm not learning to love. I'm not learning to be a gift. And the purpose of my being as a sexual being – this is the church's vision, I believe it – I'm called to learn how to love as God loves. And my body is the call to love that way. How does God love? He takes on a body and He says to His bride, the church, this is my body given up for you.

This grand theology of the body is the invitation to learn how to love divinely, self-givingly, self-sacrificially for the good of the other and for the good of the offspring that might result. When we understand that as the purpose of sexuality, then masturbation becomes the antithesis of that call to give myself. It becomes please myself. And then bring that pattern into a relationship and you're going to treat the other as just really a thing through which to fulfill your own masturbatory habit. As one who fell into that sin as a young person, I needed to be reprogrammed. I needed to have the light of Christ come into that inversion of my sexual desire and

reorient it towards self-giving. And that's a lifelong journey of conversion, and that's what we're all called to. We shouldn't be beating ourselves up when we discover inverted sexual desire. We've all inherited that through original sin. But the invitation of the gospel itself is the reorienting of our entire humanity, body and soul, in the direction of learning to love divinely. Sometimes people will say 95% of men masturbate, the other 5% are liars. Is that true? Is there hope?

Is it possible to live a life without masturbating? I thank you God. I am not saying this at all to pat myself on the back. I am saying this to praise God for the work of grace in my life. I'm a 54-year-old man. The last time I masturbated, I was 19 years old. Thank you, God. Thank you, God, for that liberation.

And I remember when I came to Christ at the age of 20. I was 20. Not 19, not that it matters. No, no, no, 19. I was 20. And I remember feeling that I had been programmed with that self-indulgent habit since I was 13 years old. And I remember lying in my bed one night. I didn't want to do this anymore because I knew I was a slave to it and I wanted liberation. And inevitably the desire comes upon you to want to indulge in that selfish way. And I remember just lying in my bed one night. I'm 20 years old.

Dear God in heaven, please, please, I give this to you. I give this urge to go in the wrong direction with my sexual desire to you. Will you please meet me here? And it was the first experience of a divine encounter in a temptation I've ever had. And it was an invitation, Christopher, I love you here. I'm not here to shame you, scold you, condemn you. I'm here to open a new path to freedom to you. But you have to die to that selfishness. St. Paul talks about this. He says, we must allow our sinful passions to be crucified. But we all know the crucifixion is not the end of the story. That's just the means to a new life, to a resurrected life.

And I remember that night saying, hearing that invitation, die to that inverted desire, and I'll show you something else. I'll show you a new path, a new way." And remember, I put myself in the shape of a cross in my bed. I'm a 20-year-old young man. Put myself in the shape of a cross. I said, here I am, Lord. Man, I feel like I'm going to explode inside. But I give it to you, and I am willing to put this on the altar of sacrifice. Show me another way. Show me another way. And man, it was gut-wrenching. There was a death. There was a death involved. But notice, if the temptation to sin here is masturbation, if the temptation is masturbation, this is a very good place to have your hands. Let's just put it that way.

I say this to men all the time. It saved my life from this sin. Put yourself in the shape of a cross and stay there until you make a Passover. And I am telling you, again, not to pat myself on the back, but to give all praise to the redemptive work of Jesus Christ in my life, there is freedom. Mason Flaherty Praise God. Second question has to do with fornication. I remember somebody coming up to me, my wife was a youth minister in Texas,

and they were wanting to know why it never said anything about not having sex before marriage. And the reason she asked this question was- She didn't know the word fornication. And the reason she didn't know what the word fornication meant is it seems that the church had stopped teaching it, or it stopped using- Using that word.

And I think ugly words for ugly behaviors are good. Yeah. Yeah. Like we say sleep around, we say cheat as if it's a game. Right. Or we say pre-marital sex, which is also a softening. So what does the church teach on fornication and why should we agree with this? Yes. Let's talk about it. And I do want to take it from the angle of this expression, pre-marital sex, which I don't like. I don't like that expression because it makes it sound like pre-marital versus post-marital, right? Well, it's wrong before this time. It's fine once you cross this line into married life. I think a better angle is non-marital sex versus marital sex. And the argument that I learned from John Paul II, which I've just carried

my whole adult life since I first read it, is that sex has a spousal meaning, a marital meaning, because we are meant to love as God loves. Love one another as I have loved you. This is the summary of the entire gospel. One of the greatest insights of St. John Paul II in his theology of the body is that that call to love divinely was chiseled by God right in the sexual difference. A man's body makes no sense by itself. A woman's body makes no sense by itself. Seen in light of each other, unless we are blind, and the modern world is blind to this,

we'll talk about that later, I'm sure, unless we are blind, we see this design of the creator that man is designed to give himself to woman. Woman is designed to open to receive that gift and return that gift and in the normal course of events if you receive it as God made it the union of the two leads to a third. The entirety of the Church's teaching can be understood as follows. When you understand the natural reality of sex, meaning receive it from the hand of God, a penis is made for a vagina, and not in isolation, but the male

person is made for the female person, and the female person is made for the male person, we go together in such a way that we are designed to generate new life, hence genitals. The entirety of the Church's teaching could be summarized. Marriage, sex, and babies go together and in that order. Why do we say that? The natural reality is that sex leads to babies. This is not something to try to X out as the modern world has done. It's something to honor and reverence and sing God's praises for because there's nothing as valuable as a human life. When we keep fertility in the equation, the sexual equation, we understand readily that in order for

sexual behavior to be responsible, the only ones who should be engaging in sexual behavior are those who have committed themselves to raising the child that might result from the union. And that commitment to that responsible engagement in sexual intercourse, which can result and often does and is meant to in a new life, the commitment to raise that child is called marriage. Sexual intercourse has a marital meaning, right? So rather than speaking of pre-marital

and post-marital sex, I like to speak of marital and non-marital sex. And I'll give you an example. Years ago, Wendy and I, my wife, we were teaching a marriage prep class. And I, this was like Sunday after a three-day weekend into the marriage prep class. So the couples know at this point, I love them and I'm not just here to beat them over the head so I can offer a challenge. And I'll usually say, ladies, if you're having sex with your fiance right now, there's one thing you know about him, he's willing to have sex with somebody he's not married to. Is that gonna change once you get married? Guys, if you're having sex with your

fiance, there's one thing you know about her. She's willing to have sex with somebody he's not married to. Is that gonna change? You have embraced a non-marital understanding of sex by engaging in non-marital sex. It is impossible to have marital sex, to have it express its true meaning if you are not married. But marriage itself is no guarantee that what you will do between the sheets has a marital meaning. And this is my example here. This woman raised her hand, she says,

"'Come on Christopher, we're getting married in three weeks. What's the difference between us having sex now and us having sex then? And I remember it was like one of those aha moments. I was like, exactly, there will be no difference. And that's the problem. Yes. You're having non-marital sex right now,

and you are going to bring that non-marital behavior with which you have trained yourself right into your marriage. And there's no sudden magic trick on the wedding night that makes what you're doing marital. You have been, this is John Paul II's language, language, you've been lying with the language of your body. The body has a language inscribed, chiseled by God right in the body that says, I give myself to you freely, I give myself to you totally, I give myself to you faithfully, and I give myself to you fruitfully. If it is God's will, let there be life. That is the language of the body. That is what sexual intercourse means when you let the body tell the full story.

Well, guess what a man and a woman commit to at the altar? The priest asked them, have you come here freely to give yourselves to one another wholeheartedly, totally? They say, yes, we have. Do you promise to be faithful all the days of your life? Yes, we do. Do you promise to receive children lovingly from God? Yes, we do. The very commitment of marriage is then meant to be expressed bodily every time a husband and a wife become one flesh. So I'll say to my audience, I'll say, whether you're married or not, you can answer these questions. If you're not married yet, maybe one day you hope to be married, answer in light of that. If you're a consecrated celibate, you also made vows, answer in light of that.

And I'll say to my audience, how many of you want to be faithful to your wedding vows? Everybody's hand goes up. And I say, are you sure? Yeah? everybody's hand goes up and I say, are you sure? Yeah. Even if it demands great sacrifice, do you still wanna be faithful? Yeah. I mean, this is what we want.

Of course. And then I say, okay, you have just accepted everything the Catholic Church teaches about sex. And I didn't impose it on you. You said you wanted it. And you said you wanted it even if it demands great sacrifice, and I assure you it will. This is what is at stake, fidelity to the wedding vows. Every time husband and wife become one flesh, they are meant to be expressing and renewing their marital commitment. I give myself to you freely, totally, faithfully, fruitfully. They're meant to be renewing and expressing that commitment with

the language of their bodies. So I say to my groups or my audiences, my students, I'll say, how healthy would a marriage be if a husband and a wife were regularly unfaithful to their wedding vows? Terrible. How healthy would a marriage be if a husband and a wife regularly renewed their wedding vows and every time they did, they were more committed to them on that day than they were the day before? That'd be great. Beautiful marriage.

How many people want that marriage? Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's the kind of marriage I want. You've just accepted everything the Catholic Church teaches about sex, because this is what is at stake. Fidelity to the marital commitment. Sexual intercourse, when we're just reading the language of the body that God has inscribed right in it, has a marital meaning. When we understand that, everything the Catholic Church teaches about sex clicks, begins to make sense. You can't express a marital meaning if you're not married. Getting married, as I said, is no guarantee that you will express a marital meaning,

but it's an absolute prerequisite. So non-marital sex versus marital sex, or even, let's be honest, anti-marital sex. Marital sex is not something you can try. That leads us into this next one, if you don't mind, because I think that you'll probably have some things to say under this next question that would also go to the second one. Is this the cohabitation one? That's right. Yeah, cohabitation. What's interesting is Jordan Peterson just spoke about this in one of his latest books,

Beyond Order. Is it in that book? Yes. I couldn't pick it up for you right now, but actually the whole video on this, I've heard that priests have shared it with those who are preparing for marriage because he makes the point that you, that I, that Jason, that others have been making forever, that you don't try somebody out because this person isn't a bike, not a car. You don't take him for a test drive.

Okay. But let's see. I mean, what you've just said about fornication kind of excludes cohabitation, but let me kind of pose the argument. All right. I don't want to get divorced and I therefore think it makes the most sense to see if me and my husband or my wife are compatible.

Therefore, it makes the most sense that we should live together just to see if we are compatible. If we are compatible, then we can marry. What's wrong with that? Yeah, well, let's look at the euphemisms here. Cohabitation and living together, these are euphemisms. We're kind of skirting the issue, right? There is nothing, hear me rightly

here, there is nothing inherently wrong with a man and a woman who are not married living under the same roof. There's nothing inherently wrong. It's not advisable. There's nothing inherently wrong. The problem with cohabitation, it's not that you're living under the same roof. Again, we're skirting the issue. What's happening is unmarried people are living as if they were married, but they're pretending, they're trying one another out. Or, just to extend that, or they're putting themselves in a near occasion of sin, which is a serious sin.

Well, sure. Right. Well, I put that out there because I think everything you're about to say will apply to those who are currently engaging in fornication. But there will be some who say, no, I'm all on board with not having sex or marriage, but we're doing this for financial reasons when really that's not advisable. Yeah, it's not advisable, but it's also not inherently wrong. Right. But it's not advisable. Good point. This is the point that I wanna make. If sex has a marital meaning, and the meaning of marriage is I give myself to you totally, you can't try that out.

It's kinda like a flip on a diving board, like you gotta commit. If you half ass it, boom, you gotta commit. Yeah, yeah. If you half ass it, boom, you're gonna hurt yourself, right? By the very nature of marriage, it's not something you can try. You either do it or you don't. And what you are training yourself in

by having sex with someone you're not married to, you are training yourself to lie with the language of your body. If you have a reserve clause, I can get out of this. You are not training yourself for the marriage commitment. In other words, living together, which is really having sex when you're not married, that's what we're talking about fornication. This is not preparation for marriage.

This is preparation for divorce. Spell that out. Why is it preparation for divorce? Because you are training yourself in a, not even, not only- If this gets hard, I'll leave. Yes. The very act of sex when you're not married is, I have an out.

So you are not giving yourself totally in the sexual act. You are training yourself psychosomatically, right, psychologically and physically. You are training yourself to lie. You are lying with the language of your body. And unless there is a major conversion of your understanding of what marriage is and what sex is, you will bring that lying that you have trained yourself in right with you into the marriage. And let me point this out by way of analogy.

We will often say, you'll hear like in certain parishes or a pastoral practice, oh, they're living together. Let's get them married to make that legitimate. Let me give you an analogy, and we will see through this analogy how absolutely nonsensical that is. Let's suppose there is a seminarian. He longs to be a priest. The analogy is an engaged couple, right? They long to be married. They want to get married. They've shown they want to get married.

This seminarian has shown he wants to become a priest. Suppose in order to train to be a priest, he vested as a priest and he started saying the words of consecration over the bread and the wine to practice, to try it out, right? It would be foolishness for a bishop to say, oh my gosh, that's a scandal. We have this non-ordained man saying the words of consecration in a mock Eucharist. Let's bring him in here. I'll ordain him right away to, you know, make this legit. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. By the very fact that he is mocking the Eucharist and the mass. Right. Because here you're not referring to a seminarian who's in training and learning

the words of the mass. You're actually talking about someone who's mocking the mass. Mocking the mass by pretending to say the mass when he has no authority to say the mass. This is a mockery of the Holy. Right? It would be foolishness for the bishop to say, let me ordain him right away to make this legit, because that seminarian has demonstrated he does not understand what the priesthood is. He does not understand what the Eucharist is because he's willing to mock it. A couple who is willfully and stubbornly, and I make those distinctions because it's a different case when out of weakness people are falling into disordered behavior, but

they regret it. That's one thing. But when you are stubbornly justifying anti-marital sex, non-marital, anti-marital sex, and saying there's no problem here. For that person to stand at the altar, for that couple to stand at the altar. And again, God's good graces can cover a multitude of sins. But what is needed is a call to conversion to recognize that sexual activity itself has an inherently marital meaning. And simply going through the motions of a wedding ceremony when you've been having sex for a long time with this person and you've had sex with multiple other people, you have trained yourself in a non-marital understanding

of sex, which is really, I get my pleasure out of this and you give it to me and I'll just end up marrying the person that I happen to be having sex with when I'm in my mid to late 20s because that's kind of expected as to what you do. You're bringing years and years of training in the wrong direction into this marriage. And John Paul II says in Love and Responsibility, that the internal problem of every marriage is learning how to express sexual activity in such a way that it will have its true marital meaning. A meaning that upholds and honors the true greatness

and dignity of the person. So that my sexual desire itself becomes this is my body given for you freely, totally, faithfully and if it is God's will, let there be new life. Mason Hickman That's excellent. I'm thinking of an analogy here. You know, often when we help people see that abortion is this terrible crime against the unborn, the key question to get the person to answer is, what are the unborn? Right? Because if you know what the unborn are, you then know what you should and shouldn't be doing with them. Yes. thing is true here. I've got 10 questions for you. Once you understand what sex is and is for, everything else makes sense. But if you're trying to make sense of the church's teaching

without realizing the kind of sacramental character of the sexual act, you can see why people just don't get it. See, they don't get it. They don't get it. And hold this together. Marriage, sex, babies go together and in that order. That's what we recognize when we let the body, as God designed it, speak. But the thing that unravels this equation, marriage, sex, babies go together, take the fertility out and the whole thing collapses. View sex through condom-colored glasses, and the whole edifice collapses. All right, well, let's get to that then. This is the next question. Contraception, what's the problem with it? My understanding was it was at one point illegal in the United States.

It was. Thank God. Would it be that we could get to that place again? But this is something that non-Catholics and Catholics, they scratch their heads over. What does the Catholic Church teach about contraception and why should we agree with it? Yeah. This is my favorite topic to talk about. Because if we get this in particular, remember I just said remove fertility from that equation and the whole edifice collapses.

And I think it's really important. This is what opened my eyes, and I'll just tell a little of my own history here. When I came back to the church in the early 90s, I was in my early 20s, I saw the damage in my own life from premarital sex. I saw it. I felt it. And I came to agree with the church's teaching. There I just used the expression, premarital sex, that I said earlier I don't like. I came to embrace the Church's teaching on fornication. Fornication is damaging to me and to everybody else that I've committed it with. I was not sold on this contraception thing.

In fact, I remember thinking, well, once I get married, I should be able to have sex with my wife whenever I want without having to worry about 15 or 20 kids. Anybody recognize a little bit of selfishness in that assertion? I should be able to have sex with my wife whenever I want. There's a selfishness, but it's also mingled with a desire to have a responsible planning of your marriage, isn't there? Not in the way I was approaching it. Whenever I want. There's a selfishness, but it's also mingled with a desire

to have a responsible planning of your marriage. Isn't there? Not in the way I was approaching it at the time. Maybe not in the way you were, but I just want to give credit to those who are watching because there is this sense in which, what, I'm not going to breed like rabbits. Absolutely, we will get there.

Let's just dispel this right away. The church is not saying in her teaching against contraception that we should just have as many children as come without any heed or responsibility here. In fact, John Paul II says in Love and Responsibility, it may be a marital duty to avoid another pregnancy. It may be a duty. So let's hold that and then we'll come,

we'll loop back around. But you're absolutely right to raise that issue. But you had a selfish. I had a selfish, there was a selfishness in me. Absolutely, yeah. And I remember it was, I think it was 1992, a friend of mine was coming into the Catholic Church and I was a cradle Catholic. I had left over the contraception issue actually in my teenage years. I remember the first time I bought a box Catholic. I had left over the contraception issue actually in my teenage years. I remember the first time I bought a box of condoms.

I was 17. And I remember putting that box of condoms on the counter at this drug store. I can picture the drug store. I can almost picture the clerk. And I can certainly remember the sentiment of taking that box of condoms off the shelf and bringing it up and the voice of conscience was kicking in. It's not like I had some active relationship with the Lord at this point in my life, but whatever thread was still there, I knew I was cutting it.

And I put that box of condoms and I said, I know, I know I'm making a decision here against something. And I said, screw it, I'm making a decision here against something. And I said, screw it, I'm doing it anyway, cut. And that was when I severed my relationship with Christ and his church. I know it was in that decision. And I still have somewhere in my files, a paper I wrote as a junior in high school,

trying to refute Humanae Vitae, which is the document that came out in 1968 reasserting what had always been the truth. The reason most people know about it in the West is because of you, probably. Yeah, who to thunk. Anyway, I'm making this long story longer. I should shorten it. But that was the severing point. 1992, a friend of mine comes into the Catholic Church, he stands up in front of everybody and he says, �I believe and profess everything the Catholic Church believes and

professes.� And he was welcomed into communion and then he received communion. I was like, �Oh, when you receive communion, you�re saying, �I believe and profess everything the Catholic Church believes and� You�re saying You're saying I'm in communion with the Church. I didn't go to communion that night because I realized I wasn't in communion with the Church because of that blasted contraception teaching. And I realized either I need to come to terms with the Catholic teaching on contraception or be honest, I'm protesting this teaching so what does that make me? I'm a protestant.

So I said, okay, I'm gonna try to come to terms with it. I sought out the priest at my parish. Oh, don't worry about it, some future Pope's gonna change the teaching. Just follow your own conscience. I sought out this married couple who had lots of kids and I figured out, I figured they must be following the Church's teaching, they have lots of kids. And they said, oh, our priest told us Bill could get a vasectomy after number seven, so that's what we did. I said, can nobody tell me? Discovering John Paul II's theology of the body in 1993, poosh, scales come off my eyes. Because what he did was he gave me

a sacramental worldview. What does that mean? It means physical creation is a sign of divine spiritual realities. I don't mean to make your story any longer because you're trying to get through this, but it's sort of like how a dog cannot perceive a sacramental reality. Correct. If I point to my dog, or if I point at something, my dog is likely to come over to me and lick my finger.

Right, right, right. If I point that way, you turn and look. Right. The finger is the sign. Right, or Bishop Fulton Sheen, he says, a horse can hear a joke as well as a human being hears the sounds, but only a human being will laugh. Yes.

The horse will not laugh. So there's the words being a sacrament. Exactly, because words are a kind of sacrament. Okay. Our bodies are a kind of sacrament. The two becoming one flesh, marriage is not only a sacrament, John Paul II says marriage is the model and prototype in some way of all of the sacraments. Why? Because the goal of all of the sacraments is to unite Christ the Bridegroom with the Church, His Bride, for what end? So that the bride might conceive eternal life within her. Our bodies, our fertility, tell that divine story.

Hence the expression theology of the body. Our bodies tell the story of God. Who is God? As John Paul II says, God is not an eternal solitude. God is an eternal family. The Father is eternally generating the Son. Not in a sexual way, God is not sexual, but in a divine spiritual way, God is eternally generating the Son.

Why? To share with the Son the love of the Holy Spirit. It is in this image that we are made as male and female. The two becoming one flesh, the two become one, but the two also become, in the normal course of events, three. And we catch a Trinitarian image here. The two become one, one God, one humanity. The two become three, Trinitarian, one God, three persons. We see an image of the Trinity. God is not sexual, but our sexuality, male and female, He created them and He blessed them and he said, be fertile. This is a sacramental mystery that is meant to communicate bodily into this world,

the mystery hidden in God from all eternity. And that mystery is the Trinitarian exchange. When we understand the sacramental integrity of creation, for sacraments to do what they're meant to do, they have to properly, the physical reality has to properly symbolise the spiritual mystery it's meant to communicate. I shouldn't baptise you with tar. Boom. Boom. Why? Sand. Because tar is a symbol of making dirty.

Water is a symbol of cleansing. Inasmuch as the water is a physical symbol of cleansing, it affects a spiritual cleansing. This is the integrity of the sacramental symbol of water. To do away with that water or to pour, I don't know, motor oil into the water. Now you're messing with the sacramental symbol. It's now a symbol of making dirty. Fertility is integral to the sacramental symbol. To render the sexual ax sterile, and that's the key line, to render it when we take into our own hands the powers of life. In other words, we activate the generative power through our genitals, but we also thwart it in the very activation of it. That is called contraception, to do something contrary to the

possibility of this act to end in conception. Right? The Church says in every instance, to activate the generative power and thwart it is always wrong. Why? Because you are changing the sacramental symbol. Instead of saying, what are you meant to be proclaiming with the language of your body? You're meant to be proclaiming, God is life-giving love. What are you saying now with the language of your body when you render it sterile? you're blaspheming. It's still theological what you're saying, but now it's blasphemous theology. Because what you are saying is God is not life-giving love. God is sterile. God is opposed to life. No, no, no, no, no. I have come so that you might have

life and have it to the full Really and truly the sexual act is meant to communicate the divine mystery When we change the language of the sexual act by sterilizing it We we are we are we are now saying Christ doesn't want the church to have life within her. And this is blasphemous theology. John Paul II puts it this way. He says, the language of the body is prophetic. What does that mean?

A prophet is one who's meant to proclaim the truth of God. And then he says, ah, yes, but we have to be careful to distinguish between true and false prophets. Because if we can speak the truth with the language of our bodies, we can also speak lies with the language of our bodies. So to render the sexual exteril is again, let's go back to marital versus anti-marital sexual behavior. To render the sexual ex marital versus anti-marital sexual behavior. To render the sexual exteril is anti-marital behavior.

And this is why a contraceptive act of intercourse cannot consummate a marriage because it is not the marital act. It is not the marital act. It's right in canon law. So it could technically be dissolved if I engage in a contraceptive act. Wow. It is not the marital act. It's right in canon law. So it could technically be dissolved. Yes, correct. In a contraceptive act. If you can demonstrate we have never had a marital act, that marriage can be dissolved, not annulled. I mean it could be annulled as well, but it could be dissolved meaning there there may have been a marriage. But ratum non consumatum, it was never consummated. And if it's never consummated, it can be dissolved.

Mason Harkness Wow. Now, I just want to say we have a lot of Christian people who watch the show, Catholics, non-Catholics. If what we've said here today doesn't convince you, fair enough. But realize that it wasn't until 1930 that the Anglican Church first broke away and said, this is at the Lambeth Conference, that contraception could be used in certain circumstances. So think about that for a second. How is it the case that for 1930 years, Christianity had it wrong on this topic? That alone should make you pause and do more research. So if what we're saying today doesn't necessarily resonate with you, that's okay, but I think you owe it to yourself to look into this unless you want to say the church got it wrong for that many years.

And here's tragically why it sometimes doesn't resonate with our Protestant brothers and sisters, and even certainly Catholics who, I mean, let's be honest, 95% of Catholics are contraceptive or something like that. It's horrible. Horrible. Why? Because we no longer have a sacramental understanding of reality. And I say this delicately and with sensitivity, but it's true. The very act of the Reformation, Luther was separating himself from the body of Christ.

And the very act of, I can go start my own church, was an act of spiritualizing the body of Christ. You mean sterilizing? No, I mean spiritualizing, meaning I'm cut off from the physicality of it. Interesting. I'm cut off from the institutional, the concrete, this world reality of it. I'm cut off from the institutional, the concrete, this world reality of it. It's an act of dualism. And you know what's funny,

just to pause on this for a moment, who the hell wouldn't want to do that? It's so messy. It's so filled with bumbling idiots like me and others. You know, you can see the temptation. I'm gonna sever myself off from the body, right? Yes. Gosh, that's a very amazing analogy because we seek to do that in our spiritual life as well.

Exactly. We hate our passions, we hate our erections, our sweat, our aging, we hate all of it. We would like to be pure-spirited. We would. Ex-carnation versus incarnation. I like that. Seeing the Protestant Revolution and even reformation. I like to call it the Revolution because it didn't reform anything. Well, that's true. I like to call it the revolution, because it didn't reform anything. Well, that's true. Good point. I like to think of the, and also the Catholics on the far right who are breaking communion

with Rome are doing the same thing, right, in cutting themselves off. Yes. I remember years ago, somebody came to one of my talks and he wrote me an angry letter or an email, I forget, and he said, how dare you insinuate that whether I ejaculate in a condom or in my wife's vagina has anything to do with my spiritual love for my wife. It does not matter where I put my semen, he said. That has no bearing on my spiritual love. I'd love to see when you're dead, I'd like you to post unnamed letters that you've received over the years because they must be just a layer some good ones And I wrote back to him and I said may I point out?

That where you put your semen has everything to do With whether or not you love your wife because I assure you if you put your semen in your next-door neighbor's body Your wife would say that's a contradiction of your love for me. Right? We have to return to the, and you put your finger on him, Matt, the physicality of our spirituality. Oh, nice. Right? Have you used that before? It's a good one. That's a good one. The physicality of our spirituality. Unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood, you have no life in you. Absolutely, body fluids have everything to do with it here.

Unless you eat my flesh, drink my blood, you have no life in you. You see the cop-out of spiritualizing that. If I spiritualize that, if I excarnate that, then I'll just excarnate everything. But if we stay in tune with the incarnation of the Spirit, the physicality of our faith, the sensuality of it, the spiritual through the physical, contraception becomes unthinkable. Because what you are saying when you render your genitals unable to generate is Christ is sterile. Yeah. No, he is not. No, he is not. No, he is not. He came so that his bride might have life and have it to the full, and the sexual act is meant to be a physical participation in that spiritual mystery.

And when you change the physicality of the fertility, you render it sterile. You're saying something blasphemous. That's what opened my eyes. And that's when I knew I was full in. Because, as you said, it was the Catholic Church's teaching on contraception that made me leave when I was a teenager, and it was the Catholic Church's teaching on contraception that brought me back, because I realized the Catholic Church is the only church standing on this issue. And so this has to be the church that Christ promised the Holy Spirit will lead you into all truth in season and out of season. I remember reading Carol Whitee was love and responsibility

after I'd become a Catholic and thought to myself, even if I had no good reason to think God existed, I would become a Catholic because of how true this is and nobody else is saying it. All right, so this leads us to another question. I think some of these answers will be shorter than others. This one might be one of them. This leads us to vasectomies and having our tubes tied, okay?

So this has to do with contraception. So you've said a lot already, but what's the problem of getting a vasectomy or getting one's tubes tied? And then is one bound to reverse those procedures if they've had them? Great question. So let's look at the purpose of medicine

and medical technology, right? So the purpose of medicine and technology is to help the human organism to function as it's meant to function. If someone is deaf and medicine and medical technology can give that person hearing, praise God, ears are meant for hearing, right? Eyes are meant for seeing, lungs are meant for breathing, genitals are meant for generating, right? If, on the other hand, we used medical technology to render someone deaf, now we are acting in the exact opposite direction, right? The pill or a tubal ligation or a condom or a vasectomy. We are using a device, we are using a medical intervention with the specific goal to render a healthy functioning part of the body unable to function. So this is contrary to the health of the organism.

To take a pill or to have a surgical operation to render yourself sterile, we are now acting against, exactly against the healthy functioning of the body. So suppose I've had a vasectomy and I come to my senses and I realize, oh my gosh, I've mutilated my body. So I've not only engaged in the sin of contraception, I've also engaged in the sin of bodily mutilation. I like to help people understand what mutilation means. By mutilation, I mean the destroying of one of the functions of that, you know, body part. And that's why to pierce your ear is not to mutilate yourself. Right. To pierce your ear drum is.

Yes. Yeah. So I like that. So that's why I think you really can't say it's not a mutilation. It is. Yes. If we're going to use language correctly, tubal ligation, vasectomy are bodily mutilations. Let's go with an analogy.

Suppose I just say, I don't like my arm. I hate my arm. I'm going to chop it off. It's a bodily mutilation. I am missing an arm. There is a moral evil, which is the sin of bodily mutilation. And there is a physical evil, because now I'm missing my arm. I may have to live unless I can reattach my arm. I come to my senses, I repent of the sin of bodily mutilation, I go to confession, I confess, I do my penance as far as the East is from the West, so now is the moral evil from me.

But the physical evil remains. Maybe my arm was put on ice and I can restore it. If I can, I should. Right? Let's do the analogy. Vesectomy or tubal ligation. I come to my senses. Not only have I committed the sin of contraception, I've committed the sin of bodily mutilation. I find a confessor, please find a confessor who believes what the Church teaches. God have mercy. And I do my penance. Part of my penance might be and could be and even should be if I have the means and I'm not a high-risk medical patient to reverse it.

It's not absolutely obligatory because I might not have the means. If you don't have the means, contact me and I will find a donor to get the means for you to have a reversal. Wow. Can we put some sort of email below? Yes, info at tobinstitute.org.

Thank you, wow. Yes, I will find a donor to make it happen. So that's removed. You are a man, wow. I have committed that to people. Really? And people have taken me up on it. Wow. And I have always found donors.

And have said, name your next kid, Christopher. I have actually had people come up to me and said, I named my kid after you. Wow. That's beautiful. Yeah. Yeah. Powerful. Anyway, here's another analogy.

Suppose I throw a baseball through my neighbor's window and I say, oh, I'm sorry, but I don't repair his window. Yeah. I should repair his window, right? If you can, sure. If I can, but what if it's a million dollar stained glass window and I don't have the means? Okay, mow his lawn for a year, do something to show

your sincere repentance. The point, you might not have the means, you might be a high-risk medical patient, you shouldn't go under the surgery, to have the surgery. There could be reasons not to have the reversal. But if it is at all possible, do so to restore your own integrity. And I've even told men whose wives have died and they're not sexually active with anybody, but they had a vasectomy years ago, get a reversal to restore your own integrity. And I've had men write to me and say,

I feel like a man again. Yeah, you've castrated yourself. You have. It's such a terrible thing. You have neutered yourself. Yeah, yeah, all right. I'm getting you Matt, I want to just, I think. You have neutered yourself. Yeah. Yeah. All right.

I'm getting you Matt. I want to just, I just want to say a note, not a note. I want to speak in to our merciful God here. None of this, none of this is said to wag fingers or scold or shame anybody. This is said to turn the lights on so we can turn to our God who is rich in mercy. And the Latin here I love, misere cordia, is Latin for mercy. And it means a heart, misere core, core means heart, right? Misery cordia, a heart that gives itself to those in misery. When we buy into this whole contraceptive culture and we neuter ourselves, we are robbing ourselves of our sexual identity. And we're in misery when we do this. Look at the world

in which we live. All of this rotten fruit, right? Anybody who wants to look at the contraception issue, judge the tree by its fruit. And all of the chaos we are involved in today, the breakdown of culture, fornication, abortion, homosexuality, gender confusion, all of this was predicted, not just by Catholics, not just by Christians. The chaos we are immersed in today, the sexual and gender chaos, was predicted in 1930 when the Anglican Church was the first Christian denomination to accept contraception. It was all this stuff by wise men and women who understood the power of fertility to orient or remove it and disorient civilization at its very fountainhead, at its very core, right?

Change it here and you're gonna have bad fruit, man. If you love the way the culture has gone over the last 50, 60, 70, 80, 100 years, you have contraception to thank for it. If you're like, how did we get in this mess? Well, take a look again at contraception. We are in misery because we took upon ourselves, we took it upon ourselves to be like God, to think we knew better than God, to think we could redefine reality and render our genitals unable to generate without consequence. Our God is rich in mercy, and in this misery, He comes to us not to shame us, not to scold us, not to condemn us. He comes to us in our misery to call us into the full, glorious, splendorous truth of what

it means to be a human being made male and female in the image of God. Yeah, good, thank you. It's a call to greatness. Let's talk about what question we're up to now. One, two, three, four, five, six. I wanted to ask you about pornography. What does the Church teach about pornography and why should we agree with it? Let me start with this. The problem with pornography is not that it shows naked bodies. The Sistine Chapel shows naked bodies. The problem with pornography is the manner in which it shows naked bodies. The Sistine Chapel shows naked bodies.

The problem with pornography is the manner in which it shows the naked body. And it shows the naked body with the explicit intention to arouse in the viewer the desire to use these images of other real human beings, to use those human beings as objects for our selfish pleasure, right? If we really wanna understand

what's wrong with pornography, we have to go back to the question I answered, I think it was the initial question in this episode about masturbation. Let's just cut to the chase. Pornography exists to be sexual fantasy fodder for masturbation. That's why it exists. It's the complete inversion of the sexual desire. It's all about pleasing myself, right? And I am now using other people as a means to my own selfish gratification. I am not learning

to love. I am not learning to be a gift. Right? Again, there is nothing wrong with the naked human body. God looked at everything he made and in the beginning they were naked without shame and he said, behold it is very good. But when our intention in viewing the naked body is to arouse in myself this inversion of the sexual urge to gratify myself, now I am acting contrary to my own dignity and certainly to the dignity of these people pictured in pornography. Put it this way. There's a difference between looking at the naked human body and seeing the naked human body. I've asked hundreds of thousands of women this question. I say ladies, you know instinctively, intuitively

there's a difference between seeing and looking. Please raise your hand if you prefer to be looked at by a man. Oh, that's good, yeah. Never has a hand gone up. Hundreds of thousands of women over all these years, when I've asked that, never has a hand gone up. Ladies, raise your hand if you prefer to be seen. Every hand goes up. So what's the difference? Looking is skin deep. Seeing, you're penetrating into the inner mystery of the person. Pornography trains us to look. It does not train us to see. Right. If we saw pornography, we'd cry. trains us to look, it does not train us to see.

Right, if we saw pornography we'd cry. Boom, you would weep, you would be in convulsions of pain because you would see the dignity of this person being treated as a thing to be used for people's masturbatory fantasies. It would make, it would crush you. masturbatory fantasies. It would make, it would crush you. And again, this is not to pat myself on the back, but this is to proclaim what grace can do in a life.

23 years ago, maybe, I was giving a talk at a secular university. And I went into the men's bathroom to use the bathroom and plastered on the wall in the stall were pornographic images, very graphic. At that stage of my life, I had probably been eight, ten years into my journey of conversion here, opening up all of my lusts to the Holy Spirit to be untwisted, to see more rightly. I hadn't seen

images like that since I was a teenager, and I was probably 30 at this point. And I remember like, ugh! There was like a sword in my heart. It was not like, oh, I get a free peek. Nobody's going to know. It was a wound, an immediate wound. And I did, I had like an interior experience of deep mourning and sadness because these are my sisters and they don't know who they are. And I can remember the face still to this day of one of these women in the stall. And from time to time when her face kind of shows up in my memory, I pray for this woman who's a real person. And God knows if she's still walking this earth, but probably she is. And I just want to say to you right now, wherever you are, whoever you are, I'm sending you love, girl.

I am sending you love. You are a person made in the image and likeness of God and you are never, ever, ever meant to be looked upon as a thing for my pleasure or anybody else's. Mason- Yeah, that's beautiful. I mean, there's so much we could say about this, but just real quick, what I would say is it's kind of proof that sex ought to be so good that it can be made so bad, because you can't make moderately bad things really, really wicked.

I think it was C.S. Lewis who said you can make an angel wicked, but you can't make a cow wicked. Oh, oh, oh, yes, yes. And it's like, just by the very fact that we can make sex so degraded shows us what it ought to be. Yes. It points us in an inverse manner to the heights that it can reach. Or if the body wasn't so good, you couldn't really degrade it in the sense that we talk about it. Correct.

You don't talk about degrading paper clips and washing machines. Yes, amen. You do talk about degrading the person. Okay, why? Because they're made in the image and likeness of God. They express something that a paperclip doesn't. BF I would put it this way, if you want to know what is most holy, what is most sacred, what is most beautiful in this world, all you have to do is look to that which is most profaned and degraded. Mason But in order to do that, don't you have to

have some knowledge of what's sacred to begin with? Otherwise, you would just say, well, I don't think it's profaned. I don't think that, yeah. Exactly. And this is why John Paul II's entire theology of the body begins with Christ's words that point us back to the beginning to understand how beautiful and holy and sacred it was when they were naked and felt no shame. If that's not our starting point, the sacredness, the dignity, the goodness, the holiness, the

theology of the body, if that's not our starting point, then we have no concept of what it means to sin. Put it this way, if sin means to miss the mark, as Thomas Aquinas said, we have to know what the mark is to know if you're missing it. And that's why we have to go back to the original blueprint, start there, only in that context do we know what sin is. And this is why I, man, I don't like it when the Gospel is summarized as follows. You're a sinner and you need a Savior. I

hate that declaration of the gospel because the starting point is sin. Is it true that you're a sinner and I'm a sinner and we need a Savior? Absolutely it's true. But I don't even know what sin is unless I go back to the original goodness from which I have fallen. Which is why the declaration of the gospel shouldn't begin with sin. The declaration of the gospel, which is called good news, should begin with the good news of our original creation. So it should be something like you have fallen from the greatness you ought to have and God wishes to restore that. Amen. Alright, let's look at number seven, seventh

question here, having to do with women's ordinations. Why is it that women cannot be ordained priests? Isn't that rather sexist? Haven't we really moved on from that? Especially when you consider the fact that women are usually way better at many of the things that priests are called to do. You know, they tend to be more pastoral perhaps.

I know this might be a bit of a stereotype, but at least sometimes it might be. Sure, sure, sure. Maybe with organization, secretarial work, attention to detail, you know, some. Yeah. So why not have women priests? Yeah, well let's look at the natural purpose of the sexual difference. And there's a basic principle here that supernatural realities, which is what priesthood is, a supernatural reality, supernatural realities are based on natural realities. Another way to put it, grace perfects nature, right? So what is the natural purpose of the sexual difference?

In all this talk about equality between the sexes, equality, yes, equal in dignity, absolutely. But equality does not mean interchangeability. What is the natural, basic purpose of the sexual difference? The generation of children. This is the natural purpose of the sexual difference. It is wrong to say a man can do anything a woman can do. No, a man will never be a mother. It is wrong to say a woman can do anything a man can do.

Stand-up comedy, for example. You are getting yourself in trouble here Matt. Not wrong. Stand-up comedy am I right? Matthew. What else? I do not. I did not say this. I do not endorse this statement. All right so the person, the woman can't. A woman will never be a father. Never. This is where the sexual difference matters. And unless priesthood has something to do with that essential difference, unless it does,

it would be unjust discrimination, right? We use this word discrimination, let's say indiscriminately, without discrimination. Discrimination is not a bad thing. We discriminate all the time and we must. Discriminate means this is not that, right? This is water, it's not a beer. I've discriminated because there's a difference. It's an unjust discrimination

when the difference is meaningless. Like brown hair and red hair, something like that. Right. Let me give you an unjust discrimination of the sexual difference. Women should not be allowed to vote. Is there something inherent in femininity that says women do not have the capacity to

vote? That would be an unjust discrimination. Here's a just discrimination of the sexual difference. Women should not enter the men's locker room at the local health club. Why? Why is that a just discrimination? Because here the sexual difference matters. Because in the locker room, people are gonna be naked.

And in the nakedness, men need their own privacy and women need their own privacy because of the world we live in and we're not naked without shame anymore. The sight of a naked body causes all kinds of stirrings that are not appropriate to be following in a locker room. That's right, yeah. It's a just discrimination.

Another example. It would be an unjust discrimination to say blind people should not enter a men's locker room if they're men. Yeah. That's unjust. Sure. But it is a just discrimination for the state to say

blind people will not be issued driver's licenses. We are discriminating in a just way, right? So this labeling of that's discrimination against women, the question is they can't be priests. That's discrimination. Is it just or is it unjust? We have to know what priesthood is to know if it's just or unjust discrimination. So what is priesthood? It is not a career choice, right? Women will bring their womanhood into all they do,

just as men will bring their manhood into all they do, right? But there's nothing inherently in being an attorney or a doctor or an astronaut that we should across the board say women can't do that. Women, I think, are right to wave a flag and say, hey, I can be an astronaut, I'll be a woman astronaut, and there will be issues that need to be looked at that are different, but I can be an astronaut or I can be president or I can be a doctor, I can be a lawyer, right? So women are right to wave that flag. Women are not right to say, I can be a father. I can be a father. No, you can't. Priesthood is spiritual fatherhood. And in order to be capable of being a father in the Spirit, you must be capable of being a father in the flesh. The Church takes this very seriously. In fact,

it's right in canon law that a man has to have his genitals to be ordained a priest. There it is in canon law. You have to have what it takes to be a father. Have you gone back and looked this up? I'm sure you've said that and at times you're like, is that still true? Well, there can be what I've been told by a canon lawyer. It's in canon law, but one can be granted a dispensation in certain circumstances. But it's true. It's right there in canon law. You have to have what it takes to generate,

as a father, to be ordained a priest. And this goes back to the Old Testament. And remember, we're talking here about a sacramental understanding of the world. In the Old Testament, the lambs that were sacrificed, all of these lambs are a foreshadowing of the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. The lamb had to be a male and he had to have his male member and his testicles intact. I don't remember reading that. I believe you. Yup, it's right in the Old Testament. You can look it up.

It's there. What is the saying? There's something inherent to masculinity that is priestly. It is the offering of the spiritual seed that makes one a spiritual father. And where do men train to be priests? In the seminary. And we're not making this up, that there's a connection. What is the man training to do in the seminary? He's training to give the spiritual seed

that will make him a spiritual father. The male body is the sacrament of that priestly fatherly offering. For a woman to attempt to confer the Eucharist, the relationship is now bride to bride. If the congregation is the bride, the priest is the bridegroom. For a woman to attempt to confer Eucharist, it's now bride to bride.

And there's no possibility of a holy communion, and there's no possibility of new life. But notice, in a world where we think two women can get married, we also think a woman can be ordained a priest. Both confusions come from the same cloth, which has confused sexual equality with sameness or interchangeability. Equal indignity, but it does not mean sameness. There's a difference that is necessary for communion and life givingness on the natural level and on the supernatural level.

Very good. I just looked up discrimination. The current definition of it is unjust. You know, it bakes that right into the definition, but the etymology means distinguish from something else or from each other. Yes. Boom. Boom. We make distinctions all the time. Yeah. So we should. So when somebody says, isn't it discriminatory to say that women can't be priests? The answer is of course. Yes, but it's just, it's good. We're making distinctions. Yeah. And I think it was, I would like, you know, you ever watch, you ever read Babylon B? Yeah. On occasion. I had this idea and I want them to take it and run with it. Cause I think it's a great joke.

I want to see a photo of men outside of a convent. Let us in. Let us in. And why, since you bring that up, why do we, it is as foolish, I'm going to start a campaign, Men for Pregnant Men, right? And I'm going to comb the world for signatures and I'm going to put this petition to the Pope and I'm going to demand that the Pope let me get pregnant. And what is the Pope gonna say? I cannot change the order God has established. Yeah, also here's a number

of a good therapist. But yeah, women who want to be priests, that's the same confusion. They want to be fathers. You can't be a father when you are a woman. This is where the sexual difference matters. But again, if we're viewing all of this through condom colored glasses, guess what disappears? The fundamental meaning of the sexual distinction. So you know, when you say condom colored glasses, I imagine the glasses removed and two condoms that droop down past my eyes. That's what I'm seeing. Maybe Thursday, can you do some kind of mock-up of condom colored glasses? Yeah, I wonder what AI would have to say about that. All right, we have three more. We can do this. Okay, homosexuality. What's the problem with

homosexuality? Well, if we're following the train of thought that we've laid out so far, it should be rather obvious. But let's just enter in a little bit. It should be rather obvious, but let's just enter in a little bit. I had a professor who once put it this way, and this is a, he was known for having a rather salty tongue. This is not table talk, but sometimes we need to be hit kind of squarely between the eyes. And this is not said in any way to shame, scold, condemn anybody. It's said to turn the lights on. But this is what he said, as soon as you sever orgasm from procreation, any orifice will do. This is the

situation. We have come to embrace homosexuality because we've come to embrace contraception. Contraception, man, you don't realize just how evil it is. It is diabolical. It results in widespread pornography. It is the biggest snow job next to original sin. It is the biggest snow job in history. Do you find yourself angry when you go to the store and see it? Yes, I find myself not just angry, I found myself repulsed.

Like this sacrilege, if you understand the sacramentality of the two becoming one flesh, that this is a great sacrament, a great mystery, as St. Paul says, of Christ's union with the Church. R. Then contraception is a sacrilege. B. It's a sacrilege. R. Yeah. B. What you're doing sexually is either going to be – and there's no middle ground – it's either going to be sacramental or sacrilegious.

It's one or the other. And let me give you a – I was going to say a visual, but not in that sense. Here's my visual. When we understand what a man and a woman can do with their genitals and are designed by God to do with their genitals, in other words, generate new life, we know it is absolutely impossible to raise what two men are doing with their genitals or two women to that level. Biologically, ontologically, impossible. However, it is not impossible to lower what a man and a woman are doing with their genitals to the same level as what

two men or two women are doing with their genitals, which is what? Pursuing sterile pleasure. With contraception, we have lowered what a man and a woman are doing to the pursuit of sterile pleasure. So when we view sexual activity and marriage itself through condom-colored glasses, the culture is right through those condom-colored glasses to say marriage equality or love is love. Mason Fierce-Klein All of a sudden it seems like unjust discrimination. David Plylar Exactly. But take those condom-colored glasses off and let the sexual difference speak the language that God has inscribed it with, and boom! You see the purpose

and meaning of the sexual difference, right? What two men are doing with their genitals, or two women are doing with their genitals, is not the same unless we've contracepted the union of what a man and a woman are doing. And this is fascinating. You brought up the Anglican Church was the first to change the teaching on contraception. 70 years later in the year 2000, Archbishop Rowan Williams, at the time head of the Anglican Church said, and this is close to memory as I can get, almost a direct quote, but this is definitely the sentiment of what he said. He said, a church that justifies contraception has no basis not to justify homosexual activity, but rather than questioning, huh, should we have justified contraception? What did he do? He was logically consistent taking contraception? What did he do? He was logically consistent,

taking contraception as a starting point, and he justified homosexual activity. With condom colored glasses, the whole purpose of the sexual difference eventually evaporates. This is the world we live in right now. None of this is said to shame anybody, scold anybody, condemn anybody. It's said to turn the lights on so we can see the darkness in which we've been

immersed and have a way out of it. And this is our God. He does not come to scold us. He comes to save us. We got to let him save us. Thursday, can we put those two episodes I've done with these two very beautiful people, as a man and a woman, on same-sex attraction and lifestyle?

So if you're out there watching this and maybe you feel condemned by this, I hope you don't, but maybe hearing it from a man who's lived the homosexual lifestyle and a woman who has and then chose to repent of that might be helpful to you, so the links will be in the description below to that. All right, two more.

Yes. What's the problem with IVF then? Because it sounds like you're saying, okay, the problem with contraception. Let's just define IVF for people who may not know what it, in vitro fertilization. Yeah, they might not know IVF. Sure, sure, sure, I'm sorry.

Yeah, because it sounds like the, you know, I can see someone saying, oh, the Catholics are super into babies, right? And so that's why they're against contraception, because if you have contraception, then babies don't result. So, okay, what's the problem with IVF then? I mean, you've got a couple, they love each other,

they want a baby, they're gonna be good parents. And now you're saying, now we got this technological advancement, right? It's apparently doing, to quote you, of course I'm playing devil's advocate, to quote you that medicine should seek to aid the body. Well, there's a deficiency here, they wanna bring a baby in lovingly, and now you're telling them they can't. It just sounds like the Catholic Church

is against all medical progress. Only that which substitutes the sexual act for the origin of the life is the Church opposed to. If medicine and technology can aid the marital act in achieving its natural end, there's nothing wrong with that at all. Viagra. Viagra, ovulation pills. You can even have a certain, put a woman on a certain diet that will improve the lubrication that allows the sperm to get to the egg. There are all number of things that can be done to aid the marital act in achieving its natural end. But if we replace the marital act itself as the means by which the child is conceived, now we have the flip side of contraception. Now we have the flip side of contraception. I'll explain that in a moment, but I want to just say this. Notice how beautifully, logically, and rightly consistent the Church is in her teaching.

And the teaching is this. Sex and babies go together. Right? If you want to frame for understanding the whole thing, marriage, sex, babies go together and in that order. Contraception says, I want the sex without the babies. Conceiving a child in a test tube says, I want the babies without the sex. It's the flip side of contraception. And tragically, we end up reducing that person conceived in the Petri dish to a product we've paid for, rather than receiving that child lovingly from God through the marital act. Mason- And not to mention what we do to the poor woman who we just asked to be the incubator. Moser- If that's the route that the couple goes, yes, yes.

Mason- But isn't that the only route? Moser- No, no, no. The child can be implanted in the actual biological mother. Mason- Oh, sure, sure, sure. I'm immediately thinking of homosexuals using IVF. That's why I thought of that. That's a good point. Moser- Yes, yes. So the point here, and I think anybody and everybody can recognize Immediately thinking of homosexuals using IVF. That's why I thought of that. But that's a good point. Yep. Yes. Yes. So the point here, and I think anybody and everybody can recognize this, the desire for

a child is beautiful, but that does not justify any means to get a child. And we don't have a right to a child. We don't. What a married couple has a right to is the marital act. Yeah. They do not have a right to demand a child from the hand of God. Anybody can recognize the desire for child is beautiful, but that does not justify you kidnapping somebody else's child. The end does not justify the means.

Even kidnapping a child from a sub-par family, let's say. Right, right. And the purpose here is not to draw a parallel between IVF and kidnapping, but just to demonstrate, we can all recognize there are means to acquiring a child that are not justified by the end. Right, and then we're saying this is one of them. And we're saying this is the Church's invitation, ponder this, to separate babies from sex is the flip side of separating sex from babies. It grows naturally out of a contraceptive mentality. And this is fascinating historically. Do you know the birth date of the first child conceived by in vitro?

No. Is it something to do with Humana Vitae? July 25th, 1978, the 10th anniversary of Humana Vitae was the birthday of the first child conceived by in vitro fertilization. If that's not a heaven just going, hello, hello, there's a connection here with contraception. What the church is opposed to is any medicine and technology that replaces the sexual act as the means by which the child is conceived. God designed every child, put it this way, if we're gonna be talking about rights here, the rights we have to consider are especially the rights of the child.

And every child, this is the church's teaching, every human being has the right to be conceived through the loving marital embrace of his or her parents. We know children can be conceived by all kinds of other acts, an act of rape, an act of fornication, an act of adultery, an unloving act by people who are married. In vitro fertilization, are these children loved by God? Absolutely. Are they desired by God? Absolutely. They would not exist if God did not desire them to exist.

But the fact that that child was not conceived by the loving, marital embrace of his parents will always remain an injustice to that child. So again, if we're to consider rights here, we must consider the right of the child first. The parents have a right to the marital act, they do not have a right to replace the marital act with something else to demand a child from the hand of God. Mason Fiery All right, thank you. We've come to our tenth and final question. And what's funny about this is, I said these would be 10 questions about sex, but in a way, this final question is a question about not sex, namely celibacy.

So to cue that up, I guess the first question is, is there even a difference between abstinence and celibacy? And what does the church invite men and women to? What does Christ invite men and women to when he invites them to? You're right. Christ calls, Christ himself, we can't just toss the scripture aside, Christ himself calls some to remain celibate, and the next line is critical- For the kingdom.

For the sake of the kingdom of God. And here's an old joke of mine, I don't even remember where I heard it, but it is celibacy for God's sake, not celibacy for God's sake. It is celibacy to devote myself entirely to the kingdom. Well, what's the kingdom? The Bible begins with the marriage of man and woman. It ends with the marriage of Christ in the church. The whole purpose of this marriage is to be an earthly sign that points me to this marriage. Why does Christ say in the resurrection men and women are no longer given in marriage? Because you no longer need a sign to point you to heaven when you're there.

Right? Marriage is the primordial sacrament, John Paul II says, the original, the fundamental sign in the created order that gives me a hint, a clue as to where this all goes. I am destined for what Scripture calls the marriage of the Lamb. The wise virgins, and here we have to distinguish the wise virgins from the unwise virgins, right? The wise virgins are the ones who have oil for their lamps, and that means their hearts are lit on fire with what the saints call a divine eros that is aimed at those eternal nuptials. Put it this way, the witness of the wise virgins is that

that eternal marriage is real and it is worth selling everything to possess. When we understand that, we understand that celibacy for the kingdom is not a denial or a rejection of sexuality. It is actually a living out of the ultimate purpose and meaning of sexuality. So in this understanding of the wise and the foolish virgins, the oil represents what? Eros. And just sum that up for us quickly. Eros is a Greek word. We get the English word erotic. But in English that word erotic has been really pornified.

We have to reclaim the meaning. And John Paul II says, "'Eros,' properly understood, "'is the upward impulse of the human spirit "'towards all that is true, good, and beautiful.'" Saint Francis de Sales says, "'Eros is the passion within us "'that strives with all of our body and soul.

I read that in your new book. I was shocked that he said that. For divinization. Beautiful. That's Eros. This is really powerful, right? Because that oil that you're referring to has to exist in marriage, earth and marriage as well. And so it's, yeah, we both need the oil. Yeah, we could speak of the wise married couples or the unwise married couples.

Do you have oil for your lamp? And if you don't have oil for your lamp, you're gonna be using one another in the sexual act. This is not gonna be the marital act. It's gonna be just a man and a woman using each other under the guise of, well, it's okay, we're married. And no, no, no, no, it's only okay if you are really learning to be a gift.

And that's a lifelong journey. You and I recently finished filming a whole series on love and responsibility, where we go into great detail on what that means. So we'll leave that for that. But the point I wanna make here, you asked, what's the difference between celibacy as a vocation and abstinence, right?

Was that your question? Yeah. Yeah, and it reminded me that we didn't address an issue previously when we were talking about contraception, which is why does the church allow natural family planning? Right? What's the difference? The church allows periodic abstinence, right? And with natural family planning, what happens, or some people today call it fertility awareness, I guess I'm old school here, I've been doing this a long time, whether you call it fertility awareness or natural family planning, doesn't matter. But a couple can come to understand the natural cycles of a woman's fertility.

And with modern methods of understanding this, you can know with 99.9 something percent accuracy when a woman is fertile and when a woman is infertile. Armed with that knowledge, suppose you know it's the fertile time. And suppose you have a serious reason, maybe even a duty to avoid a pregnancy. The only loving thing to do is to avoid that behavior that leads to a child. In other words, abstain. Abstain from the act that leads to a child. The only form of birth control in keeping with human dignity is self-control. You and I once joked, why do you spay or neuter your dogs and cats? Why not just ask them to abstain?

Right? Well, they can't abstain. Well, we can, unless we reduce ourselves to the level of animals. If you take an honest look at contraception, that's what we're reducing ourselves to. We're reducing ourselves to the level of animals who can't control themselves. We are called to freedom and freedom means I can say yes, or I can say no. If I can't say no, my yes is emptied of its meaning. So the call here is to self mastery.

So you're fertile tonight. We have maybe even a duty to avoid a child. Freely I choose to abstain in honor of the way God made the whole beautiful mystery of human sexuality. Suppose it's an infertile time in the cycle. Does the couple have to abstain? They don't have to. They don't have to. There may be still a good reason to, but you don't have to. And this is my point. Abstinence itself can be a profound act of love.

Every married couple knows this. There are many occasions in married life where you might want to renew your wedding vows through intercourse, but love demands you abstain. Maybe one of you is sick. Maybe you're at the in-laws and there are thin walls. Maybe your wife is fertile and you have a good reason not to have a child. These are good reasons to abstain. Love demands abstinence in these situations. Okay, but then there's the occasion where you're not fertile. Is there any reason to abstain?

I don't know. Is one of you sick? Are you at the in-laws and their thin walls? Are you in a public place? If not, all systems go, praise God, rejoice. And then people will say, wait a minute, what is the difference between sterilizing the act yourself and just waiting till it's naturally infertile? Both couples avoid children, the end result's

the same thing. And you've heard me say this before, you know, okay, what's the big difference between killing grandma and just waiting till she dies naturally? The end result is the same thing, dead grandma. Ah, yes. But one is a serious sin called murder. Whereas in the other situation, grandma's dead, but there's no sin involved whatsoever because her death is an act of God. And I always invite people think on this, think on this, think on this. If you can understand the difference between euthanasia and natural death. You can understand the difference between contraception and natural family planning. I give people one final kind of push because we're talking about celibacy.

Those who might be questioning their vocation, who might have made a commitment to celibacy, or there might be seminarians watching who wonder whether this really is something they should try to embrace. BF Yeah, inevitably there are people out there right now who are facing this question, how am I called? And this is the question of vocation. Am I called to make a gift of myself? That's the fundamental and innate vocation of every human being, says JP2, to learn how

to love as God loves, to make a gift of myself. There are two fundamental ways of committing your whole life to being a gift, marriage or celibacy for the kingdom. Either way, we are called to live out that bodily gift of myself. Virginity is a bodily gift. Celebacy is a bodily gift. Angels cannot be celibates. They have no bodies. It takes a body to make that kind of gift.

So if you are called to become that gift, a celibate gift, God will give you the grace to live that. If you are called to make a marital gift, God will give you the grace to live that. If you are called to make a marital gift, God will give you the grace to live that. And this is the point. Both are vocations that demand grace. We sometimes erroneously think, well, marriage is easier because you don't have to refrain from sex your whole life. Ha ha ha ha.

JP too suggests in Love and Responsibility to refrain from sex your whole life. Ah ha ha ha. JP too, suggested love and responsibility, that in fact, marriage is a harder vocation because you have to learn how to engage in sex rightly. And that is a serious call to virtue. I was just thinking that a man who lives amidst a adulterous and fornicating people may come to believe that marriage is unnatural because he looks around him and everybody else is screwing everybody else. You know, but it's not and in a similar way like the celibate man may come to believe that it's just unnatural because he's surrounded by unchaste men and women as well.

Yeah, I can summarize that whole perspective, the culture. I mean, the culture looks at the secular culture, the culture of the sexual revolution, looks at married people first and says, well, you're crazy enough. You know, Christian marriage, you limit your only chance to get some to one person for your whole life? Okay, that's crazy enough. But then you have these other freaks who give up any legitimate chance to get any, and they condemn themselves to a life of hopeless repression. That is what JP2 calls a a disintegrated, non-personalistic view of sexuality. We've reduced sexuality to the level of animals.

That's what he means, non-personalistic. And we think it's just an instinct that you can't control. And from that perspective, it is silly to limit it to one person. Don't you wanna sow your wild oats with all kinds of people? Why limit it to one person? That's crazy enough. And then these people over here, they give it

up all together. That's just insanity. But if we have this, this is a word John Paul the Second uses, a sublimated vision, which means a vision that is made sublime, upturned, turned towards these infinite realities, turned towards these divine realities. Well, then this begins to make sense, and maybe we'll close with this story. I'll never forget hearing the story. I heard a Carmelite nun tell this story, and she was giving a presentation at a secular university about Carmelite spirituality. And she was claiming that she knew, much like Teresa of Avila knew, this divine ecstasy in her prayer life.

And the statue of Teresa in ecstasy is famous, Bernini's statue, right? It's one of the most beautiful works of sacred art in the entire tradition of sacred art. And it's in a church outside Rome. Teresa in absolute ecstasy and union with God, and stammering to put a language to that experience of her prayer life, she said, it's nuptial union with love eternal. So in that tradition, this Carmelite nun was trying to explain this to a rather secular audience. And this psychologist

came up to her after her talk and said, you are sick. What you really want is sex, but you're disguising your desire for sex with all this ridiculous talk about union with God. And she responded very clearly and firmly, she said, oh no, no, no, no. I beg to differ. What the world really wants is union with God, But it's disguising that desire with all this ridiculous promiscuous sex. Preach, sister. Who was right?

Yeah, the nun, 1000%. Thank you so much, Christopher. Tell people about your wonderful podcast and your website. Yeah, my wife and I do a podcast called the Ask Christopher West Show, hosted by Wendy West. We've done something like 270 episodes or something, and we usually answer three questions. So do the math on that. We've answered hundreds of questions. And it's really enabled us.

It's a beautiful thing. We have a global community of listeners. We've had millions of downloads. It's probably the most popular thing I've ever done. And there's a sense of community because we're addressing people's real needs and real questions in real time. Beautiful thing. You can listen to that wherever you listen to podcasts.

And then we have the TOB Institute YouTube channel. And I've done a whole series of videos, 70 or so videos on my book, Good News About Sex and Marriage, which is a Q&A book. There's 150 questions in that book, all these that we've addressed and 140 others. And yeah, check out our YouTube channel, we have hundreds of videos there. And check out our course schedule. Go to theologythebody.com, look at our course schedule. We offer online courses and in-person courses in a five-day format. People can go the whole way to get a master's degree.

We have a relationship with Pontifex University. We offer a master's in theology of the body and the new evangelization. We also have a certification program which is shorter, but most people, we've had thousands of people from around the world take our courses just for personal enrichment, and it's a great way to go deeper into this incredible gift that John Paul II has given us. You've taken a course, share your experience of that course. Yeah, it was like, why are you laughing, Thursday? This is where we removed him from the room. It's like, to be fair, we have been working a lot today.

Poor Thursday's going crazy next door. It was beautiful. It was like drinking from a fire hydrant and it was a very beautiful communal journey with other folks. And my wife, yeah, your wife's been to or... I think she went to one, but she brought her friend with her, who's a lovely Protestant woman, and both got a tremendous amount out of it. So...

I mean, I know that things can be done online these days and that there's benefit to that, but there's much more benefit to doing it in Karnat. If you can do it in person in that five-day format, highly recommend it. All right, thank you. You're welcome, Matt. Thanks, Thursday.