The Christian Life: July 2009 Archives

The pope is not a Democrat or a Republican, and his vision doesn’t fit the normal categories of American politics.

Bishop Hubbard supports Cap and Trade.

I guess he thinks upstate NY families don't need to be able to pay their heating bills.

Caritas in Veritate, by B-16 & Pixar

The Pixar short is adorable and the tie-in to the new encyclical is inspiring brings tears to my eyes (yeah, a little inspiration goes a long way with me, alright?)

There's also a great round-up of commentary on Caritas in Veritate.

Let Mr. Kellemeyer show you how it's done:

For instance, I began to realize that the assertion, “I can have sex without wanting a child” was logically absurd. It’s like saying, “I can eat ice cream all day without wanting to get fat.” Sure, you can. But what does your "want" have to do with it? The biological reality was going to hit you either way.

I thought it was a good analogy, but I quickly discovered a flaw. Having sex was different from eating cupcakes all day. Every time I ate a cupcake, I added calories to my body. Every time. But it is not the case that every act of sex creates a child. The analogy wasn’t perfect.

I gnawed on that for awhile.

And I began to see… something

Something I didn’t expect.

Ultimately, it was this point - the point that sex does not always create children – that converted me back to the Faith.

This is what I saw.

Precisely because sex does not always create children, yet it always holds the promise of creating children, that sex stands for something greater than itself. Because sex is designed to produce children, yet does not always produce them, the act is transformed from a simple biological action into… there was no other word for it… poetry.

Because sex contains not a hard reality, but only a future promise, it becomes a promise, the promise of the man to the woman "I will be with you always, even if this does produce that for which it is designed."

And by this act, the man gives himself not just to the woman, he gives himself primarily to the not-yet-conceived child.

It was the poetic biology of the thing that snared me.

In the end, Ladies, real men are so much more appealing than punks who think women are good for one thing only.

http://www.ncregister.com/daily/u2_singer_bonos_ode_to_mary/

HT: Amy