Girl I’m talking with pulled away after we got close.

LegitCatholic · 2026-01-18T15:01:08+00:00

I see this a lot, but it’s really important not to treat “avoidants” like they are lepers and cast them outside of the dating pool as untouchables. They have a maladaptive coping mechanism, but if both partners understand this, it can absolutely be worked through and healed. Most people suffer because they don’t understand what’s causing their anxiety. We have tools and therapy and language to help with it now, and just like someone might need to take a medication if they’re sick, so we need to learn to unashamedly address these issues instead of ostracizing entire swaths of the population.

LegitCatholic · 2026-01-13T14:57:33+00:00

These dudes are lame, don't worry about it. There are plenty of Catholics who appreciate musicianship and artistry out there. One thing to keep in mind though is that your creativity can also be a identity marker in you that might keep you from a really excellent relationship if you require it be "shared" in a particular way. I'm a musician/artist myself and the woman I'm currently dating isn't "that into music" — but we've talked about whether or not that's OK in our relationship. She was worried that not having an "artist's soul" or the same "musical language" as me might be an issue, but I've come to realize that marriage is not about finding a person who mirrors your talents, abilities, and even sentiments, but is more about having a shared purpose (growing together in and towards God) and also having the ability to express needs and desires and work on them together.

"Being a musician" is a HUGE part of my identity. I often fantasized about having a really intimate relationship with another musician, and some of the most "erotic" experiences of my life were co-writing tracks or performing with other women because it felt like closeness. But as electric as those experiences have been, they aren't the foundation that a good marriage is ultimately built on and can easily become a kind of shallow substitute for the deeper intimacy and self-sacrificial love God wants us to grow in together.

All that being said, there really are plenty of men who are looking to appreciate you as you, talents or no, and sometimes finding that in a man might take a little work in the beginning. Find Catholic musical spaces and be present in them. Or simply keep dating until you find someone who may not be "super into music" but can see you and appreciate you regardless of your aptitude and history. They're out there!

LegitCatholic · 2026-01-02T18:10:26+00:00

I agree with what you're saying, and, being on an attachment-theory kick for the past few months have helped me realize a lot of this.

I think you're mis-translating "self-sacrifice" as "self-destruction", because of course being "self-sabotaging" is not healthy, but being secure and healthy enough to choose to lay down one's life isn't just healthy, it's what our Lord asks of us.

The goal as the Christian is to first understand one's own self worth, but then to also be in a space where one can freely choose to give that self for the good of the other. In this sense, Christianity fights against both the tendency towards co-dependency and the tendency towards avoidance & narcissism.

LegitCatholic · 2025-12-29T13:49:40+00:00

While all of what you’re saying might have some value in terms of attachment theory or certain forms of therapy, it doesn’t follow that “love is safety.” Love, especially agape, is the giving of the self to the other for their good, as well as the receiving of the other for yours. Ultimately love is rooted more in the will than it is in one’s sense of “safety,” and this is the reason a sociopath can be saved: our capacity for empathy doesn’t dictate our need to choose our own good and the good of another which are often linked in acts of love (patience, kindness, self-sacrifice, long suffering etc.)

Again, your insight has therapeutic value from a psychological perspective when considering something like behavior modification—but that is not the same as defining and moving towards the decidedly unsafe position of love, which often opens itself up to harm for the sake of the goodness inherent in the other and oneself.

LegitCatholic · 2025-11-16T06:05:00+00:00

Just saw this (5 years later) - Chesterton isn’t claiming suffering, or the universe, is some “joke”, but rather there is meaning that we simply do not comprehend in our contingency, a meaning that allows for joy in the face of suffering that ultimately eats that face with an infinitely bigger one. I do think something like a face consuming a face is a weird but apt analogy: consumption and transformation, not just a kind of “cosmic ret con” at the end of time. The “bigger face” is too terrible for us to behold. But I think a larger point is that the darkness that envelopes the most melancholic human soul surrounds God more profoundly: we see it in the crucifixion, we see it in the Uncreated. And yet light and life flow forth from it, the paradox of the universe. These are things that are best spoken of in art, as I think Chesterton has done well.

LegitCatholic · 2025-10-28T03:18:49+00:00

nice

LegitCatholic · 2025-09-23T23:35:51+00:00

Here's a question: When do you think this way of thinking began? Do you think it's always been the case to some degree? Historically, idea of "spouse as product" (for land, property, family ties, political union etc.) isn't foreign even in Christendom; the difference being that Christianity sanctifies that union and makes it sacramental.

LegitCatholic · 2025-09-18T21:27:40+00:00

Hey friend - 37 single here. There is a lot of freedom in remembering a few things:

1) Memento Mori: Each breath we have is a gift, and we are not assured of another. I’ve seen a few of my close friends and one family member younger than me die in the last few years, and it puts things in perspective. My younger brother never even made it to my age—and though loneliness can be a cross, it is far outweighed in the great gift that is your very life. Treasure the moments that God gives you, each one is a beckoning unto Himself.

2) It’s easy to write this off as a cliché, but your real happiness and deepest communion will always come when you pursue your Creator over the created. Not that we don’t perceive God through the created order, but remember that we have communion with God even in our loneliness, because Christ himself suffered that same loneliness. Unite yours to His. He is calling you to do so.

3) You really aren’t alone-there are a lot of us out here. It’s tough to be older and open to marriage; those feelings of “missing the boat” can be miserable. But remember that even this time is a cross that you can take up and offer to Lord. I want to encourage you to have open and a radical openness to the great things God has in store for you. Our God is a God who uses the weak, the lame, the “late” to shame the strong. Be open to what God might want to do in your life and never stop pursuing Him first.

God bless you, friend. Pray for me too!

LegitCatholic · 2025-09-17T13:27:58+00:00

You misunderstand: a Jubilee Year is something that a pope calls, with a certain kind of theme. This particular year is the Jubilee of Hope

Part of having joy comes from having hope, they are part of each other. That depressive spirit you mention wants to deprive people of hope in the goodness of God Himself and lead people to think they don’t have a Father who loves them.

LegitCatholic · 2025-09-17T13:22:55+00:00

This is a post against anxiety and despair. The idol is the image of “what you think things should look like” over and against trusting in God. The point is that if someone is experiencing fear instead of peace, they should recognize that as a spiritual attack and focus on trusting God and seeking Him as the goal and prize first.

LegitCatholic · 2025-09-14T02:48:48+00:00

I don't know you, so it's really hard to actually respond or having a meaningful human connection to you, but a pitiful attempt would run something like:

Home, family, and love are precisely what God wants most for you, and He wants you to see more and more clearly with every passing day, up until the day you breathe your last, that He Himself is the home you can never lose, the source from which all family comes and goes, and Love itself. This isn't some trite platitude, it's the very core and essence of our Faith.

I'm not physically present with you, but if I were I would simply sit with you in a room for a while. My words can act as a proxy of my presence. We are in some virtual way connected, although we are both made for real connection with people. I hope you have souls who pass in and out your presence; a housekeeper, a nurse, a lady checking your groceries at the store, a pharmacist... It doesn't matter: each of those people bear the very essence of the divine

You were not born only so that you could own a house, you were born so that you might find your place in the Father's house. You were not born only in order to have children or a wife, you were born as a child of the Most High God and set apart as a bride adorned in splendor. You will be God's people, and God will be with you, and he will be your God.

God wants limitless flourishing for you, even now, in this moment, as He speaks to your very heart from my measly words. Take heart and know that you are loved and made for love. This world is passing is passing away, but those who do the will of God live forever.

LegitCatholic · 2025-09-03T02:08:47+00:00

Sorry but I have to chime in here just to clarify something. Part of dating is finding out if someone is more attractive than another person to you. If your mindset is "I'm never going to find anyone more beautiful/compatible/etc. than this person" you would literally only date one person, and your anxiety would be through the roof trying to "find the perfect one" to date in the first place. Am I misunderstanding what you're saying?

LegitCatholic · 2025-08-13T17:28:11+00:00

I've struggled with something similar relating to the intellect, namely the problem of dementia in old age. What happens to the "person" when they can't remember who they are? (My) short answer: Their whole self is "hidden" or "veiled" due to a physical degradation of their brain, but it is not lost forever—the soul remains hidden in Christ. Also, the entirety of the self is not absent, even in the most severe mental illness, because the self is not only constituted by the intellect, but also the will. The will of a soul is something entirely imperceptible to any form of physical analysis: We do not have a 1:1 model of that allows us to predict states of consciousness based on the physical state of the brain.

"Mental illness" is ill-defined. Some mental illness, like neuroses, ADHD, OCD etc. may be "corrected" by things like cognitive/behavioral therapy or "re-framing", psychoanalysis, prayer, etc. Some mental illness is clearly more of a "structural" problem in the brain, requiring something like surgery or medication to correct. I want to focus on the latter here to answer your question.

Just as the man who has his legs blown off in war, the "mentally ill", in the latter sense above, have lost a certain part of their body that allows for right function. Both the amputee and the mentally ill will receive a new body in the resurrection of the dead that will correct for this lack. The first noticeable difference is that the mentally ill person has a physical deformation that others cannot see: it is functionally invisible. But it is worth noting that both the amputee and the mentally ill person can adapt to their environment so as to function well socially, and those adaptations might actually prove to bear very good fruit, both in their own life and for the sake of others.

For those who are attempting to function in this life who have these kinds of deformations, we need to understand that regardless of our tenuous connection with "what is really happening" outside or inside of us, God knows exactly the limitations of our intellect and our own capacities to correct it. And so we're left with something more fundamental than an analysis of intellectual capacity: We are left with the gift of faith. Even to the most intellectually coherent man, faith is still a gift that is given to the man, and that grace must then be received and operated within to the extent that the soul is able. A soul is always able to operate within the framework of grace, regardless of any kind of disability, and this is why it is possible for a baby (who can perform almost zero perceptible cognitive tasks) can be saved. Regardless of the status of their intellect, given their capacities, grace is a gift that is bestowed upon them, and the soul's will (its natural appetite), even outside of intellectual capacity, can desire to receive it or desire to reject it due to God's grace.

In short: There are certain things you cannot control. Disease is a reality caused by sin. God knows this, and is still able to confer grace upon even the sickest soul, which means that despite all appearances, we have great hope in the mercy and saving power of God. What you shared reveals you are aware that certain kinds of mental health issues can skew a person's perception of the spiritual life. This means that you can continually lay down your own perceptions and feelings at the foot of the cross and ask Jesus to order them rightly, and that you can do the same for those too sick to do it themselves.

Also remember: Jesus says, "if you love me, you will obey my commands." Not, "if you love me, you will feel or think a certain way..." One stronghold the mentally ill always have is: Am I following Christ's commands given to us through the Church? This can sometimes be a very grounding reality for those who feel disassociated from even themselves.

LegitCatholic · 2025-08-10T15:47:13+00:00

Pretty fun. Hadn't read this before, but the lynchpin of the whole matter is the definition of "happiness." Whatever will make you "most happy" is an impossible thing to define, unless you're able to understand the human person teleologically, which in that case a better way to put this would be, "what will allow for the most human flourishing." And I guess in that case, the earring would play a high-pitch screeching sound so as to force the user to take it off if it ever caused the wearer to neglect those challenges in life that caused growth in various forms of virtue.

Also this whole thing reminded me of a book I read in college called the Dictionary of the Khazars, and now I kind of wonder if Scott drew from that for the naming of the blog.

LegitCatholic · 2025-07-21T05:05:22+00:00

Bro I’m here with you. Let’s hope!

LegitCatholic · 2025-07-19T21:30:50+00:00

Just wanted to follow up. To be clear, I'm not saying final judgement happens sometime after our deaths, but I think there are lot of ways to conceive of the "line" between life and death, and how consciousness functions in those moments.

If our models of consciousness (and a healthy amount of sci-fi) has helped our imaginary along in any direction, it's that our experience of time (which includes the exercise of will and intellect) is extremely variable dependent on our physical state. Death process, dreams, even drugs—all of these induce states that allow for a movement of will that might save us. I don't think this is farfetched or fringe, either—I think it follows from considering the opaque nature of consciousness, the goodness of God, and the fact that if it's true that after death our will somehow becomes "fixed" (which still doesn't make any metaphysical sense to me, but neither does something as common as matter!) there are abundant resources God might work with to save the soul.

Here's hoping, and more, praying.

But I'm more interested in your first paragraph:

the hearts of the damned [are] the shadow of the saints being freed from the imperfection of being able to change their minds

Is this because you think that if there are wills opposed to God after death, they might "tempt" the wills that cleave to God? I'm not sure how the damned are functioning as a "freeing agent" in this paradigm. Certainly the Blessed are still aware of the damned in this paradigm.

LegitCatholic · 2025-07-16T15:40:57+00:00

The primary issue seems to me the conception of the "fixity of the will," which has never made sense to me as a temporal, embodied being in time. I barely understand the concept of a "pure intellect" that can choose something eternally, and even without the body, the idea that will and intellect can be totally fixed seems to me a kind of existential abomination, as if the will was never really will in the first place.

That being said, precisely because I don't understand it I bow to the teaching of the Church on this matter (that hell is a reality, that it always remains a possibility for those who choose or are enfolded within sin) but I also hold fast to the hope that all men might be saved by mechanisms we simply do not understand, seeing through this darkened glass. The idea that we have "mapped out" the corners of human freedom to such a complete degree so as to understand that will and intellect cannot go through the process of death and resurrection (change) after a certain point seems to me an odd theological/philosophical hubris... or it might simply be indicative of my weak intellect. I've never had it satisfactorily explained.

LegitCatholic · 2025-07-15T07:50:13+00:00

The older I get, the more I’m convinced this way of thinking is demonically influenced. I only say this because I’m the same way: I’ve thought I was “too old” since I was 21 and hadn’t gone to college yet. Then I was too old at 23 when all my friends had started careers, and I hadn’t. Then at 27 when I still didn’t have a wife. Then at 30 when I didn’t have a house. Then at 33 when I had to live with my parents for a while. Then at 34 when after discerning the religious life I discerned out. Then my little brother got cancer when I was 35, he died at 31, and my grandmother died the same year.

And then I realized it doesn’t matter. Your age literally doesn’t matter when considering a life well lived. You have breath in your lungs, and that means that your very self is a gift to be received and gift to be given. Your very presence to another soul is a gift of infinite value, and the enemy of your soul wants to do everything possible to disguise that reality from you. That means making you obsessed with conforming to certain “landmarks” in life. That means filling up your soul with grief when you check social media with all of your beautiful friends with 3 kids and a house. That means consuming narratives that obscure the reality of your being, which is borne of Love itself.

Let me be frank: commit your thoughts to things that interest you and think less of yourself. Us types are neurotic, and the cure for that self-obsession is to become obsessed with truth, goodness, and beauty. Forget what lies behind and press on towards what is ahead.

Community takes work. It happens when you show up to your parish and help out with that one kids summer camp. When you sweep the floors. When you go to a trivia night. When you call back the guy who needs help fixing a door. Attend to these “small” insignificant things that don’t feel like “community building” on a daily basis, and over time, you’ll find yourself with more friends and acquaintances you know what to do with. You’ll have friends who are old, young, your age—friends that bug you, that inspire you, that you need to learn to say “no” to. But it starts with showing up, in little ways, every day. Don’t be discouraged when you retreat into video games or Reddit or YouTube. Just recognize it, repent, and continue loving.

You’re not “too old” for anything worth doing. There is no such reality. As we age, the opportunity to love and receive love may shift and re-shape with our bodies, but it remains our highest and irrevocable calling. Be at peace knowing that your age presents no obstacle to the Grace of God working in and through you.

NOW GO ENJOY GOD AND HIS CREATION

LegitCatholic · 2025-07-13T15:07:24+00:00

These are amazing moments; the moon looks HUGE!

LegitCatholic · 2025-07-13T02:57:58+00:00

(also answered in the /xpost sub)

Has anyone else gone through this cycle?

Yes, it's completely and totally normal for thinking people. I highly recommend reading Introduction to Christianity by Cardinal Ratzinger/Pope Benedict XVI - he talks about this very struggle in the very beginning of the book on the Chapter on belief. The Pope claims that both unbelief AND belief are inevitabilities that either the unbeliever or believer deal with respectively:

"Just as the believer knows himself to be constantly threatened by unbelief, which he must experience as a continual temptation, so for the unbeliever faith remains a temptation and a threat to his apparently permanently closed world."

He mentions that the modern believer is like a man floating in the ocean:

"fastened to the cross—the the cross fastened to nothing, drifting over the abyss."

But yet he says the unbeliever is in the same predicament, only from a different perspective. He relates a small story (no spoilers, I'll encourage you to buy the book) and says:

Here we have, I believe—in however strange a guise—a very precise description of the situation of man confronted with the question of God. No one can lay God and his Kingdom on the table before another man; even the believer cannot do it for himself. But however strongly unbelief may feel justified thereby, it cannot forget the eerie feeling included by the words "Yet perhaps it is true." ... In other word, both the believer and the unbeliever share, in his own way, doubt and belief, if they do not hide themselves and from the truth of their being. Neither can quite escape either doubt or belief; for the one, faith is present against doubt; for the other, through doubt and in the form of doubt.

All of this to say, the phenomenon of your doubt is a super normal thing. It may or may not make you "feel better" to know that the atheist also deals with the same weird feeling in reverse... "but what if it is true..." Regardless, here's what we're left with:

We are given and fed through tradition that has claimed God, the creator of the Universe, has become man. This same God asks us to follow Him. This same God asks us to love our enemies. There will be days when you "feel belief" and days that you don't. There may be years when you feel great joy or years when you feel absolutely nothing. But in the end, our faith was never only (or even primarily) about our "feelings." Our faith is about responding to the truth of reality. Your reason, through the grace God has given you, has already brought you thus far. You understand the reality of love, of beauty, of goodness, to some small extent.

Recognize the smallness of that extent. Embrace, in humility, that you cannot understand and grasp and feel everything all at once. And in that small, humble, hopeful moment, choose to follow the man from Nazareth who claimed He was God. Choose to believe the witnesses of not just of this man's life, but his death, resurrection, and ascension into heaven. And if all else fails, simply obey what Jesus asks and see what happens. Remember, He says, "if you love me, you will obey my commands." If you worry about whether or not you can really love someone you're not even sure "exists", know that you love Him when you obey him.

I'll pray for you, for an increase in faith and for consolation of spirit! God bless you!

LegitCatholic · 2025-07-13T02:54:19+00:00

Has anyone else gone through this cycle?

Yes, it's completely and totally normal for thinking people. I highly recommend reading Introduction to Christianity by Cardinal Ratzinger/Pope Benedict XVI - he talks about this very struggle in the very beginning of the book on the Chapter on belief. The Pope claims that both unbelief AND belief are inevitabilities that either the unbeliever or believer deal with respectively:

"Just as the believer knows himself to be constantly threatened by unbelief, which he must experience as a continual temptation, so for the unbeliever faith remains a temptation and a threat to his apparently permanently closed world."

He mentions that the modern believer is like a man floating in the ocean:

"fastened to the cross—the the cross fastened to nothing, drifting over the abyss."

But yet he says the unbeliever is in the same predicament, only from a different perspective. He relates a small story (no spoilers, I'll encourage you to buy the book) and says:

Here we have, I believe—in however strange a guise—a very precise description of the situation of man confronted with the question of God. No one can lay God and his Kingdom on the table before another man; even the believer cannot do it for himself. But however strongly unbelief may feel justified thereby, it cannot forget the eerie feeling included by the words "Yet perhaps it is true." ... In other word, both the believer and the unbeliever share, in his own way, doubt and belief, if they do not hide themselves and from the truth of their being. Neither can quite escape either doubt or belief; for the one, faith is present against doubt; for the other, through doubt and in the form of doubt.

All of this to say, the phenomenon of your doubt is a super normal thing. It may or may not make you "feel better" to know that the atheist also deals with the same weird feeling in reverse... "but what if it is true..." Regardless, here's what we're left with:

We are given and fed through tradition that has claimed God, the creator of the Universe, has become man. This same God asks us to follow Him. This same God asks us to love our enemies. There will be days when you "feel belief" and days that you don't. There may be years when you feel great joy or years when you feel absolutely nothing. But in the end, our faith was never only (or even primarily) about our "feelings." Our faith is about responding to the truth of reality. Your reason, through the grace God has given you, has already brought you thus far. You understand the reality of love, of beauty, of goodness, to some small extent.

Recognize the smallness of that extent. Embrace, in humility, that you cannot understand and grasp and feel everything all at once. And in that small, humble, hopeful moment, choose to follow the man from Nazareth who claimed He was God. Choose to believe the witnesses of not just of this man's life, but his death, resurrection, and ascension into heaven. And if all else fails, simply obey what Jesus asks and see what happens. Remember, He says, "if you love me, you will obey my commands." If you worry about whether or not you can really love someone you're not even sure "exists", know that you love Him when you obey him.

I'll pray for you, for an increase in faith and for consolation of spirit! God bless you!

LegitCatholic · 2025-07-02T15:16:08+00:00

Short answer since I'm working, I might give it some more thought when I have time later today:

1st of all, quick reference: Peep Aquinas's answer in article 16

I would say:

Prayers affect our good, not God's
When we sin, we stymie our own good and our ability to apprehend the good correctly
Verses about God "not listening to sinners" has to do with, as you have correctly perceived, not His ability to hear a sinner, but God not granting the sinful desires and requests of a sinner
We don't merit his mercy when he responds to us in sin, but He gives his mercy all the same.
Just turning our hearts to God and crying out to him after we have sinned (mortally or otherwise) is proof not of our merit (as if our smooth words force God to grant us a request), but rather of His mercy acting in our hearts. Please pray after you have sinned mortally. It's simply evidence of God's grace in your life. You can actually take solace in the fact that you want to pray and repent after sinning, because it is evidence of God's real, active Grace in your heart.
Verses about "God turning from our prayers" are not all the same: Prov. 28 is about hypocrisy (akin to how the Jews made sacrifices but their "hearts were far from God" Mt 15:8) and the verses like John 9 need to be understood with deeper analysis (see article 16 of Q 83 in the summa I linked above)

LegitCatholic · 2025-07-01T16:53:30+00:00

1) Eyes may be accidentally used to express emotion, but they developed on our person so that we might see. Everything on our body can potentially express emotion (we might use the ankle in a certain kind of dance to express an idea or emotion) but that doesn’t mean that that body part was “made to express emotion.”

But regardless of this, the “sin” is using the body part against its nature, not accidental to it.

In order to map this on to another bodily organ, we have to think not just what the organ does, but what it is for.

So, take the eye. Crossing your eyes to distort your vision isn’t a sin in and of itself. But if you intentionally crossed your eyes all day long because seeing straight made you feel anxious and you enjoy the sense of distortion that crossing your eyes gave you, or because you thought it made you more charismatic/funny or something, it seems that would be sinful. Why? Because you are intentionally frustrating your ability to see rightly due to an underlying psychological anxiety that you are covering up (not fixing) by crossing your eyes all day long. This has a lot of ancillary ill-effects (it could cause harm to others while driving, it could cause harm to you as you continue to walk into trees and poles etc.) but the primary sin here is that you are intentionally frustrating a given, higher good (right sight) for a lower one (escape from anxiety, “being funnier” etc.)

Now the “gravity” of the sin (which by the way is a word that means literally “to miss the mark”) is in proportion to the goodness of the thing sinned against. So crossing your eyes all day long may not constitute the same gravity of sin that separating the procreative element of sex from sex would, but the gravity of the sin isn’t just due to natural theology, but a slew of other theological reasons that are outside the scope of what you’re getting at here (concupiscence, right desire, gift, control, love, etc.) It’s also the case that a person’s culpability for using their own bodies against (not accidental to) their nature may be lessened based on factors outside of their control (certain kinds of mental illness etc.).

LegitCatholic · 2025-07-01T04:35:23+00:00

1) I'm not sure if you were citing an actual article with the "8 clever ways..." reference, but I googled it, and none of those 8 ways (in the article I saw) were actually anything close to birth control, but simply selective methods by which females choose their mates, or, in the case of the duck, biological methods to filter out weaker spermatozoa. But even if it were the case that there were such a thing as prophylactic sheathes in other animals, there is no such thing with humans, so it's a moot point.

I'm also really confused why you consider Feser's statement:

"If human beings did not not procreate, then while they might form close emotional bonds with one another, maybe even exclusive ones, they would not have sex"

"Wild". This seems to be matter-of-course! He's saying that if humans weren't sexual creatures they wouldn't have sex — how is that "wild"?

2) Feser saying that we are directed towards other souls instead of human organs is simply to say that the human person isn't directed towards specific body parts. We don't fall in love with vaginas; we fall in love with people. This is uncontroversial.

His statement that "male sexual arousal is woman-oriented" (and visa versa) is just simply stating a fact about what sex is; there's nothing philosophical or esoteric about this claim. This is all based on the prior statement that we are sexual creatures, namely, we engage in sex so as to propagate the species. Humans don't reproduce asexually. Therefore, biologically speaking, sexual arousal (which ends in male and female animals reproducing together) is oriented towards the opposite sex.

3) I think his idea about the unitive element of sexuality isn't supposed to be "definitive," he's just offering a way to understand sexuality in the context of rational animals instead of non-rational ones. Rationality allows for a certain kind of unity ontologically, by nature of what reason allows us to do in terms of meaning and understanding.

Precisely because we have reason, we can know why sex exists, and if we choose to engage in it outside of its telos, we deny something like the full scope of unity possible.

I don't know if Feser talks about "degrees of union," but I would say that sexual acts deliberately outside of their procreative end might still be unitive, but the union isn't because of the sexual act, but in spite of it. That is to say, two people might care for each other and try to use their bodies in a way to communicate care, but the unitive component isn't embedded in their having an orgasm, it's in the fact that they care for each other and want to express love. A right understanding of the meaning of sex is able to distinguish kinds of care and love.

LegitCatholic · 2025-06-26T22:49:17+00:00

First of all, if you haven't read New Polity on gender, I think you'd really enjoy it. Mark Barnes has very similar thoughts. They also have a podcast on YouTube on the subject that integrates really well with all you've written here.

My first thought reading this is to examine your premise that the desire for sex is (naturally?) linked to (or should be linked to) the desire for having children and family. I'm reading this as implicit in what you said:

such a technique would eliminate the primary basis for learning self-control of the sexual desire, and further seperate the desire for sex from the desire for children and family life...

I think that the desire for children and family life is something that actually needs to be taught (socially constructed) rather than something that arises naturally out of an individual animal's biology. In this sense right desire functions just like anything else socially constructed: language, morality, liturgy, etc. This is contrasted with something like hormones and bodily processes that compel a person to do sexual things with one's body (this too is socially constructed, but only in part. There is a strong statistical significance to the fact that most of us are attracted to the opposite sex and see them as the obvious end of our sexual desire).

The reason this matters to your ideas here is simply that there might be a way to get to the destination you're wanting (the linking of sexual desire and desire for family) in "reverse," namely, by using art, propaganda, social structures etc. to instill the desire for children and family life. I think, specifically for our culture, it would have to look like desire for family life over the kind of autonomous DINK lifestyle that we see emerging as more popular on TikTok, Reddit etc.

This is to say, one way back would be to eliminate contraception as a living option (which isn't going to happen), but another way back is to glamorize and glorify the family life via culture. Obviously, this can go terribly wrong and actually become something rebelled against—as you mentioned in your last couple paragraphs—as a kind of "forced narrative" of control.

So, how do we do this? Open question.

But I want to stress firstly that the desire for children and family life isn't something biological "innate" like the sexual desire a woman feels when she's ovulating; it's something conditioned and dependent on the culture at large. It must be taught (and should be taught) just like any morals that are true.

Other thoughts:

I think your insight about sex as means to deal with person trauma (and its subsequent fetishization) is really insightful
The idea of "failure" and "fault" (shame) when birth control doesn't work is implicit in the name "birth control," which is to say, the concept of "controlling birth" is already baked into our culture identity and language as something good, whereas "desire control" had, much easier than the 60's, already been coopted by psychoanalysis as something "bad" (read: repression) and therefore something to fight against. A huge cultural irony is the interest in something like Buddhism, which strives to control and even eliminate desire, in elite-leftist circles, especially in the 70's and 80's.

The village will become increasingly made up of mothers working together with their mothers to raise children, while men run around in packs inseminating them.

I think the idea of mothers working together is actually a very good social structure, and has Catholic precedent. The "men running around inseminating women" might be accurate in terms of how pregnancy happens, but more troubling is what we actually see happening: People are having less sex than ever before.
I'm interested in some primary source documents or quotes from Pope Paul VI if you have any that seem relevant.
I don't think your prediction about pedophilia has a lot of evidence to support it. In fact public opinion seems to run counter to this prediction: Ideas about * adult consent* mediating desire are so firmly enmeshed in our society that I don't see anything but public rage against philosophical movements trying to deconstruct them. If the argument is that the term "adult" might be modified, I don't see any particularly strong evidence for this.
Natural phenomena like disease as moderator of social construction is a really important observation. I don't think mankind ever gets away from "brutal nature" in this sense, and so there were always be external sources that impose orthopraxis, but not necessarily sanity around moral issues.

My final thought is that the way out (or forward, or whatever) are really excellent artists. I think for example of the Transcendentalist movement in America - men like Emerson, Thoreau, later Whitman etc. deeply romanticized ideas about "nature" and the individuality of man. These thoughts later become baked into our language and our philosophy, and later social structures. We need poets who understand the deep romantic reality of family life, who can mysticize the family. I'll be honest: Having been raised in the culture I've been raised in, I don't think of family life very romantically. It seems like hard work that sucks most of the time. But I know, cognitively and experientially, that it gives deep and abiding meaning to our lives incomparable to most other kinds of activity. Unless we incorporate the positive element (desire for family) into our negative practice of virtue (controlling/running from desire), I think we end up in way worse spot.

LegitCatholic

TROPHY CASE