Posted on 09/22/2003 7:40:19 AM PDT by presidio9
Former President Ronald Reagan wrote a young widow not to believe that people have only one love in their lives - and not to feel guilty about sex. The note to childhood friend Florence Yerly is one of more than 5,000 penned by the now 92-year-old Reagan, who has been debilitated by Alzheimer's.
Yerly's husband had died in 1951 and she wrote Reagan, who had recently divorced first wife Jane Wyman, that she planned on staying single.
"Can you believe that God means for millions of really young people to go on through life alone because a war robbed them of their first loves?" he wrote.
He also told her not to feel bad about sex, admitting that "even in marriage, I had a little guilty feeling about sex." But, he said, a "fine old gentleman" who studied primitive cultures helped him overcome that feeling.
"These peoples who are truly children of nature and thus of God, accept physical desire as a natural, normal appetite," he wrote Yerly.
He also rejected "dogmas of some organized religions" that said sex is only for procreation.
The letter is one of many in "Reagan: A Life in Letters," which was produced with the cooperation of wife Nancy Reagan and will be released tomorrow. It includes letters to friends like Yerly, strangers, and world leaders, including a four-pager to Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev asking if they could work together to reduce the tensions between the two nuclear powers.
I'm sure you do. And from a purely material point of view, that's all one needs.
ATP, if you consult the documents of the Council of Trent on marriage, you will see that it emphasizes the unitive aspect of the Sacrament.
The concept of a loveless act of intercourse undertaken solely for procreation has always been repugnant to the traditional Christian idea of marriage. The notion of marrying another person on the basis of affection rather than simply to satisfy lust, produce heirs or conclude alliances is a cultural product of Jewish and Christian civilization for precisely this reason.
Sorry, but I do believe we were talking about marital sex.
What a quaint, presumptuous notion.
Pardon, where has the Pope ever said it was wrong for married people to have sex for pleasure?
Oh, wait: he hasn't. In fact, he wrote a book advocating it. In fact, the idea that Catholics believe sex is only for procreation is just another thing that "everybody knows," but that isn't true.
Lust is lust whether in marriage or out of it. If one's desire in having sex with one's spouse is purely to satisy a physical appetite, then that is lust.
If one's desire in having sex with one's spouse is to engage in a closer union with them, then it isn't.
What about when you're past child bearing years, and can no longer 'procreate?' Isn't a married couple's motivation then only physical union and pleasure?
Look at Song of Solomon. Sex (within marriage) is NOT just for procreation. It IS for pleasure. Ronald Reagan got that right a long time ago.
Majority of diehard Catholics I know have five six up to sixteen children. They did not believe in sex for pleasure just procreation. There is nothing wrong with that. THey learned that somewhere in the church.
call me a sinner. I lust after my wife.
You asked them about it? You just go up to strangers and ask them about their bedroom habits, and why they do what they do?
By the way, don't you think I'm a "diehard Catholic"? Doesn't my opinion (which is fact, BTW, not just opinion) count for anything?
Incidentally, I know just about all the "diehard Catholics" in a city of a million people. None of them have 16 children.
Wait a minute, Campion.
While it is perfectly good for married people to enjoy the physical pleasure which accompanies sex, the Church does not teach that sex undertaken purely for physical pleasure is moral.
The Pope's allocutions collected in the volume The Theology of the Body make this quite clear.
Oh, by all means, we agree about that.
Presuming to know what is in the hearts, or the nature of the motivation, of every couple who engage in intercourse who don't adhere to your rather truncated set of parameters must be really hurting your ears.
I'm not here to call your names, and I sincerely hope for your wife's sake that you are simply misusing the word "lust."
Lust is purely the appetite for physical sexual pleasure. It is one thing to be attracted to one's spouse's physical charms along with her other qualities.
To lust is to admit to a purely physical motivation without any appreciation for the other person's nonphysical qualities.
You love your wife for more and better reasons than just her physical attractiveness.
My parameters are hardly "truncated."
I believe that intercourse should be undertaken for spiritual, emotional and physical reasons and that it should be open to creating new life.
Others may wish to truncate the scope of sex to a level of mere physical - and physically barren - intercourse.
But I hardly see how insisting that sex has spiritual and emotional meaning and creative possibility in any way "truncates" it.
I understand that you are ignorantly caricaturing others here, but I have to comment that I find people who are professedly unwilling to look their partner in the eye during intimacy a bit troubling.
Do you understand that an act of intercourse can be physically pleasurable, emotionally satisfying and procreative all at the same time?
If you read my post again, these are people I KNOW.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.