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.
Yeah I have two great children. But can not afford any more. So birth control is in order.
Let's go one step further and ask what if a couple is well within child bearing years and for some reason or other are physically unable to have children?
The answer is the same: every act should be open to the possibility of procreation - there are no guarantees that a child will result from any specific act.
And again I would hope that a married couple past their childbearing years would have more than mere physicality motivating them. I would hope they have sex because it helps them maintain the emotional and spiritual bonds of intimacy that they have for one another - not just to obtain physical pleasure.
The intent should always be to express one's love for one's spouse on every level to the fullest extent one is able.
This is crazy. Without some level of pleasure or lust there is no sex for it is physically impossible. It does require some level of arousement. BTW, all the Catholics I know with large families tend to be highly aroused by their mate.
And if any one of those paramters are not met, then it is 'wrong'? I'd say that's truncated.
Others may wish to truncate the scope of sex to a level of mere physical - and physically barren - intercourse.
Again, inherent to that is the assumption that absent any of the four of your requirements the sex is somehow, magically, less valid or real or justified, or that it's 'sinful'.
But I hardly see how insisting that sex has spiritual and emotional meaning and creative possibility in any way "truncates" it.
That does not truncate it and not what you originally said.
Interesting statement.
Then we're just playing with semantics.
Again, inherent to that is the assumption that absent any of the four of your requirements the sex is somehow, magically, less valid or real or justified, or that it's 'sinful'.
Let's put it this way: all purposeful human activity exists in both the physical order and the moral order. In the physical order the action either has happened or it has not happened. In the moral order it is either right or wrong.
My criterion of right and wrong is based on right reason and on Scripture.
I do not know what your criteria are, though your placement of the word sinful in scare quotes suggests several possibilities.
That does not truncate it and not what you originally said.
I originally said that RR's discounting of openness to procreation amounted to libertinism.
My further elaboration does not contradict my original statement in any way.
I think I know what answer I will get--I've come across your type before--but you seem to be saying that you are opposed to all birth control, which is a ludicrous position. Even the Catholic Church maintains that its members can use non-artificial means to limit their families. Question: How many children do you have? Not 50? Why not?
Not at all.
The point is to do all you can to naturally fulfill the total range of possibility inherent in the act of physical intimacy.
If you are not physically capable of addressing that entire range, even though you would like to, there is obviously no culpability.
I'm picturing a couple in their 50's or 60's. Procreation doesn't enter their minds. It's out of the picture, so they are able to freely express their pleasure in each other, culminated in their 'oneness.'
Why should 'the possibility of procreation' even be a part of their physical union, and who is interested in, or capable of assessing whether or not there is sin if it isn't and why?
There are times in a healthy married couple's relationship where pleasure is the primary goal.......the healthier their relationship is, I would imagine the more often that is the case.
In a good marriage pleasure is never the only goal, nor the only result, but it is certainly a worthwhile goal, and IMO certainly never sinful when it is mutual.
It is in God's plan, and in our God-given nature (and physical attributes) to desire each other physically as husband and wife. And sometimes, you might even put it under the category of 'lust,' and still experience the emotional and spiritual union that comes with being in a God-centered marriage.
No, make that always.
Correct. If there is a grave reason.
Question: How many children do you have?
One. Five months old. We're trying for a second.
Not 50?
I don't think that many would be possible. Given the age of my wife and I, 8-10 is about as many as we could realistically hope for (unless we're blessed with twins or the like along the way).
Why not?
I haven't been married for very long. Give us a few years.
Other than a general interest in morality, I am a married man and I am interested in being the best husband and father I am capable of being.
I'm picturing a couple in their 50's or 60's. Procreation doesn't enter their minds. It's out of the picture, so they are able to freely express their pleasure in each other, culminated in their 'oneness.'
In a normal, God-centered family marriage is a lifelong bond. One understands that there will times in the marriage when one spouse or the other is physically incapable of procreating, particularly when one is older.
Different aspects of the purpose of marriage - both the unitive and the procreative - will be emphasized at different times.
The important thing is giving of yourself entirely in marriage without holding back any one of your faculties.
In a good marriage pleasure is never the only goal, nor the only result
True.
And sometimes, you might even put it under the category of 'lust,' and still experience the emotional and spiritual union that comes with being in a God-centered marriage.
Untrue. I think you and some others here have confused the sin of lust with the natural feeling of sexual attraction. Lust is the desire to engage in or the engagement in sexual activity purely to sate one's own personal appetite.
I've got to leave this discussion, but do think about that God given quality your wife has that has nothing at all to do with giving birth to children.....and then you might want to rethink your positions a bit.
One. Five months old. We're trying for a second.
Just one!!!! Heck, I thought you had the experience of managing a house full of children and were advising us of the joys of such.
Keep going and in no time at all your wife might be in the same physical and psychological state as Mrs. Yates in Texas (you do remember her, don't you?).
I understand human anatomy.
The purpose of that particular organ - as well as certainly highly developed nerve endings in the human male - is to give a physical incentive for procreative behavior.
Pleasure is intended to serve a higher purpose - there are reasons why we enjoy a good nap and a good meal as well, but sloth and gluttony are sins along with lust.
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