Free Republic
Browse · Search
Religion
Topics · Post Article

To: Forest Keeper
The overall message I am getting is that marital sex is somehow "bad", although I would not quote you as saying that outright. I am confused.

About the time the speculation of the Immaculate Conception was being developed, sex of any sort was viewed as bad. Or at least not a good thing. Augustine himself said that sex, even between a man and wife, is at best a venal sin and possibly a mortal one (if you only lusted after the spouse). There were a lot of reasons for this, much of it has to do with the influence of Plato's philosphy.

1,209 posted on 12/12/2006 11:39:04 AM PST by redgolum ("God is dead" -- Nietzsche. "Nietzsche is dead" -- God.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1174 | View Replies ]


To: redgolum
That is a very uncharitable and misleading distortion of Augustine's position, who believed that marriage and sex in marriage were goods created by God. He affirmed that unrestrained or disordered sexual desire is wrong, but not ordered and properly directed sexual desire. Read again his treatise De bono conjugali ("On the Good of Marriage").

The person who chooses the life of consecrated celibacy over the life of marriage, has indeed chosen the better part. But that does not make marriage or the marital act sinful. As St. Paul says, "If you have married, you have not sinned, and if a virgin marries, she does not sin." (1 Cor 7:28)

-A8

1,214 posted on 12/12/2006 12:02:16 PM PST by adiaireton8 ("There is no greater evil one can suffer than to hate reasonable discourse." - Plato, Phaedo 89d)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1209 | View Replies ]

To: redgolum
About the time the speculation of the Immaculate Conception was being developed, sex of any sort was viewed as bad

Any evidence marital was viewed as bad by the Catholics? What you describe is a Puritan and a Gnostic belief, and St. Paul taught against it:

doctrines of devils, speaking lies in hypocrisy, and having their conscience seared, forbidding to marry ... (1 Tim. 4:2f)

1,266 posted on 12/13/2006 2:21:44 AM PST by annalex
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1209 | View Replies ]

Free Republic
Browse · Search
Religion
Topics · Post Article


FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson