[metmom]

The way celibacy and virginity is exalted and lauded sends the clear message that sex is wrong and bad.

There was a thread some years back about a Catholic couple who decided to live a celibate marriage, and there were many who thought that was just grand, just like the whole business about Mary’s alleged perpetual virginity.

And in a related article, about women consecrating themselves to perpetual virginity, someone posted a comment about her then being kept *pure* as if if she had married and not had sex, she would have been impure.

The sex is bad thinking is an underlying message in many ways in Catholicism.

[Tax-chick]

On the other hand, denigration of virginity as a choice could give the idea that a woman has no value unless she’s being used for genital gratification by a man.

[Mrs. Don-o]

"The way celibacy and virginity is exalted and lauded sends the clear message that sex is wrong and bad."

There was no such message.

It's remarkable how you've managed to block out everything about sacramentality -- which you presumably just read in #118, which you are ostensibly responding to ---in order to write such an oblivious, blinkered statement.

"And in a related article, about women consecrating themselves to perpetual virginity, someone posted a comment about her then being kept *pure* as if if she had married and not had sex, she would have been impure."

You added your own conclusion. It's apparent that you reach these conclusions by ignoring what people actually say, and then responding to what you yourself have unrecognizably "reinterpreted" their message to be.

It's much like your reproach for a man who would "leave a wife behind and abandon her to fend for herself" ---

Except, nobody had said that: it was your own assumption. You just put it out there, and then you react as if somebody (other than yourself) were proposing such a thing.

(((Shakes head.)))

Good Lord, I'm being Cathy Newman'ed.

[Mrs. Don-o]

[Mrs. Don-o]

[Mrs. Don-o]