The threats to the Church don't always arise where you expect them. As C. S. Lewis's Screwtape advised young tempters, the Enemy's best strategy is to catch us off guard and keep us there, focused on dangers in the rear-view mirror and ignoring that silly "Do Not Enter" sign up ahead. The devil, Lewis wrote, wants us "rushing about with fire extinguishers when there is a flood, and crowding to that side of the boat which is already nearly gunwale under."
In sexual ethics, this infernal principle's application should be obvious today. Read the works of theologians who reject the Church's teachings, and you'll find in them turgid page after page on the dangers of "Puritanism" and "Jansenism" (and such terms used loosely or falsely), even the flesh-hating Albigensianism. Such warnings were written even as "free love" was being proclaimed at Woodstock, suburban couples were swapping wives in the 1970s, whole new strains of venereal disease were cooking up in American bedrooms and bathhouses, and abortion was being legalized around the world. Clearly, the real threat to sanity and virtue that needed confronting was . . . Rigorism. Right?
On issues of eros, Christians are inundated with messages urging them to let their consciences go slack and presumptuously assume that God will be "understanding." How many of us have had to argue with a confessor, "Yes, Father, it bloody well is a sin -- now would you please absolve it?" How wearisome it has gotten, this fantasy football game orthodox Catholics have had to play for 40 years, doing research to correct our priests and teachers, greeting each new appointment of a bishop or a pastor with the almost idle musing: "I wonder if he's a Catholic?" Inevitably, since Humanae Vitae, the litmus test has to do with sex.
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