Prayer request for woman pregnant with spina bifida child — update
Sister Marie Regina writes with an updated prayer request for the woman I wrote about two weeks ago (see original post below). I believe the request is urgent because, the last I heard, the abortion is scheduled for tomorrow:
Just wanted to thank you for your beautiful responses to the abortion-vulnerable young woman in Canada who is pregnant with twins, one of whom has been diagnosed in utero with spina bifida.
Apparently, the CPC working with her has been literally overwhelmed with hundreds of responses ~ many families willing and desiring to adopt the child, multiple letters written from those who have special needs children themselves, offers of every kind of support imaginable...truly, the Church's faithful at their best.
To date, however, the young woman is still determined in her decision to abort the child. The CPC is beseeching all for prayers at this point ~ all practical, hands-on help has been offered; only our Lord can reach this precious soul and her little ones now...May her heart be opened by the tangible love of God she and her children have been shown by the Body of Christ, to love through all her fears and doubt...
The CPC has also requested that we update all whom we have forwarded the original request for help to, and that we refrain from any more outreach/calls now and simply pray (they don't have the manpower to respond to any more practical offers for help! Praise God!).
Here is an edited version of my original post:
Aid To Women, a crisis pregnancy center in Toronto, has been assisting a mom who is expecting twins next month.
Recently she found out, that one of the babies (a boy) has spina bifida. This is a birth defect in which the spinal cord has not developed properly. According to the doctors, this unborn child's condition is severe. He is probably paralyzed from the waist down and will need a shunt because of hydrocephaly (water on the brain).
According to the Spina Bifida Association, "Thanks to new medical treatments and technology, most people born with Spina Bifida can expect to live a normal life. People with Spina Bifida have many special challenges because of their birth defect, but their condition does not define who they are. People with Spina Bifida have careers, get married and have children just like people who don’t have Spina Bifida."
The mother cannot face this challenge and has booked to have a selective abortion of the spina bifida boy on February 2. If she goes through with it, the child will be aborted at 31½ weeks by Caesarean.
Aid to Women feels that if they can offer this mom a promise that a family will adopt the handicapped boy, she will carry him to term. They put out a call, including a mass e-mail, and have received interest from two families so far.
I received the e-mail and phoned the center to ask if they wanted me to put the request with on my blog. Center director Ann Wilson asked that I ask readers to pray for the mother. While the mother is Christian and opposes abortion, she is very distressed at the thought of giving birth to a severely handicapped child, and she is thinking that perhaps it would be better for both the boy and her if he were killed before birth.
Please pray for the mother and her unborn child.
Note: Because I have moved this post from its original spot, the first comments below are from when the request originally ran. 2:11 PM |
"Love," by Peter Kreeft, helped me when I was writing my book. I quoted one of his statements from the article: "We fall in love but we do not fall in agape. We rise in agape."
"Catholic and Feminist: Can One Be Both?" shows the brilliant mind of Elizabeth Fox-Genovese. I don't agree with her that those upholding the Church's beliefs in the dignity of women should retain the word "feminism" to describe their efforts, but her conclusions are powerful.
"It most certainly does benefit the world if sex is valued as a part of marriage to the point that children are conceived in, and raised in, lifelong marriages. It is a natural right of a child to have a mother and a father; when social norms sever sex from marriage, it has the effect of depriving large numbers of children of their right. Unchastity produces a lot of 'secondhand smoke,' metaphorically speaking."
I'll be discussing my book today at 3:15 3 p.m. Eastern on "Charles Adler Online," syndicated throughout Canada by Corus Radio. You can hear it by clicking the "Listen Now" button atop the show's homepage.
The Sisters of Life wrote today asking that I post the following prayer request:
I am writing to ask for prayers for a very heroic woman. She has chosen life for her unborn child after attempting to seek an abortion several times, each time moved by the rightness of giving life. Now we have been able to set up a wonderful living arrangement for her and her disabled mother within a community who can offer an apartment for half its worth. She is doing well supporting her growing family but is having trouble making this month's rent due to the fact that she is in a high risk pregnancy and has been hospitalized several times. Please keep her in your prayers.
If in addition to praying, you would like to give material help, please write me at dawn -at- dawneden.com (replacing "-at-" with an at-sign) and I will forward your e-mail to the Sisters of Life. I volunteer for them and have met several women who have been helped by them. They are truly doing God's work.
6:05 PM |
Take that, Mick Jagger
"Satisfaction in chastity" is how the National Post headlines the one letter it's published so far in response to the op-ed I wrote for the paper:
Ms. Eden aims the beam of truth at the tenets of the sexual revolution and reveals them for what they are: ugly lies. The genuinely liberated woman knows that marvellous freedom and satisfaction are found in chastity before marriage and faithfulness to her husband after. What benefits the world would reap if women everywhere embraced this precious truth and acted on it.
It paints a Bosch-like hell of women in their 30s in "mounting despair" who "can't hide [their] screaming ovaries." If they miss their window for marriage, their next chance is when they're in their mid-40s, fretting because they're "competing with much younger, fresher women."
The reporter attempts to end on a note of hope, quoting a matchmaker who — though she charges nearly $12,000 for her services — insists that meeting one's mate isn't the be-all and end-all: "To be happy, you have to fulfill yourself."
If what the matchmaker is saying is that one's happiness should not depend upon outward circumstances or personal relationships, I can accept that. But she seems to go further than that by using the language of "fulfillment." In the context of her Cassandra-like pronouncements of middle-aged "singletons"' impending doom, the obvious question to me is, how can such a woman become "fulfilled"? Certainly not by reading newspaper articles painting unmarried life as a never-ending meat market where all the carrion stinks at the end of the day.
At any rate, how, pray tell, does one fulfill oneself? There's not a blessed thing I can do to fulfill myself; I'm lucky if I can manage to dress myself. I can, however, make a sincere attempt to help those around me enjoy more fulfilling lives, by trying with all my heart to say and do the most loving thing at every moment.
If I succeed even a small part of the time, I'm that much closer to being fulfilled. But I wouldn't call it fulfilling myself, because that would ignore the economy of grace — which magnifies every good thing I give into something far beyond what my own resources could provide.
According to the article, a "Relationship Window" opens only twice in one's life. Thankfully, the heart is capable of opening much more often. But one has to listen in order to hear it over the din of those screaming ovaries or what have you.
Good morning! Any substantial post will have to wait 'til tonight or tomorrow, as I've been up writing an article for a U.K. paper (will link to it when it's published). In the meantime, many thanks to the readers of my National Post article and other Canadians who enabled The Thrill of the Chaste to reach its highest-ever ranking on Amazon Canada — #183!
I've updated Gaits of Eden (click "Proceed to Gaits" on that page) and included another new publicity shot by Tony Carnes, in which I inadvertently display one more devotion than usual — a result of all the hair-tossing I had to do for the shoot.
Tony appears to have done a bit of retouching; the dark circles under my eyes have vanished, and my pearly whites are, well, pearly white. But the images are still a reasonable facsimile; compare with the video footage of me at the chastity debate. Far be it from me to pull the wool over anyone's eyes — except my own, of course.
"Between my sheets, a lonely world" is how the headline of my story in today's National Post of Canada puts it — referring to my pre-chastity life, as you can see from the illustration. I think the Chagall-like artwork is loosely based on this new publicity shot I sent the paper.
The article is a reworked version of my Sunday Times piece and is actually much closer to what I originally sent the London paper before their editor put it through the Brit-o-rizer. I'm especially happy they kept the quote from "my Baby Boomer priest."
Photo by Tony Carnes.
Buy The Thrill of the Chaste: Finding Fulfillment While Keeping Your Clothes On at Amazon.com.
Yale 'Roe vs. Wade Week' teaches non-medical students how to make a baby go (Whiffen)poof
Good morning! I'm exhausted after taking two trains and a cab back from New Haven, so I'll leave it to Stephen of For God, for Country, and for Yale to offer details (and, I hope, photos) of my Theology on Tap talk about my book, The Thrill of the Chaste: Finding Fulfillment While Keeping Your Clothes On. I can tell you that it was the best experience I've had yet at a speaking engagement. I know I'm in the right kind of bar event when I walk in and see a sign on the bannister of the staircase that reads, "Confession" — and next to it a priest in flowing white Dominican garb. (Yes, he did hear confessions after my talk as well as before — though I didn't get a chance to make one myself.) The location, in the back room of the Playwright pub, was stunning — a plank-by-plank recreation of an Irish church — and there were about 100 people there.
Meanwhile, on the other side of New Haven, student groups at Yale were gearing up for Roe vs. Wade Week. According to the Yale Daily News, the event, presumably subsidized by student activity funds, does more than just promote abortion. The organizers plan to teach attendees — not just medical students, but anyone who shows up — how to perform the "simple procedure":
On Thursday, the Yale Medical Students for Choice will host workshop on manual vacuum aspiration for medical students, using a papaya as a uterine model. Manual vacuum aspiration is a surgical abortion method that uses a syringe to remove the fetus from a woman’s uterus. Merritt Evans MED ’09 said she thought it was important to have the workshop because the procedure can be used for a variety of different purposes — including miscarriage management and the treatment of a failed medical abortion or ectopic pregnancy — and is inconsistently taught in medical school.
While the workshop is targeted towards medical students, undergraduates are also invited to attend.
“The reason I wanted to include other people is that it is such a simple procedure, but the media attention around it … makes this an emotionally traumatic and a complicated thing,” Evans said. “It’s just to be like, ‘Here is what actually happens, here is what the medical procedure is like, this is what an aborted yolk sac looks like.’ It looks like a piece of cotton.”
It strikes me that Yale's traditional schoolsongs are horribly outdated in light of the school's new mission. A $25 Amazon gift certificate to the commenter who composes the best rewrite of one of the school's anthems. Deadline is midnight tonight. Remember, do it for God, for country, for Yale, and for all those liberal arts students at one of the country's finest Ivy League universities who are about to learn how to suction a live baby out of the womb.
For further inspiration, see Yale alumnus Clinton W. Taylor's Yale songs for Talibanis and his column about his alma mater's coed bathroom policy, "Boola Loo Blues.
UPDATE, 1/27/07: Thanks to everyone who entered the contest. It was hard to judge it with so many good entries. But in the end, one entry stood out on multiple levels, with its parody, wordplay, and topicality: Leif's "Bright Sharp-edged Curette," an update of "Bright College Years":
Easy college credit; all I need's a knife. That little papaya yolk sac will see no years of life. How swiftly are ye kicking. O why does my blade so quickly fly? Thanks to Blackmun (see Wade v. Roe) The baby's red and dead; let's go. It's fitful strains did not avail To keep its limbs from the trash pail.
In after years should trouble rise I'll just blurt out that old reprise A woman's got a right to choose Papaya yolk sacs ain't much t'loose O let us strive that ever we May let these words our watch cry be What e'er's left in that trash pail: "For Choice, for country, and for Yale!"
Just a reminder that I'll be in New Haven tonight, speaking at the Theology on Tap series: 7:30-8:30 p.m. at the Playwright, 144 Temple Street. Come early for free appetizers, courtesy of the Knights of Columbus. The event is free, but a suggested offering of $5 is requested.
I'm very excited about this event, as the organizers foresee a good crowd. Expect a chastity Woodstock!
Take a good look at these two women. On a superficial level, they appear to have much in common. Both look to be in their late 30s — or thereabouts. Their hairstyles are of a similar length and are tousled in an "I meant to do that" kind of way. Each woman softens her look with a scarf. And each one is fighting a losing battle against untamable lipstick.
Yes, to look at these two women, you would never know that one of them believes that sex has the power to be a transcendent experience, filled with both joy and pleasure, while the other reduces it to a drab transaction of commodities, as soulful as brushing one's teeth.
Zoe Williams (top photo; that's me below) takes the transactional view in her "Gatekeepers of Sex" op-ed on The Guardian's Web site, the latest article in the British press by a writer who derides my book The Thrill of the Chaste without having read it. The other such piece was Barbara Ellen's Observer column labeling me a "born-again prim." Both writers read only my Sunday Times article — and even with that, it seems they only got through the first couple of paragraphs before the red mist came on.
Like Ellen and other feminists who have criticized what they think is in my book, Williams is genuinely frightened about what might happen if the chastity message were widely disseminated (ahem). "It just needs to be dispatched really fast," she cries — echoing Ellen's chilly dictum, "Eden and the [Born Again Prims] are best restrained from further comment."
What exactly is getting Williams' knickers in a twist? "The insult here," she writes, "... is in the fact that, when you take a crudely analysed "life lesson" and you try and fit it to all womanhood, it is not just neutral chatter. It actively undermines one of the greatest fundamentals of feminism — that sex can be an act of equality, entered into with equal enthusiasm by people who enjoy it equally."
If you know your New King James, you'll recognize the odd, no doubt unintentional twist on James 3:17: "Now the fruit of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace." Only in this case, the harvest of transactional sex will be sown with equal enthusiasm by those who enjoy it with equal enthusiasm.
I don't want sex that's an "act of equality." When I marry, I want sex with that's an act of polarity, celebrating all the physical, emotional, and spiritual levels on which my husband and I complement one another. It's a vision that's in sharp contrast to Williams' repeated insistence that there is "no evidence" men and women experience sex differently.
Williams, of course, is free to disagree, and she does so with the backing of one of the world's leading newspapers. What should be disturbing to anyone who still believes the word "feminist" has positive meaning is how she, Ellen, and other chastity detractors appear unable to write about the subject without urging that opposing views be silenced. It's as though they believe women are too dizzy, stupid, and impressionable to make an informed decision when chastity is presented to them as an option. Apparently, among those who worship the god of "choice," one choice is verboten: the choice to be chaste.
[Update, 11:32 a.m.: I've removed the reference to Williams' false claim that I "nobbed" Beach Boy Brian Wilson, as The Guardian removed it from the story after I notified them it was unfounded.]
Buy The Thrill of the Chaste: Finding Fulfillment While Keeping Your Clothes On at Amazon.com.
My using the Shirelles' "Will You Love Me Tomorrow" in The Thrill of the Chaste to illustrate common misconceptions about premarital sex has caused a minor kerfuffle in the feminist blog world. Amanda Marcotte's post at Pandagon (which puts the f-word right upfront, as is Marcotte's wont) states erroneously that I got the song's title wrong, then appears to imply that Carole King was responsible for the song's subject matter. "King does have a history of writing love songs where the unfairness of male power is a recurring theme," the blogger writes.
I'm sure Gerry Goffin would be surprised to learn he's exposed "the unfairness of male power." Goffin, King's husband and co-writer, was the lyricist of the duo, and "Will You Love Me Tomorrow" was his idea, as chronicled in Ken Emerson's Always Magic in the Air and elsewhere.
"Will You Love Me Tomorrow" is an undeniable classic. Its lyrics' power comes from the fact that the situation they relate resonates with many listeners' experience.
Yet the driving emotion of the words is not love. It's pathos.
"Tonight with words unspoken/You say that I'm the only one ..." The protagonist is giving her body and her heart away to a man who hasn't even verbalized a commitment to her. Indeed, it's not even clear that he's said he loves her.
A man having sex with a woman he really loves — especially a woman like the song's protagonist, who is clearly hoping for "a lasting treasure" — would never allow her to doubt for one minute that he loved her. That's part of the nature of love: It is empathetic. A loving man wants nothing more than to let his beloved know he does love her and is not going away.
As I write in The Thrill of the Chaste, if you have to ask if he'll love you tomorrow, he doesn't love you tonight.
Buy The Thrill of the Chaste: Finding Fulfillment While Keeping Your Clothes On at Amazon.com.
I'm arguing that there exists a fundamentalist, patriarchal mentality which is premised on the sexual control of women. "Chastity," in the sense that women who don't toe a particular sexual line are "soiled," is part of that.
I responded,
"Chastity," in the sense that women who don't toe a particular sexual line are "soiled," is part of that.
I don't believe that, Jill. I believe you're creating a straw-man argument because knowing the truth about what chastity is would force you to reexamine the prejudices through which you define Christians and other so-called "fundies." Try following the link I provide in this post to Deus Caritas Est to find out what Christians really believe about chastity.
Since then, as of this writing, Jill has responded only with silence, so I don't know if she'll have anything more to add to the discussion. Regardless, if you would like to add your comment to "Absolute Feministe," methinks she'll read it.
I'd like to keep all the responses to "Absolute Feministe" together, so please leave yours there. Thank you. 8:19 PM
Sunday, January 21, 2007
First Things gets The Thrill
"Particularly insightful is the connection Eden draws between her struggles with food and sexual temptation. These physical hungers point to deeper spiritual hunger. Acknowledging our own vulnerability is essential in a feminist culture of self-sufficiency precisely because this opens us up to praying to God with our struggles; living a single or married life of control and self-sacrifice cannot be done in our own strength. Eden encourages readers to develop through prayer and service 'inner qualities — like empathy, patience, humility, and faith in spite of hardship.' She devotes an entire chapter to promoting ways to meet like-minded people. Her stories of people she has encountered in being chaste are deeply moving. This is not a lesson in postmodern self-actualization and finding one's self. It is about finding the treasure of self in God's eyes and uncovering joy in a chastity that, as the Catechism insists, 'lets us love with upright and undivided heart.'"
"The affair was like a race between a lumbering sailing vessel and a modern steamer."
— Joseph J. Reilly, describing "modern steamer" G.K. Chesterton's debate against Clarence Darrow on evolution. Read the story at chesterton.org.
Speaking of debates, if you missed the great chastity debate between me and Virginia Vitzthum, the entire exchange is on YouTube. I don't think either of us is a lumbering sailing vessel, though there might be one brief point where I get a bit dinghy.
Sorry for the light posting; it's a busy weekend. More tomorrow.
"Many who would willingly let themselves be nailed to a Cross before the astonished gaze of a thousand onlookers cannot bear with a Christian spirit the pinpricks of each day! Think, then, which is the more heroic."
[Be aware that the Feministe article linked below contains profanity.]
Jill Filipovic at Feministe uses the word "wonderful" to describe my Sunday Times piece.
Really, she does. She writes that I do "a wonderful job explaining why the pro-'chastity,' anti-choice crowd is so thoroughly misogynist, seeing men as actors and women as passive objects."
She makes a number of points based on her understanding of traditional Christian sexual morality (which is also traditional Jewish sexual morality), which she believes boils down to "keep girls nice and ignorant about sex, marry them off as soon as they can get pregnant, have their husbands rape them on their wedding nights," etc. There's no use responding to these points, because unless she ever sits down with the Gospels, the Catechism, Deus Caritas Est, or a tradition-minded priest or Orthodox rabbi, she's going to go through life unaware that The Handmaid's Tale is fiction.
What I do find interesting is her claim of moral superiority over chastity proponents. She asserts that she and her fellow sexual revolutionaries are better than the "pro-'chastity,' anti-choice crowd" because they make no claim to universal truth:
I suppose I’m one of those tin-hearted sexually liberated gals, but I’m not sure I’ve ever heard casual sex promoted as a universal good in the same way that abstinence before marriage is. That seems to be the fundamental difference — sexually active, unmarried women may say “My sex life is great” or “I feel no need to wait for marriage” or “Have you heard about this new form of birth control?” or “This is what I like sexually — if you’re sexually active, maybe you’d like it to,” but I’ve never heard a woman claim that sex before marriage is the best thing for all women, or that because they like having sex before they’re married that all women must secretly desire it. They don’t make blanket statements about what does and does not make women happy when it comes to our sexual lives.
Yet, earlier in the same post, Jill lays out her moral justification for opposing chastity proponents:
That said, there are plenty of women who do feel that sex is best when we’re loved. That’s a perfectly respectable belief. But why a wedding ring is the only thing that proves “love” is beyond me. I honestly question if a man can truly love a woman — as an equal and as a partner — if he believes that sex is dirty and soils her, unless he’s the one doing it, and only after he’s paid for it. I honestly question if a woman can truly love a man, or enjoy sex, if she believes that her own body is inherently sinful, and that men are selfish beasts who have to be roped into marriage, otherwise they’ll leave you — and that sex is a gift she bestows upon him, for his pleasure, in exchange for money, security and social status.
I don't know a single chastity proponent who believes any of those things. Whatever one might call the philosophy Jill describes, it's not chastity — certainly not as defined by Christian or Jewish moral authorities. Yet, Jill needs to believe that chastity proponents hate sex and hate the human body — because if they didn't, they might be reasonable human beings and therefore might have serious justification for their views.
Instead, Jill argues that she is above those who would morally justify chastity, because she believes there is no absolute truth.
As a New York University law student, she should know better.
The assertion that there is no absolute truth is an inherent contradiction. If there is no absolute truth, that statement would itself have to be an absolute truth.
Moreover, the mere fact that Jill is morally justifying herself reflects that she does in fact believe universal truth exists. Moral justification requires universal truth, because without universal truth, there is no morality and therefore no justification.
That said, there is one point on which Jill and I are in agreement: "Love and partnership shouldn’t be about an exchange of commodoties [sic] — her body for his commitment and support."
I would go even further than that. Sex shouldn't be about a mere exchange of commodities: her physical pleasure for his. Sadly, the so-called "sex-positive" culture defines feminism as the right to reduce sex to a solely physical interaction if one wishes; it claims women are not truly liberated unless they are free from the need to tie sex to love and commitment. Certainly, free will includes the right to view one's activities within any moral context, but I believe that commodity-exchange sex — essentially mutual prostitution without money involved — shouldn't be held up as some sort of female-liberationist ideal. Rather, it should be seen as what it is: pathetic and sad.
Buy The Thrill of the Chaste: Finding Fulfillment While Keeping Your Clothes On at Amazon.com. 12:38 AM |
Wednesday, January 17, 2007
Showing divine love to the unmarried on Valentine's Day
Pastors.com, part of Rick Warren's Purpose Driven Ministries, asked me to write an article on what clergy can do to bring a divine perspective to Valentine's Day — especially for unmarried churchgoers. An anecdote left by a Dawn Patrol commenter (whose name I'm sorry to say has slipped my mind) helped get the article going:
If there's one place where unmarried people should feel most welcome, you would think it would be where they come to worship God. After all, we are all equal before the Lord.
All too often, however, single people in church are reminded that they are lacking a partner. A friend of mine recalls visiting a church for the first time where a married female congregant came up to her afterward to welcome her. After some pleasantries, the woman asked, "Are you married?"
"No," my friend responded.
"Oh," the woman replied. "Are you dating someone?"
"No," my friend said again.
"Oh," the woman said awkwardly. "I'm sorry."
The congregant had ascertained and identified my friend's single status before even getting a feel for who she was and why she was in the church. What could have been an opportunity for my friend to feel welcomed and learn more about the church community instead only made her feel more isolated.
Valentine's Day offers a special opportunity not only to show your church's singles how valuable they are to God and to your congregation, but also to foster fellowship between them and married couples.
Your sermon on Sunday, Feb. 11, can put Valentine's Day in a godly perspective. It's important to note that, while couples will already have Valentine's Day romance on their minds, singles who will be dateless on the 14th will already be looking to that night with disillusionment, bitterness, or even dread. There are few things more depressing for a lonely single person, than to have to walk past the hearts-and-chocolates aisle of the drugstore for weeks on end, and then, on Valentine's Day, stay home rather than be surrounded by canoodling couples. The way you frame your sermon can help couples take their attraction to a more sanctified plane, while at the same time reminding singles that they too are conduits of divine love.
One text that illustrates the universal nature of God's love is 1 John 3:19: "We love him, because he first loved us." (KJV) The original Greek is actually, "We love, because he first loved us." Every kind of love that binds us together – from love of neighbor to love of family and love of one's spouse – is an expression of God's divine love. He gives it to us so that we may give it to one another and back to him.
Moreover, one of the ways that we can show our love for God is through loving one another. For couples, this means that the love they show one another should not stop at mere romantic love (eros). To grow closer to one another, they need to grow in faith as well, cultivating the kind of divine agape love that Jesus asked of Peter (John 21:15). Only with God's help can we attain this divine love, which is universal, extending to those close to us as well as strangers, enabling us to love people as the unique individuals that they are.
For singles, the message that "we love, because he loves us" should bring hope. It means that God has a plan for each of us to share in his love. If unmarried congregants wish to share divine love with a spouse, they can start to grow their ability to love right now – through opening their hearts to those around them. The more one learns divine love before one marries, the better prepared one will be to share that love in a lasting and fruitful marriage.
With your congregation's hearts and minds prepared to share divine love on Valentine's Day, you can engage them in activities that will both acknowledge the day's romantic import and encourage other expressions of divine love, particularly charity and fellowship. Here are two possibilities:
To find out what those possibilities are, read the full article on Pastors.com.
Buy The Thrill of the Chaste: Finding Fulfillment While Keeping Your Clothes On at Amazon.com. 8:57 PM |
Chicago Sun-Times gets The Thrill
Chicago Sun-Times staff reporter Leslie Baldacci has the best article I've seen in a while on single adults choosing to abstain from sex: "No sex, thanks." It's noteworthy in that it treats abstinence as a lifestyle choice, rather than erroneously reducing it, as some commentators do, to a decision based on religion or on conservative ideology. It also refrains from criticizing or belittling those who make that choice.
FURTHERMORE: One thing Baldacci doesn't mention is that there is a difference between abstinence, or celibacy, and chastity. I offer a definition of chastity in my National Review Online interview.
If you're in the New Haven area, come see me speak next Wednesday, January 24, at Theology on Tap. It'll be from 7:30-8:30 p.m. at the Playwright, 144 Temple Street, but show up early for free appetizers provided by the Knights of Columbus. The event is free, but a suggested offering of $5 is requested. I'm hoping some chaste Yalies come out of hiding from the university that's home to "Sex Week."
Whatever Hypocrites austerely talk Of puritie and place and innocence, Defaming as impure what God declares Pure, and commands to som, leaves free to all. Our Maker bids increase, who bids abstain But our Destroyer, foe to God and Man? Haile wedded Love, mysterious Law, true source Of human ofspring, sole propriety, In Paradise of all things common else. By thee adulterous lust was driv'n from men Among the bestial herds to raunge, by thee Founded in Reason, Loyal, Just, and Pure, Relations dear, and all the Charities Of Father, Son, and Brother first were known. Farr be it, that I should write thee sin or blame, Or think thee unbefitting holiest place, Perpetual Fountain of Domestic sweets, Whose bed is undefil'd and chaste pronounc't, Present, or past, as Saints and Patriarchs us'd. Here Love his golden shafts imploies, here lights His constant Lamp, and waves his purple wings, Reigns here and revels; not in the bought smile Of Harlots, loveless, joyless, unindeard, Casual fruition, nor in Court Amours Mixt Dance, or wanton Mask, or Midnight Bal, Or Serenate, which the starv'd Lover sings To his proud fair, best quitted with disdain. These lulld by Nightingales imbraceing slept, And on thir naked limbs the flourie roof Showrd Roses, which the Morn repair'd. Sleep on Blest pair; and O yet happiest if ye seek No happier state, and know to know no more.
... but if you Google the word "sex," the number one result is:
Dawn Eden, author of a new memoir about chastity, gets frank about why she thinks forsaking sex has made her a better Christian, a better lover and a better ...
Here are the final minutes of my January 3 debate vs. Virginia Vitzthum on "Is Chastity a Good Idea for Singles," as seen in the Observer (U.K.):
About 30 seconds of the first clip is taken up with my stammering. I was trying to articulate a difficult point. What I wanted to say finally comes to me at the very end.
One thing I find interesting is how the anti-chastity folks in the crowd applauded when someone attributed my dissatisfaction with premarital sex to low self-esteem. They seemed to assume that if one had premarital sex for the "right" motivations, one would not feel dissatisfied. I argue more effectively against that canard in my book and my Sunday Times piece.
A residents advisory committee is preparing studies on abortion and sexual orientation to be used in classes required for early teens in Alexandria public schools.
Proposed additions to the curriculum include studies about why women seek abortions and about homosexuality, heterosexuality and sexual discrimination.
The Alexandria Board of Education must approve any additions. ...
One instruction would be to answer "yes" or "no" to 10 instances in which somebody might consider an abortion. These instances include rape, being an unmarried teen, being a college student pregnant as the result of broken condom, and being an unmarried 20-year-old for whom the father is one of four sexual partners.
Officials said the answers would be private but provide basis for teachers to explain the differences in philosophies between pro-life and pro-choice groups without using "insulting, attacking or prejudicial language."
One lesson would include a history of abortions, beginning in the Colonial era when the practice was permitted under English law and continuing through 1997 when Virginia legislators passed a parental-notification law. [Full story]
But wait, I thought the point of sex ed, as SIECUS and Planned Parenthood would have it, is to "reduce the need for abortion" through teaching contraception. Now they're simply cutting the middleman and teaching abortion?
And is it just me, or is teaching various rationalizations for abortion without using "insulting, attacking or prejudicial language" like teaching rationalizations for killing one's children without using "insulting, attacking or prejudicial language"?
Mike, 15, wants to hear from Catholics, especially converts from Protestantism. I hope you'll send out prayers for him as well as leaving a comment for him on YouTube. I don't know him beyond having seen this video, but it is beautiful to witness how grace is working in his life.
Alas, the photos aren't in the online version, but you can go through some hoops and get a free subscription to the Times' "e-paper" — then click the "News Review" link.
For those who have managed to acquire a copy of the U.K. version of the paper (available on newsstands in New York City, where it's printed locally, as well as the U.K.) (the U.S. one doesn't have News in Review), the other photo in the article, which is of me with Brian Wilson, is from when I interviewed the Beach Boy for The Bob in August 1988. It was taken by Brian's assistant, who was known as the Surf Nazi, in the suite at Manhattan's Hotel Pierre where Brian was doing interviews. For the record, nothing else happened between me and Brian in that suite — or anywhere else, for that matter, though I did get to interview him again four years later.
Also for the record, my age was added to the Times piece — and it's wrong. I'm 38, not 37. I had told the editor my correct age; a copy editor probably put in the wrong number after reading the part at the end where I said I was 37 last year. Just goes to show, you can't trust those copy editors. (Incidentally, I do plan to stop aging at 39.)
All right, enough nitpicking: I am overjoyed at this press for The Thrill of the Chaste, as you can imagine.
* * *
One person who is not happy to see me in the press is Barbara Ellen, columnist for the U.K. Observer, who, having read Paul Harris's article on my participation in a debate on chastity, takes issue with a straw woman she believes is me. Her angle is that those who regret their premarital sex should shut up.
The only thing one should be allowed to communicate about sex, Ellen infers, is "information on how to deal with [it]" — that is, how to forestall the twin perils of new life and disease, apparently — because "human beings are predestined to make their own mistakes, carnal or otherwise." Lamenting that "a study reveals that today's teenagers would cite their parents as role models over the likes of Kate Moss and Pete Doherty," Ellen says that I and other women she calls "Born Again Prims" "are best restrained from further comment.
It's been quiet these past few days on the Dawn Patrol, for good reason: When I haven't been at work, I've been writing. I've been blessed with a flood of freelance writing assignments, all related to The Thrill of the Chaste, and the biggest one is going to be ... wait for it ... the cover story for the News Review section of this coming Sunday Times of London. The editor had read Paul Harris's profile of me in the Observer and wanted me to write a 2,200-word piece on my journey to chastity and The Thrill of the Chaste.
I would be jumping up and down with joy and excitement right now if I were not so exhausted.
After I submitted the article, it went through the Brit-o-rizer machine at the Times and came out with a splashier style — amplifying the juicier elements of my story and moving them up several grafs. However, if anything in the story shocks readers who are unfamiliar with my book, I have no doubt that it will be what I have to say about chastity. I'm tempted to share more, but since it should be online soon enough (perhaps tonight), I'll just say that I'm very, very happy and thankful to have the opportunity to share the message of my book in this way.
Thanks very much to those readers who have given me encouragement and support as I promote The Thrill of the Chaste — you know who you are.
UPDATE:For those in the U.S. who would like to see a print edition of the Sunday Times, there is a U.S. edition that is on sale at New York City newsstands. Turns out the News in Review section isn't available in the U.S. edition, sorry to say.
'The truth will set you free' Basement japes, part 8
More questions from the audience at my January 3 chastity debate vs. Virginia Vitzthum at Lolita Bar on the Lower East Side. Inquiring minds want to know: What is freedom? Why do I feel that I have to evangelize about chastity?
Basement japes, part 7 Questions from the audience
It gets tricky here, during the audience-questions section of my January 3 chastity debate in the basement of lower Manhattan's Lolita Bar with Virginia Vitzthum (she's "against"; the question is, "Is Chastity a Good Thing for Singles?"). I'm asked about how I define marriage, and I lose my cool with a woman who's visibly seething because she believes I claim that all Christians support chastity. (I don't — or, at least, I don't presume that those who disagree with me lack Christ's saving grace, as I explain.)
At one point, the camera sweeps around and there's a view of the rest of the room. The parts where I'm smiling and getting up for no apparent reason are when a friend of mine, among several people crowded onto the staircase, peers through the slats to take my drink request and later hands me my grapefruit seltzer through the slats.
'Whether I feel dirty is another question entirely': Basement japes, part 6
If you watch only one video from the chastity debate, watch this one. This is where I state my manifesto and am met with gapes and a few boos. As mentioned before, I'm looking out towards the bulk of the 100 or so people who are crowding the long basement room of Lower East Side bar Lolita. My gasp at the very end of the video, after the moderator calls for questions, is a reaction to the sight of about 30 people raising their hands at once.
If you watch closely, my voice breaks near the end of one of my speeches. I am expending a lot of energy trying to hide the fact that I am very, very nervous.
The other night, I had the pleasure of speaking at the lecture series sponsored by the Forum, a group that brings together young adults, mostly Catholic, who share an interest in the arts, literature, and delicious homemade shortbread (though you're not required to eat the shortbread). The people at the gatherings tend to be on the erudite side and yet eminently approachable;. It's like a young-adult group for people who would normally run the other way from young-adult groups (those that, as my pastor puts it, are really neither young nor adult). If you're in the New York City area, I recommend
