Latest / The Lila Rose Show / E86: Why Theology Belongs In The Bedroom, a conversation with Christopher West

Transcript

E86: Why Theology Belongs In The Bedroom, a conversation with Christopher West · The Lila Rose Show

• 0:00
  In my mind, the way I thought theology was over here the study
• 0:03
  of God and the body and sexuality was way over.
• 0:06
  On the other side I found this teaching called the Theology of
• 0:10
  the Body and here was this Polish philosopher and
• 0:13
  theologian who was saying no spirituality and sexuality go
• 0:18
  together. Theology of the body is nothing
• 0:20
  but a reflection on that God himself took on flesh to reveal
• 0:25
  through the human body his own eternal mystery of love.
• 0:29
  This is like the the biggest kept secret of Christianity.
• 0:37
  Hey guys, welcome back to the Lila Rose podcast.
• 0:40
  Today we have a very special treat.
• 0:42
  We're going to be talking to somebody whose work I have
• 0:43
  followed for over a decade. His name is Christopher West of
• 0:47
  the Theology of the Body Institute.
• 0:49
  He's an author, a speaker and a podcaster and has really done
• 0:52
  some incredible work in the philosophy and theology around
• 0:56
  sex. So we talk about sex on the
• 0:58
  podcast. I debate about about other
• 1:00
  podcasts and shows. This is something that is a
• 1:03
  common theme because it has so much to do with relationships,
• 1:06
  how we live them, how we live our lives.
• 1:07
  Today. We're going to get into what is
• 1:10
  the design of sex? Why do we know about sexual
• 1:13
  ethics from sex? What do we know about those
• 1:15
  things? The philosophy and the theology,
• 1:17
  particularly the theology of the body, it's called.
• 1:20
  We're going to talk about things like orgasm.
• 1:22
  We're going to talk about contraception, we're going to
• 1:25
  talk about natural family planning and so much more.
• 1:28
  This is an episode for adults, or you can share this with your
• 1:31
  teens. This is something that maybe if
• 1:33
  you're listening to this with kids, it may not be appropriate
• 1:36
  with young children just because we're going to talk about some
• 1:38
  of the brass tacks around sex and sexual ethics.
• 1:41
  But I think you're going to really enjoy this episode.
• 1:44
  Everylife.com is America's pro-life diaper company.
• 1:47
  These are high performing diapers and wipes for your
• 1:49
  little one. I think you're going to love the
• 1:51
  product. They are great diapers.
• 1:52
  We've ordered a lot of diapers at our house and Every Life does
• 1:55
  not disappoint. What's so wonderful about Every
• 1:58
  life.com is you're not only getting a great diaper and wipes
• 2:00
  and they have other products that are coming, so check it
• 2:02
  out, but that Every life.com is a pro-life diaper company.
• 2:06
  They support your values and they donate some of their
• 2:09
  proceeds back to the pro-life movement, including groups like
• 2:12
  your favorite live Action. Check out every life.com today.
• 2:16
  You can use the code Lila at checkout for 10% off your order.
• 2:19
  Order that bundle of wipes and diapers for that new little
• 2:23
  niece or nephew in your life, your new son or daughter, your
• 2:25
  friend's baby. It's a great gift.
• 2:27
  They also have these cute new mom baby boxes.
• 2:30
  Check it out at everylife.com and use the code Lila at
• 2:34
  checkout for 10% off your order. Christopher W, Thank you so much
• 2:39
  for joining the podcast. Lila, it is my pleasure to be
• 2:42
  with you and your audience. All right.
• 2:45
  I have known about your work for well over a decade.
• 2:48
  I think even before becoming Catholic.
• 2:50
  I found your books or your writings or your speeches
• 2:53
  online. I don't remember exactly my
• 2:55
  first introduction, but you have been so influential and
• 2:59
  instrumental in me understanding, I think, God and
• 3:02
  his love and then his plan for sexuality and and so much more.
• 3:05
  So thank you first of all for your heroic work in the church.
• 3:09
  It's been amazing. Thanks be to God, I I have to
• 3:12
  pinch myself sometimes that I get to do this.
• 3:15
  I have the best job in the world.
• 3:17
  I I just like to say I invite hungry people to a banquet.
• 3:21
  That's what I do. I love that.
• 3:23
  I love that. So tell me first, tell our
• 3:25
  audience, we have obviously Catholics who listen,
• 3:28
  evangelicals, Protestants. We have people that don't have a
• 3:31
  specific faith background. Tell me, tell us our audience, a
• 3:35
  little bit about your background.
• 3:37
  Yeah, I was raised in as a Catholic in the 70s and 80s.
• 3:41
  I was born in the late 60s and the way I put it, the, the
• 3:46
  working metaphor is I was raised on what you might call the
• 3:49
  starvation diet gospel. The basic message was your
• 3:55
  desires are bad. They're only going to get you in
• 3:58
  trouble. So you need to repress all that
• 4:00
  and follow all these rules and you'll be a good, upstanding
• 4:03
  Christian citizen. And I don't know about you,
• 4:06
  Lila, but I was really hungry and I still am.
• 4:09
  Like there's this ache that I have known in my humanity, this
• 4:13
  hunger for something. So the starvation approach was
• 4:17
  not going to cut it for me. And I became a quick convert in
• 4:22
  my teenage years to what I call the fast food gospel.
• 4:27
  And by that I mean the secular cultures promise of immediate
• 4:32
  gratification for that hunger. And let's be honest, if there
• 4:38
  are two choices are starvation on the one hand or fast food on
• 4:41
  the other, if you're hungry like I am, you're going to go for the
• 4:45
  chicken Nuggets and and don't lie to me because they taste
• 4:49
  really good going down right but.
• 4:51
  Especially with Diet Coke. Metaphor.
• 4:53
  What? Good fizzy Diet Coke?
• 4:57
  Absolutely. But if you stay with that
• 4:59
  metaphor, if fast food becomes your steady diet, how you going
• 5:04
  to feel after a while? You know, eventually the grease
• 5:07
  and the sodium is going to catch up with you.
• 5:10
  And that's a picture of me in my college years.
• 5:12
  So now we're in the late 80s, right?
• 5:15
  I was a freshman in College in 1988 and I did an experiment one
• 5:21
  weekend in College in 1988 that changed my life.
• 5:26
  And it's the reason I'm talking to you here today.
• 5:28
  Because of this experiment, I decided to stay sober for one
• 5:32
  weekend because I was beginning to see the cracks in the lie.
• 5:39
  Like, put it this way, if if the culture is selling you a
• 5:44
  counterfeit version of the human story and of human happiness, at
• 5:50
  the same time, it has to sell you all kinds of numbing agents
• 5:55
  to keep you from recognizing the pain you're in.
• 5:59
  And I was just looking at what was going on every weekend at
• 6:01
  college, everybody getting drunk.
• 6:04
  And I started thinking, what are we hiding from?
• 6:08
  Why do we have to be drunk in order to pretend we're having a
• 6:12
  a good time? So just based on that, I didn't
• 6:15
  have any faith conviction at this point, I had left my
• 6:18
  Catholic upbringing. I was just indulging my desires
• 6:21
  however I wanted with all this fast food so to speak.
• 6:24
  But I decided I'm going to stay sober one weekend and man were
• 6:30
  my eyes opened. I I went to this party and I saw
• 6:34
  everybody getting drunk and I saw hookups happening and people
• 6:39
  were not having fun. They were miserable.
• 6:41
  And then I come home to my home or to my dorm room and my
• 6:46
  roommate comes back and he's terribly drunk and he vomits all
• 6:50
  over our room. It smells so bad.
• 6:52
  I grab my blanket and pillow to find somewhere else to sleep.
• 6:55
  And as I'm leaving I look back and I think, is this guy having
• 6:58
  fun? He's passed out in a puddle of
• 7:00
  his own vomit. Is this fun?
• 7:03
  I find an empty room down the hall.
• 7:05
  I I put my pillow and blanket on the floor.
• 7:08
  This guy comes back to his room, doesn't know I'm on the floor
• 7:10
  and he has a girl with him. And I won't get into the painful
• 7:15
  details, but I witnessed some things that nobody should ever
• 7:18
  witness and nobody should ever go through.
• 7:21
  This woman who he was with should never go through what
• 7:24
  happened that night and it haunted me.
• 7:27
  This experience haunted me. Like, what is it in men that
• 7:32
  lead them to treat women as nothing but objects for their
• 7:35
  pleasure? Not that it doesn't go the other
• 7:37
  way. We know it goes the other way
• 7:38
  too. But this was the situation I was
• 7:40
  in, what I had witnessed. And it compelled me to hold a
• 7:44
  mirror up to myself and say, am I much better in the way I think
• 7:49
  about women and the way I treat my girlfriend?
• 7:53
  And I had to realize I, I had to face this hard fact that I
• 7:58
  wasn't much better than this guy that I witnessed really do some
• 8:01
  abusive things. And that put me on a journey of
• 8:06
  saying, OK, God, if you exist, you better show me why you gave
• 8:10
  me all these desires because they're getting me and everybody
• 8:13
  I know into a hell of a lot of trouble.
• 8:15
  And there's a hell of a lot of pain in the world.
• 8:17
  And I'm experiencing it. And Long story short, a few
• 8:23
  years later in this journey, I'm seeking, I'm asking questions,
• 8:26
  I'm looking for answers. I discovered the teaching of
• 8:29
  this crazy Polish guy, maybe you've heard of him, Pope John
• 8:33
  Paul the Second. He was the Pope of my childhood
• 8:37
  and still was the Pope at this time in the 90s.
• 8:40
  And I found this teaching called the theology of the body.
• 8:45
  I was like theology of the what I mean in my mind, the way I
• 8:51
  thought theology was over here, the study of God, spiritual
• 8:54
  things and the body and sexuality was way over on the
• 8:58
  other side. And here was this Polish
• 9:01
  philosopher and theologian who just happened to be the Pope who
• 9:04
  was saying, no, these things go together.
• 9:07
  Spirituality and sexuality go together.
• 9:11
  The divine and the physical go together.
• 9:14
  In fact, it's called Christianity, right?
• 9:17
  It's called the incarnation. Theology of the body, I came to
• 9:22
  discover, is nothing but a reflection on God himself.
• 9:27
  This dramatic proposal of the Christian faith that God himself
• 9:33
  took on flesh to reveal through the human body his own eternal
• 9:38
  mystery of love. And I came to discover from this
• 9:42
  crazy Polish Pope that Christianity is not a starvation
• 9:46
  diet. It's an invitation to a banquet,
• 9:50
  in fact, a wedding feast. And I was, what, 2324 at the
• 9:56
  time, Lila, this was 30 years ago.
• 9:59
  And and I'm reading this and I knew then I would spend the rest
• 10:03
  of my life studying this, teaching and sharing it with the
• 10:05
  world. And that's what I've been doing
• 10:07
  for the last 30 years. And your organization, Theology
• 10:11
  of the Body Institute, you do courses and certifications and
• 10:14
  then you've spoken. I mean, you've probably spoken
• 10:17
  and I don't. I'm going to guess dozens upon
• 10:19
  dozens of countries across the the world at this point or more
• 10:23
  50. Countries around the world and
• 10:26
  yeah, it has taken me to the four corners of the earth.
• 10:30
  And I'll tell you the number one response I get was the response
• 10:35
  that I had when I first discovered the theology of the
• 10:37
  body is I was raised in the church.
• 10:40
  How come I've never heard this? Why have I never heard this?
• 10:44
  That's the number one response I get.
• 10:47
  This is this is like the biggest kept secret of Christianity, sad
• 10:53
  to say, but it's like, well, as I said, I have the best job in
• 10:58
  the world. I just get to invite hungry
• 11:00
  people to a banquet. And when you've either been
• 11:02
  taking that starvation approach or you've been taking that fast
• 11:06
  food approach, when you lay out this banquet for people, it's
• 11:11
  it's life changing. There's one thing you mentioned
• 11:15
  earlier, and I do want to ask you because it it it's, you
• 11:18
  know, unfortunately what you describe is all too common
• 11:21
  today, you know, on college campuses, high schools.
• 11:24
  But you mentioned, you know, you had this one weekend you were
• 11:26
  going to be sober. You were, you're in the room.
• 11:29
  All of a sudden your roommate, you know, comes in drunk.
• 11:32
  Were they both drunk? It sounds like they both were.
• 11:34
  And you said, you know, you saw, you heard things you never
• 11:37
  wanted to see or hear. What was just curious.
• 11:39
  Your mindset, you know, I don't think I've heard you tell that
• 11:42
  story before. But your mindset there, because
• 11:44
  you didn't stop him or stop her, you know, you were, I don't
• 11:48
  know, half asleep. What?
• 11:49
  What was kind of going through you at that?
• 11:51
  What was Christopher at? I don't know, 19 how old you
• 11:54
  were at that .20 years old. Yeah, I was. 19 I was 19 in that
• 11:57
  moment. Did you want?
• 11:58
  To go like. Yeah.
• 11:59
  In case my college roommate is listening, it wasn't him.
• 12:02
  I was in another room down the hall.
• 12:03
  OK, OK. Yeah, it I didn't want to get
• 12:07
  into those details necessarily, but I, I will say this.
• 12:13
  I remember hearing this female voice say stop, stop.
• 12:20
  I'd only want to do this if I knew you loved me.
• 12:23
  Oh wow. And then he said I love you, I
• 12:27
  love you. And I don't know exactly what
• 12:31
  happened, but he proceeded to have his way.
• 12:36
  And I should have gotten up and kicked the living SHIT out of
• 12:41
  this guy, but I was, I was frozen.
• 12:45
  I, I, I, I froze in my tracks. I was so stunned by what was
• 12:50
  happening. It's, it's a moment I look back
• 12:53
  on with deep regret and sorrow. And I have to apologize to you,
• 12:57
  Lila, and to every woman on the planet that I did not get up and
• 13:02
  take action. It's, it was a moment of
• 13:06
  disbelief. I couldn't, I couldn't believe
• 13:09
  what was happening. And, and I, I experienced a kind
• 13:13
  of paralysis. I wish I could tell you I was
• 13:16
  heroic and I got up and stopped it.
• 13:18
  But that's not the true story. I pray for that woman and I pray
• 13:22
  for that man to this day. It was a life changing
• 13:25
  experience for me because it it compelled me to ask the big
• 13:30
  questions about human life, human love, human sexuality.
• 13:35
  And you know, the the church is bold enough to speak of the
• 13:39
  happy fault of Adam, that one for us so great a Redeemer that
• 13:45
  that horrible experience became something that God used in my
• 13:50
  life to to to take my life in a totally different direction.
• 13:55
  So we talk about, thank you for sharing that.
• 13:58
  We talk a lot on the podcast about sex, sexuality,
• 14:02
  relationships, mental health, blah, blah, blah.
• 14:04
  And you know, the, our audience knows sometimes I go on podcasts
• 14:07
  and talk about these issues as well.
• 14:09
  And you know, it can get really controversial today because
• 14:12
  there's a lot of different opinions about sexual ethics.
• 14:17
  Obviously, you know this. Let's start with you mentioned
• 14:21
  theology of the body already and John Paul the second who is the
• 14:25
  best? So I'm excited to introduce
• 14:28
  people who may not be as familiar on the show today to
• 14:31
  him through you. What is theology of the body?
• 14:34
  And then I want to unpack and see where the conversation goes,
• 14:37
  but unpack how it is a an answer in many ways to or how it, you
• 14:43
  know, wrestles with the kind of prevailing notions about sex
• 14:46
  today. Yeah, I, I would like to talk
• 14:49
  about theology of the body, but I'd like first, if I, if you
• 14:52
  don't mind, to talk about another work of his that is the
• 14:55
  philosophical foundation of the theology.
• 14:58
  You know, every sound theology has a sound philosophy behind
• 15:02
  it. And the book that gives us the
• 15:05
  philosophy behind the theology might be a better starting point
• 15:09
  for your particular audience. I know we have a broad audience,
• 15:12
  not just Catholic, not just Christian, but people who might
• 15:16
  not have any faith at all. And when we begin with
• 15:19
  philosophy, we can then point to theology from a, a, a place of
• 15:25
  common ground. Is it OK with you if I start
• 15:27
  there? Go for it sounds.
• 15:29
  Great Love and Responsibility, which is a philosophy book.
• 15:35
  He says the norm for all human behavior is what he calls the
• 15:41
  personalistic norm. OK, not a term we use every day.
• 15:45
  What does he mean? He says when we're discussing
• 15:47
  morality, and specifically sexual morality, we can't
• 15:52
  understand what sexual morality is unless we understand what the
• 15:55
  human person is. So when we say personalistic
• 15:59
  norm, we're gonna zoom in on what is a person.
• 16:04
  And person is the word philosophers use to distinguish
• 16:09
  the human being from the rest of animal creation.
• 16:14
  We are animals, but we're not merely animals, right?
• 16:18
  And we know this by our experience that we're we are an
• 16:23
  animal, but we're not merely an animal.
• 16:25
  There's something different between a human person and a
• 16:28
  chicken, right? Despite all the propaganda in
• 16:32
  the modern world where some people are saying chickens are
• 16:34
  people too, we know there's a difference, right?
• 16:38
  If you're driving down the road and you see a chicken killed on
• 16:42
  the side of the road, you're not going to stop your car or call
• 16:46
  the police, right? But if you see a human person
• 16:49
  who's been hit by a car on the side of the road, you're going
• 16:52
  to stop your car and call the police.
• 16:54
  Why? There's something different.
• 16:57
  There's something different, something qualitatively
• 17:00
  different. Chickens do not look up at the
• 17:03
  stars and wonder what's out there, right?
• 17:06
  Chickens do not write music or poetry.
• 17:10
  Chickens do not build cathedrals or skyscrapers, and nor do
• 17:16
  chickens get into airplanes and fly them into skyscrapers.
• 17:21
  What's my point here? We have something.
• 17:24
  The human person has something. The animals don't have freedom.
• 17:31
  Freedom. What will we do with that
• 17:34
  freedom in the world today, freedom is prized as an end in
• 17:41
  itself, right? It's it's something we want to,
• 17:44
  we want to hold on to. Whereas the philosopher Carol
• 17:49
  Voitiwa, who became Pope John Paul the Second, he says rather,
• 17:54
  freedom is the means to love. And he says human beings desire
• 18:01
  love more than they desire freedom.
• 18:05
  And when we find the truth about love, it is worth spending our
• 18:10
  freedom to have that love, right?
• 18:13
  So sometimes, you know, we'll say I love my dog and my dog
• 18:18
  loves me. And OK, there's a certain sense
• 18:21
  in which we can use that word there.
• 18:23
  And, and one of the problems in the English language anyway, is
• 18:26
  that we use the word love for so many things, right?
• 18:29
  I love potato chips. I love my wife.
• 18:32
  Well, I hope there's a qualitative difference in the
• 18:35
  way I love potato chips and the way I love my wife.
• 18:38
  In other languages, they have many more words for the word
• 18:41
  love. So we can make these
• 18:42
  distinctions, but let's let's zoom in on what is.
• 18:46
  What is the love between persons in the strict sense of the word
• 18:51
  love? Only persons can love.
• 18:55
  We have freedom as the means to love.
• 18:59
  What does it mean to love a person?
• 19:00
  Well, let's begin with its opposite.
• 19:03
  The personalistic norm says that the human being is the kind of
• 19:09
  being that may never be used as a means to an end.
• 19:16
  If we stop there and reflect on our own experience here, we know
• 19:21
  when somebody uses me as a means to an end, we feel violated.
• 19:28
  We feel not honored in our humanity.
• 19:32
  This is why slavery is wrong, for example, right?
• 19:37
  We don't think it's offensive to have a dog on a leash, but we do
• 19:42
  find it offensive to have a human being on a leash.
• 19:45
  Why? Because that human being has
• 19:48
  freedom and the dog doesn't, right?
• 19:51
  The dog can be mastered by a person, but a person should
• 19:56
  never be mastered by another person.
• 19:59
  A person should never be used as a means to an end.
• 20:03
  So the opposite of love is not so much hatred.
• 20:07
  The opposite of love is to treat another person as a means to an
• 20:14
  end. If we understand that, we will
• 20:16
  understand everything the Catholic Church teaches about
• 20:20
  sexual morality. And I could say much more and I
• 20:23
  will, but I just want to pause there and see if you want to
• 20:26
  draw any other questions out of what I've said so far.
• 20:29
  You are a master, Chris, because the perfect timing I was like I
• 20:31
  got to ask him a question I'm going to interrupt him if he
• 20:34
  keeps going. So thank you.
• 20:36
  Yes. And here's the, you know, in
• 20:39
  culture, the word is consent that's used, right?
• 20:43
  Well, people are with you. Yeah.
• 20:45
  It needs to be freely chosen, whatever whether it's a sexual
• 20:49
  relationship or act or it's anything like I'm going to go
• 20:52
  and work for you at a coffee shop, Right.
• 20:54
  So as long as I'm freely choosing this thing that I'm
• 20:57
  doing and you're agreeing to employ me or, you know, in the
• 20:59
  sexual ethics world, you know, do the sexual thing with me, as
• 21:03
  long as there's consent, you know, freely chosen thing is
• 21:07
  chosen. We're good to go.
• 21:10
  Why is it still, even if there seems to be a free choice, still
• 21:15
  wrong to do certain things? Like for example someone could
• 21:18
  say I freely am choosing to be your slave and I'm going to
• 21:23
  subject myself to maybe some degrading treatment.
• 21:27
  Why are something still wrong even if they seem to be freely
• 21:30
  chosen? Well, the proposal here, and I'm
• 21:33
  not here to shove this down anybody's throat.
• 21:35
  I'm holding it out for people to think about right?
• 21:38
  And, and I'm going to go right with John Paul the second here,
• 21:41
  who says weigh everything against your own experience
• 21:47
  because in our deepest experiences, if we are in touch
• 21:54
  with those deepest experiences, and that's a big if, we will
• 21:56
  find a confirmation, I believe, of everything the church teaches
• 22:00
  about sex. If we look at our deepest
• 22:03
  experiences, And this is what I want to invite people to.
• 22:08
  I want to propose that the human being is the kind of being that
• 22:12
  is indispensable, is irreplaceable, and is
• 22:18
  unrepeatable. These are words I learned from
• 22:21
  John Paul the Second's philosophy from his book Love
• 22:23
  and Responsibility, and I'm going to unpack them so we can
• 22:27
  all be on the same page here. Indispensable, right?
• 22:31
  Things are dispensable. If your toaster breaks, you
• 22:36
  throw it away and you don't violate the dignity of your
• 22:40
  toaster by throwing it away. But when you use a human person
• 22:46
  and then throw him or her away, if that person is in touch with
• 22:51
  his or her true dignity, it's going to hurt, right?
• 22:55
  Let's any, any human being, let's let, let's have any human
• 22:58
  person look at an experience where they were used and thrown
• 23:02
  away, where they were treated as dispensable man.
• 23:08
  It hurts. Why does it hurt?
• 23:12
  It hurts because the human being is the kind of being that is
• 23:17
  indispensable. That's a proposal.
• 23:20
  Weigh it against your own experience and see what you
• 23:23
  think. Indispensable.
• 23:25
  Irreplaceable. Right?
• 23:28
  Your toaster breaks, you throw it away, you get another one,
• 23:31
  you replace it with another toaster.
• 23:33
  And in fact, toasters are not only dispensable replaceable,
• 23:38
  they're also repeatable. Which means you can get another
• 23:41
  of the very same model of toaster because there are
• 23:46
  1,000,000 of the very same toaster at the Amazon warehouse.
• 23:51
  The proposal here is that persons are different than
• 23:55
  things. Things are dispensable,
• 23:58
  replaceable and repeatable. Persons are indispensable.
• 24:03
  It hurts when we get thrown away.
• 24:06
  Persons are irreplaceable. It hurts when we get thrown away
• 24:11
  and we get replaced with someone else.
• 24:14
  Just look at your own experience.
• 24:16
  Anytime you have been used, discarded, and replaced, it
• 24:22
  hurts. Why does it hurt?
• 24:26
  John Paul the Second's proposal is that when you feel that pain,
• 24:31
  you're recognizing your true dignity as a person because
• 24:35
  someone has violated that dignity.
• 24:39
  And when you are compared to someone else, you are being
• 24:43
  treated as if you were repeatable or comparable, right.
• 24:48
  Oh, why don't you just look more like so and so my old
• 24:52
  girlfriend? Or if you would just behave in
• 24:54
  the bed like the girl I was in bed with last night, I would
• 24:59
  like you more. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
• 25:01
  You're treating that person as a thing that can be compared to
• 25:05
  someone else. Oh, I don't like the way you,
• 25:07
  you have sex in, in, in our relationship.
• 25:10
  I'm going to throw you away and get somebody else.
• 25:14
  Right. What would our sexual choices
• 25:17
  look like? This is the proposal.
• 25:19
  What would our sexual choices look like?
• 25:22
  If in every sexual choice we made, we upheld the dignity of
• 25:27
  the person as indispensable, irreplaceable, and unrepeatable,
• 25:35
  what would our sexual choices look like?
• 25:38
  What the Church is holding out to us here is not some
• 25:41
  oppressive list of rules to follow.
• 25:45
  What the Church is holding out to us is the dignity of what it
• 25:48
  means to be human, that you are never meant to be treated as a
• 25:52
  thing, to be used and thrown away and replaced with some
• 25:57
  other thing. You are a person, and you are
• 26:00
  meant to be seen and loved and honored and treated as
• 26:05
  indispensable, irreplaceable and unrepeatable.
• 26:11
  When the sexual relationship is approached from that
• 26:14
  perspective, I think we have a common ground to enter into
• 26:19
  conversation with anyone on the planet, to draw out of them the
• 26:24
  truth of who they are, not imposed from the outside some
• 26:29
  list of rules, but to invite them to reflect on their true
• 26:34
  dignity. That is the invitation.
• 26:38
  Seven Weeks Coffee is delicious gourmet coffee that can be
• 26:41
  shipped directly to your home. If you go to
• 26:43
  sevenweekscoffee.com, you'll learn the story of not only an
• 26:46
  amazing company that supports your pro-life values, but a
• 26:49
  company that creates and crafts some of the best and most
• 26:51
  gourmet coffee blends. I love drinking Seven Weeks
• 26:54
  Coffee because I'm not only getting an amazing cup of
• 26:57
  coffee, but I am supporting the pro-life movement every time I
• 27:00
  take a sip of seven weeks. Why is that?
• 27:02
  That's because as you guys may have heard already on the show,
• 27:04
  I've talked about it before. Seven Weeks Coffee gives 10
• 27:08
  percent of their revenue, not just their profits, 10% of all
• 27:11
  revenue directly to pregnancy Resource Center.
• 27:14
  So when you drink that great cup of coffee, you are directly
• 27:17
  supporting the care for mothers and babies in need. 7 weeks
• 27:21
  coffee is called seven weeks because that is when the baby at
• 27:24
  seven weeks pre born is the size of yes a coffee bean.
• 27:28
  Check out seven weeks coffee today.
• 27:30
  You can use the code Lila at checkout for 10% off your order
• 27:33
  if you haven't already tried it. What are you waiting for?
• 27:35
  That seven weeks coffee.com use the code Lila check out for 10%
• 27:39
  off your order. So here's the question then
• 27:43
  playing, you could say a bit of devil's advocate and I was just,
• 27:45
  I'm just coming off a, a debate on is sex work good for society?
• 27:50
  I think was the the topic. And then I did another debate
• 27:53
  recently on another podcast, you know, should porn be banned?
• 27:56
  And, you know, on and on. And you know, the, the common
• 27:58
  refrain, the response right from those that are OK with, you
• 28:03
  know, we can call it sexual hedonism.
• 28:05
  They might call it something else, but is well, you know, you
• 28:08
  consent to go work at a coffee shop.
• 28:11
  You might get fired at a coffee shop if you didn't do your job.
• 28:14
  That doesn't mean you're not, you know, a valuable human
• 28:17
  being. It just means or you, you know,
• 28:18
  you choose to quit or whatever it is, right?
• 28:21
  Why can't sex be the same? Why can't it be the same to to
• 28:25
  choose to have sex or do a sexual act like you might choose
• 28:28
  to go work at a coffee shop or not?
• 28:31
  Why is sex different? Yes.
• 28:33
  Well, because the commodity being bought and sold at a
• 28:36
  coffee shop is coffee. The commodity being bought and
• 28:40
  sold in sex work is the human person.
• 28:43
  But they would say, they would say, hey, it's not because my
• 28:45
  commodity at the coffee shop, yeah, there's coffee, but it's
• 28:48
  me serving the coffee. So in both scenarios I'm serving
• 28:52
  sex or I'm serving coffee is what they they would say.
• 28:55
  Here's the distinction serving coffee.
• 28:57
  You are serving a product that is outside of yourself.
• 29:01
  But in serving sex, you're serving your own body, and your
• 29:04
  body expresses your person, right?
• 29:08
  The the only way we can justify treating the human body as a
• 29:14
  thing is to divorce the human body from the human person.
• 29:18
  And when we divorce the body from the person, we destroy the
• 29:23
  person himself or herself. That is the proposal, and no one
• 29:30
  can force that proposal on anyone.
• 29:32
  But the invitation is Come and discover your greatness.
• 29:37
  This is a quote from John Paul 2 himself in his book Love and
• 29:40
  Responsibility. In order to understand human
• 29:44
  sexuality, the human person must reconcile himself or herself
• 29:50
  with his or her greatness, right?
• 29:53
  This is an invitation to recognize what a human person is
• 29:57
  worth, right? A human person is worth a love
• 30:03
  that will never leave you, never forsake you, never replace you
• 30:07
  with another sexual love. This is the proposal is only in
• 30:13
  keeping with the dignity of the person.
• 30:16
  When we say to the person, I will never leave you, I will
• 30:21
  never forsake you, I will never replace you with someone else, I
• 30:25
  will never treat you as a thing to be used and dispensed with.
• 30:30
  You are a person and you have a value and a dignity by the very
• 30:35
  fact that you are a person. And if I claim to love you, I am
• 30:40
  going to spend my life defending, honoring and
• 30:44
  upholding the dignity of your humanity, of your personhood.
• 30:49
  And people can say, well, I don't want to do that.
• 30:52
  You can use your freedom that way.
• 30:54
  But if you choose a life of not upholding the dignity of others,
• 30:59
  others are not going to uphold your dignity either.
• 31:02
  And you will feel the pain of it unless you are numbing yourself
• 31:07
  to that pain. Right.
• 31:09
  And I said that earlier. A culture that sells us a
• 31:12
  counterfeit version of the human story of human happiness and
• 31:16
  human love will at the same time need to sell us all kinds of
• 31:22
  numbing agents to keep us from recognizing the pain that we're
• 31:26
  in. I say pay attention to your
• 31:30
  pain. Remove the numbing agents,
• 31:33
  because that pain is instructive.
• 31:36
  It's telling you something, right?
• 31:38
  If you if you brush your teeth with a chainsaw, there's going
• 31:43
  to be some indications that you shouldn't have done that.
• 31:47
  It's going to hurt, right? If you treat yourself and others
• 31:51
  as things rather than persons, things to use rather than
• 31:57
  persons to love, it's going to hurt.
• 32:00
  Pay attention to your pain. It's instructive.
• 32:03
  So if there's somebody who is, let's say, a professional singer
• 32:07
  or dancer, right, they're using their body in a very, you could
• 32:12
  say, I mean, intimate is, is a tricky word because we're, you
• 32:15
  know, there's like sexual intimacy, but they're using
• 32:17
  their physical body to, to do an expression, whether it's singing
• 32:21
  or, or dance, song or dance that they might come, you know, they
• 32:26
  might sell, they might monetize professionally, you know, to
• 32:30
  make record and records. That's like 1990s digital, you
• 32:33
  know, sell digital music or, you know, become a professional
• 32:36
  dancer and you know, sell their dance routines or be a dance
• 32:39
  instructor, whatever, right? What is it you started with
• 32:42
  philosophy, which is so smart. You know, you you start with
• 32:45
  that before you get to the theology.
• 32:46
  But what is it ontologically that is different about I'm
• 32:49
  singing or I'm dancing or I am using my body to make coffee
• 32:53
  versus I'm using my body. My body is participating in
• 32:57
  sexual activity, yeah. This is great.
• 32:59
  So we're going to go right, right to the heart of the
• 33:01
  matter. We have to talk about genitals.
• 33:03
  So you ready to talk about genitals?
• 33:05
  Go. For it.
• 33:05
  Chris Christopher Yes, all right.
• 33:07
  And. And we we're not.
• 33:08
  This is, again, this is just philosophy.
• 33:10
  This is not an appeal to theology or the Bible or
• 33:13
  anything. Eyes are meant for seeing.
• 33:17
  Did I say anything controversial there?
• 33:21
  Not. Not so far.
• 33:22
  Keep going, OK? Ears are meant for hearing.
• 33:26
  Have I said anything controversial yet?
• 33:30
  Keep. Keep going.
• 33:32
  Lungs are meant for breathing. Any problem with that?
• 33:37
  Genitals are meant for generating.
• 33:42
  All right, now we're getting cut and people are whoa, we Genitals
• 33:45
  are meant for generating. What do you think of I?
• 33:47
  I can do whatever I want with, OK?
• 33:49
  In order for human life to flourish, we have to understand
• 33:54
  what a human being is designed to do, right?
• 33:59
  Why is it not controversial to say eyes are meant for seeing?
• 34:04
  It's obvious that eyes are meant for seeing.
• 34:06
  It's also if we're honest. If we're that's a big if.
• 34:11
  If we are honest, it is obvious that genitals are meant for
• 34:17
  generating new life, right? When we talk about engaging our
• 34:24
  genitals, we're talking about the generative power.
• 34:30
  And the generative power, the fact that sexual activity is
• 34:34
  connected fundamentally with the fundamental fact of existence,
• 34:42
  right? If it weren't for the sexual
• 34:43
  union of your parents, Lila, you would not exist.
• 34:48
  But not even just your parents, but also their parents and their
• 34:52
  parents and their parents and their parents and their parents,
• 34:54
  and the whole way back to the beginning of time, right at the
• 34:59
  very foundation of human existence is genital union.
• 35:05
  When we forget that genitals are meant for generating, society
• 35:12
  can only degenerate. And this is the world we're
• 35:17
  living in right now. We are living in a culture that
• 35:21
  is degenerating because for the last 100 years or so we have
• 35:26
  been hell bent on separating our genitals from their generative
• 35:32
  power with modern methods of contraception.
• 35:36
  And when we are hell bent on separating genitals from
• 35:41
  generating, we lose all together the dignity, the splendor, the
• 35:47
  meaning, the fundamental purpose of human sexuality.
• 35:52
  And we end up treating the human body, which is to say the human
• 35:56
  person, as a commodity, as a thing, as an object to be bought
• 36:03
  and sold and used for my own personal pleasure.
• 36:08
  When the culture becomes utilitarian, a pleasure becomes
• 36:14
  the main name of the game, right?
• 36:17
  This is the difference between a Catholic or Christian vision of
• 36:20
  sexuality and a secular one. If we boil it all down, this is
• 36:24
  the difference. What the culture is trying, the
• 36:27
  secular culture is trying to uphold at all costs, is the
• 36:31
  value of pleasure. What Christianity is trying to
• 36:36
  uphold at all costs is the value and dignity of the person.
• 36:41
  Right when we say pleasure is our main value, the person
• 36:46
  becomes a means to pleasure. I'll stay with you as long as
• 36:50
  you give me pleasure. As soon as you don't give me
• 36:52
  pleasure, I'll throw you away and I'll replace you with
• 36:56
  somebody else. But now you've just violated the
• 36:58
  dignity of that person who is indispensable, irreplaceable,
• 37:03
  and unrepeatable. The only way to honor sexuality
• 37:09
  in its integral wholeness is to receive it in its integral
• 37:15
  wholeness from the Creator. And the Creator designed us in
• 37:19
  such a way that sexuality enables us to Co create with
• 37:25
  Him. This is why we call our sexual
• 37:28
  organs genital organs, because they have the power to generate.
• 37:33
  When we look at human sexuality through condom colored glasses,
• 37:39
  all of this value and dignity and meaning and purpose
• 37:43
  evaporates. That's the world we live in
• 37:45
  right now. So to do devil's advocate more
• 37:49
  here, because people are listening to this and it's it's
• 37:52
  so it's a beautiful vision. It's so compelling.
• 37:55
  But then there's that question, what about what about what
• 37:57
  about? And the the first one that
• 37:59
  comes, it comes up is OK. So are you saying pleasure is
• 38:04
  not part of sex? It aren't the sexual organs
• 38:07
  designed also for pleasure? Pleasure.
• 38:09
  And so do you have to generate a new life every time you have sex
• 38:14
  for it to somehow be the rightly ordered use of sex?
• 38:17
  Yes. We can see how the questions
• 38:19
  begin to multiply, and I would urge people who want to do a
• 38:22
  deep dive on this to read John Paul the Second's book Love and
• 38:25
  Responsibility, where he anticipates all of these
• 38:28
  questions and answers them in a very compelling way.
• 38:31
  I will try my best in the time frame we have to address some of
• 38:35
  these at least. What is the role of pleasure in
• 38:39
  the sexual act? Pleasure is a fruit, I would say
• 38:45
  of loving rightly. Right now I'm going to get
• 38:48
  theological. As a Christian, I would put it
• 38:51
  this way. The new commandment that Jesus
• 38:54
  gives us is love one another as I have loved you, right?
• 38:59
  And then he says, I tell you this so that my joy might be in
• 39:05
  you and your joy might be complete when we understand that
• 39:11
  that sexuality has a theological language that we are meant to
• 39:16
  love as God loves with our bodies.
• 39:20
  And I would say going from the philosophy now to the theology
• 39:23
  of the body, this is one of the greatest contributions of John
• 39:26
  Paul the Second's teaching that the call to love as God loves,
• 39:31
  as Christ loves, is chiseled by God right in the sexual
• 39:36
  difference and loving divinely right.
• 39:39
  Saint Paul will say to husbands, love your wives as Christ loved
• 39:45
  the church. A husband is meant to say to his
• 39:48
  wife in the sexual act, this is my body given up for you.
• 39:54
  Jesus himself said, if you are loving that way, there will be
• 39:57
  an intense joy. An intense pleasure will be the
• 40:02
  fruit of loving that way. But if we zoom in on pleasure as
• 40:08
  the fundamental goal of the ACT, right?
• 40:11
  The end of the ACT, the purpose of the ACT.
• 40:14
  Now I'm using the other person as a means to my pleasure.
• 40:21
  And again, if we're going to subscribe to this philosophy,
• 40:24
  the personalistic norm says the human being is the kind of being
• 40:28
  that should never be used. The only proper response to the
• 40:33
  human being is love. If I don't care if it's your
• 40:37
  husband or your wife, if I'm treating my wife as just a means
• 40:42
  to my pleasure, I'm not loving her.
• 40:46
  I'm using her, and if she's in touch with her dignity, she will
• 40:52
  feel used. Simply being married does not
• 40:56
  justify sexual behavior. It's only if you choose to love
• 41:01
  divinely that justifies sexual behavior.
• 41:05
  Then the pleasure that comes is received as a fruit of love, not
• 41:11
  as the end, right? Because if I treat pleasure as
• 41:14
  the goal, then the person becomes a means to an end.
• 41:19
  I think the difference in sexual, the sexual difference
• 41:24
  between men and women here is such an interesting thing to
• 41:28
  grapple with because you describe, you know, you
• 41:31
  mentioned if you're the the fruit of a fruit of love can be
• 41:35
  pleasure, right, But in a sexual act, you know, it's much easier
• 41:40
  for men to experience pleasure than women.
• 41:42
  You know, this is like AI think that's actually commented about
• 41:46
  in a secular world and in the Christian world, but they call
• 41:48
  it the orgasm gap or they call other things like that where our
• 41:51
  bodies are just designed so differently that the ability to
• 41:55
  feel pleasure happens so differently.
• 41:57
  And for men, it's a much easier, shorter curve than for women.
• 42:01
  What does that say about this theology and this philosophy of
• 42:06
  ultimately love that you are explaining here?
• 42:09
  I'm. So glad you brought this up.
• 42:11
  John Paul, the second I kid you not, has an entire chapter in
• 42:14
  his book on love and responsibility dedicated to
• 42:18
  calling husbands to what he calls the virtue of tenderness.
• 42:25
  He says because of what you just mentioned, there's a sharper
• 42:28
  curve of arousal in the man. Biologically, it calls him to a
• 42:34
  tenderness with his wife to enable her to experience the
• 42:38
  full pleasure of the sexual act. And he gets right into some
• 42:42
  very, shall we say, nitty gritty details that come from his
• 42:47
  pastoral experience with couples.
• 42:50
  And he says a husband who can at times be rather brutal in the
• 42:57
  sexual act in seeking his own pleasure if he does not take
• 43:02
  into account the the the the longer curve of arousal in his
• 43:06
  wife and show her the proper tenderness that enables her to
• 43:13
  with him experience the fullness of joy in the marital act.
• 43:17
  Such a man cannot be said to love his wife as Christ loves
• 43:22
  the church. So the invitation is to one of a
• 43:26
  deep. This is how he describes it, he
• 43:29
  says, rather than Speaking of sexual technique, which is
• 43:34
  where, you know, this is where you get all the sex manuals on
• 43:37
  the bookshelf at Barnes and Nobles, right?
• 43:40
  He says, we don't so much need a sexual technique as we need a
• 43:44
  culture of marital relations where a husband and a wife are
• 43:50
  learning to share their inner worlds with each other, where
• 43:54
  the physical act becomes a sacrament or an outward
• 43:58
  expression of a deep inner intimacy, a nakedness of the
• 44:03
  heart, if you will. Right, He says if the nakedness
• 44:07
  of the body does not have a corresponding nakedness of the
• 44:11
  heart, well, then there's the danger that we're just using
• 44:15
  each other for, for whatever kind of pleasure we're after.
• 44:19
  The goal is, is an intimacy of soul and heart that becomes
• 44:25
  expressed in the intimacy of the body.
• 44:29
  And if that culture of intimacy is fostered in that relationship
• 44:34
  only when the wife knows she is loved, honored, she will never
• 44:40
  be treated as a thing, She will never be dispensed with.
• 44:44
  She will never be abandoned. She will never be used as an
• 44:48
  object. It's that knowledge of authentic
• 44:50
  love that enables her to open, relax, and God willing with his
• 44:58
  tenderness, the tenderness of the husband, come to experience
• 45:01
  the fullness of joy in the marital act.
• 45:03
  And John Paul's very clear, if the wife does not come to
• 45:07
  experience this, there is a real danger of of a resentment that
• 45:11
  can be built up in the marriage. And I'd urge anyone to read the
• 45:16
  let's just put it this way. He raised more than a few
• 45:20
  eyebrows when he wrote about this.
• 45:22
  And this was in the early 1960s that he was writing about this.
• 45:26
  He was a man ahead of his time, let's put it that way.
• 45:30
  Oh, totally. I mean, I most people I think
• 45:33
  are shocked when I've had conversations when they, when
• 45:36
  I've shared, Yeah, actually a Pope, Pope John Paul the second
• 45:38
  and last century thinks that, you know, it's, it's a prime,
• 45:42
  prime importance for a husband to bring his wife to orgasm.
• 45:46
  And he like wrote about, that was something he took time to
• 45:49
  write about because it's like, wow, that they care so much.
• 45:52
  I mean, those Catholics are those Christians who don't care
• 45:54
  about sexual pleasure. They actually care so much about
• 45:57
  the unity that comes from sexual pleasure, not just sexual
• 46:01
  pleasure, but the unity that's part of sexual pleasure or
• 46:03
  sexual pleasure is part of that unity that they would say it's
• 46:06
  important for both men and women to experience it fully in a
• 46:08
  marriage. Let me let me paint a picture
• 46:11
  this way. You're exactly right, Lila.
• 46:12
  The, the, the church is placing such a high value on the beauty,
• 46:20
  the splendor, the dignity of sexual relations.
• 46:23
  And I'd paint it this way. Let's take 2 pictures.
• 46:26
  Let's start with a I'm just going to speak from the male
• 46:28
  perspective because that's the one I know far better.
• 46:31
  Let's take a typical American teenage boy who's exposed to
• 46:36
  pornography at a very young age, and he starts masturbating to
• 46:40
  the pornography. And throughout his teenage
• 46:43
  years, that's his experience. Sexual stimulation through
• 46:46
  pornography translated into masturbation.
• 46:51
  His whole psychosexual development is based on pleasing
• 46:58
  himself. Fantasy image, fantasy
• 47:02
  stimulation, selfish release. Let's suppose he's sexually
• 47:07
  active at some point in his teenage years, and he marries
• 47:12
  the woman that he's sexually active with sometime in his late
• 47:15
  20s. And he's probably had multiple
• 47:18
  sexual partners, right? He goes into marriage and all.
• 47:21
  His whole psychosexual development is conditioned by a
• 47:25
  masturbatory frame of reference, right?
• 47:30
  Woman is object to stimulate my fantasy life to indulge in my
• 47:35
  selfish pleasure. For him, the sexual act will be
• 47:39
  unless he experiences A dramatic change of his heart.
• 47:44
  His sexual experience will with his own wife will be 1 of using
• 47:48
  her to please himself. In other words, he will still be
• 47:52
  masturbating, except he will be using his wife's body as a means
• 47:57
  for his own masturbatory behavior.
• 48:00
  Right. This is what the world thinks
• 48:04
  sex is supposed to be, and that's what I thought sex was
• 48:09
  supposed to be. Well.
• 48:10
  The world the the, the world on feminism is at least.
• 48:14
  Well, we're mutually masturbating, right?
• 48:16
  Like yes, I'll help you, but you better help me.
• 48:20
  Yes, I'll use you, you use me. And I want to say to that world,
• 48:26
  you are made for so much more. There is another way to see.
• 48:31
  There is another way to think. There is another way to
• 48:35
  experience human sexuality in such a way that it corresponds
• 48:40
  to the deepest, most real desires of our heart.
• 48:46
  To be seen, to be known, to be loved, to be affirmed as
• 48:54
  indispensable, irreplaceable, and unrepeatable.
• 49:00
  I can speak from my own life here on both sides of that
• 49:04
  equation. I know the experience of using
• 49:06
  and being used. And by God's grace, I can say I
• 49:12
  have learned this art of loving. I have learned the art of seeing
• 49:18
  woman not as object for me, although I can still be tempted
• 49:24
  and even fall in that direction. But I have come to see woman as
• 49:29
  person, made in the image of God, whose body reveals to me a
• 49:35
  stunning, glorious mystery to which I am deeply attracted in
• 49:41
  such a way that I want to honor her and uphold her in the
• 49:46
  fullness of her dignity. But we have to to get there.
• 49:50
  We have to go through some real rearranging of the interior
• 49:54
  furniture, so to speak. And, and that's the work we do
• 49:57
  at the Theology of the Body Institute to take people from
• 50:00
  that masturbatory mindset, a pornographic masturbatory
• 50:05
  mindset to a, to a coming to see purely right.
• 50:10
  And, and I love this line from Jesus Christ where he says
• 50:14
  blessed are the pure of heart for they shall see God.
• 50:21
  This is what we come to see as our eyes get opened.
• 50:25
  We come to see the the message of God a a divine message, a
• 50:30
  divine story written by God right in the male and female
• 50:35
  body. There's nothing, truly, there is
• 50:38
  nothing more awesome than to see with your own eyes the theology
• 50:44
  of the human body. I've always had a hard time
• 50:47
  finding skin care products that I really liked and wanted to
• 50:50
  continue using. I've tried a lot of different
• 50:52
  products, so I was really excited to discover
• 50:54
  nimiskincare.com. That's Nimi. nimiskincare.com.
• 51:00
  What's so awesome about Nimi is it's a beautiful brand that
• 51:02
  shares our values. It's a pro-life, pro family
• 51:04
  brand, but that doesn't mean necessarily the product is going
• 51:07
  to be amazing. So I tried the product a few
• 51:09
  months ago and I fell in love. Nimi Skin Care has an amazing
• 51:12
  vitamin C cream that I love using, an evening moisturizer
• 51:16
  that that I've been using, and I also really love their
• 51:18
  sunscreen. They have amazing products that
• 51:20
  are simple. The ingredients are no nonsense.
• 51:23
  They're listed on the website. You know what you're using on
• 51:25
  your skin and the price point is great.
• 51:28
  So check out nimiskincare.com. I think you're going to really
• 51:31
  enjoy their products. That's Nimi skincare.com and you
• 51:34
  can get 15% off your order using the code Lila at checkout.
• 51:39
  I mean so beautiful and so compelling and I mean, learning
• 51:43
  about this was one of the reasons that I fell in love with
• 51:46
  the teachings of the church. And it was part of that whole
• 51:49
  journey for me back to just misunderstandings or just
• 51:53
  questions or, you know, the devil's advocate side of the
• 51:56
  side of things. What about you mentioned, I
• 51:59
  think condom colored glasses, I think was the phrase you used
• 52:01
  very funny. What is the the answer to OK,
• 52:07
  yes, sex is meant to be generative, but it's not
• 52:10
  generative every time. Obviously some people are
• 52:13
  infertile, some people are old and so they're not able to
• 52:16
  generate anymore, especially women if they're past menopause.
• 52:19
  So there is sex that is good that, you know, let's say within
• 52:24
  marriage is happening that is not generating.
• 52:27
  So why is it such a big deal at certain points, especially if
• 52:31
  there's a a good reason for it to do something to the sexual
• 52:34
  act to make it non generative IE use a condom or use
• 52:37
  contraception? Yes, let's let's jump right in.
• 52:40
  My wife and I have been married 28 years.
• 52:42
  We have 5 beautiful children, age 26 down to age 15.
• 52:47
  And it has only been God's will in 28 years of marriage, for
• 52:54
  five of the times we've come together for there to be new
• 52:58
  life. To our knowledge, it's only been
• 53:01
  God's will. 5 And I assure you, we've come together more than
• 53:04
  five times. Right.
• 53:05
  So clearly. And we've never used
• 53:07
  contraception. Not a once.
• 53:10
  I couldn't. It's unthinkable to me.
• 53:11
  I, I would, I would rather be cut up in 100 million pieces by
• 53:16
  a razor blade than ever render the sexual act sterile.
• 53:20
  Why? Because I have come to
• 53:22
  understand the message of God written into my and my wife's
• 53:28
  fertility. Well, my wife doesn't have
• 53:31
  fertility anymore. She's past childbearing years.
• 53:33
  So this is all part of God's design.
• 53:37
  As I said, God designs a woman's fertility and a man's fertility.
• 53:41
  He designs when they can come together and it can result in
• 53:44
  the child. And he designs it in such a way
• 53:46
  that most of the time it is not his will for a child to come to
• 53:51
  be. The point is simply this.
• 53:53
  We are not the Lords of our fertility.
• 53:59
  Fertility places us in the domain of God.
• 54:02
  Let's just pause on that for a moment.
• 54:05
  Fertility places us in the domain of God.
• 54:11
  God has given us a share. Astounding.
• 54:17
  God has given us a share in his own creative power.
• 54:24
  Lila, I want you to imagine that you were looking at the Milky
• 54:27
  Way Galaxy, and God gave you the power to create that Milky Way
• 54:32
  Galaxy with him. Would you not be astonished at
• 54:37
  your ability to create the Milky Way with God?
• 54:39
  Wouldn't that be awesome? Or suppose He gave you the power
• 54:42
  to create the Himalayas with him, Like you knew that together
• 54:46
  with God you created the Himalayas.
• 54:48
  Would that not be awesome? He's given us something far more
• 54:52
  astounding. He's given us the ability to Co
• 54:57
  create with Him a human life. This fertility puts us on the
• 55:04
  plane, in the domain, in the playing field, if you will, with
• 55:09
  the creative power of God himself.
• 55:14
  Reverence. Reverence is demanded here,
• 55:17
  great reverence. This is the point when human
• 55:21
  sexuality remains linked with fertility.
• 55:25
  It demands that reverence for the creator and the creature and
• 55:31
  the union of man and woman. When we try, when we look at it
• 55:34
  through condom colored glasses, that reverence evaporates and
• 55:39
  all that is left is pleasure, right?
• 55:42
  Not that pleasure in itself is bad, but when it's all that's
• 55:46
  left, the goal becomes pleasure. Let me give you 2 scenarios.
• 55:53
  Let's say, let's go back to, I don't know, the 1940s or the
• 55:56
  1950s. This is prior to the pill,
• 56:00
  right? The pill is not even on people's
• 56:02
  radar at this point. If a guy said to a girl in 19,
• 56:07
  pick a year 1955. If a guy said to a girl, I want
• 56:11
  to have sex with you, she could rightly assume, logically
• 56:18
  assume, oh, he wants to be the father of my children, he wants
• 56:24
  to start a family with me, He wants to commit his life to me.
• 56:31
  That would not be illogical in 1955.
• 56:36
  But today, if a guy says to a girl I want to have sex with
• 56:39
  you, what does that mean? It means you're hot and I want
• 56:43
  an orgasm. The value the value of sex is
• 56:48
  now placed on the amount of pleasure you can give me right
• 56:53
  The the whole if we could use an economic term.
• 56:58
  The economics of sex has changed with its value is no longer the
• 57:04
  family. The the the value of sex is no
• 57:07
  longer starting a family, committing my life to raising
• 57:10
  the next generation. The value in economic terms of
• 57:14
  sex today is whether you are hot or not, right?
• 57:19
  In other words, how much pleasure you can give me.
• 57:22
  The exchange is now one of pleasure rather than one of
• 57:27
  generating the next generation and committing our lives.
• 57:30
  What afforded that change? Modern methods of contraception
• 57:36
  afforded that change, primarily the pill.
• 57:39
  And when the pill doesn't work, what do we do?
• 57:41
  Well, we were just in it for the pleasure.
• 57:43
  We didn't want this pregnancy to begin with, so we'll kill the
• 57:45
  baby. What kind of world do we live
• 57:48
  in? We live in a world where we are
• 57:51
  willing to kill a human life to indulge my right to have sexual
• 57:59
  pleasure whenever I want it. That kind of economy of sex is
• 58:05
  destroying us because we have lost sight of the value and
• 58:11
  dignity of the person, and we have lost sight of the value and
• 58:16
  dignity of the person that may be generated by the genital
• 58:20
  activity we are engaging in. We have now placed pleasure as a
• 58:26
  higher value than the person, and when we place pleasure as a
• 58:31
  higher value than the person, the person is terribly degraded.
• 58:36
  The church has always said Christianity has always said no,
• 58:39
  the person has the higher value. Pleasure must be subordinate to
• 58:44
  the dignity of the person, not the person subordinate to the
• 58:49
  pleasure that I'm seeking. When we flip those, it's the
• 58:52
  difference between a culture of life and a culture of death.
• 58:58
  I it's so well said. What you're everything you're
• 59:02
  describing, Christopher, The you know, the the person who is OK,
• 59:06
  Yeah, they're with you. What you're saying So
• 59:08
  compelling, but but what about those cases where you might need
• 59:15
  to use contraception for some serious reason?
• 59:18
  It's not that you want to never have children.
• 59:21
  It's not that you think children is bad.
• 59:23
  It's not that you disrespect sex.
• 59:25
  You think it's holy. You think God created it.
• 59:28
  You have reverence for the other person you want to sacrifice for
• 59:31
  them. In fact, you might even be using
• 59:33
  the contraception because of the other person's, you know, mental
• 59:35
  health issues or physical issues.
• 59:38
  You know, all of these reasons, right to justify in these
• 59:41
  circumstances. Why?
• 59:43
  How can we have this hard line of saying, well contraception is
• 59:47
  always wrong? Yes.
• 59:48
  The end never justifies the means.
• 59:52
  You might have 101 good reasons not to bring another life into
• 59:57
  the world. Let's just take that as a given.
• 59:59
  You have a couple, they have a good reason not to bring another
• 1:00:02
  life into the world. Well, rendering the sexual act
• 1:00:06
  sterile. Is not the only recourse not to
• 1:00:10
  bring another life into the world, Right.
• 1:00:13
  And And let me talk about reverence.
• 1:00:15
  You said I have reverence for sex, but I still want a
• 1:00:18
  contracept. No, I'm sorry, I'd have to tell
• 1:00:21
  you. You don't have reverence for
• 1:00:22
  sex. You can't say if you're looking
• 1:00:26
  at, I don't know, the Mona Lisa. You can't claim that you have
• 1:00:33
  reverence for the Mona Lisa if you take a razor blade to it,
• 1:00:38
  right? You can't claim that you have
• 1:00:39
  reverence for sex if you are rendering it sterile.
• 1:00:44
  You are, you are erasing, you are defrauding the sexual act of
• 1:00:49
  the way God created it to be. In fact, you're you're taking a
• 1:00:53
  razor blade to it. You're saying I don't like the
• 1:00:56
  way God created sex. I don't like the fact that if we
• 1:00:59
  had sex tonight, you could become pregnant.
• 1:01:02
  So I'm going to demand that you render yourself sterile.
• 1:01:06
  Lila, how would you feel if your husband said to you, I'll only
• 1:01:10
  have sex with you tonight if you get a nose job?
• 1:01:15
  I don't like your nose. I don't like the way God made
• 1:01:17
  your nose. Get a nose job and then I'll
• 1:01:19
  have sex with you. Is it any different for a man to
• 1:01:22
  say to his wife, I don't like the fact that you are fertile.
• 1:01:26
  I don't like the fact that if I had sex with you tonight, you
• 1:01:29
  could conceive. So here, insert this diaphragm
• 1:01:32
  or get on the pill. What you are saying you can't
• 1:01:37
  get it, You can't escape from this.
• 1:01:38
  What you are saying is I don't like the way God made you and
• 1:01:43
  I'm going to alter it, right? When Christ speaks of committing
• 1:01:49
  adultery in the heart, I want to zoom in on that word adultery.
• 1:01:55
  It add alter comes from the Latin to alter, right?
• 1:01:59
  To adulterate something is to alter it from God's original
• 1:02:04
  intention. When we render the sexual act
• 1:02:08
  sterile, we are adulterating the sexual act.
• 1:02:13
  We are altering it according to God's original intention, ends
• 1:02:19
  and means. Let's take an example that is
• 1:02:22
  not sexual, just for the sake of an analogy.
• 1:02:25
  Say you have two people who want to lose weight and let's say
• 1:02:31
  they have a good reason, a just reason.
• 1:02:33
  It's not some fanatical situation.
• 1:02:36
  You know, it's, it's a legitimate reason I need to lose
• 1:02:38
  weight for medical reasons. You have one person who
• 1:02:44
  disciplines himself or herself in eating food, right?
• 1:02:48
  There's the piece of cheesecake. And the one person says, I'm not
• 1:02:52
  going to eat the piece of cheesecake.
• 1:02:54
  The other person says, well, it sure would taste good if I ate
• 1:02:58
  that cheesecake. I'm going to eat the cheesecake,
• 1:03:00
  but then I'm going to vomit it up.
• 1:03:03
  So I don't gain the weight. I get the pleasure, but I don't
• 1:03:05
  gain the weight. Contraceptive sex is kind of
• 1:03:10
  like sexual bulimia. We want the pleasure, but we
• 1:03:14
  don't want the fruit, right? It's like eating the cheesecake
• 1:03:18
  and vomiting it up. Whereas you have a serious
• 1:03:22
  reason not to bring a child into the world.
• 1:03:24
  OK, then don't engage in the behavior that brings children
• 1:03:28
  into the world. You're not an animal.
• 1:03:30
  You can control yourself. And so here we are, back at the
• 1:03:35
  difference between animals and human beings.
• 1:03:40
  Why do we spay and neuter our dogs and cats?
• 1:03:44
  Why don't we just ask them to abstain?
• 1:03:50
  That's a question. Why don't we just ask our pets
• 1:03:52
  to abstain? Why do we have to?
• 1:03:55
  They can't abstain. Ah, we can.
• 1:03:59
  And if we say we can't or we believe we can't, we've just
• 1:04:03
  reduced ourselves to the level of animals.
• 1:04:07
  Why do we have freedom? Freedom is given to us as the
• 1:04:12
  capacity to love, and John Paul the Second says in love and
• 1:04:17
  responsibility. Whenever our sexual desires
• 1:04:21
  interfere with our call to love the other person, we must say no
• 1:04:27
  to them, right? And if my wife is fertile on a
• 1:04:34
  given night and we have a serious reason not to be
• 1:04:37
  bringing another life into the world, love demands that I
• 1:04:42
  abstain from that act that would bring children into the world.
• 1:04:47
  To engage in the act and defraud it of its procreative potential
• 1:04:52
  is to take a razor blade to the Mona Lisa.
• 1:04:54
  I would never in a million years do it.
• 1:04:56
  Take the razor blade to me. Slice me into 1000 pieces.
• 1:04:59
  I will never dishonor God's good creation in my wife by demanding
• 1:05:04
  she render herself sterile. I will never do it because I see
• 1:05:09
  how beautiful she is as God made her to be and I don't want her
• 1:05:13
  to change herself for me so that I can indulge and have an orgasm
• 1:05:17
  them tonight. Not going to do it.
• 1:05:18
  I'm not going to treat her that way.
• 1:05:20
  I am going to have mastery of myself and say no to engaging in
• 1:05:25
  the sexual act out of respect and love for my wife and for her
• 1:05:31
  fertility. Well, the.
• 1:05:33
  Other aspect too of this is there's so much to love and to
• 1:05:36
  intimacy beyond sex. I mean, sex is this incredible
• 1:05:42
  and it's an incredibly unique way of the living intimacy.
• 1:05:46
  You could say it's the most intimate thing you can do with
• 1:05:48
  another person, your body, their body, But you know, there's so
• 1:05:52
  much other, there's so many other ways a husband can love a
• 1:05:54
  wife, a wife can love a husband. And so I think that's another
• 1:05:57
  thing is we we have this obsession with sex as a culture
• 1:06:00
  where, yes, sex should be on a pedestal, I think.
• 1:06:03
  But at the same time, there's so much more to human love than
• 1:06:06
  sex. And I think part of that is we
• 1:06:09
  as a culture don't get celibacy. I think celibacy is scary and
• 1:06:14
  seems weird and odd. And I'd like to go there to kind
• 1:06:17
  of round us out here, Chris, because, you know, Christopher,
• 1:06:20
  because, you know, obviously in the Catholic tradition, there's
• 1:06:22
  the celibate priesthood, right? And the religious life, You're
• 1:06:26
  celibate if you're not married. You know, everyone's called the
• 1:06:28
  celibacy who's not married, of course.
• 1:06:30
  And in marriage, you may be called the periods of celibacy.
• 1:06:33
  Can you talk about, when it comes to the theology of the
• 1:06:35
  body and the value of sexuality, what it means to be freely or
• 1:06:41
  fully alive sexually, even as a celibate?
• 1:06:46
  Yes, what we don't get in our culture today is what I would
• 1:06:50
  call self mastery, right? We we have this big line about
• 1:06:55
  sexual freedom in our world today.
• 1:06:58
  But what does the world mean by sexual freedom?
• 1:07:01
  It means do whatever you want, whenever you want, however you
• 1:07:04
  want, without ever saying no. Time out.
• 1:07:09
  Press into that and we will discover that what the world
• 1:07:12
  promotes as sexual freedom is actually sexual addiction.
• 1:07:19
  Is a man who cannot say no to alcohol free, right?
• 1:07:24
  Will he be free by just binging on booze that is not sexual or
• 1:07:30
  that is not freedom with alcohol?
• 1:07:31
  That's enslavement to alcohol, right?
• 1:07:34
  Freedom in the realm of alcohol means I know how to enjoy a
• 1:07:38
  drink within moderation and I know how to say no, right?
• 1:07:43
  But addiction is what we're talking about here.
• 1:07:45
  When when the culture says sexual freedom press in, it's
• 1:07:49
  actually sexual addiction, right?
• 1:07:51
  If you cannot say no to your sexual desires, your yes means
• 1:07:57
  nothing. You are not free.
• 1:08:00
  There's another way to see, there's another way to think.
• 1:08:03
  There's another way to experience our sexual desires
• 1:08:06
  here and. Sorry, sorry to interrupt here,
• 1:08:09
  but I think this is some this is such a misunderstanding.
• 1:08:12
  Because you need food to survive.
• 1:08:14
  We cannot. Our desire to eat is one that we
• 1:08:17
  should not endlessly ever say no to because we need nutrition to
• 1:08:22
  live and to breathe. Nobody needs to have sex.
• 1:08:25
  No individual needs to have sex to live.
• 1:08:28
  And I think that's what the modern mind is like.
• 1:08:30
  Oh no, some people think I need sex to live.
• 1:08:33
  And what you're saying it sounds like is that's not a need.
• 1:08:36
  That's an addiction that you have, yes.
• 1:08:38
  That becomes if you if you feel like you need sexual release,
• 1:08:42
  like you need 3 meals a day, and you indulge in those needs as if
• 1:08:48
  you are free, you are not free, you are enslaved, Right?
• 1:08:53
  I remember as a teenage boy when I thought I was sexually
• 1:08:57
  liberated and free because I had tossed off the oppressive
• 1:09:00
  shackles of my Catholic upbringing and I was indulging
• 1:09:03
  my lustful desires, whatever I wanted.
• 1:09:06
  I thought I was free until I realized I couldn't say no to my
• 1:09:11
  sexual desires. I was enslaved by them, and I
• 1:09:15
  called slavery freedom. What is the freedom to which the
• 1:09:20
  human person is called? It is the freedom to be in
• 1:09:23
  control of my desires so that I can put them at the service of
• 1:09:27
  what is true, good, and beautiful.
• 1:09:31
  And here's an analogy I often turn to.
• 1:09:35
  Anyone can walk up to a piano keyboard and just bang on it and
• 1:09:40
  make meaningless noise, right? But it's going to grate against
• 1:09:44
  the ear, right? A concert pianist can also walk
• 1:09:49
  up to a piano keyboard and spontaneously tickle those keys
• 1:09:53
  and make music that lifts our souls to the heavens.
• 1:09:58
  But we know behind that spontaneity of the beautiful
• 1:10:02
  music is a lifetime of training, of discipline, of sacrifice, of
• 1:10:10
  learning to master my own body, to put it at the service of what
• 1:10:15
  is true, good and beautiful, right?
• 1:10:18
  Let's apply that to our sexuality.
• 1:10:21
  Anyone can indulge sexual desire when it just comes upon the
• 1:10:26
  person. But that's like banning banging
• 1:10:29
  on a keyboard and making meaningless noise.
• 1:10:32
  We are called to take that sexual energy and learn how to
• 1:10:36
  master it, to put it at the service of the true, the good
• 1:10:40
  and the beautiful. That will take discipline.
• 1:10:44
  That will take training. That will take struggle.
• 1:10:48
  That will take effort, but it is a constructive effort, like the
• 1:10:53
  effort of an athlete who knows, like a Michael Jordan who can
• 1:10:57
  fly through the air and dunk that ball with grace and beauty
• 1:11:00
  and skill, or a concert pianist that the sacrifice behind that.
• 1:11:05
  We're talking about a constructive self-discipline
• 1:11:09
  that makes us master of our own body so that I can put my
• 1:11:14
  sexuality at the service either of one person for the whole of
• 1:11:20
  my life, namely my wife and the offspring that would come from
• 1:11:24
  our union, or I could also put my body totally at the service
• 1:11:33
  of the Kingdom. Now that's a theological word.
• 1:11:35
  What do we mean? Jesus says some remain celibate
• 1:11:41
  for the sake of the Kingdom of heaven.
• 1:11:45
  What does that mean? Here We're going to go
• 1:11:48
  theological. We've been talking mostly on the
• 1:11:50
  philosophical side. Now we're going to theology of
• 1:11:52
  the body. We have to look at Scripture
• 1:11:55
  here from beginning to end. The Bible begins with the
• 1:11:59
  marriage of man and woman, but it ends in the Book of
• 1:12:03
  Revelation with the marriage of Christ and the church, God and
• 1:12:08
  humanity. And what we learn when we're
• 1:12:11
  reading the Bible with our theology of the body lenses, we
• 1:12:15
  learned the whole Bible can be summarized with five words.
• 1:12:19
  God wants to marry us, and he wanted that eternal marital plan
• 1:12:27
  to be so plain to us, so obvious to us, that he chiseled an image
• 1:12:32
  of it right in our bodies when he made us male and female and
• 1:12:36
  called the two to become one flesh.
• 1:12:39
  And so Saint Paul tells us that this union in one flesh is a
• 1:12:44
  mega mystery and it refers to Christ in the Church.
• 1:12:50
  Christ came and took on flesh to be one in the flesh with us
• 1:12:56
  forever. Bible begins with the marriage
• 1:13:00
  of man and woman. It ends with the marriage of
• 1:13:02
  Christ in the church. The whole purpose of this
• 1:13:04
  marriage, the marriage that starts the Bible, is to point us
• 1:13:07
  to the eternal marriage of Christ in the church.
• 1:13:11
  And This is why Jesus says in the resurrection, at the end of
• 1:13:15
  time, in the final reality, men and women are no longer given in
• 1:13:21
  marriage. Why?
• 1:13:23
  Because you no longer need a sign to point you to heaven when
• 1:13:29
  you're in heaven. The union of man and woman in
• 1:13:33
  one flesh, husband and wife in their intimate embrace.
• 1:13:37
  It is the main biblical image of the heavenly reality that awaits
• 1:13:43
  us on the other side, where we will be one in an eternal
• 1:13:46
  communion with God forever. We don't need a sign to point us
• 1:13:52
  to Disneyland when we've arrived at Disneyland, right?
• 1:13:56
  We're there. Only in this context can we
• 1:14:00
  understand why Christ calls some to remain celibate for the sake
• 1:14:05
  of the Kingdom. It is celibacy for God's sake.
• 1:14:11
  It is not celibacy for God's sake.
• 1:14:14
  It is a choice to give my entire life to that eternal reality.
• 1:14:21
  I'll tell a story here that I hope will make the point.
• 1:14:25
  There was a a very wise Carmelite nun who was giving a
• 1:14:30
  lecture at a secular university and she was trying to explain
• 1:14:35
  that as a celibate woman, in her intimate life of prayer with the
• 1:14:39
  Lord, she experienced what the Saints call nuptial union with
• 1:14:46
  love eternal. Well, this agnostic psychologist
• 1:14:51
  comes up to her after her presentation and says you're
• 1:14:55
  sick. What you really want is sex, but
• 1:14:59
  you're disguising your desire for sex with all this ridiculous
• 1:15:04
  talk about union with God, she said.
• 1:15:08
  Oh, no, no, no, I beg to differ. What the whole world really
• 1:15:13
  wants is union with God, but it's disguising that desire with
• 1:15:18
  all this ridiculous sex. Who do you think was right?
• 1:15:24
  What? You're describing reminds me of
• 1:15:26
  the Caravaggio of Mary Magdalene, who's in ecstasy and
• 1:15:29
  the idea there is she had lived a life of sin and you know, had
• 1:15:32
  experienced this physical orgasm, but now she's
• 1:15:34
  experiencing something even greater, which is a spiritual
• 1:15:37
  ecstasy and of. Avila Caravaggio's or, or or
• 1:15:42
  maybe. No, no, it's Bernini's.
• 1:15:44
  Teresa of Avila. I'm thinking of you, you know.
• 1:15:46
  Yes, yes. Caravaggio's.
• 1:15:47
  Mary Magdalene. You're exactly right.
• 1:15:49
  I have that there. But but you're right, there's
• 1:15:51
  another one of Teresa of Avila. Yes, this is this is part of the
• 1:15:55
  mystical tradition of the church where we can learn how to direct
• 1:16:01
  Eros would be the right word. Eros direct that passion and
• 1:16:05
  yearning for love and union. We can learn how to direct it
• 1:16:09
  towards love, eternal right. And the first one to teach us
• 1:16:13
  this is the Blessed Mother Mary. Mary's virginal conception of
• 1:16:18
  Christ is not a negation of her femininity or her being a woman.
• 1:16:25
  It's rather demonstrating that femininity, her sexuality, her
• 1:16:30
  womanhood can be opened directly to God.
• 1:16:34
  And what happens when she opens her sexual being directly to
• 1:16:38
  God? She conceives virginly God's
• 1:16:42
  Son, right? The very foundations of
• 1:16:46
  Christian faith. Contrary to all the prudish
• 1:16:50
  ideas that get projected onto Christianity, at the very
• 1:16:54
  foundations of Christianity we have a woman opening her
• 1:16:58
  fertility, opening her womb, opening her sexuality, directing
• 1:17:04
  her Eros towards love eternal. This is Christian faith.
• 1:17:10
  And it also explains why it makes theological sense that
• 1:17:13
  Mary and Joseph would have been celibate in their marriage.
• 1:17:16
  Because their marriage, they the intimacy of their marriage was
• 1:17:19
  something out of this world, truly.
• 1:17:22
  Mary. We'll put it this way.
• 1:17:24
  Mary was already living the consummation of the eternal
• 1:17:28
  marriage. To have had sexual relations
• 1:17:30
  with Joseph would have been a step backwards, right?
• 1:17:33
  Instead of going backwards and having sex with Joseph, Mary
• 1:17:37
  reaches out her hand to Joseph and says, Joseph, come with me,
• 1:17:40
  baby. I'm going to show you the
• 1:17:41
  eternal union. I'm going to take it into the
• 1:17:44
  ecstasy of these eternal nuptials.
• 1:17:47
  We are destined for this wedding feast, this eternal banquet.
• 1:17:53
  And what does Jesus say? He says go into the main streets
• 1:17:56
  and invite everyone to starve to death.
• 1:18:00
  No, that's not what he says. He says go into the main streets
• 1:18:03
  and invite everyone to this wedding feast.
• 1:18:08
  That's why I said I got the greatest job in the world.
• 1:18:10
  I just get to invite hungry people to a banquet.
• 1:18:13
  All right, last question, Chris, and this is something that a lot
• 1:18:16
  of people get hung up on. What is the difference between
• 1:18:19
  natural family planning and contraception?
• 1:18:22
  Some people say that NFP is basically Catholic
• 1:18:24
  contraception. Yeah, when we were talking
• 1:18:27
  earlier about why do we spay and neuter our dogs and cats, right?
• 1:18:30
  Why don't we just ask them to abstain?
• 1:18:32
  Well, because they can't abstain.
• 1:18:34
  What is the principle of natural family planning?
• 1:18:37
  When you are fertile and you have a good reason not to have a
• 1:18:39
  child, you refrain. You use yourself mastery to
• 1:18:43
  refrain from the sexual act. Well, what about on another
• 1:18:47
  occasion when the woman is naturally infertile?
• 1:18:51
  Is there any reason you have to abstain then?
• 1:18:54
  Oh come on, what is the big difference people say between
• 1:18:58
  sterilizing the ACT yourself and just waiting till it's naturally
• 1:19:03
  infertile? Both couples avoid children.
• 1:19:06
  The end result is the same thing.
• 1:19:09
  To which I respond, oh come on, what is the big difference
• 1:19:14
  between killing grandma and just waiting till she dies naturally?
• 1:19:20
  The end result is the same thing, dead grandma.
• 1:19:25
  Yes, the end result is the same thing, dead grandma.
• 1:19:27
  But let me point out a very significant difference.
• 1:19:31
  In one, you killed her. It's a serious sin called
• 1:19:35
  murder. And in the other, grandma is
• 1:19:38
  dead, but there's no sin involved whatsoever because her
• 1:19:42
  death is an act of God. Think about it.
• 1:19:47
  Enter into this, spend some time with it, and you will recognize
• 1:19:52
  if you can tell the difference between euthanasia and natural
• 1:19:57
  death, you can tell the difference between contraception
• 1:20:02
  and natural family planning. It's the same difference.
• 1:20:06
  I'm not saying those who use contraception are guilty of
• 1:20:10
  murder. I'm not saying that.
• 1:20:12
  Rather, this is the analogy in euthanasia in in natural death
• 1:20:18
  and natural infertility, God remains God.
• 1:20:22
  In contraception and euthanasia, we take the powers of life into
• 1:20:28
  our own hands and we make ourselves like God.
• 1:20:33
  Wasn't that the original sin to begin with?
• 1:20:38
  Think about it. Enter into it.
• 1:20:41
  The Catholic Church is not crazy.
• 1:20:43
  And one day, the whole world, we'll see that the Catholic
• 1:20:48
  Church was not crazy, and this teaching will be vindicated.
• 1:20:52
  Prophetic words. Christopher.
• 1:20:54
  OK, where can people find your amazing work?
• 1:20:57
  Go to theologythebody.com to the that's take it to the main
• 1:21:00
  website. My wife and I do a podcast
• 1:21:02
  called The Ask Christopher West Show hosted by Wendy West.
• 1:21:06
  We have over 250 episodes. Anywhere you listen to podcasts,
• 1:21:10
  just type in Ask Christopher West.
• 1:21:12
  We have a very active YouTube presence at the Theology of the
• 1:21:15
  Body Institute. Check us out there.
• 1:21:18
  Yeah, that'll that'll take you up to the main places.
• 1:21:21
  Amazing. Thank you so much for coming on
• 1:21:23
  the show. Christopher Lila.
• 1:21:25
  It's my pleasure. Thank you for all the good work
• 1:21:26
  you do. Thanks so much for listening to
• 1:21:29
  this episode of the Lila Rose Podcast.
• 1:21:31
  Please check out Christopher West's work.
• 1:21:33
  It's really phenomenal. I want to hear your guys, those
• 1:21:36
  thoughts. We're going to keep on having
• 1:21:38
  these kinds of conversations on the podcast.
• 1:21:39
  So as always, you can leave a comment, send a message.
• 1:21:42
  You can e-mail me at lila@gtvmedia.com.
• 1:21:46
  Don't forget to subscribe to the podcast and on our YouTube
• 1:21:49
  channel, wherever you get your podcasts, whether that's
• 1:21:51
  Spotify, Apple, or elsewhere, can leave us a review that helps
• 1:21:55
  the podcast reach more people. And of course, if you haven't
• 1:21:58
  already, join our Locals community.
• 1:22:00
  We're so excited about our Locals community.
• 1:22:02
  It's starting to grow. This is where we're going to
• 1:22:04
  have behind the scenes stuff. We're going to have special
• 1:22:07
  access for members. And this is where you can
• 1:22:09
  financially support the podcast so we can keep growing it and
• 1:22:12
  producing more episodes. Check that out at the link in
• 1:22:15
  the bio and we'll see you next time.