If I haven’t mentioned it before, I should have. Back when we began attending church for the good of our son, an old, old, ancient priest who could have been preserved since the Byzantine Empire was pulled from retirement to give us all a lecture on proper Catholic sexuality. No, it is not a contradiction in terms since the Church loves large families, but the restrictions are numerous, and for our times, somewhat ridiculous. Nothing but organ to organ sex without birth control and, of course, only in marriage. He almost turned purple when mentioning oral sex, so much so that I thought the tomb might be calling him back, and I couldn’t help but look around at the young couples and their reactions. While I was smiling slyly at my wife, most looked like the dog being prepared for a bath: unable to avoid it and dreading every moment.
Since then, I do not know of any fellow church-goers whose grown children have not first lived in sin before marriage, if they are or have been married at all. It is as if there are two universes for the faithful, and neither the twain shall meet. Most have simply disregarded the old admonishments, because that’s the way it has been since the Boomer sexual revolution and there is no putting the toothpaste back in the tube (although I have done it. It takes care and patience and is really not worth it). I myself find much of the restrictions petty and pointless. However, it is clear that the family structure was perpetuated in large part by pre-marital restrictions, and that without them, fewer are getting married and even fewer are having children, or at least are having no more than one or two. There are long-term consequences for that, many of which still remain largely under the radar.
Still, while I believe that the old ways are gone forever and I am not deeply mourning much of the loss, there was a lot of wisdom in some of them, reaching even beyond family stability. This has been made clear by a new series we are watching on Amazon Prime, “The Fall,” with Gillian Anderson (X-Files) as the flawed police hero who is brought into the dark and tangled underground world of Belfast to solve an ongoing spate of serial killings.
Serial murderers: when have they not been connected to sexual malfunction? Ted Bundy, Jeffery Dahmer, the Boston Strangler, Jack the Ripper – the list goes on and on – were all psychosexually sick puppies, warped in early life or the womb or before time began to derive pleasure from other people’s pain and death. In our movie it is the same, this killer a decent family man who makes his living as a psychologist for the bereaved. He apparently loves his two children and also seems to be fairly good at his job, at the very least feigning sympathy for his patients, but in private goes online to shop for victims, then stalks them to learn their ways by night. He then strangles them and dresses them for Playboy-style poses that he takes home on his IPhone to enjoy, naked and panting in the house attic.
It could be the house basement as well, both reflecting the dark desires that the serial killer knows are forbidden by society. Such killers are almost always men, and men know why; it is not just that men are generally stronger than women, but that their sex drive is much more demanding. Read any story of war or of ancient times or The Bible itself, and you will find men, even common men, behaving badly due to the sexual urge. In this we can see an ugly truth: that although most men do not desire that a sexual mate suffer, most strongly desire a sexual mate and will do almost anything to get one or more than one. The extent to which they will go or not go is largely determined by their culture and familial background. In the past, part of a soldier’s pay was being allowed to have his way with the enemy’s women (or for some, girls or boys as well). Many if not most did. Ask a warrior of Genghis Khan’s army if he felt sorrow for the women he raped and he would probably kill you with righteous indignation. It is, he would say as he drove his spear through you, the way of the world and the way of the victor. So it has always been.
And so it would still be without well-honed moral restrictions. Even the decent Mongolian warrior did not rape within his community and certainly did not go after his mother or sisters. The outcast would, and he would be like the rapists and, most out on the fringe, the serial killer in our own society. There is a difference, but by how much? If the average guy would rape under certain conditions, how far is he from the angels? How much is he like and not like the psycho-sexual killer?
There are reams of volumes written on this, and for good reason. It is obvious from the greater study of sexual violence and perversion that restraint among men is the norm, but we know the dividing line between the psycho and the normal is not a division between two universes. The twain sometimes do meet. The important thing is knowing how to keep them from meeting.
Lord knows the founders of Catholicism knew of sexual violence. They lived, after all, in the latter half of the Roman Empire with its many unbelievably perverse emperors, and the general chaos of war and rape. There is death in war, and killing was and is condemned, but they could not condemn sexuality. It is the great fact of most multi-cellular life, and without it the world we know could not exist. So what to do, from great thinkers who understood violence and perversion from daily life? Rules. Rules against the temptations of the greed of polygamy, against rape, against pornographic thought, and against anything that might tempt one toward the dark side of sexuality. Maybe they didn’t get it all right, but they knew they had to try.
I recall a foreign reporter and popular personality talking about the “lizard mind,” which was a catch-all phrase back then for those desires and actions that rise from the pre-rational mind. Murder is one, sex another, as well as appetite, and probably all those things that rise to the order of the Seven Deadly Sins if traced back from conscious thought. When we let them go, we know, we are behaving like animals, but there is something more; when we let them go, we are behaving like thinking humans behaving like animals. Animals are not kind and will kill their own and eat their young under certain conditions, but not even the house cat is truly perverse. As far as we know, only humans can take basic drives and distort or enlarge them, and hold them in their minds as fantasies that can be fulfilled. It is not just upbringing; dogs and horses and so on are often treated cruelly from birth (by humans), but they do not alter the sex act or plan rapes. Only humans can do that.
But only humans can be repelled by such acts. It is our human ability to reflect, then, that causes both cruelty and perversion as well as kindness and compassion. These have been called the devils and angels of our soul. And while socio-biologists have laboriously worked out some reasons for human altruism, they have not for anti-social violent perversion, at least not to (my) satisfaction. A release valve for human socialization? But why should we need a release valve for something that is supposedly programmed within us? Why not just call them devils and angels and deal with them from there?
There is a reason that Satan is pictured as a snake, a lizard. His is the lizard mind that plays with free will – the ability to think and make choices, but also to imagine and fantasize – distorting the gift of the angels that we have also been given beyond the mind of animals. This, not sex but the perversion of sex – was not meant to be. This, the dark side of sexuality, is the snake in the garden that teases the imagination and allows it to act as though the ‘other’ is only an actor in our fantasy life. It is the essence of egoism, the faulty self-perception that we and only we matter, which is a distorted view that free will does not necessarily make, but allows. This is what is at the bottom of the great Catholic ban on so many sexual things. The rules are meant to starve the lizard and direct the will towards a more perfect goal. The means might sometimes seem ridiculous, but not the ends. This does not justify all the means, but should have us reconsider just what the means were meant to be for us all – as a guide to lead us away from a potentially endless spiral into egoistic darkness that can block out all light.
If I haven’t mentioned it before, I should have. Back when we began attending church for the good of our son, an old, old, ancient priest who could have been preserved since the Byzantine Empire was pulled from retirement to give us all a lecture on proper Catholic sexuality. No, it is not a contradiction in terms since the Church loves large families, but the restrictions are numerous, and for our times, somewhat ridiculous. Nothing but organ to organ sex without birth control and, of course, only in marriage. He almost turned purple when mentioning oral sex, so much so that I thought the tomb might be calling him back, and I couldn’t help but look around at the young couples and their reactions. While I was smiling slyly at my wife, most looked like the dog being prepared for a bath: unable to avoid it and dreading every moment.
Since then, I do not know of any fellow church-goers whose grown children have not first lived in sin before marriage, if they are or have been married at all. It is as if there are two universes for the faithful, and neither the twain shall meet. Most have simply disregarded the old admonishments, because that’s the way it has been since the Boomer sexual revolution and there is no putting the toothpaste back in the tube (although I have done it. It takes care and patience and is really not worth it). I myself find much of the restrictions petty and pointless. However, it is clear that the family structure was perpetuated in large part by pre-marital restrictions, and that without them, fewer are getting married and even fewer are having children, or at least are having no more than one or two. There are long-term consequences for that, many of which still remain largely under the radar.
Still, while I believe that the old ways are gone forever and I am not deeply mourning much of the loss, there was a lot of wisdom in some of them, reaching even beyond family stability. This has been made clear by a new series we are watching on Amazon Prime, “The Fall,” with Gillian Anderson (X-Files) as the flawed police hero who is brought into the dark and tangled underground world of Belfast to solve an ongoing spate of serial killings.
Serial murderers: when have they not been connected to sexual malfunction? Ted Bundy, Jeffery Dahmer, the Boston Strangler, Jack the Ripper – the list goes on and on – were all psychosexually sick puppies, warped in early life or the womb or before time began to derive pleasure from other people’s pain and death. In our movie it is the same, this killer a decent family man who makes his living as a psychologist for the bereaved. He apparently loves his two children and also seems to be fairly good at his job, at the very least feigning sympathy for his patients, but in private goes online to shop for victims, then stalks them to learn their ways by night. He then strangles them and dresses them for Playboy-style poses that he takes home on his IPhone to enjoy, naked and panting in the house attic.
It could be the house basement as well, both reflecting the dark desires that the serial killer knows are forbidden by society. Such killers are almost always men, and men know why; it is not just that men are generally stronger than women, but that their sex drive is much more demanding. Read any story of war or of ancient times or The Bible itself, and you will find men, even common men, behaving badly due to the sexual urge. In this we can see an ugly truth: that although most men do not desire that a sexual mate suffer, most strongly desire a sexual mate and will do almost anything to get one or more than one. The extent to which they will go or not go is largely determined by their culture and familial background. In the past, part of a soldier’s pay was being allowed to have his way with the enemy’s women (or for some, girls or boys as well). Many if not most did. Ask a warrior of Genghis Khan’s army if he felt sorrow for the women he raped and he would probably kill you with righteous indignation. It is, he would say as he drove his spear through you, the way of the world and the way of the victor. So it has always been.
And so it would still be without well-honed moral restrictions. Even the decent Mongolian warrior did not rape within his community and certainly did not go after his mother or sisters. The outcast would, and he would be like the rapists and, most out on the fringe, the serial killer in our own society. There is a difference, but by how much? If the average guy would rape under certain conditions, how far is he from the angels? How much is he like and not like the psycho-sexual killer?
There are reams of volumes written on this, and for good reason. It is obvious from the greater study of sexual violence and perversion that restraint among men is the norm, but we know the dividing line between the psycho and the normal is not a division between two universes. The twain sometimes do meet. The important thing is knowing how to keep them from meeting.
Lord knows the founders of Catholicism knew of sexual violence. They lived, after all, in the latter half of the Roman Empire with its many unbelievably perverse emperors, and the general chaos of war and rape. There is death in war, and killing was and is condemned, but they could not condemn sexuality. It is the great fact of most multi-cellular life, and without it the world we know could not exist. So what to do, from great thinkers who understood violence and perversion from daily life? Rules. Rules against the temptations of the greed of polygamy, against rape, against pornographic thought, and against anything that might tempt one toward the dark side of sexuality. Maybe they didn’t get it all right, but they knew they had to try.
I recall a foreign reporter and popular personality talking about the “lizard mind,” which was a catch-all phrase back then for those desires and actions that rise from the pre-rational mind. Murder is one, sex another, as well as appetite, and probably all those things that rise to the order of the Seven Deadly Sins if traced back from conscious thought. When we let them go, we know, we are behaving like animals, but there is something more; when we let them go, we are behaving like thinking humans behaving like animals. Animals are not kind and will kill their own and eat their young under certain conditions, but not even the house cat is truly perverse. As far as we know, only humans can take basic drives and distort or enlarge them, and hold them in their minds as fantasies that can be fulfilled. It is not just upbringing; dogs and horses and so on are often treated cruelly from birth (by humans), but they do not alter the sex act or plan rapes. Only humans can do that.
But only humans can be repelled by such acts. It is our human ability to reflect, then, that causes both cruelty and perversion as well as kindness and compassion. These have been called the devils and angels of our soul. And while socio-biologists have laboriously worked out some reasons for human altruism, they have not for anti-social violent perversion, at least not to (my) satisfaction. A release valve for human socialization? But why should we need a release valve for something that is supposedly programmed within us? Why not just call them devils and angels and deal with them from there?
There is a reason that Satan is pictured as a snake, a lizard. His is the lizard mind that plays with free will – the ability to think and make choices, but also to imagine and fantasize – distorting the gift of the angels that we have also been given beyond the mind of animals. This, not sex but the perversion of sex – was not meant to be. This, the dark side of sexuality, is the snake in the garden that teases the imagination and allows it to act as though the ‘other’ is only an actor in our fantasy life. It is the essence of egoism, the faulty self-perception that we and only we matter, which is a distorted view that free will does not necessarily make, but allows. This is what is at the bottom of the great Catholic ban on so many sexual things. The rules are meant to starve the lizard and direct the will towards a more perfect goal. The means might sometimes seem ridiculous, but not the ends. This does not justify all the means, but should have us reconsider just what the means were meant to be for us all – as a guide to lead us away from a potentially endless spiral into egoistic darkness that can block out all light.
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