{"id":6964,"date":"2006-06-22T13:50:29","date_gmt":"2006-06-22T13:50:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2006\/06\/must-read-of-the-day.html"},"modified":"2006-06-22T13:50:29","modified_gmt":"2006-06-22T13:50:29","slug":"must-read-of-the-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/06\/must-read-of-the-day.html","title":{"rendered":"Must read of the day"},"content":{"rendered":"

Porn and the Sacred Heart by one Patrick Sill – in Godspy.<\/a><\/p>\n

Beautifully written, from the heart and soul (and loins), true and that profoundly Christian mystery of pain and hope.  This marvelous passage is not directly related to the main point, but it might entice you to go read the whole thing, if you’re so inclined.<\/p>\n

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For all of it: my Catholicism, our daughter, the baptism, and to some degree the celibacy\u2014I can only blame my wife. And God. Years ago, when we had barely thought of marriage, she took me to a rural orphanage in Honduras, run by a toothless Franciscan. There, a humble tabernacle in a cement block chapel sent chills through my spine. I found a prayer of \u201cAdoration to the Blessed Sacrament\u201d in an old book, next to a dusty kneeler. My calloused evangelical heart was made raw by the possibility that the real presence of my Lord was silently waiting for me to notice him. I made sure I was alone, and read the words, holding their sweetness as long as I could. Quietly, I said, \u201cI know you\u2019re in there, Jesus,\u201d and let my fingers ghost across the front of the tabernacle. Then I left before anyone saw my embarrassment for falling in love with a wafer locked up in a golden box. <\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

One commentor at Godsbody (not to be confused with Godspy!) said it was "weirdly incomplete" – <\/a>well, I’d imagine because it’s written in an incomplete moment. <\/span><\/p>\n

Also from Godpsy what Gandhi believed about marriage, sex and birth control:<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

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Once, in a debate with a birth control advocate, his opponent asked Gandhi whether he would advocate artificial birth control in specific cases where the health of the mother might be at risk. His reply? \u201cNo. One exception will lead to another till it finally becomes general.\u201d Instead, Gandhi recommends that in these rare situations couples live apart if they are truly incapable of continence\u2014a situation he was not ever willing to concede lightly. This statement was typical of Gandhi\u2019s approach to these hard cases. \u201cA wise judge will not give the wrong decision in the face of a hard case. He will allow himself to appear to have hardened his heart, because he knows that truest mercy lies in not making a bad law.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Gandhi argued that the long-term implications of a contraceptive mentality posed a grave danger to society by disordering mankind\u2019s understanding of the sexual act. He feared that men and women would become \u201cmental and moral wrecks\u201d if they embraced contraception. He saw the great danger to sexual purity within a society where sex was separated from its reproductive purpose. <\/span><\/p>\n

Gandhi served as a spiritual director for many young men and women in India whom he advised personally, often through letters. Based on this experience, he stated: \u201cArtificial methods [of contraception] are like putting a premium on vice. They make man and woman reckless,\u201d and \u201cbirth controllers turn vice into virtue. When sexual indulgence is regarded a virtue, it will be the undoing of man.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Porn and the Sacred Heart by one Patrick Sill – in Godspy. Beautifully written, from the heart and soul (and loins), true and that profoundly Christian mystery of pain and hope.  This marvelous passage is not directly related to the main point, but it might entice you to go read the whole thing, if you’re…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6964","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nMust read of the day - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/06\/must-read-of-the-day.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Must read of the day - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Porn and the Sacred Heart by one Patrick Sill – in Godspy. 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6964","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6964"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6964\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6964"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6964"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6964"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}