Now I got here via Alte at TC. Bonald is quite catholic and there are points where, as you would expect, he varies from the clear reformed teaching. But he states the current issue fairly clearly: like the ancient Corinthians, we are tempted to embrace instutitionalized, random, sex: without covenant, but with consequences.
The key to the lustful man’s salvation is that he at least remain ashamed of himself during the decades when the fever is high. Today, unfortunately, sexual vice and perversion are championed by the ruling class. This adds a new temptation; a man can put aside his burden of duty and guilt any time by embracing sexual libertinism. This activates a much more dangerous deadly sin: pride. You’ll notice that the perverts don’t call their foul marches “Gay Lust” parades; they call them “Gay Pride” parades, and rightly so. Their purpose is to emancipate themselves from God, social propriety, and the natural law. They declare the body meaningless in itself, mere raw material to be used in whatever way best gratifies their desires. They expel all reverence before the mystery of natural meanings. Worst of all, they make war on the Church, using their control of the state and the media to persecute their enemies and to corrupt our children. If a man joins the sexual revolution, he will almost certainly be damned. Now it is not mere human weakness that separates him from God, but hard ideological conviction. He has declared as a matter of principle that he will stand with Satan and refuse to serve God and His order.
Modern society does not embrace the idea of arguing from nature, nor the church, nor God. But we are left with a need to inter-relate. Despite being told that there are no limits, we want to commit to one, and that one only. We see ourselves as more than our bodies.
We want but one. Yet society insists that we should not be satisfied. There is a unwritten competition to remain in some state of youthful freshness while the spirit corrupts and fades, as if who we are will not be graven on our faces.
But that used to be something that was managed. When young, a woman came out into society, and (with the guidance of her parents) knew she had but one or two seasons (years) to make an advantageous marriage.
This was the raw source of most of Austen’s novels. Lust was supposed to take care of the rest. However, the spirited heroines of Austen’s world became the weak, foolish women of Tolstoy (Elizabeth Bennett would wipe the floor if up against Anna Karenina). More recently, the fairly competent women in the Dorothy Sayers novels — happily single or happily married — have turned into complete wimps such as Bella in Twilight.
And at the same time, the men in our society are not the heroes of Austen. As SSM commented
I observed this last week and wondered about it. I had taken some of my children to swimming lessons at a nearby community recreation center and noticed that the twenty-something male instructors were oddly feminine. They didn’t seem gay to me, but they had wispy body hair, narrow shoulder, paunchy abdomens, and higher-pitched voices. I found it unattractive; why would women be actively selecting for low-testosterone men?
Libertinism makes men effete. Now, being too rigid, having a psychosis or being autistic, decreases fertility.
However, the converse may be true. Many liberals and geeks despise their bodies… they are either very fat or thin, but the idea of that their body is worth anything is horrifying to them. Now, despite being overly precise, this also seems to link with a lack of clarity of thought, as one of the catholic nerd girls pointed out…
,…don’t bother arguing logically with liberals. It’s pointless, as they’ll just emote all over you and stomp off in a huff. Try to make an emotional plea, as that will more likely change their mind, or at least allow them to relate to your argument… …This is what our debates have now all degraded down to — conservatives posing logical arguments (often poorly-worded, as logical thinking and verbal fluency are different blessings) and liberals eloquently picking a fight about how conservatives are mean. This is a political stalemate that cannot be bridged for purely physiological reasons: we don’t care about their feelings and they don’t care about our thoughts.
Now, Corinth was a place where temple prostitutes (of every imaginable gender) were a tourist attraction. This level of dissolution also led to a sense among the ancients that the people were untrustworthy, weak, and cowardly. The one thing they left out of their analysis was that they were unjust. They valued their own comforts over the needs of others, like the women of Sodom.
As I live, declares the Lord God, your sister Sodom and her daughters have not done as you and your daughters have done. 49Behold, this was the guilt of your sister Sodom: she and her daughters had pride, excess of food, and prosperous ease, but did not aid the poor and needy. 50They were haughty and did an abomination before me. So I removed them, when I saw it.
I have often said that rich nations can afford to be stupid. But that is only a half truth. Because no nation is rich enough to forget the poor and needy, become entranced in their own comfort and ease, and forget the effort by which they came to where they are.
Because when that happens boys become enervated, women effete, and the imp of desire dies while the nation enters a decline, which all too often is terminal. The mechanism by which a people perish when they lose their vision is that they simply refuse to breed a following generation.
That is happening in both Europe, in Asia, and in the Muslim world. As people of faith, we should not join them.
So let us turn to Paul’s cure. Marry, and make love. Frequently, joyfully, faithfully and, God willing, fruitfully.