Alright, I don’t want to get too nuanced, but please tell me if you agree with the following two statements:
- All libidinous – which is to say, all sexually-arousing – activity ought to be avoided as much as possible except in marriage.
- Passionate or prolonged kissing is libidinous by nature.
If you agree with both of these statements, then the conclusion that “passionate or prolonged kissing ought to be avoided as much as possible except in marriage” follows ineluctably, and there is no need to protract this discourse. If you disagree, you need to tell me with what and for what reason(s). So far, to be quite blunt, you’ve completely avoided addressing this facet of the issue.
You and I both agree, you will find, that sexual desire is not in-and-of-itself wrong.
Your anfractuous analogy boils down to this: desiring to have sex is not disordered unless one desires to do so without “being joined”.
Desiring to pass through the gate Secs isn’t disordered at all unless you desire to not be in Bin Joynd at the same time, or you desire it inordinately.
So you appear to agree with me here: the desire for sex is disordered unless the context is marriage. In other words, it’s okay to desire properly-ordered sexual intercourse.
Let me make a few tangential comments. Romantic love, as I understand it, is not “a desire to join with another person on every level,” because that would mean that romantic love is a desire for sexual intercourse. You’ve explicitly denied this, presumably because it sounds ridiculous. I think on purely moral grounds I can safely say that you
should not desire to copulate with everyone towards whom you feel romantic love. You should withhold that desire inasmuch as it is possible to do so until marriage.
What, then, of sexual desire in romantic relationships? Different kinds of sexual desire can be distinguished; the salient thing to note is that carnal (bodily) desire ought to also be avoided as much as possible, because the only proper place for carnal desire is marriage. The desire to “unite” is, in fact, and contrariwise, properly-directed not the desire to have sex but the desire to get married. This is self-evident, I think, if you realize that sex brings about no ontological changes whatsoever in the couple, but marriage most certainly
does. Sex is only unitive after the couple is sacramentally bound by marriage; outside of marriage, it can only ever sunder.
Thus I say, on the principle that that desire which cannot be fulfilled is disordered, that the desire for unitive sex outside of marriage is disordered, because it can never be fulfilled outside of marriage.
Now you asseverate that the reason passionate kissing outside of marriage can be morally acceptable is that “it can be an expression of love”. This is execrable reasoning.
Sex can also be an expression of love. It makes no sense, you see, to say that “because
x is an expression of love it can be licit outside of marriage.” If *x *is sex, e.g., this is simply never true. I would qualify your statement by saying that “passionate kissing can be an expression of love only within the bounds of marriage,” for reasons I’ve made abundantly clear. Entering actual or occasional sin, including engaging in any libidinous activity, outside of marriage, is never truly an expression of love. It may “feel” like one, but feelings do not affect the objective nature of sin.
In order, then, to maintain that passionate kissing outside of marriage is permissible, I say that you must do the following:
- Know with relative certainty either that sexually-stimulating activity deliberately engaged outside of marriage is morally acceptable; or, that passionate kissing is not sexually stimulating.
- Know with relative certainty that passionate kissing, which almost certainly involves being alone with one’s partner for an extended period of time, stimulating erogenous zones, and effecting hormonal and psychosexual excitement, is not an occasion of sin, which is to say, it’s not an instance where the participants needlessly place themselves in such a state in which if they fail to exercise sufficient self-control they will fall into sin.
- Delineate clearly for what reasons and under which circumstances, objectively-speaking, passionate kissing is morally acceptable, because clearly it’s unacceptable under most circumstances. To be clear, I do not think this delineation should include any references to yourself, or to emotions, because emotions can never justify that which is immoral in their absence.
I’m on the verge of apologizing for writing such a long response, but this is such an important issue for me because I see so many otherwise good Catholics being so horrendously misguided in this area. God commands us to “flee temptation,” not to encourage it in the name of love. If you really love someone, you will do everything you can to keep her as pure, spotless, and inviolate as possible, and usually that involves protecting her from your own sexual desires.
, does it require we confess such a thing if were and if it wrong if that is what the facts are?