The thing is EJ is that the accusation was not about men who were promiscuous even. The accusation was that a man who has had premarital sex is a red flag because he doesn’t respect women. I normally agree with your posts. I think you should re-read this thread (and I’m not being snarky).
I don’t want to argue with you, because I see your point. (Well, I have a thing against Wikapedia, obviously, but let’s let my prejudice on that go by the wayside.
) The thing is, I can see why your “adversary” feels so strongly, too. Let’s step back and look at that.
I can appreciate that you do not want anyone unfairly branded as disrespectful when the fellow had no such intent. That is a charitable attitude, no doubt about it. Also stop and think about who you are posting back and forth with, too, Lucky7. You’re not calling in to NPR. You are posting back and forth with a Catholic man who has maintained his virginity, and at a price.
Let’s say I’m a Catholic woman who is saving myself for marriage, as the OP has done. You’re a Catholic man who’s saving yourself for marriage. We are both doing it out of respect for the law of God and the feelings of those who will one day be spouse to each of us. Now…I tell you that I’m dating a guy who has had premarital sex. What do you think you’re naturally going to say? You’re going to say, “Wow, you know, I’d be concerned that this guy doesn’t respect women. I don’t think guys who have premarital sex even understand the concept. I also kind of wonder about his morals in general.” Why do you think a virginal man might say that?
Because as a man in his sexual prime who has had to learn to master the urges everyone else around him seems to be giving in to with a gusto, as if their health and welfare depends on it, the man who has kept his virginity knows the price of the respect he holds dear. This isn’t a theory. He is walking his talk, every day. The respect he shows for women is not lip service. It comes at a cost to him. Maybe you’re doing this youself and see nothing great about it, but I’m here to tell you that is another level of respect than is the societal norm, even among men who merely avoid talking about women as if they were meat (as the OPs fiance has done, let us remember).
Now, tell me: what use would it be to argue with this fellow? What exactly would your point be? “Oh, no, premarital sex doesn’t mean people have less respect for themselves, their sexual partners, or their future spouses than you do.” Are you kidding me?
I’m not saying that every Catholic virgin is going to post things like Chevaleresse has. Maybe you’re a Catholic who’s kept his or her virginity, and within the whole of your moral life, you know you’ve failed here and succeeded there, and you don’t feel that you’re going to use the word “disrespectful” of those who have broken different moral laws than you have. OK, fair enough. He’s talking about a theoretical person, and besides he’s attacking a pattern of action and not a person, but your way of looking at it is not less moral than his.
I’m saying that if you are a virgin, you know he is making a huge sacrifice to live what he believes. There is nothing more pointless than trying to find a scientific study to talk him out of the great benefit in making that sacrifice. If you’re going to keep arguing with him, at least acknowledge that in his case, where virginity is kept with the expressly-held intent to have respect for his future wife, of course that attitude isn’t going to be without its fruit.
None of us needs a bunch of scientists to prove that to us, do we? Then you can say, “but the man who has not been as wise or as self-controlled as you have been in this area can amend his life and, by the grace of God, also be a wonderful husband, because God can remake any sinner who turns around and makes himself pliant to grace…because after all, Chevaleresse, we have our moral faults, too.”
I think if you concede his point that the sacrifice of maintaining virginity prior to marriage out of love for God and one’s future spouse must surely bear fruit in the marriage, then of course he is going to concede that failing in that doesn’t doom a person as marriage material forever. It might be hard for this woman or that to get past–because, let us face it, in not a few cases her own sacrifice has been won on the idea that it was being reciprocated out there, somewhere!-- but that doesn’t mean no good woman could possibly get past it. I would hope he’d concede that much. Obviously, after all, if the Church thought fornication precluded a valid marriage, then fornication would be an impediment to marriage, and it is not. If he wouldn’t concede even that much, he’d have to concede that not every virgin in the world agrees with him on that one, because of course that is true.
As for the studies, they have their place but we don’t live our lives according to statistical norms. It is not as if science can read hearts or measure eternal outcomes. We live according to moral norms, and we take the temporal difficulties and benefits that come with that. My sense is that as much as he wants to believe it will make his life better in the long run, if Chevaleresse knew that the only thing “in it” for him by keeping his virginity prior to marriage was that it would please God, he’d still do it. We don’t keep moral law just for the consolations it brings in this life, after all. On that much, I think the two of you surely agree.
It was due to my college major, plus being a vegetarian back then (intense interest in the human body and diet). The above is absolutely true; the devil is in the details.
I had my pretentious college days too (political science and psychology), and I was a vegan, so that probably didn’t help. (I’m still a vegan, but the brattiness subsided years ago.) When it comes down to it you can throw out all of the peer reviewed journal articles you can find, and you can start pointing out technical fallacies in logic, but in the real world unless you’re inside a courtroom no one cares. It’s more important, especially in every day life and when dealing with personal issues that pertain to real people, not moral hypotheticals to listen, think, evaluate, and use common sense and compassion. Outside of a classroom people are not objective moral units, they are complex, feeling, thinking beings.