De Omnibus Dubitandum Est.

This is in the news at the moment and poses some really interesting questions if you are a parent and a Catholic. The Church teaches that parents are children's primary educators (see  Compendium of Social Doctrine of the Church , 238 ff ). Despite this, the Catholic Education Service has welcomed the UK government's decision to introduce compulsory relationship and sex education in England for 4-year-olds and upwards ( see here ). While it is clear that children need to be educated in a broad range of social and sexual issues, my own experience of sex education in Catholic Secondary Schools is that it is inadequate, mechanical and damaging. All three of my own sons were disturbed by what they were taught at 11. Not because they didn't know about it, we had discussed it a great deal at home, but because it was given without the social context they were used to hearing about it in. The point I'm making is that I don't trust schools to provide this important, ...

Good heavens! I could hardly believe my ears when I watched this edition of Russell Brand's The Trews in which he rants about the popularity of the newly released film of the notorious book Fifty Shades of Grey. One has to wonder if the long-haired-lothario has been secretly reading Pope St. John Paul II's Theology of the Body lectures? Certainly, many of the ideas he articulates here are straight from Church teaching and he mentions a priest who said that porn affects us not because it shows too much, but because it shows too little. In other words, it removes sex from its proper context, i.e. a mutual respectful, loving relationship. Porn effects the way adults relate to each other and the reality of our sexuality which is ultimately—factuality—scientifically—about pro-creation. Porn removes the essential context of our humanity and reduces it to image or idea. In reality, intimacy is about building a consensual, respectful relationship where we share each other in an i...

This post won't deal with all the problems there are with pornography, but it will attempt to address some. It's got some philosophy in it too. I found this great post on Emma Scrivener's blog about porn. I think it is always good to read information on this from a woman's perspective because of stuff like this: This woman's reaction to page 3 of The Sun makes sense to me, because the subtle normalisation of sexual images in newspapers is implicitly condoning the sexualisation of women. True femenism should seek to dismantle such out dated stereotypes. Instead as Germaine Greer famously laments, her brand of feminism seems to have merely achieved a reality wherein the girls can now act in as inappropriate, drunken, and lecherous manner as the boys. Not much of a step up for society! There is an interesting argument about prudishness that asks why anyone should be offended by bare boobs. It states that the human body is natural and we should not be embar...

Jennifer Lawrence is a really famous and very beautiful actress. Someone has hacked into her home computer and stolen some images there of her naked and spread them around the internet. OK so I'm a little behind the times with this post, but honestly, I've been so busy! If you were cynical, you might consider I was fishing for google hits with the title; I'll be honest, the idea may have crossed my mind. However, I do think this is issue is oxygen that will facilitate discussion of a really difficult and thorny modern problem. And if a few people come across this post and read it while searching for naked pictures of Jennifer, could they conceivably find it helpful? It is also an issue that was brought to the front of my mind at Buckfast on Monday when Cardinal Pell addressed the prevalence, invasive nature, an insidious effect of internet pornography in our lives and on our society. This has long been a concern of mine not least because the availability of image...

abc news reports today that The top legislative body of the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. voted by large margins yesterday to recognise same-sex marriage as Christian in the church constitution, adding language that marriage can be the union of "two people," not just "a man and a woman." In a stunning break with more than 2,000 years of Christian Tradition, the amendment approved by the Presbyterian General Assembly requires approval from a majority of the 172 regional presbyteries, which will vote on the change over the next year. But in a separate policy change that takes effect at the end of this week's meeting, delegates voted to allow ministers to preside at gay weddings in states where the unions are legal and local congregational leaders approve. Nineteen states and the District of Columbia recognise same-sex marriage. The votes, during a national meeting in Detroit, were a sweeping victory for Presbyterian gay-rights advocates. The denom...