Is premarital kissing a sin? and other quick takes: 7QT XXIII, seriatim.

ppar­ent­ly there’s a cri­sis of pre­mar­i­tal kiss­ing afoot, and Trad­dy blog­gers must call it out, or legions will end up in the Sec­ond Cir­cle. Or some­thing. I actu­al­ly guf­fawed, and loud­ly, when I saw this post over at ProLife365. “There Kuk­la goes again,” I said. “Stop­ping abor­tions by stop­ping kiss­ing first.”

Then, on the Face­book dis­cus­sion, Mic­ah Mur­phy (who admits to scrupu­los­i­ty even about the poten­tial sex­u­al temp­ta­tions of hand-hold­ing, one of the most dan­ger­ous sins of this present age), direct­ed me to this post from the always-cred­i­ble Tay­lor Mar­shall. Dr. Mar­shall claims that Pope Alexan­der VII con­demned French kiss­ing between unwed­ded cou­ples.

Except that’s not quite what Alexan­der VII con­demned. If we go to the ref­er­ence in Den­zinger, here is what we will find. (It comes from a a doc­u­ment enti­tled “Var­i­ous Errors on Moral Mat­ters.”)

It is a prob­a­ble opin­ion which states that a kiss is only venial when per­formed for the sake of the car­nal and sen­si­ble delight which aris­es from the kiss, if dan­ger of fur­ther con­sent and pol­lu­tion is exclud­ed.

So this is not spe­cif­ic to French kiss­ing, and Alexan­der VII adds an impor­tant qual­i­fi­ca­tion, which is that sex­u­al arousal is the intent of the kiss. How many peo­ple do you know who kiss some­one, with the spe­cif­ic intent of arous­ing sex­u­al desire, with­out the fur­ther intent to ulti­mate­ly engage in a sex­u­al act? The kiss is the least of the wor­ry here.

I sus­pect Dr. Mar­shall is mak­ing too much of this; which would not be unusu­al for some­one who has also spent his days con­dem­ing Bea­t­les cov­er art as deeply trou­bling.

The prob­lem with this whole legal­is­tic dis­cus­sion about pre­mar­i­tal kiss­ing and when it becomes sin­ful is that a cou­ple that is dat­ing and dis­cern­ing mar­riage will kiss for any num­ber of rea­sons: to express love, affec­tion, pas­sion; to cre­ate a roman­tic bond; because they take delight in each oth­er. This is so nor­mal I mar­vel great­ly that any­one would wring his hands and faint upon a couch over it. If it’s not plea­sur­able, you’re doing it wrong. Arousal is incidental—you know, that kind of thing hap­pens—and if it cre­ates too great a dan­ger that you’ll get car­ried away and sex will occur, it’s prob­a­bly wise to cool it for the time being and find some­thing else to do.

But I can’t think of a dis­cus­sion more apt to cre­ate scrupu­los­i­ty and neu­ro­sis over the least sign that you are sex­u­al­ly attract­ed to the per­son you’re dat­ing. Aren’t you sup­posed to be sex­u­al­ly attract­ed? If only it were true that all we had to wor­ry about was that unmar­ried cou­ples engage in pas­sion­ate kiss­ing but do noth­ing more.

Dar­win Catholic has some good things to say about all this:

Sex is an action reserved for mar­riage not just because the repro­duc­tive aspects are most tru­ly real­ized in a com­mit­ted mar­i­tal rela­tion­ship, but because the phys­i­cal action of inter­course also bonds a man and woman togeth­er spir­i­tu­al­ly. Since all actions have spir­i­tu­al effects, a kiss also can form a bond, but it is not remote­ly the per­ma­nent bond formed by inter­course. … [A] kiss is not remote­ly the phys­i­cal and spir­i­tu­al equiv­a­lent of (avert your eyes!) a penis enter­ing a vagi­na, no, not even a french kiss. Not even if it’s an arous­ing kiss. A cou­ple may choose, for mutu­al and pru­den­tial rea­sons, not to kiss before mar­riage, but that does not nec­es­sar­i­ly make them more vir­tu­ous or chaste than a cou­ple who does. It makes them a cou­ple who miss­es out on the joys of kiss­ing.

Why is this some­thing we must talk about this week?

II

I got some grief when I cit­ed the Coun­cil of Trent as an author­i­ty for Bap­tism of Desire as applied by griev­ing par­ents to infants who die in the womb. Tush! I was told. One can desire bap­tism only on his own behalf.

It struck me as a weird claim, since Catholics teach that par­ents can speak on their liv­ing chil­dren’s behalf. But sud­den­ly, if a child dies in the womb and his par­ents can’t bap­tize him, Calvin­ist rules apply. Actu­al bap­tism is Catholic; Bap­tism of Desire is Calvin­ist. That’s pecu­liar.

Any­way, here is Tim Sta­ples on Catholic Answers Live, agree­ing with me about Trent.

III

Cyn­thia Schrage, of After the Ecsta­sy, the Laun­dry, intro­duced me to the blog Brain Pick­ings, by Maria Popo­va. It is excel­lent. If you don’t know it, you should. Popo­va describes her­self as a “curi­ous mind at large,” and it shows. She writes—in just her most recent posts—about Vir­ginia Woolf on cre­ativ­i­ty, astropo­et­ics, Han­nah Arendt on lying, and Dorothy Day on com­mu­ni­ty. Check it out.

IV

Dr.* James White and Steve “Pur­ple” Hays of Fail­ablogue (he calls it Tri­ablogue, which I think is opti­mistic) are hav­ing a bit of a Calvin­ist’s quar­rel over the shoot­ing in Orlan­do.

Dr.* White has been at pains to point out that jihadists don’t rep­re­sent the major­i­ty of Mus­lims. It seems to me that he would know; I mean, he debates Mus­lim apol­o­gists and schol­ars all the time, and is there­fore in a good posi­tion to know that the rad­i­cals don’t rep­re­sent the main­stream of Islam­ic thought.

It’s hard to tell what Pur­ple Hays knows.

Despite that, Mr. Hays is cer­tain that Dr.* White is a “Mus­lim par­ti­san” and a “tool for Mus­lims.”

This is amus­ing to watch from a dis­tance.

V

Con­sid­er­ing the response I have got­ten when I have called out two Chris­t­ian pas­tors for cel­e­brat­ing the shoot­ing in Orlan­do (here and here), I shall nev­er, nev­er, nev­er, nev­er, nev­er, nev­er again wring my hands and won­der why Mus­lims don’t call out their own. These silent Mus­lims are smart peo­ple. They don’t wish to be told: Hey, you know, most Mus­lims are not like that! Most Mus­lims do nice things! The best thing for you to do is to ignore these peo­ple and not give them press! Hey, why are you anti-Mus­lim? Why are you a shill for Chris­tian­i­ty?

With­in a week, like mag­ic, I have become a defi­cient Catholic and a hater of Chris­tian­i­ty and a shill for Islam.

I feel a bit of sol­i­dar­i­ty with Dr.* James White, the Mus­lim apol­o­gist.

VI

There have been two excel­lent posts this week in the wake of the tragedy in Flori­da, in which an alli­ga­tor dragged a two-year-old boy to his drown­ing death.

Tom­my Tighe at Aleteia writes on “Grief, Con­do­lences, and the Secret of What to Say.” Here is part of it:

At my son’s funer­al, the priest expressed it bet­ter than I could have. He said, “I spent the night before this funer­al try­ing to think of the rea­son some­thing like this would hap­pen. I came up with noth­ing. And so I start­ed to try and think of the some­thing I could say that would lessen this family’s pain, even by the small­est of mea­sures. Again, I came up with noth­ing.

There is no mag­ic for­mu­la, no per­fect obser­va­tion, no pre­cise words that can ease the pain of some­one suf­fer­ing some­thing so pro­found. …

For those who are expe­ri­enc­ing the worst moment of their lives, con-dolence is exact­ly what they need: Some­one who is will­ing to sit with us in that uncom­fort­able space, through the tears, the anger, and the hope­less­ness. We need some­one who doesn’t suc­cumb to the urge to fix every­thing, the wish to make us hap­py, or a pre­tense that every­thing is okay.

Every­thing is not okay. And it’s okay to say that every­thing is not okay.

And Matt Walsh, as only Matt Walsh can, raked the coals over the ass­es in social media who rushed to blame the tragedy upon poor par­ent­ing.

Most par­ents would not hes­i­tate to give up their lives or under­go any phys­i­cal trau­ma for the sake of pro­tect­ing their chil­dren. That father in Flori­da did not hes­i­tate to rush into the water and tus­sle with a giant alli­ga­tor. If he’d been suc­cess­ful, per­haps the alli­ga­tor would have attacked him next. And I have no doubt he would have pre­ferred to suf­fer that painful and ago­niz­ing death instead of his son. If he could go back and stand in his son’s place, he would. That is what it means to love a child. What pos­si­ble pur­pose does your crit­i­cism serve? He would give up his life to have his child back. Do you think he needs you to inform him that it would have been best if this whole sit­u­a­tion were avoid­ed? Does any par­ent need that?

No; no more than I need­ed it when I was told that my daugh­ter’s still­birth was my fault. (Yes, some­one did tell me that.)

VII

Aren’t there moral issues, which a pro-life site might be check­ing into, more impor­tant than whether or not I kiss my girl­friend and I like it?