from The Humanist:
Praying for Sexby Luis Granados
Published in the March/April 2010 HumanistA 140-year-old organization in London called the “Catholic Truth Society” has published a new “Prayer Book for Spouses,” containing among other things a prayer to be recited by couples before engaging in sex. The prayer runs as follows:
Father, send Your Holy Spirit into our hearts.
Place within us love that truly gives,
tenderness that truly unites,
self-offering that tells the truth
and does not deceive,
forgiveness that truly receives,
loving physical union that welcomes.
Open our hearts to you, to each other
and to the goodness of your will.
Cover our poverty in the richness
of Your mercy and forgiveness.
Clothe us in our true dignity
and take to Yourself our shared aspirations,
for Your glory, for ever and ever.
Mary, our Mother, intercede for us.
Amen. It’s too easy to come up with jokes about this (like, whatever happened to a simple “Oh God!”?) What’s more interesting is the light it sheds on Christian totalitarianism, which seeks once again to impose itself on one of the unholier joys of life.
From the very beginning Christianity has been anti-sex. Jesus understood human nature and was as explicit as he could possibly be in suggesting that the elimination of all differences between the sexes was the correct prescription for rigid chastity. “For there are some eunuchs, which were so born from their mother’s womb: and there are some eunuchs, which were made eunuchs of men: and there be eunuchs, which have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven’s sake,” Jesus says in Matthew 19:12. “He that is able to receive it, let him receive it.”
The castration theme is repeated in the Gospel of Thomas, unearthed at Nag Hammadi in 1945. Though not included in modern Bibles, it appears to be at least as old as the four canonical gospels, and there is no reason to treat it as any less accurate a reflection of what Jesus said: “And when you make the male and the female one and the same, so that the male be not male nor the female female…then will you enter
.” Thomas goes on to relate that “Simon Peter said to them, ‘Let Mary leave us, for women are not worthy of life.’ Jesus said, ‘I myself shall lead her in order to make her male, so that she too may become a living spirit resembling you males. For every woman who will make herself male will enter the kingdom of heaven.’” .........(more)
The complete piece is at: http://www.thehumanist.org/humanist/10_mar_apr/Granados.html
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