When I was in first grade, we would have a period of “lights out” during lunchtime in which the entire room was to remain in silence. It was really the fault of the sixth graders, they chatted so much that they sometimes forgot to eat. Thinking back, it must have been a curious spectacle. Teachers paced the aisles spotlighting for troublemakers, while students furiously shoveled down their Lunchables and Capri Suns so as to be ready for that glorious moment when the sudden flip of a switch would erupt the room with voices, laughter, and all the blessed sounds of youth.

There was a game we would play in that darkness, a version of telephone in which a word or phrase would be passed down the line in illegal whispers. And I’ll never forget the day when a friend whispered to me the particular word of that afternoon, “S-E-X, pass it on.” I asked her to repeat a few more times. The letters just weren’t computing in my mind. Eventually I found myself compelled to clarify by speaking the word aloud, “Sex?” Whoops. My voice had carried a little too much. Jelly-covered fingers were suddenly pointing and a chorus of “ummms” filled the air. My teacher called me to her end of the table to question me on where I had learned that word. I protested, as any first grader would do, that Michael (my classmate) had started it.  My ignorance was rightfully bashful.

There is a lot going on in the world right now, so much in fact, that it is hard to even know what to write about. With headlines regarding the Me Too movement, transgender bathroom use, priest abuse scandals, and the shocking reports of declining fertility rates, it can be difficult to know where exactly to focus one’s outrage or even problem solving skills. Though I may be unqualified to offer direct solutions to any of these very sensitive subjects, I do, however, feel emboldened to draw everyone’s attention to the common thread here; and it probably comes as no surprise that the common thread is sex. Rather than get into all the nitty-gritty details on all of the issues, I’d rather try to offer a very subtle skimming of the general landscape we now find ourselves in. I’ll leave it to the experts to argue the finer points.

PAST

Any glance into history would reveal the changing culture surrounding sex. The 1960s saw the advent of the “Sexual Revolution” during which the traditional behaviors regarding sex were challenged. Birth control and promiscuity skyrocketed and shortly thereafter, Roe v. Wade legalized abortion. Much of the drive for these sought-after “freedoms” piggybacked on the woman’s liberation movement. Sue Ellen Browder writes extensively in her book, “Subverted: How I Helped the Sexual Revolution Hijack the Women’s Movement,” about her time working for the magazine, Cosmopolitan. While there, she was instructed to publish fictional stories about loose women so as to convince the modern ladies that these behaviors were now the norm. The status quo was shifted by force.

Understandably, with a more sexualized culture it didn’t take long before the law needed to change and allow for “no fault divorces.” In the 1970s, divorce rates began to rise at an exponential rate. Women, bolstered by the feminist movement, had already been striving to establish themselves successfully in the workplace, only now many divorced women found themselves having to work out of necessity to support themselves rather than simply fulfill themselves. Meanwhile, motherhood seemed to become a burden, as employers increasingly frowned upon maternity leave and family life.

Simultaneously in the late 1970s, Pope John Paul II began a series of talks that would continue weekly over the course of 5 years. These talks compile what has since come to be known as the “Theology of the Body.” He rocked the world with this integrated vision of the human person, a vision not touted to be new, but deep in alignment with our creation and the very raw materials we have been given in our bodies. In these audiences, JP2 encouraged a reverence for the gift of sexuality and challenged us to view one another with dignity. He said that our bodies have a language and that there must be a correspondence between what our bodies “do” and what we “intend.” This intention, he argued, must always be in accordance with the dignity of the human person and rooted in love (self-gift). This was in direct opposition to the sexual revolution that promulgated a pleasure-seeking mentality at the expense of the other.

PRESENT

And now here we are in the present times. We are scarred, opinionated, isolated, and distraught. We have a skewed view of sex, a deep longing for unity, and very few consequences for our actions.

The rise of the Internet brought about new sexual avenues such as pornography and greater opportunities for sexual predators to gain access to potential victims through chat rooms and social media. Despite scientific acknowledgements that porn is harmful to individuals, relationships, and society, it can be found everywhere. Movie and video game ratings have changed over time, becoming more lenient and exposing children to more violence and sexuality than past decades could have imagined. And then we had the Fifty Shades of Grey hysteria.

Fifty Shades of Grey is a novel (if I can call it that) first published in 2011 that, despite its lack of critical reception and extremely poor prose, topped best-seller lists around the world.   Full of erotic and sadomasochistic themes, it became extremely sensationalized in pop culture. Pop culture supported it.

Not too long after that, in 2017 the “Me Too” movement took off. Starting as a hashtag on social media it attempted to demonstrate the widespread prevalence of sexual assault and harassment. In a sense, it caused a healthy awakening to the severe affront on human dignity caused by these unwelcome advances. Pop culture also supported this.

And more recently in the news we have seen horrific reports of the widespread priest abuse scandal in the Catholic Church that have been swept under the rug for decades. Whether a victim or not, whether a faithful Catholic or not, we have all been shaken and appalled by these allegations. Many have called for explanations, apologies, resignations, and yes, there is no doubt that there has been significant mismanagement, cover-ups, and power trips. We should indeed do everything we can to remedy this and purge the Church as we move forward. But, despite management problems, the fact remains that these scandals are almost all some type of sexual perversion. The teachings of Jesus are not the problem. Sin is the problem. And this sin of sexual distortion has been creeping into society like a poison for decades now. It’s time to reconcile this.

Dear culture, you can’t have it both ways.

A recently released government report reveals that in the United States, we are not having enough babies to replenish the population. Fertility rates have fallen to a 30-year low. Reasons for not having children have historically been attributed to financial insecurities (and these remains highly cited reasons that surveyed people chose not to have more children); however, despite economic recovery following the most recent recession, the fertility rate continues to decline. It appears that there are now many more personal reasons such as the desire for “more leisure time” and “having a career” to blame. Until society becomes more supportive mentally and structurally of the larger family, it appears that the population will continue this decline. It’s time to think about the future.

FUTURE

Society is composed of a convoluted web of biases and consequences that we may never fully understand. Human beings have free will. Concupiscence confuses intentions. But no matter how dark the times get, we have many reasons to hope.

We live in a society that is desperately yearning for truth and transparency.   But this transparency is not fully complete. We pump ourselves with hormones, but won’t tolerate them in our chickens. Our federal law allows viable human babies to be painfully slaughtered for the sake of convenience, and yet another federal law requires that livestock be stunned so as not to feel pain during slaughter. Our celebrities wear black at the Golden Globes to support assault victims, and a few minutes later an ad for the next Fifty Shades movie is played. We want tolerance, but we also want ignorance-and not just bashful ignorance, but willful ignorance.  I repeat:

We cannot have it both ways.  Either we have moral absolutes, or we are all phantasms in the figments of a million different sexual realities.

At the time I am writing this post, it is Candlemas, the Feast of the Presentation of Our Lord Jesus and the Feast of the Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary. It is considered the last day of the Christmas season and a feast day around the world in which faithful persons will bring candles to be blessed and used throughout the year. Processions with candles remind us that we can be a light to the world. It is a day in which we remember that light does shine in the darkest places of our lives.

My prayer is that we will start to allow the light to shine in this realm of sexuality. We need to bring sexy back in the right sense. If we can slowly separate ourselves from this self-destructive, pleasure-seeking impetus, then maybe we can truly start to become gifts to one another. Maybe we can treat each other with true dignity and true respect.  And then, instead of whispering illicit nothings in the darkened lunchroom of our daily lives, maybe we will see the day when we can flip the lights on and confidently pass along the truth about “S-E-X.”