Orgasm: The New Religion

The Anchoress shares her thoughts about sex, the "almighty orgasm" and abstinance:

The whole world has paid a price for it, this rampant, thoughtless, ravenous pursuit of the Almighty Orgasm - deemed more delightful, more worthy, more necessary than God or Family or even Self.

Here is her personal experience with the New Religion:

But the world, and the Prince of the world, don’t want abstinence promoted. Abstinence leads to thought…and thought, too, too often, leads to things of the Spirit. And even more often, that leads to God. It makes a Houndog into a Hound of Heaven. And we can’t have that.

Evil wants to keep us mindless and distracted. Our society has been distracted for 40 years by the non-stop promotion of sex, and by the over-emphasis on the big O. And many smart, beautiful-but-immature-and-reckless people have died for that O. In fact, in the past 40 years, many more have died for the Orgasm than have died for the faith.

Too many have died for the false god of the Orgasm. They are not martyrs. They are not saints. But they are victims of a tinsel mentality that urged them on, every step of the way. And they leave behind countless, countless lives full of pain and sorrow.

I miss my brother. God, I miss him.

I did not intend to write all of this. But, I miss my brother, S. He is gone 18 months and the pain does not go away. We are not a “noble” family because we lost our beloved S to AIDS. And he was not noble because he died of AIDS. He was noble because he was as generous and forgiving and loving and sincerely warm a human being as I’ve ever known. The KINDEST guy I have ever known. And he is gone to us, now.

And all the “friends” who disappeared when he became sick and lost his pretty looks, they’re all continuing on. Some have HIV, some do not. They’re still renting the summer houses and living the reckless, eternally adolescent lifestyle of material things and sexual pre-occupations that are so outsized they cannot be counterbalanced by the love of family or faith, lives that are so raucous they cannot hear the quiet, simple pleading of God to “draw near…”

Now, my brother’s house is empty and his things - all those THINGS he loved and had to have, all the THINGS he acquired to try to fill the void in his life, the one he wouldn’t let God fill, because to do so would have ended the party…they have been disbursed - much of it to strangers.

S was so conflicted. On one hand he wanted God, he wanted faith - he HAD faith, but faith on his own terms, and his own terms simply brought in more conflict. He could never get settled. I asked him once, if the concept of chastity, of living his life in chastity as all non-married people are called to do, meant anything to him. It was a long and serious conversation, but he got distracted. He got distracted by the next phone call and the next party, before he could remember to ask for grace.

Grace did come, finally, stunningly, very late in the ballgame. It was a sort of 9th inning grace. But I am so grateful that it finally came.

But I miss him, and it hurts. The grief is slightly - so very slightly - healed over but it doesn’t take much to rip the scab and begin to bleed afresh. I would rather spend the rest of my life tending to his bedside than going to his grave.

It is so uncool to believe abstinance works. It is so uncool to state that "there is a better way". There is a better way. There is a way to peace and fullness and liberty and yes, freedom, and that way is not through sex. It isn't through drugs. It isn't through "experience". It isn't through things. The Way is a way of light and love and kindness. The Way is God's Way. Grace. Jesus Christ.

Jesus came that we might have life, and have it to the full. These ACT UP people call Benedict XVI (and by extension all of Catholism) an accomplice to death, they have it exactly backwards. Like his predecessor, John Paul II, this pope is trying to save their lives. So that they might have it to the full. And while some would say that a celibate person has nothing to say to the rest of human sexuality, it seems pretty clear to me, from the example of countless saints…from the example of celibates like Mother Theresa and JPII, and yes, the Dalai Lama, that once can live life to the full - very grandly, very completely - without worshipping at the altar of the Almighty O.

Please read the whole thing. In these dark days, the world can seem confusing, but the answer is actually simple.