Recreation or procreation, that is the question...

It seems to me that one of the areas where I am most at odds with contemporary culture is human sexuality.
The wisdom of the world seems to be that sex is for recreation. I believe it is for procreation.

By that I do not simply mean for conceiving children, but also for participating in the creation of true - and permanent - love. And that those two are inextricably entwined.

How we convey that to our kids in the culture we live in is one of the biggest challenges of all - but convey it we must.

Otherwise - well look around you to see the consequences of the other view: rampant STDs, abortion, aids, young men driven to suicide by their gay identity, marriages falling apart, kids raised in unstable and emotionally crippling circumstances...

People sometimes think the traditional rules around sexuality - those which, strangely , the Catholic Church continues to proclaim - were there to oppress us and stop us having fun, and sprang from a celibate clergy's hatred of (or jealousy of) sex.

But the reverse is true: the rules are there to protect us (from, for example, rampant STDs, abortion, aids, young men being driven to suicide by their gay identity, marriages falling apart, kids raised in unstable and emotionally crippling circumstances...) and are the fruit of the Church's divine origins and centuries of wisdom.

The poor Anglicans shattered twenty centuries of Christian consensus in 1930 when they first permitted contraception: and now they are reaping the fruits of that, because they have nowhere left to stand.