August 28th, 2010 Posted in Sex education |

By Alan Wilson, Guardian

Steven Sample, the recently departed president of the University of Southern California, used to play a mean trick on his graduate students. He restricted MBA class reading to books that been in print for at least 250 years. Anything that had remained in constant use for that long, he argued, must have something about it. Thus airport bookstall how-to paperbacks yielded to Shakespeare, Milton and Machiavelli, all of whom students had heard of, but seldom read. For many today, including Church of England clergy, the Book of Common Prayer (BCP) occupies a similar niche in their consciousness.

Supplemented by newer liturgical compilations, the BCP remains the normative liturgy of the Church of England. It has been translated into over 150 languages. Its words have resonated through almost 450 years of English life and culture. Now it has been placed online, in its entirety, by the Church of England.

The BCP was a bold attempt, on a national level, to bring together a whole community around what was then a new concept of uniformity. This powerful notion was enacted for the Latin church 21 years later when the Council of Trent delivered the Missal of Pius V. The BCP allowed for celebrations in Latin (indeed there is one termly in Oxford to this day), but required that worship should normally be conducted “in a language understanded of the people”. Vernacular liturgy was a reform for which Roman Catholics had to wait another 400 years.

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August 6th, 2010 Posted in Marriage |

S. M. Hutchens writes in Touchstone’s Mere Comments:

In the July 28 edition of The Slate, Ron Rosenbaum identifies agnosticism as the reasonable option for those who do not know whether there is a God, finding it impossible in all honesty to commit themselves either to theism or atheism. He notes that the latter demands the same kind of belief, and can be accompanied by the same levels of intolerance as the most belligerent religious fundamentalism. It is gratifying to hear him observe,

Atheists display a credulous and childlike faith, worship a certainty as yet unsupported by evidence—the certainty that they can or will be able to explain how and why the universe came into existence. (And some of them can behave as intolerantly to heretics who deviate from their unproven orthodoxy as the most unbending religious Inquisitor.) Faced with the fundamental question: “Why is there something rather than nothing?” atheists have faith that science will tell us eventually. Most seem never to consider that it may well be a philosophic, logical impossibility for something to create itself from nothing.

From a Christian perspective, and I also believe from that of the believing Jew, there is no such thing as an atheist or agnostic. All men are endowed with what has been called a natural knowledge of God which it takes an act of the will to deny, for “ever since the creation of the world God’s invisible nature, namely his eternal power and deity, has been clearly perceived in the things that have been made, so [the ungodly are] without excuse.” “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the earth shows forth his handiwork.”

Nor am I sure Mr. Rosenbaum (and on this he stands with many believers) understands the nature of theism, for the “knowing” that believers in God profess–or should profess–is not of the kind many imagine it to be. While believers believe it is true knowledge, it is also partial and analogical, the product of sight, citing St. Paul once again here, “through a mirror, imperfectly.” The knowing paradoxically stands alongside unknowing, both of which are equally valid and true, so that more than a little of the offense caused by Hoffer’s True Believer comes from mistaken enthusiasms rather than the knowledge of God. (Which is not to deny that by the same token much offense comes, as Christ indicated it would, from knowledge of God and obedience to him.)

But these things aside, I doubt whether agnosticism, or a least the fixed neutral attitude on God implied by the idea of agnosticism, can exist comfortably on the logic of its own grounds, either. The agnostic says he does not believe in God, but neither does he deny him–he professes the possibility of God’s existence, but does not know whether he exists. The problem his reason makes him face, if he is honest, is a moral one that I doubt can be avoided.

If it is possible that God exists but the agnostic cannot see him, the question of this existence (because it is the existence of God) must become the Principal Thing for him. He must abandon agnosticism as a static state and become a seeker. If he will not, then he has refused what must be for a professed agnostic the most singularly important of all conceivables, and, like the seeker, he is no longer neutral on the question, but is in active refusal to consider God–an a-theist in the sense of a person in rebellion, someone who has said in his heart “no God.”

By N T Wright, Touchstone

Reflections on a Master Apologist After 60 Years

I once found myself working closely, in a cathedral fundraising campaign, with a local millionaire. He was a self-made man. When I met him he was in his 60s, at the top of his game as a businessman, and was chairing our Board of Trustees. To me, coming from the academic world, he was a nightmare to work with.

He never thought in (what seemed to me) straight lines; he would leap from one conversation to another; he would suddenly break into a discussion and ask what seemed a totally unrelated question. But after a while I learned to say to myself: Well, it must work, or he wouldn’t be where he is. And that was right. We raised the money. We probably wouldn’t have done it if I’d been running the Trust my own way.

A Great Debt

I have something of the same feeling on re-reading C. S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity. I owe Lewis a great debt. In my late teens and early twenties I read everything of his I could get my hands on, and read some of his paperbacks and essays several times over. There are sentences, and some whole passages, I know pretty much by heart.

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By Miriam Grossman, MercatorNet

It is not what you would want to read before breakfast, but it’s the sex menu they are serving up to children.

Sex education for tots is in the headlines. Last month it was a policy in Provincetown, Massachusetts making condoms available to first graders. Student requests were to be kept secret and parents’ objections ignored.

Now the news is from Montana. If the Helena school district has its way, kindergarteners will learn about “reproductive body parts”: the penis, vagina, breast, nipples, testicles, scrotum, and uterus. Ten year olds will be taught that “sexual intercourse includes but is not limited to vaginal, oral, or anal penetration”. Two years later they will discover this may involve “the penis, fingers, tongue or objects”.

Have these people lost their minds? To the contrary. All these maneuvers are entirely consistent with the sex education programs supported by President Obama. Moreover, the administration would like taxpayers to fund their export to the rest of the world.

Who came up with the notion that it’s necessary to teach the world’s children about high risk sex acts their parents never heard of? The usual suspects: Planned Parenthood and the Sexuality Education and Information Council of the United States (SEICUS, a private organization). These groups portray themselves as guardians of our children’s health; they claim to provide students with all the information and skills they need to make smart choices. Their curricula, they declare, are comprehensive, age appropriate, ideologically neutral, and medically accurate. They give children the same message as parents: you’re too young – wait until you’re older.

If only it was so. The priority of this industry is not sexual health, but sexual freedom. Their objective is not for students to delay sexual behavior and remain free of infection, but for them to be open, from a tender age, to just about any form of sexual activity.

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By Rosie Boycott

Comments left on internet forums deemed Kimberly Walsh’s serial monogamy ‘unhealthy’

The very fact it was deemed newsworthy at all is a damning indictment of the changes within our society over the past few decades.

When Girls Aloud’s Kimberley Walsh admitted to only having had two lovers, the response was one of incredulity.

Among the many comments on internet forums discussing this ’shocking news’ were those who deemed her serial monogamy ‘unhealthy’ or declared ‘the more boyfriends the better’.

Contrast her admission with the one from the writer Lynn Barber, who admitted this week that as a young student at Oxford she had taken 50 lovers in the space of just two terms. The response to this? One newspaper columnist described it as ‘the norm for women today’.

Is it? has promiscuity really infected our society to such an extent that it is now considered commonplace, while fidelity is seen as freakish?

Even as a child of the liberated Sixties, I wonder what sort of inverted moral universe we inhabit when a woman of 28 who has had no more than two lovers is held up as some sort of aberration, while a woman who has taken 50 lovers in a few months is deemed par for the course.

I hate to sound like a fogey, but it wasn’t that long ago - just 40 years or so - when even to have made the admission of having sex before marriage or out-of-wedlock was potentially risky.

Now it seems that many younger women see lovers as things you collect, like shoes or dresses or earrings - something to show off about. Research shows that promiscuity among the young is on the rise. People in the 16-24 age group have already clocked up an average of nine partners.

While she was never so indiscreet as to discuss her own sex life, I do know that such figures would have appalled my mother and her generation. The sad thing is that I suspect it was my generation who is to blame.

I was 17 in 1968, the Summer of Love, so had a ringside seat to the start of the sexual revolution. But it was only when I took my first job on an underground magazine two years later that I found myself in its midst.

When Girls Aloud’s Kimberley Walsh, pictured with boyfriend Justin Scott, admitted to only having had two lovers, the response was one of incredulity

Our office on London’s Portobello road was chaotic, endlessly full of long-haired men and shawl-draped women. If we weren’t all sleeping with each other, we certainly told jokes about who was ‘getting it on’ and with whom.

The new era, we agreed, was all about experimentation - with drugs, rock ‘n’ roll and, above all, sex. Suddenly ‘being available’ seemed to be expected and those who showed reticence were labelled old-fashioned. We were meant to meet someone, hop into bed and go on our way as if nothing of any importance had occurred.

It might surprise people who know me - admittedly my tally is nearer Lynn’s than Kimberley’s - but I hated the clinical, emotional detachment of it all. Looking back, we were under as much pressure to conform to promiscuity as our parents were to fidelity and monogamy.

For beneath all this bravado, I longed for a real relationship - and when a man suggested sex, I went along with it with the hope that something more concrete would follow.

I was too young or too naive to realise that falling into bed is a far cry from falling in love. It wasn’t until I spoke to other girls that I realised I wasn’t the only one who wasn’t enjoying it.

Yes, we wanted to be free of the shackles which had prevented our mothers forging ahead in life - the rights to equal pay and education. But we didn’t want the pressure to go along with so-called sexual liberation, too.

Lynn Barber admitted that as a student at Oxford she had taken 50 lovers in just two terms

And I don’t doubt that two generations on, for all their laissez-faire attitudes, today’s young women - far more sexually advanced than even we were - yearn for the same things as we did: a solid relationship, where respect and love are paramount.

The fact they behave as they do is largely the result of peer pressure and what they perceive as society’s expectations.

Take, as one example, the daughter of a friend of mine. Alice told me that although only 22 years old she has already had 17 lovers.

Alice explains: ‘I went to private day school in London and lost my virginity at 15 - one of the oldest girls in my class to do so. My friends would compare notes on Monday mornings and I started to feel as though I was a throwback.

‘Being a virgin implied no one wanted me and I felt anxious and unattractive. So much so that I decided to sleep with a boy who’d been pursuing me for ages. Then, one wasn’t enough and I began sleeping around.

‘It didn’t make me feel good and I would find myself in tears after yet another night with someone I didn’t know well. It was years before I realised that real love begins with friendship, with shared values and respect.’

Sadly Alice’s experience is not unusual - hence the reaction to a pop star bucking the trend.

As a feminist, people are often surprised when I say that casual sex can be damaging, but as the years have gone by, I know that life is much more fulfilling when it is shared with someone, with respect and trust at its heart. Besides, as I have said, promiscuity certainly isn’t what feminism set out to achieve.

When I co-founded Spare Rib, the first magazine in Britain devoted to the subject of Women’s Liberation, it was inspired by the need for parity in the workplace and in the home.

Back then, women couldn’t even get a mortgage unless their father or husband countersigned the application, so there was a lot to write about.

And yet now, nearly 40 years on, it would seem that although so much has changed, attitudes to sex are subjugating women every bit as much as the old-fashioned misogyny of the past.

The only difference is that these days, women are often complicit in the process. Too often, they value themselves in terms of their sexual allure alone - and if this is your ambition, then collecting lovers is the surest way to keep score against your ‘rivals’.

This short-sighted approach is encouraged by the all-pervasive use of sexual imagery and insinuation to sell everything from cars to coffee.

But underneath it all, I believe modern women are as uncertain about this obsession with sex as I was back at the dawn of the sexual revolution. young women today want the same fundamental thing I did: a loving relationship of the kind Kimberley Walsh is lucky enough to enjoy.

Yes, a one-night stand might occasionally lead to something more lasting. But take it from me, more often than not it leads to sad, lonely feelings and diminishing self-worth.

Is it too much to hope that Kimberley will inspire other young girls to reassess their lives and values?