Appreciating Beauty vs. Concupiscence

A reader writes:

This is regarding “looking at girls”.I am very clear that obviously pornography is a grave matter.

I also am clear that deliberately engaging in lustful thoughts, lustful desires, or trying to arouse yourself (outside marriage) with full knowledge and full consent is also mortal sin.  Of course thoughts without these aspects are either venial or not a sin.

What I still struggle with is the question of “deliberately looking at an attractive or shapely girl”.  And liking to do so.

I had understood that one could deliberately look at an attractive girl and admire her beauty -even the beauty of her form- and that the non-sexual pleasure one finds in seeing her beauty and shape was not sinful to consent to and one could just ignore any “reactions of concupiscence” that happen.

Of course one must take care ..and know yourself …as well as at times use custody of the eyes –particularly if she is very immodestly dressed.

Also that one could even look at a work of art that is nude etc (that is not lustfully done –that shows the dignity of the person) and admire the form and beauty and ignore any “reactions of concupiscence”.

Is this treating a girl as an object? Am I wrong in doing this? Is it sinful?

In this context, treating someone “as an object” mean improperly treating a person as an instrument of sexual gratification and thus not properly recognizing the dignity of the person.

There are also other ways one can (non-sexually) “object”-ify a person, e.g., treating a spouse as merely a means of getting certain tasks done (breadwinning, household management, whatever).

In general, treating someone merely as a means to an end and not respecting the fundamental dignity of the person results in the objectification of that person. Sexual objectification is just one species in a larger genus.

But you know what doesn’t belong to this genus?

Recognizing a person’s good points.

If someone is beautiful or handsome or smart or prudent or a good breadwinner or a good household manager or a good square dance caller or has any other good points, it’s fine to recognize and appreciate those facts.

If they are manifest, it would even be contrary to reason not to do so.

So recognizing and appreciating the beauty of the human form–in general or in a specific case–is not a sin.

At least you couldn’t guess it from the statues and paintings that the folks at the Vatican have all over the place. They sure seem to be on board with this idea.

I mean, just look at the Sistine Chapel!

Just look at the Last Judgment!

And this is where they elect popes!

So it seems to me that one is on pretty safe ground saying that it’s okay and not-automatically-objectifying if you recognize and appreciate physical beauty or any other good attribute that a person has.

It becomes objectifying if you reduce the person’s worth to just their good or useful qualities.

Of course, in the area of appreciating physical beauty–especially of the opposite sex–we have to be careful.

It’s one thing to be looking at a marble statue of a nude woman.

It’s another to be looking at a color photograph of a nude woman.

It’s another yet to be looking at a real live nude woman.

These represent different levels of moral risk, and the greater the peril, the more stringent efforts must be taken to avoid it or escape from it.

Because people are different and subject to different levels of temptation, they will have to determine based on their own self-knowledge and personal history what situations are too dangerous for them to allow themselves to be in.

For some–particularly males at a particular stage of life–even looking at artistic representations of nudes may be too much.

As normal in risk management–which is what avoiding temptation is, since it’s not possible to completely eliminate the risk of temptation (given the mind’s ability to produce temptation on its own)–one must avoid two extremes: under-estimating the risk that a situation poses and over-estimating it.

For most people the laxist approach is the greater danger, which is why Jesus told us to seek the narrow path.

For other people, particularly those subject to scrupulous tendencies, the rigorist approach is a danger.

Neither approach is what we are called to.

What one must do is evaluate the risk a particular course of action poses for one and act accordingly.

In some cases temptation will arise despite one’s efforts. That’s the nature of risk. As long as the risk isn’t zero–and it never is in this life–sometimes temptation will arise.

The thing to do when that happens is relax, ignore the temptation, and move on to something else.

The “relax” part is important, because if one allows oneself to become anxious about temptation then it only reinforces the temptation.

Temptation is deprived of its power if you refuse to get anxious about it and simply move on.

Because I’m not the reader, I can’t say precisely what courses of action are too risky in his case, but I can say that it’s not sinful to simply recognize and appreciate beauty. (As opposed to dwelling on or studiously contemplating the details of a particular person’s physical form, which is going to increase risk.)

I can say that it is not sinful to be exposed to any and all levels of non-zero risk. (Zero risk of temptation is impossible in this life.)

And I can say that if he tries to instantly avert his eyes from every single pretty girl he sees then he will foster an anxiety about temptation that will actually feed the temptation he is seeking to minimize.

The better thing to do is avoid situations that are known to be dangerous (i.e., that pose a significant risk of significant temptation) and to otherwise relax and move on when temptation does appear.

Author: Jimmy Akin

Jimmy was born in Texas, grew up nominally Protestant, but at age 20 experienced a profound conversion to Christ. Planning on becoming a Protestant seminary professor, he started an intensive study of the Bible. But the more he immersed himself in Scripture the more he found to support the Catholic faith, and in 1992 he entered the Catholic Church. His conversion story, "A Triumph and a Tragedy," is published in Surprised by Truth. Besides being an author, Jimmy is the Senior Apologist at Catholic Answers, a contributing editor to Catholic Answers Magazine, and a weekly guest on "Catholic Answers Live."

130 thoughts on “Appreciating Beauty vs. Concupiscence”

  1. I’ve always had a deeper problem with this, namely, knowing just when one has crossed the line between appreciating one’s beauty and lusting. I have tried to find out for years – not obsessively, spending hours each day, but in a more healthy, trying to figure it out sort of way. I’ve asked people’s opinions, read articles, got lots of stuff from Christopher West, and I still have never been able to really get a handle on it. As I’ve gotten older and more spiritually mature, I have certainly gotten what I consider a much more “tangible” sense of where that line is, but still not so much as I’d like.
    So any one with any helpful advice is more than welcome to offer it!

  2. Two good clues that you are in danger of crossing the line:
    1) You start pleasurably imagining the act of sex.
    2) You start to experience the stirrings of physical arousal.
    Either of these is a signal that it’s time to relax and move on.

  3. “In this context, treating someone “as an object” mean improperly treating a person as an instrument of sexual gratification and thus not properly recognizing the dignity of the person.”
    I’m not clear whether by this you mean that it is always — in every possible circumstance — improper to treat a person as an instrument of sexual gratification or whether you mean, merely, that treating someone so in an improper fashion would not properly recognize the dignity of the person and thus be morally defective.
    “There are also other ways one can (non-sexually) “object”-ify a person, e.g., treating a spouse as merely a means of getting certain tasks done (breadwinning, household management, whatever).”
    Despite the ambiguity I described above, I liked what you stated above better as “merely a means” sounds a little vague to me in terms of what constitutes “merely” versus, partially? It’s not clear for example, whether you mean that a corporate official is being morally deficient in treating employees merely as human capital — not that he would not also judge them to be persons with dignity proper to persons, but that for the purposes of his life and work, he does not engage that kind of thought as it has no bearing in his economic analysis. So it seems to me, that it is only in certain contexts that treating someone as a means to an end becomes morally defective.
    “In general, treating someone merely as a means to an end and not respecting the fundamental dignity of the person results in the objectification of that person. Sexual objectification is just one species in a larger genus.”
    Since you qualify this with “In general”, perhaps you agree with what I stated above that treating of persons merely as means to an end is morally defective only in certain contexts. In the sexual context or more specifically, for example, in the context of coitus, it would seem to me that the nature of the act of coitus is such that it would be morally defective in that context to treat another person as though he were a giant back scratcher, if you will, as opposed to someone who with whom in said act one is in communion, spiritual and bodily with.
    Thanks for the post.

  4. Just look at the Last Judgment!
    The experience of surfing the .va domain must be what Purgatory is like.

  5. I also am clear that deliberately […] trying to arouse yourself (outside marriage) with full knowledge and full consent is also mortal sin.
    Is it true that to arouse oneself (short of masturbation, and without specifically lustful thoughts) is grave matter?

  6. Hmmm. This has always been a huge sticking point for me as I believe beauty is so subjective. Appreciating the beauty of a painting is so much different than appreciating the “beauty” of a woman! I constantly see this being related as the same thing! We have no right to look at women in any other way except in the light that God sees her. With a pure heart, undefiled, and with honor, respect, and dignity. No matter how she may appear. It’s not our right ever to treat or to view her otherwise.
    If a man is married and is going around appreciating the “beauty” of women other than his wife, there is a huge problem. How cruel for that wife. Women are not pieces of art to be looked upon for your own aesthetic pleasure purposes. As humans we automatically know when someone is pretty, but as a married person should it go further in that you are so impacted by their beauty that you think “She is beautiful” then there is a disordered problem there. Your wife should be your standard of beauty. I have seen this many many times that other men will justify and rationalize their looking at a woman as just appreciating her beauty. Do I know when someone is pretty? Yes. Does that mean something to me? Am I impacted by something so shallow so as to focus on someone else’s looks being wonderful? No. They are pretty. Good for them.
    God thinks all of his creation is beautiful for a reason. Our definition and opinion of beauty is not His. We need to be careful not to assume that the way we are appreciating someone’s beauty is something He would approve of-we do not appreciate in the same way. If we did then we would see all women in that light. If you don’t see all women in that light, as beautiful, then you are looking through a different lens other than what God intended. We are disordered.

  7. Jimmy when you say above:
    2) You start to experience the stirrings of physical arousal.
    I assume you do not mean “little stirrings” –which come very often –very–when I see some attractive woman –but rather what we more active arousal?
    Is it ok to ignore these …and still look and appreciate the beauty?
    Otherwise I would need a blindfold ?

  8. Great post, Jimmy.
    Christopher West talks about this in his “Theology of the Body” talks. Here’s a story he often tells:
    Two bishops were emerging from a church when an immodestly dressed prostitute passed by. The first bishop turned his head; the second did not. “Brother bishop,” exclaimed the first, “what are you doing? Avert your eyes!” But when the second bishop looked at him, there were tears in his eyes. “How tragic,” said the second bishop, “such beauty sold to the lusts of men!”
    West’s question: Which bishop did the right thing?
    The first bishop certainly did the right thing in practicing custody of the eyes. He knew that not to do so would be an occasion of sin for him.
    The second bishop was able to look at that woman with the eyes of a father seeing his daughter. Rather than being tempted to lust, he regarded her in her dignity as a human being, and his heart broke at her shameless display.

  9. “As humans we automatically know when someone is pretty, but as a married person should it go further in that you are so impacted by their beauty that you think “She is beautiful” then there is a disordered problem there.”
    Why? Why *need* that be substantially different than saying “that sunset is beautiful”?.
    For instance, I did a post at my blog recently about a mixed-race family with two sets of twin girls of mixed skin color;
    http://timothyjones.typepad.com/old_world_swine/2009/01/shades-of-black-white-great.html
    I just noted that the girls are so angelic and beautiful that I wanted to paint them the moment I saw their picture (the older pair of sisters are just 7 years old). They are beautiful.
    Why should we suppress such a reaction or avoid making such an acknowledgment just because the person has reached sexual maturity?
    There is a danger of temptation, yes. There is the danger of lying to oneself and saying “Oh, I’m just appreciating beauty” when you’re really ogling some girl’s backside in a lustful way. It is good to keep that in mind.
    Incidentally, my wife notices the beauty of other women all the time. She has remarked that some woman or young girl is “so beautiful” or “gorgeous”, “pretty” or what have you. Such observations are not necessarily related – at all – to thoughts of a sexual nature.

  10. Kris, With all due respect — what you say is not true ….
    “should it go further in that you are so impacted by their beauty that you think “She is beautiful” then there is a disordered problem there.”
    For a married man to look at a beautiful woman and appreciate her beauty and say “she is beautiful” –is not a sin nor a disordered problem. It would could be disordered if he did not.
    Jesus said:
    “You have heard that it was said, `You shall not commit adultery.’ But I say to you that every one who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart [Matt. 5:27-28].”
    NOT –everyone that “looks and says a woman is beautiful or attractive etc” …..
    The problem is looking lustfully. Looking in order to lust.
    A married man should not look at another woman the way he would have before he was married –as a potential date or spouse ….and of course not lustfully ….and yes it can get disordered if it is too much -just like anything that is too much.
    But beauty is beauty and is good. One must be more cautious as Jimmy says due to concupscience but –and one must not fool oneself and buy the swimsuit issue so one can look at beauty…but to simply look at an attractive girl (even my wife will comment that a particular girl is beautiful or a man or a child…) and say “she is beautiful” is not disordered. It is simply responding to beauty.
    Of course it needs to be done when done…with care.

  11. Great post. Thanks. Especially the the idea to “relax”. A priest once told me to remember God is a gardener, not a universal cop (no offense to cops!)

  12. JIMMY
    Can you just touch on as a follow up the verse in Matthew:
    What does the “looks lustfully” mean …. in “You have heard that it was said, `You shall not commit adultery.’ But I say to you that every one who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart [Matt. 5:27-28].”
    Am I correct then that “looking lustfully” here does not mean intentionally looking and feeling attraction and liking to see the beauty or form of a woman but rather “looking in order to have lustful thoughts or to actively arouse oneself “?
    That what one is seeking to avoid is the thoughts or desires or deliberate sexual arousal (beyond normal little stirrings that just happen) outside of Marriage…..
    ????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

  13. Since SDG has posted, I thought I’d ask about this topic as it relates to movies. Occasionally there are movies that I’d like to see, like “The Reader”, that get good reviews but have some nudity/sexuality. Even assuming that such is truly a part of telling the story (I’m not talking about “Old School” gratuity here), it may represent an occasion of sin. There’s the rub, it may. But without seeing the movie, how can I know? Sites like decentfilms.com (free plug!) certainly help. Should I go and close my eyes, so to speak, if it gets to be somewhat tempting, leave if it goes to far for me?
    SDG, how do you handle this as part of you profession?

  14. St. Augustine’s “Love, and do as you will” has some application here when deciding how to forumlate a personal behavior code. Cultivating a strong detachment is very helpful in overcoming this type of sin.
    If two future saints of the opposite sex unknowingly went down to a river from their separate monasteries to bathe and beheld each other naked, my impression is that they would not hasten to cover up, per se, but would enjoy the beauty of God’s creation that they see in one another. I’m not saying they would unduly prolong the moment or not ensure that it never happens again, but I doubt they would flee each other immediately. That is quite possibly how they will behold each other in heaven. The evil is not in the form, which God created good, but in the impure attachments we make, in this case ordering love of body above love of God.
    Kris is wrong in many of her points, as has been pointed out, but there are definitely elements of truth. We must still TRY to see others as God sees them, in perfect love. If we have surrendered ourselves to God and focus all our energies towards him, we will not fail by committing lustful thoughts on his creatures which he wills us to love as well, through Him.
    Still, as everyone as pointed out, we have fallen, and live in a fallen world, and we are always subject to temptation. I hope no one ever unduly puts themselves in harm’s way thinking that their love of God is pure enough to save them from the temptation to elevate love of form above anything else. Prudence!

  15. Speaking as a potential “object” — that is, a woman — I’d like to share an experience that demonstrates the difference between appreciating beauty and objectification.
    When I was in college, I was walking back to campus (dressed modestly) when a pickup truck passed me. The male occupants wolf-whistled at me, and I felt mortified and offended. Here I was, just an ordinary person minding her business, when some strangers felt the need to remind me that I was an object of lust.
    A few minutes later, I arrived back on campus and saw a male acquaintance. He said, “You look nice today!” I smiled with pleasure at the comment. Then I remembered the pickup truck and realized that both had expressed the same sentiment to me — “You are attractive” — yet the way it was expressed could not be more different. My friend expressed it in the context of my human dignity and of our friendship, while the pickup’s occupants expressed it in the context of my sexuality detached from my humanity.
    I cannot tell a man where to “draw the line” when silently appreciating a beautiful female, but I hope this illustration may help to show how to find the line.

  16. “Is it true that to arouse oneself (short of masturbation, and without specifically lustful thoughts) is grave matter?”
    Answer –YES. (outside of marriage with ones spouse)

  17. Kris wrote:

    This has always been a huge sticking point for me as I believe beauty is so subjective.

    Subjectivity plays a role, but it’s not the whole story. For example, physical beauty correlates with healthy traits. Symmetry is attractive; no one finds crooked teeth, wall eye or otherwise imbalanced features attractive. In general, a healthy weight is more attractive than unhealthy extremes in either direction; fashion and culture can pull the imaginary “ideal” a certain distance from the healthy ideal, but there are limits.

    We have no right to look at women in any other way except in the light that God sees her.

    I’m not sure what this would mean. God has given us human eyes, and human sensibilities, and like everything else he created these are “very good.” Human nature has been distorted and disordered by the fall, but not absolutely and totally depraved. Our response to physical beauty is still essentially God’s good work.

    With a pure heart, undefiled, and with honor, respect, and dignity. No matter how she may appear. It’s not our right ever to treat or to view her otherwise.

    Certainly, and the same is true with regard to any other excellence or the lack thereof. An intelligent person does not have greater dignity than an unintelligent one, and we should love and respect them equally. But we still appreciate the intelligence of the one, and cannot enjoy that particular excellence in the other.
    Attractiveness is pleasing. We respond to it emotionally and sensibly. In my experience, this can be the case for members of the same sex as well as the opposite sex, regardless of “preference” or “orientation.” A young, muscular male body can be visually pleasing to “straight” men as well as to women, and “straight” women as well as men can admire a shapely female form — without any sinful desire.
    I’m an art-school student and an inveterate doodler. I’m also a comic-book fan, and doodles of heroic male figures (often Batman or Spider-Man, sometimes no one in particular) and the like cover the scrap paper on my desk. Some Freudian might diagnose me with repressed same-sex attraction, but the reality is that the ideal human figure is aesthetically pleasing in either sex, to either sex.

    Your wife should be your standard of beauty.

    I disagree. That would mean measuring the beauty of others by their similarity or dissimilarity to one’s wife. My appreciation of my wife’s beauty is unique: I don’t compare anyone to her, or her to anyone. She is literally beyond compare.

    Do I know when someone is pretty? Yes. Does that mean something to me? Am I impacted by something so shallow so as to focus on someone else’s looks being wonderful? No. They are pretty. Good for them.

    Are you similarly unmoved by the adorableness of a child? Or even a puppy or a kitten? I mean, there are ugly babies in the world, alas, and their dignity is no less than that of an adorable baby. But it seems absurd to me to think that God intended us not to be “impacted by something so shallow” as a baby’s cuteness. It might even be that an ugly baby elicits as sympathetic an emotional reaction as the adorable baby — but even so, it’s not the same emotional reaction.

    God thinks all of his creation is beautiful for a reason. Our definition and opinion of beauty is not His.

    Again, God is the author of our human sensibilities, despite the disordering effects of sin.

    If we did then we would see all women in that light. If you don’t see all women in that light, as beautiful, then you are looking through a different lens other than what God intended.

    Consider again the cute baby example: The cuteness of cute babies tells us how we should respond to all babies, even non-cute ones. This doesn’t mean that all babies are equally cute, or that we are somehow disordered for finding some babies cuter than others, or for having a different (not necessarily better) emotional reaction to cute babies.
    In a similar vein, in my youth I worked in a service industry, and did my best to be attentive and helpful to everyone and to treat every customer with respect and dignity. On occasion a customer happened to be an attractive young woman, and a young man enjoys the presence of an attractive young woman, and on such occasions I found it very easy to be solicitous to her. At the same time, whenever this happened, it made me resolve to treat every other customer exactly the same way.
    So yes, we should see everyone as beautiful, but to aspire “not to be impacted” by physical beauty seems to me sub-natural rather than supernatural or virtuous.

  18. I think that Kris is right; you have to read his words carefully.
    He is talking about a *married man* who is *appreciating* the beauty of another woman who is not his wife. This man is *actively admiring* some woman who is not his wife. Imagine how the wife would feel to know that this man she married would be *admiring* some other woman’s beauty.
    Kris said that he can tell when a woman is pretty, and I think his point is that he doesn’t go into the realm of appreciating that prettiness because it would be disrespectful to his wife. And I agree with him, admiration should be reserved for our spouses in a marital relationship. It may not be a sin to admire someone’s beauty if we don’t lust, but out of respect and honor for our wives, we should not be admiring another woman either.
    It is just like how marriage is a prefigurement of our relationship with God. We wouldn’t go about saying, “hey that Buddha teaches some really great things, things that are not what God teaches. I really admire Buddha.” We should only be admiring and adoring our God; he is our covenant. Likewise, our marriage covenant should restrict our admiration to our spouse alone. We can recognize that other women have pretty qualities, but it would be inappropriate for us to admire them, once we have entered into covenant. An attitude of “we can admire the beauty of all women” lessens our bond with our wife. Saving that admiration for our wife’s beauty alone helps us grow more intimate with our wife.
    I know this is possible because I live this life. Let us married men all keep our marriage covenant with the highest dignity and respect for our wives.

  19. JIMMY
    Can you just touch on as a follow up the verse in Matthew:
    What does the “looks lustfully” mean …. in “You have heard that it was said, `You shall not commit adultery.’ But I say to you that every one who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart [Matt. 5:27-28].”
    Am I correct then that “looking lustfully” here does not mean intentionally looking and feeling attraction and liking to see the beauty or form of a woman but rather “looking in order to have lustful thoughts or to actively arouse oneself “?
    That what one is seeking to avoid is the thoughts or desires or deliberate sexual arousal (beyond normal little stirrings that just happen) outside of Marriage…..
    ????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

  20. Since SDG has posted, I thought I’d ask about this topic as it relates to movies. Occasionally there are movies that I’d like to see, like “The Reader”, that get good reviews but have some nudity/sexuality. Even assuming that such is truly a part of telling the story (I’m not talking about “Old School” gratuity here), it may represent an occasion of sin. There’s the rub, it may. But without seeing the movie, how can I know? Sites like decentfilms.com (free plug!) certainly help. Should I go and close my eyes, so to speak, if it gets to be somewhat tempting, leave if it goes to far for me?

    SDG, how do you handle this as part of you profession?

    A big part of the answer is simply knowing yourself. As I’ve written elsewhere, what constitutes a likely occasion of sin differs from one person to another, and even in the same person from one point in time to another. A sixteen-year-old boy and a 40-year-old married man may be subject to very different temptations and very different near occasions of sin.
    Speaking as a 40-year-old married man, that’s been my experience. What I now consider a near occasion of sin has not always been so for me, and what I once considered a near occasion of sin no longer is. Some things I once experienced as besetting temptations either no longer move me in the slightest or even repel me, and are no longer any sort of occasion of sin, but quite the opposite.
    As a part-time film critic writing for a niche audience, I am fortunate to have little reason to see movies that I consider likely occasions of sin for me, though I am aware that what is not an occasion for me may be to someone else. I always have the option of practicing custody of the eyes, and do when necessary, but again I try to avoid movies regarding which I anticipate such an occasion.
    It is possible to progress, to overcome concupiscent responses and attachments. Frequenting the sacraments and prayer, focusing on God rather than our own failings and on loving our neighbor rather than worrying about her as a likely occasion of sin, and learning to relax and move on rather than becoming paralyzed by anxiety are all part of the solution.

  21. Catholica,
    Jimmy’s response would apply to married or unmarried. A Christian actually does admire any truth that Buddha taught….this is the teaching of the Church. Truth is Truth wherever it is and beauty is beauty is beauty. A right response is a chaste (non-lustful) response –married or not married.
    A married man may appreciate the beauty of another woman –this is not disrespecting his wife. But he can not consent to sexual thoughts …or take her for a date….etc.
    And my wife agrees
    ” Imagine how the wife would feel to know that this man she married would be *admiring* some other woman’s beauty.”
    I read this to my wife and her response was “whats the problem?”
    There is nothing sinful in just appreciating the beauty of other women. One must not lust etc and be reseasonable about it …but beauty is good.

  22. Great Line:
    “So yes, we should see everyone as beautiful, but to aspire “not to be impacted” by physical beauty seems to me sub-natural rather than supernatural or virtuous.”

  23. He is talking about a *married man* who is *appreciating* the beauty of another woman who is not his wife. This man is *actively admiring* some woman who is not his wife. Imagine how the wife would feel to know that this man she married would be *admiring* some other woman’s beauty.

    If it’s wrong for a married man, it would also be wrong for an unmarried man; if a married man’s admiration of another woman is a kind of infidelity, then an unmarried man’s admiration of any woman would be a kind of fornication. In that case, even an engaged man could not even admire the beauty of his own fiancee until they had actually tied the knot.
    This seems to me manifestly absurd. With Kevin — and his wife — and for that matter my wife — I reject the idea that all male appreciation of female beauty (other than of one’s wife) is impure, and that a husband necessarily wrongs his wife by admiring another woman, or a wife her husband by admiring another man. Such admiration may be or become impure, but it need not be.
    To pick an obvious example: Is it wrong for a husband and father to appreciate and be proud of the physical beauty of his grown daughter, or for a wife and mother to admire the handsomeness of her grown son? Does this constitute a form of inner incest?
    Tragically, incest does happen, and I suppose there is such a thing as an incestuous parental gaze, but this has nothing to do with the normal, healthy appreciation of the physical beauty of one’s grown children.
    Likewise, among single adults, there is such a thing as a gaze of desire, but not all appreciation of the opposite sex among singles constitutes fornication of the heart. And in marriage, in just the same way, not all appreciation of members of the opposite sex other than one’s spouse constitutes adultery of the heart.
    Appreciation of physical beauty is not the same as lust. John Paul II’s theology of the body is very helpful here.

  24. Great Line:

    “So yes, we should see everyone as beautiful, but to aspire “not to be impacted” by physical beauty seems to me sub-natural rather than supernatural or virtuous.”

    Thanks.
    I’m reminded of the scholastic truism that “Grace does not abolish nature, but perfects it.” Is appreciation of beauty in general, and male appreciation of female beauty in particular, essentially part of man’s corruption, or is it rooted in his nature as created by God, even if distorted by sin? Clearly the latter.
    This is not to deny that the distortions of sin must not be underestimated, or that concessions to our weakness must be made. But it will be the work of grace in us, not to abolish our appreciation of beauty or to enable us “not to be impacted” by physical beauty, but to purify and redeem our appreciation of physical beauty, including that of the opposite sex.

  25. Another scholastic piece of wisdom:
    Always distinguish.
    Looking lustfully (consenting to sexual thoughts, or desires (I would like to go to bed with her) consenting to sexual arousal) is one thing.
    Looking to admire beauty is another….
    Of So is — looking a couple of times to admire a particularly beautiful -shapely girl in the presence of ones wife “when one knows this would hurt her” –some can be too sensitive in this…(the circumstance would cause the problem here)…so one would out of love not look….
    Just as St. Paul said not to eat the meat (which was ok to eat) if one is with a brother whom it would offend…
    Sometimes a circumstance like this can be the case…
    But objectively — it is as we have been arguing ….and as our wifes have said. 🙂

  26. SDG
    I spent some time writing a comment addressing Brian’s question before you posted yours, but when I finally posted it, it has been filtred by Typepad’s spam machine to be checked by an administrator. Can you take a look at it?

  27. I spent some time writing a comment addressing Brian’s question before you posted yours, but when I finally posted it, it has been filtred by Typepad’s spam machine to be checked by an administrator. Can you take a look at it?

    Done (with one edit of a questionable word that caused the post to be flagged).

  28. Thank you very much. I thought it had been flagged because of the links and HTML. I didn’t think the word was vulgar, it wasn’t my intention.

  29. Other than the “Looking lustfully” that Jesus tells us we would commit adultery with…
    An important virtue is that of Modesty. Modesty protects purity (chastity) and guides HOW and what we look at as well…(and a sin against modesty can often be venial).
    For instance ASIDE from looking and admiring a womans beauty which is good per se and ASIDE from the lustful looks…one can look in a way or at an immodest person that would be as Jimmy notes too much of a temptation for one…
    In this case modesty must guide ones eyes to look away or to look in a different way…
    From the Catechism:
    2521 Purity requires modesty, an integral part of temperance. Modesty protects the intimate center of the person. It means refusing to unveil what should remain hidden. It is ordered to chastity to whose sensitivity it bears witness. It guides how one looks at others and behaves toward them in conformity with the dignity of persons and their solidarity.
    2522 Modesty protects the mystery of persons and their love. It encourages patience and moderation in loving relationships; it requires that the conditions for the definitive giving and commitment of man and woman to one another be fulfilled. Modesty is decency. It inspires one’s choice of clothing. It keeps silence or reserve where there is evident risk of unhealthy curiosity. It is discreet.
    2523 There is a modesty of the feelings as well as of the body. It protests, for example, against the voyeuristic explorations of the human body in certain advertisements, or against the solicitations of certain media that go too far in the exhibition of intimate things. Modesty inspires a way of life which makes it possible to resist the allurements of fashion and the pressures of prevailing ideologies.
    2524 The forms taken by modesty vary from one culture to another. Everywhere, however, modesty exists as an intuition of the spiritual dignity proper to man. It is born with the awakening consciousness of being a subject. Teaching modesty to children and adolescents means awakening in them respect for the human person.
    2525 Christian purity requires a purification of the social climate. It requires of the communications media that their presentations show concern for respect and restraint. Purity of heart brings freedom from widespread eroticism and avoids entertainment inclined to voyeurism and illusion.
    ——————————–
    –but again I should note that the intentional admiring of a womans beauty is not per se “voyeurism” or “looking wrongly –even if not lustfully”…it is or can be ..as noted… “good” —
    but in our particular culture one needs to be use perhaps greater caution due to the cultural climate ….the clothing habits of some of the natives….
    In this case one would apply the custody of the eyes…and look away from the temptation or disordered use of beauty.
    So one may look within reason and appreciate beauty …but one needs to know oneself and know what is too tempting etc.
    The Beauty of the human female person is wonderful. But sometimes (depending on the person and outfit etc) –one should follow the prudential “advise” of Scripture :
    Sirach 9:8 “Turn away your eyes from a shapely woman, and do not gaze at beauty belonging to another; many have been seduced by a woman’s beauty, and by it passion is kindled like a fire.”
    This is of course a recommendation a proverb of sorts …due to possible “occasion of sin” aspect Jimmy mentioned above…when seeing some members of the fairer sex …….not a commandment (saying one can never look at beautiful women) it would seem.
    Just like other wisdom writings one must understand it properly (as Jimmy has given us above) –but in truth —sometimes one must use “Custodia Occulorum” and turn away….
    But relax….too 🙂

  30. Oh –I almost forgot this great quote from the Catechism:
    2519 The “pure in heart” are promised that they will see God face to face and be like him.312 Purity of heart is the precondition of the vision of God. Even now it enables us to see according to God, to accept others as “neighbors”; it lets us perceive the human body – ours and our neighbor’s – as a temple of the Holy Spirit, a manifestation of divine beauty.
    Note is says that we can perceive our neighors human body–via looking chastely (not lustfully!) –as a manifestation of divine beauty!!! and of course one would have to look to see such…

  31. Kevin,
    With all due respect to you and your wife, just because you both agree on something does not make it right. A couple may enjoy swinging too, and man asks his wife, “I think swinging is okay, what do you think?” She says, “What’s the problem?”. Doesn’t make it right. I know I’m stretching the analogy into something objectively sinful here; I’m doing it to show a correlation, not to imply that it is sinful.
    I think a lot of people disagreed likewise with the pope when he said it was sinful even to look at your own wife with lust. The Bible does not say “another woman” it just says “a woman”. Therefore, you can commit adultery even *with* your own wife.
    In this case we have a less serious “offense” which is not a sin. But still I think that if more people paid this type of respect to their spouse, marriages would be even closer. And who doesn’t want that?
    Sirach 9:8
    “Turn away your eyes from a shapely woman, and do not look intently at beauty belonging to another; many have been misled by a woman’s beauty, and by it passion is kindled like fire.”

  32. Sorry about the delayed post here, it took me a long time to write, and I missed your quoting the same verse.

  33. Kevin,
    In regard to CCC 2519, do you think that God sees one person’s body as beautiful more than another’s? In fact, I think that God would see us all the same, and would have not the same concept of what any culture considers “beauty”. I think it means that instead of seeing the body itself as good or bad, we just see it like we’d look at a sunset – always beautiful, always the same, beautiful because it is God’s creation, not because someone had plastic surgery, hair extensions, liposuction, or whatever other horrible thing a person does to their body to try to live up to our fallen culture’s concept of “beauty”.

  34. Catholica,
    We are not of course –swingers — we are a married couple whose views are in harmony with the Church –and who both have degrees in Theology from orthodox Catholic institutions…mine from Steubenville and hers from a Pontifical Academy in Europe….so along with other Catholics with great backgrounds –such as Jimmy (we all know him!) and SDG (who also has a degree from a very sound Catholic institution) –one cannot compare our “agreement” with that of “swingers”.
    I imagine that Pope Benedict too would agree with what Jimmy and and SDG and I have said. He would not consider it a sin per se for a married man to appreciate the beauty of other women. Beauty is a reasonable good –and misuse does not negate good appreciation–even by married men.
    You will notice That I actually quoted Sirach just a few moments ago –and noted its context as what Jimmy is talking about “recommendation in avoiding occasions” not a commandment…you will find many things in the wisdom writings that need a context to understand what they are saying. And as Pope Benedict XVI has pointed out –one must not just lift a verse out of the Bible but take the Bible as whole… Sirach is a prudential recommendation …it also says to stay away from singing girls but I am sure you would have been willing to date a girl from a choir…
    I would not say that “looking with lust at ones wife” (this of course does mean good sexual desire but treating her lustfully as a mere object…) is not sinful — it is. Though it can be often a venial sin –as St. Thomas notes in the Summa.
    Per se –to appreciate in a good way the beauty of another woman — is not to disrespect ones wife…anymore than as SDG points out to appreciate the beauty of other children disrespects ones children…

  35. Kevin,
    In regard to CCC 2519, do you think that God sees one person’s body as beautiful more than another’s? In fact, I think that God would see us all the same, and would have not the same concept of what any culture considers “beauty”. I think it means that instead of seeing the body itself as good or bad, we just see it like we’d look at a sunset – always beautiful, always the same, beautiful because it is God’s creation, not because someone had plastic surgery, hair extensions, liposuction, or whatever other horrible thing a person does to their body to try to live up to our fallen culture’s concept of “beauty”.
    — Yes I do.
    Just as some are more talented than others in art or science or some are better at sports….or some are more intelligent or more funny –yes beauty is a distributed gift. Not an “equal gift”.
    But God loves us all and give varied gifts–which makes things interesting.
    Just imagine if everyone was was the same.

  36. “For example, physical beauty correlates with healthy traits.”
    This is may be so. However, it is important to clarify that a reductionist approach to beauty or physical beauty (for ex. seeing it as merely an evolutionary device) is not in accordance with Catholic philosophical doctrine. In Catholic philosophy, beauty is considered to inhere in the object which the intellect apprehends as beautiful and in so being apprehended brings about delight in human nature, both intellectually and affectively as SDG noted, in various ways variant to the nature of the beauty and object being apprehended and variant to any special relation one might have to that object or the beauty which inheres in it. (SDG did not say anything to the contrary, but since his sttement could be interpreted in a reductionist way, I thought I’d chime in).
    “I always have the option of practicing custody of the eyes, and do when necessary, but again I try to avoid movies regarding which I anticipate such an occasion.”
    I have not encountered any reviews in which you mention this practice and to the extent that such a practice might color your reviews, FWIW, I would suggest mentioning it somewhere in the course of those reviews (I’m not sure whether it is just averting your eyes you practice or also something even more substantial such as not listening attentively but in either case it would seem that material that the producer or director or actor/actress may have thought integral to or at least contributive towards the artistic work may be not fully apprehended or experienced and thus in that respect the work (potentially) not fairly judged)
    FWIW, my own view if I were to give the traditional view a sort of rehabilitation would be to say that there is thought, emotion, and desire that is unruly such that it constitutes a commotion in human nature which impedes a will, firm, and intellect, enlightened, from holding fast to the good, which holding fast to is constituted ideally not only in will and intellection but also as the Catechism teaches in affection. One can apply this of course specifically to the sexual realm. So if I were to adopt such a view, I would as I noted or hinted at above, appreciate some of the circumspect and qualified and more tentative language in the OP inasmuch as that might be indicative of receptiveness to this view. In general terms, I do adopt this view but as applied to sex, I would say — and nothing in the OP or later comment would seem to contradict this — that it is not intrinsically evil to imagine sexual congress with someone, but it is evil circumstantially inasmuch as it might be an “unruly” thought of the kind I just defined above. This could apply even to one’s spouse if one’s spouse were in a condition in which sexual congress would not be just and the dwelling in such thought would cause an “unruliness” of the kind I specified. Where my view might differ or differ more substantially as regards things specific to sex is probably beyond the scope of this discussion.
    O, I agree with what SDG wrote about being attracted to the beautiful being natural and moral and as to it being true of both same and opposite sex. I would add however that being attracted to the beautiful as I mentioned above involves a variance in the nature of the attraction variant to the nature of the beauty/object being apprehended by the intellect and any special relation it may have to the apprehender. In the case of the opposite sex, one has a special relation to all members of the opposite sex (in varying ways and degrees) and as regards the beauty that would inhere in certain many members of the opposite sex transparent to one’s apprehension, one would have a special relation to said beauty transparent to one’s apprehension, and the apprehension of such beauty would bring about a different kind or, if you will, color of attraction than one might have to for ex. members of the same sex — and rightly so. Likewise, the attraction, generally that one might have to humans would be of a different kind, or if you will color, than the attraction one might have towards inanimate things. The nature of beauty is for it to be found attractive as apprehended in intellect ideally in humans in harmony with a right ordering of will and affection.
    I think one would be remiss in this discussion of beauty to not also mention that Catholic philosophy in addition to believing physical beauty to be objective, i.e. to inhere in the object itself, believes that beauty extends to non-physical things such as moral virtues as well, as well as to things that might be termed physical such as music. In terms of transcendentals, there is some question as to whether the beautiful is a trascendental in its own right or whether it is simply the consideration together of two other trascendentals, namely, the good and the true. In either case as someone above may have alluded to, everything that exists insofar as it exists, is beautiful; this would be true even of Satan: Satan insofar as he exists, is beautiful.

  37. With all due respect to you and your wife, just because you both agree on something does not make it right.

    Kevin didn’t say it did. He was responding to the rhetorical appeal to “how the wife would feel” by pointing out that it is not obviously the case that the woman would, or should, feel wronged.

    I think a lot of people disagreed likewise with the pope when he said it was sinful even to look at your own wife with lust. The Bible does not say “another woman” it just says “a woman”. Therefore, you can commit adultery even *with* your own wife.

    I agree with JP2’s moral point, though I wouldn’t call an act of objectifying one’s wife “adultery,” except in the general sense in which all sexual sins are violations of the sixth commandment. It is possible to regard one’s wife in a degrading way; it is not possible to commit “adultery” with her.
    In context Jesus is clearly speaking of looking lustfully at another woman: “You have heard it said, ‘You shall not commit adultery’…” Jesus here contrasts outward adherence with inward attitudes, pointing out that a physical act — i.e., with another woman — is not necessary to be implicated in adultery.

    In regard to CCC 2519, do you think that God sees one person’s body as beautiful more than another’s?

    I think that God intends our aesthetic sensibilities to make meaningful discriminations, yes. It is part of human nature — as created by God, not just as distorted by sin — to find health and beauty attractive and to find disease and unshapeliness unattractive.
    Perhaps we can say that physical beauty communicates to us something of how we ought to view and treat all human persons, while physical ugliness gives us the opportunity actually to treat people that way (or not) without the incentive of physical beauty. What would St. Francis embracing the leper be worth if leprosy made people attractive?

  38. FWIW, on beauty, (Fr) Thomas Dubay, SM has done one perhaps more excellent shows on Catholic Answers on beauty, including speaking about its objective nature as regards physical beauty. I don’t know if catholic.com is configured for such a search, but using the “site:” parameter on google, you could probably find a list of all months in which he has been a guest or all months in which he has been a guest and the topic has been beauty. It might be worth a listen.

  39. and I should add that beauty that we have been discussing –is only one kind of beauty –one should not reduce a women to only her external beauty….
    There is more to woman than meets the eye 🙂
    and Beauty and goodness and truth go together…

  40. “I agree with JP2’s moral point, though I wouldn’t call an act of objectifying one’s wife “adultery,” except in the general sense in which all sexual sins are violations of the sixth commandment. It is possible to regard one’s wife in a degrading way; it is not possible to commit “adultery” with her.”
    SDG is right here…for
    –it should be noted that JPII did not say it was ‘adultry” but that it is possible to sin by “lusting” after ones wife…treating her as a mere object…

  41. “In this case we have a less serious “offense” which is not a sin.”
    It is not necessarily an offense *at all*.
    Sirach gives good advice, but it is advice, it does not rise to the level of a commandment. In general, more than a passing glance at a real, live woman is getting into dangerous territory, but to acknowledge beauty is not only NOT sinful, it is how God made us.
    The analogy to a sunset is apt, but you miss the plain fact that some sunsets are more beautiful than others. They all have their good points, but some are just more spectacularly awesome than others. Thay are NOT all the same. Some take your breath away, and others are just… nice.
    There is nothing wrong with that.
    Also, because of our fallen nature, our bodies suffer, too, and fall short of perfection. As a result, ugliness and decay are a fact of physical, human existence. Do you figure God looks at a cancer the same way as the cheek of a newborn baby?
    We shrivel up and die, and this is not a pretty process.
    It’s great – far preferable – to recognize the non-physical attributes of human personality, but to pretend that physical beauty isn’t REAL beauty, or is of its very nature debasing is an insult to the One that created it.

  42. SDG,
    I don’t think JP2 was proposing that the sin would be classed adultery in some technical sense, but merely that the moral ideal proposed by the word (or if you prefer, commandment) in the Decalogue would be violated or diminished by such things. There are a couple ways to discuss morality … one organization is around the Decalogue and another is more focused philosophically on virtues. The Catechism seems to have inclined more in the direction of a Decalogue-style organization or characterization. In any event, whether we term a sin with a particular name is in itself of absolutely no consequence; what is of consequence is what concepts — however they be termed — we attribute to them. So, substantively, JP2 seems to be suggesting that such things involve a moral defect of a kind similar in certain ways to might be involved outside of marriage. So if you agree with JP2 as to those ways and as to those similarities, the terminological difference of usage becomes a mere question of what language might be more apt, convenient, useful, or facilitative of enlightenment on matters of substance.

  43. Atsols
    I do not think JP2 used the word “adultery” in this context–but only “lust”….

  44. I don’t think JP2 was proposing that the sin would be classed adultery in some technical sense

    With Kevin, I believe JP2 didn’t use the word “adultery” here. My demurral was not toward JP2, but Catholica (“Therefore, you can commit adultery even *with* your own wife”).

  45. Catholica,
    I’d guess that God does see one’s persons body as more beautiful than another’s, just as I’d guess he see’s one person’s mind as being more intelligent than another’s, or muscles stronger or sense of humor wittier or any number of characteristics. This, of course, has no bearing on the person’s worth or God’s love for him or her. But God created us and gave us different gifts and abilities – I can’t imagine he doesn’t notice them.
    I don’t really follow your sunset analogy. I definitely view some sunsets as more beautiful than others and not all the same – I’ve always figured most people also do. I don’t think anyone here suggested judging others based on the fallen culture’s concept of beauty or using beauty to judge another person’s body as good or bad. We already know that God thinks our bodies are good; possessing more physical beauty doesn’t make a body good and neither does possessing less make a body bad.

  46. I think — this is just my opinion — that apprehension of physical beauty as it relates to interpersonal affairs needs to be in some way inasmuch as that apprehension motivates interpersonal acts be united to apprehension of that person’s spiritual reality. To think otherwise, ISTM, would mean committing one’s self to saying that apprehension of the physical beauty of a corpse (a soul-less body) as might relate to “interpersonal” acts one might engage in with that corpse is not morally defective (apart from the impossibility of interpersonal acts obtaining here). IOW, apprehending, being drawn by physical beauty is fine when united to apprehension — even if not wowing — of spiritual beauty as regards interpersonal acts (be it conversation or glancing etc); otherwise one is not authentically in admiration of or being attracted to the beauty of a human person, body and soul, but only to the beauty of a body, separated, if you will, from soul, which is not a human person at all and is, if you will, a corpse — meaning that interpersonal activity (be it glancing or conversation or what have you) is simply not obtaining at all (which can be fine, as I mentioned up above as regards economic matters) or obtaining in a defective way.
    I think, FWIW, a fruitful consideration in the contemplation of beauty, is the divine. God is not — traditionally — a soul, for a soul is form of body; and nor is he — traditionally — a body. So would then God be more like a soul or more like a body and would not God and the beauty which is God, perhaps be so trascendent that the gap, infinite, between God and the physical and the gap, infinite, between God and the spirital — is, well, in both cases, infinite and thus in a sense one not more substantially like God than the other. This, for me, leaves man as a kind of organic mystery. Indeed in the resurrected life it is supposed that our bodies will be perfectly beautiful and perfectly reflect/express our beautiful souls which would inhere perfectly in said bodies. ISTM that a reasonable understanding of the tradition is to suppose that in this life, our bodies be beautiful to the extent that the beauty of our souls inhere perfectly in them and beautiful in various ways to the extent that the beauty of our souls inhere variously in them. Since someone in a state of mortal sin or a state of the dead conscience can still be markedly beautiful in shape, it would seem then that there is some kind of beauty in soul that cannot be destoryed even by mortal sin — indeed such is an inescapable conclusion of Catholic philosophic doctrine as the soul exists ontologically and all things to the extent that they exist ontologically are beautiful. An area of exploration I would suggest is what kind of beauty, impervious to mortal sin, this might be and what ontological relation it may have to other kinds of beauty inherent in soul, and what would impede the bodily constitution of beauty of soul. FWIW, I agree with what I recall to be the opinion of the OP that in the resurrected life, we can shape shift … inasmuch as we are able to form our bodies in accordance with the dynamic beauty of our soul with freedom or fluidity.
    This dynamic nature of beauty, including physical beauty, might be fruitful to consider as well (and how it might be consistent with certain views of the divine)

  47. Hello Kevin,
    “— Yes I do.
    Just as some are more talented than others in art or science or some are better at sports….or some are more intelligent or more funny –yes beauty is a distributed gift. Not an “equal gift”.
    But God loves us all and give varied gifts–which makes things interesting.
    Just imagine if everyone was was the same.”
    If you do not see women as equally beautiful, then in my opinion you are not seeing them as God does. You are seeing them as you have been culturally conditioned.
    In England, I understand, most men (or at least a large number of men) think that plastic surgery makes a woman look awful. That seems to be the opposite in America, according to Hollywood. In Brazil, small breasts are deemed more attractive than large, but according to Hollywood, that is different here. As for the “healthy” argument, there are many men who objectively prefer morbidly obese women.
    So of course you find some women pretty, some women not. Does the Holy Spirit find some tabernacles suitable (according to their body shape) and some not? No. So you are not pure of heart, you do not perceive every human body as beautiful, as simply a temple of the holy spirit. The Holy Spirit dwells in our body because we are persons, not because we are subjectively beautiful or repulsive persons. When you also see people that way, then you are fulfilling CCC 2519.
    SDG wrote:
    “I agree with JP2’s moral point, though I wouldn’t call an act of objectifying one’s wife “adultery,” except in the general sense in which all sexual sins are violations of the sixth commandment. It is possible to regard one’s wife in a degrading way; it is not possible to commit “adultery” with her. ”
    In my understanding of TOB and the Bible, Jesus disagrees with you, and so does JP2.
    TOB 157 (October 8, 1980) http://www.ewtn.com/library/PAPALDOC/jp2tb42.htm
    “Adultery in the heart is committed not only because man looks in this way at a woman who is not his wife, but precisely because he looks at a woman in this way. Even if he looked in this way at the woman who is his wife, he could likewise commit adultery in his heart.”

  48. This isn’t that critical, but when I spoke of “word” of the Decalogue, I wasn’t meaning word in the sense that most people are familiar with. A “word” can refer to a phrase, a sentence, or even something longer. Some like to characterize the Decalogue not as ten commandments but as ten words.

  49. This from the following section of the same talk:
    “Man can commit this adultery in the heart also with regard to his own wife, if he treats her only as an object to satisfy instinct.”

  50. Catholica,
    I stand corrected on the JPII Quote…in so far as the word used. But it should be noted that he may have simply used this word due to his doing basically an exegesis of the saying of Jesus in Matthew about looking lustfully….also I suppose it would mean treating ones wife as “not ones wife” but as a person to merely use as an object …this too may be the sense.
    But as for seeing some women as more beautiful than others (yes there is a subjective aspect in ones response to the objective beauty in various persons or even things…) this is the case. Beauty is a distributed gift.
    And yes one could say that I do not “see beauty as God does” of course not –I am not God.
    But there are varied degrees of beauty –this is just a reality.
    You state: “So you are not pure of heart, you do not perceive every human body as beautiful, as simply a temple of the holy spirit.”
    I never said I do not perceive every human body as beautiful– certainly in certain senses one can call all are beautiful –just not all are equally beautiful in the physically attractive sense…which is what we have been talking about.
    Anymore than all are good in other ways to the same degree as I note above.

  51. If you do not see women as equally beautiful, then in my opinion you are not seeing them as God does. You are seeing them as you have been culturally conditioned.

    Physical beauty is not mere cultural conditioning. No amount of conditioning will ever make a culture regard morbid obesity as attractive or a healthy weight as repulsive.

    In England, I understand, most men (or at least a large number of men) think that plastic surgery makes a woman look awful. That seems to be the opposite in America, according to Hollywood. In Brazil, small breasts are deemed more attractive than large, but according to Hollywood, that is different here. As for the “healthy” argument, there are many men who objectively prefer morbidly obese women.

    The first and third sentences do not seem to be serious arguments. The middle sentence represents an example of the limited play of subjectivity and cultural conditioning in this area.

    In my understanding of TOB and the Bible, Jesus disagrees with you, and so does JP2.

    All right, it looks like you’ve got me: JP2 does use “adultery of the heart” to refer to objectifying one’s own wife. I think the pope has a valid moral point, but it looks to me as if his exegesis of Matthew 5 here is mistaken, and his use of “adultery of the heart” in this case is dubious.
    The problem I see with JP2’s words quoted here is that he doesn’t seem to leave any room for a way of looking at a woman which is licit and moral with one’s wife, but not with another woman. This is precisely the differentia of adultery: It’s what is wrong when a man does it with a woman who is not his wife (where at least one of them is otherwise married).
    To say “What Jesus is talking about here applies just as much to your own wife as to other women” would seem to imply, conversely, that any way a man can licitly look at his own wife, he can licit look at other women too. Which is manifest nonsense.
    No. JP2 has a valid point to make, but it is not the same point Jesus is making, even if JP2 seems to indicate that it is. I suspect it will be possible to validate elsewhere in JP2’s thought the legitimacy of a marital gaze that would be adulterous if turned elsewhere, and it is this that is the subject of Jesus’ teaching here.

  52. SDG
    All right, it looks like you’ve got me: JP2 does use “adultery of the heart” to refer to objectifying one’s own wife. I think the pope has a valid moral point, but it looks to me as if his exegesis of Matthew 5 here is mistaken, and his use of “adultery of the heart” in this case is dubious.
    I WOULD NOT SAY HE IS MISTAKEN — BUT RATHER THAT HE IS TAKING THE TEXT AND USING IT TO MAKE A FURTHER POINT THAT IF A MAN TREATS HIS WIFE WITH LUST –HE IS BASICALLY NOT TREATING HER “AS HIS WIFE” BUT WITH A KIND OF ADULTERY OF THE HEART…
    The problem I see with JP2’s words quoted here is that he doesn’t seem to leave any room for a way of looking at a woman which is licit and moral with one’s wife, but not with another woman. This is precisely the differentia of adultery: It’s what is wrong when a man does it with a woman who is not his wife (where at least one of them is otherwise married).
    JP2 WORDS HERE HAVE TO BE TAKEN IN CONTEXT OF HIS WHOLE SERIES OF TALKS ON THIS SUBJECT –WHERE HE DOES TALK ABOUT THE BEAUTY OF MARRIAGE AND ATTRACTION ETC….HE TAKES THE NORMAL UNDERSTANDING OF ADULTERY FOR GRANTED AND GOES DEEPER TO MAKE A POINT ….AND SHOW ONE CAN NOT TREAT ONES WIFE AS “NOT ONES WIFE” BY LUSTING AFTER HER (WHICH IS DISORDERD SEXUAL DESIRE ETC NOT THE NORMAL GOOD KIND OF SEXUAL DESIRE IN MARRIAGE)
    SORRY I AM USING THIS LARGE TEXT –I DO NOT KNOW HOW TO MAKE YOUR TEXT SMALL…:)

  53. Mr Akin,
    Excellent comments.
    Your words bring to mind a passage in one of the great encyclicals of Pope Pius XII holy pontificate: “Sacra Virginitas”, where in paragraph 54 the Holy Father warns us we must not attempt to struggle with impure temptations, but rather to flee from them.
    “54. On this point it should be noted, as indeed the Fathers[90] and Doctors[91] of the Church teach, that we can more easily struggle against and repress the wiles of evil and the enticements of the passions if we do not struggle directly against them, but rather flee from them as best we may. For the preserving of chastity, according to the teaching of Jerome, flight is more effective than open warfare: “Therefore I flee, lest I be overcome.”[92] Flight must be understood in this sense, that not only do we diligently avoid occasion of sin, but especially that in struggles of this kind we lift our minds and hearts to God, intent above all on Him to Whom we have vowed our virginity. “Look upon the beauty of your Lover,”[93] St. Augustine tells us.”

  54. He is basically doing an exergesis of the text so must “use the words” of the text…..”)

  55. Mr Akin,
    Excellent comments.
    What you say about purity brings to mind a passage from the writings of the great and holy Pope Pius XII, who during his pontificate, of happy memory, penned the Encyclical: “Sacra Virginitas”, where in paragraph 54 the Holy Father seems to echo your words to not wrestle with impurity but to flee from it, to get away…
    “54. On this point it should be noted, as indeed the Fathers[90] and Doctors[91] of the Church teach, that we can more easily struggle against and repress the wiles of evil and the enticements of the passions if we do not struggle directly against them, but rather flee from them as best we may. For the preserving of chastity, according to the teaching of Jerome, flight is more effective than open warfare: “Therefore I flee, lest I be overcome.”[92] Flight must be understood in this sense, that not only do we diligently avoid occasion of sin, but especially that in struggles of this kind we lift our minds and hearts to God, intent above all on Him to Whom we have vowed our virginity. “Look upon the beauty of your Lover,”[93] St. Augustine tells us.”

  56. From the Holy Father Pope Pius XII Encyclical,”Sacra Virginitas”, on avoiding the near occasion of sin and impurity:
    54. On this point it should be noted, as indeed the Fathers[90] and Doctors[91] of the Church teach, that we can more easily struggle against and repress the wiles of evil and the enticements of the passions if we do not struggle directly against them, but rather flee from them as best we may. For the preserving of chastity, according to the teaching of Jerome, flight is more effective than open warfare: “Therefore I flee, lest I be overcome.”[92] Flight must be understood in this sense, that not only do we diligently avoid occasion of sin, but especially that in struggles of this kind we lift our minds and hearts to God, intent above all on Him to Whom we have vowed our virginity. “Look upon the beauty of your Lover,”[93] St. Augustine tells us.

  57. So sorry about the triple posting.
    It did not take the first two times.
    Mr Akin feel free to delete the second two.

  58. Kevin,
    I’m not sure that I agree with your assessment about objective beauty. Everyone’s idea is subjective. Do all people agree on what or whom is beautiful? No! We can’t even agree with what is healthy. Is thin healthy? How thin? You can’t tell if someone is healthy by looking at them anymore anyway, they have modified their bodies, caked on the makeup, and injected poision into their lips. You are literally not seeing their bodies anymore, but a manufactured body.
    The only objective beauty there is comes from every person’s inherent beauty in being created in the image and likeness of God. Physical beauty is completely subjective. We can agree to disagree, but I’m not changing my mind. We agree that each person has a subjective measure of what is beautiful, and a lot of it appears to be culturally biased.
    But regardless, we are getting off the point here. It has never been my argument that we do not know when a person is pretty, but I am saying that, it is not proper in the context of marriage to be *admiring* physical qualities of another’s wife. I think in general our concupiscent nature just cannot handle that. Admiring another woman’s beauty has the possible side-effect of creating in us some sort of standard, and that could have the result of causing us to wonder why our own wife doesn’t look like so-and-so. Its a slippery slope – why even tempt it? Let’s not live to the letter of the law, but the spirit of the law, and be as enamored with our wives as the bridegroom in the Song of Songs. Could you imagine Solomon saying, “my wife is beautiful, one among many”. No! He is extolling how beautiful his sister, his bride is, and no other, and she in return extols his beauty in return, set apart among thousands. How wonderful is that?
    Proverbs 5:15-23
    15 Drink water from your own cistern, flowing water from your own well.
    16 Should your springs be scattered abroad, streams of water in the streets?
    17 Let them be for yourself alone, and not for strangers with you.
    18 Let your fountain be blessed, and rejoice in the wife of your youth,
    19 a lovely deer, a graceful doe. Let her affection fill you at all times with delight, be infatuated always with her love.
    20 Why should you be infatuated, my son, with a loose woman and embrace the bosom of an adventuress?
    21 For a man’s ways are before the eyes of the Lord, and he watches all his paths.
    22 The iniquities of the wicked ensnare him, and he is caught in the toils of his sin.
    23 He dies for lack of discipline, and because of his great folly he is lost.

  59. Catholica, I think you’re mixing the meanings of the word beauty. This thread has from the start been about physical beauty. It’s unfair to Kevin to change physical beauty, which everyone has been talking about, to a definition beauty as the entirety of a person’s attractive qualities – and then accuse Kevin of not understanding beauty.
    Even if we’re going to use the definition of beauty that looks at the totality of a person, I still don’t agree with: “If you do not see women as equally beautiful, then in my opinion you are not seeing them as God does.” Does God not find Mary more beautiful than all of His creatures, if not why did He choose her? Aren’t His saints more beautiful to him than the lost souls in hell? Does he find Adam and Eve as the were in the garden more beautiful than than we are today in our fallen state? Sure God finds every person beautiful, just as He gives every person the necessary grace for salvation. Yet He still gives some people more grace than others and I’d venture to guess that He finds some people more beautiful than others.
    Getting back to physical beauty you wrote, “So you are not pure of heart, you do not perceive every human body as beautiful, as simply a temple of the holy spirit.” Surely this is too small a view of God. God loves the physical world and He made it beautiful. Likewise, we make our temples on earth beautiful in imitation of the beauty God wove into all creation. Our bodies aren’t Tupperware containers meant to be merely functional holders of our souls. If we believe God’s revelation that he made us to be temples of the Holy Spirit, God must have created our bodies to be immensely beautiful – it can’t be wrong to admire that beauty in a healthy way. A person with an exceptionally beautiful physical form reminds us of man as God originally made us.

  60. If you do not see women as equally beautiful, then in my opinion you are not seeing them as God does. You are seeing them as you have been culturally conditioned.

    Dear Catholica
    You seem to take the concept of cultural conditioning too far. If man could be 100% culturally conditioned as you seem to suggest by your remark above, there couldn’t possibly be a thing such as Natural Law, inscribed onto every human being’s soul by God. How can a man who chastely discerns different degrees or kinds of beauty between different female faces be “culturally conditioned“?

    In Brazil, small breasts are deemed more attractive than large…

    In 1500, perhaps. Now, I’m not sure. I take a Truth is in the Middle… approach myself…

  61. Catholica wrote: “I’m not sure that I agree with your assessment about objective beauty. Everyone’s idea is subjective. Do all people agree on what or whom is beautiful? No! We can’t even agree with what is healthy.”
    If I were to buy that argument I’d have to also conclude that morals are subjective, after all no one can agree on them.
    Catholica wrote: “You can’t tell if someone is healthy by looking at them anymore anyway, they have modified their bodies, caked on the makeup, and injected poision into their lips. You are literally not seeing their bodies anymore, but a manufactured body.”
    You’re focusing on the excesses. Making yourself look good is a part of respecting your basic human dignity. It’s why buy clothes and take good care of them instead of wearing sacks. It’s why we get haircuts and comb our hair in the morning. It’s why men shave and women put on makeup. Yes it can be, and is far too often, overdone and abused in our culture – but making ourselves look good is generally a good thing.
    Besides, then how you do explain children? They don’t wear makeup and they wear whatever clothes their parents put them in. Haven’t you seen some children that possess more physical beauty than others? Are you able to note such distinctions without lusting over them or treating them as objects? If you tell friends of yours that their children are beautiful are your children or your siblings (or your parents for that matter) insulted.
    Catholica wrote: “The only objective beauty there is comes from every person’s inherent beauty in being created in the image and likeness of God. Physical beauty is completely subjective. We can agree to disagree, but I’m not changing my mind. We agree that each person has a subjective measure of what is beautiful, and a lot of it appears to be culturally biased.”
    Is symmetry cultural based? Is order culturally based? Is proportion culturally based? Does it take our western culture to realize that a medieval cathedral is more beautiful than my parish built during the 1970’s? You’re only seeing the the small subjective things on the surface. We disagree over those things on the tip of the iceberg because the rest is shared among us.
    Catholica wrote: “but I am saying that, it is not proper in the context of marriage to be *admiring* physical qualities of another’s wife. I think in general our concupiscent nature just cannot handle that.”
    If by physical qualities you mean individual qualities (she has a nice nose, she has a nice mouth, etc.) I think you’ve misinterpreted what people are saying. I think if you’re looking at someone and going down a checklist of their physical qualities more often than not you’re in a morally dangerous situation. I think the beauty people are talking about here is often an entire package – it’s more than the sum of the adding up some checklist.
    Catholica wrote: “Admiring another woman’s beauty has the possible side-effect of creating in us some sort of standard, and that could have the result of causing us to wonder why our own wife doesn’t look like so-and-so. Its a slippery slope – why even tempt it?”
    Admiring another object’s beauty has the possible side effect of jealousy and greed. It could cause us to wonder why our own things aren’t as beautiful as other people’s things. Should we not build beautiful things? Should we continue the wreckovation of our churches? Should Tim Jones stop painting? Just as there’s a proper way to admire the physical beauty of an object, there’s a proper way to admire the physical beauty of a person.
    Catholica wrote: “Let’s not live to the letter of the law, but the spirit of the law, and be as enamored with our wives as the bridegroom in the Song of Songs. Could you imagine Solomon saying, “my wife is beautiful, one among many”. No! He is extolling how beautiful his sister, his bride is, and no other, and she in return extols his beauty in return, set apart among thousands. How wonderful is that?”
    If we’re going to live to the spirit of the law, that includes appreciating the physical beauty of God’s creation. If a person’s question is “How much leering can I get away with before it’s a sin?” – he’s violating the spirit of the law. But there’s nothing wrong with truly appreciating the beauty of another person, especially a friend or relative. I think my wife is the most beautiful woman in the world (although Nana gives her a run for her money). I don’t think she’s the most physically beautiful woman nor do I think she expects me to. Her physical beauty is a part of her overall beauty, but she no more expects me to think she’s the most physically beautiful woman in the world than she expects me to think she’s the smartest or the funniest. It’s the combination of everything that makes her beautiful.
    I do like your wedding example, though; think of the bride. Most brides look more beautiful on their wedding day than they do normally (maybe ever). The dress and the hairdo and all that stuff are a big part of it, but it’s also the glow that they have. It’s in their eyes, it’s in their whole face. How can any guest at such a wedding not turn to his wife and say that the bride is beautiful?
    For another example, Sarah Palin exploded onto the scene a few months ago. Many people noticed that she’s not only a very highly rated governor but she’s also physically beautiful. I don’t think it would be insulting to my wife if I said Sarah Palin was beautiful (nor do I think she’d be insulted). Just as it wouldn’t be an insult to say that Sarah Palin is a good mother or a natural leader.
    It doesn’t take away from my wife, per se, to acknowledge the qualities of another woman. That said I agree with you that this is an area that requires a great deal of prudence. It would not be good for me to constantly sing the virtues of a friend who just got married or Sarah Palin (or any woman) to my wife. But that doesn’t make it wrong to admire, with good intent, a quality in someone else in the proper context.

  62. Kevin,
    The easiest approach to setting off quoted text from an earlier comment is to use quote marks and italics, like so:
    <i>“Quoted text here”</i>
    (The <i>/</i> tags don’t really render … I used html entities to make the tags render.)
    I like to use indenting too, but I usually offset the font-size fluctuations (unless I’m quoting an outside source) by using paragraph tags; that’s a little more complicated. In any case, PLEASE DON’T SHOUT! :‑)
    I would like to agree with you about JP2 going beyond the text, but his language suggests he is doing exegesis: “It is significant that in speaking of the object of this act, Christ did not stress that it is ‘another man’s wife,’ or a woman who is not his own wife, but says generically, a woman.” If this is meant as exegesis, I take it be mistaken: In context, “Whoever looks lustfully at a woman” means “Whoever looks lustfully at another woman,” i.e., not his wife.
    One might possibly try to argue that by “It is significant that…” JP2 did not mean “It is significant for determining the literal (primary) sense of the text,” but only “It is significant in some accomodated spiritual sense.” But this seems like reaching to me. I would rather simply say that it looks like JP2 is saying something here I disagree with.
    I do agree with you that JP2’s larger teaching likely corrects the issue here.

  63. Catholica
    Beauty is an objective quality. ( I think this was explained by one of the other readers above)
    Subjectively one can “respond well” or not to a particular beauty.
    And of course some are able to respond to certain kinds of beauty and some are not…
    Beauty though is quality of the thing itself –not simply in the “eye of the beholder”.
    Niagra falls –is beautiful…snow covered mountains are beautiful …sunsets in particular places are beautiful…
    They ARE beautiful…
    Most will agree to this…some will not and they are somewhat “value blind” in that particular matter. This is where the cultural background and experience comes in…
    This is why there are such things as Parks featuring these things –and why they are popular places to go …or why people flock to a particular place to see a sunset.
    In anycase– as Jimmy and others have noted above — to look at and appreciate a beautiful woman –even by a married man–is not not per se a sin.
    Your difficulty is that you seem to equate the appreciation of the beauty of other beautiful female persons as being somehow unfaithful to ones wife. This is not a position of the Church. Beauty is a good — and when not abused by lust etc — there it is within reason and goodness to respond with joy and delight at seeing beauty in other women…as well as in mountains….in children…in boxers (the dog) ….and most especially in ones wife!

  64. A human person, beautiful strikingly, in both body and soul would not be merely beautiful as the sum of that beauty, bodily and that beauty, spiritual. Rather, the integral human whole would, if you will, ring a chord of a beauty that is more than the mere sum of disparate kinds of beauty. Properly speaking, I don’t think beauty proper to the human person can really be considered bodily apart from its unity with the spirit; for in authentic human beauty, it is, ontologically, the body’s unity with the spirit that gives the body its authentic bodily beauty (calling into mind what I had said earlier of corpses — which btw would be broad in application and not only when dealing with sexual things; corpses are not beautiful in ways fully authentically human for of course fully authentic humanity involves living bodies, bodies that are not merely static but in a certain dynamic flux of beauty as informed by their souls; and if one were dealing with artificial simulcra or androids, then it may be authentic beauty but it wouldn’t be authentic human beauty)
    So when a human person is beautiful not only in spirit and not only in body but in both aspects, there obtains a certain organic integration as marvelous as the radiance of the sun or moon and as wondrous as the birth of a star. When “health” is considered to mean “well being” then the obtaining of beauty may be correlated with certain kinds of health but would also itself be a certain kind of health, or well-being or flourishing in its own right inasmuch as God made us that we might be beautiful. The sun, beautiful, in a manner of speaking, prays and those blessed with beauty, spiritual or beauty bodily or beauty both spiritual and bodily, in manifold ways and to varying degrees, pray in their very being or constitution, merely by being so. Inasmuch as beauty (whether interpreted as such in its own right or reduced to the consideration together of the true and the good) is a transcendental, then just as it is in God we have our being, we may also say, especially for those of us who might be participate in beauty in an especially perfect way, that it is in God we have our beauty. Inasmuch as beauty inheres in that which is beautiful, we can say that God himself inheres in that which is beautiful inasmuch as it is beautiful. This would be true of models of Catholic virtue and stardom such as Adriana Lima — whom apart from being a “virgin” was apparently once a novice or some such — of Brazil whom our Brazilian Rotten Orange friend might be familiar with and it would also be true of Satan for insofar as Satan exists, he is beautiful and inasmuch as beauty inheres in that which is beautiful, God inheres in Satan. For me personally, this kind of contemplation has been fruitful in my moral and intellectual formation; perhaps it will be of use to you as it relates to questions of morality, beauty, and (per the sex of the reader in the OP), Eve.

  65. FWIW, I think he is saying that to admire beauty in another woman with a certain, if you will, wistfulness, is morally problematic in some way. Whatever he is saying, I disagree with it and I am not going to change my mind 😉 It may be useful at this point to recall what Thomas says of what accounts for in certain cases the differing beliefs of different people; he chooses to attribute the difference, in some cases, to will or to a disposition of will. My skepticism to that line of thought just decreased somewhat today 😉

  66. Here is another quote regarding wives … but in saying so …the writer is not referring to his wife…but to wives with certain qualities of beauty…ranging from modesty to grace to work well done…and then speaking of some aspects of physical beauty:
    In the section titled women (I use this version cause it brings out the point well)
    “Like the lamp shining on the sacred lamp-stand
    is a beautiful face on a well-proportioned body.
    Like golden pillars on a silver base,
    are shapely legs on firm-set heels.” (Eccesiasticus 26 17-18 JB)
    Note a few things:
    It is about not one persons wife –his wife –but SOME wives among women (those who have these qualities).
    He is praising certain qualities of physical beauty — which only some have (for there are legs not shapely and bodies not well proportioned.)
    Thus beauty is a distributed value…some have certain aspects some do not.
    And he notices them –and says this about –not only his wife…..but those women who have these qualities.
    How would he know if he did not see them and appreciate them chastely …..

  67. And of course this is the same book that gives the prudential recommendation to turn ones eyes away from a shapely woman…and warns about dangers associated with womens beauty…
    But then again –so does Jimmy and the rest of us here! (depending on the risk and the person)
    A person can reasonably appreciate a womans beauty….and even if it is not ones wife and one is married….but one needs to know the “dangers” and at times turn away ones eyes depending on the circumstances…
    But such cautions do not make it not good and reasonable to appreciate chastely a womens outward beauty…
    (remember she is a PERSON and that outward is not the ONLY beauty she has…it just may be the only kind you get a chance to see in this life as she passes you in the store…)

  68. “The essence of chastity consists in quickness to affirm the value of the person in every situation and in raising to the personal level the value of “the body and sex”…”
    One does not “artificially banish the values of the ‘body’ or more generally the values of sex to the subconscious, pretending they do not exist, or at any rate have no effect.”
    “It is not a matter of summarily ‘annihilating’ the value “body and sex” in the conscious mind…the value of “body and sex” must be grounded and implanted in the value of the person”
    “…Beauty is essentially an object of contemplative cognition, and to experience aesthetic values is not to exploit: it give joy..”
    (all from Love and Responsibility (Wojtyla …later JPII …p 105 p 171)
    One appreciates the beauty of “persons”…all is grounded in or to be grounded in the person.
    “SHE that person with dignity is beautiful….”

  69. the above quotes from JPII were lifted from “Achieving Chastity in a pornographic world” by Rev. T.G. Marrow. (a nice little book on the virtue of chastity)

  70. To quote a holy priest:
    “When you’re driving down the road and a pretty girl turns your head, praise God that you’re still virile and alive enough to notice… But don’t look twice.”

  71. To quote a holy priest:
    “When you’re driving down the road and a pretty girl turns your head, praise God that you’re still virile and alive enough to notice… But don’t look twice.”

  72. To quote a holy priest:
    “When you’re driving down the road and a pretty girl turns your head, praise God that you’re still virile and alive enough to notice… But don’t look twice.”
    This “can” be a prudent thing…depending on the person and the girl….
    but the point of Jimmy’s fine work above is that –this does not mean there is any sin if one looks twice..or more (within reason ..this is where knowing oneself comes in).
    It is not sin in itself to look twice or to intentionally appreciate the physical beauty of a person…but one must (due to concupscience etc) know what can be an occasion or danger for you…and one must be honest with oneself …and of course chaste and modest.
    But looking at a beautiful girl in the right way is not what Jesus tells us to avoid….we are to avoid “looking lustfully”. And we could add that we are too look reasonably too.
    (this of course does not mean one can go to the beach to sit and watch the girls in bikini’s! or buy the latest “swimsuit” edition….that would be getting into the wrong waters…)
    Beauty is good –and when reasonably appreciated –that is good too.

  73. What Jesus said in Matthew however, is that to look upon a married woman in order to (pros ton) covet (epithumaesai) her is to have already committed adultery with her in your heart.
    The changing semantic domain of the English word ‘lust’ which doesn’t really match all that well to “epithumaesai” – which is elsewhere more correctly translated ‘covet’ has caused some problems – and weakened the line against neo-platonic influences.

  74. What Jesus said in Matthew however, is that to look upon a married woman in order to (pros ton) covet (epithumaesai) her is to have already committed adultery with her in your heart

    If that’s accurate, it seems a helpful clarification. Thanks, labri.

  75. Beauty is normally perceived as what the healthy is. Among the Polynesians and sub-Saharan Africans, morbid obesity was seen as beautiful. Likewise what our government presently calls healthy weight was seen as spectral, unnatural, unhealthy, tubercular unattractiveness.
    But beauty isn’t wholly subjective or culturally conditioned. What men perceive (subconsciously) as beauty is reproductive health, and the lack of signs of being another man’s wife – sagging breasts and the obesity that naturally comes from having had children.
    Kevin, you turn off your caps lock key.
    Dan Hunter, if your advice were followed, evangelism would rarely if ever occur.
    SDG, indeed, and I would suggest the use of gunaikos rather than gunae, indicates a -married woman-, since by definition you can’t covet what is already yours, nor can you commit adultery with your own wife – again, by definition., John Paul the Great to the contrary.

  76. SDG, I’m going by memory, so feel free to check me on that. I don’t want to lead anyone astray.

  77. What Jesus said in Matthew however, is that to look upon a married woman in order to (pros ton) covet (epithumaesai) her is to have already committed adultery with her in your heart
    …………………….
    This is not though what Jesus said in the Matthew…nor what the Church says he said.
    Nor is it the way the very good English translations render it.
    Nor …is it what Jimmy says it says…
    It is about lusting after any woman. (coveting can be of course a kind of lust …but it would be directed to any woman …not just a married woman)
    As Jimmy says elsewhere on this blog:
    “To address the issue, what Jesus said was:
    You have heard that it was said, `You shall not commit adultery.’ But I say to you that every one who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart [Matt. 5:27-28].
    Translated a bit more literally, he singled out those who look at a woman “to lust after her.” (I.e., purposefully looking at her in order to incite lustful fantasies, not just looking at her and feeling attraction.)”

  78. PS: John Paul the Great was going into a more deeper sense….of treating one wife like “not your wife” by lusting after her and making her an object…like some woman for use.

  79. I can’t say I would advise anyone to “go ahead and look twice”…
    I would say that *if* you find your gaze lingering, give thanks to God for the beauty of his creation – relax – and look away.
    Avoiding the near occasion of sin is a Christian duty, and the chances of a lingering look turning into lust are pretty good I’d say.
    This is all in relation to looking at a real, live woman. Looking at art is a bit different. In that case, it may be fine to study the image for some time and in some detail. It is very possible for some to do this without it leading at all to lustful thoughts or temptations.
    Any image that is calculated to arouse lust, (clothing or not) should be avoided. Many paintings of nudes just aren’t about lust at all, and so it would be safer to look at some of these than at, say, a swimsuit calendar or a lingerie ad.

  80. I did not mean to suggest “go ahead and look twice” but is is just not necessary to say “the second look is a sin” or something one can not do.
    For instance…I see some strikingly beautiful person and I look again to admire that wonderfully made face … this can be very good.

  81. Also –while the advice “do not go back for a second look” “can” be good…it can also cause trouble of the sort Jimmy referred to (especially for those with an eye for beauty) above when he said:
    “And I can say that if he tries to instantly avert his eyes from every single pretty girl he sees then he will foster an anxiety about temptation that will actually feed the temptation he is seeking to minimize.”
    Sooo if the person says “I can not look a second time….” he can cause himself more of the “anxiety” and more temptation….like in the example Jimmy gave.
    Or he can think it is a sin every time he gives a second look!! Which also would not be good…
    It is better to be relaxed and know oneself…etc.
    But of course if the “no second look” works for a person –that is good too 🙂

  82. And of course Jimmy does note looking too long can increase the temptation…
    “As opposed to dwelling on or studiously contemplating the details of a particular person’s physical form, which is going to increase risk.”

  83. What I meant by “I can’t say I would advise anyone to ‘go ahead and look twice’…” was that, though that may be fine, it’s not a pattern of thinking I would actively *encourage*.
    I really enjoy good beer, but I can’t see myself saying to an individual, “Gee, Ted, you ought to think about taking up drinking.”…

  84. But I would say “hey Genesis is a great beer you ought to try it” ….:):)
    But yes I am not “recommending” taking a second look per se.

  85. I have spent a pleasantly frustrating evening trying to figure out a way to change the font size in the Typepad combox with no success. I have tried every html I know, Short of editing the CSS (cascading style sheet), which ordinary posters do not have access to, is there a way to do this? This was one of Kevin’s questions, above and it got me to thinking.
    Sorry I haven’t posted for a while. I am somewhat ill and standing up is problematic, today (some bacterial infection).
    Basically, the whole problem of beauty vs. concupiscence can be reduced to finding each individual’s via media.
    The Chicken

  86. I have spent a pleasantly frustrating evening trying to figure out a way to change the font size in the Typepad combox with no success.

    Dear TMC
    Why would you like to do that? I would prefer to see the font changed, because I realized that I agree with something told here by Dr. Peters about two years ago. Times New Roman is a beautiful font, but not good to read on a computer monitor; it isn’t easy on the eye, especially after a few minutes.
    Also, seeing the commentator’s name on the top of the respective comment instead of after it would be great, considering the size of certain comments.

    I am somewhat ill and standing up is problematic, today (some bacterial infection).

    I hope it’s not Avian Influenza.
    I will pray for your health.

  87. “For instance…I see some strikingly beautiful person and I look again to admire that wonderfully made face … this can be very good.”
    Sure, but, of course only if it is with the consent of that other person. To do otherwise would be staring. Beauty of a person is a good that is shared; if a person chooses for some motive to not share it or unveil it, others do not have a right to appropriate against will.
    There seems to be an unfortunate materialism and reductionism at work in one, perhaps two here. Physical beauty can be and is objective quite apart from any relation it may have to things like health. There seems to be an assumption by one or two that any objectivity present must be grounded in health or some other thing that would be judged “objective” by modernity. That is not consonant with Catholic philosophical doctrine which sees physical beauty as inhereing in the object apprehended as beautiful independent of what association or any other kind of relation it may have to things like health or matters of what modernity terms “science.”
    Physical beauty as such like any other authentic beauty cannot itself tempt to evil for the nature of beauty as such is to be attractive, to attract to that which is true and good. The authentic apprehension of it also cannot as such tempt to evil for similar reasons. What can happen though is that its apprehension can be an occasion of other thoughts which are themselves unruly or other desires with are themselves unruly — the apprehension itself and the attraction authentic to the beauty apprehended can never properly speaking be unruly, disordered, or “lustful.” So it is important to distinguish this kind of “occasion of sin” from kinds which involve in themselves some element of evil such as the state of being slightly drunk — which may be a tolerable state and something accepted as a side effect and even willed therapeutically as a means to an end, but which is nevertheless a physical evil with the shade of moral dimension insofar as it involves the perfection of the intellect and will. The beauty of a person, however, naked to the eye, would not in itself involve any kind of evil at all. An easy “proof” of that can be seen in that it was sanctioned mythically in the Garden. IOW, the occasion of sin here arises not from the impropriety of immodesty — which is a separate issue — but from defects in the human nature of would be observers. In terms of modesty, modesty properly speaking is an ideal or virtue that would be of relevance, here, even if all were perfect and impeccable. For modesty is not merely about self-protection or protection of others; modesty flows from a proper treasuring of one’s gifts and properly understood would be something operative among lovers as well as, on a beach.
    Personally, I think the antidote to this impersonalization of sex, body, and beauty, is not to shelter one’s self from beauty but to immerse one’s self more fully. So I would not advise people to avoid swimsuit magazines. Just as a phobia is often treated by more exposure, perhaps somewhat graduated, to the object of phobia, so also I think here, the disordered relationship to bodily beauty of person should be addressed not by sheltering one’s self from bodily beauty — how absurd does that sound! — but by working to as SDG suggested transform one’s self — perhaps, as I am suggesting, by graduated exposure to bodily beauty, especially in venues in which the personal character of human bodily beauty is not too obscured.

  88. Mattheus,
    You can just change the font yourself in your browser settings (if you are able). You can also use tools that work with some browsers that would allow you to specific a font just for certain websites.

  89. “Sure, but, of course only if it is with the consent of that other person.”
    Hummm…. not the case.
    Unless she is wearing a burka…
    That I is why the face is on the outside and we do not wear things over it…

  90. “Personally, I think the antidote to this impersonalization of sex, body, and beauty, is not to shelter one’s self from beauty but to immerse one’s self more fully. So I would not advise people to avoid swimsuit magazines. Just as a phobia is often treated by more exposure, perhaps somewhat graduated, to the object of phobia, so also I think here, the disordered relationship to bodily beauty of person should be addressed not by sheltering one’s self from bodily beauty — how absurd does that sound! — but by working to as SDG suggested transform one’s self — perhaps, as I am suggesting, by graduated exposure to bodily beauty, especially in venues in which the personal character of human bodily beauty is not too obscured.”
    — I can agree that perhaps…for those who have too much stress or scruples over the issue– a kind of “exposure and the “blocking” of the anxious response can be helpful ( I learned this in a course at Steubenville on Learning) –where a person who suffers such can intentionally look at a woman and then resist doing whatever kind of compulsion (etc) or seek to relax the anxiousness…
    But I would not suggest a swimsuit magizine for this is not the best source for what you say next: “venues in which the personal character of human bodily beauty is not too obscured.” For such is normally focused on immodest suits and in ways that would not “personalizing” but rather treating as an object. I would suggest rather looking intentionally at normally modestly dressed women…in this regards…but perhaps too the care of a professional should be sought when doing such a “treatment”…

  91. Please explain to me just how a Christian is expected to appreciate ANYTHING that buddha,mohammed,wicca or any other form of paganism has to say?
    you would think that these heathens would be swept under the rug like dirt,compared to Jesus.
    Dominic.

  92. “Please explain to me just how a Christian is expected to appreciate ANYTHING that buddha,mohammed,wicca or any other form of paganism has to say?
    you would think that these heathens would be swept under the rug like dirt,compared to Jesus.”
    Sure. This is the case that all that is truth or goodness or Beauty — the Church recognizes as such. This is her teaching. For all such things come from God. Of course Buddha etc has many things that are not true…we are not talking about these. But truth etc are discernable by our human reason — and even Buddha other pagans can see good things and say true things.
    As St. Justin Martyr the early Christian philosopher said (not direct quote) “All that is good and beautiful and true–belongs to us”. He was talking about all the truths etc in pagan philosophies…
    “To me if it’s not Catholic,it has no worth.
    Period.”
    But this is not the opinion of the Catholic Church….

  93. When I say all such truths come from God I mean that truth has to do with “reality”.
    Truth in the mind is when the mind conforms to the reality outside of it in the world.
    So all reality comes from God–and if any pagan –by use of his mind or even by some movement of the grace of God directly –comes to know about reality –about truth –that truth is…well truth.
    If a pagan comes by reason to believe that there is only one God –well that is truth.
    If he comes to reason that human persons have dignity and are created and need to be not hurt…well that is truth.
    And we as Christians recognize that –hey they got it right….
    as the Catechism of the Catholic Church states:
    843 The Catholic Church recognizes in other religions that search, among shadows and images, for the God who is unknown yet near since he gives life and breath and all things and wants all men to be saved. Thus, the Church considers all goodness and truth found in these religions as “a preparation for the Gospel and given by him who enlightens all men that they may at length have life.”332

  94. You can just change the font yourself in your browser settings (if you are able).

    Dear aslos/atslos/Ruse/CT (…and so on and so forth…)
    Thanks for the advice, but I already knew that. I mentioned the comments because the posts themselves I read on an RSS aggregator, which has a nice formatting, and there isn’t a feed for the comments, but that’s not what I would prefer because I don’t like comment feeds. I can change the font in my browser (Firefox), but it will change everything, including the aggregator font. Of course I can choose the setting I like, check the box on Firefox that changes everything to read the comments, and then uncheck it, I don’t know if I’m willing to do that; but since another reader had already complained about it, I thought an eventual change would benfit others, not only me.

    You can also use tools that work with some browsers that would allow you to specific a font just for certain websites.

    I think so, but then it would involve the kind of CSS formatting TMC mentioned, which I don’t know and is beyond my patience, anyway.

  95. Kevin, even a fully covered person could still be seen by say infared technology and have features revealed that way. I don’t think the fact that a person has chosen to not wear a burkha gives one blanket permission to enjoy the beauty of his/her face as you might please. The sharing of beauty — even the beauty of one’s face, indeed, especially the beauty of one’s face in certain ways as Kreeft suggests inasmuch as the face most brilliantly expresses the soul — is in some degree or other, some fashion or other — however slight that degree and however minor that fashion — a relation of intimacy. Thus it would not be proper for someone to without the beautiful person’s permission and gaze at that person in loving (of beauty) admiration, even say while being inspired to higher spiritual thoughts.
    Look at it this way, some women wear form fitting clothing that unveils in that aspect certain features — that does not mean that they are thereby giving you permission to look, “stare”, or otherwise appropriate for yourself the gifts that are proper to their person. These gifts belong to them and it is for them to choose to share it. The physical possibility of your appropriating without their consent (in the case of an uncovered face for example) does not entail that they have given their consent. I don’t have any surveys to cite, but I am fairly sure that many women would not be appreciative of men who would gaze at them outside a context of consent (such as romantic friendship or just openeness on their part) … it may make them feel uncomfortable.
    Consent here is not some secular concept of law, or a moralistic technicality, but a question merely of doing as they might wish or wished as pertains to the gifts proper to them and their nature.
    Be assured that this is not meant to be a criticism of your person; I am trying to frame this politely and academically 🙂
    Your (partial) agreement on my suggestion of exposure is appreciated. I don’t think nudity is “impersonalizing.” As Tim J has alluded to, nude models are used in art and are also of course depicted in art. I think the obscuring of the personal character of human bodily beauty comes not from any nudity but rather from a kind of reduction of the human person to be mere animal (as opposed to rational or spiritual animal). So a certain “crudeness” — if I might leave it vague — would be what obscures the personal reality of those depicted and that crudeness can obtain whether those persons are nude or fully clothed … it can obtain even in mere writing such as: “I want some” — which reduces an interpersonal act to a mere animal function akin to eating or some such — even if such is not intended, the expression is at least not apt … likewise certain graphic expressions, may despite good intention, be inapt in the same respect.

  96. Brazilian Rotten Orange
    “I think so, but then it would involve the kind of CSS formatting TMC mentioned, which I don’t know and is beyond my patience, anyway.”
    No, TMC was referring to formatting your particular comments, I believe. What I am referring to is something else … but you seem to have no interest in my help so I won’t go on unless you express interest. But … get some help.

  97. “I can change the font in my browser (Firefox), but it will change everything, including the aggregator font.”
    BRO/RO/MF/M/BL, etc. OK … you seem to be unaware that in Firefox you can appropriate ad-ons aka extensions — some of which will enable you to have font settings specific to certain websites. So you could have one for jimmyakin.org It does not require complex self-coding to do so.

  98. aslos: Although it is not a rule, it would be really, really nice if you would pick a handle and stick with it. Talking to a blank slate takes more energy than talking to someone with whom you have a shared social history, and every time you change handles you force others to do unnecessary work until they figure out who you are.
    Your “permission” theory strikes me as just silly. Take the common-sense examples: Are guests at a wedding precluding from noting the bride’s beauty unless she offers some sort of explicit general waiver? Doesn’t a pretty girl at a dance want to be noticed and asked to dance? How about the adorableness of children and babies — are we supposed to not appreciate that as well?

  99. SDG, there was no “figuring” out involved; I mentioned that I would change my name and gave the reason for it immediately prior to do soing. The reason for it was as I had mentinoned was that a few individuals, sometimes on more than one occasion were making puns on my name. Likewise, your suggestion that there has been a history of having to “figure” things out is untruthful … but I would rather not have to go over that. For some reason, some people feel free to give people a misimpression there. As I have mentioned before, one individual, suggested that I had posted as “CT” and then in secret fashion posted later as “CW” — that is not the truth. When I “changed” my name to “CW”, I indicated explicitly the change in the name field and explained the reason in the body of the post … and both “CT” and “CW” at that time alluded to a now defunct blog titled in correspondence with “CT” and authored by “CW”, to which blog at that time I had usually linked when remembering to do so in the URL field — so for example your suggestion previously that this was an instance of non- “transparency” was misleading as I previously had noted (IMO, you found it too tempting to piggyback on my appeal to transparency of a different sort, ecclesial transparency).
    I would be happy to satisfy you as to your preferences but I wish persons would satisfy my own preferences … it is fine that you express what would be nice as regards to what I prefer but I would hope that you in turn would be interested in what I would find nice as regards what I prefer. For example, though you have no control over this, I find it rather obnoxious for persons to when addressing me do so — in consistent repeated fashion as “x/y/z” — even you did so for some bizarre reason in the thread in which I changed my name to “CW” — even though as I have tried explaining I explicitly mentioned the change in the “Name:” field and also explicitly stated the change in the body of the post in that very thread. Perhaps you just missed what was in the name field or perhaps you missed some of what was in the body of that post (you couldn’t have missed all of it as you responded to some of it). I would also strongly prefer that no one refer to me as “Charel Weng” — I have never used such in the “Name:” field here and my full real name is not “Charel Weng” … however someone was able to discern my real identity partially based on the use of that pen name and some harassment occurred. Since a certain poster has already associated “aslos” with “Charel Weng” in another thread, unfortunately, I will have to change my name yet again and hope that no one, this time, refers to me as “Charel Weng” … I don’t mind so much if you refer to “CT” or “Ruse” — which has the same genesis as “Rotten Orange” and “Brazilian Rotten Orange” in case BRO was unaware — but it would be really really nice if people would respect my privacy and not refer to “Charel Weng” even though I have revealed that pen name on this blog and in links from here.
    SDG,
    On the substance of your post — which I would prefer we could restrict ourselves to — your characterization of my “theory” is a downright caricature and as such deserves no response.

  100. Aslos
    As to the swimsuit issue thing..they certainly would be going into not good waters..too orientated towards lust usually…
    As to ” I don’t think the fact that a person has chosen to not wear a burkha gives one blanket permission to enjoy the beauty of his/her face as you might please.”
    I cannot admit this as being a reasonable approach.
    It just simply is not reasonable –as one can see from SDG’s common sense arguments above–to think one needs permission to look more than once a persons beautiful face.
    Can you imagine going and seeking such permission?
    Just think of the emphasis of Pope Benedict on the human face…even the very face of Jesus as revealing to us GOD.
    The face is meant by God to be seen and so is beauty (in a reasonable way) of course some beauty is is marital beauty — but the face is meant by God to be seen and as a the main way of social interaction –with everyone from one spouse to the person at the check out lane in the grocery store.
    To contemplate the beauty of a persons face –even if they do not know or give “permission” is fine…
    Now if you start stalking the person….or other things related unseemly ….well then one needs some outside assistance.

  101. Aslos
    As to the swimsuit issue thing..they certainly would be going into not good waters..too orientated towards lust usually…
    As to ” I don’t think the fact that a person has chosen to not wear a burkha gives one blanket permission to enjoy the beauty of his/her face as you might please.”
    I cannot admit this as being a reasonable approach.
    It just simply is not reasonable –as one can see from SDG’s common sense arguments above–to think one needs permission to look more than once a persons beautiful face.
    Can you imagine going and seeking such permission?
    Just think of the emphasis of Pope Benedict on the human face…even the very face of Jesus as revealing to us GOD.
    The face is meant by God to be seen and so is beauty (in a reasonable way) of course some beauty is is marital beauty — but the face is meant by God to be seen and as a the main way of social interaction –with everyone from one spouse to the person at the check out lane in the grocery store.
    To contemplate the beauty of a persons face –even if they do not know or give “permission” is fine…
    Now if you start stalking the person….or other things related unseemly ….well then one needs some outside assistance.

  102. …I will have to change my name yet again…

    Dear aslos
    When things seem to finally reach relative normalcy, you start this kind of stuff all over again…What I would like to ask you, based on SDG’s request, is that at least this time you don’t act deceptively, and find some way to make all of us aware that your new nickname is you. You can announce it beforehand, as you did with “CW”, or you can make a transition between the two (“Such and Such, formerly aslos“, etc.)
    This way, as SDG said, you don’t underestimate our intelligence, we don’t have to unmask you, and you don’t get angry when we do it.

  103. FWIW, if it is partially — or merely — the size of font that is at issue for some, then that can be easily corrected in several browsers even without the use of any “ad ons” or “extensions.” For ex., in the latest version of firefox, I believe the default behavior for full page zooming (not merely text, but text and images in unison) is for it to be site-specific. So for example, if you open up cnn.com and set the full page zoom to say 200%, then whenever you go to cnn.com everything will be, more or less, twice as big (but yet still fit on your screen, provided your display’s resolution is sufficiently high) but when you go to politco.com that site will still remain as normal — or as whatever you wish to set it to. So the browser will “remember” the full page zoom setting for each site. This is a totally separate function from choosing a font size and it also distinct from text-only zoom — I am not sure if text-only zoom is site-specific or not, but full page zoom which is the default behavior is also defaulted to be site-specific — and so it will remember it next time you open up the browser (using that same profile).
    I believe similar site-specific full page zoom functionality is present in other browsers as well … though perhaps not all.
    Kevin,
    one’s consent can be conveyed in a variety of ways. Going to a dance signifies a certain kind of consent. Walking down a street does not give passersby consent to gaze as they please for as long as they please at the person’s face, feet, or any other part of their body. Modesty just so you know as a virtue pertains to more than the avoidance of sexual sin. In some cases, wearing more clothing can be immodest. Modesty is the flourishing of an authentic treasuring and sharing of gifts — here, especially, intimate to human nature. So, frankly, walking down a street in the hopes that others will notice and gaze and enjoy is a perversion of humanity. Walking down a street in the hopes that one might give pleasure to others, would be a more authentic humanity. Walking down a street in the hopes that one might achieve some goal (of mating) is fine too. But the first scenario involves a kind of self-absorption and self-orientation which is not the authentic self-possession which underlies modesty. More than a way of acting or behaving, modesty is a way of being. Modesty is the exercise of a certain temperance for the sake of the good that pertains to or is one’s person.

  104. Matheus,
    I wasn’t angry before, but you have made me angry now. Perhaps that was your intention since if you presumed me to already be angry, it wouldn’t take a genius to realize that your post would only increase that anger.
    Just so you know, since you don’t seem technically adept, websites can be configured to capture the following information:
    IP address
    browser
    operating system
    internet service provider
    referrer
    If I wanted to be “deceptive” I would use a VPN, I wouldn’t announce that I was going to change my name from Ruse — as I had done btw in case you missed it — nor would I continue in the same writing style that has characterized all my posts here … I mean who else on this blog writes as I do? … who else on the internet does? I know of a few others who do, but it’s really rather rare. And why should it matter to you whether I overestimate or understimate your intelligence? Why is that so important to you? Since it seems so important to you, I will go ahead and estimate your intelligence — FWIW, I’ve never estimated anyone’s intelligence here before — as 105 scaled to the standard deviation scheme of the WAIS (… TMC brought up IQ tests once before and I didn’t comment then, but those scores have a different scheme of scaling depending on the test — for example one standard deviation in the WAIS does not equal the same number of points as it does in the Stanford-Binet)
    BTW, I think “normalcy” obtained until you decided to I suppose “figure” out or “unmask” that which was ostensibly hidden and continue a past pattern of obnoxiousness (which consisted unlike here of not initially addressing me as you did but repeatedly so) … even though for ex., Tim J alluded to my change in name the other day previously … perhaps he remembered that I announced I would change my name like the day before I changed it … I am sorry Mattheus that I thought that would have constituted an epistemic environemnt amply facile for someone as intelligent as you to not have to rack your brain as to who this might be.
    I don’t think btw — and sorry if this insults your intelligence … or whatever it is you thought I insulted — that you understood what I referred to when I wrote of “real identity” … Sleeping Beastly similarly did not understood previously. I am referring to my real full name when I speak of that. In some forums things like that are held sacred and considered private even if it is common knowledge on other forums whom someone is. In one such forum, they do this partially because certain individuals might not feel so free to express or explore if their “real identity” — I hope this clarifies what I mean — were known as for ex. their employer or institution they are connected with or colleagues of theirs may not view certain expressions as praiseworthy (for ex. if their colleagues are anti-Christian, they may view explorations of Christianity as a betrayal of methodological naturalism in the natural sciences).

  105. Aslos,
    I can not agree with your “requirement of consent” in this regards. I find nothing in my long experience in Catholic Theology and Church Teaching nor even in St. Thomas that would require the consent of a person in order to gaze upon the beauty of their face. Yes modestly does of course cover according to St. Thomas a number of things. But consent to gaze upon a persons beautiful face is not required…
    I honestly think you are rather over thinking the issue and (no offense intended) are creating an unreasonable (though well intentioned) requirement of consent of this sort beholding of a beautiful person. Something outside of even St.Thomas’s long discourse on Modesty.
    And I would hazard to say it is not in harmony either with Pope John Paul II’s in depth theology of the Body. Nor Pope Benedict’s emphasis on the importance of the face.
    I find instead the view to be more in the range of an unreasonable restriction of life…

  106. BTW,
    Why is it that you don’t ask for example, “stromboli” to say that is “formerly having posted here as bill bannon etc” — “bill bannon” is like “CW” or “Charel Weng” AFAIK, a pen name and not “stromboli”‘s real name …. or for that matter TMC who has acknowledged having posted under at least two other handles (not variations of chicken)
    I don’t think btw, that your chiming in here was really helpful. Perhaps you were intending to be helpful. Well, you are not being helpful. And as intelligent as you might be you seem to have (1) not realized that I had not been angered — until your latest post that is and (2) not realized that which I was objecting to and that which was of concern to me which has little to nothing to do with my posting history as it does with my personal safety and fortune. I mentioned this before but on one occasion outside this forum someone threatened physical harm on me for something I had written. Of course expressions of violent impulses are not altogether uncommon here. Given this I will have to withdraw as, as much good might obtain from my participation, it seems evident that certain individuals are obsessive in for example googling the content of I presume a preponderance if not vast majority of Dan Hunter’s posts to see if he plagiarized something … as there are things penned to my real and full name on the Internet and as, as has happened before — and the partial reason for it I tried explaining but evidently you did not grasp it — one could certainly with enough effort peg me to those things. FWIW, — and you may like Tim J choose to doubt my “veracity” here — but I have been a victim of religious violence before — yes in real life, that’s the only way real, religious violence obtains. So when I am cognizant of the past threat of physical violence based on something I wrote on the virginity of Mary conveyed outside this forum and when I am cognizant of the several posts here which expressed violent impulses, it would not be prudent for me to remain here.
    I will limit my online involvement to the more academically oriented blogs where issues of decorum are rarely if ever an issue. I think it is wise that on some of these blogs they require people to post under their real names — not doing so causes some to say things they wouldn’t otherwise say. But since posting under my real name would frankly embarass me as certain of my social cohort would not look favorably upon belief in the supernatural, spiritual, or in the God of enlightened theism and reformed Christianity. As I bid you leave, along with your mocking and ridicule wrt to “another ostensible final exit” … this does make me have about the same as TMC … I said 3 or 4 wrt to TMC, remembering 3 distinctly, but I think it was 4 — one I had previously not remembered was where TMC bid us leave as he stated the blog was a source of temptation for him — one of the Mary’s on this blog suggested that could be a valid reason to leave even it should be merely the occasion of scrupulosity that the blog gives rise to …. anyway, along with your mocking, if you would kindly pray for someone close to me (but not me) who is a materialist/physicalist. I pity him as I think it renders his life in conception devoid of meaning but I am encouraged that more secular scientists now are envisioning a world without God but yet composed of space, time, matter, energy, and consciousness as fundamental ingredients … O, and TMC, in your statistical studies, aside from checking your data, read up on something some term “patternicity”
    btw “los” stood for “love of satan” … Rosalind Moss once expressed the view that God “loves” Satan on CAL, FWIW … in any event, I think we should love preferentially those who are forgotten and ignored and shunned such as the unborn and satan.
    BTW, FWIW — though if one subscribes to the Tim J hypothesis that I am really an atheist this will be of no use to you — I have transitioned from an arcane from of Christian pantheism to non-pantheistic belief. BTW, … SDG … you once “apologized” to me — and characterized it as an “apology” for mischaracterizing me as an atheist not knowing that I was now a theist … but yet you say you find Tim J’s view that I am an atheist posing as a theist to be “plausible” — perhaps Tim J’s view was not fully stated at that time, but it was later, obliquely, in a PZM thread … I find that inconsistent.
    Anyway, I hope you get back to your discussion w/out me as I think for ex. that Kevin had some interesting things to say. May beauty greet you in paradise, reward you in paradise and be in interpenetrate with you in paradise that you might in, per Franciscan theology, love of beauty find your joy and, per Thomistic theology in sight of beauty find your peace. And may RJN – RIP – who was in my experience humble and diplomatic find occasion to help resolve the conflict, strife, and discord that obtains amongst even the good angels* in the spirit with which he worked to resolve conflict between evangelicals and Catholics.
    *Cf. http://www.newadvent.org/summa/1113.htm#article8
    and “stromboli”/”bill bannon”/etc.: keep up the good work in my absence … ditto to TMC 😉

  107. Tim, my post was directed to Mattheus. As for your missing it, it was right here
    “To those to whom my preferences matter an iota:
    “There’s been at least three jokes now made on my name Ruse as it relates to “rose”. Maybe it was funny the first time, but it is getting tiresome and frankly annoying (to me, if that should matter to you) If this continues, then I will have to think of a new name.”
    and then after pondering the matter, I decided as announced in the name field of a later post in the same thread and as happened to be in the same page of comments:
    “Ruse, hoping the next series of puns be more creative”
    that I would change my name.
    WRT to CW versus CT, I had stated:
    “JFYI, I am going to now post comments on this blog as “CW” instead of “CT”. The reason is that I intend to move my blog “courageous thought” to a new name and url and perhaps have multiple blogs with different themes. One day I may end up giving up the original blog url, so it may result in confusion by retaining “CT”. If someone takes over the url, then please be aware, that some posts I’ve made on certain blogs using OpenID would of course now associate a blog not controlled by me with my post or comment on other blogs. . . .”
    and in the name field I had written “CW, no longer CT and maybe soon to no longer operate courageous thought”
    Yet consistently in that thread a certain individual as I noted persisted in referring to me as “CT/CW” numerous times — perhaps so that other readers would not neglect to notice, even though it would have been clear from the same link I continued to include (when remembering to do so) in the URL field anyway. And as I have noted, one individual also suggested a certain lack of “transparency” in going from CT to CW even though it was fully transparent.
    Anyway, now that the record is clear on that as well as your statement, I bid you my leave. Good luck with your human pursuits.

  108. Given that aslos has made for the exit, it would only be decent to refrain from hashing over his posts above or leaving any parting shots in the combox.
    Let it be.

  109. …it would only be decent to refrain from hashing over his posts above or leaving any parting shots in the combox.

    I wouldn’t know what to say, anyway. It would be a waste of time.

  110. Sorry, Tim J, but flouting your excellent advice I have one quick comment for aslos:
    aslos: FWIW, my express wish for you to use a consistent handle was not about one handle change, but a pattern of rotating handles. Although you may have made some mention about your latest name change, such mention could easily be missed by users not reading every single post … and while this wouldn’t be an issue for a single handle change, the constant round robin has gotten wearying.

  111. FWIW, not having any other way to contact aslos – and against my own advice (above) I would like to say that I don’t believe I insisted that aslos (whatever handle he/she was using at the time) was necessarily an atheist… only that he/she did not hold to any kind of Christianity that could be identified as such by any commonly understood or historic use of that word.
    It seemed to me always a kind of game of doctrinal minimalism… as in “how far afield of traditional creedal understandings of Christian doctrine can one go and still (in one’s own mind) call it ‘Christianity’?”.
    My e-mail address is easily found, aslos.

  112. Getting back to the topic….
    Beauty is good…a reasoned appreciation is good…but one must in the area of “looking” at the beauty of a woman –(I speak as a man)—know oneself and as Jimmy states above ones “risk”.
    There is a time to look and appreciate beauty…and there is a time to notice and turn away….
    I time to see and a time to flee 🙂

  113. My earlier question concerned how to change the size of a font within a combox, say for a quote. I tried the h1, h2, sizes; it tried the big/small command; I tried the div/span command. I can’t seem to shrink the font in a part of a combox post and then bring it back to size.
    Obviously, once can globally change the size of the font by either changing the font type or size in the browser.
    I’m still weak and dizzy. I contracted some stomach thing either from moving water-soaked carpets the other day or from a student. Either way, I have massive fluid loss and sitting up for long periods is problematic. Assuming it isn’t something serious, I just have to drink plenty of fluids and wait. Chicken soup is definitely on my diet list for replacement of sodium.
    Oh, yet another topic related to beauty for you guys to discuss in my absence (and I know it might start another long series of posts that are perennial in catholic comboxes, but it is relevant): a study was just published this week that says that urban environments, the noise, the high information content, can decrease brain function and self-control. Is there a difference between country folk and city folk in the area of beauty vs. lusting? Does the high-pace of urban life make things like custody of the eyes more difficult (try crossing the street that way)? If so, would this not be a reason to ask women in the workplace in urban settings to dial it down a notch in terms of how they display themselves in dress, knowing that men are weaker in this setting?
    The Dizzy Chicken

  114. My earlier question concerned how to change the size of a font within a combox, say for a quote.

    I still don’t understand, TMC. Doesn’t the blockquote tag, like the one above, make the quote appear on a smaller font than the rest of the comment?

  115. Truth, Beauty, Goodness. These things exist in the actual world and exist independent of what we think of them. Catholicism–it’s not just a head trip.

  116. What about looking at a 12 year old girl who has breasts?

    If one suffers from hebephilic temptations (disordered attraction to pubescent children) or other issues, such a look might be problematic.
    If a healthy adult can appreciate an adorable baby or a lovely prepubescent child, I see no reason why he might not also be able to appreciate the budding femininity of a 12-year-old (or a 14-year-old, or a 16-year-old) with a gaze as chaste and decent as a good father’s.

  117. My question.
    Is it wrong to look at women while currently being in a realtionship with another, whether that be dating or marriage?
    On one hand i’m told that we can’t avoid all near occasions of sin and that i shouldn’t look away from women, but on the otherhand I’m told i should flee from a situation which may be a struggle for me? How can anyone have both these mentalities? I guess what it comes down to is should I stay and fight the temptation or flee from the temptation if it becomes a consistent battle. Just the other day i was talking to a girl and I swear i could not just simple look at her without an impure reaction, so then i look away, and continue to to talk, but still feel turned on. Should I excuse myself or look at her straight in the eye and tell myself im going to give a sincere try to looking at her purely?
    And how do i deel with things such as dancing? Say perhaps its not uncommon for there to be a struggle while im dancing with a girl( modest dancing.) doers this mean I shouldn’t dance at all?

  118. I failed to mention that I actually had two questions in that previous post. Please dont be confused. The first sentance is unrelated to the rest.

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