Two Become Family Podcast: Conversations and Encouragement For Your Catholic Family
Welcome to the podcast where we echo the words of St. John Paul II and encourage families to "Believe in what you are!"
We are Renzo and Monica Ortega, we've been married 13 years, we have 5 kids, and our apostolate, Two Become Family, encourages Catholics who love the Church, love each other, and still feel like marriage and family life is harder than it's supposed to be.
Through our very candid, and sometimes uncomfortably vulnerable, conversations about sex, NFP, conflict, family life, we hope to spark conversations between you and your spouse leaving you with a little more joy and a lot more hope that you have what it takes to be a family.
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Two Become Family Podcast: Conversations and Encouragement For Your Catholic Family
187. Why Should the Resurrection Change How Catholics Talk About Sex?
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Why would the Resurrection change how Catholics talk about sex?
We got into an online argument about sex, marriage, and what husbands are owed. But the more we talked, the more we realized the real disagreement was deeper than sex. It was about what marriage is, what sexual desire is, and whether how we understood the Resurrection actually changes what we believe our bodies are for.
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And welcome back to episode 187, I think it is, of Two Become Family. We're your host, Frenzer and Monaco Ortega. Thank you for being here. I hope you're here because you are getting something from this and not just because your phone is automatically downloading this podcast every week and you just forgot to unsubscribe from this. Please don't unsubscribe. Uh thank you for being here.
SPEAKER_03Share it with somebody else, actually.
SPEAKER_01Share it with people and say this is a podcast I actually will never unsubscribe to because of these things. Today's episode is going to be focused on one of our favorite topics. Um, arguing online. Arguing online and yeah, trolling and keyboard warring. So Monica decided this weekend, this week, to argue with people on the internet because that always yields the best fruit.
SPEAKER_03Every 100% of the time. Every time. Every time I argue online, it always goes well. And I do it on the daily. Yes. No, I never do it.
SPEAKER_01You did a great job.
SPEAKER_03I sent Renzo a first.
SPEAKER_01Well, if I did do that, do that.
SPEAKER_03I sent Renzo a gif of my version of trolling and it's Poppy from the kids' movie Trolls like skipping along. That's about as aggressive as I get.
SPEAKER_01It was it was a rough day out there. So but I engaged. All right, tell us a story. What happened? And eventually this is gonna be something you care about.
SPEAKER_03All right, so um, Evie Eevee, I don't even know how to say it. It's going right it's like a conservative Christian.
SPEAKER_01Not Pokemon Eevee.
SPEAKER_03That's right. Spelled the same way though. Not even close.
SPEAKER_01I'm so sad. At least you read Red Rising.
SPEAKER_03I do that. All right, so I mispronounce their names too when I listen to their when I listen to the audiobook. I'm like, hmm, that's not how I said his name. Like who? Gosh, I can't think of it right now.
SPEAKER_01Agnar.
SPEAKER_03Oh, no, um.
SPEAKER_01What'd you say?
SPEAKER_03Rs. It's spelled A-R-E-S. It's the plural of R.
SPEAKER_01This is where your son gets it from.
SPEAKER_03I don't even know what I was saying anymore. My friend, my friend who does listen to us every week and is reading Red Rising is gonna stop being friends with me now.
SPEAKER_01Um I gave her the fifth book today, and I forgot to tell her I hope this doesn't ruin our friendship. But it's actually the sixth book that's gonna ruin our friendship.
SPEAKER_03Okay, continue. So circling back, Evi magazine, EV magazine, I think it's Evi, um, is a conservative Christian magazine for women, and they posted a carousel of uh things that men need from their wives. I think five five things that wives need number one for their husband.
SPEAKER_01A sandwich.
SPEAKER_03Basically. Um, and you swipe through, like, yeah, one of them was freedom. Um, love, I think one was respect. And the fifth one.
SPEAKER_01Let's go back and look.
SPEAKER_03The fifth one while you're looking, the fifth one was men need sex. And that got my belly all fiery because their little caption underneath did not add nuance, it just dug.
SPEAKER_01I mean, you did exactly what they wanted. You commented and caused an issue.
SPEAKER_03So I did. I gave them so many views. The name E V I E.
SPEAKER_01And is it like Mag or something? Probably.
SPEAKER_03I don't know. It's not even an account I follow. Somebody shared it. Oh goodness. So then I went there.
SPEAKER_01All right. Well, keep going.
SPEAKER_03So I started commenting about chastity and freedom and self-gift and total love, authentic love, sacrificial love, and how, like, yes, of course, it's great that men desire their wives. It does not mean that they need it, nor should they demand sex from their wives. And I got a whole lot of people telling me I was wrong, and that was sad.
SPEAKER_01My goodness, I don't I can't find it.
SPEAKER_03Maybe they blocked us because they're like, thanks for the engagement. Now you can leave because you were right, and we were wrong, but we don't want to say that, so we'd like you to leave.
SPEAKER_01E V I E? I think so. What a this is gonna be a terrible episode if I can't find this now. Oh, I got it. See, no, I didn't.
SPEAKER_03Ayayay.
SPEAKER_01No, I got it. No, I didn't. They may have blocked you.
SPEAKER_03You're making no sense to me.
SPEAKER_01I found it, but I can't get to it. Did they block us? Whoa.
SPEAKER_03Wow, now I feel like I did a great job, actually. Seriously?
SPEAKER_01I can't find him.
SPEAKER_03I'm going.
SPEAKER_01I couldn't find him on my personal either.
SPEAKER_03Oh, and I'm even looking under like our likes and comments, and I don't see We got blocked, guys. We whoa.
SPEAKER_01Whoa, I feel so good. All right, well, too bad I have a lot of dummy accounts.
SPEAKER_03That's really cool.
SPEAKER_01From failed ideas in the past.
SPEAKER_03That's funny.
unknownWhat?
SPEAKER_01No, I'm just using the youth group account. Wait, I can't find them at all.
SPEAKER_03I can't see it either, actually.
SPEAKER_01Maybe something happened to them. Sorry. Maybe they crashed. Alright, I can't find it. So now I don't know where the post it. Oh.
SPEAKER_03Oh boy.
SPEAKER_01Too bad. Okay, now people are gonna think we're making things up. Alright, well, so that yeah, they said five things that uh all husbands need. They needed freedom, trips. One of them was like time with the boys.
SPEAKER_03It was time with the boys.
SPEAKER_01You need to give them like trust. True. Was trust one of them?
SPEAKER_03Or like yes, trust, respect, freedom, sandwich, sex.
SPEAKER_01That's those are the five. That's not the five things. Yeah. You can't even collaborate or corroborate this. Collaborate with this.
SPEAKER_03Oh yeah, they're gone. Well, the post is not available. They took it down because they were so wrong.
SPEAKER_01Well, so okay, so either way though, um, so they're basically saying that you a wife, um, a good wife needs to be able to give her husband sex. Like the way that the post was written was that this is a thing your husband needs. And that's always been something that that um bothers us when you say it's a husband's need, um, because it just it our main argument within the comments was that doing that does a couple of things. Um, one, it reduces the male, the husband, to it reduces his dignity, or it it does not um recognize his dignity as a human with a soul, um, with intellect and will, because it basically is saying that like because a husband has a need, um, you need to fulfill it, or else, you know, bad things happen, husband's not gonna be happy, this and that. Um, and a husband, because he has intellect and will and reason and everything, he's not an animal. So like he can have desires, have things he feels like he needs, um, but he can differentiate when he needs them, when it's appropriate to have them, when it's not appropriate to have them. Um, as evidenced by like if a husband really, really wants sex and then there's a fire in the house, like he doesn't need to have sex anymore. Like, oh, it's time for the fire. Whereas, like, if hmm, ready for imperfect analogies 101 here. But like, if there's a fire in the house and the husband, give me a need. Mazel's hierarchy.
SPEAKER_03Oh, hunger.
SPEAKER_01But he's really hungry, he's not hungry anymore.
SPEAKER_03I don't think this is working. I don't think this is working. He needs to be hydrated though, or else he can't run out of the house and I don't know. Having his, I think fire is not a great one because like he needs to get out to survive. All his other needs are subordinate to that need anyway. So this doesn't work. In the hierarchy, all other needs minus survival are out the window.
SPEAKER_01Okay. But the point being that like But he needs to hydrate before sex.
SPEAKER_03So therefore he needs like quid pro quo. He needs his he needs his electrolytes so that you know he's ready. But that so the one person actually commented on Maslow's hierarchy of needs, and I was like, Yeah, love and belonging, sure. Like all husbands, like that is a need of humans, is to feel loved, to give love, to belong that is higher up, that's like above food and water. But that and and sex for yourself, sex in marriage.
SPEAKER_01I will gladly not see people if I get Chick-fil-A.
SPEAKER_03That's fine. That's actually one way to show you love is to just deliver the Chick-fil-A and back away. Um, but that's one argument that, like, yeah, sex in marriage is one of the most fun, enjoyable, obvious ways to show love and belonging. Like that certainly is like, we're also not trying to say, like, never have sex. We wrote a book about how to have like better sex with your spouse. But for us to say that that need for love and affirmation and belonging to be cared for by your spouse, to be totally received by them as you are, right? Like to say that sex is the need, like removes the wholeness of what sex is supposed to be as well, because it reduces it to just the behavior, just the act. And it's like the release of endorphins, the like feeling pleasure, the like, you're good enough, and that's why I picked you. Like that it takes away like the fullness, the totalness of that mutual self-gift to one another when you say that men need sex and that wives, if they want to show their husband that they love them, they should give it to him. And it's like that misses a lot and um and can be very dangerous. That like phraseology can be very dangerous to somebody who is phrasology, not who does not have the desire for sex and intimacy rightly ordered in his humanness.
SPEAKER_01Well, and I so I think, yeah, right. So that's one way to that's one argument that we made was that the need for intimacy and need for connection is completely valid, uh, and sex is one way to reach that um or to experience that, but it's not the only way. Um, but the argument that I started making, because people, because it's a shared account that we have. Some people did not realize it was a shared account, so they started calling Monica Lady and Miss. And then I responded, Sir, I'm a man. I said, Sir, I'm a man. And then the same person actually commented something about like something about you said it's a shared account, and then he said, Oh, I see how it is now. And I said, I don't know if you saw the comment I put she restricts sex in Instagram, please help me.
SPEAKER_03Um but he made it like I'm the like I wear the pants in the relationship and I'm bot boss baby.
SPEAKER_01I have no pants on right now. No more YouTube. Um, but so but the argument I started making was that this the because they started people started saying, like, you know, like if you're married, you're all these things go, you can't lust after your spouse.
SPEAKER_03Um and yeah, they thought that lust was like not a thing in marriage. Right.
SPEAKER_01Well, because they start and they started quoting a lot of scripture. So I are I started telling you that what's what's happening here, and I think the overall issue with the thing that we have of m saying men don't need sex comes from our understanding of Catholicism and Christianity and what Jesus did on the cross and what redemption is and how we experience sanctification and are ultimately saved. And I know that like seems like wait, wait, what do you we were just talking about sex, but like I really think at the core of what's happening is that you have most of most Americans believe in the eva evangelical um rendition of the gospel, and because of that, the box that they have for sex and lust doesn't like there's no box for the kind of sex that we are talking about compared to the kind of sex that like evangelicals are talking about. Or the in sexual in this and by sex I mean like I'm including like sexual desire, uh passions, um, not just the act itself, but like everything around it.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. Use that word. What be attractive. You said you said that there was a there's like a vocabulary word, there's a thing for the the difference in how we believe in I have no idea what I sanctification. There was a word that you use. I don't remember it. It was too big for talk holy to me.
SPEAKER_01Uh no, well, okay, so it might come up again and then you could just wink at me. Um, but so what I so so so that's my premise because I think that if you re if you realize how like evangelicals and you I would like you to push back and not just like agree with me if I'm making if I'm not making sense, if that makes sense. Oh boy, it's gonna be long. We only have 10 more minutes. All right, so basically, the way evangelicals understand the gospel is that um man was created perfect, man sinned, a huge chasm was caused, it was created between man and God. Jesus paid the price that has now connected and built a bridge on that chasm, so now we can reach God through Jesus, and now we are able to go to heaven if we um believe in Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior, and now we have a relationship with Him. And fundamentally, what they believe Um happened with Jesus dying on the cross is that He paid a pay uh He paid a debt that we couldn't pay ourselves in the sense of like Um how you like pay a debt in like a court of law, for example. Um if you like they think that like oh humanity was at a court of law, God was the judge and said you need to pay this much in order to be able to get to heaven. Humanity can't pay that much because like we're flawed humans, we're not perfect, we can't do that. So then somebody else, Jesus, who's perfectly human and is able to pay the debt, pays the debt for us, and now therefore we are saved and able to go to heaven because we accept Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. And that's how they believe in all of those things. So like that's what they believe in redemption, sanctification, atonement, like that's kind of summarizing everything they believe. Um and as Catholics, like we we believe uh some of that, like that is it kind of correct, but like we don't believe that Jesus dying on the cross was a a um a paying of the debt in the same way that like he paid a like he paid a price for us and now we are free. Um because like his sacrifice on the cross. Oh gosh. I'm trying to not make this terrible boring, but I may just say whatever I want. So no, so like his um so the way that he so the wages of sin is death, right? That's that is in one of the letters from Paul, I'm sorry. Um and and so basically, like because humanity sinned, humanity was death was condemned to death. And so G and then we we in the Catechism says like we were then living in the domin under the dominion of Satan. And so Jesus comes in and he dies on behalf of humanity, but like because he took on our nature, like he dies in place of the death that we were supposed to incur on our own. Which is like that's a different understanding than just like him paying a price for us. Like he so you could like so both evangelicals and Catholics would say that like Jesus died for my sins, yeah, but like those mean two very different things to us. Yeah. Because like it was because he was incarnate, perfectly human, uh, he was fully human, fully divine, he took on our nature, he lived a perfect life, and then he died for us, and he died the death that the humanity was supposed to die. And because of that, and then he was able to rise from the dead, and then we are called to follow him, and then the following in him and is more than just like believe through faith, but is also to like to continue to live a life that relies on him to continue to be perfected on this earth. So it's not just like, oh, I believe in him and then I'm done. But as Catholics, we believe like I believe in him, I follow him, and that's the beginning of my life in Christ that needs to be perfected. Whereas for for evangelical, like my believing in him, like that's it. Like, yeah, not saying that they're not trying to get better, that's not the point, but like in terms of the exchange that need to happen between God and man, like, no, I believe I'm done. If I were to die in this moment because I believe, like I'm going to heaven, whereas as a Catholic, you'd be like, now I believe this is the beginning. Now the perfection begins because like we believe through grace, God continues to perfect us. We are continuing to share in the redemption, we are continuing to unite ourselves to the sacrifice on the cross that we were supposed to die on our own, but like now it is like through through his death that we are reborn, so we are uniting ourselves to him. And because of that, like we see sex as one of those things that is perfecting us, and we see marriage as one of those things that's perfecting us. Whereas like an evangelical understanding would be like marriage is a good that God created between man and woman to be fruitful and multiply, all these things, but and it's like one of those gifts that God has given you to live out as a Christian. But like we see it as like, no, this is like a uh this is a sacrament he's given us to help us be perfected in by grace, to be joined with him on the cross so that we can be resurrect with him and live with him in heaven. So like all the the all of the issues within my heart of wanting to desire my wife in a way that I shouldn't aren't just given like an okay blanket of like this is fine because I believe in Jesus, but like we see it as like these are ways that you are still imperfect in how you love, that Jesus is gonna show you how to be perfect in love, yeah, and marriage is gonna do that for you. So when we are talking to them uh through Instagram or anything, even if this is in person, like they're not like they don't have that box of like you're still being perfected, because in them, like I made righteous in Christ.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And we have two very underdiffered shines of what that means.
SPEAKER_03Right. So their idea of of this, uh struggling back to like sex and marriage, is that because Jesus has died on the cross and has won the victory for us, like he paid our our debt and the debt is paid, so that's all done. That the marriage that we can live on earth now after Jesus is like returned back to the way that it was first kind of created to be. So that like the kind of anything goes, that because Jesus died and we are living a Christian marriage that you know, a man and a wife, and then so then that's like that's golden. So the stuff that happens like in our bandwidth. Right. And we're like, we're avoiding like fornication, we're not we're not um we're not adulterous, like we we just stay with our husband, we just stay with our wife.
SPEAKER_01Like if we're living that you can't even say we're avoiding fornication, because that's not true.
SPEAKER_03Okay, sorry. So I meant I meant say adultery, but then fornication came out of my mouth. So I hate when that happens. So they believe that, whereas like your explanation is that like okay, believing in Jesus and in being a Christian and being a Catholic Christian means that we get to participate in the perfecting. Like we are invited to Yes, we participate in the perfecting, yeah, by cooperating, by coordinating with grace, and like that he transforms us to prepare us for heaven, to perfect us so that like this whole journey of like living a Catholic Christian life, every piece of it is what is preparing us and perfecting us as we go. And so, and you had said too that they don't they don't believe in concupiscence, like the um I don't know if I I guess it's probably like depending on what's it's hard to say to like I wouldn't say all Protestants believe the same, right?
SPEAKER_01Because they don't. There's so many different um denominations of Protestantism. I would say that like most evangelical Christians would would believe the same. I don't believe they would I don't think, and I could be wrong, so if I'm wrong, like I'm you can correct me on this, but I don't think to believe in concupiscence in the same way that Catholics do, in that with concupiscence, we believe that because of the fall, we all have a a natural, like a an inherited natural desire to do the wrong thing, desire things that aren't good for us, lie. We have we have a natural desire to do all those things. Um, and it's by grace that we're able to to not go towards those things, like Jesus does that for us.
SPEAKER_03And that's like inherited from our parents of Adam and Eve, right? Like yes, yeah.
SPEAKER_01So that's like it's something that we don't we don't yeah, it's that's part of original sin. And I don't know if they believe in that. I do know that they believe most do believe in original sin and um in sin and needing baptism in order to be part of the new covenant, but I don't think they recognize that the the effects of the sin are still present. Like I think they believe that it's like again, it's like a black and white judge and jury, like, no, I'm I'm I'm declared innocent by this judge, so therefore I'm innocent. If I sin again, I you know, I apologize to God on my own, and then I'm innocent again, and like those that's their back and forth. Whereas for us Catholics, we believe like in baptism, like you could have a person who's baptized, newly baptized uh um the Easter Vigil, and like they are perfected, they are clean, they are they're able to go to heaven, but they still have those inclinations. Yeah, and so therefore, like if they continue to live life beyond this Easter Vigil, they need to be perfected of those inclinations, either now or in purgatory, which again they don't believe in purgatory. That's why I don't think they believe in concupiscence. Yeah. So just wanted to make a quick correction because I said I would welcome corrections, and look, I'm correcting myself. So I did say here in the episode that Protestants don't believe or evangelicals don't believe in concupiscence, and that is true in the sense that they don't use the term concupiscence, and they have a different understanding than Catholics do about the difference between the uh disordered or misordered desires from concupiscence that we have and sins themselves. There's different types of evangelicals, and like we can't cover all of them here today, but the evangelicals that we are referring to in this episode, they believe that things like the sinful nature, and they call it like the flesh or the indwelling sin or like a uh total depravity of our desires or corrupt desires, and they tend to equate all of that with like inner sinfulness that we have, and they would make they would not make the distinction between a sinful desire and a sinful act, and they would kind of say all of that is sin. Whereas in the Catholic realm we have concupiscence, we believe that like we we have this inner disposition that we have inherited from Adam and Eve that that has negative inclinations and and and desire to not seek out the good all the time, and because of that we need grace in order to perfect those things within us. But we would make the distinction between a sinful desire and sin itself. Um we would call it like a misordered desire and sin itself, and sin is a thing that we we don't want to do, we are free to commit a sin or to not commit a sin, and that just because we have a desired inclination towards the sin does not mean that we have committed the sin yet. Um but in the evangelical realm, like they don't make that distinction. If you have an inclination or a misorder to a particular sin, they would already consider that something sinful within your nature. Um and so they would they would remedy that very differently um than we would on in the Catholic realm with the sacraments and grace, which we kind of go into in a little bit here as well. Um so I just wanted to make that correction and back to. To the episode.
SPEAKER_03So it's it's tricky in engaging in this conversation on this Instagram post about men needing sex and trying to talk about like, okay, the virtue of chastity combating the vice of lust. There was a lot of like lady, lust doesn't happen in marriage. I'm a man. Yeah. If I desire my my wife, like that's a good. And it was kind of like a no matter what. Isn't that great that I want to have sex with my wife and she should want to have sex with me? And it's like, yeah, like that.
unknownRight.
SPEAKER_03That's very basic, but like, sure, but are you desiring your wife for the wholeness that she is, like the whole human that she is, everything that she brings, or are you desiring to have sex? Yeah. And so there was like a distinction that they were not either didn't understand or willing to engage in the fact that, like, as spouses, and this we're saying men need like because that was the post, but like this can certainly happen for women as well, that we can still lust within marriage because we can have this desire, this somewhat or completely disordered desire towards sex for our own gratification, for our own affirmation. And that could be for the pleasure that comes from sex, the physical feeling that it comes. It could be from like I'm desiring affirmation because I don't feel very good about myself. And so I want because sex is like the most obvious way to show that I'm wanted, and that is still even disordered. It is still selfish because I'm still thinking about what I get out of sex and not what we experience when we come together in sex. So, um, so it's tricky like to talk about that, and then to also talk about the virtue of chastity because it's it seemed like for a lot of them that it was like chastity ends once you get married. Like chastity is not having sex of it as abstinence. It's where they think of it as abstinence, and so like now that you're married, you can have sex all you want, whenever you want, wherever you but and like all these things, and you're a little a bit like don't you see though that there are some boundaries like if they but that's why they still use contraception, and that this is very broadly speaking, not all uh Protestants do, but like for for the most part, it uh that there's the Catholic Church, the only Christian church that says no contraception. Yeah, um, and a lot that sex needs to end with uh male in female, that like these other PIV, PIV, like there's other ways to show to have intimacy that mimic sex, but they're not actually the full act, and like that's allowable in a lot of other um other faith practices, and so that again, like as we kind of like were unlike peeling back the layers to this, it was like wow, we are actually not gonna get anywhere because there is so there are so many like fundamental misunderstandings here that we're not just talking about like men need sex. And I think the re I mean, the reason why I wanted to engage in this conversation though was because like that line in and of itself is can be so dangerous when heard in the wrong marriage, when heard in the wrong relationship by the man or even by the woman who feels like, oh, I've had this, I've had this inclination that like things just aren't going right. And so I'm not desiring sex, or sex just doesn't feel like the way it's supposed to. I'm a little nervous, I'm afraid of it. It feels it, I feel like I'm being used. And then you're told by this like very popular uh resource for conservative Christian like know-how. And it's like, no, that doesn't exist anymore. Number five, yeah, number five says like that my husband needs it, and here's scripture to like back that up, and then you feel obligated, right?
SPEAKER_01Well, because they use the different ones from Corinthians about like don't deny your husband, don't deny your wife. Um, but like so I I think though fundamentally it's because they have a misunderstanding of what Jesus did on the cross or how we understand what Jesus did on the cross. Yeah. And I think that's also why a lot I I do think a lot of their influence though is seeped into Catholics. Like, I don't think I think the explanation I just gave about the difference between what Jesus did, what's how we understand what Jesus did versus uh in an evangelical understanding, I think that some people might be like, wait, and need to learn more or read more about it because they've always seen it as like a I paid this and therefore you're done. Um but also to take it further, uh uh because of that, because a lot of Catholics even don't have a full understanding of it, um, there's a uh there's a general audience uh from St. John Paul II that is not that is not included in the book. Sorry, that's not included online. If you go online and look up all the different general audiences, this one is not in the general audience. I forgot which one it is, um, but it's it is in the books that have been released of it. Um and I know that because I used I used it for um the most recent book I just submitted. Um and it talks specifically about the male, the male, um, the male sexual desire, the male sexual desire for his wife, um, using the song of songs as a as the imagery for it. And basically it was it was equating the the male desire for his bride, um, similar to saying similar to that's how Jesus desires the church. And if you see the male desire for his bride as you may not use the word lustful, but you see it as like, well, he just wants to use her, right? He doesn't he desires her for a release, he desires her for because he needs to feel connection rather than like he desires to be united with her in her entirety of who she is, mind, body, soul, everything. Like, I want to be completely yours and completely united to you in that way. If you don't recognize that piece, like you miss a huge portion of like how much how Jesus sees the church and how how much he desires to be with be one with us. Because like you, you could be like, Well, you can because it you could you run the risk of overly sexualizing that and being like, Well, Jesus wants like no, that's not He desires a a communion with you that is that is more intimate than any other union that you could understand. The closest one you can understand is marriage. Um, and then even within marriage, the closest like act that you could understand this kind of union is within sex. Um, and that act between you and Jesus happens, that is the most intimate thing in the world happens during holy communion. Um, and he desires you so much that like if you have fallen away and sinned, like he still wants to be with you. So, like if a wife, no matter how how how bloated, how pregnant, how how just disheveled, whatever she feels like, like your husband still desires you. And the reason St. John Paul's second is like pointing to the sexual desire of that, because like how many times have you been like, you know, your hair is up, you're having coffee in the morning, and you're wearing super baggy pants, and I'm just like, you look so good right now. You're just like, what the heck? But like that is that's a glimpse of the male's sexual desire. And then if you think of like how Jesus desires us, like no matter what our state, like he still desires us, and not in a not in the sexual realm of like how you might understand me, but like he desires to be one with us, still, he desires to be intimate with us, he desires to have communion with us, regardless of like what our state in life is at the moment. And I think like the sad part for me is that like if we can't jump the hurdle of how we understand the redemption, like this makes no sense of like what are you talking about? You're overly sexualizing Jesus, and it's like, no, like this is an aspect of our faith, yeah, that we believe, and yeah.
SPEAKER_03And that's why that is why like the gift of sex in marriage is so supreme and it is godly, like it is a gift from God for us to get those glimpses, for us to start to like have little experiences that um of true love, of total love, of the opportunity to both give and receive at the same time with the person that we love the most and without reservation and like all of that, um, you know, in the context of marriage where there is sacrifice and there is struggle and there is mercy and there's forgiveness and there's apologizing and there's um there there's suffering and there's like all the all of it, like to have that beautiful thing like available to us is is why it's such a supreme gift. And so when that gift gets dulled by um by just different different temptations and by different um I mean it's certainly like Satan trying to poke holes at like the one of the great gifts that God has given his people and he's gonna find ways to try to like disorder that and dismantle that. And so like that simple phrase of like men need sex invites so much disorder in when it's not put into like a fully loving, fully actualized, fully understood marriage. Um and and it can just like wreak havoc on on a marriage, and that is just something that we do not want because we so much want for married couples to understand like the greatness of that gift and to always point to like, and this is why because we have Jesus and because we have the way that he loves the church, so like ground it in that.
SPEAKER_01That's probably the only regret's not the right word. I'm happy we wrote love making and I'm happy what it is, but it's definitely a lot more of a a practical, like entry-level understanding of like how to like we go through like the very human part, it's like a human formation thing of like the human aspects of like how to have a good Catholic sex life. And I I would love to at some point like be able to expand on like the the not the theology of it, because like but like somewhere between this and uh Christopher West understanding of theology body, like there needs to be something else that can help bridge the gap and not not um address address sex, but like by addressing the parts of like what you don't realize in your faith is all of this is like pointing to how much God loves you and like sex. If you don't get sex, like you also will miss this too, but like you should know all these things too. I don't know. That's kind of what I think. If you agree with me, first you guys gotta make love making sell out like crazy. It's been out for a year. Go get yourself 10, read it with your book club. There's no graphs, but you'll still giggle at some of my jokes. Um, yeah, go go ahead and buy love making. I'm gonna put it in the show notes um because we do like this is a thing we are passionate about, um, about doing it, about writing. And I think that I do think the book is helpful to at least start the understanding. So, like if you've listened to the end and you're like, what are these two talking about? Get love making and then come back and listen to this again. And this might make a little bit more sense.
SPEAKER_03I actually have a request. If you have listened to us, you kind of know what we say and how we say it about the topic of lovemaking. I would love for you to order several copies for your parish, give it to your pastor, and say, this is for all the newlyweds for this year, or something like that. Like that would be a great gift to pass on to your church and to support your church in a special way. It's like, okay, how many couples are gonna get married in our church this year? Maybe there's 10, maybe there's 15. Like, get some copies, give it to your pastor so that he can gift the to them. Um, that's that was one of the dreams that we had when we first published this. That that would that would become a thing.
SPEAKER_01And maybe it'll still happen. I know the Dice's of Saint Saint of St. Paul, Minneapolis. Yes, they endorse the book really seriously. Thanks, Renee. Thanks, Renee. Shout out if you still listen. I don't even know if you do. If you do, that's great. So let's get some more Diocese doing this too. So um for now though, thank you for listening to us. Leave us a review on Apple and Spotify. Um, share this with anybody who you think would like to hear two people they don't know talking about sex. And we will see you at the next episode.