Doing Cartwheels By Page 2

The past couple of days I've seen the mail carrier drive past our mailbox and I get giddy with anticipation. Like an excited schoolgirl getting a prize delivered I run to the box to collect the contents. Why so excited about the mail? Because I've ordered a bunch more Bishop Sheen books. They'd been sitting in my Amazon "cart" for months now and I finally went ahead and pointed and clicked them as purchases...

In any event, I have to laugh at myself at how truly giddy I become when I see that they have been delivered to our mailbox! As I ran back across the street and towards our garage I actually caught myself laughing out loud and grinning so hard that I could feel it in my face. I have already finished the Last Seven Words of Christ - FABULOUS!! Now I'm on to Three to Get Married.

As I read the first 2 paragraphs I began doing internal high fives with the Bishop and shouting "hooray" inside my own mind. By page 2 I was doing cartwheels!!! Here's a sampling (pages 1 and 2)

The Difference Between Love and Sex

Love is primarily in the will, not in the emotions or the glands. The will is like the voice; the emotions are like the echo. The pleasure associated with love, or what is today called "sex" is the frosdting on the cake; its purpose is to make us love the cake, not ignore it. The greatest illusion of lovers is to believe that the intensity of their sexual attraction is the guarantee of the perpetuity of their love. It is because of this failure to distinguish between the glandular and spiritual-or between sex which we have in common with anilmals, and love which we have in common with God-that marriages are so full of deception. What some people love is not a person, but the experience of being in love. The first is replaceable; the second is not. As soon as the glands cease to react with their pristine force, couples whoidentified emotionalism with love claim they no longer love one another. If such is the case they never loved the other person in the first place; they only loved being loved, which is the highest form of egotism. Marriage founded on sex passion alone lasts only as long as the animal passion lasts. Within two years the animal attraction for the other may die, and when it does, law comes to its rescue to justify the divorce with meaningless words "incompatibiity", or "mental torture". Animals never have recourse to law courts, because they have no will to love; but man, having reason, feels the need of justifying his irrational behavior when he does wrong.

There are two reasons for the primacy of sex over love in a decadent civilization. One is the decline of reason. As humans give up reason, they resort to their imaginations. That is why motion pictures and picture magazines enjoy such popularity. As thinking fades, unrestrained desires come to the fore. Since physical and erotic desires are among the easiest to dwell upon, because they require no effort and because they are powerfully aided by bodily passions, sex begins to be all-important. It is by no historical accident that an age of anti-intellectualism and irrationalism, such as our own, is also an age of carnal license.

The second factor is egotism. As a belief in Divine Judgement, a future life, heaven and hell, a moral order, is increasingly rejected, the ego becomes more and more firmly enthroned as the source of morality. Each person becomes a judge in his own case. With this increase of selfishness, the demands for self-satisfation become more and more imperious, and the interests of the community and the righjts of others have less and less appeal. All sin is self-centeredness, as love is otherness and relatedness. Sin is the infidelity of man to the image of what he ought to be in his eternal vocation as an adopted son of God: the image God sees in Himself when He contemplates His Word.

There are two extremes to be avoided in discussing married love: one is the refusal to recognize sexual love, the other is the giving of primacy to sexual attraction...

Now go by your own copies and read for yourself...you'll be doing quiet cartwheels as well!!