Catholic women and that other contraceptive mandate

Why do so many church-going women reject Catholic teaching on family planning? At last someone has asked them.

Back in February this year, when the battle between religious leaders and the Obama administration over the latter’s contraceptive mandate reached a new pitch of intensity, the White House defended its policy by alleging that 98 per cent of Catholic women had used contraception. If that was the case, we were meant to ask, what on earth were the Catholic bishops, for one, making a song and dance about? Hadn’t their own female constituency effectively deserted them on this issue?

The claim, quoted far and wide at the time, turned out to be a political factoid rather than a real statistic. People who analysed the Guttmacher Institute study it came from pointed out that the study was selective and self-contradictory. For a start it was based on a survey restricted to women aged between 15 and 44, so it could say nothing about women between 45 and 100. And one table showed that 11 per cent sexually active Catholic women who did not want to become pregnant were using no method of contraception at all.

Still, nobody is pretending that hordes of Catholics don’t dissent from their Church’s “thou shalt not” regarding contraception. We do not need the Guttmacher Institute or the White House to tell us that. Nor do we need them to tell us why the many Catholics who never go to church would not bother with one of its more difficult moral teachings.

What we don’t know is why practising Catholics who do go to Mass -- and even, if only occasionally, to confession -- also feel entitled to reject the teaching.

Why, for instance, do “Catholic moms in minivans drop their children at the parish school and head to their gynaecologists to be fitted for diaphragms or to get a new prescription for ‘the pill’  -- and think nothing of it,” as the authors of a new study, What Catholic Women Think About Faith, Conscience, and Contraception, put it.

Do the parish moms have an accurate idea of the Church’s teaching on family planning? After four decades of dissent it would be surprising if they all did. And when the teaching is presented accurately to practising Catholics are they more open to it? What are their reasons for rejecting it, and what would they like to know more about?

For all the times Catholic women have been surveyed on whether they have “ever used” contraceptives, no-one has asked those who practice their faith but not its teaching on family planning, “Why?”, say the study’s authors, lawyer Mary Rice Hasson, a Fellow in the Catholic Studies Program at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, Washington, D.C, and director of the Women, Faith, and Culture project, and Michele M. Hill, a Baltimore Catholic and co-director of the project.

National survey of church-going women

To answer that question a national online survey of church-going Catholic women aged 18 to 54 was carried out in June and July of last year by the polling company inc./WomanTrend. (This is a preliminary report, say the authors, as further insights are expected from focus groups and ongoing in-depth interviews with 100 of the women.) Of the 824 women in the sample, half attended church at least weekly, while the other half attended less than weekly but at least a few times a year.

Their responses confirm that, on this issue at least, church-going Catholics have been influenced far more by popular culture than by Catholic teaching on sex and reproduction. Fully 85 percent of all the women believe they can be “good Catholics” even if they do not accept some of this teaching, including the 37 percent who completely reject it.

The picture, of course, looks decidedly better among regular Mass-goers. Among young women (18-34) who attend every week, 27 percent completely accept the Church’s teaching, and among those who both attend Mass weekly and have been to confession within the past year that figure rises to 37 percent. Just 24 percent of the women who go to Mass every week completely reject the teaching on contraception, and for those who have been to confession that figure drops to 12 percent.

Even among the dissenting majority, however, not all are closed to the Church’s message on this subject. Hasson and Hill point out that about a third of these women mistakenly believe that the Church itself gives them the right to make up their own minds about which methods of family planning are morally acceptable. Many do not reject the Church’s authority out of hand.

Top reasons for contraceptive use

Mistakenly or not, 53 per cent of all women in the study who dissent in part or completely from church teaching cite a couple’s “moral right” to decide which method of family planning they will use. This makes it the top reason given for rejecting church teaching on the matter.

Two other reasons are cited frequently among this group: 46 percent say couples have “the right to enjoy sexual pleasure without worrying about pregnancy”, and 41 percent think that natural family planning is not an effective method to space or postpone pregnancy.

The authors perceive two main dynamics shaping these views: the influence of a cultural mindset that divorces sex from procreation and promises “sexual pleasure without consequences”, and a deficit on the church side in presenting Church teaching.

The latter can be deduced from the fact that 72 per cent of women surveyed said they rely mainly on the homily at Sunday Mass for learning about the faith, and yet just 15 per cent of that group fully accept the Church’s teaching on sex and reproduction. The weekly Mass homily, the authors say, “seems to represent a lost opportunity when it comes to conscience formation on the contraception issue.”

As for cultural influences, they seem likely (although the authors don’t say so) to account for at least some of the scepticism about natural family planning given the systematic bad press NFP is give by mainstream family planners and the media.

For the pastors of the Church, all this represents a steep challenge. Yet Catholic women may be more receptive to the Church’s view of things than first appears.

Openness of the "soft middle"

Importantly, the survey shows they are more open to children than the average American, their “ideal” number of children averaging 3.5 (or 4 if money were not a factor) compared with the American ideal of two or fewer.

Also, say the study authors, “When presented with an accurate description of the Church’s teachings on family planning many Catholic women show reluctance to completely reject the Church’s teaching.”

Instead, three groups emerge: “the faithful” (who fully accept the teaching -- 13 percent of the sample), “the dissenters” (who completely reject it -- 37 percent), and the “soft middle” (who accept “parts” of the teaching). In addition, a significant number of women in the “soft middle” (about half of weekly Mass-goers) show openness to learning more about church teaching on contraception and natural family planning.

Good will shown by many women in the “middle” represents an opportunity for the Church, the authors point out -- and natural family planning may be a good starting point for communicating the Church’s teaching about procreation. About one in four of those who attend Mass regularly shows an interest in learning more about the method: hearing from other couples about the health and relationship benefits of NFP, what doctors say about it, and scientific evidence about its effectiveness. Such messages may be more persuasive than spiritual or authoritative ones, the authors suggest.

But alongside their message that many Catholic women are “reachable” the authors warn that the task is becoming more complicated. While the survey shows 10 percent of church-going women have had abortions (lower than the national average), 17 percent of younger women have used emergency contraception. This means that the Church has to inform women about the potentially abortifacient nature of EC “as well as arguing more persuasively that contraception itself is wrong.”

The Catholic bishops are fighting the Obama administration’s contraceptive mandate -- that is, the policy of forcing all employers, including Catholic institutions such as hospitals and schools, to provide full cover for contraceptives, sterilisation and emergency contraception in their health insurance plans -- as an attack on the free exercise of religion, which it is.

But in light of the information in “What Catholic Women Think…” the mandate may be a blessing in disguise. By forcing the issue of contraception to the top of the Church’s public agenda it has created an opportunity for the Church to have an internal conversation on the subject -- the kind of opportunity that perhaps has not been seen since Pope Paul VI issued Humanae Vitae in 1968.

The study from the Women Faith and Culture project shows that such a discussion is long overdue.

Unhealthy notions

Why is it so hard to admit that gay health and life expectancy are far below average?

The head of the Australian Christian Lobby, Jim Wallace, found himself in hot water recently after he suggested in a debate that the lifestyle of gays was as unhealthy as the lifestyle of smokers. “The life of smokers is reduced by something like seven to 10 years and yet we tell all our kids at school they shouldn't smoke. We need to be aware that the homosexual lifestyle carries these problems.”

The Australian Prime Minister was outraged. “To compare the health effects of smoking cigarettes with the many struggles gay and lesbian Australians endure in contemporary society is heartless and wrong,” said Julia Gillard. David van Gend reports on the controversy, which mirrors debates in other countries.

* * * * *

The left knows how great a prize is within its grasp: any law redefining marriage will mandate the new definition in the wider culture with the full force of anti-discrimination law, thus completing the 60s sexual revolution.

Hence the commitment by Jim Wallace, head of the Australian Christian Lobby (ACL), to make people understand that laws for gay marriage will crush conscientious objection by parents who oppose the promotion of homosexual behaviour to school children.

Wallace wrote last December: "If our schools are concerned about discouraging smoking for its 7-10 year shortening of life, how can we in all honesty encourage a lifestyle for men that shortens it on average by double that?"

But when he made similar comments last week in a debate with Greens leader Christine Milne the Greens reported him to the Human Rights Commission. Prime Minister Julia Gillard cancelled her appearance at the ACL conference; she was due to speak on “religious freedom in a secular society”.

Wallace’s figures are sound: a 20-year loss in gay life expectancy was reported by a homosexual lobby group in 2009. A 17-year loss in life expectancy among young HIV positive men was reported in 2008 in the Lancet medical journal, despite the very best anti-viral treatment, which is double the loss from smoking. In Australia HIV/AIDS remains overwhelmingly a homosexual disease: Wallace correctly quoted the Kirby Institute finding that over 80 percent of new cases of HIV/AIDS in Australia are in “men who have sex with men”.

Why then do some legislators plan to institutionalise this type of sexual behaviour within marriage, when it is so medically and morally problematic?

Politicians of good will feel compelled on three points: they believe same-sex attraction is inborn and unchangeable, when it is clearly not; they think gay kids are bullied more than other kids, despite excellent research finding they are not; most importantly, they believe that the reduced life expectancy from AIDS and suicide is the fault of homophobic society, and we must legalise gay marriage to help the mental health of gay youth.

Yet the research of University of Western Australia Professor Rob Cover finds: “the relationship between the legalisation of marriage and GLBTIQ youth health and well-being is more complex and it is important not to assume that legislative amendment leads directly by itself to a reduction in youth suicidality.”

Certainly, the rates of suicide did not drop several years after gay marriage was legalised in Canada and Massachusetts.

From my observations, the pressures that depress a young gay man are more intrinsic than extrinsic: the sense that something has gone wrong deep inside; the depressing effect of what he might experience as compulsive sexual behaviour; the unresolved anger where he sees the cause of his sexual confusion to be childhood abuse by a male or adolescent initiation by a trusted adult.

It trivialises a homosexual person’s suffering to blame it primarily on homophobic society. The associated claim that Parliament must legalise gay marriage or be culpable for gay suicide is folly. One does not overturn the foundational institution of society, with all the harm that entails – trashing a child’s right to both a mother and a father, and crushing a parent’s right to teach their child right and wrong - as an act of psychotherapy for depressed citizens. Professional help and neighbourly kindness is needed; gay marriage and gay sex-education is not.

A dangerous dish on the cultural menu

Are “boys on the side” really the answer to young women’s career ambitions?

In case you haven't noticed, 2012 has been declared The Year of the Women in the United States. Everyone wants to talk about women: Democrats at their National Convention; shocked multitudes following Rep. Todd Akin’s outrageous statements about women and rape; leading columnists debating options for a pregnant Marissa Meyer after her being named CEO of Yahoo! It seems that every time we open a newspaper, turn on the TV, or surf the internet, there is a feverish conversation around who women are and what is and is not good for us.

So it is hardly surprising that when Hanna Rosin, author of the controversial 2010 Atlantic article “The End of Men” (which has spawned a book, just published, of the same name), released one of the book's juicier chapters in the latest Atlantic, it ignited the conversation anew. Her piece, entitled “Boys on the Side”, proves to be just as provocative as the title suggests.

In it, Rosin takes a contrarian view of the hookup culture allegedly flourishing on college campuses, contesting the typical women-as-victim narrative. If your idea of hookups assumes there will be a broken-hearted girl crying into her pillow because “she thought it was love,” you would be quite mistaken. Not only are college women not upset by the new world of casual sexual relationships, says Rosin, but they have actually become the leaders in initiating and perpetuating the system.

More than just acknowledging that casual sex is the new norm, Rosin posits that this development is actually the necessary ingredient for further female progress. Just as birth control affords women sex without the babies, the appeal of the college hook-up culture is sex without the love that can lead to burdensome monogamy and steal our professional dreams.

Rosin bases these conclusions on interviews and research conducted with college women who, at the time, were immersed in this culture themselves. Can we really conclude from these anecdotes that hooking up is good for young women, and therefore something to be applauded?

As late 20-somethings looking back on a decade of witnessing the no-strings-attached trend first hand, we can’t help but be skeptical. Yes, it may look on the surface that the world is our oyster: we are pursuing prestigious, well-paying careers, living in vibrant cities and traveling the world. Perhaps if we only worshiped at the altar of the shattered glass ceiling, this would be enough. But the reality is that most of us don’t, and our definition of the good life has as much to do with love and intimate relationships as with career aspirations.

By denying this, Rosin’s analysis misses the huge downside presented by the hookup culture, namely, that when we habitually separate sex from intimacy, it hurts our chances of being able to form the kinds of committed relationships that would one day lead us towards the very thing we have been avoiding but claim to desire: marriage.

In one of the surveys she cites, 90 percent of respondents said they wanted to get married. One comment she quotes stands out as particularly encapsulating the attitude of young adults towards marriage: “I want to get secure in a city and in a job.... As long as I’m married by 30, I’m good.” But the reality, according to a 2010 Pew Research Center survey, is that only 44 percent of adults aged 25-34 have achieved that goal.

If “hookups haven't wrecked the capacity for intimacy” as Rosin claims, and if the only lasting effects are Facebook photos and alcohol-hazed memories, why are our prospects for attaining committed intimacy plummeting?

Some may say our expectations changed as we matured and that we decided we would prefer to delay or forgo marriage. But in the aforementioned Pew report, 61 percent of those who aren’t married say they want to be, so that doesn’t fully explain what’s going on.

What seems far more likely is that separating sex from love can be habit-forming. Sensory experiences can actually change the physical and organizational structure of our brain, meaning―as Dr. Freda Bush and Dr. Joseph S. McKissic reveal in their book Hooked―that years of equating sexual pleasure with emotional detachment and objectification could have long-term effects on one’s sensory memory and ability to maintain healthy, committed relationships in the future.

The other stumbling block seems to be in the deliberately self-seeking and habitually utilitarian lifestyle that gives rise to casual and detached sex―as one survey respondent in a study by NYU sociologist Paula England put it, just being “100% selfish.”

Martin Seligman, author of Authentic Happiness and founding director of the Positive Psychology Center at the University of Pennsylvania, and colleagues have found that fostering internal character strengths are the key to happiness and life satisfaction. Their studies have  indicated that the most important character traits are what they call “heart strengths” -- gratitude, hope, zest, and the ability to love and be loved -- and that these are enhanced with practice.

So, when you practice being altruistic by reaching outside of yourself to serve another, you in fact become an altruistic person. On the other hand, it would follow that after practicing being a selfish person for 10 years, it should be no surprise that you reach the end of your twenties and find that selfishness is a bad habit that stands in the way of long-term happiness.

None of this is to say that women should not pursue careers or that they need to “find a husband” early in life. But it is dangerous to believe that there aren’t long-term consequences to teaching ourselves to value our careers first and to use people for momentary sexual gratification without any promise of long-term commitment.

How hollow is the victory of economic progress if our deepest emotional desires are thrown to the wayside?

Rather than taking Rosin’s assessment at face value, young women today would do better to take charge of reshaping the terms of women’s empowerment. Career and healthy romantic relationships are not mutually exclusive; it may be difficult to have both, but if we truly value this as an important part of our happiness, we should want to foster a culture that supports working just as hard at healthy, committed relationships as it does at working on our PhDs.

While we might laugh and shake our heads at the embarrassing Facebook photos of our college days, and we’d be the first to admit they don’t define us, we also have to be honest: they represent hurdles to our relational futures that we wish we didn’t have to clear.

The end of men - and women

If masculinity is doomed, so is femininity, as a new book demonstrates.

It would be easy to misunderstand the meaning of Hanna Rosin’s now celebrated theme “the end of men”. The title of the American writer’s 2010 Atlantic magazine article, and now of a full-blown book, signifies not the total redundancy of men as sub-species of the human race (although a biology professor recently suggested we were near that point) but the end of masculinity as we have known it. What is in sight is the end of men as providers and protectors, as leaders and authorities -- roles based on their physical strength and capacity for fatherhood.

As I have noted before, this also means that what Rosin calls “the rise of women” (the subtitle of her book) is actually “the end of women” in the sense that femininity has no meaning once masculinity disappears.

Her prediction is based on long-term changes in the workforce which have now given women an edge over men in some respects, and resulting domestic changes. She assumes that this is a good thing, that we have arrived at a kind of evolutionary point from which women can lead men towards a new balance of power -- if only men will learn from women how to adapt to the new economic and social climate.

Is she right? It depends on what you mean by adaptation. Few lament the passing of the strict role segregation of the “patriarchal” era, or higher education for more women and their increasing role in professional life and public leadership. But the attempt to push this trend towards a strict equality that refuses to give any significance to sexual differences is a denial of reality that will have serious consequences for the family and the whole of society.

One can reject such assumptions, however, and still benefit from Rosin’s presentation of statistical trends and their impact on particular lives, since they are potentially revolutionary and we do have to contend with them.

The “mancession” and the house-husband

Men -- working class men anyway -- have been hard hit by the changing economy. The decline of manufacturing and the rise of the service and “knowledge” industries have made male strength and the skills based on it increasingly redundant and left large numbers of men unemployed. This process has been accelerated by recent recessions to the point where people talk of a “mancession”. Around one in five of men of prime working age today are not working.

Rosin observes that men who have lost their old jobs find it hard to accept the jobs that are available -- typically “women’s work” such as sales, teaching, accounting, nursing and child care. It is easy to appreciate that a man accustomed to using heavy machinery in a textile mill is not thrilled at the prospect of sitting in front of a computer in a call centre or looking after toddlers in daycare -- let alone collecting the meagre pay packet for such work.

Women, by contrast, have seized the opportunities of the new economy, and by early 2010 had become a small majority of the US workforce. While men start again at the bottom of the ladder in some new activity, women are climbing into managerial positions. They study part-time at community college and get new qualifications. At universities they outnumber men and outstrip them in completing degrees. Young women overall earn more money than young men, says Rosin.

Why? Because women are “plastic” and willingly adapt themselves to the new conditions, and because the new jobs happen to value skills that come naturally to them: things like sitting still and concentrating, listening to people and communicating openly. Men need to learn from women’s flexibility and skills, Rosin suggests.

Becoming a house-husband while your wife spends all day (and perhaps half the night) at the office is one way to learn. Rosin paints a picture of wives becoming breadwinners and husbands looking after the kids and doing the housework and shopping -- while, perhaps, doing some freelance work or trying to start a new business. Just the way mothers at home have tended to do. College girls in Kansas tell Rosin they expect to be the breadwinners. One talks about men as “the new ball and chain”.

Rosin lays out this whole scenario from her vantage point as a married woman with a husband, who could well be one of the new-style plastic men (David Plotz is the editor of the Washington Post’s online magazine Slate and Rosin runs the site’s XX blog), and three children. The new work and domestic dispensation has worked for them, presumably.

Further down the social scale, however, the imbalance between men and women in education, skills and employability is wreaking havoc on the family. Women with jobs and prospects don’t want to marry down; they would rather, it seems, join the swelling ranks of single mothers. Nearly 60 percent of births to women with high school degrees or less now occur outside marriage, and while some of these women may be cohabiting with the father of their children, such relationships are notoriously unstable. Marriage is becoming a luxury of the educated elite.

It’s the family, not the economy, stupid

So much for trends. But what are we to make of them?

One can accept that working class men should be more adaptable. They should contribute more to childcare and domestic work -- as many already do. They should be happy to see women succeed in the workforce and, if they are unemployed with a family, they should be grateful that at least one parent is bringing in a wage. All this can be taken for granted.

What should not be taken for granted is that society is evolving to a point where gender based roles don’t count at all. What we should not accept is Rosin’s cheerful assumption that masculinity itself is doomed -- and with it, necessarily, femininity.

The distinctive masculine and feminine roles of the past have a sound basis: male and female biology and its orientation towards procreation and the family. And it is the needs of the family - in particular what is best for children -- that should shape the economy, not the other way round.

Since one of the parents must invest more heavily in nurturing young children, why not the mother, who has been favoured for it by nature? Why not let men play second fiddle at home and invest more heavily in providing for the family’s material needs? Why not look to the father as the protector, since his physical strength fits him for the role?

This is not to deny that women can combine motherhood and careers, or that at times mothers will have to be breadwinners and fathers play the domestic role, but all this can happen without the need to discard the norm of sexual complementarity altogether. Studies consistently show that mothers of young children typically prefer part-time work to full-time.

The pill, sexual culture, and the end of the human race

There is no evolutionary inevitability about current trends, as Rosin seems to suggest.

The current feminised form of the workforce is not the outcome of some inherent law of production and distribution. It is, to a large degree, an artefact of the contraceptive revolution and the abrupt end that brought to a more natural level of fertility and the domestic culture that went with it. As Rosin herself notes, women came flooding into the workforce in the 1970s, after the pill and legalised abortion became available.

Feminist ideology also played its part in this revolution with its insistence on equality -- a term that meant, in practice, sameness. And so we arrived at the notions of gender equity and the interchangeability of women and men in both the public and domestic spheres. Some of the consequences of this should alarm us.

In a revealing chapter of her book, published separately in the Atlantic under the heading “Boys on the Side”, Rosin describes the sexual customs of some (presumably typical) college women. Practically every serious-minded person who has commented on the trend of “hooking up” -- that is, casual sex on the agreed basis that there is no emotional investment or commitment at all -- regards it as harmful to young women. But Rosin reports that today’s ambitious college girls are appropriating the hook-up culture as a way to stay focused on their career track while getting their rightful share of sexual pleasure. (See “A dangerous dish” for further comment.)

From the point of view of human dignity, of course, this suggests the “fall of women” rather than their “rise” and yet, disturbingly, Rosin completely approves of it. “To put it crudely,” she says, feminist progress right now largely depends on the existence of the hook-up culture.”

It’s Rosin’s views on sex, ultimately, that undermine her judgement concerning the future of either men or women, but we are obliged to her for showing so clearly on what morally precarious foundations the rise of women now rests.

What is clear is that the end of men (masculinity) would also mean the end of women (femininity) and the reduction of both sexes to a state of plasticity that makes them perfect ciphers for “the economy” (the political and financial establishment). That way lies the end of the human race itself.

How to Get the Man of Your Dreams

The author of a new book is quizzed about its big promise.

How to Get the Man of Your Dreams
The author of a new book is quizzed about its big promise.

dreamsRelationships have never been easy to navigate. In our highly sexualised culture, which insists on putting the self before others, they have become even more complicated. On top of this, most of the media push perspectives on relationships that are neither sincere nor fulfilling. So what’s a girl to do?

Well, she could read Jonathan Doyle’s book, How to Get the Man of Your Dreams, in which the Australian teacher turned author and motivational speaker calls on his experience and research to offer young women practical answers. It seems like a big promise and I had my doubts, so I pitched Mr Doyle some tough questions. He fielded every one.



You say to girls that "you'll get the man you think that you deserve". What do you say to a girl who is convinced that she does not deserve a good man because of the way she's lived her life so far?

The older I get the more I am convinced that our outcomes in life have a great deal to do with the stories we tell ourselves about how things are. Hitting your thumb with a hammer is an objective reality. What you think you deserve in life is subjective and it can be shifted.

In essence, the girl you are describing is living with a toxic belief system that will cause self-fulfilling prophecies. I think the answer for anyone in this situation is to reach out for real help and access options like cognitive behavioural therapy from a professional who can begin to identify and help shift these patterns.

The other way to create change for this girl would be to gradually have a series of better experiences over time. We sustain our view of the world by experiences that reinforce or contradict it. Opening herself, safely, over time, to the ability to trust a good man may also help to change the negative associations of the past. There are good men out there.

There are many girls who are dating guys they love, but they also know that they deserve to be treated with more respect. What would your advice to them be? Stay in the relationship and try to help their boyfriend? End the relationship as it's unlikely that he will change? Or try a break until he can respect her?

End the relationship. It’s simple. A girl’s job is not to change the boyfriend. It’s a recipe for exhaustion and conflict. He will resent it and sooner or later become angry and resistant. Also, a guy that does not respect her has years of work ahead of him to become a better man and that is work that he may not even attempt. I don’t want to paint too bleak a picture but a central message of the book is that there are fewer fine men around. Let’s not pretend that is not true.

There is also a slight metaphysical problem with your question. Love must be based on truth. If a girl is dating a guy that she thinks she loves but he is disrespectful he is not responding to the truth of who she is. She may be in love with the idea of being in love, or maybe in love with the idea that he will change and come to his senses, but genuine human love is based on both partners understanding, at least at some level, the value and dignity of the person and responding to that with their words, actions and choices.

You explain how a man at a bar could view a woman in two possible ways: as an individual human being or as a sexual conquest. How can girls help men to see them as an individual rather than a conquest?

Modesty comes in here. Some writers, notably Wendy Shalit, have addressed this topic in detail. Modesty simply protects the value and dignity of the person and their nature as a gift to be given and received in an exclusive permanent relationship. Some cultures and faith traditions take this too far for my liking but modern secular culture has problems with it in different ways. Secular culture worships the body but reduces it to its potential value for sexual satisfaction only, while ignoring the body's role as an icon or window into deep spiritual mysteries.

My personal opinion is that fine men find women who wear very little less attractive than those who have style, grace, class, taste and what the Polish phenomenologist Karol Wotilja called, the "feminine genius".

There’s a difference between love and pleasure. I've met guys that claim they'd prefer a life of one pleasurable experience after another with different women, rather than even having to settle down with one person. Could they be happy?

It seems you are probably describing sex addiction. Men who chase serial sexual experience are, in my view, cowards. They actually lack the manly virtue of courage to be husbands and fathers. They are little boys, Peter Pans. They cannot do the hard work and heavy lifting of human love which at some level calls us to die to our selfishness.

You coin the term "man-boy" to explain the way that many males are these days (sadly). What are some clear signs that girls can look out for to know if they're dating a man-boy as opposed to a real man?

The man-boy is pretty easy to spot. Here are a few tell-tale signs:

1.  He lives at home after about 25 years.
2.  He is frequently angry and blames others for his anger.
3.  He spends large amounts of time playing computer games.
4.  He has problems with pornography.
5.  He lies, often.
6.  He is unsure about career, marriage and fatherhood.
7.  He wants sex as soon as possible in the relationship.
8.  He has a poor or non-existent relationship with his own father.
9.  He is the centre of his own universe.
10.He has problems with alcohol or other substances.
11.He is sexually unfaithful and blames either the situation, women or alcohol for his own choices.
12.He lacks a clear and compelling life vision.

OK, so I should avoid guys like that. But what qualities should I look for? Especially if I don't know any "good" men that I can base my ideas on?

I think you need to look for a man with a plan! I think young men need to be much more focused in getting on with their life project rather than postponing it into their late twenties and thirties. Karen (my wife) always said that life with me would never be boring. She liked that I was heading somewhere. If the guy is sitting on the couch all the time with no idea of what to do, then move on.

Other things to look for are the quality of his relationships with his father, grandfather or other significant men. A man with a strong bond with his own father, grandfather or other significant men can often have a deep sense of his own value and worth which is a good thing because he won’t try and get a woman to provide his only source of validation – that can be suffocating. That said, I don’t want to be prescriptive. Some guys buck the trend and despite painful childhoods can be fine men.

You quote St Augustine in saying that "we esteem but lightly what we gain but easily." I have met couples in relationships that met by hooking-up at a party or bar. How does this quote apply here?

Couples who meet via hook-ups and are together long term are an anomaly. We need to remember that. We need to look for broad cultural trends because these trends have enormous economic and social ramifications. The statistics clearly demonstrate that relationships that begin with sex rarely do the hard work of deep and sustainable intimacy.

Meeting in bar is not necessarily a problem. It would not be what I hope for my own daughters but I would be unfair to say a successful relationship could not eventuate from such a meeting. However, much research tells us that the best chance of relationship success comes for people who share similar value systems and meet via family, civic or religious events or organisations.

This is all lovely stuff if I'm looking for a committed relationship, but why can't I just have fun now and take your advice when I want to settle down later?

I guess that depends on your definition of ‘fun’! What seems to be happening to many young women seems to often leave them disillusioned and hurt.

All behaviours have consequences. It may be consequences in terms of mental health, sexual health or a deep cynicism about life. Hedonism does not have a great track record for creating healthy and happy people long-term. Our actions and choices at any point in life are not neutral. They are shaping who we become into the future.

Also, the path of slowly building a deep emotional, relational, psychological connection with another person, what we use to call romance, is a deeply human task. A one-night stand subverts the truth of our personhood on multiple levels.

You mention the threats that pornography can pose to a relationship but don't go into depth. Why is porn incompatible with a healthy relationship?

Pornography simply strips the many layered, human and spiritual contexts of human sexuality to the base level of sexual climax and self-obsession. Professor Mary Anne Layden from the University of Pennsylvania argues that pornography operates as a curriculum for young men, as a training package. In the absence of good men and fathers, pornography fills the void of sexual discipleship and mentoring that men actually need.

Pornography harms women. It just seems to break their hearts when they discover a spouse or boyfriend is deriving sexual pleasure from horrific content involving the abuse and degradation of other women.

To finish on a better note; there are still good men around. The two-fold task is for women to know what to look for to have a true sense of their own identity, value and worth. This can happen. It’s not easy but it’s worth the effort.

Why is being alone for life better than being with the wrong person?

The book makes a clear value claim that the human person is ontologically (in its very essence) the type of thing that is made for love. Being with the wrong person means being in a relationship that can’t meet this core human need. I am not saying that every relationship will be utterly perfect, we know it will not, but the general disposition of both partners needs to be geared toward loving each other selflessly.

Also, our culture is totally messed up when it comes to basic human interpersonal relationships. It pathologizes singleness and deifies cheap sexual encounters. Go figure!

There is no crime in being single. Neither is it a disease. One Spanish poet said that the ultimate level of human existence is radical solitude. I don’t quite agree but I get their point. If you can’t do singleness well then you will struggle to do relationships well.

Childless by choice - a decision you may live to regret

Hot yoga and shopping trips to New York won't sustain you when you're eighty-plus and lying in a resthome.

When it comes to major life decisions, who in his right mind wouldn’t choose what sounded like more fun and less work? This, according to one observer, is the rationale behind a new trend in Canada: childlessness. in a recent National Post op-ed:

Imagine a scenario where, on a Friday night, after running around like a beheaded chicken at work all week you get home, smooch the person you love, grab a glass of wine and enjoy the silence, the blissful quietude of being a committed and adoring couple — without kids.

Indeed. No great effort of imagination is required, and, while not agreeing with his overall these-folks-are-just-plain-selfish tone, I do think Mr O'Connor has put his finger on real problem. Between the pressures of work and the possibilities for self-indulgence today's couples could very easily decide that there is no room in their lives for children.
It’s not exactly news that western nations are in demographic freefall, but the statistics are never pleasant to contemplate. Canada’s latest batch of 2011 census numbers shows that nearly half of Canadian couples (44.5 percent) are “without children”.
Of course the stats are skewed somewhat by the inclusion of Boomer empty-nesters: people who have children that are not living in their household. And we know that smaller families are a long-term trend. However, University of Calgary sociologist Kevin McQuillan confirms that there is a new element, "a turning away by couples from having children, period.”
Maybe more like an exclamation mark: the in-your-face "childless by choice"  has been around for decades, though I was sheltered from it in my home town, where five kids was considered a small family. I recall being surprised and disconcerted by society’s anti-child mentality as a university student and then a naïve young mum in the 1980s; now, not so much. I just like to sit back and savour the irony.
O'Connor cites one childless woman who told the Post: “The benefits of not having children are in the driveway, in our closet and stamped on our passports. Kids are expensive.”
And spending lavishly on yourself isn’t? They don’t teach logic in school anymore, do they? And they don't need to teach "me first’ or "the path of least resistance", since it is simply imbibed from the environment these days. Do it if it feels good; do it if it’s convenient; avoid suffering at all costs.
It was not always thus. As O’Connor says, "Having children used to be the point of being a pair. It was the great aspiration — along with finding love everlasting — a biological impulse to go forth and multiply and, later, once your babies reached a certain age, to cajole them about the merits and benefits of doing their bit to join the ranks of parenthood while giving Mom and Dad some grandkids."
His inclusion of biology scores a point for natural law: since human reproduction is natural, it is therefore natural to desire children. Yet clearly, some couples do not. What has occurred to thwart this desire? O’Connor’s curious choice of the biblical phrase “go forth and multiply” hints at the (not insignificant) spiritual motive that inspired earlier generations. Linked with this was a sense of a larger duty to society, which he evokes with his “doing their bit” remark.
It would be unwise to argue that all people have a duty to reproduce; in the past, society depended on some people remaining single to care for the elderly and orphans and to dedicate themselves completely to service professions and the arts. Furthermore, parenthood is a vocation that goes with marriage, and not all people who feel called, so to speak, are successful in finding a mate. Others seem eminently unsuited to raising children.
Today, many young people are infected with the mentality of doomsayers, environmental or otherwise, who argue the polar opposite of the reproductive imperative: that humans have an obligation to become extinct in order to save Mother Earth -- for what, we’re not sure. These people might argue that it's possible to have a child for quite selfish reasons.
Still, as O'Connor suggests, we have a society that provides many temptations to self indulgence and few incentives for the sacrifices demanded by raising children: “Gone are diaper changes and ballet classes, replaced by hot yoga and shopping trips to New York City.”
In other words, life without kids is a never-ending joyride. Now we enter the realm of myth, which is also where I would place the contention that life with children is overwhelmingly stressful, exhausting, expensive and heartbreaking. Or that (horror of horrors) having babies makes you old, frumpy and fat.
In fact, time makes you old, gluttony makes you fat, and apathy and neglect make you frumpy. I can only speak for moms, but lots of us have moved beyond maybe it’s time popular culture kept pace. Skating with your six kids at the local rink is not only every bit as physically invigorating as hot yoga, it’s also better for the economy.
But even if the childless ones don’t mind economic meltdown (and with it the social safety-net state), perhaps they might be invited to reconsider their opinions  out of sheer self-interest. O’Connor concludes with a memento mori: “[W]hat will become of those … folks when decrepitude inevitably creeps in; when they age, as we all inevitably do, and the children they chose not to have aren’t around to look after them?”
He might have added the following, but since he didn’t, I will. Imagine a scenario where, on a Sunday afternoon, you sit idly for interminable hours slumped in your wheelchair in the tiny and stifling nursing home bedroom, which, due to overcrowding, you share with a cantankerous roommate. (Thank heaven she’s in the lounge for her weekly visit with her family!)
You think wistfully of your husband, now long departed. You begin to cry and your nose starts to run. You’d like a tissue, but you are tired and haven’t the strength to wheel yourself to the bedside table. Your diaper is wet, but you know the aide won’t be around for another 45 minutes. You know it is pointless to call for help; the home is chronically understaffed (you’re not sure why).
Enjoy the silence, the blissful quietude as you remember being part of a committed and adoring couple — without kids.

What happens when we redefine marriage?

If same-sex marriage becomes law in Britain, the law will demand that it be respected in word and in deed. Peter Smith considers where the same-sex marriage debate lies in Britain today. There are foreseen consequences of redefinition: the severe hindrance of the freedom of expression and the reasonable manifestation of religious belief, and a profound effect on the provision of fundamental public services. Back in January I set out David Cameron’s proposals for creating same-sex marriage, which he announced at the British Conservative Party’s annual Conference in October 2011, alongside some arguments against those plans. A year later, the controversy has moved on. There are now two parallel movements for same-sex marriage in the UK, a result of the devolution of powers to the Scottish Government. A consultation in Scotland ended in December 2011 and its results were snuck out shortly before Olympic fever dominated the Isles. It is notable how divisive same-sex marriage has been north of Hadrian’s Wall: an ‘unprecedented’ 77,508 responses were received in the ‘largest consultation exercise of its type ever held in Scotland’. Over 33,000 responses were submitted via forms amended by organisations with an interest in the two core proposals of same-sex civil marriage and religious civil partnerships. Opponents of same-sex marriage pipped supporters 52:48, but more than two thirds opposed religious civil partnerships. Nonetheless, the Scottish Government intends on continuing to legalise both relationships, and the Catholic Church – numerically and financially the largest single supporter of traditional marriage – has since ceased dialogue with Edinburgh on the matter. Down south, we are a step behind. The Home Office has also consulted on its plans to create such relationships in England and Wales, but they are effectively limited to same-sex marriages and not religious civil partnerships. After months of campaigning, two umbrella organisations broadly covered the diverse faiths, standpoints and interest groups in the opposing camps. In favour of same-sex marriage stands the Coalition for Equal Marriage, and its slick media campaign, Out4Marriage.org, which publishes clips of well-known proponents of gay marriage such as Boris Johnson and Hugh Grant ‘coming out’ in support of the move. Against liberalisation is the Coalition for Marriage, based out of the Christian Institute’s offices in Newcastle, which has mobilised tens of thousands of Christians to sign petitions and dominate the postbags of Members of Parliament. The Home Office consultation ended in June, and the results are unlikely to be known this calendar year. It is safe to say that there have been a considerable number of responses from both sides (although, as in Scotland, many will be standard pro-forma that campaign groups have handed out and emailed to supporters). Polls favouring both positions have been published. If, following the publication of the consultation document, the Government in Westminster puts legislation before Parliament in the new year, it is likely to be passed by the second anniversary of Cameron’s speech in 2013. But will that legislation be tabled? Opening Pandora’s box The best hope for opponents of same-sex marriage in England is for the Government to conclude it is too difficult to pass coherent and stable legislation that creates such marriages in the narrow circumstances so far envisaged. Social conservatives should not be too hopeful that such sense will prevail: Nick Clegg, the Deputy Prime Minister, gave a glimpse of the liberal class’s mindset when his staff trailed a speech in which he described supporters of traditional marriage as “bigots” – a slur he was rapidly forced to retract. As an example of the radical legal consequences of redefining marriage, the Coalition for Marriage has recently released a précis of a legal opinion by Aidan O’Neil QC, an expert in equality and discrimination law who practises from the same barristers’ chambers as Tony Blair’s wife, Cherie Booth. O’Neil was instructed to consider the implications for religious conscience and religious liberty arising from redefining marriage in England and Wales, and he considers the interplay between the Equality Act 2010 (including the Public Sector Equality Duty (PSEQ)), the European Convention on Human Rights, and case law on point. The PSEQ compels public authorities – including state schools, councils and the National Health Service – to “have due regard to the need to eliminate discrimination, harassment, victimisation and any other conduct that is prohibited...” when exercising their public functions. This includes the obligation to “tackle prejudice” and “promote understanding” between homosexual and heterosexual people. It is a far-reaching obligation on an enormous range of bodies and organisations, and it reduces substantially the lawful opportunities for supporters of traditional marriage to explain – let alone mention – their views. The Coalition for Marriage asked O’Neil to consider some hypothetical situations where religiously-minded people could find themselves in difficulties – and potentially fired from their jobs. Here are elaborations of some of his examples (the précis contains more), which focus on practical positions that readers of MercatorNet might find themselves in, should the prohibition on same-sex marriage be removed. (For brevity, the precise legal reasoning is omitted. What follows is a characterisation of the legal positions, which are necessarily latent or untested propositions.) The chaplain A hospital chaplain is also a local Church of England vicar. Suppose he preaches, at a private wedding service in his church, that marriage is between only one man and one woman. If his hospital employers were to hear of this action, they could take into account his conduct outside of the workplace when determining whether the chaplain was acting in accordance with the requirements of his hospital work and the ethos of the hospital. This is true for any chaplain employed with the public sector (e.g. within a university or the Armed Forces) who, in all likelihood, would have a duty to accept only that marriage could be between two people of the same sex, and that any contrary restrictive view would lead to their lawful dismissal as this view would be ‘un-ethical’, ie, against the prevailing ethos. The teacher A teacher is told by her head that she must use in class a book recommended by the local council and a gay advocacy charity. This book is about a man who falls in love with a prince and marries him. If the teacher asked to opt out of using the book on the grounds of conscientious objection, she would be refusing to obey the otherwise lawful instructions of her employers, thus constituting grounds for her dismissal. Moreover, it would make no difference if the school was a faith school or any type of school with a religious ethos or none. The child A child says in a school assembly that he thinks marriage is only between a man and a woman, on religious grounds. The assembly theme is on marriage and same-sex marriage is discussed. The child is subsequently bullied but the school takes no action. Because the school is under a duty to teach about marriage, and because marriage would mean same-sex marriage, a school which taught marriage equality (same-sex and opposite-sex marriages are the same) would not be discriminating against the child’s religious views. Furthermore, the school is potentially under a duty to ensure that the curriculum it teaches is delivered in a way that discourages and even eliminates the attitudes held by its pupils that involve sexual orientation. This potentially implies that it may brook no dissent from the redefinition. The parents Concerned parents learn that their school is planning a gay and lesbian history month, including lessons on ‘the campaign for marriage equality’. The parents insist that they have the right to withdraw their child from these history lessons. In fact, even if the school were a faith school teaching a subject in a manner contrary to the orthodox teachings of that faith, the parents would be completely unable to withdraw their child from these lessons, and the European Convention would not facilitate it. The foster couple Couples who apply to become foster carers and, during the interview process, let it be known that they could not support same-sex marriage, could be barred by a local authority or council from continuing with their application. The local authority is under an obligation to investigate the views of potential foster parents, and to consider the extent to which those views might influence and affect the behaviour and treatment of a child in their care. As a public authority, the council is under an obligation to safeguard and promote the welfare of looked-after children and this could be construed to include the prevention of exposure to an environment that is potentially exclusive of same-sex marriage. The crucial lesson of civil partnerships It is worth noting again the analogy between same-sex marriage and civil partnerships in England and Wales. When the Civil Partnerships Act was winding its way through Parliament in 2003 and 2004, Tony Blair promised that no religions would be compelled to carry out partnerships. In fact, religious readings, music or symbols were prohibited from the partnership ceremony. However, with only cursory scrutiny by Parliament, this ban was lifted in December 2011. This substantial change in civil partnership policy demonstrates that religious leaders should be very wary of accepting any ‘red line’ promises from ministers (even the Prime Minister) as a way of ameliorating opposition to the current proposals. In the current proposals, there will be a blanket ban on religious ceremonies in England and Wales. This is effectively a religious exemption and means thatchurches and ministers cannot host or celebrate same-sex marriages. However, the O’Neill opinion suggests there is would be a strong case that a blanket ban would be overturned by European human rights law. The material provision is Article 12 of the European Convention, which establishes a right for two individuals to marry: “men and women of marriageable age have the right to marry and found a family...” O’Neil raises the spectre of a fundamental reinterpretation of this Article, from the right of one man and one woman to marry, to same-sex couples, if redefinition occurs in English law. The consequence of this would be to open up other legal avenues, like human rights law, to support same-sex marriage. This could spell the end of the religious exemption. Even if churches were allowed to conduct same-sex marriages, it would be mistaken to think that a happy settlement could be reached whereby those vicars who accepted it would be free to do so, whilst supporters of traditional marriage would be free not to. Because of the established identity of the Church of England, granting the Church a unique and privileged place amongst religions in England, once any vicar allows same-sex marriages it becomes untenable in law for the whole Church not to participate. Thus O’Neil concludes: “Churches might indeed better protect themselves against the possibility of any such litigation by deciding not to provide marriage services at all, since there could be no complaint then of discrimination in their provision of services as between same sex and opposite sex couples. “And, in principle, the Church of England might be better protected under any such claim if it were disestablished in the sense that its clergy were no longer placed under formal legal obligations by the general law to solemnise the marriages of all and any person otherwise eligible to marry under the general law...” It isn’t too late, Mr Cameron Already, MPs are queuing up to remove the hypothetical ban on same-sex marriages in religious places, and Ed Milliband, the leader of the opposition Labour Party, appears to have outflanked Cameron in the latter’s rush to social liberalism. If same-sex legislation is pushed into the House of Commons, David Cameron will likely see a back-bench rebellion from his own MPs on the right of the Party, who are vociferously opposed to the measures. He knows that many Tory MPs hold seats where the UK Independence Party and the Liberal Democrats cannot oust the incumbent Conservatives in a fair fight, but they can succeed if the Tory vote is split (over Europe, for instance) or because Conservative voters simply absent themselves on election day because they are angry or disappointed at the Party leadership. Gay marriage is such an issue. In any event, Cameron will be left in the embarrassing position of relying on Liberal Democrat and Labour support for a majority to be secured (particularly as he is likely to give a free vote), and he will see the Parliamentary Conservative Party split cleanly on this social issue, conservative/liberal, when unity is needed to push through controversial healthcare reforms. Given the political difficulties of creating same-sex marriage and the legal consequences of doing so, it would suit him well to put the plans back on the shelf and move on to getting Britain out of its slump and recession.