{"id":55404,"date":"2015-02-28T08:00:38","date_gmt":"2015-02-28T15:00:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/?p=55404"},"modified":"2015-03-19T22:59:37","modified_gmt":"2015-03-20T05:59:37","slug":"virgin-regret-5","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/2015\/02\/28\/virgin-regret-5\/","title":{"rendered":"Virgin Regret (Part 5): Conclusion"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is the last post in the series<\/a> responding to Samantha Pugsley’s article about her regret in\u00a0remaining a virgin until her wedding night.<\/p>\n

\"Bride<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Losing my religion<\/h2>\n

As a result of all she experienced<\/a>, Samantha left the faith of her childhood:<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t go to church anymore, nor am I religious. As I started to heal, I realized that I couldn\u2019t figure out how to be both religious and sexual at the same time.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Although it’s understandable that she felt a conflict between sex and faith, it really does have to be pointed out that Christians for 2,000 years have\u00a0not found the two to be irreconcilable.\u00a0The reason for this is that\u00a0Christianity has much more to say about sex and marriage than Samantha was ever taught. God made sex! He made it good and enjoyable, he stamped the design into our very bodies. One of the earliest commands in the Bible is to “be fruitful and multiply”<\/span> and I don’t think God was talking about apples\u00a0and arithmetic…<\/p>\n

Doing things differently<\/h2>\n

Samantha says that if she could do it again, she wouldn’t have waited until she got married to have sex. I do wonder though what would have been different? I wonder if they would have stayed together if they weren’t married and their first sexual experience was anything like that of their honeymoon<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Samantha\u00a0also said that if she and her husband\u00a0could do it again, they “would have gotten married at a more appropriate age”<\/em><\/span>. She doesn’t say in the article how old they were, but since they dated for six years, I can’t imagine that she was any younger than twenty-one, which is young, but hardly an inappropriate age to get married.<\/p>\n

In a phrase rather reminiscent of her boyfriend’s earlier comment<\/a>, Samantha\u00a0speaks to her readers:<\/p>\n

It\u2019s your body; it belongs to you, not your church. Your sexuality is nobody\u2019s business but yours.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

All this has left Samantha, in my opinion, in a position no better than she was before:<\/p>\n

When I have sex with my husband, I make sure it\u2019s because I have a sexual need and not because I feel I\u2019m required to fulfill his desires.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

If I were\u00a0her husband reading this, I’d be\u00a0heartbroken. What she was taught before was twisted, but this seems to me to be equally broken. Rather than her, it’s now\u00a0her husband who is being used and objectified. Sex for her continues to be not about self-donation, but about fulfilling basic biological urges.<\/p>\n

The difference good theology makes<\/h2>\n

Jesus, the Church and Pope St. John Paul II in his “Theology of the Body”<\/em> point us\u00a0to something far grander and this must be proclaimed. Couples are called to be living icons of God Himself, spouses are exhorted\u00a0to image Christ and His Church, all called to chastity, to forget ourselves and live lives of authentic love. This is a truth we must proclaim to the world. We cannot be vague and we cannot afford to water-down the truth.<\/p>\n

I am fortunate to be surrounded by couples who live chastely and have embraced the Church’s vision. It is truly beautiful. This is not an ethereal theology, a nice idea\u00a0dreamed up by\u00a0scholastic theologians. No, the Church\u00a0offers us a concrete, robust understanding of the human person and the goodness of sexual union.<\/p>\n

Part 1<\/a> | Part 2<\/a> | Part 3<\/a> | Part 4<\/a> | Part 5<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is the last post in the series responding to Samantha Pugsley’s article about her regret in\u00a0remaining a virgin until her wedding night.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":55413,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crdt_document":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[28,17],"tags":[1026,276,410,2969,1845,348,3122,2889,3132],"class_list":["post-55404","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-apologetics","category-faith","tag-abstinence","tag-catholic","tag-chastity","tag-featured","tag-john-paul-ii","tag-protestant","tag-samantha-pugsley","tag-virginity","tag-virginregretseries"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/WeddingBAnner.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55404","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=55404"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55404\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":55767,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55404\/revisions\/55767"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/55413"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=55404"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=55404"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=55404"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}